Thanks to a heads up from our EH editor, Tim Philp, the moon will be occulting the Pleiades star cluster early on the morning of Fri August 14, 2009.
Starting around 4am local time, the moon will slowly glide in front of various stars in the Pleiades cluster, causing the stars to wink out and back again. I haven’t checked if there will be any “grazers” from our latitude, but it will be a nice show, easy to spot with the clear forecast predicted for the early morning. (The only weather risk appears to be some fog.) At that time, the moon will be high in the sky, almost due South.
Each star occulted by the moon will blank out for about an hour (the time it takes the moon to travel it’s own width across the sky). Since it’s passing through the heart of the cluster, it will take several hours and may continue past sunrise. (This will be “potentially” an interesting opportunity to see stars with a scope during early daylight since the moon will be easier to spot, and therefore know where to find some brighter stars.)
This will be visible from anywhere, even from within the city, and you won’t need a scope. But binos or a scope, as well as a darker location, will allow you to see more stars being covered, and generally make the show even more impressive.
So if you are an early morning person, or are willing to make the effort, you should be well rewarded. This will also be a great photo-op. You might even catch a few straggling Perseids.
Three years ago during the Perseid meteor watch, observers were able to catch the long period variable star Chi Cygni overhead, shining at magnitude 3.5 – the brightest it had been in decades. This year, alas, Chi will be at minimum during the Perseid shower but observers can scan the western sky for R CrB, a variable star in the constellation of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown.
R CrB fades and brightens suddenly! Most of the time it is between magnitude 5 amd 6, a naked eye object if you know where to look. It has been beyond the reach of 12″ telescopes for the last two years, but you never know when it may pop back into view!
The following is taken from the SpaceWeather web site. There will be a bright moon, but this meteor shower is always worth watching. You could see early Perseids already! Stay tuned for information on club observing activities on Perseid night.
“POSSIBLE PERSEID OUTBURST: This year’s Perseid meteor shower could be even better than usual. “A filament of comet dust has drifted across Earth’s path and when Earth passes through it, sometime between 0800 and 0900 UT (1 – 2 am PDT) [4-5am August 12, local time in Hamilton – John] on August 12th, the Perseid meteor rate could surge to twice its normal value,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. The following profile is based on the debris stream models of veteran forecasters Jeremie Vaubaillon and Mikhail Maslov:
The filament was shed by Perseid parent comet Swift-Tuttle in the year 1610, and this is one of Earth’s first encounters with it. “In addition,” notes Cooke, “the main Perseid debris stream, which we run into every year, may be denser than normal due to a gravitational enhancement by Saturn. The total combination of these effects could result in as many as 200 meteors per hour (ZHR).”
5 Members showed up at the park on Upper Wentworth and the Linc last night. We all had a good time showing the about 60+ people(young and old) views of the Moon and Jupiter.There was still wow factor in the Moon even though it is only a day or so from full. The terminator showed lots of detail of craters and mountains. Jupiter was showing lots of detail the equitorial banding and the colours were clearly evident. Many questions were asked and answered and many (O My God’s, wow’s and cool’s)were heard from the public. Hopefully some of the other members will add the comments to this blog.
You’re right Jim, it sure was a lot of fun. As the night wore on and the public left we had a good look at Jupiter. There was a 6th magnitude star (45 Capricorni) right in line with the Galilean moons, and it gave the appearance of 5 moons. Jim was able to correctly identify which of the 5 was the imposter. Well done, Jim! You can look tonight for yourself and see 5 “moons” on one side of Jupiter. Meanwhile, Steve K. and I were trying to identify the impact scar on Jupiter, and had a great time comparing views through our two 5″ achromat refractors, and comparing the clean, bright image of Steve’s orthoscopic eyepiece with the comfort and wide field of my Pentax. Both gave excellent views, and we were able to see a wealth of detail in the bands of Jupiter (including festoons and knots) and yes, we did see the impact scar in the south polar region. Unfortunately we didn’t stay late enough to see the GRS come around the limb. What a fun night!
Bert Rhebergen, the local sunspot expert, called me tonight with a heads-up about a possible sunspot (or sunspot group) just about to come into view on the solar disk. Tonight about 8:00 pm, he spotted a complex group of faculae on the limb of the sun. Bert explains that faculae (which appear as lighter patches on the sun’s surface when viewed through a white-light solar filter) often accompany sunspots. The patch swinging into view may be associated with a new sunspot. So I would encourage anyone with a proper solar filter or a PST to dust them off and watch the sun over the next few days.
Of course, any note about solar observing has to contain a warning to only observe the sun through a proper, safe solar filter.
In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Carina Software is making available their SkyVoyager software available for free download from iTunes App Store. Normally this is a $15 USD product.
It is supposed to be a planetarium program for your iPod Touch or iPhone. Good for both beginners and advanced users. It contains 300,000 stars and 30,000 DSO’s in its database, provides NASA imagery, and shows the sky from any position on the Earth for any time from 100 years in the past to 100 years in the future.
Please note that this is only available for free on Mon Jul 20, 2009. I nor the HAA endorses or warranties it’s effectiveness, usefulness or availability. I’m just making you aware of this product. I don’t have an iPod Touch or iPhone, so I’m unable to download it or give it a try.
The link to the download and information for this product is: http://www.carinasoft.com/products/index.html
If you do download it and find it useful, you might consider writing a blog entry or a small review article for the Event Horizon.
(Thanks to BadAstronomy.com for making us aware of this temporary freebie.)
One space station, one space shuttle, one camera and one chance at a photo, but the impressive number tonight is thirteen. That’s how many people are on that point of light streaking across the sky, and it includes two Canadians.
The International Space Station, accompanied by the space shuttle Endeavor, is currently making a series of favourable passes over Hamilton. I got this photo earlier this evening as the ISS passed through the Big Dipper. By checking the web site ‘Heavens-Above’ you can get predicted times when you can see the space station/shuttle as well. Here’s the link: http://www.heavens-above.com/?Lat=43.1&Lng=-79.8&Alt=197&Loc=Binbrook+Conservation+Area&TZ=EST
In this case, knowing that the ISS would pass through a particularly photogenic part of the sky, I set up well ahead of time and made several test exposures to make sure I had the right balance for the station, the stars and the light pollution! When it appears you only get one chance at your photo; moving at 25,000 km/h the station doesn’t stay around long! The massive station/shuttle complex appeared about as bright as Venus, easily outshining anything else in the night sky.
Today, July 20th, is the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, Apollo 11. Think about that as you go out to see the ISS for yourself, and feel free to share your exeriences here on the HAA blog.
The International Space Station, the space shuttle Endeavor and 13 astronauts pass through Ursa Major, and over Hamilton.
I found out about some web content that will be interesting to some HAA members. Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams has documented some of his research, and it appears here with some other distinguished canadian researchers and their work.
A lecture by the Canadian Astronaut Dr. Dave Williams, Up or Down ? The body?s plasticity in exploring inner and outer space, is also available for a limited time as a podcast here
Playback of the lectures will require installing Microsoft Silverlight (a program similar to adobe flash player).
Lectures by renowned scientists and a Canadian astronaut on the latest developments in astronomy, space exploration and astrophysics are now available as webcasts here
http://www.mcgill.ca/science/mini/webcast/
These lectures are from Mini-Science 2009 To Infinity and Beyond: Space, Stars and the Universe held April 1 ? May 13, 2009. Mini-Science is a public lectures series organized each Spring by the Faculty of Science at McGill University.
For more information about Mini-Science please check out the website
Today marks the 40th Anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 and the first manned mission to land on the moon. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long and 37 years since we’ve been back.
I remember watching all of the Gemini and Apollo missions as best as we could with our black & white television and roof-top antenna, listening to Walter Cronkite wax poetically about our accomplishments, and even get teary-eyed at certain significant moments. Our family was in the maritimes on summer vacation, and I remember being awakened early in the morning to watch various events.
Apollo 11 Launch, 16 Jul 1969
To mark this historic occasion, several groups have released some interesting items that you might like to check out.
First, The Boston Globe has a feature called the Big Picture. Among the various items they have covered, there is a recent release of some amazing images for the Apollo 11 Mission. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/remembering_apollo_11.html
NASA has released some restored videos of the moon walking. (These are not the Lost Tapes – just restored versions of known tapes). These are quite large so you need some bandwidth or time. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html
Alternatively, there is a 2min YouTube montage created by Phil Plait from these videos. (YouTube loses some of the fidelity of the restored videos.)
NASA is also doing a real-time replay of the entire mission in audio streaming. It started this morning with the launch and will run for the entire 9 days of the mission (Jul 16-24) so you can jump in at any time to hear what was going on at the time. This includes sleep periods, cruise time to/from the moon, etc so there will be lots of quiet times too. http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/apollo11_radio/index.html
In a similar vein, there is a website which has produced a flash recreation/animation of the moon mission in “real-time”. I haven’t really tried to follow this since the text doesn’t seem to display very well on my screens. But some of you may find this interesting. http://wechoosethemoon.org/
I’ve been trying to follow LRO/LCROSS mission to the moon. There has been a rumour going around that NASA has planned the timing of this mission to be able to capture high-res images of the Apollo 11 landing site. If true, then these may be released on or about the 20th. At full resolution (70cm/pixel), you’d be able to make out a fair amount of detail from the landing site, including clear indication of the lander, tracks, and some equipment left behind. Unfortunately the website for this mission is not releasing intermediary images (or at least I haven’t found any) to give me an indication of how close they are imaging Mare Tranquillitatis. And their satellite tracking program doesn’t allow you to see much in the past or future of where the satellite will be on any given day. But keep an eye of the LRO website just case something does become available. http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
