Here is the Perseus Double-Cluster and Comet 103P/Hartley 2, side by side, from Spectacle Lake, Barry’s Bay, ON, single 2-minute image taken through Tamron 300 mm f/2.8 lens with Canon Digital Rebel 300D, on Thursday, October 7, 2010, at approx. 9:25 pm.
— Bob Christmas
Here is a small excerpt of one of my images of Comet 103P/Hartley 2 that I took from Spectacle Lake Lodge, near Barry’s Bay, ON, Sunday Night, October 3, 2010, 10-pm-ish.
This is a single 2-minute exposure, Canon Digital Rebel 300D through a Tamron 300mm lens at f/2.8 & ISO 1600. Gamma-corrected and contrasted slightly.
— Bob Christmas
This month, Comet Hartley will be visible high in the sky just south of Cassiopeia. Sky and Telescope magazine has an excellent finder chart available on its website: http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/CometHartley2-bw.jpg
Conditions will be excellent this week to view the comet because we are approaching new moon. If the skies clear (current weather forecasts are looking favourable for later this week), the comet should be visible in binoculars or small telescopes even from the city.
From Oct. 7 until about October 9 – a grand photo opportunity presents itself when the comet passes near the Perseus Double Cluster. You can get the jump on NASA – their EPOXI spacecraft will be imaging the comet from 1000 kms. away next month. So charge up your camera batteries!
Shine on, harvest moon. That’s what the old song says, and that’s what will happen tonight. The full moon rises at 6:38pm, followed by Jupiter only a half hour later. But even better, this is the famed Harvest Moon, everybody’s favourite full moon of the year. This year it falls on the day of the autumnal equinox, meaning that this is the first day of fall. The equinox occurs a few hours after moonrise, at 11:09pm. By then the moon will be high in the sky, shining on for all the folks below who are out to enjoy this lovely autumn evening.
Our club’s principal founder, Doug Welch, has been awarded the Royal Society’s McNeil Medal for science promotion. The Hamilton Spectator has a report on it here: Astrophysicist Is Now A Star.
Since arriving at McMaster about 20 years ago, Doug has been a major player and driving force behind public astronomy education in this area.
I am thrilled to hear that he has been given this recognition. Congratulations, Doug!
Ann Tekatch
Last night I took advantage of good seeing conditions to watch Jupiter. The GRS was easily visible against the whitish cloud bands around where the Southern eq band should be. Saw another black dot on the surface which I identified as Ganymede transiting. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a moon transiting so I stayed up to watch egress at the western limb around 12:05 this morning. I also saw several white circles within the northern eq band for the 1st time. As Ganymede egressed, I noticed that it looked like a sphere instead of a point of light. It’s the first time I’ve seen any of the moons as anything but a point of light. I’m assuming (feel free to comment on this) that the combination of 2 light sources and their relative angles to each other (Jupiter and the Sun) gave the moon a 3D look. While I was at it, I spent some time looking at Uranus (looks blue to me). Its about 1degree North and slightly west of Jupiter and at 230 mag I could definately see it as a sphere. Neptune is about 1degree East of Mu Capricorn and I used 9×63 binos to ID it. I hope those at the various star parties are having a good time this weekend!
Space Weather News for Sept. 5, 2010
http://spaceweather.com
SOLAR ACTIVITY: On Sept. 4th around 1600 UT, a magnetic filament erupted, hurling a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) off the sun’s northwestern limb. Today’s edition of http://spaceweather.com features a close-up view of the blast from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The CME is not expected to hit Earth. Nevertheless, auroras are possible in the nights ahead. A solar wind stream flowing from a coronal hole is heading our way, due to arrive on Sept. 5th or 6th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of high-latitude geomagnetic activity when the solar wind hits. With the approach of northern autumn, Arctic nights are getting dark again–dark enough to see the Northern Lights. People in Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia should keep an eye on the night sky this weekend.
Have you seen the recent emails claiming that on Aug 27, 2010, that Mars was going to be huge, larger than it’s ever been, as big as the Moon, and larger than anyone alive will ever see again? I hope you didn’t believe it. This is a recurring email that appears to be sent out every year about this time – and it’s a Hoax.
Being an active astronomy club and a site that many people come to look for info, it seemed appropriate that we post something about this hoax and hopefully put it to rest once and for all (perhaps I’m too optimistic).
First it may help to present some numbers to put things in perspective. Mars is about twice the size of the Moon and roughly half the size of the Earth, and orbits the Sun, like the Earth but at a greater distance. The Earth’s average orbit is about 92 million miles or 150 million kilometers from the Sun. Mars’ average distance from the Sun is 140 million miles or about 227 million km. So while the Earth take 365 days to orbit the Sun (1 Earth year), Mars takes 687 days (1 Mars year). On the other hand, the Moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 250,000 miles or 400,000 kilometres and doesn’t change much since it’s always orbiting the Earth.
Since the Earth takes less time to orbit the Sun than Mars (because it’s closer to the Sun), it means that every 26 months or so, we “catch up” to Mars and pass it. Think of watching a car race around an oval track. Cars on the inside lane more easily pass those on the outside lanes because they have less distance to travel. And cars that are on the same side of the track are closer to each other (so appear to be about the same size) than those on the opposite side of the track (they appear smaller in the distance). This race track analogy will come into play again later.
When we are on the same side of the Sun (same side of the track), we are at the closest point between the 2 planets, what astronomers call Opposition. Earth’s orbit is fairly circular (but not exactly) but Mars’ is much more eccentric (more elliptical or oval than Earth’s orbit). So sometimes at closest approach, we can be as close as about 55 million kilometers or more than 80 million km apart. (When Mars is on the opposite side of the “track” then obviously it’s even further away). Now keep this in mind. The closest Mars can get is about 55 MILLION kilometers, whereas the Moon is about 400,000 km away. That’s more than 130 times further. And even though Mars may be twice the size of the Moon, it can never look as big as the Moon. Consider a dime and a quarter. A quarter is about roughly twice the size of a dime. If you place a dime 5 feet from you and place the quarter 675 feet (130 times) away, the quarter isn’t going to look the same size. In fact you’re going to have a tough time seeing the quarter. For Mars to appear the same size as the Moon, it would have to get within about 750,000 km, and it can never get any where “close” to that distance from the Earth.
Now in these emails, which actually started back in 2003, and have now become an annual event, were very loosely based on some facts. On Aug 27, 2003, Mars did get closer to Earth than it has been in at least 5000 years, about 56 million km from Earth at its closest. The first emails came out then telling people that Mars would appear as large as the Moon. From the numbers above we know this can never happen. Mars was impressive through a telescope, but it didn’t get as big as the Moon.
We had a break in 2004 when it appears the emails didn’t circulate (or at least not widely). But then they appeared again in 2005 when Mars was going to be moderately close (astronomically speaking) in Oct of that year (remember we catch up every 26 months). The fact that they used the same Aug 27th date instead of Oct didn’t seem to bother the originators of the email. But in 2005 Earth didn’t get any closer than about 72 million km. Certainly a lot further than 56 million km we experienced in 2003.
For some reason, since then, these emails have re-appeared every year, regardless of whether we are getting to close approach of Mars (opposition) or not. In fact, right now, Mars is almost to the far side of the Sun from us, about 315 million km away – not even close. We had hit our closest approach back in Jan 2010 – quite a long time ago, and it won’t be until Mar 2012 when we get moderately close again. We won’t get as close as we did in 2003 for many years. I think in 2018 we’ll get almost as close as we did in 2003 – but “almost” in this case is about 60 million km.
In later years the emails have taken slightly different forms and some have had minor corrections or additions. For instance, some of them indicate in small print somewhere that using a telescope with 75 times magnification, then Mars will look as big as the Moon, since the apparent size of Mars in 2003 was about 75 times smaller than the Moon. Sadly they don’t make that obvious. I guess it takes away from some of the “WOW factor”.
Why do they keep sending these emails? I don’t know. No one is making money or “phishing” for your email address like some viruses do. So there doesn’t appear to be anything malicious. But when you consider that they are spreading misinformation and causing people to believe in things that aren’t true, then that’s a true disservice. Sadly there is a lot of bad info on the internet, many times made to look factual. In fact one could make that claim about this post. The best way to deal with this is to arm yourself with the facts. Check out many sources, especially the main-stream scientific sources for factual information. So I’m providing some links below to help you research this subject or to get more information.
This link is for Snopes which talks about modern folklore and various stories, identifying which are true and which are false. This particular link is for one of the entries over the years for this False claim.
Mars Hoax
This is a recent NASA article talking about the hoax.
NASA
Bad Astronomy, which I have referred to several times in the past, has a lot of articles and blogs postings about various hoaxes including this one. Many of the blog postings contain additional references and resources. Some of them can be found HERE and HERE.
And Universe Today has a good article from 2007, but still relevant, debunking this misinformation at Mars Hoax
You’ll notice that most of these references are old. That’s because this hoax keeps reappearing and scientists keep trying to correct it, and yet it keeps coming back each year.
I encourage you to read these articles and seek out others. And of course, when you see these emails in the future, and they inevitably will re-appear again next year, please don’t forward them on to your friends. Let’s put an end to this nonsense.
“Clear skies? Must be full moon.” A sarcastic statement but all too true this week! Many of our members found the lure of clear summer skies and warm temperatures too tempting to resist last night and again tonight (Friday and Saturday).
The ISS passed overhead both evenings. Tonight the seeing was excellent and I had a great view of Jupiter through John’s “small but mighty” 80mm refractor. Kevin’s 10″ Dob. pulled in B86 and the adjacent globular cluster, NGC6520 and gave breathtaking views of M11, M22 and M15.
I tried taking some untracked, unguided photos of the Milky Way through Sagittarius.
Now, if we can only save some of these clear skies for new moon….
Just by chance, I stepped outside last night for some fresh air and as I often do, I looked up. And just as I was looking to see what was visible from the backyard, a bright light was moving through the sky. My experience told me it was a satellite and not an airplane. I momentarily thought it might have been an Iridium flare, but the size seemed too large. So my guess changed to the ISS (International Space Station).
Once it had faded and moved into Earth’s shadows, I went back in to visit the Heaven-Above.com website which has transit times for many satellites, and confirmed that it was indeed the ISS and I just happen to catch the 20-30 seconds that it was passing overhead. I also noticed that we’re going to have a number of additional passes for the next 4 or 5 nights. Ann suggested I make this info available to members and the general public. Always interesting to see the ISS pass overhead. And if you have time to prepare, you could try using binoculars to see some structure.
So as a public service, I’m posting some of the upcoming ISS passes for your observing pleasure. Remember that for basic observing of the space station, you don’t need any equipment. It’s bright enough that when the skies are clear, you can see it with just your eyes – it will look like a bright airplane, but without the flashing coloured lights. (Binos and telescopes may allow you to see detail which you can’t do with just your eyes, but it’s harder to track when it moves across the sky).
How to read this info:
Date and Time should be fairly straight forward. The time shown is local for the Hamilton area using the 24 hour clock. The times shown are in the evening.
Mag – (Magnitude) this indicates how bright the ISS will be with larger negative numbers being brighter. Venus (presently in the Western sky after sunset) is currently about -2. So a -3 pass will be brighter than Venus.
Track – this is a rough guide where to start looking for, and the direction that the ISS will take as it crosses the sky. At the designated time, look in the specified direction at about 30 degrees above the horizon which is roughly where you should first spot the ISS. Then follow it’s path when it crosses the sky. Usually the brighter passes will become visible earlier and last longer, but at most a pass will only last a couple of minutes. Usually they are more in the 15-30 sec time frame. Some won’t get very high above the horizon (trees and houses could be a problem). Others will pass nearly overhead. For the “NW to NW” appearances, this indicates that the ISS will only appear briefly in the general NW area of the sky and not very high above the horizon.
Most of the brighter passes will occur this weekend and fortunately the forecast is expected to generally be good.
I’ve tried to simplify the info from the Heavens-Above website, so what’s listed below won’t be exactly as you would find on their site. More details and info can be found at:
Heavens-Above for Hamilton
This info is current as of Thu Aug 26.
Date Time Mag Track Notes Thu Aug 26 20:23 -2.4 SW to E won't get high in sky Thu Aug 26 21:58 -2.3 W to NE Fri Aug 27 20:50 -3.7 SW to NE will pass nearly overhead Fri Aug 27 22:26 -1.1 NW to NW appears just above horizon Sat Aug 28 21:17 -2.0 W to NE Sat Aug 28 22:54 -0.2 NW to NW appears just above horizon Sun Aug 29 20:09 -3.5 SW to NE will pass nearly overhead Sun Aug 29 21:46 -1.1 NW to NE won't get high in sky Mon Aug 30 20:37 -1.8 W to NE Mon Aug 30 22:14 -0.8 NW to N appears just above horizon Tue Aug 31 21:05 -1.1 NW to NE Tue Aug 31 22:41 -0.3 NW to NW appears just above horizon For the following dates, the ISS won't get very high above the horizon. Wed Sep 1 21:33 -0.9 NW to NE Thu Sep 2 20:24 -1.1 NW to NE Thu Sep 2 22:00 -1.1 NW to N Fri Sep 3 20:52 -1.0 NW to NW Fri Sep 3 22:27 -0.5 NW to NW
Hopefully there will be lots of clear evenings and you’ll have a chance to see the ISS. You don’t need a particularly dark location, just a clear view of the path. If you don’t have trees or home in your way, you can see the ISS from the city.
Happy hunting.
