Last Friday I visited the Salisbury Star Party, in Wiltshire, to film a report for an episode of the Sky at Night Magazine vodcast. It was a great day of filming (despite the occasional rain shower) and everyone I talked to was really friendly and enthusiastic. The video* is now online and I’ve embedded it below. Hopefully it gives a flavour of what the event is all about.
Video credit: Sky at Night Magazine
*Make sure you select the 720p or 1080p HD button in the bottom right of the YouTube screen, for the best quality display.
The Perseid meteor shower is currently putting on a show in the night sky, as the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The shower is expected to reach a peak sometime between the evening of the 12 of August and the morning of the 13 August. Even so, it’s worth looking out for Perseid meteors a few nights before and after this time; on Saturday night I managed to spot 13 Perseids, including a spectacular fireball, during a roughly two-hour period of clear sky.
With the Moon out of the way, this year, we should have a fairly good view of the peak of the shower. With this in mind, I’ve put together my top five tips for making the most of the Perseids.
The best time to look out for the Perseids will be between the evening of the 12 of August and the pre-dawn hours of the 13 August, around the time when the peak of the shower is anticipated. After midnight is a good time to look, as the patch of sky the meteors appear to come from will be higher in the sky then.
Don’t get too hung-up on the exact direction in which to look. Simply try to find an observing site, away from sources of light pollution, where you can see as much of the sky as possible, and look up.
My favourite piece of meteor shower observing equipment is undoubtedly my sunlounger. If you have one, dig it out. Being wrapped up warm lying back on a sunlounger is, to me, the perfect way to watch meteor showers. They’re great for binocular astronomy too.
If you’re a budding citizen scientist then you can submit a report of your meteor shower observations to one of the astronomical societies. The SPA have a form here and the BAA have one here.
For me, meteor showers are mainly about having fun and revelling in one of nature’s greatest spectacles. So my final tip is to invite your friends over to watch the shower with you. When the brighter meteors blaze over you’ll then have someone to share the excitement with. If you’re on Twitter, you can tweet your observations to other meteor watchers using the hastag #meteorwatch.
Herschel’s garden, from where he found the planet Uranus. Credit: Will Gater
Yesterday I paid a visit to the former home of one of my all time astronomy heroes. Number 19, New King Street in Bath was the home of Sir William Herschel, one of the greatest astronomers this country, and indeed the world, has ever seen. Today the house is a museum, celebrating Herschel’s great achievements, as well as those of his sister Caroline, who herself was a prolific comet hunter and accomplished astronomer.
One of the prisms Herschel used to study infrared radiation. Credit: Will Gater
William is undoubtedly most famous for his discoveries of Uranus and infrared radiation. But he and Caroline were also pioneers of the technique of ‘survey astronomy’. It’s a method that today’s professional astronomers use to study large swathes the sky, looking for objects like asteroids, supernovae, and interesting galaxies. With the telescopes of his day however, William surveyed the sky looking for nebulae and star clusters. His ‘Catalogue of Nebulae’ went on to form the basis of John Dreyer’s famous ‘New General Catalogue’, which astronomers, both amateur and professional, still use today.
The Herschel Museum is full of artefacts from the Herschels’ lives including family letters, notes, many pieces of William’s telescopes and the tools he used to make them. Of all the pieces in the museum, there was one that really caught my eye.
If I’ve understood it correctly, it’s a letter (right) from Caroline Herschel to another astronomer, requesting him to follow-up on her observations of what she suspects to be a comet. What I loved about this letter was how it showed that, in some ways at least, astronomy hasn’t changed after all these years. Even the pros today, using the largest telescopes in the world, still benefit from such collaborations with other astronomers. Now of course it’s an email, or a submission to use time on a big scope, rather than a hand written letter – but the meaning is just the same.
Above right: Caroline’s letter to a fellow astronomer, on display. Credit: Will Gater
You can find out more about the Herschel Museum here and I’ve embedded a short PBS documentary on the Herschels below.
Around 10:30pm last night I started to see reports coming in on Twitter of a large and bright noctilucent cloud (NLC) display appearing across much of the country. Poking my head out the window I was, to my dismay, greeted with thick uniform cloud lit by light pollution. Hoping for the best, I checked on the latest IR satellite image from the Met Office which showed that a clear patch would likely arrive over my location around midnight. I’ll give it a try I thought.
Well, by 11:30pm the skies had cleared and the sky, low to the north, was glowing with bright and detailed swirling NLC activity. Running out of the house and down the dark lanes I found a spot where the hedgerow allowed me to glimpse the northern horizon. Here are a few of the fifty or so images I managed to grab. It was, without doubt, the most impressive NLC display I’ve seen from south Devon. Let’s hope for a few more displays like this one before the NLC season’s out.
The Milky Way over Dartmoor (click to see a bigger version). Credit: Will Gater
I thought I’d just briefly share this image with you all and give you a quick heads-up for some sights to look out for in the night sky at the moment.
I took this image last weekend from one of my favourite dark sky sites on Dartmoor. It shows our galaxy, the Milky Way, towards the constellations of Sagittarius and Scutum. I particularly wanted to mention this as the next few weeks are a good time for any of you in the UK, with a clear southern horizon, to look out for the lovely celestial objects on show in this part of the sky.
To help you find the objects — such as the wonderful and bright Lagoon Nebula as well as several fine clusters — I’ve posted a labelled (but slightly cropped) version of the image below. This part of the sky can be found by looking for the famous ‘Teapot’ asterism (labelled) in the south around midnight. Pretty much all of the objects I’ve marked make good small telescope or binocular targets. So, if you’re out observing anytime soon, have a look for some of them.
A view of the ISS gliding across the night sky on 24 June 2010. Credit: WillGater.com
The International Space Station (ISS) will be making some bright flyovers over the UK over the next week or so, providing the perfect entertainment for any of you waiting for a noctilucent cloud display to materialize. The ISS appears as a very bright point of light moving across the sky against the background stars. It’s an undeniably impressive sight, especially when it’s at its brightest sailing over silently.
The reason we see it shining is because the station’s solar panels and other components reflect the light from the Sun (which is usually below our horizon when we see it) down to us on the ground. The station is over 100 metres long, with 16 huge solar arrays for generating power (seen in the NASA image below), so you can see why it’s so bright in our night skies.
The ISS as seen by the departing Space Shuttle Atlantis in May this year. Credit: NASA
To find out when and where to look for the ISS flying over, plug your location details into the excellent Heavens Above website. It’ll then list when the space station will be visible to you, as well as give you the times and dates of other interesting satellite phenomena, that can be seen from your location, such as Iridium flares.
Much of the UK is forecast to have some sunny warm weather over the weekend. Hopefully the skies will be clear for astronomical observing of all kinds.
The author is not responsible for the content of external links and/or websites. Opinions expressed by the author on this website/blog & his microblog are his own and not those of the BBC.
Top banner image courtesy: ESO, J. Emerson, VISTA, Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit, NASA, JPL, Caltech, Cornell University, University of Arizona, Space Science Institute, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Reto Stöckli, Robert Simmon, MODIS Land Group, MODIS Science Data Support Team, MODIS Atmosphere Group, MODIS Ocean Group, USGS EROS Data Center, USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
Herschel’s garden, from where he found the planet Uranus. Credit: Will Gater
One of the prisms Herschel used to study infrared radiation. Credit: Will Gater
A view of the ISS gliding across the night sky on 24 June 2010. Credit: WillGater.com
The ISS as seen by the departing Space Shuttle Atlantis in May this year. Credit: NASA
