The Milky Way
I always hope that around the time of a New Moon we can get to see the sparkling band of stars of the Milky Way stretching over our heads. The next New Moon is October 14th. Despite the fact that ancient civilisations did not have powerful telescopes they knew the Milky Way was special. It was considered a path, road or even a river between Heaven and Earth. In Peru, the Milky Way is thought to take water from the cosmic ocean and return it to us as rain. In Hebrew tradition, the river of light; in India the reflection of the Ganges. It is estimated that now one third of humanity can’t observe this spectacle for many reasons but mainly due to light pollution. So we are very lucky to be able to see it here in Embsay.
Often it can be mistaken for light cloud, but if you just point a pair of binoculars upwards you will see countless stars that form our home. Although we live in a disc of 100,000 million stars, as we look at it we are looking from inside and edge on. When we see the Milky Way we are looking into a big spiral (plate shaped), in the main when we look away from this band we are looking outwards into deep space. Of course there are other local stars that make up the ‘thickness’ of our galaxy and these are the ones we see elsewhere in the sky. Shaped like a catherine wheel we are positioned away from the centre in one of the arms that form a great spiral.
It is big! It would take 200,000 years (at the speed of light) to travel across our galaxy, and 1000 years to travel through its thickness. That is travelling nearly 3.5 BILLION YEARS using our current technology. Despite this enormous size, it can be faint to our eyes and our challenge this month is to try and photograph it.
Photo: Aezo
How to photograph the Milky Way.
Basic steps
The faintness of the Milky Way can be overcome by setting your camera (or phone) to a shutter speed of about 15 to 20 seconds. This will let enough light in for the faintness to stand out. But because you have done this, your camera will have to be very steady for that length of time. So either put it on a tripod or have a delay of a few seconds so that you can put it into position. Then pick a moonless, clear night. Set your camera to face anywhere along a NE or SW line across the sky or just straight upward.
Better pictures
A couple of other things will help a lot but are a bit technical. If you know how to make your camera more sensitive by adjusting the ISO, then set it between 3200 and 6400. Also, set your lens as wide as possible (f/2.8)
Even better pictures
Set the camera white balance to 4000k.
Some particular mobile phones do a terrific job at taking dark sky scenes, why not give it a go!
Photo: Outerspace Universe
Comet 103P Hartley
This peanut shaped lump of ice, carbon dioxide and methanol is about 1000m across. In 2010, as part of the Deep Impact Mission, a flyby took place and identified its very unique movement. It spins around one axis but tumbles around another. As it gets closer to the sun, the dry ice and gases heat up and burn off as a long tail across space - always facing away from the sun due to the solar wind blasting it outward.
This is its position on 14th October before sunrise - looking South East.
A quick look at our night sky this month.
Looking North at 9pm on 14th October
Looking South at 9pm on 14th October
The planets this month
Mercury - best the first week of October early in the morning
Saturn - low in the East
Uranus - October 29th Can be found South of the Moon.
New Moon 14th October
Full Moon 28th October
Other points to note this month? A Partial Lunar Eclipse 28th October 21.15 pm where the Earth will cast a 12% shadow over the moon. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/@7298251
My target to observe this month is the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, almost directly above, a concentration of interstellar gas and dust. If I manage an image, I will include it in my next article!
Clear Skies
Milan Davidovic
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