Report for 2002-11-15

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Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".

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Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

2002 Leonid Meteor Storm

2002 is shaping up to be another banner year for the Leonids. Estimates of meteor activity are in the 2000-6000 meteors per hour range. For those of us living in North America, the peak will occur at 10:20UT (That's 3:20am MST)

Checkout our Special Report on the 2002 Leonid Meteors.

This year could also be your last chance to view a Leonid Meteor Storm.

Will this year's Leonid meteor shower be as good as last year's? No one knows for sure. Possibly, however, in the waning nighttime hours of November 18 and lasting throughout much of November 19, sky gazers across the globe may get their last chance ever to see a meteor storm. Although the glare of a nearly full Moon will likely hide the presence of many faint meteors, plenty of bright meteors may well streak across the other side of the sky. The above image was taken during 2001 as Leonids stormed over Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia. The image is actually a digital composite of 22 separate frames, including one at sunset. The Gum Nebula is visible on the upper left. 

Holiday Gift Giving Ideas

Viewing Outlook

Space Weather Update

Scientists say they have made the unprecedented discovery of solar flares erupting almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the sun. The flares -- massive eruptions of hydrogen from the sun's surface -- were observed by researchers at the National Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico on the morning of October 31. For more info, click on CNN.com/SPACE

This stunning image shows remarkable and mysterious details near the dark central region of a planet-sized sunspot in one of the sharpest views ever of the surface of the Sun. Just released, the picture was made using the adaptive optics enabled Swedish Solar Telescope now in its first year of operation on the Canary Island of La Palma.
For more info, visit the APOD 

Checkout this awesome black & white shot taken on Nov. 7th,

Want to see more awesome displays of the northern lights? Check out our Image Library.

Mission Update

The International Space Station will make several passes over the area this weekend.  To find out when, visit NASA's Space Flight Website. The ISS is orbits the Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour. At this rate, it circles the Earth 16 times per day.

The developing International Space Station (ISS) has changed its appearance yet again. Last month the Space Shuttle Atlantis visited the ISS and installed the third of eleven pieces that will compose
the Integrated Truss Structure. The new S-1 Truss is visible on the right, below the extended solar panels across the top. The world's foremost space outpost can be seen developing over the past few years by
comparing the above image to past images. Also visible above are many different types of modules, a robotic arm, several wing-like solar panels, and a supply ship. Construction began on the ISS in 1998 and the
core structure should be in place before 2005. Yesterday, the ISS celebrated its second anniversary of continuous human habitation. 

Lunar Phase

The moon will be full on Monday at 6:34 pm. In the meantime, we'll be under a waxing gibbous moon with 84% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated in the sky tonight.

I took the accompanying image earlier this spring through a 6" Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope. 

Visit our Lunar Information Page for even more images and information.

Planetary Report

Mars has begun to brighten. While only a small step, this week marks the second small step in Mars return to grandeur. By the summer of 2003, Mars will be bigger and brighter than at any time in the last 5000 years. Get your telescopes ready, we are in for a treat!

 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. Checkout this sweet image captured by Ed Grafton this month's Utah Skies Astrophotographer of the Month.

Venus has made the shift... It is now rising about 1 hour and 45 minutes before the sun. It has taken up the role as the " morning star".  Look for it shining brightly low in the eastern sky just before dawn. Given it's incredible brightness, it an easy target for observers. Now that Venus is in the morning sky, you can see four planets before sunrise: Venus and Mars and Jupiter and Saturn.

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 a mere 2% illuminated. When the planet is near the Sun (as it is now) it looks like a thin crescent. Javier Ruiz Fernández of Santander, Spain, captured this image of Venus through an 8" telescope on Nov. 5th. At this point, Venus is pretty cool to look at in a telescope. So... get out there and check it out!

The accompanying image of the Degas Ray Crater shows the incredible amount of meteor bombardment which Mercury has gone through in its history. Since Mercury has no atmosphere, the marks of each and every strike are still visible on the planets surface.

Mercury is quite the illusive object for amateur astronomers. Since it is the innermost planet, it never gets far enough away from the Sun to be seen in dark skies. Additionally, views along the horizon are typically the most turbulent. So... simply seeing Mercury is about the best you can hope for.

Take this bit of planetary information either as an interesting side note, or an observing challenge. Pluto is in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 15 degrees north of Mars. At magnitude 13.75, Pluto is basically out of reach of smaller telescopes. One way to verify that you have found Pluto is to sketch the star patterns over several nights. If you have actually found Pluto, one of the the faint star-like objects will have moved over the course of a few nights. This is Pluto.

Pluto orbits the Sun at about 30 times the distance of the Earth - nearly 2.75 billion miles away. The image at right is one of the best ground based images I have ever seen so don't expect to see any surface detail. Merely seeing Pluto is an accomplishment.

The accompanying image was taken by the Nordic Optical Telescope.

How's this for a cool shot of Neptune and it's largest moon Tritan? Taken in 1989 by  Voyager 2 as it passed the giant planet.

Neptune is a relatively easy target when viewed at the right time... and that time is now! It is best viewed throughout 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, Neptune 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.

Saturn is now rising about 10:00pm, giving planetary viewers a bedtime treat. It can be found high, almost overhead just before dawn. Given that it's dark until almost 7:00am, you should have no problem getting out to view the ringed planet. I got some truly spectacular views of Saturn Monday morning. I was able to push the Ute-Newt to just a smidge past 250x without any loss of image quality. Saturn can be found about 15° north of Betelgeuse... the alpha star in Orion.
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.

The accompanying picture of Saturn is the first release by NASA created from images taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft en route to the ringed planet. What an awesome shot! If you look closely, you can see the shadow of the rings falling across the top of the planet. You can also see the shadow of the planet being cast upon the lower portion of the rings. Finally, you can see Saturn largest moon Titan near the upper edge. Wow!

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		11:15 pm
Visual Magnitude:		-2.20
Visual Diameter:		39"
Distance:		5.09 AU
Constellation:		Cancer

 

This sequence of nine true-color, narrow-angle images shows the varying
appearance of Jupiter as it rotated through more than a complete 360-degree turn.
Taken by the Cassini-HuygensSpacecraft, the smallest features seen in this sequence are no bigger than about 380 kilometers (about 236 miles). 

Rotating more than twice as fast as Earth, Jupiter completes one rotation in about
10 hours. These images were taken on Oct. 22 and 23, 2000. From image to
image (proceeding left to right across each row and then down to the next row),
cloud features on Jupiter move from left to right before disappearing over the edge
onto the nightside of the planet. The most obvious Jovian feature is the Great Red
Spot, which can be seen moving onto the dayside in the third frame (below and to
the left of the center of the planet). In the fourth frame, taken about 1 hour and 40
minutes later, the Great Red Spot has been carried by the planet's rotation to the
east and does not appear again until the final frame, which was taken one
complete rotation after the third frame. 

Hubble Vision

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.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recently obtained images of the planetary nebula NGC 6369. This object is known to amateur astronomers as the "Little Ghost Nebula," because it appears as a small, ghostly cloud surrounding the faint, dying central star. NGC 6369 lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, at a distance estimated to be between about 2,000 and 5,000 light-years from Earth. 
When a star with a mass similar to that of our own Sun nears the end of its lifetime, it expands in size to become a red giant. The red-giant stage ends when the star expels its outer layers into space, producing a faintly glowing nebula. Astronomers call such an object a planetary nebula, because its round shape resembles that of a planet when viewed with a small telescope. 
The Hubble photograph of NGC 6369, captured with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in February 2002, reveals remarkable details of the ejection process that are not visible from ground-based telescopes because of the blurring produced by the Earth's atmosphere. 
The remnant stellar core in the center is now sending out a flood of ultraviolet (UV) light into the surrounding gas. The prominent blue-green ring, nearly a light-year in diameter, marks the location where the energetic UV light has stripped electrons off of atoms in the gas. This process is called ionization. In the redder gas at larger distances from the star, where the UV light is less intense, the ionization process is less advanced. Even farther outside the main body of the nebula, one can see fainter wisps of gas that were lost from the star at the beginning of the ejection process. 
The color image has been produced by combining WFPC2 pictures taken through filters that isolate light emitted by three different chemical elements with different degrees of ionization. The doughnut-shaped blue-green ring represents light from ionized oxygen atoms that have lost two electrons (blue) and from hydrogen atoms that have lost their single electrons (green). Red marks emission from nitrogen atoms that have lost only one electron. 
Our own Sun may eject a similar nebula, but not for another 5 billion years. The gas will expand away from the star at about 15 miles per second, dissipating into interstellar space after some 10,000 years. After that, the remnant stellar ember in the center will gradually cool off for billions of years as a tiny white dwarf star, and eventually wink out. 
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)  

If you are able to find all of these objects, you may be one of the few, the proud, the Deep Sky Obsessed. 
E-mail your findings to DeepSkyObservations@UtahSkies.org.

IDA-Utah Light Pollution Update

Next Weeks Report

Next week, we'll continue our journey through the cosmos and focus on the constellation Pisces

Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org  

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