Astronomy a Go Go! Tour of the Sky: May 2006

I have divided the show into two parts, early May and late May with a song in the middle to help you find the division.

All of the observations are for 10pm for the mid latitudes as you move south it gets darker sooner so if you go out before 10 rotate my observations to the east 15 degrees for each hour.

Northern hemisphere sky map
Southern hemisphere sky map - also visit
James Barclay's site for a great tour of the Southern Hemisphere May sky.

So spread out a blanket, pull out your scopes and binoculars and join me for a tour of the May skies.

Key Dates for May

May
1 - Lunar Libration reveals Mare Australe on the lower eastern limb (selenographic coordinates 38.9° S, 93.0° E.)
1 - Moon at greatest Northern declination +29 degrees 4 - Jupiter at opposition 5 - First Quarter
6 - Eta Aquarid meteor shower peak and Astronomy Day 12 - Comet Schwassman-Wachmann closest to earth. 13 - Full Moon
16 - Moon at greatest southern declination -29 degrees 18 - Mercury at superior conjunction slipping into the glare of the sun to become an evening planet
20 - Last Quarter
27 - New Moon
30 - Moon and Mars line up with Castor and Pollux
31 - Waxing Crescent Moon, Saturn and the Beehive cluster all framed together
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Music

Alexye Nov -"Nightly Murmur of Crickets"
Jeff Vidov - "Arise--for chamber ensemble--2nd movement"
Adrina Thorpe - "Midnight"

I have divided the show into two parts, early May and late May with a song in the middle to help you find the division.

All of the observations are for 10pm for the mid latitudes as you move south it gets darker sooner so if you go out before 10 rotate my observations to the east 15 degrees for each hour.

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

Schwassman-Wachmann fragment "B"
The trailing fragment has been designated "AQ" by the IAU
from the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope (VLT)
(the colored dots are a result of the star trails imaged as different filters are applied)

Comets

"From his huge vapouring train perhaps to shake
Reviving moisture on the numerous orbs,
Thro' which his long ellipsis winds; perhaps
To lend new fuel to declining suns,
To light up worlds, and feed th' ethereal fire."

�James Thomson, "The Seasons" (1730; 1748).

Comets for April.

Pojmanski
73P/ Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 New "B" fragments

If you really want to understand just how many solar system relatives we really have take a look at a chart for the inner and the outer solar system!

Constellations

Images courtesy of PP3 and Torsten Bronger
Libra - The Scales - The Italians, French, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians and Syrians all called the constellation the 'weigh beam' or scales the Arabs and Greeks included it as part of the scorpion, its elongated pinchers!
The two brightest stars in this constellation have wonderful Arabic names Zubenelgenubi (zoo-BEN-el-je-NEW-bee) and Zubeneschamali (zoo-BEN-ess-sha-MAH-lee) which mean southern and northern claw respectively.

Hercules - The Strong Man, The Hero
Three of these labors involve other inhabitance of the sky. His first labor was to slay the lion of Nemaean - Leo. With a little hint from Artemis he used the Lions own claws to skin the tough hide after strangling the beast.

His second labor was to slay the great Hydra. It was Iolaus who suggested burning the stumps before they had a chance to grow back. Hercules and Iolaus made a great team. The uncle chopped heads; the nephew burned the stumps before the new ones grew.

The eleventh labor was to steal the golden apples (a wedding gift from Hera to Zeus)that were protected by a great dragon, Ladon the dragon was a faithful guard, allowing only Atlas to approach him. Knowing this, Hercules made a deal with Atlas. Hercules offered to carry it for him while Atlas stole the apples.

Ladon was napping when he heard the footstep of Atlas. He glanced at his master and went back to sleep. Atlas took the apples, and realized he no longer had to carry the Earth on his shoulders. He told Hercules he would deliver the apples himself. Hercules read Atlas' mind perfectly; he was a bit smarter than Atlas (more of an insult to Atlas than a complement to Hercules). He told Atlas he didn't mind carrying the globe, but first he would need to get a shoulder pad to rest it on. Atlas took back the globe without suspecting Hercules. Hercules quickly took the golden apples, laughed at Atlas, and left the garden. Too late Atlas realized the deception.

Hera and Zeus were enraged because the dragon failed to protect the golden apples (after all the dragon was the guardian of the apple, not Atlas). To punish the dragon, Hera placed the creature among the chilly circumpolar constellations to guard the heavens forever, never resting, never setting

Planets

• Jupiter - In Libra and Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands to you, along with its four Galilean satellites.
  Here are the transit times (UT) of the Great Red Spot:
  • 4/26, 5:58, 15:53
  • 4/27, 1:49, 11:44, 21:40
  • 4/28, 7:36, 17:31
  • 4/29, 3:27, 13:22, 23:18
  • 4/30, 9:13, 19:09
• Saturn - Is in Cancer and tonight and moving 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.
• Mars - Is cruising through Gemini and this weekend sits right on the navel of Castor.
  
  
• Mercury - Just before sunrise in the East 23.5 degrees SE of Venus (almost a full hand span)
• Venus - 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.
• Uranus - 11.5 degrees NW of Venus in Aquarius April 26, 1781 Sir William Herschel Announces the discovery of Uranus (found on March 13,1781 as a new comet).
• Neptune - 35 degrees NW of Venus in Capricorn

Viewing

Naked eye - Take a look at Jupiter tonight and notice the bright object just south of Jupiter. That is Alpha Librea also named Zubenelgenubi (zoo-BEN-el-je-NEW-bee).

Another good naked eye observation is to start really watching the evening planets for the next month. Between Mars and Saturn you will see the difference between the apparent movement between object close to us compared to those far away. Mars just seems to leap across the sky while Saturn just inches away. By June 17, 2006 they will be right on top of each other!

Binocular - Try for Schwassman-Wachmann 3
It was dim in my 8" so you will need a very good tracking chart and no light pollution. The easiest to use and most accurate tracking charts I have found is from the Sky Hound site.

For the middle and southern latitudes turn due south and check out 47 Tuc or NGC 104 Looking east our SH friends have a good look at the Milky Way as Scorpius and Sagittarius rise in the East.
To the NE you have Corona Borealis and to the SE Corona Australis.

Telescope - For everyone lets look at an over looked object in Leo. We spent a lot of time in Leo last week but didn't head south far enough to pick up this lovely spiral galaxy but it is worth the hunt. At 8.9 mag it has a bright concentration in the middle and the slight tilt away from us make a slightly harder target to find. NGC 3521 in Leo

For those of you in the mid-Northern latitudes find a clear southern horizon. Centaurus and Lupus are just peeking up from the horizon.
Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) This cluster is a standard for our lucky friends down-under. Those of us in the high northern latitudes can't see it at all so for those of you south of 32 degrees North latitude take a look in the late evening just off the Southern horizon. Omega Centauri is a 3.9 mag object that makes a long triangle pointing south with Jupiter and Spica. The further South you are the higher in the sky and also look for the Southern Cross standing upright in the South.

For those of you in the high Northern latitudes let go look at NGC 869 and 884 (mag 5.3) or the Perseus Double Cluster
If you have dark skies do this one with binoculars first and then switch to a telescope. Use the lowest power eyepiece you have for the best view and you will get both clusters in the same field of view. The double cluster is low to the NE and is fading close to the Northern horizon so catch it now or wait until the end of summer when it starts to rise higher in the NE. For the experienced viewers out there this one may be old hat and if that is the case then challenge yourself to find the asterism the "Diamond Ring" or the "Parachute" inside the cluster

The Moon

New moon on Thursday how soon can you pick out the new waxing crescent - do not look at the sun!

Mare Australe
Images created with Lunar Phase Pro

Hector Hugh Munro claimed, "A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."

Libration
On Monday May 1st the eastern limb will be tilted towards us exposing parts of the Moon we don't usually see. Look for Mare Australe on the SE edge of the lunar limb. This slight rocking motion that allows for this is called libration and allows us to see 59% of the lunar surface.

There are three types of libration.
Libration in latitude: The Moon's north-south bobbing. The Moon's axis of rotation being slightly inclined (1.5 degrees) to the normal to the plane of its orbit around Earth which is also inclined by 5 degrees. (Similar to the Earth's 23.5% tilt to its orbital plane. So you end up with 6.5 degrees of 'play' in the north-south surface.

Libration in longitude: The Moon's east-west wobble. The Moon's orbit around Earth is elliptical so even though the Moon's rotation is constant the orbital speed varies going fastest at perigee (Moon's closest approach to Earth) and slowest at apogee (Moon's farthest point from Earth).

Diurnal libration: This is a consequence of Earth's rotation, which carries an observer first to one side and then to the other side of the straight line joining Earth's center to the Moon's center, allowing the observer to look first around one side of the Moon and then around the other.

Also on May Day the Moon will reach its greatest northern declination (+29 degrees)

The Sun

Scientists classify solar flares according to their x-ray brightness in the wavelength range 1 to 8 Angstroms. There are 3 categories:

X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.

M-class flares are medium-sized; they can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare.

C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth.

I recommend adding the Space Weather website to your bookmark list

Tools

Chasing Jupiter's moons (Sky and Telescope)
Go the the java script and enter in a couple of different days and times (in UT) you might be observing. Use the +10 or -10 minute button and see if you can find a time to observe one of the moons passing between earth and Jupiter so you can see a shadow passing across the face of Jupiter....happens frequently!

Sky and Telescope's "Field Map of the Moon"

News

Globe at night - for those of you who participated in the Globe at Night project back in March you can find yourself on their map at http://www.globe.gov/GaN/analyze.html. There were 4591 nighttime observations reported from 96 countries on all continents except Antarctica! I took a look at the map and found my report :-) and little dots where I know that AAGG listeners are from so take a look!

Hubble turns 16 -

Happy cross-quarter day. May Day (May 1st astronomically May 5th) marks the halfway point between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice...my first day of summer! Make sense give that the summer solstice is also called to as Midsummer! Just get use to it folks I'm going to keep it up until someone changes the calendars and makes them right. Besides those of us in the high northern or high southern latitudes need extra sun based holidays!

The National Park System in the United States has released data on its ongoing Night Sky light pollution assessment.

The Evening Sky maps for May 2006 are now available at Skymaps.com so go download your copy so you'll be ready for our May Tour of the Sky tomorrow!

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

Ash Verjee -"Impromptu for Six Pianos"
Boo Boo Davis -"Sure had a Wonderful Time"

Hunting comet Schwassman-Wachmann, talking about lunar libration, solar flares and why May Day is the beginning of summer, listening to some great music and enjoying the night sky together.

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

"Welcome home!"

This is not really the Milky Way! 
Since we have not (yet) traveled out side of our own galaxy
we have to use current sky surveys and calculations to 'imagine' what we might look like.
(I love the analogy from Dr. Churchwell of Univ. Wisconson-Madison "...its like
trying to define the boundries of a forest from deep within the woods."

Current research results classify the Milky Way as a
barred spiral type galaxy with a central bar more pronounced than the image of M83 above.

Image: NASA, Galaxy M83, similar size and shape to the Milky Way (pre - 9/2005)

The Galaxy

Torrent of light and river of the air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor, on serene
And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies
Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,
The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies
From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A tool EVERYONE should have!

Keeping your own observing guide/journal/log

A simple observation template in Word
The Saguaro Astronomical Club (home of the SAO NGC 100 list) has a printable sheet
David Paul Green has a wonderful set of small database of preset lists (Messier, Caldwell)
Messier45.com is another online database to track your finds and excellent for researching
Blogging is a great way to keep an online journal to share especially if you take pictures or make sketches

Constellations

Sextans - the sextant - Hevelius who used the Sextant successfully to make stellar measurements from 1658 to 1679 There are a few galaxies in Sextans. The most notable is NGC 3115 (called the Spindle galaxy), a spiral galaxy of magnitude 9.1

Leo Minor - Little lion - Johannes Hevelius around 1690 to fill in the spaces around the constellations

Found a sketch of the 140 ft open format Hevelian telescope!

The Moon

Last quarter right now and will have a lovely dark weekend for observing...clouds may vary!

Planets

Evening
• Jupiter - In Libra and Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands to you, along with its four Galilean satellites.
• Saturn - Is in Cancer and tonight and moving 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.
• Mars has left Taurus and is just North of Castor's foot right next to M35.
  Morning
• 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.
• Mercury - Just south of east about 21 degrees from Venus (towards the horizon and easterly) horrible for Northern Viewers but great for those of you along the equator look East and in the S.Hemisphere
• Uranus (5.9)- On the morning of the 23 it is between Venus and the Moon
• Neptune (7.9)- Is in Capricorn and 28 degrees West along the ecliptic

Viewing

Naked eye - Lyrid meteor shower peaks on the 21st. The left-overs of comet Thatcher and produces about 15 bright, long-lasting meteors per hour.
Best Venus/Moon conjunction of the year is pre-dawn on the 24rd but the morning prior you will have Venus and the Moon bracketing Uranus so pull out your binos and take a look for a small bluish faint star between the two. These times are for -5 UT so you will want to bump yourself forward a morning if you are in Australian for example.
Sometimes the simplest things are the most awe inspiring like looking at EAST at sunset and realizing that the beautiful dark inky purple band is actually the shadow of the earth.

Binocular - Swing over to Castor's foot and find Mars and just west of Mars is M35(5.1 mag) open cluster with about 100 stars there!
Likewise take a look at Saturn and then slide your binoculars east to pick up the brighter Beehive Cluster M44 (mag 3.1) which on a clear night is a naked eye object..
Bode's Galaxies/ Bode's Nebula - Find this extraordinary pair of small scope studies, first locate Phecda (Beta) and 2 Dubhe (Alpha). Draw a line between this bright pair and extend that line an equal distance northwest beyond Alpha. Both galaxies; M81 and M82 are visible in large finder scopes or binoculars.

The Monty Python Galaxy Song!

Telescope - Leo Trio and Virgo

Here is the absolutely simplest way to determine directions in the eyepiece:
East - West: Turn off the right ascension drive(if using one)and watch as the stars drift from east to the west.
North - South: Nudge the tube in declination towards the north, and the stars move towards the south in the eyepiece.
Galaxies in Leo

Find the first Leo Trio by finding Regulus and Denebola and establishing the triangle that makes the back hip of the Lion.

Chertan is the bright star that makes up the hip joint between Regulus and Denebola.
SE of Chertan is a bright 4.0 mag star that forms the back leg.
Half way down the line between this star and Chertan is our first Leo Trio: M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

The second trio M95, M96 and M105 is the southern point of an equilateral triangle with Zosma(the top star of the lion's hip) and Algieba the second brightest star in Leo's sickle. M95 and M96 are two spiral galaxies where as M95 looks like a squat barred spiral, M96 be it spiral, looks more elliptical.
M105 (9.4) is a strong elliptical and it forms another set of elliptical galaxies in the same field of view. NGC 3384 (also called NGC 3371) a 10 mag barred lenticular galaxy NE and to the SE 11.8 mag Spiral Galaxy NGC 3389- hard in a small scope or near city lights.

Markarian's Chain in the Virgo Cluster -

Make sure you start by following this link to a click-able image!
(The owner of the site doesn't allow mirrors but that's okay you need to see the site anyway!)

Here we begin:
Draw a line between Denebola and Epsilon Virginas (Vindemiatrix)
Half way between those two is M86 and one of the eyes of our starting happy face.
M86-(EG) 8.9 mag It displays the highest blue shift of all Messier objects, as it is approaching the Milky Way at 419 km/sec.
In the same field of view and WEST of M86 is M84 and other (EG) 9.2 mag
SOUTH and creating and equilateral triangle is 11.0 mag NGC 4388 a somewhat edge-on spiral
In the center, the nose, is 12 mag NGC 4387 another (EG)
Nudge the scope a hair EAST and NORTH for another set of eyes, this time Spiral Galaxies (SG) NGC 4435 -Mag 10.8 and NGC 4438 10 mag
NGC 4461(SG) - 11.1 mag and 4458 11.8 NORTH-EAST a hair
NGC 4473 10.2 mag (EG) and in the same field of view NE
NGC 4477 10.4 mag (SG) NNE keeping 4477 just in the eyepiece M88 9.4 mag (SG)
DUE SOUTH ~3 fields of view
NGC M87 8.6 mag (EG)

News

Leo I
ISS transits the Moon

Comets for April.

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

Monty Python's -"Galaxy Song"
Jeremy Kushnier -"Stars"

We are going to hop our way through one of the galaxy richest parts of the night time sky; Markarian's Chain in the Virgo Cluster!

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

"Birth of Venus"
Sandro Botticelli

The Evening Star

"Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
The evening star, the star of love and rest!
And then anon she doth herself divest
Of all her radiant garments, and reclines
Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,
With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.
O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!
My morning and my evening star of love!
My best and gentlest lady! even thus,
As that fair planet in the sky above,
Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,
And from thy darkened window fades the light."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thank you Pamela!

Pamela came up to visit and we had a blast! I will post her presentations as soon as the video gets edited. Pamela was a keynote speaker at a large Girl Scout event and you can listen to the keynote speech on life, Scouting, astronomy, horses, and culture on the Slacker website

Pamela was delightful to work with and we had a great time with amateur astronomer from several local clubs and local educators talking about podcasting as an outreach tool and playing around with all the toys.

Venus

Venus Express

VE yesterday, returned the first ever images of the Venusian South pole providing not only and interesting day-side and night-side image but one in several different wave lengths. The mission to our 'twin' planet will hopefully answer:

• What is the mechanism and what is the driving force of the super-rotation of the atmosphere?
• What are the basic processes in the general circulation of the atmosphere?
• What is the composition and chemistry of the lower atmosphere and the clouds?
• What is the past and present water balance in the atmosphere?
• What is the role of the radiative balance and greenhouse effect in the past present and future evolution of the planet?
• Is there currently volcanic and/or tectonic activity on the planet

Most of what we know comes from Mariner 2, Pioneer Venus, the Venera probes and Magellan imaging radar. The Soviet Union sent 19 different probes and orbiters to Venus

Mayans knew that it would appear in the morning sky after disappearing in the evening sky Moreover, they knew that every 2920 days (about eight years) Venus repeats its movements in relation to the sun. Mayans determined with great approximation the synodic period of Venus, which according to modern astronomers is 583.92 days. For the Mayans, it was 584 days!

So, how are we alike and different...

• Venus is 95% the size of Earth and 80% its mass
• Similar young craters
• Mostly large craters with crater trails indication the breakup of large objects. Small objects don't make it to the surface
• Tremendous atmospheric pressure 90 atm...similar to 1 km beneath Earth's the ocean
• Runaway greenhouse effect 400-750K (hot enough to melt lead)
• Hotter than all the planets including Mercury
• 350 phi winds in the upper atmosphere but only a few phi at the surface
• Gently rolling plains with a few shield volcanos
• Unique features include coronea which could be collapsed surface previously covering magma domes and pancake volcanos caused by the eruption of thick lava
• Planet only rotates once every 243 Earth days An a Venusian year is 225 Earth days
• Axial tilt of 177.36 degrees
• Orbital eccentricity of 1% almost perfect circle
• Orbits closer to the sun, inferior, thus has phases similar to our moon.
• Upper atmosphere wind circumnavigate the planet in 4 Earth days
• Venus has no magnetic field, perhaps because of its slow rotation.
• The oldest craters seem to be only 500 million years old, recent resurfacing - no steady pressure releases like on earth (venting earthquakes) instead massive global eruptions
• Most of the planetary features of Venus are named after famous women and goddesses pursuant to a decision of the International Astronomical Union, the organization responsible for selecting names for all celestial objects. craters - poets, artists, popular names; chasms - fairies, goddesses - undea (dunes) named after Sumerian and Arabian desert goddesses There is only ONE exception to this, James Clerk Maxwell the great Scottish physicist and theorist - father of electromagnitism has a mountain range named after him.

Listener Question

Christopher from Illinois was out looking at the planets and spotted something he had not seen before and emailed the following:

"...with tonight's full moon, I took your suggestion and went 
planet-hunting tonight Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were
all present tonight though the moderate cloud cover and I 
saw something I've never seen before. There was a spectacular 
halo around the moon, occupying about 1/5th of the visible sky!  
Do you know what this could be?"

Photos courtesy of
Lauri A. Kangas
www.photon-echos.com
 
Halos

The 22 degree radius( from your thumb to your pinky) halos are visible any where on the planet and created by sun or moon. Always complete circles although sometimes the horizon can block some of the ring. They are caused by light refracting through ice crystals at high altitude.

Corona (not the surface of the sun Corona)

On the other hand, corona are caused by water droplets they are very bright in the center and ringed with the subtle hues of rainbow colors and will grow larger or smaller as the cloud passing in front changes in density. Corona is produced by the diffraction of light. Small particles like water drops fine dust, ice can cause light to scatter light

Moon dogs

The horizontal reflection point of the sun or the moon on the outside edge of a halo. Also called "false sun" or "false moon."

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.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

This first image by the Context Camera includes some chaotic terrain at the east end of Mars' Valles Marineris, seen along the top (northern) edge of the image. The image has a scale of about 87 meters (285 feet) per pixel, which is 14.5 times lower resolution than will be acquired during the primary science phase.

The Moon

Images created with Lunar Phase Pro

Apollo landing sites

The Sun

Sunspots are creeping back and I am hoping the clouds will stay away this weekend. We are having a solar viewing event and I would like to at least have a sun to share. Not to mention the fact that we are building stomp rockets!

Jay, at the Observing the Sky blog, posted tonight that at his clear moonlit site in N. Dakota he was out viewing aurorae!

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. On Friday it will be just East of the Moon
• Saturn - Is in Cancer and tonight and moving 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.
• Mars has left Taurus and is just North of Castor's foot.
• 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.
• Uranus - On April 17th, 18th and 19th, Venus and Uranus are going to have a close encounter in the dawn sky. Simply look east before sunrise. As a guidepost, Venus can't be beat. It is so bright people often think it's a landing airplane. Simply scan Venus with a pair of binoculars (or a small telescope) and you'll see Uranus right beside it. If the sky is very dark, you may be able to lift your eyes from the optics and see Uranus directly. On April 17th the pair will be separated by about one degree, the width of your pinky finger held at arm's length. On the 18th they'll be even closer together, 0.3 degrees. On the 19th the distance increases again to one degree.

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

Finniston -"Half Man Half Boy
Adrina Thorp -"Around the Bend"

The podcast that almost wasn't!  Talking about Venus, Mars, the bright moon, halos and coronea.

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

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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!