Basic astronomy and night sky information
“We and our world are the minutiae and curiosa– galaxies are the grand realities.” -Leland Copeland
This wide-field image of the core of the Virgo cluster reveals several dozen of the more than 2,000 galaxies spread across our sky between the stars Denebola in Leo and Vindemiatrix in Virgo [Read more…] about Panorama of the Virgo Cluster
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Galaxy season is back, and I’m going hunting in the deep sky. Among tonight’s targets is NGC 5907, the “Splinter Galaxy” in the constellation Draco. Part of the NGC 5866 galaxy group, this edge-on spiral is 50 million light years away. At a length of 120,000 light years long, it’s one of the largest edge-on systems visible in a small telescope, with a mass of 250 billion Suns. NGC 5907 is well-known for its warped disk and a dramatic arc of stars that suggests a recent collision with another galaxy. It also lacks the number of giant stars expected of a spiral galaxy [Read more…] about From the Observer’s Log: The Splinter Galaxy
Located in the Diablo mountain range east of San Jose, California, Lick Observatory is the world’s first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory. It was founded in 1888 and has been part of the University of California ever since. This image by reader Marilyn Perry shows the Full Moon rising over the observatory in May 2015.
The location of Lick on Mt. Hamilton provides calm air and excellent viewing despite ambient light and pollution. The peak is normally above the level of the low cloud cover often seen in San Jose. The peak provides a stunning view to the west of the Valley of Heart’s Delight, now better known as Silicon Valley. To the east, the Sierra’s can be seen on a very clear day [Read more…] about Full Moon Over Lick Observatory
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It’s a good time for seeing planets. Venus moved past the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters in early April. Now it’s Mercury’s turn. In this image, you see the speedy little planet near the two famous star clusters on May 1, 2015. The Hyades star cluster is tangled in the branches at left. For the next week, Mercury makes its best appearance this year in the western sky after sunset. Venus is much higher above the horizon after sunset, and Jupiter higher still. Saturn rises in the east before midnight, its rings tilted dramatically, as it moves to its closest approach to Earth later in May.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
The usually reliable Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks on the night of May 5-6 this year. The shower runs from April 21 – May 20, 2015, with many meteors still visible for several days on either side of the peak. It’s perhaps the best meteor shower of the year for southern hemisphere stargazers, and it’s pretty good for northerners too. The meteors are sandgrain-sized bits left over from Halley’s comet. Like most such showers, the best viewing is just before dawn.
Astronomers at the University of Arizona announced one of the ‘standard candles’ of the universe, exploding stars called Type Ia supernovae, may not be so standard after all. They found more distant Type Ia supernovae might be intrinsically fainter than more nearby events, suggesting the accelerating expansion of the universe is not as pronounced as once thought. This may mean the effect of the mysterious ‘dark energy’ that causes the expansion is also less important. But that doesn’t disprove the existence of dark energy. As Ethan Siegel explains, there are two more independent observations that show something like dark energy (whatever it may be) still accounts for the majority of the universe.
Yesterday, NASA released rather stirring images from the New Horizon’s spacecraft of Pluto and its Texas-sized moon Charon revolving about their common center of mass. The images also show Pluto rotating about its axis, and large-scale surface features on the former planet’s surface. These are the best images yet captured. The view will only get better as New Horizons gets closer to its brief but historic rendezvous with Pluto just 11 weeks from now.
Well, this makes me feel old, but NASA marked the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope last week. The redoubtable instrument, which began its career with a malformed primary mirror, has revolutionized professional astronomy and helped astronomers to generate more knowledge and understanding of the universe in the past 25 years than in the previous 200 years. Hubble helped refine our understanding of the age of the universe, detect atmospheres on exoplanets, and find millions of galaxies in parts of the sky where no galaxies had been seen before. The New York Times has a brief retrospective video on the launch and legacy of Hubble. And Phil Plait published his favorite “12 1/2” images from Hubble in his column at Slate.
Ottawa-based stargazer Andrew Symes continues to refine his imaging techniques using an iPhone and an 8″ Celestron NexStarSE telescope. An iPhone! The small sensor and pixel sizes of smartphone cameras make them unlikely candidates for astrophotography. But clever developers have created apps that enhance the low-light operation of the iPhone camera. So with a little practice and standard post-processing techniques, Symes has shown it’s possible to take quite acceptable images of Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and even brighter deep-sky sights directly at the eyepiece of a telescope with an iPhone.
Wishing you clear skies,
Brian Ventrudo
Publisher, Cosmic Pursuits
CosmicPursuits.com
