|
Report for 2003-07-11 |
|
< | Index
| >
|
|
Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".
|
|
|
Contents
|
|
|
|
|
|
Astronomical Times
(Mountain Standard) |
| Sunrise: |
6:05 am |
|
Sunset: |
9:00 pm |
| Astronomical Twilight Begins: |
4:03 am |
|
Astronomical Twilight Ends: |
11:02 pm |
| Moonrise: |
7:31 pm |
|
Moonset: |
3:39 am |
|
|
|
|
|
We're under an aurora watch this weekend. Yea... I know... skies are too clear here in Utah for them to make it down this far south. Keep an eye out anyway. You just never know. Chris Gray of Manitoba, Canada snagged this awesome shot on July 2nd. Sweet!
.
|
|
|
|
|
 Boy are we on a roll! Skies over Park City have been beautiful for several weeks now. As is typical for this time of year, days have been hot and sunny and nights have been warm and clear. Ok... warm might be an overstatement. Warm for the Park City area. Thursday morning temps while viewing Mars were pushing 40°. Anyway... Make sure you get out to take advantage of these conditions. Observing the beautiful summer skies requires no optical equipment, though you'll benefit greatly from even the smallest telescope or binoculars.
I took the accompanying image a couple of weekends ago from my favorite campe site in Utah's Uinta Mountains. At 9400', the campsite offers incrediblly dark skies and great horizons. This shot is centered in last weeks constellation, Sagittarius.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Destination
Mars
On Saturday, 7/5/2003, a Delta 2 rocket
carrying the Mars
rover Opportunity, will lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida to begin its
seven month journey to the red planet, Mars. For more information, checkout
CNN.com/SPACE
|
 Opportunity,
the second of two identical rovers to be launched by NASA, will rendezvous with it's twin in January when they
both arrive at their final destination, Mars. The two probes will land on
opposite sides of the planet and begin their work... looking for signs that life
exists... or once existed on Mars. |
|
|
Solar System
|
|
|
|
|
 Sunspot seems to be dropping off a bit lately.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
6:40 am |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
-1.37 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
5" |
| Distance: |
|
1.32 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Gemini |
|
 Mercury has completed it's swing behind the Sun. It has now returned to the evening sky. With a clear western horizon, you should be able to see it fairly easily shortly after sunset.
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
5:20 am |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
-3.90 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
10" |
| Distance: |
|
1.70 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Taurus |
|
Venus is now rising little more than a half hour before the sun. You'll have an extremely tough time finding it now in the bright morning sky. It will soon disappear completely from the morning sky
and reappear in the evening sky by late summer or early fall. As it
sinks, it grows in phase (currently 98%) and shrinks in overall size and brightness. At this
point, it is considerably past its maximum on all counts. It has shrunk
from over 1' in diameter to only 11"... less than 1/5 of it's largest. It has
also dimmed from over mag-4.6 to under mag-3.9...
This beautiful shot of Venus was taken by the Galileo Spacecraft.Need
to no more about Venus? Checkout this article by The
Planetary Society.
|
|
|
Earth, the 3rd Planet
|
Summer in Utah's Uinta Mountains
This is a typical summer view in Utah's Uinta Mountains. Wildflowers everywhere... blue skies... dense forests.
I took the accompanying shot a couple of weekends ago while exploring the mountains above Strawberry Reservoir. Flowers were in bloom everywhere.
|
|
|
|
|
 The moon will be full on Sunday. Tonight, we'll be under a
waxing gibbous moon with 94% of the moon's visible surface illuminated
when it rises around 7:30pm. Given it's late rise, we're basically stuck with the moon for the entire evening. So... don't fight it. Break out a lunar filter and observe Earth's nearest celestial neighbor. The moon is an incredibly easy target... giving up all kinds of details to the naked eye... binoculars... or a telescope.
Visit our Lunar
Information Page for even more images and information
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
11:45 pm |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
-1.73 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
18" |
| Distance: |
|
0.51 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Aquarius |
|
 Mars
continues to grow at an incredible rate of over 1" per week. In apparent size and brightness the
changes from week to week are simply amazing.
Mars now spans over 18”… this is over 50% larger than at the start of
May. Mars has also brightened to mag –1.73… making it the brightest
object in the morning sky. I got several chances to view The Red Planet
this past week. Predawn skies were fairly steady and ... details were
definitely there for the taking. Most impressive (from my point of view anyway)
was that the Martian
Polar Ice Caps were clearly visible. Mars is getting just plain big. Even at low power, the planets disk is unmistakeable. As you increase the power (sky conditions permitting), details that a few weeks ago were invisible simply jummp right out at your.
If
you’d like to checkout Mars for yourself, all you need to do is look high
and towards the south before sunrise. Mars is so bright that you just
can’t miss it.
Viewing Mars will grow easier
too as Mars continues to grow throughout the remainder of the spring and into the summer...
culminating in late August, when Mars will be bigger
and brighter than at any time in over 70,000 years! Why is this you may
be wondering... Earth and Mars both orbit the Sun on different paths and at
different distances. This summer, both planets will be on the same side of
the Sun. This type of alignment, known as Opposition,
occurs about every 26 months. No big deal, right? Well... that depends
because the separation at opposition varies considerably. On August 27th,
that distance will be about 35 million miles. At the previous opposition in
June of 2001, the distance was 41 million miles and in 1995 it was almost 70
million miles. So... what can you expect? Well.. only the best views of the Red
Planet in your lifetime! Mars will shine at mag -2.9. This is about as
bright as Jupiter ever gets... and far brighter than it's been in quite some time Additionally, Mars will have an apparent
diameter of 25". That's about 50 percent larger than its current size. Still not convinced?
Want even better views? Well, short of climbing aboard a spaceship (not
completely out of the question nowadays) you'd have to wait until 2287 for a
closer peak.
Since Mars will be closest to Earth this summer...
what better time to launch a spacecraft to study the planet? Answer: There
is no better time... that's why there'll be a total of 5
spacecraft launched in the coming months to study the Red Planet. The
first of these, The Mars Express, took off on Tuesday. Carrying a space
probe known as Beagle 2, the mission will dig into the Martian surface and
analyze it's makeup for signs of life.
The accompanying image was captured
by Utah Skies own Don Brown yesterday morning (July 10, 2003). There's some serious detail in that image... and... If you start viewing right now, you can jump in mid-stream and catch some of the most incredible views of the Red Planet for yourself! It'll be several hundred years before Mars approaches this summers size and brightness, so... Don't miss it :)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
8:45 am |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
-1.76 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
32" |
| Distance: |
|
6.20 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Leo |
|
 Checkout this beautiful shot of Jupiter and it's moons Io and Ganymede.
Jupiter is way low above the western horizon... pretty much gone for the season. While all the good views are past, you can take a quick peak early in the evening if you'd like to say goodbye.
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
5:10 am |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
0.06 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
17" |
| Distance: |
|
10.02 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Gemini |
|
 Saturn's
rings are now tilted wide open to us... roughly 27° from edge-on. Over
the next 15 years, they will move from wide open.. to edge-on to wide open
revealing the other pole. This and next year will be the best time to study
Saturn's beautiful ring structure for some time, so... get out there and do
it.
Saturn is now rising about 6:00am and is pretty much
lost for the season at this point. Saturn will return to the morning sky
later this summer. Be sure to stay tuned.
This beautiful image of the 6th planet was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
11:15 pm |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
5.7r56 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
4" |
| Distance: |
|
19:29 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Aquarius |
|
 Interested
in viewing the 7th planet? Now would be a great time to begin trying. Uranus
is rising shortly after midnight... putting it high in the sky just before
sunrise. It's also recently jumped from 3" to 4" in apparent
diameter. This is just about as big and bright as Uranus gets... So... take
advantage of it.
Note the beautiful aquamarine color and the delicate ring system orbiting the planet. In a telescope, the color is obvious... but the rings are not.
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
10:15 pm |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
7.84 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
2" |
| Distance: |
|
29.15 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Capricornus |
|
 Springtime
on Neptune? Yup... that's what the latest observations seem to indicate. The
southern portion of the 8th planet is having some spring like
conditions. Spring is always a fun time of year.. and that's a good
thing, because spring last for over 40 Earth years on Neptune. 40 years?
Yup... Because it takes Neptune 165 years to orbit the Sun, seasons last
just a smidge over 40 earth years.
How's this for a cool shot of Neptune? This was taken recently by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. It clearly shows the cloud tops of the 8th planet.
|
|
|
|
|
| Rising: |
|
6:15 pm |
| Visual Magnitude: |
|
13.83 |
| Visual Diameter: |
|
<1" |
| Distance: |
|
29.79 AU |
| Constellation: |
|
Ophiuchus |
|
Astronomers made a surprising discovery about Pluto recently. As Pluto begins to move away from the Sun... towards the beginning of it's winter... things are actually heating up on the distant planet instead of cooling down. Checkout CNN.com/SPACE for more details
Take
this bit of planetary information either as an interesting side note, or an
observing challenge. Pluto is in the constellation Ophiuchus, less than °1
southwest of NGC6309 aka The Bug Nebula. I viewed The Bug this past weekend, so... photons from Pluto must have hit my retina :-) At magnitude 13.9, Pluto is basically out of reach
of smaller telescopes... Even in the big scope... it's difficult to be sure that you've seen Pluto. 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.
This high resolution image was created
from images taken by The Hubble Space Telescope.
Need more information? Checkout the Pluto
Home Page.
|
|
|
Deep Sky
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
 Celestial Fireworks
Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworks display in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, these delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy. Hubble's target was a supernova remnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby, small companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the southern hemisphere.
Denoted N 49, or DEM L 190, this remnant is from a massive star that died in a supernova blast whose light would have reached Earth thousands of years ago. This filamentary material will eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars in the LMC. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similar debris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions of years ago.
This seemingly gentle structure also harbors a very powerful spinning neutron star that may be the central remnant from the initial blast. It is quite common for the core of an exploded supernova star to become a spinning neutron star (also called a pulsar - because of the regular pulses of energy from the rotational spin) after the immediate shedding of the star's outer layers. In the case of N 49, not only is the neutron star spinning at a rate of once every 8 seconds, it also has a super-strong magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. This places this star into the exclusive class of objects called "magnetars."
On March 5, 1979, this neutron star displayed a historic gamma-ray burst episode that was detected by numerous Earth-orbiting satellites. Gamma rays have a million or more times the energy of visible light photons. The Earth's atmosphere protects us by blocking gamma rays that originate from outer space. The neutron star in N 49 has had several subsequent gamma-ray emissions, and is now recognized as a "soft gamma-ray repeater." These objects are a peculiar class of stars producing gamma rays that are less energetic than those emitted by most gamma-ray bursters.
The neutron star in N 49 is also emitting X-rays, whose energies are slightly less than that of soft gamma rays. High-resolution X-ray satellites have resolved a point source near the center of N 49, the likely X-ray counterpart of the soft gamma-ray repeater. Diffuse filaments and knots throughout the supernova remnant are also visible in X-ray. The filamentary features visible in the optical image represent the blast wave sweeping through the ambient interstellar medium and nearby dense molecular clouds.
Today, N 49 is the target of investigations led by Hubble astronomers You-Hua Chu from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Rosa Williams from the University of Massachusetts. Members of this science team are interested in understanding whether small cloudlets in the interstellar medium of the LMC may have a marked effect on the physical structure and evolution of this supernova remnant.
The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur ([S II]), oxygen ([O III]), and hydrogen (H-alpha). The color image has been superimposed on a black-and-white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble.
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu (UIUC), S. Kulkarni (Caltech), and R. Rothschild (UCSD)
|
| |
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly
checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org
|
|
< | Index
| >
|
|
|
|
|
We're under an aurora watch this weekend. Yea... I know... skies are too clear here in Utah for them to make it down this far south. Keep an eye out anyway. You just never know. Chris Gray of Manitoba, Canada snagged this awesome shot on July 2nd. Sweet!
.