Sky Wise

The Moon Makes Friends

  On Saturday, April 1st, our heavenly neighbour moon is only a thin crescent, sailing through a sea of stars.  Look for it in the west immediately after the sun sets.  If you have binoculars you will see that the moon is approaching a tightly bound star cluster called the "Pleiades".  The Pleiades is a stellar nursery in the final stages of starbirth.  Stars are blazing away, still nestled in an envelope of dust and gas.  Slowly, these clouds of elemental star material will be blown away by the stars themselves.

Come back to the moon an hour later and you will see that it has moved against the backdrop of stars --Cool!

Sky Chart:  (c) Image made with Starry Night Software

Eclipse Update

For a live video feed of the eclipse go to:  http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2006/index.html

A Total Eclipse for Everyone Else

I can't help but feel a little jealous of people in other parts of the world; places where you can see a total eclipse of the sun.  In the wee hours (our time) of Wednesday March 29th, people across an area stretching from the east coast of Brazil, across the Atlantic  and into Northern Africa, Turkey and Mongolia will witness this rare event.  It is such a magical moment that many people become "eclipse chasers" -going all over the world to see eclipses wherever and whenever they happen.

A total eclipse of the sun happens when the moon lines up exactly in front of the sun.  For one, two or three minutes -and in this case up to four, the moon is placed in just the right spot for people to see the "totality" where only the sun's bright corona (outer atmosphere) is visible.

Sometimes an eclipse happens when the moon is a little closer in its orbit around earth and we end up with an "Annular" eclipse instead.  An annular eclipse covers all but the sun's outside edge.  Look at an annular eclipse directly and you will suffer eye damage.  With a total eclipse the time spent in "totality" can be seen with the naked eye, but it shouldn't be done unless you know exactly what you are doing.  In other words please don't EVER look directly at the sun unless you are an astronomer who knows exactly when it is safe to do so.

The next total eclipse after this can be seen in the cold extremes of Canada's high arctic in August 2008.  As much as I'd like to see it, I think I'll be waiting until 2017 when another cuts across the middle of the U.S.A.

NASA has more great info on this event.  Want to find out more?  Click here!

Come back here Friday for another interesting event involving our moon.

Eclipse path image courtesy of NASA/Fred Espenak

Goes Great with Coffee!

Usually I like to sleep in on the weekend but sometimes it's just worth getting up early.  Click on the sky chart and take a look at what awaits early risers just before sunrise on Saturday March 25th.  The thin crescent moon rises over the southeast horizon just a few degrees from our brightest planet, Venus.  To the south, Jupiter is the advance scout, leading the way into the morning sky.  Although present, Neptune and Pluto are too faint to be seen with the naked eye. 

Now click on this sky chart.  You can't miss Venus --it's by far the brightest object you will see in the sky before the sun comes up.  Right now it's about as bright as it gets.  Often, people mistake it for a bright star but it's a planet all right.  If you focus a telescope on Earth's beautiful twin, you will see that it goes through phases, just like the moon.  So get up a little early this Saturday, put on a coffee and enjoy the show.

Sky Chart:  (c) Image made with Starry Night Software

Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring

I thought it might be fitting to visit winter just one more time because this is one of the most beautiful images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

5000 light-years away in the constellation Gemini, you will find the "Eskimo Nebula" also known by astronomers as "NGC 2392".  This incredibly beautiful object is an example of a "Planetary Nebula".  Don't be fooled.  It's actually the remains of a dead star which blew off it's outer atmosphere about 10,000 years ago.  The resulting effect is that we see what looks like a man's face in a parka!

Photo Credit: NASA, Andrew Fruchter/ERO, STScI

To find the Eskimo Nebula you will need to have access to a decent telescope, preferably one with an aperture of 8 Inches or more.  If you don't have a telescope but ache to see this star that burped and died, you might consider joining an organization like the Durham Region Astronomical Association where many members are happy to share.  Another option is a private viewing of the night sky with a professional sky tour service like Night Sky Tours.

Whichever way you do it, the Eskimo Nebula is a winter object and only visible for a few weeks more.  If you want to see it, now is the time!

If you have the equipment, look for the Eskimo in the south after dark.  This sky chart will help guide you.  Click on it to enlarge the image.

Sky Chart:  (c) Image made with Starry Night Software

The next meeting of the Durham Region Astronomical Association is Tuesday March 21st, 7 PM where John Everett, Post Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theorectical Astrophyics will tell us about what we know about Black Holes!  It's free and you don't need to be a member to attend.  Click on the date link for more info.

Mars -Bigger, Better and More Beautiful

More than any other extraterrestrial planet in our solar system, none captures the imagination more than Mars.   The latest visitor to Mars is an ambitious science package --NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter  (MRO) which is due to arrive today.  This is by far the largest project to orbit the dry, cold and desolate planet.  The MRO will use a variety of instruments to observe and probe Mars from orbit.  Ground-penetrating radar will search for traces of water while incredibly high resolution optics will provide the best pictures yet of the Martian surface.  Weather on Mars will be scrutinized to determine the atmosphere's structure and circulation.  A Spectrometer will study the geology.  All this is important because a lot depends on what this spacecraft will find.  More information than ever will flow back to Earth and for good reason.  NASA scientists will use what they learn from MRO to choose the places to go to next.  Many robotic missions over the next decade are planned and when you are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each time you want to get the most bang for the buck.

As I write this, the people at Jet Propulsion Labaratory (JPL) are preparing the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to arrive at our distant neighbour.  This is the crucial final phase of the trip where a mistake in the math could end your career.  Of course if everything goes according to plan, we will be looking forward to lots of great images and important info from our red neighbour.

Follow up to our Trivia Question:  It would take 171 years to drive to our sun at 100 km/h.  Congratulations to Gil Tennant for getting it right! 

Mars picture Credit:  Hubble Space Telescope:  NASA, ESA (STSci)

MRO picture Credit:  NASA, JPL

A Beautiful Winter Jewel

The Orion Nebula is a bright winter jewel --so bright that it can be seen with the naked eye!  I remember the first time I noticed it too.  I was 9 years old and the Apollo space program was in full swing.  My mind was full of strange and wonderful alien places all due to the ongoing space race.  Unfortunately, I mistook this beautiful object for a fuzzy star.

It's easy to dismiss the brightest nebula in the northern sky.  It does look like a faint fuzzy star and it does need dark skies to be seen by the naked eye. It's what happens when you look at it through binoculars and telescopes that makes it come alive.  This huge interstellar nursery is giving birth to new stars as I write this piece.  Distant suns are forming out of tenuous dust and gas, slowly coming together through gravity until the mass builds up.  Eventually, when enough of it comes together, nuclear fusion starts and a sun blazes into being.  Boom! Wow!

You can see the Orion Nebula even in moderately light-polluted skies.  If you can't find it with only your eyes, try a pair of binoculars.  This gem shows up a great amount of detail through even modest telescopes. Sorry but aside from the planets of our solar system, most of the stuff you will see in our skies will be in black and white.  We're talking about very small amounts of light here.  That being said, when I'm doing a public viewing with the Durham Region Astronomical Association people's comments usually range from "cool" to "holy smokes" to "absolutely incredible!".  My family gives it a thumbs up even though they think I'm a little over the top on this -which I am.

To find the Orion Nebula first look in the south after dark.  Orion is one of the few constellations that actually seems to be what it is describing.  Orion is the mighty hunter and does look somewhat like a stick-figure human.  You will see "Orion's Belt", three stars lined up neatly in a row.  Just a little below the leftmost of the three will be a fuzzy object often referred to as "Orion's Sword".  That's the Orion Nebula!

The sky chart is done in a great planetarium program called "Starry Night" 

(c) Image made with Starry Night Software - www.starrynight.com

Orion Photo Credit: NASA and C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), STSci (Hubble Space Telescope)

The Most Detailed Picture of a Galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to offer up incredible pictures of our universe.  This week, a composite picture of 51 Hubble exposures plus elements from ground-based observatories made its debut.

This picture of the distant galaxy M101 is a giant pinwheel of billions and billions of stars and measures about 170,000 light-years across.  A light year is not a measure of time but of distance.  A ray of light takes 170,000 years to travel from one side of M101 to the opposite side.  For comparison, a ray of light leaving our sun arrives at the Earth about 8 1/2 minutes later.

This is the most detailed picture of a distant gallery we have.  It measures 16,000 pixels wide by 12,000 pixels high.  Thanks to the incredible resolution, astronomers can see in greater detail the structure of this immense object.  By looking more closely at M101 we can learn more about other galaxies, including our own Milky Way.  For a high resolution version of this image visit the newsdesk of hubblesite.org

Trivia Question:  If you could drive your car to our Sun how long would it take to get there?  Keep to the posted speed limit of 100 km/h!

Photo Credit:  NASA and ESA,  STSci