Massive Cosmic Train Wreck?
In what astronomers are describing as The Perfect Cosmic Storm, a vast collection of galaxies known as Abell 754 are piling up in the largest, most energetic collision ever detected. Captured in this Keck Observatory image are some of the roughly 1300 galaxies involved in the pile up. The energy being released from the event is second only to The Big Bang that formed the universe. Checkout CNN.com/SPACE for more details.
Asteroid Fly-By
Asteroid 4179 Toutatis, a 3 mile long peanut-shaped rock, made its closest pass of Earth on Wednesday evening... a mere 1,000,000 miles away. This is only about 4x the Earth-Moon distance... a virtual near miss in astronomical terms. The 9th magnitude rock was an easy target in amateur telescopes. Click here for more info.
Spaceship One Seeks X Prize
The future of commercial space travel got another step closer as California-based Scaled Composites made the first of two scheduled space flights Wednesday morning. Scaled is attempting to claim the $10 million X Prize by putting a privately financed manned craft into sub-orbital space. To collect, Scaled must make 2 flights within 2 weeks using the same spacecraft. The first flight had a few "interesting" moments in which the spacecraft tumbled wildly as its rockets fired, but ended successfully as witnessed by this shot of the event. SpaceShipOne is scheduled to make its second launch on October 4th. Checkout CNN.com/Space for more information.
25th Anniversary
The California-France-Hawaii Telescope is celebrating its 25th anniversary. This was once one of the largest telescopes in the world. Located at the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, CFHT is still returning incredible images as evidenced by the accompanying shot of Spiral Galaxy M101. Click here to visit their extensive image library.
Ring Herding?
Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen shepherding the inner edge of
Saturn's F
ring. This was captured in a close-up view by the
orbiting Cassini spacecraft.
Solar System
Sunspot
activity on our star has resumed. Not on the high intensity scale we've seen
previously, but... with a respectable pair of sunspots #675 & 676 to the
lower left. This
beautiful shot was taken by The Big Bear
Solar Observatory.
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
| Rising: | 6:00 am | |
| Visual Magnitude: | -0.97 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 6" | |
| Distance: | 1.15 AU | |
| Constellation: | Leo |
Mercury is back in the morning sky. Look for Mercury above the eastern horizon just before sunrise. Mercury also reached greatest elongation yesterday (9/9) 18° from the Sun... making the next several days your best opportunity to view the innermost planet. Binoculars can be quite helpful in pulling the planet out of the glare cast by the rising Sun.
Venus, the 2nd Planet
| Rising: | 3:40 am | |
| Visual Magnitude: | -4.15 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 18" | |
| Distance: | 0.94 AU | |
| Constellation: | Cancer |
Venus
is now rising almost 4 hours before the sun. This makes it an easy target
high in the eastern
sky. Those of you with any kind of view at all to the
east should be able to find the morning skies brightest planetary object..
Venus just recently passed the half-way point... and is currently 64% illuminated.
Those of you who have been monitoring Venus with your telescopes will have
noticed that Venus' phase is increasing while its size is decreasing. This
is because Venus is moving away from us... and will disappear behind the Sun
in the coming months. Venus has recently moved into the constellation Cancer.
As a special treat, Venus will pose alongside the stars the Beehive Cluster. You'll (finally) be able to find the Beehive Cluster ;-). Just head outside in the pre-dawn hours... from about 3:30 until about 6:00am or so.... and look towards the east. Your eyes will instantly notice Venus because of its spectacular brilliance. If you look closely (yes... with the naked eye) you'll be able to spot the Beehive Cluster. Of course, the Beehive will look impressive in binoculars or a telescope a well. The two objects will come within about 2.5° of each other Sunday through Wednesday morning 9/12-15. This should fit within the field of view of some smaller, wide-angle telescopes... or virtually all binoculars.
Ever wonder why Venus has phases? Checkout this great animation to find out.
This beautiful image of the second rock was taken by B. Colville of the Maple Ridge Observatory
Need to no more about Venus? Checkout this article by The Planetary Society.
Earth, the 3rd Planet
Fall
is in the air.. and in the leaves. This gorgeous shot captures the fall colors
at The
Park City Mountain Resort.
Lunar Phase
The moon was full this past Tuesday morning. In the meantime, we'll be under a waning gibbous phase with 89% of the moons visible surface illuminated when it rises around 8:45pm.
September's Full Moon is also know as The Harvest Moon... because it comes at a time when crops are traditionally being harvested. Interestingly, the Harvest Moon puts more light on the ground at sunset than other full moons. Seriously. Throughout the year, the moon generally rises about 50 minutes later each night. Near the autumnal equinox, which occurred on 9/23 this year, the moon rises only about 30 minutes later each night. This keeps the lights on at the end of the day just a bit more than usual.
The accompanying shot of a waxing gibbous Moon was taken yesterday using a Sony DSC-F717 digital camera shooting via eyepiece projection through a 6" f/12 Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope.
Mars, the 4th Planet
| Rising: | 7:15 am | |
| Visual Magnitude: | 1.72 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 4" | |
| Distance: | 2.66 AU | |
| Constellation: | Leo |
Mars has finally turned the corner... it is no longer moving away
from us. Mars has reached its faintest... and will begin to steadily
grow in apparent size and brighten. Next summer it will be well
placed for viewing again :-) While this next approach won't be as close as the last one
was, it will be much further north... and therefore better
positioned for viewers at mid-northern latitudes... like us here in
Park City :-).
This beautiful image of the red planet was taken by B. Colville of the Maple Ridge Observatory.
Jupiter, the 5th Planet
| Rising: | 7:30 am | |
| Visual Magnitude: | -1.67 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 31" | |
| Distance: | 6.45 AU | |
| Constellation: | Virgo |
Jupiter
has quietly slid into the
constellation Virgo after many, many months cruising through Leo.
Jupiter is now rising
early in the morning... and setting early in the evening. If you're going to
see Jupiter... at all.. you'd better have an unobstructed view towards the
west. Look for Jupiter low in the western sky shortly after sunset.
Checkout this awesome shot of the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter. It was taken by former Utah Skies Featured Astrophotographer, Ed Grafton.
Saturn, the 6th Planet
| Rising: | 2:15 am | |
| Visual Magnitude: | 0.23 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 17" | |
| Distance: | 9.51 AU | |
| Constellation: | Gemini |
How's this for an awesome family portrait? The orbiting Cassini Spacecraft captured Saturn along with 5 of its moons using its wide angle camera. The image was taken on August 1st, 2004 from a distance of just over 4 million miles.
Moons visible in the image are (clockwise from upper left): Dione, Enceladus, Tethys,
Mimas and Rhea.
Click on the image for a larger view.
Uranus, the 7th Planet
| Rising: | 6:45 pm | |
| Visual Magnitude: | 5.73 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 4" | |
| Distance: | 19.11 AU | |
| Constellation: | Aquarius |
Interested
in viewing the 7th planet? Now would be a great time to try. The planet
reaches opposition
tonight. Opposition is the point where the Earth sits exactly between the
planet and the sun. This is also the time that our two planets will be at
their very closest... roughly 1.7 billion miles away. Uranus
is rising as the sun is setting... putting it in
view all night long. This shot of Uranus was taken by former Utah Skies Featured Astrophotographer, Ed Grafton.
Neptune, the 8th Planet
| Rising: | 5:45 pm | |
| Visual Magnitude: | 7.86 | |
| Visual Diameter: | 2" | |
| Distance: | 29.32 AU | |
| Constellation: | Capricornus |
This
beautiful trio of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope captures some
of the intricate detail within Neptune's clouds. From these images,
astronomers have gained insight into the composition and structure of
Neptune's upper atmosphere.
Neptune reached opposition on August 5th.
Pluto, the 9th Planet
| Rising: | 1:50 pm | |
| Visual Magnitude: | 13.96 | |
| Visual Diameter: | <1" | |
| Distance: | 30.93 AU | |
| Constellation: | Serpens |
With
an early evening rising, Pluto should be visible all night long. Can you
find it?
This image was taken by The
Hubble Space Telescope.
Need more information? Checkout the Pluto
Home Page.
Deep Sky
Hubble Vision
Farthest Objects Ever Seen Pinpointed in the Hubble Ultra Deep FieldDetailed analyses of mankind's deepest optical view of the universe, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), by several expert teams have at last identified what may turn out to be some of the earliest star-forming galaxies. The sensitivity of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), combined with the penetrating power of the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), finally revealed these long-sought faint galaxies. The HUDF shows that close to a billion years after the big bang the early universe was filled with dwarf galaxies, but no fully formed galaxies like our Milky Way. After careful analysis, they have been sorted out as between 54 and 108 dim, red smudges sprinkled across the HUDF image. This image shows the full sample of candidates circled in green. Three enlargements at right show several dwarf objects that are at the limits of Hubble's present instrument capabilities. The HUDF is a small region of sky in the direction of the southern constellation Fornax. The faintest objects are less than one four-billionth the brightness of stars that can be seen with the naked eye. Their light has taken nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth, and so these objects represent some of the earliest star-forming galaxies to form in the universe.
Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Windhorst (Arizona State University) and H. Yan (Spitzer Science Center, Caltech)
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