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The Sky This Month – December 2017

December 1, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

Meteors from the Geminid meteor shower (credit: Asim Patel)

For better or worse, the year 2017 finally comes down to its last month. Our planet, to be sure, has had better years. But the heavens, as always, offer respite.

This month has many beautiful sights and events for attentive sky watchers. The Moon acts as your guide in December to the planets and bright stars along the ecliptic, especially the brightening planets Mars and Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky. Saturn finally disappears westward into the Sun for the year after a fine apparition in 2017, while Venus disappears eastward into the Sun’s glare by mid-month. There are two fine meteors showers in December. And the seasons change once again as winter begins in the northern hemisphere and summer begins in the south. Here’s what to see in the sky this month… [Read more…] about The Sky This Month – December 2017

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The Sky This Month – November 2017

November 1, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

A Taurid fireball photographed on Oct. 28, 2005, by Hiroyuki Iida of Toyama, Japan.

November has fallen fast upon us. That’s good news for southern-hemisphere stargazers who now enjoy warmer nights. But it’s also good for northern stargazers who enjoy earlier sunsets and longer stargazing sessions. For deep-sky observers, there are plenty of open star clusters in Cassiopeia and Perseus, and lots of galaxies in Pegasus, Sculptor, and elsewhere. There are congregations of bright planets in the morning sky, and a few planetary stragglers in the evening sky as well. Not to mention two overlapping meteor showers that offer a chance for you to see a few bright, slow-moving fireballs, and two occultations by the Moon of first-magnitude stars. Here’s what to see in the night sky this month…
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Roaming the October Skies – A Brief Tour of Aquarius

October 13, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula, a cloud of glowing gas ejected by a dying mid-sized star. (Image by Terry Hancock)

Aquarius is a dim constellation in a barren patch of sky far off the plane of the Milky Way. Just east of Capricorn, it marks the 11th constellation of the zodiac. This dim constellation lies near the other “watery” constellations including Cetus, the Sea Monster (or whale), Pisces, the Fishes, and Eridanus, the River. This ancient constellation was associated with water or water bearers since Babylonian times. Some representations have the water bearer pouring water into a stream that leads to the bright star Fomalhaut, the mouth of the southern fishes Piscis Austrinus. Like Capricorn, Aquarius has far fewer deep-sky sights than Sagittarius. But there are a handful of objects here of enduring interest including the famous Helix Nebula, one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. Let’s take a short tour of some of the finer sights in this zodiacal constellation… [Read more…] about Roaming the October Skies – A Brief Tour of Aquarius

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The Sky This Month – October 2017

September 30, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

An Orionid meteor, a tiny sliver of Comet Halley, falls into the Earth’s atmosphere in October 2012. Credit: NASA.

If the weather holds, October is a lovely month for stargazing. The Milky Way still lingers in the west along with stars that were prominent in the northern summer. The autumn stars dominate overhead, and the northern winter stars are starting to poke above the eastern horizon. Best of all, you can get in a good night of stargazing without staying up too late. Early this month, there’s a wonderful pairing of planets in the eastern sky before sunrise, two meteor showers, a dramatic occultation of a bright star, another chance to see the ‘False Dawn, and your best chance of the year to see an ‘ice giant’ in the the outer solar system. Here’s what to see in the night sky this month…
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Seeing Carbon Stars, Close Up and Far

September 22, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

his ALMA image reveals much finer structure in the U Antliae shell than has previously been possible. Around 2700 years ago, U Antliae went through a short period of rapid mass loss. During this period of only a few hundred years, the material making up the shell seen in the new ALMA data was ejected at high speed. Examination of this shell in further detail also shows some evidence of thin, wispy clouds known as filamentary substructures. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/F. Kerschbaum

Many experienced stargazers are connoisseurs of carbon stars, deep-red and highly evolved stars that are dredging up carbon and other nuclear reactants from their innards on their way to becoming, briefly, planetary nebulae. These striking stars are the most colorful of all celestial sights and they’ve long intrigued astronomers who are trying to fine tune their theories of how stars come to the end of their lives. Carbon stars are too far away to reveal much detail directly, so astronomers study them indirectly by examining their spectra. But a team of researchers at the remarkable ALMA telescope in northern Chile have captured an amazingly beautiful and revealing image of a carbon star in the constellation Antlia. Let’s have a look at what they saw, then set some time aside to go see a carbon star for ourselves with a small telescope or pair of binoculars [Read more…] about Seeing Carbon Stars, Close Up and Far

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