Report for 2002-09-13
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Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".
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| This Weeks Issue | The Utah Skies Website | |
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| Sunrise: 7:05 am | Sunset: 7:41 pm | ||
| Astronomical Twilight Begins: 5:31 am | Astronomical Twilight Ends: 9:15 pm | ||
| Moonrise: 2:55 pm First Quarter: 12:08 pm |
Moonset: none | ||
| Weather has been stormy over northern Utah all week. We've finally received a bunch of much needed rain. I did manage to get some nice views on Monday night... checking out M13, M57, the planet Uranus and a few others. This weekend's weather forecasts is... thankfully... calling for clear skies again. With the moon at first quarter, we'll have to wait until after midnight to view under truly dark skies. That ought to give the fall constellations plenty of time to rise high in the east. The same can be said of Saturn... it is now rising shortly after midnight. Get your telescopes ready for some awesome fall viewing. |
 We
were hit with another surprise aurora this past weekend. On Saturday, a
blast from the solar wind was detected sweeping past Earth. Our planets
magnetic field shifted sharply south... a condition known to facilitate
auroral activity. Skywatchers were treated to beautiful displays of the
northern and southern lights. Northern Utah was... of course... buried under
heavy cloud cover as the first serious batch of rain all summer picked this
weekend to come. This of course adds further support to
"Anthony's First Theorem of Geomagnetic Activity" which states
that "The intensity of geomagnetic activity is directly proportional to
the amount of cloud cover over northern Utah".
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 Checkout
this awesome "fisheye" shot by Jorma Koski taken from Hollola county, Southern Finland
on Sept. 7th. Jorma captured this remarkable image during the Manskivi Deep Sky Star Party; the auroras were so intense, he says, they cast shadows on the ground. Photo details: Canon EOS D60 6Mb digital camera set to 100ASA, 30 second exposure, 8mm Peleng fish-eye lens at f/3.5
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 Here's
a cool shot by Stephane Levesque
of Luceville, Quebec, Canadataken on Sept. 12th. The image reveals not only the aurora borealis, but also a bright meteor. |
 Checkout
this awesome sunset shot by Canadian photographer Lauri Kangas captured this one on Sept. 9th. The beams of sunlight emerging from gaps in the clouds are called
crepuscular rays.
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 Valley fog provided a natural sun filter for photographer Karl Kuehn, who captured this photo from Greene, New York on Sept. 10th. Sunspot 105 is visible near the bottom of the solar disk.
Please... Remember to always use Safe Solar Viewing Techniques. |
 The
controversy continues... Some people are still convinced that man never set
foot on the moon... That the whole thing is a hoax...
A man who publicly confronted astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin over whether he actually went to the moon said that the Apollo 11 hero almost sent him into space with a punch to the jaw. The man claims that the Apollo 11 astronauts faked footage of their July 1969 trip to the moon to fool the Soviet Union into thinking the United States had won the 1960s space race. Find out more...
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 The
International Space Station
will make several brief passes over the area this weekend... including one
billed as a "Space
Station Supernova". The reason for this is that the ISS will come
from the dark side of the planet into the light of the soon to be rising
sun. See if you can find it. The ISS look like a bright, but slow moving
meteor. While it is traveling slower than a meteor which moves at speeds
approaching 100,000 miles per hour, the ISS is traveling a respectable
17,000 miles per hour. At this rate, it circles the Earth 16 times per
day.
To find out when the ISS will be overhead, visit NASA's Space Flight Website.
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 The moon
will reach first quarter today at 12:08 pm (Park City). It is now rising
around midday and
setting around midnight... by nightfall, it should be almost directly
overhead.
The accompanying image was taken by Utah Skies own Don Brown using an Olympus D-340R Digital Camera. Don used eyepiece projection to 50x through an Orion XT8 Newtonian Reflector. |
In this section, we visit the planets in the order in
which they are currently rising. We do our best to track down the finest images
available. 
for 2002. As
an added feature, you may also click on any of the planetary images to view a
planetary reference page filled with important facts about the planet. |
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Saturn is now rising about six hours before the Sun and can be found
high almost overhead just before dawn. If you're an early riser, you should have now
trouble finding the ringed planet as it is brighter than any of the
surrounding stars. Did you know that the rings are visible in binoculars?
It's true. You'll have to hold it extremely steady... or maybe even mount
it on a tripod, but.. they are visible.
Checkout this awesome shot of Saturn by last month's Utah Skies Astro-Photographer of the month, Robert Gendler. Notice how quickly the Cassini Division jumps into view... plus the varying colors in the planetary disk. Very cool! |
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Checkout this beautiful image of Jupiter
taken by Robert
Gendler. Would you be happy with views like this? You might be
surprised at what a half-way decent telescope could do for you. Jupiter is
fairly well positioned for viewing in the mornings now. Perhaps you should
dust off your telescope and see what it's capable of doing? |
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| Checkout this sweet image captured by
Ed Grafton.
It clearly shows why most of the detail on the surface of the Red Planet
was invisible to amateur telescope last year. A huge, planet-wide dust
storm was engulfing the planet... just as it was moving into it's best
viewing position in years. Mars has now reached its greatest separation from Earth at this point .The distance between the two planets will slowly begin to shrink. Visually, Mars has shrunk down to a measly 4".. a tiny fraction of it's peak of 21" in June 2001. In fact, this is just about as small as Mars ever gets. It has also dimmed significantly as well - currently shining at a wimpy magnitude 1.79 down from -2.4 in June. But... don't you worry. Mars will return for an even better pass in the summer of 2003. At that time, Mars will make it makes it's closest pass in over 5000+ years. Get your telescopes ready! In the mean time, we can live vicariously through the works of some of the finest astrophotographers on the planet... and even beyond the planet. In case you didn't notice, Mars has now moved into the morning sky. We should begin picking it up in the east in the coming weeks. |
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| The accompanying image series was taken by Juan Carlos Cansado in Spain. It depicts the path that Mercury's orbit takes it through the sky. Notice that even at its highest... Mercury is never far above the horizon. The reason for this... Mercury is the innermost planet. It has the tightest orbit and never gets too far away from the Sun. | |||||||||||||
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| Venus continues its journey
through the constellation Leo. It also continues to brighten. Checkout
this cool shot by B. Colville of the Maple
Ridge Observatory. These were taken using a special Bessel U Filter which allows the transmission of ultra-violet light. Note the detail captured in the clouds of Venus' upper atmosphere.
Venus is now rising about four hours after the sun... it has slowly but surely moved to take up its role as the Evening Star. Many of you have no doubt seen it blazing away in the western sky after sunset. Mercury will achieve its greatest brightness and largest apparent diameter in the coming weeks. Did you know that Venus goes through phases? No... not those kind of phases... Phases of illumination, like the moon. It's true. Venus is currently 36% illuminated. As it climbs higher in the sky (larger angular separation from the Sun) the illuminated portion shrinks. By the time Venus is only 1/4 illuminated towards the end of September, it will have brightened to mag -4.6. It will continue to brighten to about mag -4.7 late in the fall when it reaches its greatest elongation (angular separation from the Sun). At that point, Venus will have grown to over 44"... almost 1/3 larger than it's current size. |
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Occasionally, a planet in our Solar System will pass in front of a bright star. Since stars and planets take up so little space on the sky, such events are quite rare. Two months ago, however, Pluto and its large moon Charon passed in front of a comparatively bright triple star system known as P126. By noting how P126 A dimmed, the event was useful for studying Pluto's relatively unknown atmosphere. A Very Large Telescope in Chile using a deformable mirror to counter the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere captured the above image.
Pluto is currently over 2.8 billion miles from Earth. Located in the southwestern sky before sunset, Pluto is also not very well placed at this point for viewing. If you haven't viewed it recently, you'll have to catch it on the next go round. |
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Checkout the cool Voyager 2 shot of
Neptune. Clearly visible is Neptune's "Great Dark Spot", a
large hurricane-like storm similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Neptune
is a relatively easy target when viewed at the right time... and that time
is now! It is best viewed now and through the
fall, when it will high in the sky for hours late at night and into the
dawn. Almost
star-like in binoculars, it shows it's beautiful blue color in telescopes. Neptune gets this beautiful
blue coloring from a layer of Methane in its upper atmosphere.
Located over 2.84 billion miles from Earth, Neptune
has a huge circular orbit -- taking just over 164 years to orbit the Sun.
In fact, Neptune's orbit varies by less than 1% from circular. Neptune has
a couple of other claims to fame... It has the fastest wind speeds in the
solar system with gust at almost 1500 mph. Similar to Jupiter, it is categorized as a gas giant. Neptune is roughly 17 times more massive than the Earth. In another similarity to Jupiter, Neptune has a Great Dark Spot. William Herschel is credited with the discovery of Neptune in 1781. However, it had been recorded in several catalogs as a star as far back as 1690. |
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Uranus reached opposition on Monday 8/19. This means
that the planet is opposite the sun in the sky. Opposition brings Uranus closest to us for this year at 2.6 light-hours away.
That's right... Light hours... the distance light travels in 2.6 hours.
Uranus is just about visible to the naked eye... depending on how dark
your skies are of course. This means its an easy target for binoculars or
a telescope. I saw Uranus recently. While sweeping for it using low powers
Uranus looked like a strange star. The reason for this is that Uranus
resolves to a disk... not just a point source of light like a star. As I
increased the power I was able to determine without a doubt that I was
observing the 7th planet. It appeared as a very pale blue disk. As it was
less than an ideal night for observing, none of its faint moons were
visible. I suspect that on a better night... from darker skies that I
would have been able to spy at least the brightest moon Miranda... though
at mag 16.5 it would certainly be a stretch. Checkout this shot of Uranus taken by Astrophotographer Ed Grafton. You can clearly see several of it's moons in this image. At almost 2 billion miles away, this is one tough shot to make from Earth! Uranus is a relatively easy target to find though. However, this is another tiny planet at only 4". It is also rising at almost the same time as the sun. So... you'll have to wait a few months to seek it out. Additionally, given it's tiny size, It displays absolutely no surface detail. It does however show it's beautiful aquamarine color. Uranus also gets its beautiful coloring from a layer of Methane in its upper atmosphere. Located over 1.92 billion miles from Earth, Uranus has a huge orbit -- taking just over 84 years to orbit the Sun. It is categorized as a gas giant as is Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Uranus is roughly 14 times more massive than the Earth. Discovered by William Herschel in March of 1781, Uranus was the first planet to be "discovered". All the others are plainly visible, and hence have been known since antiquity. The name Uranus was suggested for mythological reasons. Since Jupiter was the father of Saturn, it made sense to name the next planet out Uranus -- the father of Saturn. |
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| The Hubble Space Telescope
has distinguished itself as a premier source of astronomical images.
Amazing HST images have graced the covers of major magazines and
newspapers worldwide. In recognition of the amazing advances in astronomy
and physics which have come from Hubble discoveries, we'd like to devote a
section of this report to some of these incredible images, and share some of them with you. Our
latest comes directly from the Hubble
Heritage Team.
We've got a special treat for you in this weeks Hubble Vision section. These are the first shots made public from the new camera installed in the Hubble Space Telescope. I'm sure you'll agree that these shots are even more impressive than previous Hubble products. |
A Wheel within a Wheel
A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The image may help astronomers unravel clues on how such strange objects form. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. The blue ring, which is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, contrasts sharply with the yellow nucleus of mostly older stars. What appears to be a "gap" separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag's Object can be seen in the gap at the one o'clock position. The object is probably a background ring galaxy. Ring-shaped galaxies can form in several different ways. One possible scenario is through a collision with another galaxy. Sometimes the second galaxy speeds through the first, leaving a "splash" of star formation. But in Hoag's Object there is no sign of the second galaxy, which leads to the suspicion that the blue ring of stars may be the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed nearby. Some astronomers estimate that the encounter occurred about 2 to 3 billion years ago. This unusual galaxy was discovered in 1950 by astronomer Art Hoag. Hoag thought the smoke-ring-like object resembled a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star. But he quickly discounted that possibility, suggesting that the mysterious object was most likely a galaxy. Observations in the 1970s confirmed this prediction, though many of the details of Hoag's galaxy remain a mystery. The galaxy is 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 took this image on July 9, 2001. Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: Ray A. Lucas (STScI/AURA) |
| 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 move on to the constellation Capricornus the Sea Goat. What's a sea goat, you may be wondering? The sea goat was one of the forms of the Sumerian water-god Ea. This would date Capricornus back more than 4,000 years!
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The focus of our efforts this week will be the deep
sky objects of Capricornus. To find this constellation, face
south after dark and you should be looking right at it. Capricornus is
between about 20° and 35° above the horizon. To judge this
distance, hold out your hand and spread your fingers wide apart. The
distance covered from your thumb to your pinky finger covers about
20°. Capricornus is home to a host of double and triple stars, and
a lone Messier object.
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Moving
on, we take a brief detour. Our next object is not a deep sky
object. Nope. Our next object resides within our own solar system.
Next up is the planet Uranus(mag5.7). At a distance of about 19
astronomical units (the Earth-Sun distance or 93 million miles),
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered in modern times.
Continuing
on our detour, we come to the 8th planet, Neptune(mag7.8). At a
distance of over 29 AU, Neptune is also too small(2") to reveal
anything but it's bluish color. This color is an indication of it's
atmospheric composition which is similar to Uranus.
Jumping back out of our solar system and deep
into our galaxy, we come Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC6907(mag11.3).
Continuing, we come Irregular Galaxy,
IC1321(mag15).
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Next Weeks Report |
| Next week, we'll continue our journey through the cosmos and focus on the constellation Equuleus. |
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Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org
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