Report for 2004-02-20

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

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

Viewing Outlook

A Blanket of Stars

If the skies over your house don't look like this... they're suffering the effects of light pollution. Light Pollution (as any Utah Skies reader will tell you) is misused or misdirected light... providing no benefit... wasting energy... and destroying our views of the heavens. 

Spirit Studies White Boat

Help Save The Hubble Space Telescope

The amazing Hubble Space Telescope... perhaps the greatest astronomical observatory of all times needs your help. Budgetary constraints and new NASA objectives are threatening to leave the HST high and dry. In order to meet new directives, NASA has decided to cancel the planned 4th HST Servicing Mission. Without this servicing visit, Hubble will soon be rendered incapable of acquiring and tracking the deep sky objects it is supposed to study. If you'd like to prevent this from happening... please sign this on-line petition to Save The Hubble Space Telescope. 

Proving it's worth to the very end... astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope recently discovered oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. These key ingredients are some of the essential building blocks for life as we know it. While the astronomers don't believe there is life on the planet in question... their discovery on another planet helps paint a picture of the composition of our universe.

Read the full story at CNN.com/SPACE.

Comet C/2002 T7 Linear

Checkout this recent shot of comet C/2002 T7 Linear...  taken on February 14th, by Astrophotographer Jack Newton. 

The comet is now about mag6.9... making it a fairly easy target for most binoculars and small telescopes. As we've mentioned previously, the comet is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on May 19th, 2004 when it passes only 0.27AU from Earth. AU or Astronomical Units are the approximate average distance between the Earth and the Sun. The comet is expected to brighten to between mag0 & mag1... making this an easy naked eye comet for springtime observers. Needless to say... views through a telescope or binoculars ought to be absolutely incredible by then! 

The comet is currently cruising through southeastern most portion of the constellation Pegasus, which is high in the southwestern sky shortly after dark. Now would be a great time to get out and observe the brightening comet. Click here for ephemeris to help you find the comet... or here for analysis of the comets journey... or here for a sky map.

Solar System

Sunspot activity on our star has paused again. What a big difference from last week... when the sun was devoid of sunspots. While none of these are very large, they are at least large enough.. and numerous enough to make the view interesting..

The sun is a fascinating subject. It's appearance changes from day to day. In fact, it is the only star in the sky that we can see any details on at all! If you'd like to observe our star, make sure you do so safely. Checkout these Safe Viewing Techniques.

Planetary Report

Mercury, the 1st Planet

The last couple of weeks were great for viewing the innermost planet. Mercury has now begun to rapidly dive towards the sun. It will soon reappear in the western horizon after sunset in the coming weeks.

This beautiful image of Mercury's South Pole was taken by the Mariner 10 Spacecraft in 1974.

Venus, the 2nd Planet

Venus is now rising little more than two hours after the sun. You should now be able to find it easily in the evening sky shortly after sundown. In fact, now would be a good time to start watching Venus. Why? Well, because Venus is getting ready for some major changes. It is currently 76% illuminated. As it climbs higher in the sky over the coming months, it will grow considerably in size and brightness... while shrinking just as considerably in phase. By late winter / early spring Venus will only be 1/2 illuminated, but will be almost half again as bright.

I've been catching Venus above the western horizon about 30-45 minutes after sunset for the last couple of months. It is now high enough that you can actually view it at a leisurely pace. It'll only get easier at this point. Slowly but surely, Venus will come to dominate the night sky. If you have a nice wide sky horizon to horizon, compare Venus with Saturn. They're both about the same height above the horizon shortly after dark... Venus in the west... and Saturn in the east.

This shows several of the largest craters on Venus.

Need to no more about Venus? Checkout this article by The Planetary Society.

Earth, the 3rd Planet

Lunar Phase

The moon reached new this morning... meaning that it it's rising at sunrise and setting at sunset. Because of this, the moon will not be visible in the sky today. You should be able to spy the moon (if you've got a good western horizon) by tomorrow night. It should then look almost like a mirror image of the accompanying image... which was taken less than 24 hours before new moon.

Interested in how and why we see the lunar phases we do? Checkout this animation.

The accompanying image was taken on the morning of October 24th, 2003 by Anthony Arrigo of Utah Skies. Anthony shot through a 150mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope with a Sony DSC-F717 digital camera shooting eyepiece projection to 45x.

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

Mars, the 4th Planet

This beautiful sequence takes us back to Mars' close up visit in the summer of 2003. Taken by Utah Skies own Don Brown it catalogs the red planet's incredible growth.

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		7:15 pm
Visual Magnitude:		-2.48
Visual Diameter:		44"
Distance:		4.45 AU
Constellation:		Leo

 

I took the accompanying image of Jupiter in the southern part of Leo on February 14th, 2004 with my Sony DSC-F717 digital camera. Jupiter is the very bright star in the lower left of the constellation... or magnified 50x in the lower right. 

The view to the lower right is a typical view through a telescope. Notice that 4 of Jupiter's moons are also visible... as are some of the giant planets' cloud bands. An annotated version of the image is also available.

Saturn, the 6th Planet

Saturn reached opposition on New Years Eve. Opposition occurs when the Sun and Saturn appear in opposite directions as viewed from Earth. So, on December 31st, as the Sun is setting, Saturn will be rising. This opposition should provide us with some of the best views of Saturn in quite some time. Saturn always looks great, right? What makes this year so special? Well... first off, Saturn recently reached perihelion... it's nearest distance to the Sun. This makes it seem just a little brighter than usual. Second, Saturn's rings are tipped about as much as they can be... roughly

I took this shot of the ringed planet in late October 2003 through a 25" Obsession Telescope.

Ok... here's an interesting note... Saturn's shadow... visible recent images on the rings... are now hidden... they were on the left side of the planet... and will soon switch and reappear on the opposite side in the coming months. Make a mental note next time you're out viewing. 

Uranus, the 7th Planet

Neptune, the 8th Planet

Pluto, the 9th Planet

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  image was taken by The Hubble Space Telescope.

Need more information? Checkout the Pluto Home Page.

Deep Sky

Hubble Vision

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

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