The Meteorite Men land on UK television
Just a quick heads up about an interesting new TV series that’s currently airing on Tuesdays at 10pm* on the UK Freeview television channel Quest (Freeview channel 38). It’s called Meteorite Men and follows expert meteorite hunters Steve Arnold and Geoff Notkin as they search the US countryside for pieces of Solar System debris that have fallen to Earth.
I caught the second episode by chance last week and I really enjoyed it. It turns out following the ups and downs of a meteorite hunt makes for really exciting television! The show has a great Mythbusters feel about it, by which I mean you actually learn quite a lot and it’s genuinely fun to watch. I’m not sure exactly how many episodes this series has but I hope it continues; I imagine it’ll get a lot of people interested in astronomy. With many meteorites falling on the Earth every year there’s certainly scope for another few series!
*Update: I’ve just seen that the show is also on Quest on Mondays at 9pm.
Update no. 2: Tavi Greiner mentions in the comments that an interview she & Rob Keown did with Geoff of the Meteorite Men is available on their blog here: http://blog.askyfullofstars.com/2010/03/of-fusion-crusts-and-strewn-fields/
Study our star with Solar Stormwatch
A vast coronal mass ejection blasts away from the Sun. Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO
In August last year I wrote a feature for Sky at Night Magazine about how you could help STEREO mission scientists search for the building blocks of the object, known as Theia, that’s thought to have formed the Moon when it collided with the proto-Earth. Now the latest citizen science project to launch, ‘Solar Stormwatch’, is using data from the STEREO spacecraft to get the public studying another Solar System spectacle — coronal mass ejections.
Coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) are vast and violent eruptions of plasma from the Sun that travel at high-speed across our Solar System. Studying how CMEs and other similar solar phenomena are formed, and how they interact with the Earth, is one of the biggest (and perhaps most important) fields of solar science. The twin STEREO spacecraft are (literally) in a perfect position to do this, as they fly through space separated by huge distances. This allows them to create a three-dimensional picture of the huge clouds of material thrown out from the Sun. The short video below from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explains a little more about how STEREO does this.
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab
Solar Stormwatch, which launched today, is being run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. It gives you the chance to monitor (almost) real-time images from the STEREO spacecraft to spot and track coronal mass ejections. Your efforts doing this can really help solar scientists as this page on the website explains nicely. I really like the smooth interface of the site and there’s a great deal of additional material to explore there on top of the citizen science activities themselves. Once you’re registered the website has everything you need to start seeking out solar storms, including several excellent tutorial videos (two of which I’ve embedded below) narrated by STEREO project scientist Dr Chris Davis. Who knows what you could discover? If previous citizen science projects are anything to go by it could be something very exciting!
Tutorial videos by the Royal Observatory Greenwich
10 incredible infrared space images
NASA has just released the first batch of images taken by the WISE spacecraft showing several astronomical objects glowing at infrared wavelengths. The level of detail in those images is really quite impressive. They got me thinking about the best infrared images of celestial subjects that I’ve seen in recent years.
Infrared telescopes are vital tools for astronomers. Observing at infrared wavelengths allows them to see through dust and gas, revealing regions of astronomical objects that may be obscured from view at other wavelengths (like ‘visible light’ that you and I can see). Similarly, powerful infrared telescopes are able to reveal the farthest galaxies in the Universe, allowing astronomers to study how the earliest galaxies evolved.
I’ve put together ten of my favourite infrared space images below but what would your top ones be? Have I missed a real cracker? Let me know in the comments below, or drop me a tweet. Clicking on the images will take you to the big versions (and be warned I mean big!) whilst clicking the title of the picture takes you to a news story about the science behind it.
1. Clouds of dust and gas in the Eagle Nebula
One section of the Eagle Nebula was made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope image dubbed the ‘Pillars of Creation’. Can you spot the ‘pillars’ glowing in this image from the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope?
NASA/JPL-Caltech/N. Flagey (IAS/SSC) & A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech)
2. A stripy Saturn
Infrared radiation reflected off Saturn reveals the Ringed Planet in this view from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Erich Karkoschka (University of Arizona), and NASA
3. The magnificent arms of M81
M81, also known as Bode’s Nebula, is a galaxy in the northern hemisphere constellation of Ursa Major and is a fine sight in a small telescope. Dust clouds within its spiral arms are revealed in red in this picture.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Willner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
4. Wisps of gas and dust at our galaxy’s centre
A 900 lightyear diameter region towards the heart of the Milky Way is shown in spectacular detail in this panoramic image from Spitzer.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/ Caltech)
5. An eerie eye looks out from the Helix Nebula
It might look like the eye of an angry monster staring back at us but this is in fact a planetary nebula – a huge ejected shell (or series of shells) of gas and dust created towards the end of a Sun-like star’s life.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Su (Univ. of Ariz.)
6. The sparkling spiral of the Pinwheel Galaxy
The Pinwheel Galaxy lies 27 million lightyears away from the Earth in the constellation of Ursa Major. Its beautiful twisting spiral arms shine brightly in this detailed image.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
7. The swirling Sword of Orion
The Orion Nebula (M42) at the centre of the Sword of Orion is one of the finest night sky sights through binoculars or a small telescope. This image from the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope however reveals regions of the nebula that amateur astronomers cannot see.
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
8. The Andromeda Galaxy
At a distance of roughly 2.5 million lightyears away the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. Young stars in its spiral arms glow yellow in this image from the WISE telescope, whilst older stars are represented with a blue hue.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
9. The Milky Way’s heart of stars
Myriad stars sparkle in this image taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. It’s thought that hidden within this region (the central region of the Milky Way) is a supermassive black hole.
ESO
10. Drifts of dust in the Pleiades star cluster
The Pleiades star cluster is a familiar sight to amateur astronomers observing the winter night skies. This image from the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope shows the vast cirrus like dust clouds which currently surround the stars of the cluster.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech)
Focusing on Titan’s lakes and Io’s volcanism
A little while ago I had a lot of fun being interviewed by Jheni, J and Andy from Focus magazine’s podcast. We talked about a new astronomy TV series coming to our screens called ‘Seven Wonders of the Solar System’. Presented by particle physicist Prof Brian Cox the series will, according to the BBC, look at “how the laws of nature…carve spectacular sights throughout the Solar System.”
On the Focus podcast I talked specifically about the lakes of liquid methane on Titan and the spectacular volcanism which occurs on Jupiter’s moon Io. The podcast is now online, on iTunes and embedded below, with my interview starting about 8 minutes 45s in. There’s a short trailer for the series here, so check it out when it airs in the UK sometime later this year.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010
After the huge success of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009 the Royal Observatory Greenwich (and Sky at Night Magazine, as media partner) have today opened entries to this year’s competition. Last year the competition received hundreds of images showing everything from spectacular swirling nebulae to moonscapes reminiscent of the views seen by Apollo astronauts.
This year’s competition takes on much the same form as last year’s but with a few interesting extras. Just like last year there are three main categories. They are: ‘Earth and Space’ (for ‘earthly’ landscapes with an astronomical object in them), ‘Our Solar System’ (for images of our Sun, the planets, the Moon, comets etc.) and finally ‘Deep Space’ (for pictures of stars, nebulae and galaxies). There will also be two special prizes. The first is ‘People and Space’ which, according to the ROG website, is for “photos that include people in a creative and original way” and the second is the ‘Best Newcomer’ prize. This is a new prize for those of you who have just started taking pictures of the night sky in the last year and haven’t entered the competition before. Here’s where we’ll no doubt see the rising stars (if you’ll excuse the pun) of astroimaging.
Last, but by no means least, there will also be the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year category, for entrants under-16 years old. There were some fantastic images from last year’s young astroimagers, with some really clever shots entered. So if you know a budding young astroimager, why not tell them about the competition?
The overall winner of the competition will receive £1000 and there are other prizes for the various category winners, runners up etc. For the full rules of the competition and more about how to enter see the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s website.
I’ll be on the judging panel again for this year’s competition and, like last year, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the world’s top astroimagers can produce. We had a superb mix of subjects last year and I know that all of the judges were incredibly impressed at the quality in all the categories. For now though it’s over to you…impress us! You’ve got until the 16th July to submit your images, so good luck and clear skies!
APOTY logo courtesy & copyright NMM/Royal Observatory Greenwich
“The science of Avatar” – new S@N podcast episode
With the release of James Cameron’s new 3D movie Avatar, cinema-goers are being transported to the surface of an alien world called Pandora. Pandora is an exomoon (a moon of an extrasolar planet) and the setting for much of the film’s spectacular action. For the new episode of the Sky at Night Magazine podcast I interviewed David Kipping, an extrasolar planet and exomoon expert, and Dr Lewis Dartnell who is an astrobiologist at UCL in London. We talked about the astronomy behind the movie & the science going on at the moment that might enable astronomers to detect a real exomoon. We also covered what any observations of an exomoon or extrasolar planet could tell us about its physical characteristics. The podcast can be listened to in the player below or downloaded here [12.5 MB mp3]; and I’ve embedded the Avatar trailer below if you’re thinking of going to see the film.
A chilly crescent
Despite the bitterly cold wind, tonight’s crescent Moon was a sight that I couldn’t resist photographing. The first and third shots show an interesting phenomenon known as ‘Earthshine’ where the shadowed part of the Moon is partially illuminated by light reflected off the Earth. If you look closely at the first image you’ll be able to make out some of the more prominent lunar ‘seas’. Jupiter was not far from the Moon tonight too, as can be seen in the last two shots. Click on the images to see larger versions and remember to look out for the faint glow of Earthshine the next time you see a thin crescent Moon.
The Moon with Earthshine. Credit: Will Gater
The Moon and Jupiter at twilight. Credit: Will Gater
The Moon and Jupiter at twilight. Credit: Will Gater
The Cosmic Keyhole at The Book Depository
I’m very pleased to say that my new book The Cosmic Keyhole is now on sale at the online book store The Book Depository. At the moment it’s available for a discounted price of just over £15 (a discount of over 40%) and you can get free delivery to the UK and many other countries too. If you want to find out a little more about the book and what it covers there’s a blurb for it on the books page.
Hubble reveals a sparkling spectacle in the LMC
A section of the new Hubble image showing the star cluster R136 and surroundings.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee. Click for a larger version.
I’ve thought hard about how I might write this post. How do you go about introducing the incredible image above?
I could tell you that it’s a new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s shiny new Wide Field Camera 3. I’d probably say that it shows a region of frenetic star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a nearby galaxy to the Milky Way) known as 30 Doradus. Undoubtedly I’d draw your attention to the cluster of stars to the centre right of the image, designated R136. It’s full of infant massive stars whose winds are sculpting the gas around the cluster; seen clearly in the great, roughly 70 lightyear wide, cavern forming at the centre of the image. I’d likely also talk about the huge billowing clouds of hydrogen gas which are glowing red around the young cluster – a typical trait of star forming regions. And I’d definitely say that using Hubble to study regions like this one allows astronomers to examine the processes which create and shape the stars in vast stellar clusters like R136.
Of course, in the end, the image speaks for itself in many ways; its sheer beauty, the vivid colours, the stunning detail that shows the power of the instrument that made it. We’re going to miss Hubble when it’s gone. But images like this one show that it’s got a lot more to offer before that time comes.
A quick guide to the Geminid meteor shower
A meteor from the 2009 Geminid meteor shower darts through the constellation of Hydra, close to the star Alphard, as captured by Pete Lawrence. Credit: Pete Lawrence
The annual Geminid meteor shower will put on a celestial show over the next few nights, with some predictions suggesting that almost 100 meteors per hour could be spotted shooting across the night sky. Meteors are produced when tiny pieces of space dust enter our atmosphere at enormous speeds. As they do the air ahead of them is compressed violently causing it to heat up. This tremendous heat in turn makes the meteor glow as it streaks across the sky. It’s amazing to think that the average meteor is created by a piece of celestial detritus no bigger than a grain of sand.
Ordinarily on a clear dark night you might see a handful of meteors every hour. These are known as ‘sporadic’ meteors as they don’t belong to a particular shower. However when a meteor shower is underway there’s a good chance you’ll see many more, as the shower is supplementing the handful of sporadic ‘shooting stars’.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through a trail of debris left by a comet as it passes through the Solar System. The particular object that creates the Geminid meteors measures around 5km in diameter and is known as 3200 Phaethon. It was found in the early 1980s and is in fact designated as an asteroid, though it certainly has some cometary traits. Perhaps, some have argued, it is a ‘dormant’ comet.
If you go out over the next few nights and see any meteors you’ll know you’ve spotted a Geminid if it appears to come from a point in the constellation of Gemini. This point is known as the ‘radiant’ and it’s the constellation that the radiant is in that gives the shower its name; so the Geminids come from Gemini, the Orionids come from Orion etc.
In terms of where to look, my advice would simply be to look up. Gemini is very high in the sky over the next few nights at around 1:30am and with a Moon that isn’t going to cause too much trouble we’ve got some good observing conditions for this year’s shower. Wrap up warm and sit back in a sun-lounger if you can as this should stop your neck from getting tired and give you a better, more comfortable, view of the sky. Meteor showers like the Geminids are a great chance to get together with friends to observe too, as the more eyes the better. You can join in with the special Geminid ‘Meteorwatch’ event on Twitter by tagging any Geminid meteor observations you tweet with the hashtag #meteorwatch.
The actual peak of the Geminid meteor shower will occur at around 5am (UK time) on Monday morning when the constellation of Gemini will be sitting in the west, around 40 degrees above the horizon, as seen from the UK. Even so there have already been several reports of Geminid meteor sightings. So if it’s clear where you are, go outside over the next few nights and see what you can see!
Slide through the spectrum with Chromoscope
A section of the Milky Way in microwaves. Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team
If you’ve ever wondered what the Orion Nebula looks like in the far-infrared or what the Milky Way looks like at microwave wavelengths then you’re going to like Chromoscope. This exciting new website is the brainchild of professional astronomers Stuart Lowe, Rob Simpson and Chris North, who’ve brought together several all sky maps of the night sky (made observing at different wavelengths) into one clever interactive tool.
It couldn’t be easier to use. You can switch between different wavelengths quickly with the slide of the wavelength bar at the top right of your screen, or by jumping to them with a keyboard shortcut. Plus there’s a really handy search function built in, along with the ability to overlay labels onto the view.
I’ve found it fun to look at objects well-known to amateur astronomers whilst moving the slider — thus revealing them (quite literally) in a different light. From the dust enshrouded heart of our galaxy seen at visible wavelengths to its glowing core in the far-infrared, after a few minutes you’ll quickly begin to see why professional astronomers observe different wavelengths of radiation to get the big picture of what’s happening in the Universe.
To find out more about Chromoscope the team has a blog here with a video tour. But here’s where you want to go if you want to dive right in.
ESO’s Paranal Observatory in 3D
The European Southern Observatory operates several observatory sites in the southern hemisphere, including the world famous Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope (the VLT). This afternoon I stumbled across an amazing video of the VLT which shows this incredible facility, high in the Atacama Desert, in a way I’ve never seen it before — it’s in 3D!
The video is the work of astrophotographer and head Optics Engineer on the VLT, Stéphane Guisard. Stéphane has recently been working with ESO and fellow astrophotographer Serge Brunier to create some truly stunning images for ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project, which you can check out here. There’s lots I love about this video. From the ISS zipping over to the excited movements of the telescopes and the way it appears the observatories are living and breathing things inspecting the skies above them. Grab a pair of 3D specs and check it out for yourself below.
© Stéphane Guisard. Many thanks to Stéphane for giving me permission to post this cool video on the blog. Click the video to go to a larger YouTube version.
Looking for LCROSS
An illustration of LCROSS heading for lunar impact. Credit: NASA
The NASA LCROSS spacecraft, and part of the upper stage of its rocket, are due to deliberately crash into a crater (known as Cabeus) close to the Moon’s south pole on Friday (12:31pm UK time). Scientists are hoping that the huge plumes the impacts create will throw up material that can be studied for signs of water at the lunar pole. The LCROSS impacts come not long after the announcement of the discovery of small amounts of water found over much of the lunar surface. No doubt LCROSS will add something to this surprising result.
Astronomers, both amateur and professional, back on Earth are preparing to observe the impacts too, to add to the data from the LCROSS probe and other space based telescopes observing what happens. If you take an image of the LCROSS plume too you can also help out with a bit of citizen science. The UK isn’t well placed to observe the impact as, unfortunately, it will be daylight here and the Moon will be quite low. However if you have a large telescope (with a mirror diameter of 25cm or greater) it may still be worth a go. See here for more.
For those of us who won’t be able to look for the impact plume ourselves there are a few websites which will be broadcasting information and live feeds as the event unfolds. NASA will be having a live webcast of the event on NASA television with commentary and animations as well as live video from the craft. The remote observatory company SLOOH will also be showing live feeds from two telescopes located in the USA looking for the plume.
So with all that in mind, now all we have to do is wait.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year – The Results
A few weeks ago the results of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition were announced, at the opening of the exhibition of the winning images. As the media partner for the competition a few of us from the Sky At Night Magazine team, travelled to the Royal Observatory Greenwich for the opening night and whilst there we recorded an episode of the Sky At Night Magazine vodcast. I’ll let the vodcast explain the rest but if you want to see more of the amazing images from this stunning exhibition you can see them on the ROG’s website here or, if you’re in the area, at the observatory itself.
An enduring eclipse
Ten years ago tomorrow, on the morning of August 11th 1999, I had butterflies in my stomach and tingles running down my spine. I was a 13 year old school kid obsessed with astronomy and that morning the south west of the UK (where I lived) was going to be plunged into darkness during a total solar eclipse. The forecast wasn’t good and as morning broke the clouds above south Devon seemed impenetrable. We didn’t give up hope though and early in the morning my whole family, grandparents too, travelled to my school in Torquay where we had planned to observe the eclipse from. Our school was lucky enough to be equipped with a decent observatory where many astronomers had gathered; as we drove up to the observing site (the school playing fields around the observatory) throngs of tents and telescopes greeted us.
For most of the morning I fiddled with a basic solar projector setup to safely observe the partial phases of the eclipse. It never really ‘saw’ the Sun though. The few glimpses we had, to tell us the eclipse was progressing, came when the clouds momentarily broke, revealing a thin, ever diminishing, crescent. They were brief but exciting peeks at the drama unfolding above, which was revealed in full thanks to a television propped up outside the observatory, showing footage from an airplane above the clouds. As totality washed over us the clouds above us went dark, the temperature fell and for a brief moment we all enjoyed the spectacle of being in the shadow of the Moon. Around the horizon the sky was bright and, as soon as it had come, totality passed. And that was that.
I have many memories of that amazing morning, from the excited build up to the subdued darkness of the obscured total phase. Despite not seeing the Sun’s corona or any of the incredible phenomena associated with totality I have no strong memory of being utterly disappointed. In fact today when I think back about it, what we experienced that day was one of the most incredible & exciting things I’ve ever seen. The webpage from 1999 of my, then, local astronomical society is still up and is a nice record of the eclipse from our observing site. I just hope I can hold on long enough to see the next total solar eclipse from the UK mainland!
New S@N Magazine article: ‘Return to the Moon’
I have the cover feature of July’s Sky At Night Magazine with an article entitled ‘Return to the Moon’, about NASA’s Constellation programme and the plans to send astronauts back to the Moon. In the feature I look at the how the programme is progressing, the various stages in a Constellation lunar mission, as well as how some of the key bits of new/proposed hardware and rocket technology compare to their counterparts of the Apollo era. Meanwhile if you want to look back on Apollo’s great achievements, what better place to start than the BBC’s own archive of footage about the first manned Moon missions.
Image courtesy: NASA & Sky At Night Magazine
Noctilucent nirvana
Well you wait for noctilucent cloud season to start and then they appear three nights in a row! I missed Tuesday night’s display so here are some images (click them to enlarge) captured from Bristol from Wednesday (17th) night between 10:30 and 11:45 local time. The clouds last night were full of contrast and were tinged with the classic electric blue colour. An impressive sight looming over the horizon, like something from a movie. If the last few weeks of displays are anything to go by this is going to be a good summer for NLCs.
A wider angle looking at the whole display:
A shot with a zoom lens to reveal some of the fine detail in the clouds:
Early morning NLCs
Getting up to grab a glass a water at 3:30am this morning I popped my head out the window to hear the dawn chorus. I’m glad I did, as it gave me my first sight of noctilucent clouds this year. These ‘night-shining’ clouds appear to glow as the rising or setting Sun scatters off tiny ice particles within them.
Noctilucent cloud patterns at dawn. Credit: WillGater.com
They are found much higher in the atmosphere than ‘normal’ clouds, typically around 80km or so. You can often see them in the summer months about an hour after sunset and before sunrise. They shine whiteish blue and don’t appear silhouetted against the bright dawn or twilight sky like lower clouds tend to be (some high cirrus clouds can often look similar to them though). Sometimes they show beautifully intricate glowing patterns and other times simple swirls.
Type II NLCs towards the bottom of the image. Credit: WillGater.com
To find out more about NLCs there is some excellent information on Les Cowley’s great site and more on the different forms of NLC here. I’ve put two pictures I captured of this morning’s impressive display in the post above. So if you are up early or are enjoying a twilight walk, keep an eye out for these impressive and ethereal clouds.
Part II of the S@N Magazine vodcast from JENAM…
…is now online. In this last episode of the special report from the 2009 Joint European Astronomy Meeting, we meet the prototype rover model for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission.
New asteroid article in Sky At Night Magazine
I have a new article in Sky At Night Magazine this month, about asteroids, addressing a topic that I’ve often wondered about and one I’ve heard asked about quite a lot recently (especially after things like this happen) — “why do we miss some spacerocks and why do we spot some of them so late?”. It turns out there are a few reasons, and thankfully there are several things that are being done about it. If you want to get the whole story though you’ll have to see pages 39-43 of the June issue.
Get to know our neighbour this Moonwatch week
The Moon — an incredible sight through even a small telescope. Credit: WillGater.com
In the UK we’ve just started the Spring Moonwatch week, as part of the International Year of Astronomy. It’s the first of a handful of special lunar observing weeks planned throughout the year aimed at getting everyone out having a look at our nearest Solar System neighbour, the Moon.
Even a good pair of small binoculars can show you interesting features on the Moon’s surface like the larger craters, the darker maria (which are vast expanses of smooth basalt) and ray ejecta (the brighter streaks of material stretching across the Moon from when an asteroid hit the surface). If you own a telescope and maybe haven’t used it in months/years/decades why not get it out of the cupboard, dust it off and see what the Moon has to offer? And if you’re already a dedicated amateur astronomer then here’s a perfect opportunity to show some friends some stunning selenogical sights through your scope — there’s nothing quite as rewarding as giving someone their first view of the lunar surface at high magnification. Also be sure to look up your local astronomy society, as they may well have their own Moonwatch events already planned that you can join in with; a good place to start is the IYA UK events page here.
The craters Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Clavius and Plato as well as the rille the ‘Straight Wall’ are all visible during Spring Moonwatch. Credit: WillGater.com
The April Sky At Night Magazine has a special 6-page guide to the Spring Moonwatch week and there’s more info. about the whole project over on the Society for Popular Astronomy’s website here. Lastly, if you do observe the Moon and you tweet about them on Twitter, remember to tag it with #starparty. Happy observing!
Catching Comet Lulin
Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin) is currently putting on a good show in the night sky, having brightened as it makes its journey through the inner Solar System. Earlier this month Lulin had been fairly low down during the wee-small hours, for us UK astronomers anyway, but as the days have gone by it has slowly climbed higher — meaning it is now visible in the southern part of the sky during the late evening around midnight.
This past weekend I managed to observe and take a few pictures of the comet from a reasonably dark sky site. On Friday and Saturday night it was easily visible, against the background stars, as a slightly teardrop shaped grey smudge (with a hint of the dusty anti-tail) through a pair of 10×50 binoculars; during periods of good transparency I believe I glimpsed it with the naked eye too.
Tonight Comet Lulin appears close to Saturn in the sky and tomorrow it makes its close approach to Earth, at a distance of some 61 million km (38 million miles). On the 28th February it will be very close to the bright star Regulus in Leo. Interestingly, NASA observations made with the Swift spacecraft suggest that in late January Lulin was ejecting around 3000 litres of water every second! The Society for Popular Astronomy, here in the UK, have a webpage (scroll down to links for detailed charts) showing the location of the comet over the next few days. So if you are interested, don’t miss this opportunity to see a visitor from the outer Solar System as it gracefully passes us by.
Building ALMA
How the real ALMA will look. Credit: ESO/Calcada/Heyer/Zodet
ALMA is the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a huge arrangement of 80 astronomical antennas currently being built by several organisations on the arid plains of the Atacama Desert, in Chile. It will observe the sky to explore in detail, amongst other things, the origins of the Universe, stars and extrasolar planets. This morning I had somewhat smaller ambitions.
Stuart mentioned on Wednesday about the instructions/plans for a model ALMA antenna that the team at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan — who are involved in building ALMA — have on their website. So this morning I thought I’d have a go at making one. I printed the plans out and had them photocopied onto 300gsm A4 card at the local stationery store. A few hours later I had something that, remarkably for me, actually looked like the antenna in the instructions. Here are a few pictures I took during the construction process.
My attempt at making the NOAJ’s ALMA model. Credit: WillGater.com
In (1) the main dish and part of the fork arms are done; in (2) you can see the base taking shape (I substituted a small piece of dowel to support the weight of the main dish) and (3) shows the finished model. If you want the plans to build your own ALMA antenna then they are on the NOAJ website here and you can find out more about the project itself on the new ALMA website here. Now though, I’ve got to find the time to build the other 79!
Are you 2009′s Astronomy Photographer of the Year?
The night sky provides a wealth of astro-imaging targets. Image credit: WillGater.com
Each month the astro-magazines, Internet forums and websites fill with countless stunning amateur images of nebulae, galaxies, the Moon and more. Often they’ve been taken with a huge range of equipment; from a point and shoot camera held over the telescope eyepiece to many thousands of pounds worth of equipment and CCD cameras. It’s no secret that today accomplished ‘amateur’ astronomers, with quite modest equipment, are producing images whose quality is on a par with (and in some cases far excels) those from professional telescopes, taken a few decades ago. You just have to look at the monthly reader Hotshots pages of Sky At Night Magazine to see what amateur astro-imagers are capable of nowadays!
To celebrate the burgeoning nature of this exciting aspect of astronomy the Royal Observatory Greenwich, in association with BBC Sky At Night Magazine, have just launched the 2009 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. It’s open to everyone around the globe so, if you’ve taken an amazing astro-image that you want to show off to the world, now’s your chance to enter. There are several categories, to cover the many different celestial subjects, including; “Earth and Space” which is for landscapes with an astronomy interest, “Deep Sky” for galaxies and nebulae and “Our Solar System” for pictures of the Sun’s celestial family. The overall winner will receive £1000, with runners up etc. receiving other prizes. Getting youngsters interested in the night sky is also vitally important for astronomy, as both a hobby and a science, so there’s also the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition for entrants under 16 years of age.
When the results have been decided there’s going to be a free exhibition of the winning images at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich from 10th September 2009 to 10th January 2010. You can find out more and read all the rules on the National Maritime Museum/Royal Observatory’s website here. I’m on the judging panel and I genuinely can’t wait for the images to start coming in, so I can see the fruits of your labours. So good luck to those of you who enter and let’s hope 2009 brings us all some nice clear skies to savour!
