Show #31: Happy Halloween

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night! Week of Oct. 31, 2006

The Starlight Night

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Happy Halloween Astronomy Style!

Here are some great creepy astronomy sites:
Chandra has some great autumn greeting and Halloween cards
NASA Spooky Sounds Video
Spitzer captured this creepy, skull like image in Cygnus.
Creepy, cool, spooky silhouette of the shuttle and space station against the sun.

Planets

Evening Planets

• Mercury - Mag 0.0 in Libra. Mark your calendars for inferior conjunction and visible transit on Nov. 8th! Low on the western horizon near Jupiter.
• Jupiter - Mag -1.6 in Libra. Visible low in the sky just after sunset.
  
  
  
  images courtesy of: Stellarium software
• Pluto - Mag +14.0 in Ophiuchus
• Uranus - Mag +5.8 in Aquarius Uranus is best seen in a dark moonless sky away from artificial lighting. It may be seen looking like a very faint star to the dark-adapted naked eye that shimmers in and out of visibility just over 1 degree east of Lambda Aquarii. Find the tipped over letter Y of Aquarius, go 4 thumbwidths southeast to find Lambda, and then look pinky nail east.
• Neptune - Mag +7.9 in Capricorn 1.25 degree north of the +4.3 magnitude star Iota Capricorni

Too close to the sun..

• Mars - Mag +1.6 is at the western end of Virgo and lost in the sun in the northern latitudes. You will have to look hard in the haze of the horizon and it will help to be closer to the equator.
• Venus - Mag -3.8 in Virgo.

Morning Planets

• Saturn - Mag +0.6 on the western edge of Leo!

Shall we be sassy? Dwarf Planets..er...Minor Planets...er...Icy Dwarfs....er...um...hmmmm

• 1 Ceres +7.9 mag in Pisces Australis 18.5 degrees West of Fomalhaut
• Eris mag +19 in central Cetus

Constellations

Horologium -the pendulum clock - Horologium was named by Abbe' Nicolas Louis de Lacaille. Originally named Horologium Oscillitorium to honor Christian Huygens, the inventor of the pendulum clock in 1656-57 but like most longer astronomical names it was shortened to Horologium . Huygens is also famous for discovering Saturn's rings.

Reticulum - the grid - A reticle consists of sets of parallel and perpendicular lines, either in the form of thread or wire or in the form of markings etched in glass. The result is a square grid which may be accurately used to locate and plot the relative positions of objects viewed through the grid. Zeta Reticuli is a double star visible to the naked eye and strangely enough the home of the aliens in the alleged Barney and Betty Hill abduction.

Aries - the ram - One of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy and one of the 13 zodiacal constellations In Greek mythology Athamas, the king of Orchomenos, was married first to the goddess Nephele with whom he had the twins Phrixus and Helle. He later divorced Nephele and married Ino, daughter of Cadmus. Phrixus and Helle were hated by their stepmother, Ino who hatched a plot to get rid of the twins, roasting all the town's crop seeds so they would not grow. The local farmers, frightened of famine, asked a nearby oracle for assistance. Ino bribed the men sent to the oracle to lie and tell the others that the oracle required the sacrifice of Phrixus. Athamus reluctantly agreed. Before he was killed, though, Phrixus and Helle were rescued by a flying golden ram sent by Nephele, their natural mother. Helle fell off the ram into the the strait between the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara (Hellespont which was named after her) and died, but Phrixus survived all the way to Colchis (kolkis), where King Aettees took him in and treated him kindly, giving Phrixus his daughter Medea in marriage. In gratitude, Phrixus gave the king the golden fleece of the ram, which Aettees hung in a tree in his kingdom.

Viewing

October
30 -First Quarter Moon 11:04 UT
31 -Halloween!
November
1 -Uranus 0.5 deg North of the Moon, occultation possible in New Zealand and SE Australia
5 -Full Moon and Taurid meteors peak
8 -Transit of Mercury

Naked eye -
Saturn in the early morning 5 degrees West of Regulus
Ghostly smudge M46 and M47 in dark skies -in Puppis west of Canis Major
Algol (Al-goul) naked eye variable star in Perseus.

Binocular -
M45 - the Pleiades. Take time to appreciate the ghostly nebulosity around the sisters.

Telescope -
NGC 3242 - Ghost of Jupiter - planetary nebula near the tail of Hydra
NGC 1909 - IC 2118 - Witch head nebula - nebula just west of Rigel
M16 - ghostly nebula in Saggitarius 6.0 mag large but close to the horizon and the moon
M27 - Dumbbell nebula in Vulpecula - ghost of apple core
M97 - Planetary nebula in Ursa Major - Owl Nebula 9.9 mag
NGC 2070 - Tarantula Nebula - 8 mag in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Feature Attraction - Astronomy Trick or Treat!

Top 10 Astronomy misconceptions

""Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out.

Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)

1. Bad! The Big Dipper is a constellation (and the Pleiades is the same thing as the Little Dipper)
   Good! The Pleiades and the Big Dipper are asterisms.
2. Bad! You can (only) balance an egg on the equinox.
   Good! If you have steady hands you can balance an egg anytime!
3. Bad! The seasons are caused by our distance from the sun.
   Good! The seasons are the result of the tilt of the Earth!
4. Bad! The Coriolis effect causes drains and toilets to rotate in different directions in different hemispheres.
   Good! Check out this website: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html
5. Bad! August Mars will be as big as the full moon. This was a horrible email full of erroneous facts.
   Good! Track the relationship with Earth and Mars on this website to see when we are close(er) to Mars.
6. Bad! The moon looks larger on the horizon because the air is thicker and acts like a magnifying glass.
   Good! Look at the illusions here: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/3d/moonillu.htm
7. Bad! The "dark side of the moon" never receives any sun-light.
   Good! Try it! Since the moon rotates on its axis it will receive sunlight on all sides.
8. Bad! Polaris is the brightest star in the sky.
   Good! The sun is the brightest star followed my Sirius, Canopus, Rigel Kentaurus, etc
9. Bad!Bad! First man in space was John Glenn.
   Good! Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space.
10. Bad! You can buy a star or a piece of the moon.

Transit of Mercury Nov. 8 2006

Get more information about the Transit of Mercury: Wikipedia,
HM Nautical Almanac,
"Mr. Eclipse"

Viewing the transit safely!
Build a solar filter Sources for Baader film (http://www.baader-planetarium.com/sofifolie/details_e.htm#distributor)

New Comets

Comet Swan (8.5 mag) currently in Hercules check out the heavens-above.com site. From the city it looks like a faint nebulous globular cluster! I did NOT see this! Aerith.net, Heavens-above.com
Comet C2006 T1 (Levy) currently in Leo.

Comets for the Month.

Check out the Sky Hound site. Email us at [e-mail] or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
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"Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them" Peter Ustinov

Music

Rebecca Loebe - All This Time

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