Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

photo courtesy of: Ron Wright
Grand Rapids MI

Can You Count the Stars Tonight?

My darling daughter, can you count the stars tonight?
Can you imagine a night, not so long ago, filled with starlight,
An infinity of shimmering diamonds on a meadow of velvet?
Can you close your eyes and picture a river of a million distant fireflies,
A cascade of sparkling heavenly beacons that once filled our skies?
Now that those who are without wonder or awe have taken our night,
My darling daughter, can you count the stars tonight?

Yes, daddy, I can see two!
---Doug Snyder, 5 August 1998

Listener Question

Ron, from Grand Rapids MI, is looking for E.T :-) 6.4 mag NGC 457 in Cassiopeia it doesn't have a "M" number but it isn't too hard to find. NGC 457not a good picture - too many stars! near M103 (7.4 mag NGC 581)

Also Anthony from Manchester is getting ready to go on holiday and sent in the following request:

"Hi Alice,

I will soon be going away on holiday with the family for a couple of
weeks and I wondered if you could throw out a question to your
listeners for any suggestions or recommendations for holiday reading?

Something reasonably light, in terms of weight and content, and
astro-related would be great. I won't have access to my scope and I'll
be most likely reading when its light (and hopefully sunny) so nothing
that requires any specific observing as I read. 

Cheers!  Anthony"

So leave your suggestions for Anthony in the show notes!

Viewing

Naked eye - May 27 - use binoculars (after sunset)to see a very young moon next to Mercury
May 30 - Moon and Mars line up with Castor and Pollux
May 31 - Waxing Crescent Moon, Saturn and the Beehive cluster all framed together

Binocular - M3 (6.3 mag) globular cluster half way between Cor Caroli and Arcturus about 12 degrees on the line starting from Arcturus
Jewel box in Crux (4.2 mag), Omega Centauri (3.9 mag), M7 Ptolomey's Cluster (3.3 mag) in Scorpio and M4 (5.4 mag) west of Antares.

Telescope - M63 The Sunflower Galaxy (8.5 mag), M94 in Canes Venatici(8.1 mag), and M51 the Whirlpool in Ursa Major all of which have very bright centers.
Compare these to M109 (9.8 mag) in Ursa Major Ringtail Galaxy (10.3 mag)NGC 4038 in Corvus and compare that to M104 (8.3 mag) Sombrero Galaxy on the border between Virgo and Corvus. For me this is still pretty far south in the light pollution and muck.

The Moon

Images created with Lunar Phase Pro

What to look for!
Waning and waxing crescent 2 days apart

Southeast favoring libration will help those with eagle eyes find some lunar edge items!

New! To help those working on Lunar awards* I will give latitudes and longitudes when possible. Remember latitudes that are negative (-) are South and longitudes that are negative (-) are West!

Object	Latitude	Longitude	Comments
Mare Australe	-38.9	93!
Mare Spumans	1.1	65.1
Mare Undarum	7	69
Crater Petavius and rimea	-25.1	60.4	Rimea Petavius a straight line from the central peak SW
Crater Langrenus(lan-grin'as)	-8.9	61.1	During the Apollo 8 mission, Astronaut James Lovell described Langrenus as, "quite a huge crater; it's got a central cone to it. The walls of the crater are terraced, about six or seven terraces on the way down." The Flemish Astronomer Michel Florent van Langren was the first person to draw a lunar map while giving names to many of the features. He even named this crater after himself. Ironically, this is the only one of his named features that has retained his original designation *Wikipedia entry Langrenas is also a site with a history of transient lunar phenomenon (tlp)
Crater Cleomedes	27.7	56	Just above Mare Crisium it is named after the 1st century Greek astronomer known for his book On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies. Crater Cleomedes is a very prominent crater approximately 126 kilometers in diameter with rilles on the central peak and sides.
Crater Hercules	46.7	39.1	With twin crater Atlas...
Crater Atlas	46.7	44.4	With twin crater Hercules...look for the dark halo craters

*Lunar Awards:
Astronomical League Lunar Club and Lunar Club 2
Lunar 100 - Charles A. Wood- 100 features laminated feature card available through Sky and Telescope
Free online support at Charles Wood's site and Mike Tyrrel site (lots of pictures slow to load)
Astronomy a Go Go! Lunar club (The loonies?) coming soon 4 levels; beginner, intermediate, advanced and master. No membership required no fees, beautiful "you print" certificate for each level and your name on the website.

Planets

Evening Planets
• Jupiter - Mag -2.5 in Libra. Just past opposition for those of you watching this gas giant over the past couple of months will have noticed it getting brighter. Clearly visible just after sunset, if you know where to look! The bright star to the SE is Zuben Elgenubi in Libra the bright star west along the ecliptic is Spica in the constellation Virgo. Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands and four Galilean satellites.
  Listener Kevin recommended a piece of free software that I now have on all my computers Jupiter 2.
• Saturn - 0.1 mag In Cancer and tonight and moving East just 1.5 degree SW of M44 the Beehive cluster. It appears as a yellowish star that rivals Capella in brightness, A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest and most extraordinary moon.
• Mars - Mag +1.6 in Gemini creeping west towards Cancer and Saturn. It is the bright point of light SW of Castor and Pollux just SW of Kappa Gemini so that it looks like Pollux is trying to reach out and catch him.
• Mercury - has now finished his time behind the sun and has joined the rank of the evening planets. This weekend it will be very near the horizon just after sunset between the sun and the waxing crescent moon.
  Morning Planets
• Venus - Mag -3.9 The brightest morning planet visible. Low in the eastern morning sky. You will want to grab a pair of binoculars or even just a finder scope to check out her phase. Just over half full she is intensely bright in her gibbous phase.
• Uranus - Mag. 5.9 in Aquarius low in the south west before dawn.
• Neptune - Mag. 7.9 in Capricorn low in the south west before dawn
• Pluto Mag. 14 in Serpens Cauda is high in the south before dawn In Superior Conjunction - As alignment of an interior planet (Venus or Mercury) and the Sun which occurs when the Earth and the planet are on opposite sides of the Sun.
  

Viewing

Some things to keep in mind about our viewing difference:

• Location
• Age
• Ability/Experience
• Fatigue
• Instruments

Some things you can calculate and work around:

• Sky Brightness - The higher in the sky you look, the darker the sky will be. Plan your deep-sky observing projects accordingly. Also, light pollution tends to improve a bit after 11 or midnight as some outdoor lights get turned off.
• Dark Adaptation - After spending 15 minutes in darkness you might think your night vision is fully developed. But in fact your eyes gain as much as another two magnitudes of sensitivity during the next 15 minutes. Thereafter, dark adaptation improves very slightly for 90 minutes more. So don't expect to see faint objects at their best until a half hour or more into an observing session.
• Averted Vision -When you look directly at something, its image falls on your retina's fovea centralis. This spot is packed with bright-light-optimized cone cells and provides sharp resolution under strong illumination. To see something faint, you have to look slightly away from it. Doing so moves the image of your target off the fovea and onto parts of the retina that have more rod cells, which see only in black and white but are more light-sensitive than the cones.
• High Power - Can help bring out the detail of galaxies, clusters and nebula but can be thwarted by high sky brightness. Feel free to experiment!
• Capturing Color - In order to show us color, a deep-sky object must have a high enough surface brightness to stimulate the retina's cone cells Averted vision is not the way to look for color. The cones are thickest in the fovea, so stare right at your object. In this case, the lowest useful power should work best. A large telescope aperture is especially advantageous for those who seek to see color in deep-sky objects.

Weather charts and forecasts

Cloud cover This forecast may miss low cloud and afternoon thunderstorms. When the forecast is clear, the sky may still be hazy, if the transparency forecast is poor.

Transparency-Astronomically 'transparency' means just what astronomers mean by the word: the total transparency of the atmosphere from ground to space. It's calculated from the total amount of water vapor in the air. It is somewhat independent of the cloud cover forecast in that there can be isolated clouds in a transparent air mass, and poor transparency can occur when there is very little cloud.

Above average transparency is necessary for good observation of low contrast objects like galaxies and nebulae. However, open clusters and planetary nebulae are quite observable in below average transparency. Large globulars and planets can be observed in poor transparency.

Transparency Scale
0. Do Not Observe - Completely cloudy or precipitating.
1. Very Poor - Mostly cloudy.
2. Poor - Partly cloudy or heavy haze. 1 or 2 Little Dipper stars visible.
3. Somewhat Clear - Cirrus or moderate haze. 3 or 4 Little Dipper stars visible.
4. Partly Clear - Slight haze. 4 or 5 Little Dipper stars visible.
5. Clear - No clouds. Milky Way visible with averted vision. 6 Little Dipper stars visible.
6. Very Clear - Milky Way and M31 visible. 7 Little Dipper stars visible.
7. Extremely Clear - M33 and/or M81 are visible.

Seeing
Refers to the blurring and twinkling of astronomical objects such as stars caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. The turbulence can also come from the telescope itself, the observer, or the immediate surroundings.

Excellent seeing means at high magnification you will see fine detail on planets. In bad seeing, planets might look like they are under a layer of rippling water and show little detail at any magnification, but the view of galaxies is probably undiminished. Bad seeing is caused by turbulence combined with temperature differences in the atmosphere. This forecast attempts to predict turbulence and temperature differences that affect seeing for all altitudes.

Bad seeing can occur during perfectly clear weather. Often good seeing occurs during poor transparency. It's because seeing is not very related to the water vapor content of the air.

Astronomical Seeing
1. Severely disturbed skies: Even low power* views are uselessly shaky. Go read a good book.
2. Poor seeing: Low power images are pretty steady, but medium powers are not.
3. Good seeing: You can use about half the useful magnification of your scope. High powers* produce fidgety planets.
4. Excellent seeing: Medium-powers are crisp and stable. High-powers are good, but a little soft.
5. Superb seeing: Extremely Steady. Any power eyepiece produces a good crisp image.

* The PRACTICAL LOWEST power magnification for any telescope is approximately 7 times for each inch of aperture. Example: 28X for a 4-inch (100mm) diameter telescope
* The PRACTICAL HIGHEST power magnification for any telescope is approximately 50 times for each inch of aperture. Example: 200X for a 4-inch (100mm)diameter telescope.
Humidity

This forecasts ground-level relative humidity. Humidity variations won't determine whether or not you can observe, but it might affect observer comfort and can indicate the likelihood of dewing.

But dewing is not simply correlated to relative humidity. Dewing tends to happen when the sky is clear, the temperature is dropping and there isn't much wind. Being on a hilltop or in a small valley can make the difference between no dew and dripping telescopes.

An example of transparency forecasting from Environment Canada
Outside of North America try the 7timer site
In North America try Clear Sky Clock
Everyone can try Wunderground, here is an example of South America
Great Britain and Ireland can try The Weather Outlook they have a tab for astronomy and it seems to be improving. There is also MetCheck which loads faster and will take a postal code.

Limiting Magnitude

Apparent magnitudes How bright things look from Earth. We don't know how intrinsically bright an object is until we also take its distance into account. Thus astronomers created the absolute magnitude scale.

Absolute magnitude An object's absolute magnitude is simply how bright it would appear if placed at a standard distance of 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) The parsec (symbol pc) is a unit of length used in astronomy. It stands for "parallax of one arc second". BBC's Sky at Night programme: Patrick Moore demonstrates Parallax using Cricket.

Seen from this distance, the Sun would shine at an unimpressive visual magnitude 4.85. Rigel would blaze at a dazzling -8, nearly as bright as the quarter Moon. The red dwarf Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system, would appear to be magnitude 15.6, the tiniest little glimmer visible in a 16-inch telescope! Knowing absolute magnitudes makes plain how vastly diverse are the objects that we casually lump together under the single word "star."

Some online calculators of Limiting Magnitude and surface brightness.

News

ESA lava tubes on Mars. Mars Express, shows Pavonis Mons, the central volcano of the three 'shield' volcanos that comprise Tharsis Montes

ProAM extrasolar planet find!. In June and July 2005, four amateur astronomers (Ron Bissinger in California, Bruce Gary in Arizona, Paul Howell in Maine, and Tonny Vanmunster in Belgium) carefully monitored one of the most promising candidates identified by XO: a magnitude-11.3 solar-type star in Corona Borealis. The amateur observations revealed the telltale periodic dips of a transiting object only 30 percent larger than Jupiter. The star decreases in brightness by 2 percent for 3 hours every 3.9415 days  -  the companion's orbital period. Armatur Transit organization Transit.org

Comets for May.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"
-- Shakespeare

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

28 -"Miles Away"
Katy Pfaffl -"Halfway There"

Woodland Hills Camera and Telescope is offering FREE web hosting on our servers for you or your organization's website. In order to promote the hobbies of Astronomy, Astrophotography, Photography, Birding or generally any topic that is of interest to our customer base, Woodland Hills Camera and Telescope is offering Hosting Grants.

What are some of the conditions that make our night-time observing so variable?

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

Hevelius at his telescope

Hello!

Hello to Trustin in Newfoundland and James in Christchurch

Eclipse

Visit the show notes from my Eclipse Special and follow the link to "Live from Turkey" from the Exploritorium. It was a great program and this time they lucked out and didn't have to fight the clouds. If you missed their equinox webcast (2005?) from Mexico and Chichen Itza go take a look.

Glossary of Telescope Terms

concave lens or convex mirror - causes light to spread out. convex lens or concave mirror - causes light to come together to a focal point.
field of view - area of the sky that can be seen through a given eyepiece. focal length - distance required to bring the light to a focus. focal point - point at which light comes together. objective - lens or mirror is the primary light directing source magnification - telescope's focal length divided by the eyepiece's focal length. resolution - how close two objects can be and yet still be detected as separate objects, usually measured in arc-seconds (this is important for revealing fine details of an object, and is related to the telescope's aperture) secondary - the mirror that reflects the light from the primary mirror to the eyepiece

Telescopes

Rice University's Galileo project
Refractors
Hans Lippershey gets credit for inventing the refractor in 1608, and the military used the instrument first. Galileo was the first to use it in astronomy. Both Lippershey's and Galileo's designs used a combination of convex and concave lenses. Kepler improved the design to have two convex lenses.

Reflectors

Isaac Newton developed the reflector about 1680, in response to the chromatic aberration (rainbow halo) problem that plagued refractors during his time. Instead of using a lens to gather light, Newton used a curved, metal mirror (primary mirror) to collect the light and reflect it to a focus. Mirrors do not have the chromatic aberration problems that lenses do. Newton placed the primary mirror in the back of the tube.

In 1722, John Hadley developed a design that used parabolic mirrors, and there were various improvements in mirror-making. The Newtonian reflector was a highly successful design, and remains one of the most popular telescope designs in use today.

Hybrids

The first compound telescope was made by German astronomer Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Catadioptric telescopes are hybrid telescopes that have a mix of refractor and reflector elements in their design. Schmidt-Cassegrain design, which was invented in the 1960s, is the most popular type of telescope; it uses a secondary mirror that bounces light through a hole in the primary mirror to an eyepiece.

Telecope mounts

Alt-Azmuth mounts move left-right and up-down. Dobsonians are the most popular Alt-Az mounts
Equitorial mounts are polar aligned so their "left-rights" will track along the ecliptic keeping objects in the scope as the Earth turns (if motorized)

Finders (Finder scopes)

peep sights reflex sights finder scopes or telecope sights

The Moon

This weekend the moon is a waxing gibbous moon which will make things tough for our starparty on Saturday, tough but not impossible!

Images created with Lunar Phase Pro

Triple Marshes(pa'les) Palus Epidemiarum (latin for Marsh of Epidemics) -pink circle p Palus Somni (Latin for "Marsh of Sleep") -yellow circle p Palus Putredinus (latin for "Marsh of Decay")-blue circle p

Triple craters Three craters that tell a story - in a red elipse Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharine. Starting with Theophilus note how each crater progressively older.

Triple ranges Montes (Monteez) Alpenninus(ap a nay us)-yellow line Montes Heamus(He ma us) - blue line Montes Caucasus (Caucasias)-pink line

Planets

• Venus - The brightest planet visible this month. Venus is outstanding in the Eastern morning sky and you will want to grab a pair of binoculars or even just a finder scope to check out her phase. Just over half full she is intensely bright in her gibbous phase.
• Jupiter - In Libra and Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands to you, along with its four Galilean satellites. There are some great new Cassini composit images on the Planetary Society Webpage
• Saturn - Is in Cancer and tonight stop in it's apparent backsliding to the West and will begin moving in it's direct motion to the East. It appears as a yellowish star that rivals Capella in brightness, A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest and most extraordinary moon. A 6-inch telescope will begin to show the orange color of its atmospheric haze.
• Mars has swung past Aldeberon and is almost between the tips of the bulls horns.
• Mercury - Just south of east about 25 degrees from Venus (towards the horizon and easterly) if you remember how to measure 25 degrees, it is the spread between your pinky and thumb when fully extended. Show #10 has our primmer for measuring distances in the sky

News

There are so many great space and astronomy news sites out there I won't try and duplicate them all, I'll just report things that really strike my fancy or that I think you might be interested in. Here is a list of some of the sites I visit daily:

• NASA's Eclipse Page -
• How Prometheus Pulls on Saturn's F Ring Wed, 05 Apr 2006 - One of the most amazing images sent back by the Cassini spacecraft shows one of Saturn's shepherd moons, Prometheus, tugging a stream of particles away from the F ring. Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have developed a model that explains the forces at work in this dramatic interaction. It was originally believed that Prometheus steals ring particles, but it now appears that it just borrows them as it comes past, and they drift back into the ring system after the moon sweeps by.
  
  Prometheus acting on Saturn's F ring. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
• Don Quijote to impact an asteroid -ESA 3 April 206 Asteroids: treasures of the past and a threat to the future If a large asteroid such as the recently identified 2004 VD17 â�� about 500 m in diameter with a mass of nearly 1000 million tonnes - collides with the Earth it could spell disaster for much of our planet. As part of ESAâ��s Near-Earth Object deflecting mission Don Quijote, three teams of European industries are now carrying out studies on how to prevent this. The impactor, Hildalgo will be monitored by an orbitor, Sancho.
• Dead Stars Producing Planets - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered new evidence that planets might rise up out of a dead star's ashes. The infrared telescope surveyed the scene around a pulsar, the remnant of an exploded star, and found a surrounding disk made up of debris shot out during the star's death throes. The dusty rubble in this disk might ultimately stick together to form planets. This is the first time scientists have detected planet-building materials around a star that died in a fiery blast.
• Spirit continues to have problem - Two years and three months after landing on Mars, Spirit can't help but dig trenches in the martian sand. The right front wheel of NASAâ��s Mars Exploration Rover is no longer working.

  Essentially, it's a race against time. The period of minimum sunshine in the martian winter is more than 100 days away, but Spirit currently gets only enough power for about one hour of driving on flat ground. And, Spirit literally has an up-hill battle.

• Great Moon Buggy Race - Fifty high school and college student teams are putting the finishing touches on designs of their very own lunar vehicles. Teams from the United States and Puerto Rico are competing in NASA's 13th annual Great Moonbuggy Race. The event, which is open to the media and public, runs Friday and Saturday at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.

 

Listener Question

There was a question in my inbox that was worth sharing with everyone. The current status of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2
There is a pdf file from the main Voyager site that has their estimated distances plotted through the fall of 2015. This week V1 should be 98.73 AU away and V2 79.28 and better yet, if you go to Heavens Above you can find it plotted VOYAGER 1 received by AMSAT-DL group

Space probe VOYAGER 1 successfully received On March 31st, 2006 an AMSAT-DL / IUZ team received the American space probe VOYAGER 1 with the 20m antenna in Bochum.

The distance was 14.7 billion km. This is a new record for AMSAT-DL and IUZ Bochum. The received signal was clearly identified through means of doppler shift and position in the sky. The receive frequency was exactly measured and compared with the information provided by NASA.

This distance equals approximately 98 times the distance between Earth and Sun. VOYAGER 1 is the most distant object ever built by mankind. This again proves the superior performance of the Bochum antenna. Most probably this is the first time Voyager 1 has been received by radio amateurs.

Comets visible with binoculars/telescopes in the northern hemisphere.

Pojmanski
and 73P/ Schwassmann-Wachmann 3
and C/2005 E2 ( McNaught )

 

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"
-- Shakespeare

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Josh Woodward -"Bonjour, Mon Amie"
Mario Ajero -"Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, mvt. 3 by Joseph Haydn"

Talking about the different types of telescopes available and the critical parts of a telescope, visit some unique features on the Moon, check in on the planets and get an update on astronomy related news!

Branching out to things not Messier, following the water, wondering why comets are birthed in the furnace and the fridge, enjoying some music and, of course, your company.

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

Simon Vouet, The Muses Urania and Calliope, c. 1634
Urania (heavenly) is the muse of astronomy and astrology.
Calliope (beautiful-voiced) is the muse of epic poetry.

The Star-Splitter
by Robert Frost

You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

--first stanza

Welcome!

I know it is a little late, but happy Pi day. March 14th at 1:59 UTC can be fudged into 3.14159. In our department we celebrate the notorious number 3.14.59 with Pie of course, any excuse for a party!

To make thing even better it was Albert Einstein's birthday as well.

Another anniversary to celebrate is On this day in 1926, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket.

Planets

• Venus - The brightest planet visible this month. Venus is outstanding in the Eastern morning sky
• Jupiter - The largest planet resides in the confines of Libra and is highest around 3:am on the ecliptic between the bright Spica to the west and the ruddy Antares to the east. Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands to you, along with its four Galilean satellites.
• Saturn - It appears as a yellowish star that rivals Capella in brightness, but in the constellation of Cancer (1 1/2 thumb width west of The Beehive - M-44) A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest and most extraordinary moon. A 6-inch telescope will begin to show the orange color of its atmospheric haze.
• Mars is sneaking it's way closer to Aldeberon creating another eye for the bull. So in that part of the sky it is hip to be red, red Beetleguese, orange Aldeberon and the red Mars
• Mercury - hidden in the glare of the sun as are Uranus and Neptune

Tools

Catalogues -

• Uranography - The branch of astronomy concerned with mapping the stars, galaxies, or other celestial bodies.
• Uranometria - The sky atlas compiled by Johann Bayer in 1603
• Messier catalogue- compiled by Charles Messier
• New General Catalogue (NGC)- compiled by John Dreyer
  IC I published in 1895 added 1,529 new star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies
  IC II published in 1908 listed a further 3,857 objects
• NGC 2000.0 - is a modern compilation of the New General Catalogue, the Index Catalogue, and the Second Index Catalogue
• HIP - Hiparcos catalogue - Its name is an acronym for High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite and was chosen for its similarity to that of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus.
• Caldwell and Herschel 400 and Uranometria - all great astronomy catalogues

Constellations

Volans, the Flying FishOriginally named Piscis Volans, this constellation was named by Johann Bayer. It is located where all good fish should be, below a boat. In the southern sky Volans is southwest of Carina, the keel, and east of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Johannes Kepler called this set of stars Passer, the Sparrow.

Camelopardalis(ka-MEL-oh-PAR-duh-lis), the Giraffe can be found between Perseus, Auriga and Ursa Minor. This constellation was first observed to look like a camel but name was eventually changed to camelopardalis, which is Latin for giraffe. In the winter months the giraffe appears upside down. Only during the summer months does it appear right side up.

The Moon -

This weekend the moon will be moving from a full moon to a waning gibbous so your early evenings will be darker.

Mare Crisium (Sea of Crisis) will slowly be covered by lunar night as this week continues so we are going to look at the NW quadrant of the moon.

Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) slices across the northern cap of the moon and at it's western end seems to dump into Sinus Roris.

Image courtesy of the Lunar Republic

Sinus Roris (Bay of Dew)leads into the great Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). This ocean of regolith sweeps down the western side of the moon.

Last week we looked at the craters Copernicus and Kepler, this week our lunar crater is in the great ocean further north, but just as bright as Kepler. Crater Aristarcus

Image courtesy of the Lunar Republic

We are actually looking at a complex of Aristarcus a Greek grammarian noted for is commentary on the Iliad and the Odyssey and just a little bit SW Herodotus named after the greek "Father of History". Squiggled above and between them is Valles Schoteri. To see Herodotus or Schoteri will take a telescope. At the southern edge it finally meets up with Mare Humorum (Sea of Moisture) and Mare Congnitum (The Sea that has become known)

Naked eye viewing-The splendid open cluster IC 2602 is still known under the common name "Southern Pleiades." An open cluster of more than 50 stars in the constellation Carina, centered on the blue-white star Theta Carinae and can be seen with the naked eye. (use the chart below)

Binocular viewing Kemple's Cascade

Kemble�¢ï¿½ï¿½s cascade is situated in one of the most difficult constellations to detect in the night sky, Camelopardalis or the Giraffe. A string of 15 to 25 stars ranging from the 5th to the 9th magnitude. The stars seem to cascade from the northeast down to the southwest they do not form a group or cluster physically, it's only a chance arrangement of stars. At the southeastern end of the chain of stars you will find the 6th magnitude open cluster NGC 1502, containing 15 stars in a 7' area.

Eta Carina - The Eta Carina Nebula is the largest diffuse nebula in the sky, much larger than the more famous Orion Nebula. The star Eta Carinae itself is also interesting. It is a variable star; in the mid-19th century it was the second brightest star in the sky; today it is not even visible with the naked eye.
Star Chart generated from "Star Charts R Us"

Telescopic viewing My favorite object E.T (kachina doll cluster)

News

There are so many great space and astronomy news sites out there I won't try and duplicate them all, I'll just report things that really strike my fancy or that I think you might be interested in. Here is a list of some of the sites I visit daily:

• Planet Quest - the counter has moved up from 159 to 160 extrasolar planets. Starting in 1991 with Pulsar 1257 but more popularly realized with 51 Pegasi in 1995 the list now seems to have grown to 160 (plus a few others in waiting ) with the last addition residing in Sagittarius. Still getting the data in.
• Enceladus - "Our search for liquid water has taken a new turn. The type of evidence for liquid water on Enceladus is very different from what we've seen at Jupiter's moon Europa. On Europa the evidence from surface geological features points to an internal ocean. On Enceladus the evidence is direct observation of water vapor venting from sources close to the surface," said Dr. Peter Thomas, Cassini imaging scientist, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

  But in the mean time, scientist who believed that Enceladus was fueling Saturn's E ring now have further proof!

• Stardust Update - Comets, they said, may not be as simple as the clouds of ice, dust and gases they were thought to comprise. They may be diverse with complex and varied histories. Wild 2 seems to be an example of that complexity.

  Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice," said Donald Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator and professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. The returned samples show high-temperature materials from the coldest part of our solar system.

  The material like that in the green Hawaiian beach sand is called olivine. Its presence in the comet's dust trail was a surprise. "It seems that comets are �¢ï¿½�¦ a mixture of materials formed at all temperatures, at places very near the early sun and at places very remote from it," said Michael Zolensky, Stardust curator and co-investigator at JSC

• Martian crater flyby - A "Grand Canyon of Mars" slices across the Red Planet near its equator. This canyon -- Valles Marineris, or the Mariner Valley -- is 10 times longer and deeper than Arizona's Grand Canyon, and 20 times wider. As the picture shows, you could drop the whole Los Angeles basin into a small part of Valles Marineris and leave plenty of room to spare. In length, the canyon extends far enough that it could reach across the United States from East Coast to West Coast, while its rim stands more than 25,000 feet high, nearly as tall as Earth's Mount Everest.

Comets visible with binoculars/telescopes in the northern hemisphere. - C/2006 A1 Pojmanski

and 73P/ Schwassmann-Wachmann 3
and C/2005 E2 ( McNaught )

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"
-- Shakespeare

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Josh Woodward -"Soft Orange Glow"
49Bliss -"The Way you Are"

I hope some of you are having clear mornings because here it has been cloudy at 'comet' time. Send me some pictures please!!!! ;-)

For those of you wanting to calculate when to see the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. there is a GRS calculator on the Sky and Tel website...

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_107_1.asp

The GRS is currently around 104 d long and I believe around 20 d South so unless my upside-down thinking is off Junior should transit after GRS. (the image on Science@NASA being south-side up) without lats and long on both I can be exact with a calculation but with a 10hr rotational period you wouldn't have to wait very long maybe 2 hours would get both in the same frame???

Astrophotographers out there have any comments or corrections???

Cheers!
Alice

Learning Ra and Dec, how to find Venus, music and more! We had major technical difficulties during recording and lost large segments of the podcast so we pieced together what was usable and did our best to carry on!

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

"Stars"
by Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Welcome!

Hello to Steve from Utah in the states , Cheryl who publishes "Backyard Astronomy" at Pikerpress.com and to
Joe from Middlefield Connecticut

Thank you to Craig from Poway, California for sending me the Rush song "Earthshine" If it weren't for the fact that the song is copy written I would play it here!
Thanks to a suggestion by Ian of Burford, Oxfordshire U.K. we have Frappr!map for Astronomy a Go Go! Ian has the distinction of being the only Astronomy a Go Go! listener, that I know of so far, who can hear lions roaring while he stargazes!

Russell from Australia had a new podcast "Dark Matters" and we have a snippet of his first podcast to play.

Thanks to the kids from After School Astronomy Clubs for the Venus report.

Tips and Tricks

Last week we talked about using your hands to measure distance of object in the sky by degrees and that is great for communicating to each other how to find an object, like finding Saturn 15 degrees from Procyon. But there is a more precise way to refer to objects and that is by their Right Ascension(hours, minutes and seconds) and Declination(degrees, minutes of degree and seconds of degree)

The Celestial Sphere - The transparent imaginary two-dimensional sphere around the earth so that the Earth's equator (0°) will equal the Celestial Equator (0°) and the Earth's south pole (-90°) will equal the south celestial pole (-90°). The Earth's north pole will represent the north celestial pole where the star Polaris resides (+90°).

The Ecliptic - The path of the Sun across the Celestial Sphere

The Meridian and your Zenith - The line that goes directly above over your head from North to South through your Zenith is called the Meridian. Your Zenith it the point directly above you head in the sky. (90 degrees up in the sky when using altitude).

Remember it like this: Right Ascension (RA) is equal to Longitude. If you ascend, you go up: up down, north south, the RA lines go from North to South in the sky. Declination (Dec) is equal to Latitude, the Dec lines turn like a wheel from west to east in the sky, parallel with the latitude lines on Earth which also go from west to east.

"Movement" of the Grid Lines - Just as the longitude and latitude lines are fixed to the Earth as the Earth rotates, so does the RA and Dec lines move together with the sky as it "rotates" around the Earth. A star will thus always be at the same coordinate at all times. The Moon, Sun and Planets though, will not always have the same RA and Dec, because they move on the ecliptic path in the sky much faster than the stars can ever imagine traveling.

Planets

Venus - just before dawn between Aquila and Sagittarius
Jupiter - in the wee hours of the morning in the constellation Libra
Saturn - is in cancer the crab
Mars - is south of the Pleiades
Mercury - is visible in the west 45 minutes after sunset at the head of Pisces

Naked eye viewing- I am going to have you seek out our two solar hide and seek planets Mercury and Venus The after school astronomy club kids made this recording on how to find Venus.... This Friday the 24th Mercury officially reaches greatest elongation, which means that it is at its farthest visual distance from the Sun for this go-round and sets later than usual about one and a half hours after sunset. But to make sure you catch it I suggest looking during twilight about 45 minutes after sunset. And if you still have a real hard time finding it wait until Wednesday March first when an crescent Moon will be parked just above Mercury.

Telescopic viewing- Lets try for Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy. At mag 8.5 it straddle the line between Corvus and Virgo

News

there are so many great space and astronomy news sites and podcasts out there I won't try and duplicate them all, I'll just report things that really strike my fancy or that I think you might be interested in. Here is a list of some of the sites I visit daily:

• Universe Today
• NASA breaking news
• BBC Science and Technology - ! World Edition
• Planetary Society Blog
• Space.com
• And to get a good summary of all the news try Tom's Astronomy Blog
• Bad Astronomer's Blog
• Some of the names proposed for Pluto's two new moons.
• And since we are talking about moons, Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos are objects we can't catch in the normal backyard telescope but Mars express did a wonderful job returning some outstanding images
.
• Two comets visible with telescopes in the southern hemisphere. - Pojmanski is very faint magnitude 12.5 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 may eventually become a naked eye comet but I'm not going to predict that...we will keep an eye on both of these.

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Brobdingnagian Bards -"Wild Mountain Thyme"

Learning about planispheres, talking about the news and what is up in the sky tonight and listening to a little music! Happy New Years Everyone!

Okay, I have a joke for you. What is the definition of an optimist? How about an amateur astronomer in the Pacific Northwest!!! We have had almost 2 straight weeks of rain and if not rain clouds! It never fails that when we have time off the clouds come in so I am hoping all of my friends in other parts of the country are having better luck with their night sky!!

In fact, drop us a line and tell us how your New Year's Eve night fare and give us an astronomy related New Years resolution! You can email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com. We would love to hear from you!

So, I often work with kids, and adults for that matter, and when talking about the planets I use the mnemonic "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas." To help them learn the planets in order. So here is my question to you, what mnemonics do you use to remember astronomical references? Drop us a line at astronomyagogo@gmail.com

Trivia!

We thought we would add some trivia to the podcast. We have three questions for you to answer and will announce the winners and the correct answers in next week's pod cast.

You can leave an answer in the comment section of our webpage astronomy.libsyn.com in the notes for Show #3 or email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com

• Question #1 Who was the first woman in space?
• Question #2 Which of the following animals has NOT flown in space? A: Dog, B:Brine Shrimp, C: Jellyfish, and D: Cat
• Question #3 How many planets in our solar system have rings?

Planispheres

Whether you like your astronomy occasionally or you are totally obsessed you should definitely know how to use a planisphere.

We are going to use this generic planisphere for this podcast. You should print a holder and the coordinate star wheel. If you can print them on heavy paper they will last longer.

A couple of things about planispheres

• You do need to use a planisphere for a specific location! You can't buy a commercial planisphere designed for 50 degrees North latitude and then use it in the Southern hemisphere.
• Planispheres don't show the planets. However many include a chart or booklet that will tell you which constellations to look in for particular planets in particular months. My solution is to look at a monthly sky calendar or map like the one at www.skymaps.com to see if there are any planets or other astronomical notables for the month.
• It is tough to take a picture of a sphere and accurately squash it flat. Some planispheres distort the constellations on the horizon.
• East and west will be oriented correctly once you hold it over head. The window is your horizon.

Monthly Sky maps

These are handy when you want to find planets and comets since these are updated monthly. They don't have the flexibility of planispheres so they usually state a time that the map is set for but now that you have played with your sky wheel and know how to turn it to simulate time you can turn the sky map to match the sky as well

Look insideâ?¦

• Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazines
• Free online Skymaps for Northern and Southern Hemisphere Skymaps.com

Need more Southern Hemisphere help?

Southern hemisphere views can use the maps designed for them at the same site but since you have all the sun you will have to wait until 10 pm to use the maps.
Learning the sky in the Southern hemisphere

What to look for in January

• Venus is sinking lower in the sky each night and will soon be gone until she becomes the morning star later in the month. On the evening of the 1st look for her next to the new crescent moon.
• Saturn is becoming the star of the show rising higher each night and is in the constellation cancer, so now that you have your planisphere finding Saturn should be easier.
• On the 4th Earth is at perihelion which means that we are at the point in our orbit closest to the sun!
• The Moon is full on the 14th of this month and waning to new moon on the 29th.

News

• Explosion on the Moon caught and recorded - probably a Taurid meteroid
• The science from Deep Impact on Tempel 1 -
• Mike Salway has posted a wonderful collection of planetary photographs
• Hubble finds a couple of more moon and rings for Uranus and confirms a moon find from Voyager 2

Music

• Intro: Bill deRome's "The Sundial"
• Fade out: Red River's "Ring in the Old" a end of the year song!

Check out the show note with all the links to the websites and podcasts mentioned on our show! Enjoy!

Astronomy a Go Go! Mini-podcast: Having fun with those new presents!

Closing song: "Just Dream" by Ginnicide

First off those MP3 players!

Here is what you need to listen to podcasts:

• a computer
• a connection to the Internet
• a free audio player, (standard part of Windows, Apple, Linux installation)
• a free podcast aggregator (these programs store and check for subscription updates for you)

 

Most podcasts have website that will allow you to listen to specific episodes without a subscriptions or additional software. But if you find a podcast you like having an aggregator makes life much easier.

There are several places to find directories of podcasts the current favorites being:

• iTunes music store podcast section
• Podcast Alley
• iPodder
• Liberated Syndication directory (Libsyn hosts my podcast)
• Podcasting News directory
• Podcast Pickle

...and since there seem to be as many podcast directories as podcasts check out the list created by Robin Good.

Here are our favorite astronomy and science podcasts.

General Public

• Astronomy a Go Go!
• Slacker Astronomy (quite hysterical)
• The Naked Scientist Radio Show
• StarDate
• Science at NASA
• Science Fridays from NPR

More Scientific

• Universe Today
• The Keck Observatory

Blogs without podcasts

• Bad Astronomy
• NASA Breaking News
• Planetary Society
• Space.com

And now for those new telescopes!

For those of you who are old hats at telescopes this will a review but if this is your first telescope you probably just can't wait to get that scope outside. The first rule of telescopes, binoculars and your eyes is never, never, ever look directly at the sun. We will talk about solar viewing at a later date for now just trust me permanent eye damage is no laughing matter. It is also a good thing to remind your friends and family looking through your scope as well.

Use the internet to search for "astronomy clubs", astronomers and knitter are probably the most prolific sharing groups on the internet! My club, the Tacoma Astronomical Club keeps a great website with all of our free public nights on the calendar. In North America you can go to the Astronomical League website to look for a list of member clubs in your area.

Find or make a red flashlight. White light kills your night vision so get or make a couple of red flashlights and keep them with your astronomy gear.

Learn about your scope. There is a very good beginers article at Sky and Telescope about choosing telescopes.

Practice aligning you finder tool The idea is that you look through the finder to find and center the telescope on the area you want to see. However this doesn't work if the finder isn't pointing the same way as the telescope. Not matching the finder with the telescope is probably the first, and most common mistake for all astronomers. This is a perfect afternoon activity.

Start out with big things! This time of year the waning crescent moon, the planets, the Orion nebula, and the Pleiades are all good first objects. You can find a free December star map at www.skymaps.com. We will be talking about planispheres on our next podcast so make sure you join us for that show.

Collimating your scope. Your refractors and most Cassigrains will not need collimating as long as they are handled carefully. However your reflectors/Newtonians will need collimating the first time you get them and any time you decide to toss it in the back of the car and find a super bumpy road to drive on. Follow the steps in your manual or check out one of these pages. Sky and Telescope article Step-by-step guide

I let you go I would like to thank the band 3 Blind Mice for their lovely comment on my first show, I played their song "Watchstar" and I would like to thank Stephanie, Arthur and Nic for their wonderful and supportive comments.

Good night everyone thanks for listening and we will talk to you in a few days at our end of the year podcast!