Lunar Eclipse

The Night Sky

Don’t miss your chance this month!

We are in for a treat this month. Get your diary out now, find the date night of 20/21st January and make a note AMAZING SUPERMOON ECLIPSE TONIGHT!!! The slight problem is that totality begins at 4.41 in the morning and lasts for about an hour. So If we have a clear night and If you are not too tired, it will be the most spectacular lunar eclipse. An alternative is to wake up early before work to catch the end of totality at 5.30am! The eclipse is caused by the Earth’s shadow moving across our particularly close moon in those early hours. As the light passes from the sun through our atmosphere and hits the moon, many of the wavelengths of light are stripped away, apart from red, and that’s why the moon will look blood red! Look high in the West. You may remember that I highlighted a previous eclipse in July and you might think that they are common but the next total lunar eclipse is in May 2022! So let’s hope for clear skies.

The Dog Star

January heralds the coming of the very dominant hourglass-shaped Orion that I described this time last year. If you follow the three stars that make up Orion’s belt down towards the horizon you will see the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.( It will continue to be the brightest star in our night sky for the next 200,000 years). Also known as the Dog Star, it sits in the constellation Canis Major or the Great Dog. It is one of the most famous stars in the sky in terms of world cultures. The name Sirius means ‘scorching’ and its brightness can only be outshone by a planet. It is so bright because it is one of our sun’s closest neighbours and double the size.

One mystery surrounding Sirius is that in the very distant past, the natives of Mali in West Africa named a companion star ‘Po’ next to Sirius and even used Po to measure their ritual periods of time by giving it a 50-year orbit. It wasn’t until 1862 that Sirius was discovered to be a ‘double star’ and that it had a much smaller star orbiting it …..every 50 years. How they managed to discover that is still a complete mystery as it is invisible to the naked eye. Sirius was also very important in the Egyptian calendar as its first appearance before sunrise marked the time of the yearly rising of the Nile. This in turn mobilised famers as it was vital to their crops and wealth. Interestingly, the familiar expression ‘the dog days of summer’ was first coined by the Romans as Sirius appeared at the hottest time of the year and was linked to heat, drought, fever and mad dogs.

If you are out planet- hunting this month, then Mars is the only real target in the evening sky at the moment, setting in the West about midnight. Shining with its red tint it is unmistakable. If you are an early riser, then you can spot Jupiter and Venus and a Crescent Moon on the last few days of the month looking South East.

Finally, a historic moment is about to occur. The New Horizons’ spacecraft will pass a very distant object in a region called the Kuiper Belt on 1st January. It will be a billion miles beyond Puto that it has already visited in 2015. This flyby will be the most distant in our history of space exploration!

December 2018 Best Comet Of The Year!

The Night Sky in December.

A Telescope for Christmas?

When I was a young boy, my father bought me a telescope that he had seen advertised in a national newspaper. It was described as having a magnification of hundreds and a cardboard tube nearly 2 metres long. He had no idea what he was buying but wanted to buy me a present that would encourage my interests.

It was an amazing present! I spent many dark nights trying to hold it steady and pick out details of the moon. I was hooked! What eventually dawned on me and has been confirmed by years of observing is be careful what you buy! Some advertised telescope magnifications can often result in a very large blurry image. Additionally, a telescope needs to be held very steady to be of any use and a tripod or mount needs to be added to the equation. In fact, you will get just as much pleasure and enjoyment out of a decent pair of 10x50 binoculars as a poor quality telescope. The first number (10) is by how much they will magnify an image eg. x10. The second number (50) is the size of lens that collects the light; the bigger the better, but too big and they will be too heavy! This specification means they are easy to get out and observe during a break in the clouds and you often have a wider field of view. All that being said, a good quality telescope is hard to beat and that first one, regardless of quality, captured my imagination and set me on the path of a long lasting love of astronomy. There are two main types, refractors (which use lenses) and reflectors (use a lens and curved mirror). Some can even locate amazing objects in the night sky automatically. The development of telescopes in recent years for home use has been remarkable. But please remember whatever you buy, when using it, don’t point it at the sun!

The Twins.

During this month looking east late evening you will spot the twins or Gemini. Looking at my diagram you will see two ‘matchstick’ people holding hands. Their heads are made from two bright stars, Castor and Pollux. The Greeks told a tale of two half-brothers searching for the Golden Fleece with Jason - Castor, the son of a king and Pollux, the son of Zeus. The search was made into a film which is often shown over Christmas. Watch out for it! Nearby is M35, a cluster of stars visible to the naked eye. Binoculars or a telescope will reveal even more stars. The cluster covers an area the size of a full moon so it should be easy to spot.

Comet Wirtanen – Best Comet Viewing of 2018!

Every five years or so we have a visitor who comes quite close to Earth, circling our sun in a large elongated orbit. Comet Wirtanen will visit us again this month and will be the closest and brightest it will be for twenty years. It promises to be the best comet viewing of the year. On any clear night this month you will be able to spot this comet. Look out for it around the 7th when we have a New Moon when it should be easy to spot (close to the Pleiades). This icy lump of debris is just over 1km across. As these huge ‘dirty snowballs’ orbit the sun they start to melt, releasing gas, dust and particles which often give them their characteristic tail. The tail always points away from the sun and appears odd when moving away from the sun with its tail ahead of its movement. Of course over the next few years the Earth will pass through the debris that it has left and hopefully give us a meteor shower to remind us of its visit until the next time.

As the dark nights draw in, I hope we can all appreciate the privilege of living in a village which boasts a rich, dark sky at a time when more and more people are denied this fundamental right.

Image taken on the 13th December from Embsay

November 2018 Seven Sisters

The Night Sky November 2018

The Seven Sisters

When I first saw the Pleiades through binoculars it took my breath away. It was like opening a treasure chest to discover hidden gems trying to out-sparkle each other. Even with my naked eye I could see a ‘cluster’ of stars but was stunned to see so many points of light tightly packed together. So just imagine this image as I pointed my telescope at this star cluster! Its common name is the Seven Sisters. Throughout time they have created a lot of interest. In medieval times they were known as ‘hen and chickens’ and also bizarrely as a bunch of grapes. In Greece they immortalised the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The location of the Seven Sisters is shown on my diagram. It is very close to the constellation of Taurus the Bull in the evening sky. See how many of them you can spot with your naked eye. It is a good test of observation (and your eyesight!). There are 9 main stars which include 7 Sisters and their parents.

Taurus

Spotting Taurus is not difficult providing you find the very bright red/orange eye which is part of a distinctive ‘V’ shaped head called Hyades (one of our nearest open cluster of stars). Its horns are over exaggerated and it is pretty much an incomplete ‘bull’. The red eye is the star Aldebaran, 68 light years away. Spotting Hyades was regarded as bad luck to sailors and people who worked the land. This was because as Hyades became visible in the night sky it heralded the season of rain and poor weather. Conversely when it was no longer visible it indicated much calmer weather.

On the 23rd November a full moon will be sitting next to Aldebaran (the eye of Taurus) so this will help you get a fix on its position. But it would be much better to observe the delights of this area of the night sky around 7th November during a dark sky and a new moon. My diagram shows the view to the east around 9pm in the early part of the month. Note the diagonal line across the diagram. It is the path of the moon and planets during the year called the Ecliptic and extends right across the sky. If there is a planet to observe it will be very close to this imaginary line.

The Crab Nebula

In the year 1054 Chinese astronomers observed a massive supernova explosion named the Crab Nebula (M1) just at the edge of Taurus. Apparently it was the brightest object in the night sky and could even be seen during the day! With good conditions in Embsay and a pair of binoculars you can see it for yourself - although it is much fainter now. What you will see is a faint cloud but at the centre are the remnants of the star that exploded. All that is left is the size of a city 12 miles across called the Crab Pulsar. It is an object that rotates 30 times each second blasting out X-Rays, Gamma Rays and Radio Waves from 4000 light years away. It is very odd to think that when it was observed to have exploded, the light took so long to reach earth it had already happened 3000 years earlier! Many of the objects we see in the night sky may no longer exist as we observe them due to the incredible distance light has to travel to reach our eyes.

Other events of note this month.

17/18 November : Leonid meteor shower best observed after 1am. You may see between 10-20 beautiful streaks per hour radiating from the low east across our dark Yorkshire nightscape.

Crab Nebula (M1)