October 2018
The observing season is back into full swing this month as October 28th marks the end of British Summer Time.
The Sun
When I first saw how the size of our sun compares to some other stars I was taken aback. (See diagram.) Our star, the sun, is of average size but it is still about 100 times wider than the Earth. It is so important and necessary to our life, yet we still have so much to discover about it. Over the summer, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was launched as humankind’s first mission to touch the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona. The probe is about the size of a family car but not a road trip that any of us would want to make due to the intense heat and radiation. The Earth is 93 million miles away from the sun but the orbit of the probe will be much closer. However, it will still be 3.9 million miles away from the sun and take until 2024 to get there! On its journey it will have to withstand temperatures of 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. In getting there it will reach 430,000 mph and become the fastest manmade object ever. The main objective of the mission is to track the energy that drives the sun’s atmosphere such as its corona and solar winds. Solar winds are important to understand and predict as they can cause massive disruption for parts of our modern everyday life, such as the loss of electrical power or communication as they become ever more vital in our society.
The Mysteries of Cygnus.
Cygnus, the swan, is a constellation easily seen due west after 9pm in the middle of the month. On a clear night it appears to be flying along the Milky Way from the Pole Star. Its main star, Deneb, the tail of the swan, is a supergiant star 200 times larger than the diameter of our sun. Part of this constellation is also known as the Northern Cross. Cygnus has been surveyed by the Kepler satellite in the search for other planets outside our solar system (appropriately called extrasolar planets). There are over a hundred stars in this region which have been identified as having planets. The most famous being the Kepler-11 system which contains at least 6 planets. There are many deep sky objects to observe in Cygnus and of particular note is the North America Nebula, so called because it really does resemble the North American continent. It is very large but quite dim and can really best be seen with binoculars.
In 1964 during a rocket flight, a very strong and strange signal was discovered coming from Cygnus. Strange because the signal indicated that it should have come from a very large object much bigger than our sun but no known object resembled this type of signal. The signal eventually was established to be one of the strongest X-ray sources recorded from Earth. It is now regarded to be a black hole (Cygnus X-1) circling a massive companion star, slowly pulling material away from it until it eventually devours its neighbour completely! So Cygnus is truly a mysterious region in the night sky. New worlds are being discovered and old ones are being ripped apart.
3 Planets to spot.
About half way through the month you will have the chance to spot 3 planets. Be sure to catch them in the early evening before they set. Jupiter, Saturn and a very bright and red Mars close to the moon in the south to south-west direction.
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