Report for 2005-01-14

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

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

Viewing Outlook

Deep Impact Mission Underway

Huygens Set For Friday Landing

Black Hole Accelerates Material To Incredible Speeds

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Prepares For Liftoff

Aurora

Comet Machholz Reaches Peak Brightness

Comet Machholz has inched off its peak brightness by about 1/10 of a magnitude… currently sitting around mag4.2… This is still an easy naked eye target under dark skies and even not so dark skies. To the casual observer, the comet looks like a fuzzy star. But, point binoculars or a telescope at it and it seems to jump to life. In binoculars, the head of the comet looks like a fuzzy star cluster. In a telescope, especially larger ones, the comets tail has come into view. The comet recently entered into the constellation Perseus after spending over a week cruising through the constellation Taurus. It was in Taurus that the comet put on a nice show posing alongside one of the winter sky’s premier deep sky objects… M45… aka The Pleiades Star Cluster. Maccholz will continue its journey north and eventually meet up with another gem of the night sky… The Double Cluster in Perseus. This rendezvous will take place in the final week of Jan.

Checkout this map showing the comet's position throughout January.

This sweet shot of the comet was taken by Utah Skies subscriber Ed Lunt. Awesome work, Ed!!

Planets In A Row

The accompanying shot, taken on Wednesday morning (1/12/05) by Anthony Arrigo of Utah Skies, shows 2 of the planets Mercury and Venus. The pair will pull even closer for a sweet conjunction this weekend. Check it out if skies in your area will allow. The two are currently rising around 6:30am here in Park City.

The other bright planets are also visible in the morning. Mars is just out of the picture to the upper right while Jupiter is almost overhead and Saturn is sinking in the west.

Solar System

The Sun, Our Star

In only two days time, sunspot #720 has gone from non-existent to over 5 times the size of the Earth. It's rapid growth could usher in a period of increased solar activity. One can only hope. This series of images was captured by Utah Skies own Don Brown.

Planetary Report

Mercury, the 1st Planet

Venus, the 2nd Planet

Earth, the 3rd Planet

Lunar Phase

The moon will reach first quarter on Sunday. In the meantime, we'll be under a waxing crescent phase with 24% of the moons visible surface illuminated when it around 10:45am this morning.

This shot was taken in May of 2002 by Anthony Arrigo of Utah Skies with a Canon Rebel 2000 using Fuji ASA200 film at prime focus through a 600mm f/5 refractor .

The smaller phases of the moon are a great time to look for some of the moon's more distinctive features. Get out and take advantage of the opportunity this weekend.

Mars, the 4th Planet

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

Saturn, the 6th Planet

Uranus, the 7th Planet

Neptune, the 8th Planet

Pluto, the 9th Planet

Deep Sky

Hubble Vision

A Poster-Size Image of the Beautiful Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300  

One of the largest Hubble Space Telescope images ever made of a complete galaxy is being unveiled today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, Calif.

The Hubble telescope captured a display of starlight, glowing gas, and silhouetted dark clouds of interstellar dust in this 4-foot-by-8-foot image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. NGC 1300 is considered to be prototypical of barred spiral galaxies. Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in that the arms of the galaxy do not spiral all the way into the center, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars containing the nucleus at its center.

At Hubble's resolution, a myriad of fine details, some of which have never before been seen, is seen throughout the galaxy's arms, disk, bulge, and nucleus. Blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions are well resolved across the spiral arms, and dust lanes trace out fine structures in the disk and bar. Numerous more distant galaxies are visible in the background, and are seen even through the densest regions of NGC 1300.

In the core of the larger spiral structure of NGC 1300, the nucleus shows its own extraordinary and distinct "grand-design" spiral structure that is about 3,300 light-years (1 kiloparsec) long. Only galaxies with large-scale bars appear to have these grand-design inner disks — a spiral within a spiral. Models suggest that the gas in a bar can be funneled inwards, and then spiral into the center through the grand-design disk, where it can potentially fuel a central black hole. NGC 1300 is not known to have an active nucleus, however, indicating either that there is no black hole, or that it is not accreting matter.

The image was constructed from exposures taken in September 2004 by the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard Hubble in four filters. Starlight and dust are seen in blue, visible, and infrared light. Bright star clusters are highlighted in red by their associated emission from glowing hydrogen gas. Due to the galaxy's large size, two adjacent pointings of the telescope were necessary to cover the extent of the spiral arms. The galaxy lies roughly 69 million light-years away (21 megaparsecs) in the direction of the constellation Eridanus.

For more information, please contact: Keith Noll, Hubble Heritage Team, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, (phone) 410-338-1828, (fax) 410-338-4579, (e-mail) noll@stsci.edu or

Pat Knezek, WIYN Consortium, Inc., 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ, (phone) 520-318-8442, (fax) 520-318-8360, (e-mail) knezek@noao.edu .

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Acknowledgment: P. Knezek (WIYN)

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