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Welcome to the Utah Skies Report.
Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".

Weekend Viewing Conditions Outlook

Let me start this report by saying... "If you missed the aurora last Friday night, you missed an amazing event." It was undoubtedly one of the most impressive sights to ever grace the skies over Utah. At several points during the evening, more than 1/2 of the sky was filled with color. Reds, greens, whites. It was awesome. It was reported that this event was seen as far south as Mexico!. I believe it. I was able to look straight up and see the electric curtains waving overhead.

Aurora are caused when magnetic material from the Sun interacts with the Earth's magnetosphere. You may recall from last weeks Utah Skies Report that an extremely large Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was recorded leaving the Sun on Wednesday. It was this CME which triggered the beautiful northern lights which we saw here. We are still near the peak of solar activity, so... let's hope that we're treated to a few more of these amazing displays.

Aside from the aurora, conditions have been down right poor. I know I'm looking forward to those continually clear summer nights

 

Astronomical Times

Sunrise:  7:03 am	Sunset:  7:56 pm
Astronomical Twilight Ends:  5:28 am	Astronomical Twilight Begins:  9:32 pm

Lunar Phase 
The moon will be full this weekend, meaning that it will be up all night and completely dominate the sky.
The full moon is a glorious site to the naked eye. It has been both feared and worshiped since the dawn of time.
If you'd like to do some deep sky observing, you'll have to wait till at least the middle of the week when the moon rises closer to midnight.

Planetary Report 
In our planetary report today we'll briefly mention Jupiter and Saturn. They still dominate the night sky, blazing in the western sky after sunset. If you've been enjoying them, or would like to, you'd better hurry. They are setting earlier and earlier each week. Combine this with the fact that it's staying lighter longer and you've got a small window of opportunity. Jupiter and Saturn will both be gone from the night sky in the next month or so. So... what are you waiting for :)

Telescope Talk 

Last week we briefly spoke about the wonderful, but expensive views produced by apochromatic refractors. This week we'll speak about everybody's favorite, the Dobsonian reflector. Dobsonian reflectors have the distinction of providing "the most scope for the buck". This time tested design is simple and inexpensive to produce. While a 6" high end refractor will set you back $5000, you can get a nice 10" Dobsonian reflector for under $1000. Dobsonians are often referred to as light buckets. This, somewhat disparaging term is based on the larger telescopes incredible light gathering capabilities. These larger reflectors will take you places that their smaller cousins can only dream of. So... if you dream of seeing distant galaxies, star clusters and nebulas, a large Dobsonian reflector may be the ideal telescope for you.

Constellation Report  Our Constellation report is an easy way for people to become familiar with the nighttime sky. We’ll discuss myths associated with the various constellations as well as describing the numerous deep sky objects residing in the area. No equipment is required to view the constellations, though a star chart can be quite helpful. This ease of observing makes constellations a natural place to begin your journey to the stars. This weekend we’ll focus in on the constellation Gemini.

Gemini  To find Gemini, turn to the west and look up. You should be staring at Gemini. Gemini is located overhead after sunset. In classical Greece the stars were named Castor and Pollux, legendary twins born of immortal Zeus and the mortal Leda, wife of the king of Sparta. Thus, Pollux was immortal and Castor mortal. They were brothers of beautiful Helen of Troy, for whom the Trojan War was fought.

Deep Sky Report 
Our Deep Sky report examines Gemini in more detail.

First stop, the beautiful double star Castor. These stars are beautiful and a good test of sky conditions. With magnitudes of 2.0 and 2.8 and a separation of 5 arc seconds, splitting this pair can be a bit of a challenge. Are you up for it?

The next stop on our tour of Gemini is the beautiful open star cluster M35(mag5.1). This cluster spans over 1* of sky and contains 200-300 visible member stars. How many can you count? To find this beauty, look a degree or so north west of the foot of the western most twin. Finding this object with a star chart and a telescope of binoculars is usually quite simple.

While you're in the neighborhood, see if you can find a few of M35's neighbors. To the southwest is NGC 2158 and to the west of this  is NGC 2129. Each of these beautiful clusters should be visible within a low power, wide angle eyepiece.

Deep Sky Challenge 

Our final stop in Gemini is our double Deep Sky Challenge of the week,  NGC2392 better know as The Eskimo Nebula. The Eskimo nebula is not all that difficult at mag 8.6. It looks like a bluish dot at 100x in a small telescope. In larger scopes, at higher magnifications, the features which give it its name become apparent. Here is the amazing Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eskimo Nebula...

Light Pollution Update
Do lights in your neighborhood illuminate your house? You don't have to put up with it any more. Your neighbors "right to illuminate" ends at his property line. Tell them that you don't appreciate this. We need to reclaim our skies one at a time.

Next Weeks Report
Next week, we'll focus on the Constellation Cancer and beautiful objects which call it home.

Closing

This "Star Cast" has been presented by Utah Skies. View-tah’s Astronomy Home. Utah Skies can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.UtahSkies.org. Visit our site and discover the cosmos. We have numerous images of deep sky objects such as galaxies, nebulas and star clusters. We also have lots of astronomy-related information as well as links to other astronomy sites. Utah Skies is also your best source of information on light pollution.

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