VERMILLION SKIES

Persieds

2011-08-16T01:19:00.000+01:00

Firstly the Persied meteor shower which peaked on Saturday, but will be with us for a few days yet, look to the N E below Cassiopeia, the wonky w on its side. But looking to the north east should be enough. I think I saw one but that may have been wishful thinking. I have the same relationship with meteors as the bloke in the kit kat advert has with pandas, I look for ages and see nothing then look away and it’s Guy Fawkes Night. But you may have better luck; I’ve put a picture of one taken from space on the Radio Scilly Facebook page, and on the Scilly stars blog.

Persied shot from Space.

The planets are pretty much the same as last week, no Venus or Mercury, too close to the sun, and they have been joined by Saturn which now sets very soon after the Sun. Mars rises around 3 am but isn’t very far above before the predawn twilight blinks it out.

Jupiter is the only naked eye planet we have at the moment rising around midnight and blazing in the SE sky and very high in the South by dawn.

Uranus which is just naked eye visible and Neptune which isn’t are well up in the east and SE by midnight, but they are both very difficult to find, I did spot Uranus once but Neptune has always stayed elusive.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 706^th anniversary of William Wallace, Scottish being hung, drawn and quartered for high treason by Edward I of England. And recent research has confirmed that it was exactly like it was depicted in Braveheart.

Not Much Again.............

2011-06-20T22:07:00.003+01:00

Here's a current super novae I haven't mentioned this week.

Supernova 2011dh, which was discovered in the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, on May 31st, has been brightening ever since — though the brightening is now levelling off. As of June 16th the supernova was about V magnitude 12.6 and visible in a lot more amateur telescopes.

Well so much for last weeks eclipse, which wouldn’t have been overly fantastic even if it hadn’t been cloudy, which it obviously was, but never mind there’s another one on December the 10^th, but its at 2:30 in the after noon but we should catch the tail end of as the moon rises at about 4, with the sun setting shortly afterwards. Putting disappointing lunar eclipses to one side, which is always a little traumatic, this week, is much last week. But we do have an event coming up in less than a half hour, at 8:16 in fact, summer starts and the axis of the earth’s rotation starts to edge away from the sun. So today is the longest day, with about 16 hours of daylight. This gives me an excellent opportunity to waffle.

The Earths axial tilt is 23.4 degrees and it always points in the same direction throughout the year, which means it changes with respect to the sun. In spring and summer towards and in autumn and winter away from the sun. At the equinoxes the tilt is at right angles to the sun and we have equal days and nights. Now 23 and half degrees may not seem much but double it and it makes the sun 47 degrees higher today at noon than it will be in mid winter, which is a lot. Now you may have noticed that the rate of change of daylight hours is much slower now or in mid winter than it is in early spring or autumn. It’s best thought of as a pendulum effect, at 8:16 the days stop getting longer and begin to slowly get shorter. The pendulum has reached the top of its swing and starts to fall the other way and begins accelerating again down to the bottom of the swing, which next happens at the autumn equinox, when the swing begins to slow again toward the winter solstice when it will stop and then begin to fall toward mid summer again. And like any pendulum effect the swing is always faster at the bottom slowing to zero at the top.

Now because we had a full moon last week, we have a last quarter moon this week which will rise in the early hours and means that when the stars do come out form 11pm onwards they will be showing well, this of course is under the rather optimistic assumption that the skies ever clear, well if the do the milky way should be lovely arcing over head the North East to the South East, and there’s always the possibility of shooting stars, not that we are expecting a shower at the moment.

As for the planets bar Jupiter and Saturn they are all to close to the Jupiter at the Aries-Pisces border shines in the east during dawn, if you’re up and about it will just about the only thing of note in that part of the sky.

Saturn is in fine view in the south to southwest after dusk. And just ¼° to its upper right is fainter Porrima (Gamma Virginis), turning Saturn into a naked-eye "double star." Shining 15° to Saturn's left is Spica.

And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 120^th anniversary of The Street railway in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, commencing operation.

Götterdämmerung Postponed.

2011-05-31T11:56:00.001+01:00

Very much the same in the pre midnight sky this week, in fact if you haven’t noticed yet, the sky shifts by a smidgen less then 7degrees to the west each week, or 360 degrees dived by 52 weeks. This is why we don’t get a great deal of change week by week. The planets give us a bit more variation because the obviously move against the fixed background of the sky.

Early Friday morning, if your one of the legion of listeners who live in the Western United States a pretty unimpressive star, Nu Pegasi, will be occulted for up to 1.2 seconds by the small asteroid 4569 Baerbel along a thin track (only 9 miles wide!) running from southernmost California through Arizona, Colorado, and the Dakotas. The star will be low in the southeast. But blink and you’ll miss it.

Summer almost upon us and we’re into the brightest 6 weeks of the year now which means the summer constellations are appearing Scorpio is up in the South East now. The brightest star in the east these nights is Vega. You can't miss it. Look for the little triangle-and-parallelogram pattern of the constellation Lyra dangling to its lower right.

We have a new moon tomorrow, so more spring tides.

The planets are a little better this week Saturn is a little West of South when it gets dark, and Saturn has a mate this week. Saturn and the star Porrima have now closed to 17 arc minutes of each other, practically as close as they will get. Although they look like neighbours, Saturn is only 76 light-minutes from Earth, while Porrima is 39 light-years in the background. That's more than a quarter million times farther away!

Low in the dawn, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter continue drawing farther apart in a long diagonal line. Jupiter is the highest and easiest. Far to its lower left are faint Mars, then bright Venus, and then very-low Mercury, as shown in the scenes above. Bring binoculars for Mars and Mercury. If you’re up an hour before the sun look east Venus and Jupiter should be unmissable.

Now for some news about the Black Shadow’s deadly gamma ray space laser, apparently the chap who set up the orbital synchronous lock was a bit of a cowboy and Barbara’s doomsday machine is now sedately heading for a low lunar orbit which will render it useless. But I have been told by a very unreliable source that she is hoping to get it up and running in time for the next projected end of the world on October 21^st, keep your fingers crossed.

And that was your nights sky for the week ending on the 167^th anniversary of the founding of The Young Men's Christian Association.

Lyrid Meteor Shower And Jesus

2011-04-19T12:12:00.002+01:00

Not much movement this week, but we do have a lack lustre meteor shower latter peaking on Friday.

Vega, the "Summer Star," is now rising in the northeast right around the end of. Later in the night as Vega rises higher, look for its dim little constellation Lyra dangling from it toward the lower right.

The radiant of the Lyrid meteor shower is Magnified in the NE.

Which bring us to this week’s high light, The Lyrid meteor shower should peak late on Friday, but it's usually quite weak. The best chance to see an occasional Lyrid will be around midnight, when Lyra is up fairly high but the Moon hasn't yet risen. So look to the North East after 10pm and you may see a few from Wednesday to as late as Monday, but this shower is by no means the best of the year.

Now the planets, for what it’s worth Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter are buried deep in the glare of sunrise (well to the lower left of Venus), pretty well in a wasted conjunction.

Venus (still a respectable magnitude –3.9) is visible very low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 30 minutes before sunrise. But it won’t be showing well if at all.

But we still have Saturn which is still the only planet showing well. After passing through opposition on April 3rd, it glows low in the east-southeast as the stars come out. Saturn rises higher in the southeast during evening and shines highest in the south around midnight. Look for twinkly Spica 12° below it or to its lower left. Don't confuse Saturn with brighter Arcturus 30° to its left or upper left.

A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on Batman’s 72^nd birthday.

And as it's Passion Week here's a picture of Jesus.

The Song Remains The Same

2011-04-11T23:54:00.001+01:00

A pretty worthless week again, pretty well exactly the same as last week, and next week for that matter.

We have Venus but barely, it rises just before the sun and is visible for a very limited period and Saturn, it glows low in the east as the sun sets and is about to set in the west as the Sun sets. The planet is pretty well due south at midnight. It’s fairly easy to spot. There are 3 bright stars, one being Saturn, in that area of the sky, Arcturus which is the brightest star in bo o teas which helpfully is written as bootes, is quite a bit higher and further to the east of Saturn and the other is Spica, or Spy ka the brightest star in Virgo which is a little below and to the right of Saturn. So Saturn’s the middle one. And that’s about it.

Now I’m going to waffle about the moon for a bit. Now you may be wandering why Easter is so stupidly late this year. Well it’s the moon’s fault, not that it’s overly contrite about it. Basically Easter, which if you don’t know, is a pretty bizarre myth about an alleged charismatic Jewish carpenter coming back to life on a Sunday around 2000 years ago, it’s not as barking as some of the Norse stuff, but it’s getting there, anyway this bloke was allegedly crucified during the Jewish Passover, which is based on an even more barking great escape myth from around 3500 years ago, there’s book full of this stuff if your interested. Anyway the Passover starts on the first full moon after the spring equinox which is next Monday. So Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. So it’s all a bit primitive. Easter is on the 24^th of April, the 25^th being the latest it can be. And that won’t happen again until 2030, when I’ll be 79. The March full moon this year was on the 19^th two days before the start of Spring. The earliest Easter can be is the 22^nd when the March full moon falls on the spring equinox. Anyway next year it’s much better it’s on then 8^th. I hope that was clear.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 81^st anniversary of BBC Radio announcing that there is no news on April the 18^th 1930. Be nice if they did it again, though Sky News would find something somewhere, and failing that Keri definitely would.

Darkness At Noon

2011-04-04T21:28:00.004+01:00

Another stunning week this week, the moon is just past noon at the moment setting just after sunset tonight and moving further up the western sky over the course of the week, skirting Orion. It’s just below the Pleiades on the 6^th and is just to the right of Aldebaran, the baleful red eye of the bull in Taurus. And speaking of Orion, we will soon lose the hunter as it sinks further into the sun, a sure sigh that that summer’s on the way, his belt is horizontal now. There are three stars in the belt Alnitak is approximately 800 light years away from Earth and is 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun, Alnilam is is 375,000 times more luminous than the Sun and is 90,000 times more luminous than the Sun. So they’re all pretty bright.

Orion is very useful as an aid to locating other stars. By extending the line of the Belt south-eastward, Sirius can be found; north-westward, there’s Aldebaran. A line eastward across the two shoulders indicates the direction of Procyon; and a line from Rigel through Betelgeuse points to the twins Castor and Pollux.

And now for the planets, well Saturn anyway, which was at opposition on Sunday; which means that the earth was directly in line with Saturn and the Sun. It glows low in the east-southeast as twilight fades, rises higher in the southeast during evening, and shines highest in the south after midnight. During the evening, look for twinkly Spica 11° below it and brighter Arcturus nearly 30° to its left.

As for the other planets you may get a glimpse of Venus pre dawn in the South East.

But not Mercury which is fading fast and disappearing down into the sunset as it nears inferior conjunction.

Or Mars which remains out of sight behind the glare of the Sun for a while yet, and Jupiter is out of sight in conjunction with the Sun.

Now you may have noticed that the Black Shadow, aka Barbara Simpson, has been quiet of late, well after much clandestine investigation and at no small personal risk I have discovered that she raised a considerable sum smuggling endangered species over the course of the last 6 months and has now invested in am immensely powerful gamma ray space laser, which will be able to take out London, Washington and Ulan Bator at the push of button unless her as yet unspecified demands are met. It’s Sod’s law isn’t it just when you really need James Bond, MGM pulls the plug.

And that was your night sky for the week wending on the 57^th anniversary of the the most boring day since 1900 according to the True Knowledge Answer Engine.

Mercury Again.

2011-03-21T23:03:00.001Z

Well if you didn’t catch Mercury last week when it was on top of Jupiter, this week it’s at his highest above the western horizon, to night is its highest point. Mercury will be quite a bit higher than Jupiter until the weekend when it will rapidly fall into the horizon, Mercury does rather flip around, this is because it’s so close the sun and has an 88 day year, so by the time we get to mid summer’s day it will be back where it is now.

Venus shines low in the southeast during dawn, lower each week, you can still see it, unless Dean was lying, he claimed to have seen over Peninis last week, I wouldn’t know the planet of love sets at least 4 hours before I get up at the moment. But Venus is getting closer to the Sun all the time and will soon disappear.

This is all getting a bit sad because we are about to say goodbye to Jupiter as well it’s very low in the west and not easily seen. But if you haven’t a enough of it since September All you need is a clear evening and a viewing site with an good view down to the west horizon. Note the spot where the Sun sets, wait another 15 minutes, and then start scanning above that spot for Jupiter and Mercury. Mercury is still about 12° — two binocular fields — above the horizon a half hour after sunset.

But they will all come back, in fact Venus, Mars and Jupiter all rise around 5 am on the 16^th of May and a week later Mercury joins them, so set your alarms.

And of course Mars is still out of sight behind the glare of the Sun.

Saturn rises around 8 p.m. It's highest in the south around 1 a.m. daylight saving time. Spica, slightly fainter, shines about 10° below Saturn all evening.

There is something else we can look out for, these next two weeks, when there's no moonlight in the sky at the end of twilight, are a chipper time to look for the zodiacal light. As the last of twilight is fading away, look for a vague but huge, tall, narrow pyramid of pearly light extending up from the western horizon. It slopes to the left, following the ecliptic. What you're seeing is interplanetary dust near the plane of the solar system, lit by the Sun.

That was your night sky for the week ending 1974^th anniversary of Caligula accepting the titles of the Principate, entitled to him by the Senate. He was initially reluctant to accept but his horse said he would have to sleep on the sofa if he didn’t, so he did.

Mercury Jupiter Conjunction.

2011-03-14T23:33:00.001Z

This week for the first time for months we actually have something happen, a good conjunction, tonight mercury is within 2 degrees of Jupiter, pretty well due west at sunset. Sadly there’s not a huge amount of time to catch them, it should be dark enough to catch Jupiter soon after 7 it’s still pretty bright, though its about as far away from us as it gets at the moment, so find Jupiter first and Mercury which will be much dimmer, but will be right on top of the giant planet, and by 7:45 they’ve both set. But it’s the best chance to see Mercury this year. Because they are both so low western horizon you will need a pretty good low view of the western horizon, at least on St Mary’s because the accursed garrison will be in the way. As usual binoculars will help, you’ll certainly see Jupiter as a disc and maybe some of the Jovian moons, and if you’re prepared to use a little imagination you may see Mercury as a crescent. Mercury will be within 5 degrees of Jupiter right up until Friday. There’s a guide on the blog.

The other highlight happens next Sunday at 23:21, when the sun edges north over the equator and spring starts.

We still have Venus which rises around 6:30 in the South East followed very quickly by the sun, so it’s not what it was.

Saturn rises at around 9 again in the SE it’s quite easy to find before midnight look to the SE where you’ll see two similarly bright stars, Saturn is the upper of the two and Spica is the other, now here’s a load of exciting padding about Spica, it’s the brightest star in the in Virgo, and the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is 260 light years distant from Earth. A blue giant, it is a variable of the Beta Cepheid type, so now you know.

The other highlight happens next Sunday at 23:21, when the sun edges north over the equator and spring starts, and our hour goes forward a week on Saturday, hough as usual the Americans got in first.

And it seems that daylight saving came in at 2am on Saturday in most of the US and Canada, though in Arizona Hawaii Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa they don’t bother, and stay on standard time all year. Though when I say Arizona, I’m obviously excluding that part of the state which is under the jurisdiction of the Navajo Nation, which isn’t just Navajo being petulant and a little cussed, it’s probably because the Navajo nation straddles Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as well, which would make it even more confusing. That was more padding by the way.

And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on 167th anniversary of the original date predicted by William Miller for the return of Christ. Of course he may well have turned up but people thought he was a bit of a nutter as you would and largely ignored him, but probably William Miller was wrong

The Slough Of Despond

2011-02-22T14:38:00.003Z

The Crab Nebula

The sky a seems to have sunk into a Slough of Despond at the moment, which is of course is a deep bog in John Bunyan's, The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them, not that you should necessarily do this, but that is of course between you and your conscience. There really is nothing much happening, and certainly not before midnight.

So in the absence of any planets in the evening star, except of course a setting Jupiter, and with the waning moon rising later all the time, it may be a good time to look for some deeper sky objects. There’s the winter star cluster M41, visible in binoculars about one binocular field south of Sirius, It contains about 100 stars including several red giants, Its age is estimated at between 190 and 240 million years old. So compared to the Sun, its stars are still in nappies.

You could also like between the horns of Taurus? Taurus is easily spotted just above Orion, the horns sweeping backward from Aldebaran, the bulls baleful red eye. You should see a hazy smudge which is the Crab Nebula.

And then there’s the Andromeda galaxy around half way between Cassiopeia and Pegasus. There’s a link below if you want to have a go.

Finding Andromeda.

As for the planets Mercury, Mars, and Neptune are hidden behind the glare of the Sun. But Venus is still there shining brightly in Sagittarius) shines as the "Morning Star" in the southeast just before and during dawn.

Jupiter shines brightly in the west at dusk and sets roughly an hour after dark now. But by 8:45 the giant planet has set.

Saturn rises at 10p.m., in the south east, you may get a glimpse of the rings in binoculars, and they’re at a reasonable angle to us now.

Uranus is a bout 7° west (lower right) of Jupiter and disappearing into the evening twilight. And it’s easier to see with the naked eye now as it moves away from Jupiter’s glare, but it’s very dim.

On that was your nights sky for the week ending on the 72^nd anniversary of the erroneous word "Dord" being discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation. It seems it was submitted as capital D or d as an abbreviation for density but through a shameful example of howling ineptitude it went in as Dord, which is fascinating.

150 today.

2011-02-01T01:06:00.003Z

This weeks Scilly Stars is a very special one, hence the fanfare, it’s the 150^th, which seems rather a lot to me, and it is it’s about 7 and a half hours, and I’ve got all of them. So if anybody wants copies I can just squeeze them onto 6 cds, but do bear in mind I’m not anticipating a huge take up on that offer, even if it were free, which its not. Anyway because it’s so special this Scilly Stars is like the radio equivalent of the end of the Christmas 2 Ronnies, I only wish you could see all the hoopla, suffice to say I'm recording this week’s in a gold lame jacket wearing a very fetching Liberace toupee. I also, in a dream, asked god if he would make a guest appearance, but was told no, because it seems it would have upset Alan Bookbinder, the previous head of religious programming at the BBC, but that was only a dream and maybe Mr Bookbinder wouldn't have minded, but we’ll never know. But in the end I dad manage to get a celebrity, Dieter Markus Stein who holds the record for landing the worlds biggest, but sadly Mr Stein couldn't speak English very well so I dropped him.

This is a picture of the largest common carp in the world - a colossal record-breaking beast weighing in at 85lb 9oz. It was taken by German ace Dieter Markus Stein from a top-secret stillwater in his homeland, a venue which is regarded as one of the hardest lakes on the Continent where the gap between bites can sometimes run into months

Now sadly for such a special occasion, there is very little going on up there this week, in fact it’s almost the same as last week.

No Mercury and no Mars, in fact no Mars until the summer. But we have the other 3, 4 if you include Uranus, which seems reasonable.

Venus, still a very bright –4.3 blazes as the "Morning Star" in the southeast before and during dawn.

A bright but dimming Jupiter, which is now moving toward the other side of the sun, shines brightly in the southwest as the stars come out; it sinks lower later. We only have Jupiter for another couple of months, by the of March it will be setting with the sun.

Saturn a lot dimmer than Jupiter rises around 11 p.m, and is best ssen due south in the early hours before dawn.

Uranus is naked eye visible, but only just, is about 4° west of Jupiter and pulling away from it.

But anyway its to cold to look anyway, I did try at the weekend and after 45 seconds I surrendered then scurried back in doors with a hacking cough more dead than alive.

And that was you 150^th Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 216^th anniversary of the ratification of The 11th Amendment to the US Constitution.

And if the 11 amendment has slipped your mind here it is.

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Cha Cha Cha

2011-01-26T00:17:00.005Z

This week is very similar to last week, we still can’t see Mercury or Mars, but Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are still putting on a show, and Uranus if you know where to look, which shining a very pleasant blue/green 2 and half degrees to the west of Jupiter.

Venus is still extremely bright, it shines as the "Morning Star" in the southeast before and during dawn. If your up and the sky’s clear, you can’t miss it.

Jupiter shines in the southwest as the stars come out. It sinks lower later and sets around 9 or 10 p.m.

Saturn a lot dimmer then either Jupiter or especially Venus, in rises in Virgo around 11 p.m. but is best seen the South before dawn, the the storm is still rising. The rings are way passed edge on at the moment and are showing well with a little magnification. To find it have a look at the star map for Scilly, next door.

As we lose the moon over the course week, it may be time to see some of the dimmer naked eye objects in the sky. The Andromeda Galaxy is the brightest deep sky object we can see. Though saying that it’s not that deep sky, in fact’s next door at a mere 2 and half million light years, some galaxy’s are knocking 14 billion years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, but not the closest galaxy overall. It is visible with the naked eye from Earth as a faint smudge on a moonless night.. It gets its name from the area of the sky in which it appears the Andromeda constellation. Andromeda is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which consists of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It has up to a trillion stars whereas the milky way has up to about 400 million.

So I’d better tell you where it is, it’s just off the knee of the Andromeda stick figure. The brighter, sharper bottom-point of the Cassiopeia "W" points to it. Again look on the blog for a little guidance.

The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are expected to collide in perhaps 4.5 billion years. By then the sun will be on its last legs, and the BBC will still be repeating the two Ronnies.

Andromeda

And in case you’re wondering, which your not, there’re are loads more stars than there are grains of sand. Apparently there are at least 100 stars for every grain of sand on earth, presumably that’s an estimate.

And next week the stars will be on Tuesday, because it seems that’s when the jingle says it’s on.

And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 50^th anniversary of Ham the Chimp travelling on Mercury Redstone II. He returned 16 minutes later with a slightly bruised nose. He’s sadly dead, January 1983, so he had a good life .His real name was Chop-Chop Chang, and he was so endearing in his lovely NASA helmet, here's ape icture.

Ham aka Chop-Chop Chang

Young Fishmonger of the Year

2011-01-11T19:03:00.017Z

Not a huge cavalcade of excitement for you this week, though you may have heard about Kepler 10b, a new planet about 4 and half times the mass of the earth about 560 light years away, so we’re not likely to see much of it. It orbits very close to its Sun, and has a surface temperature which will melt rock, but if there's one rocky planet out there there will be others. If your interested here it is, Kepler 10b.

Nearer home, Mercury is having an excellent morning apparition. Look for it low in the east-southeast, far to the lower left of bright Venus, it rises at about 7pm in the E S E, but won’t be all that bright being so close to the rising sun.

Venus considerably brighter balazes as the "Morning Star" in the south east before and during dawn. In fact Venus rises some two hours before the first glimmer of dawn a weird UFO of a thing low in the east-southeast. Look for Saturn and Spica very far to Venus's upper right in the south, and Arcturus even higher above Venus.

Mars as usual is lost behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.3, at the Pisces-Aquarius border) shines high in the south as the stars come out, then lower in the southwest later in the evening. Jupiter is the brightest starlike point in the evening sky, but it sets by 10 or 11 p.m. now. In a telescope it has shrunk to only 38 arcseconds wide as Earth rounds to the far side of the Sun from it.

Saturn rises around midnight but is best seen in a telescope high in the south before dawn (far upper right of brilliant Venus). Don't confuse Saturn with Spica below or lower left of it. And Saturn has a bit of a storm that must be a good 40,000 miles long raging across its northern hemisphere, with winds over a thousand miles an hour, at about 130 degrees below. With pellets of ammonia and ice moving like bullets, true sailing is dead.

Saturn's rings, meanwhile, have widened to 10° from edge-on, the widest they've appeared since 2007.

Uranus remains less than 1½° from Jupiter this week, and should be easily spotted in binoculars.

On Saturday, the gibbous Moon shines between Aldebaran and the Pleiades, high above Orion in early evening. Look below Orion for Sirius.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 591^st anniversary of King Naresuan of Siam killing Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, which is why this date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day. Which strangely is largely ignored in the UK.

Lest We Forget

2010-12-14T21:21:00.013Z

The Geminid meteor shower which I for reasons I would rather keep out of the public domain I forgot to mention last week peaked on Monday but they will be around until Friday at least. Best viewing will be after midnight, but some meteors can be seen earlier. As the name suggests the radiant is in Gemini which is easily found up and a little to the left of Orion’s shoulders.

Mercury and Mars, are very close together on the western horizon at sunset but are both very dim and not worth the effort.

Venus which would be worth the effort except it rises so early blazes in the southeast before and during dawn. Venus rises some two hours before the first glimmer of dawn

Jupiter shines in the south to southwest during evening, the brightest star like point in the sky. We are gradually losing Jupiter now it’s setting around midnight.

Saturn (magnitude +0.8, in Virgo) rises around 2:30. and is well up the southeast before and during dawn, far upper right of brilliant Venus.

On Friday, look to the lower left of the Moon (by a little more than a fist-width at arm's length) for the delicate Pleiades star cluster. Below the Pleiades by a roughly similar distance is orange Aldebaran, the eye of the bull in Taurus.

And that was your night sky on 1941st anniversary of the end of the Year of the four emperors. Who were respectively Galba, Otho, Vitellius who sounds like an expensive yoghurt for people with more money than sense, and finally Vespasian who became the fourth Emperor of Rome within a year. First Galba, was assassinated, by Otho’s agents, Otho then ruled for 3 months until he topped himself, then Vitellius ruled for 8 months until he was beheaded and chucked in the Tiber, and finally Vespasian who by some sort of miracle died 10 years later of natural causes.

Dec-Jan

2010-12-09T13:01:00.001Z

Eye on the Sky

All events in
BST (UT + 1 hour)

Dec 2010 - Jan 2011

DEC	1st	Mercury is at greatest elongation, 21 degrees east (4pm); Saturn is eight degrees north of the Moon (6pm)
Sat	4th	Venus is at its greatest illuminated extent (11am)
Mon	6th	Uranus is stationary (11am)
Tue	7th	Mercury is 1.8 degrees south of the Moon (9am); Asteroid (16) Psyche is at opposition
Fri	10th	Mercury is stationary (11am)
Sat	11th	Neptune is five degrees south of the Moon (3pm)
Tue	14th	Geminds meteor shower maximum (6am); Jupiter is seven degrees south of the Moon (2am); Uranus is seven degrees south of the Moon (6am)
Thu	16th	Asteroid (88) Thisbe is at opposition
Mon	20th	Mercury is in inferior conjunction (1am)
Tue	21st	Total lunar eclipse as Moon is setting from the UK (8am)
Wed	22nd	Winter solstice (12am); Pallas is in conjunction with the Sun (5pm)
Thu	23rd	Ursids meteor shower maximum
Sun	26th	Asteroid (387) Aquitnia is at opposition
Mon	27th	Pluto is in conjunction with the SUn (1am)
Wed	29th	Saturn is eight degrees north of the Moon (3am)
Thu	30th	Mercury is stationary (8am)
Fri	31st	Venus is seven degrees north of the Moon (4pm)
JAN 2011	2nd	Jupiter is 0.6 degrees south of Uranus (2pm); Mercury is four degrees north of the Moon (3pm)
Mon	3rd	Earth is at perihelion (7pm)
Tue	4th	Quadrantids meteor shower peak (1am); Partial solar eclipse (Sun in eclipse at sunrise in UK, 9am); Saturn's moon Iapetus is at greatest western elongation (6pm)
Sat	8th	Neptune is five degrees south of the Moon (12am); Venus reaches greatest western elongation (47 degrees, 4pm)
Sun	9th	Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation (23 degrees, 3pm)
Mon	10th	Uranus is seven degrees south of the Moon, (3pm); Jupiter is seven degrees south of the Moon (5pm)
Tue	11th	NEO 2000 AZ93 (magnitude +15.8) makes a close approach of 3.4 lunar distances (0.0477 AU)
Sat	15th	Venus is eight degrees north of Antares (10pm)
Mon	17th	Comet 9P/Tempel at peak brightness (mag +13)
Sat	22nd	Asteroid (3) Juno is stationary (11pm)
Mon	24th	Asteroid (7) Iris at opposition (magnitude +7.9)
Tue	25th	Saturn is eight degrees north of the Moon (10am)
Thu	27th	Saturn is stationary (8am)
Sun	30th	Venus is three degrees north of the Moon (4am)
Mon	31st	Ceres is in conjunction with the Moon (1am)

The Strumpets Of Yore.

2010-11-03T00:36:00.007Z

Venus and Saturn at the end of November.

Well its November, its cold, its wet, its windy and the day suddenly seems a lot shorter but those are the negatives, on the plus side everything rises and sets an hour earlier, Orion is now fully exposed by 10pm in the east, a welcome sight after the star-poor skies of October. And apart from Jupiter that’s about it for this week, but Novem

ber as a whole isn’t too bad.

But looking at this week first, we still have Jupiter very bright and due south around 9pm. Venus is back in the dawn sky barely rising by 7am. But it’s much improved by the end of the month, when it rises before 5 and by 7 it will be well above the SE horizon not far from Saturn and the moon, very bright and unmissable. And if you’re out and about between 6 and 7am you can see Saturn in the S E fairly, but not overly bright.

We still have comet Hartley II, though I’ve given up on it, it’s over in the east around midnight just to the east of Gemini passing through Canis Minor, if you want to try for it I’ve put a guide on the blog, but if you can’t be bothered then let NASA do the leg work. On Friday morning NASA's EPOXI mission, which has nothing to do with glue, flies within about 450 miles of the nucleus of Comet Hartley 2, taking pictures all the way. The best resolution should be just 7 meters per pixel on the nucleus's landscape. You can watch the coverage live on NASA TV.

November holds two respectable meteor showers and a chance to three bright planets during the night. The Taurid meteor shower is active through the middle of November. This shower holds few meteors, just 6 per hour on average. But the meteors are much brighter than average. Another meteor shower, the Leonids, peaks during the early morning of November 17. This brief shower has been known for sudden dramatic outbursts, also called meteor storms. But the Leonids have been pretty quiet these past few years. You might see 25-50 meteors per hour before dawn. I’ll tell you how to find them next week.

And as you will all know we’re in Scorpio now, which is my birth sign, the 20^th of November if you’re panning any lavish gifts though cash is preferred. Which means that Scorpio is one constellation you won’t see at the moment because that’s where the sun is.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 3^rd anniversary of the German Bundestag passing the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.

Last week of buses, whoopee.

2010-10-20T01:21:00.005+01:00

Well we certainly have an autumn sky now, which in many ways is as it should be, the summer constellations are now but an ephemeral wisp of memory. Taurus the bull with its baleful red eye is well up in the east by 10 closely followed by Orion. Which neatly brings us to the Orionid meteor shower which peaks this week around the 21^st, and much good will it do us, because we have a full moon on the 23^rd so throughout the entire week we will be hard pushed to see anything at all. But if you’re a fanatic and are determined to have a look then to have any chance at all look toward Orion in the eastern sky after midnight and good luck

And because there’s not much else this week, and I know its flogging a dead horse, lets reprise comet Hartley, with the rash optimism of youth I looked for it again and failed again, and this week with a full moon as well it will be even more difficult, but undaunted I’ll put another guide on the blog. So if you’re a fanatic and are determined to have a look then to have any chance at all look toward Auriga, the only constellation named after a local guest house, almost straight over head to the North with binoculars look a greenish star with a smudge.

Some people have managed to find Hartley 2.

As for the planets Venus has gone it will be back in the dawn sky in 3 weeks. Jupiter remains the main attraction dominating the southern sky throughout the whole night. And Saturn is back in the dawn sky rising around 7 in the east.

And that's your night sky for the week ending on the 1704th anniversary of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica.

Fly Fishing Again.

2010-10-13T22:05:00.002+01:00

A brief look again this week because there’s not a great deal going on just for once, I mentioned Hartley the comet last week, I looked for it again and I may have seen it, in fact I almost certainly did. There was no moon, I looked with binoculars a little to the east of Cassiopeia toward Perseus and saw hundreds of stars, the thing which has no tail and is allegedly surrounded by for want of a better word a smudge, was indiscernible amongst the milky way, and the moons back next week so it will there’s a guide above, if you think you may have better luck.

Next week maybe from Sunday onwards we have the Orionid meteor shower, which usually peaks on the 21^st, but you’ll need to be up after midnight and look toward Orion in the east.

As for the planets we’ve just about got Venus and most definitely have Jupiter.

Venus, though very bright at magnitude –4.7, is disappearing very low in the southwest during bright evening twilight. It sets well before dark. And if you’re on St Mary’s you have to go up the garrison to see it. It’s a very pronounced crescent at the moment.

Jupiter is loitering at the Pisces-Aquarius border as twilight fades; the giant planet becomes very obvious low in the east-southeast. It shines high in the southeast by mid-evening, by far the brightest star like point in the sky. It's highest in the south around midnight. And well worth a look in binoculars where it will show as a clear disc with the 4 largest moons clearly visible.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 1st anniversary of Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wisconsin proudly displaying the world’s biggest pumpkin at the Stillwater Harvest festival in Stillwater, Minnesota, it weighed 1810.IIbs 8 oz.

Fly Fishing

2010-10-06T11:43:00.003+01:00

The path of comet Hartley.

A brief look this week because there’s not a great deal going on, I mentioned Hartley last week, I looked for it but the moon was too bright, not this week though. Periodic Comet Hartley 2 is a dim 7th magnitude, visible in binoculars in a dark sky. It's excellently placed very high these moonless evenings, passing just south of Cassiopeia. But it's large and diffuse, so you'll need an unpolluted dark sky. Which we have in abundance, the moon is new on Thursday so this is the best week for a look, Cassiopeia is the wonky W high in the north eastern sky before midnight, there’s a guide on the blog.

Mercury (magnitude –1.2) drops back down into the sunrise this week. So its gone for a while but it will soon be back in the evening sunset.

Mars, vastly dimmer at magnitude +1.5, is 7° above or upper right of Venus in bright twilight. That's about one field-of-view width in typical binoculars. You'll need them. Good luck.

Jupiter is loitering at the Pisces-Aquarius border and is two weeks past opposition now. As twilight fades, Jupiter becomes very obvious low in the east-southeast. It shines high in the southeast by mid-evening, by far the brightest star like point in the sky. It's highest in the south around midnight. And well worth a look in binoculars where it will show as a clear disc with the 4 largest moons clearly visible.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 200^th anniversary of the first Oktoberfest: When the Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

The Persieds

2010-08-11T10:39:00.006+01:00

Persieds Radient, peaking Thursday night / Friday Morning

The main event this week has to be the Perseid meteor shower. They peak this year at 2 am Friday morning, so tomorrow night as late as you can manage is the best time for viewing. You need to look to the Northeast, there are no obvious stars nearby, the best way to find the radiant is to find Cassiopeia, which looks like a wonky W on its side. If you can’t find Cassiopeia, then I hope you can find the plough. Take a line from the two stars through the end of the dipper which takes you to Polaris, the North Star, keep going and you’ll find Cassiopeia. Now take a line from the lower internal diagonal in the triangle toward a couple of brightish stars and your there. Failing that just look to Northeast 30-40 degrees up, and if you don’t know where the Northeast is, have you considered suicide.

This year should be a good one because the moon is just off new and will be trailing the sun on the way to New York, it was 2007 when we last had a moonless Perseid Shower. If you’re a special type of Anorak you can count how many you see in a certain time and send the data in to the International Meteor Organization, who will compile it all and put it into a very interesting book. Though all this wholly academic because its bound to be overcast, but the Perseids will still be showing right up to the 22^nd.

The shower is caused by the Earth passing through the orbit of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which is due back in 2016 when the show will be much more vivid.

We still have Venus, Mars and Saturn waltzing around very close to each other shortly after evening twilight in the west. Unfortunately this means that Saturn and Mars are on the other side of the Sun and are about as far away as they get. Venus on the other hand is getting closer to us and should be visible as a bright crescent in a good pair of binoculars.

Jupiter is up now well before midnight in south east and dominates the Southern sky for the rest of the night, you can’t miss it.

That was your Scilly stars for the week ending on 127th anniversary of the first public performance of the Dominican Republic.

The Flatulence Of The Sun

2010-08-04T18:41:00.010+01:00

I take a week off and before you know its August, the month where the evening start to very noticeably start drawing in. And it’s not a bad month for looking at the night sky.

This week in particular if you look to the Northwest, Venus Mars and Saturn are almost on top of each other, especially on Saturday when they are within a 5 degree circle. Don’t worry about Mars and Saturn at first, just look for Venus which will visible very soon after Sunset hanging between Samson and the Bishop, looking from St. Mary’s. As the Sun sinks lower Saturn and Mars will come into view, all 3 of them should be easily visible at once in binoculars. By the end of August they will all be setting before 9, so this is the last chance to see them for a while. For this week at least, Mercury will be there but a lot closer to the horizon and may not be visible.

Yesterday Keri was banging on about the Aurora Borealis and he almost sounded like he knew what he was talking about, when the sad reality is that Keri is as much a scientist as John Prescott is a gay icon. Anyway you never know, there’s no moon of consequence for the next two weeks before midnight, so if you see some shimmering to the north it could just be the Northern Lights which are caused by the solar wind, a sort of Astral flatulence interacting with the earths magnetosphere. Which in turn is caused by the huge puddle of molten iron at the earth’s core?

Auroras are the result of the emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere, above 80 km (50 miles), from ionized nitrogen atoms regaining an electron, and oxygen and nitrogen atoms returning from an excited state to ground state. They are ionized or excited by the collision of solar wind particles being funneled down and accelerated along the Earth's magnetic field lines; excitation energy is lost by the emission of a photon of light, or by collision with another atom or molecule:

As for the moon this month first quarter was yesterday, its New on the tenth and full on the 24th.

And the other highlight of August is the Perseids Meteor Shower. The Perseids is one of the best meteor showers of the year, producing up to 60 meteors per hour at their peak. This year's shower should peak on the night of August 12 and the morning of the 13th, well after the moon has set. But you may be able to see some meteors any time from now to the 22nd. The radiant point for this shower will be, oddly enough, in the constellation Perseus. The thin, crescent moon will be out of the way early, setting the stage for a potentially spectacular show. For best viewing, look to the northeast after midnight.

I’ve put a guide on the blog. Of course the advent of the Perseids has now become a harbinger of doom. It is of course the time of year when the black shadow or she who walks by night begins her annual 8 and half months of plunder. Of course Barbara has already had virtually everything of value, but I’ve heard that this year she will be kidnapping elderly relatives for ransom, so you may want to put that Granny Flat on hold pending further developments.

And that was night sky for the week ending on the 39th anniversary of the founding of the Society for American Baseball in Cooperstown, New York.

The Scottish Comet

2010-06-16T21:24:00.004+01:00

A bit of a challenge for you this week, which I’m can say with a fair degree of certainty that none of you will take up, Comet McNaught. I did mention this comet before in the May round up, but couldn’t find any easy way of placing it for you, well now there is and its now naked eye bright. But and it’s a big but, you’ll have to get up very early or better still go to bed very late. Mid-June is when Comet McNaught should be most interesting, offering the best compromise between its increasing brightness and its decreasing altitude at the start of dawn. Moreover, the sky will be free of moonlight. It’s about 15° high in the nor, nor east as the sky starts to grow light on June tonight, but it appears roughly 1° lower every day after that. The comet passes Capella on the 21st, and it’s very low by the 24th, when it passes through Auriga, the constellation named after the guest house not the guest house it self.. By now Comet McNaught may be as bright as 4th magnitude, but moonlight is returning.

Comet McNaught June 1oth.

And Capella is the key to spotting the comet. Cappella is the brightest star in Auriga, the sixth brightest in the sky, and there’s really nothing else in the early low Northern sky at the moment, apart from the inevitable cloud that will make all this redundant. McNaught is moving towards Cappella up to the 21st. Find Cappella with binoculars and slowly move them eastward parallel to the horizon and you should find it, otherwise just scan randomly in the general area.

It’s quite a striking green, with a blue tail, pictures and a guide of course on the blog. Gas molecules of cyanogen (CN) and diatomic carbon (C2) in a comet's coma fluoresce green in sunlight. Ions of carbon monoxide (CO+) and carbon dioxide (CO2+) in the ion tail fluoresce blue. A comet's dust tail, on the other hand, simply reflects sunlight and is basically Sun-colored: pale yellow-white. This is clearly not a very dusty comet.

As for the planets no real change at all.

Mercury barely rises before the sun, so forget about it.

Mars still forms a striking pair with bluer Regulus in the late evening western sky.

Jupiter rises around 1 or 2 a.m. daylight saving time and shines high in the southeast before dawn.

Saturn (magnitude +1.1, in the head of Virgo) glows in the southwest during evening. The diagonal line of Saturn, Mars, and Venus is shrinking week by week. The three planets will bunch up low in the sunset in early August.

That was your night sky for the week ending on the 377th anniversary of the Catholic Church forcing Galileo to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe. He was wrong anyway, but it was a big step up the road.

Jupiter Dinged Again

2010-06-09T01:54:00.006+01:00

Impact Point

June 2010 Around 11pm

Nothing overly exciting going on at the moment, unless you live on Jupiter, which has just had another impact event. The fireball appeared in the giant planet's atmosphere June 3 at 20h30m GMT.

Jupiter has been the target of several huge impacts within the last two decades. In July 1994, 21 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the planet, any of which would have wiped us out. More recently, a 600 metre wide asteroid struck Jupiter on July 18th last year. This makes two impacts in a year twice in a year, which is actually quite alarming. Now a 600 metre meteorite is no where big as the 10kilomtre job that wiped out the 70% of everything including the dinosaurs 65,000,000 years. But if one landed in the North Atlantic at a 120,000 miles per hour plus there wouldn’t be much left of Europe or the Eastern Sea board of America. But not to worry Bruce Willis would sort it out in that rather fetching vest of his. But just to reassure you it all happens on Jupiter because the planet is so big it attracts these rogue celestial mountains and throws them out of a stable orbit, it’s like the solar system’s Hoover. Video below

Now more mundanely Mercury is back in the morning sky but to dim and too close to the sun to bother with.

Venus is still very much with us in the north western sky during and well after Sunset. Venus, Pollux, and Castor line up straight as twilight fades on Friday. You just can’t miss Venus its fantastically bright at moment. It’s on the other side of the Sun at the moment and in a telescope it shows as an almost complete but tiny disc. It’s getting nearer all the time and as it comes around the sun toward us, it will gradually change to a much larger crescent, by late summer. Venus is as high in twilight as it will appear this year; soon it begins its slow summer sink.

Mars glows in the west, forming a striking pair with bluer Regulus (magnitude +1.4). Mars has been closing in on Regulus for weeks. They passed each other on June 6th, 0.8° apart — a pencil-width at arm's length. In a telescope Mars is just a very tiny blob, 5.8 arcseconds in diameter.

Jupiter rises around 2 a.m. and shines in the southeast at dawn. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

Saturn (magnitude +1.0, in the head of Virgo) glows in the southwest during evening. Take a look at the star map for Scilly on the blog if you want to find it.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 133rd anniversary of Henry Ossian Flipper becoming the first African American cadet to graduate from West Point.

Old Town Inn Completes The Partial Mind

2010-05-19T13:50:00.003+01:00

Well I tried I really did but could I find the moon let alone Venus on Sunday afternoon, well the short answer is no. And if any of you tried and failed as well, well that’ll teach you to listen to me.

Venus now moving from Taurus to Gemini) is the bright Evening Star shining in the west-northwest during and after twilight, and remains completely unmissable Capella is the bright star far to its upper right.

Mars (magnitude +0.9, in Cancer) is high in the west during evening, very far upper left of Venus along the ecliptic. Mars is moving eastward against the stars; week by week it's closing in on Regulus to its upper left. They'll pass each other on June 6th, 0.8° apart.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.2, below the Circlet of Pisces) shines in the east-southeast at the first light of dawn. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

On Saturday the "star" and that’s star in quotes. above the gibbous Moon this evening (by about 8°: as seen from North America) is Saturn. The much fainter star about 2° to Saturn's lower right this week is Beta Virginis, which although my Latin doesn’t extend beyond amo agricola, means I think, virgin second class. And if you’re curious amo agricola means I love the farmer.

Saturn is high in the southwest during the evening. In a telescope Saturn's rings are tilted a mere 1.7° from edge-on, their minimum tilt for the next 15 years.

On Friday as dusk fades into night, turn binoculars or a telescope on Venus in the west-northwest. Look less than 1° lower left of Venus for the big open star cluster M35, but wait until the end of twilight

And that’s about it for this week a week that ends on the 468th anniversary of the ending of the Diet of Worms, when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw, a bit like a pious German Billy the Kid I guess.

May 2010

2010-05-05T12:16:00.002+01:00

This is one of the first images of the Sun in the extreme ultraviolet taken by the new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It will be producing solar images of unprecedented detail with over 1.5 Terrabytes of data being returned to Earth each day! It does rather look as though the Sun is awakening from its deep sleep over the last couple of years!

Well it’s over for another year, and over the course of two days the average of our visitors has tripled and some may say though I wouldn’t dare, that their average IQ has been similarly engorged. This means that it’s the beginning of May, so here’s some highlights for the coming month.

You may remember that last week I told you that Venus is visible sometimes during the day, well on the 16th which is a Sunday the moon is the merest whisker below Venus.. Its closest approach is at 10:00 BST when the Moon's northern edge is just 0.25 degrees below the planet. At 10 am, the Moon and Venus will lie just 5 degrees south of East and the newish moon will be naked eye visible. They’ll lie 30 degrees away from the Sun, but still be VERY careful when searching for them and keep your binoculars well away form the Sun!! The pair, which will lie close to the open cluster M35 in Gemini (1 degree above the Moon) that evening, should also make a beautiful target with binoculars as night falls.

Jupiter, having passed behind the Sun on the 28th February, has now reappeared in the pre-dawn sky. At the beginning of May it will rise in the east as morning twilight begins and, at magnitude -2.1, could be seen in binoculars given a clear low eastern horizon. During the month it will gradually rise earlier and, by end of the month, will rise about 2:30 and brighten to -2.3 magnitude, which is pretty bright. A small telescope will easily pick up Jupiter’s four Galilean moons as they weave their way around it.

Saturn may now be easily seen in the south after sunset lying in Virgo down to the lower left of the constellation Leo. It can then be seen for much of the night with a magnitude +0.8 rising (which means getting fainter) to +1 during the month. The ring system is still close to edge-on and so will still appear very thin - the reason why Saturn is not a bright as it is when the rings are more open. For the first time in 15 years we are now begining to see the northern face of the rings. A small telescope will easily show its brightest satellite, Titan at magnitude 7.8.

Mercury passed in front of the Sun on April 28th and will appear in the morning twilight sky during the latter part of May reaching its greatest elongation from the Sun on the 26th. However, the ecliptic is at a very shallow angle to the horizon and so Mercury will only lie about 5 degrees above the horizon half an hour before sunrise. You might just be able to pick it out with binoculars given a very low eastern horizon.

Mars remains visible (at magnitude +0.7 changing to +1.1 during the month) in the south-west after sunset. It is now moving ~1/2 degree a day eastwards from Cancer into Leo. On the 31st May, it will lie just 3.5 degrees to the right of Regulus.

And right at the end of May we have Comet McNaught. In the early hours of the morning at the end of May, binoculars should help you spot a comet. It’ll be a night mare to find but if I can figure out how to tell you where to look I will in 3 weeks.

And that was night sky for the month ending on the 99th anniversary of the blessing and launch of RMS Titanic.

Mo and I

2010-04-30T14:43:00.001+01:00

Pretty much same old same old this week. Which is not necessarily bad, Venus is still there in the North West soon after sun set, getting brighter all the time a little to the left of the Pleiades which are we about to lose until next autumn. During the next 10 days as the moon ages and shifts further toward the dawn sky, Venus may be bright to cast a shadow, if its dark enough. Venus along with the moon, the sun, the occasional very bright comet, and the even rarer super nova are the only celestial bodies capable of casting a shadow, we shall see.

Anyway I’ve been covering for Spider while he’s off on the mainland attending his gran’s funeral. And on Monday night I picked up Mo Widdop and before taking her own I drove down the mermaid car park to see Venus, and there it was, incandescent, the planet of love, and me and Mo, it was a very touching moment. And as an aside when Denis passes away, hopefully in many, many years to come Mo will become the widow Widdop, which I hope will be some consolation for her.

The summer constellations are beginning to appear in the dawn sky, Scorpio is there now with the full moon around an hour before Sunset, see the blog, because you won’t be up for it. Scorpio as you may know runs from 23 of October to 22 of November when it rises and sets with the sun. At the moment we’re in Taurus which sets a little after Venus at the moment but by the end of May it will be firmly attached to the Sun, and then it will be Gemini’s turn.

Tomorrow we have a full moon, which will give us fairly big tides for the upcoming weekend tedium. And a low tide for Sunday’s barbeque so hopefully it won’t come in and put the fire out hours before the end this year.

Mars, dimming farther into the distance, is high in the southwest during the evening. It's in Cancer east of the Beehive Star Cluster.

A bright Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 60 to 45 minutes before sunrise. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

A not overly bright Saturn is high in the south during evening. Use the star map for Scilly on the blog to find it. In binoculars you should be able to Titan, which is Saturn’s largest moon, and is actually larger than Mercury.

That was your Night Sky over for the week ending on the 165th anniversary of William Walker departing from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

Mo and I

2010-04-30T14:43:00.000+01:00

Fireballs

2010-04-21T01:38:00.003+01:00

I suppose the big event of this and last week has passed with the meteorite crashing into the sea off Tolman point. It could have been an isolated pebble but it is far more likely to part of the dust left in a comets trail. The most likely contender for this is comet Thatcher which has nothing to do with the iron lady. When we pass through its tail between the 16th and 26th of April fire balls are quite common. They seem to radiate from the constellation Lyra. But Lyra rises a bit later than the meteorite was seen, in the North East at about 9:30, and the fireball appeared in the South. So we’ll never know but after 10 if you look to North East where you’ll see a brightish star Vega, you should see 10 to 20 meteors an hour. The shower should peak tomorrow on the 22nd but they should show for a few days either side.

Tonight, the First-quarter Moon shines below Mars shines over the Moon.

From Friday through Sunday Venus and the Pleiades fit within a 5° binocular field of view in the west soon after sunset. With binoculars you should be just able to see Venus as a crescent leaning toward the setting sun. On Saturday a milky yellow Saturn shines to the Moon's upper left.

Mercury is fading and dropping out of sight in the sunset, after pairing with Venus for the first half of April. And I know quite a lot of you saw the elusive little rock, well two of you anyway, buts it’s well on the way back into the sun again now.

Venus shines very brightly in the west-northwest during twilight, getting a little higher and more obvious every week.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.5, shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon. Near it binoculars show the big Beehive Star Cluster, M44.

Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 45 minutes before your sunup. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

Saturn is high in the southeast to south during evening. Not overly bright or easy to find, so have a look at APL star map for Scilly on the blog.

But enough of this frippery, not much has been heard of the black shadow recently, but she has been busy, very busy, while her alto ego Barbara Simpson has been gleaning feel good stories the length and breath of the islands, the black shadow has been hard at it. You may have heard of quantitative easing, well my mole in the US federal reserve tells me that, through a diabolically cunning scheme, to difficult for me to understand let alone explain, the Black Shadow has siphoned more than 650 billion dollars that had been intended to kick start the world economy, its all stashed in her hide away deep in the bowels of Mt Moorwell. What sinister use she will put it too, remains to be seen.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 51st anniversary of the last Canadian missionary being booted out of the People's Republic of China.

Mercury.

2010-04-08T10:47:00.003+01:00

Mercury

We have an unusual contender for this week’s main attraction, tiny little Mercury. Not that its overly bright, but for once its easy to, in fact this is as good an apparition as often-elusive Mercury ever puts on and with Venus lighting the way to it, you could hardly ask for Mercury to be any easier. Look to the WNW soon after sunset and you’ll very quickly be able to spot an extremely bright Venus, if you look a little to its right you be able to see Mercury.

Yesterday evening at around 8:45 I caught the pair of them at the same time in binoculars. Venus is many times brighter than Mercury but they were the only two objects visible in that part of the sky. Venus was visible from around 8 until about 10:30 when it sank over Mincarlo, looking from the garrison.

It was a bit of a red letter day for me because it was the first time I could ever say I’d definitively seen Mercury, though I must have seen it from the plane window 6 weeks ago when it was completely over shadowed by Venus. The little planet is dimming rapidly now it was magnitude -.8 on the second but by the next week it will be right down to magnitude 1.4. So the next few days will give you your best viewing window, possibly for the next 140,000 years, but I’m speculating here.

And here’s some stuff you probably have less than no interest in about Mercury, it’s a pretty miserable place that orbits as close as 30 million miles from the Sun so it gets as hot as a monkeys bum, it whacks around the sun every 88 days, and it has a 1400 hour day, one day on Mercury is 58 of ours, more or less 9 Mercurian months long. It only revolves at 6 miles an hour so if you could maintain a brisk walk at the equator, which you couldn’t then you’d never have see the sun come up, or set, depending on whether you like extreme cold -150 degrees, or heat 500 degrees, and nothing lives there. But on the plus side there are no elections

As for the other planets they’re all around at the moment. Venus will be bright after sunset in the wnw for a while yet.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.3, now, it shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1) is emerging very low in the glow of dawn. Look for it just above the eastern horizon about 40 or 30 minutes before sunrise.

Saturn (magnitude +0.6, in the head of Virgo) is two weeks past opposition. Look for it in the east-southeast at dusk, higher in the southeast by late evening, and highest in the south by 11 or midnight.

As usual have a look at the blog for guidance, which I guess you are doing.

That was your night sky for the week ending on the 40^th anniversary of an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploding.

The Pliers Of Hercules

2010-03-24T01:02:00.009Z

Just a short one this week, because I’m flying back to England yesterday, sorry about the miss-matched tenses there, but I’m recording this Monday you’re listening on Wednesday and I’m fly back Tuesday. So by the time you hear this I’ll be back in England trudging across the Tundra, mile after mile, trying to find some Soya milk for the huskies.

Officially spring has arrived, not that you’d know it, even in Spain where it’s wet and miserable as well but maybe not quite as cold, and nothing too special to report this week. Mercury should be just about visible in the West just after Sunset, below a much brighter Venus. This week well away from the middle aged moon.

Tonight the Moon forms a roughly equilateral triangle with Mars and Pollux this evening, as shown here, tomorrow the moon moves up a little and together with Mars, Pollux, and Castor form a ragged line this evening, and on Friday you’ll be able to spot bright Regulus shining to the left of the moon. As usual there’s a guide on the blog, though lets face it you should all be experts by now.

Not much action with the rest of the planets, these being Jupiter and Saturn, according to my secret sources Jupiter is apparently still hidden in the glow of sunrise, but I reckon it should be visible very low in the east in the minutes before sun up, especially toward the end of the week and definitely by early April.

Saturn not overly bright is in the head of Virgo and hit opposition last Sunday: rising around sunset, shining highest in the middle of the night, and setting around sunrise. In a telescope Saturn's rings are tilted only 3° from edge-on. They'll narrow further to 1.7° in May and early June, and then begin widening again. So with any luck in about 5 years Saturn will be good and bright again. Anyway there’s a thunder storm on Saturn at the moment, about twice the size of the Earth, but from here it looks like little white spot. There’s a video of it on the blog where you can see Dione, one Saturn’s moons wacking around as well, but be warned Avatar it’s not.

White Storm On Saturn.

The giant, long-lived thunderstorm on Saturn known as the Saturn Electrostatic Disturbance (SED), a source of radio emissions detected by the Cassini spacecraft, has returned to amateur visibility as a small white spot, at least for users of large scopes and/or during moments of excellent seeing. It's above center barely past the central meridian here. "The SED is really brightening now!" writes Christopher Go, who took this image. "It is much more prominent than when I last imaged it." Update: As of March 18th it was fading and had reportedly split in two.

Go took this image at 16:48 UT March 13, 2010. The spot is near System III longitude 0°, System II longitude 236°. In addition, he notes, "The [dark] South Equatorial Belt is very prominent, while the North Equatorial Belt looks faint. There are a lot of band details, especially in the northern hemisphere."
Little Dione is in the background below the right end of the rings. South is up. Click image for a .wmv movie of eight images (with north up).

Christopher Go

And that was a rather brisk Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 152nd anniversary of Hymen Lipman patenting the first pencil with an attached eraser.

Spring

2010-03-15T19:22:00.003Z

The most important thing about this week must be on Sunday which is the first day of spring, the equinox occurs at 9:32 am when the axis of the earth is exactly perpendicular to the ecliptic, in English the orbital plane, and by 9:33 it will be tentatively pointing toward the Sun again. And because we’re right on top of the vernal equinox the days are lengthening faster now than at any other time of the year. The rate of change will peak on the 21st then slow down to midsummer’s day when it stops dead and reverses when we begin the inexorable plunge to mid winter. But that’s another 3 months yet.

We may be able to just swing all 5 naked eye planets this week, but I warn you now it’s iffy and it means very little sleep. Mercury sets at 6:30 just behind the sun, but it may be visible in binoculars with a clear eastern horizon over the sea, so this is really for St Agnes and Bryher folk. Though you may get a view between Porth Looe and the golf club on St Mary’s. But if you can’t see Mercury you won’t be able to miss Venus if the conditions are right, it sets around 7:30 and is a very bright -3.9. Tonight the two inner planets will be accompanied by a very young moon, which reminds me it was a month ago last night that I photographed the 3 of them from the window of a jet, over Northern France.

Mars is still very much with us, now sadly faded to magnitude –0.2, it shines very high in the southeast at dusk and is due South by 8:30. It's in Cancer, below Pollux and Castor at nightfall and left of them later in the evening.

Saturn that most buoyant of planets, it being the only one that will in water float admittedly in a bath if heroic proportions. The ringed planet is at opposition on the 21st which means it rises as the sun sets and vice versa. And it will be due South at about 12:30, this week it setting at about 6:30 am just as Jupiter rises. The giant planet has passed from behind the sun and is setting around now before the sun at 4pm, which we can’t see. But it’s back in the late dawn sky just before the sun so it may be visible briefly. But by the 31st it’s up almost an hour before the sun so it may best to wait. We won’t see it again before midnight until early July, but by September it will rise around 8 and will be dominating the southern sky throughout the autumn and early winter, but let’s get the summer out of the way first.

If you’re champing at the bit to find Aires, as I’m sure most of you are. The moon is just off new at the moment and on Thursday at nightfall you’ll find it in the west at Sunset just after Venus has retired for the night in Aries, there’s a guide of on the blog. Now who am I to pass judgement on the ancient Greeks, though it’s not as if they can sue or anything, but they must have been on something pretty strong to be able to see a ram in that little pile of nondescript stars.

On the 20th the moon a little further up occults the Pleiades again and on Sunday it’s a little to the North of Taurus the bull, which to be fair is quite like a bulls head, with his bright baleful eye Aldebaran.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 4th anniversary The Federal Reserve discontinuing publishing the M3 money supply figures.

The Inter Regnum

2010-03-08T13:46:00.002Z

Vesta find it if you can.

Mars is gibbous now; it's more than a month past opposition. The north polar cap (bottom) remains big and bright despite the advance of spring in the Martian northern hemisphere. At center-left is dark Syrtis Major; at upper right are dark Sinus Sabaeus and Sinus Meridiani. At top, the Hellas region is slightly bright.

The Winter Triangle

Now you may claim and with some justification that it’s not summer yet and technically you could be right. But and it’s a big but, if you get up early enough in the pre dawn sky the summer constellations have arrived, ready to shove Orion, Gemini and Taurus unceremoniously out of the way. If for reasons of your own your up an hour before sunrise, in the twilit dawn sky you’ll see Scorpio and Sagittarius teapot, itching to reassert themselves; and Sagittarius is quite easy to spot, it looks a lot more like a teapot than an archer. If you look in the next couple of days, you’ll see them in the Southeast along with a rapidly ageing moon. There’s a guide on the blog for you anyway. And here it is.

But the husky hag of early darkness in her robes of snowy grey is still with us for a while yet; quite lyrical that but sadly not mine, so we still have the winter triangle in the southern sky. Comprising of the red giant Betelgeuse on Orion’s right shoulder with Procyon a little up and to the left with down below Sirius, the brightest of the stars, giving us the third point. I know I mention the winter triangle quite a lot but this time I have a lovely picture for you on the blog.

Tomorrow Mars stops its retrograde motion and starts to move east again against the background of the stars. If as many of you believe the Scilly is at the centre of the universe this retrograde motion is difficult to explain, and involves the planets doing elaborate little pirouettes around their main orbit. But it all falls into place if you bite the bullet and accept the sun as the centre of the Solar System it all falls nicely into place, and we can thank good old Copernicus for working it out and Newton for telling us how.

As for the planets, only 3 again this week, Jupiter and Mercury are immersed in sunlight, in fact Jupiter is on the other side of the sun at its most distant at the moment.

But Venus is very much back with us at a very bright magnitude –3.9 the planet of love is slowly emerging from the sunset. Look for it due west just above the horizon about 30 minutes after sundown. Venus will gradually creep up into better twilight visibility for the next three months. Venus isn’t a very nice place when all’s said and done. It has a dense atmosphere of CO2 which traps most of the suns heat, there’s a little water there which will be in the form of superheated steam, the surface temperature is hot enough for rivers of molten lead, not that there are any, that’s just how hot it is. Global warming gone mad, so take you telly of standby and switch off the radio, now.

A much dimmer Mars, now faded to magnitude –0.4, shines very high in the east at dusk and toward the south by around 9 p.m. It's in Cancer, below Pollux and Castor after dusk and left of them later in the evening. So if you’re unfortunate to be born is Cancer with Mars right still retrograde then you’re in for a hell of a time, allegedly.

Saturn not overly bright, in western Virgo rises in the east in twilight and shines higher in the southeast later in the evening, and stands highest in the south around 1 a.m. It’s a lot dimmer than it could be because the rings are still almost flat on to us. The best way to find it is to look on the APL star map for Scilly on the blog. If you can find it, it has a yellowish glow and won’t twinkle too much.

And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 15th anniversary of the state of Mississippi formally ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, and becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. A mere 130 years after most of the others.

The Night Sky March 2010

2010-03-02T13:41:00.000Z

The Night Sky March 2010

The Flatulence of Goats

2010-02-24T18:01:00.008Z

At this time of year, Orion stands at his highest in the south after dusk. His top-left star is bright, red Betelgeuse, a bloated giant star nearing the end of its life. It’s consumed most of its hydrogen and turned it to helium, and it will keep on moving up the periodic table until it gets to iron, if its big enough, when it’s energy gone it will collapse on itself and turn into a super dense white dwarf. If it was a little bigger, well quite a lot bigger, like Mr Creosote, the collapse would trigger an enormous explosion and form a super nova, but its too small so it won’t. That’s a sad little story if I ever heard one, but don’t get to maudlin it will still be up there glowing red and podgy long after we’re all gone. Anyway I’m banging on about it because Betelgeuse, if you’ve forgotten forms part of the Winter Triangle (which is almost equilateral) with Procyon to its left and bright white Sirius below them both.

Tonight Castor and Pollux the twins in Gemini are left of the Moon, there’s a guide on the blog. And tomorrow the bright, fiery "star" near the gibbous Moon is Mars. A telescope reveals that Mars too is becoming gibbous; it's now nearly a month past opposition.

On Friday the Moon, Mars, Pollux, and Castor form a long, ragged across the Southern sky. And on Saturday, the "star" over the Moon is Regulus, as seen above.

As for the planets we only really have two this week, Mercury as usual is lost in the glow of the sun. Venus a very bright -3.9 is barely emerging from deep in the sunset. Look for it just above the west-southwest horizon about 20 minutes after sundown. Despite its brightness it won’t show well being so close to the setting sun.

Mars, still bright, but dimming now, shines high in the east at dusk and is highest in the south around 10 p.m. It's in Cancer, below Pollux and Castor after dark

Jupiter is hidden behind the glare of the Sun, it will be while now until it remerges in the dawn sky in the spring.

Saturn’s not overly bright rises in the east around 8 p.m. and stands highest in the south around after midnight

Now I must confess to a little misinformation last week, when I told you I’d missed the close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter last Tuesday evening. I recorded on Monday because I was travelling on Tuesday and assumed I’d miss it. Well as luck would have it, I had a starboard window seat on the plane looking west and as the sun set over northern France at 37,000 feet, though I have to take the pilots word for that, both planets were showing well beneath the tiny sickle moon. It was quite impressive more for the deep blue sky you get 8,000 feet higher than Everest; I’ve put an enhanced photo on the blog

Venus and Jupiter setting over France on the 16th Feb.

And that was your Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 77th anniversary of King Kong opening at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

Orion Nebula

2010-02-10T10:26:00.001Z

The Great Nebula In Orion's Belt

Not a huge amount to get excited about this week, pretty well all we’ve got at the moment is Mars and Saturn. Mercury has cleared off again and Venus is about to turn up next week.

The stars are still all there of course and if you get the chance take a look at Orion while it’s so high, if you’re your eyes are good you will be able to see a fuzzy patch in his belt, but it’s easily seen with binoculars. This is the Orion Nebula (aka M42, or NGC 1976). It is one of the brightest nebulae; it’s located at a distance of 1,350 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. And its enormous at an estimated 24 light years across

The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed brown dwarfs, intense and turbulent motions of gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula. There are also supersonic "bullets" of gas piercing the dense hydrogen clouds of the Orion Nebula. Each bullet is ten times the diameter of Pluto's orbit and tipped with iron atoms glowing bright blue, real Jovian thunder bolts if you like.

But mercifully it’s much quieter around here.
Mercury after a brief reappearance is sinking back into the sunrise. Look for it just above the east-southeast horizon about 30 minutes before sunup. Binoculars help. Venus is hidden nearby but she’s on the way back.

Mars, fiery bright at magnitude –1.1, shines in the east-northeast in twilight and higher in the east later. It's in Cancer, more than halfway from Regulus below it to Pollux and Castor above. Mars is highest in the south by midnight. Dramatic things are happening on Mars's north polar cap (bottom) as it shrinks in the Martian springtime. With billowing white clouds, and dust storms, unfortunately the clouds are co2 as is the ice at the poles. And if you’re an idiot like me and got your hand painfully stuck to a lump of dry ice as a kid, you’ll know just how cold it is. Mars has ice caps at both its north and south poles. The perennial or permanent portion of the north polar cap consists almost entirely of water ice. In the northern hemisphere winter, this gains a seasonal coating of frozen carbon dioxide about three feet thick.

Jupiter now almost gone is descending into the sunset glow low in the west-southwest. But it will be in a close sunset conjunction with Venus on the 16th.

Saturn’s in Virgo and rises in the east around 9 p.m, standing highest in the south around 2 a.m. I’ve not seen it yet this yet, but it will get easier to find as the year progresses.
Now I rarely mention the outer planets because they’re so dim and distant, and on Uranus can be seen with the naked eye. Uranus and Neptune are hidden in the glare of the Sun. Pluto is low in the southeast before dawn, but I defy any one to find it, I know I couldn’t. As usual I’ve put some guides up on the blog and will attempt another video this week, but they are a little time consuming.
Now on a more serious note sadly we must return to the Black Shadow and a particularly poignant plea from a little girl who must remain nameless. In early December the Black Shadow aka Barbara Simpson cleared the poor child’s house, including her mum’s dentures. Since then mum just sits on a over turned wheel barrow day and night vacantly drinking meths, because her dentures were her life. The hapless child’s dad couldn’t stand it anymore and ran off with a shepherd on Christmas Eve. All the little girl wants is for the Black Shadow to return her mum’s false teeth, so that her dad will hopefully come back and then they can begin rebuilding their lives.

And that was your Scilly star for the week ending on 142nd anniversary of New York’s City Jolly Corks organization renaming itself the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

February's Outlook and A VIDEO!!!!!!

2010-02-02T16:43:00.033Z

A pretty shoddy first attempt at a Scilly Stars video.
Fellini it's not!

The Moon Occulting The Pleides Cluster

Mercury 45 minutes before sunrise

Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus on the 16th Feb at Sunset.

Firstly this week I’ve have to make a correction, because last week I made myself a bit of a laughing stock. If you recall I said that Mars was in Opposition, which it was on Friday, but I also said that it would be easy to spot, which it was, because it would be where the sun was 12 hours ago, which is a pack of lies. What I should have was it would be where the sun was 12 hours earlier on July 31st in pretty well any year you want. Because unforgivably I forgot that that the earth’s axis is sloped toward the night sky during the autumn and winter months. Which is why the planets always take a higher path across the sky during the winter months.

Anyway Mars is still there and very bright it rises in the e north e around 5, where the sun will rise at the end of July as I just painstakingly told you. By 10pm it will be almost due south as Saturn rises due East. And Mars is still retrograde against the stars, which moves it appears to be moving east instead of west which means according to the laws of toffee that it’s a bad time to be assertive. Here’s Belinda to take you into the Twilight zone

It seems that When Mars is in its retrograde cycle, we are forced to re-assess our current projects, our approach to getting what we want, and our desire nature. Rather than directly asserting our desires, we tend towards introspection. While Mars in direct motion is direct, straightforward, assertive, and aggressive, with Mars in retrograde motion, Mars energy is essentially turned inward--it's internalized, intensified, personalized, and perhaps pressurized. We can be hesitant about taking action, second-guessing our instincts or our natural impulses rather than acting upon them. The way we react to situations under normal conditions doesn't necessarily work for us now, or we don't exactly trust it.

And that’s why you feel more like Norman Wisdom than Charles Bronson, at the moment!

February has a couple of very nice high points. Venus is back for a star. And on the 16th there’s a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. Given a low south-western horizon and a clear night you will have a chance to see a close conjunction of the two brightest planets at about 6 pm, just after sunset. Jupiter is moving towards the Sun, so getting lower in the sky whilst Venus is moving away so getting higher in the sky. Their closest approach is on the 16th February when they are just 4 degrees above the horizon with a very thin crescent Moon hanging in the sky above. This should be a lovely sight, so let’s hope that it is clear. Porth Looe will be a good viewing point for those of us unfortunate enough to live on St Mary’s.

On the 21st at 18:50 The Moon occults some of the stars in the Pleiades Cluster. The first quarter Moon at will occult the very pretty arc of stars that extends down to the left of the Pleiades Cluster. As the leading limb of is in darkness, it will be nice to see the stars disappear from sight without an obvious cause. More about that in two weeks.

And as you know this the international year of Astronomy and to celebrate a team of British astronomers have made the largest lunar image in history and gained a place in the Guinness Book of Records! The image comprises 87.4 mega pixels with a Moon diameter of 9550 pixels. This show details as small as 1km across. It works a little like Google Earth.

That was night sky for the week ending on the 65th anniversary of the first deployment of US combat troops in Vietnam. Life was so much simpler then.

Mars at its closest.

2010-01-28T10:20:00.005Z

There’s a couple of high points this week both involving Mars, though perhaps I should qualify that, high points may be pushing it a little, maybe a couple of less subterranean would be more apt. Tonight the red planet is at its closest point to us until 2012, and its at its brightest. It’s a mere 63 million miles away, nowhere near as close as in 2003 when it was as close as 35,000,000 miles, the closest it’s been for at least 5000 years. It appears brighter than at any point between 2008 and 2012. At magnitude -1.3 it’s just a shade dimmer than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, which is far to Mars's right in the southeast.

And if you’ve been following the saga of Spirit, the Mars rover that Nasa landed 6 years ago, which is still functioning, you’ll know that there’s a lot of evidence that Mars was once a lot warmer and wetter than it is now, which considering its freezing cold and bone dry is plausible. So what happened, it’s obvious really the Martians, bless them, didn’t use their compositors adequately, flew off on too many gas guzzling skiing holidays on Olympus Mons and drove their children to school when they should have made them walk.
And on Friday Mars is at opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's sky. So it will be rising and setting with Friday’s full Moon. And the Moon is at perigee, the closest point to us in its orbit making this the largest and brightest full Moon, by a little bit, of the year. And if you happen to be on Mars looking Earthward, well the blue planet will be invisible buried in the heart of the sun, much like Venus is for us at the moment. If you want to find Mars it’s pretty easy, because its in opposition it where the sun would be 12 hours before. So it’s rising in the SE at sunset, it pokes hits little red head over the horizon at 5:03 and is due South at midnight, very red and very bright, it's in Cancer, nearly midway between Regulus below it and Pollux and Castor above it.
And we have three other planets to see this week.
Mercury is having a good morning apparition. Look for it low in the southeast about an hour before sunrise
Venus is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.
Jupiter still very bright shines in the west-southwest in twilight and sets soon after dark.
Saturn rises in the east around 10 p.m. and stands highest in the south around 4 a.m. In earliest dawn, trace the huge, horizontal line of Spica, Saturn, Regulus, Mars, and Pollux all the way from high in the south to lower in the west-northwest
And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 130th anniversary of the installation of the first electric streetlight Wabash, Indiana.

Rather Cold

2010-01-05T22:56:00.000Z

The sky at this time of year is as good as it gets, the summer constellations which pale in comparison with the winter stars are firmly lodged in the daylight sky, and we have Orion, Taurus Gemini and the little Pleiades star cluster dominating the southern sky all night. To the north is Polaris, the great and little bears and Cassiopeia much higher and looking much brighter than they do in the summer. And with the cold nights there’s less atmospheric distortion, but there’s the rub it’s to cold to stand around looking even with a Radio Scilly Winter Weight Hoody. And going out to set up a telescope is a lost cause. So most of us at this time of year only see the sky when walking between one warm environment and another.

One New Years Day there was a spectacular tilted Rhombus, that’s a diamond shape, in the South Eastern Sky, Betelgeuse the red giant on Orion’s shoulder making one point, brilliant Procyon, I can pronounce it now, making the lower point, Mars very bright now in the East the furthest point and Pollux in Gemini the upper point suitably embellished with the almost full moon in the middle. Of course the moons moved on now, but the loop sided diamond is still there in the S eastern sky, becoming ever more loop sided as Mars moved further to the west.

We’re down to 3 visible planets again now, Mercury and Venus are hidden behind the sun, Venus will appear again in the Sunset in late February. Mars (a bright magnitude –0.8, in Leo) rises in the east-northeast around 7 or 8 p.m. local time, far below Castor and Pollux and a bit to the left. About an hour later, dimmer Regulus rises about a fist-width beneath it. By 2 or 3 a.m. Mars and Regulus are highest in the south, now lined up horizontally.

In a telescope Mars is 13 arcseconds wide, nearly as large as it will become during this apparition. The north polar cap is in good view, bordered by a wide dark collar.. Mars will pass closest to Earth on January 27th, when it will be 14.1 arcseconds wide.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1, at the Capricorns-Aquarius border) shines brightly in the southwest in twilight, but lower after dark. It sets around 8 p.m. With binoculars you will be able to see up to 4 of the giant planets 63 named moons.

Saturn in the head of Virgo rises in the east around 11 and stands highest in the south before dawn. Saturn’s rings are narrow, tilted 5° from edge-on to us, their maximum tilt until next August, but it’s still pretty dim.

And remember its January 6th today, so you’d better take down your decorations or something dreadful may happen, maybe all the doom and gloom predicted in Island Parish will come true, than we’ll all have to go live on the mainland, if anything survives the snow that is.

That was your Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 237th anniversary of the opening of the first public Colonial American museum in Charleston, South Carolina.

Blue Moon

2009-12-30T09:52:00.006Z

CAN'T UPLOAD ANY PICS TO THE BLOG YET, HOPEFULLY LATER!

Well here we are with the last Scilly Stars of the year, nay the whole decade, perhaps if this was Household tips or even a clever pets spot, it would be appropriate to do a round up but its not so I won’t, and anyway the only thing I can remember was the total Lunar Eclipse of August 2009, when town was full thronged with panicking locals who were convinced the end of the world was imminent, being reassured by east European seasonal workers mopping there brows and telling them in perfect English that the moon will come back. And that’s my review of the decade.

Not much going on this week, though I expect you're all to jaded to care, but on Thursday, New Years Eve by the way, we have a full moon, the second full moon in December, which means it’s a blue moon, which means we must have another in January as well, except its full at 7:15, so technically it won’t be full on New Years Day, but its good enough for me. So how exciting two blue moons in a row.

And on Thursday again, there’s a very slight partial lunar eclipse from 18:52 to 19:54.

What else do we have this week, well like last week and next week Orion's Belt points the way down to rising Sirius. Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon form the nearly equilateral Winter Triangle. And if you don’t know where Orion is yet have a look at the blog.

Mercury is still just about there in the sunset, going down shortly after the Sun. Venus is on winter vacation on the other side of the sun.

Mars getting brighter all the time now in Leo rises around 9 p.m. local time, far below Castor and Pollux in Gemini a bit north of east. A little later, dimmer Regulus rises about a fist-width beneath it. By 2 or 3 a.m. Mars and Regulus are highest in the south, lined up horizontally.

Saturn (magnitude +0.9, in the head of Virgo) rises in the east around midnight and shines highest in the south before and during dawn. Its rings are still narrow, tilted 4.8° from edge-on to us.

Jupiter, bar the moon far away the brightest object in the sky, brightly in the south-southwest in twilight, and lower in the southwest after dark. It sets around 9 p.m.

Now for the lucky among you Santa came a bit late this year, but for others not at all, why? Well I was talking to a very tired Black Shadow on Boxing Day, and it seems that she blackmailed Santa, she showed me the photos, into letting her borrow his fully laden sleigh this year, which has Tardis like properties, Barbara tells me. Anyway she took what she wanted and gave him a detritus laden sleigh back in the early hours of Christmas morning. She then blindfolded me and took me to her secret hideaway in the depths of mount moorwell, which is now a Aladdin’s cave stuffed full of plasma TVs, laptops and iphones. Well as she said on happy talk only last week it supplements the pension.

That was your night’s sky on the 288th anniversary of The Committee of Inquiry on the South Sea Bubble publishing its findings.

5 Weeks Away

2009-11-11T12:19:00.008Z

Now if you were listening to Keri yesterday you may recall he said that last night would be hopeless for star gazing, well that was just another fine example of how he’s not to be trusted, last night was the best night we’ve had for ages. And gave me the best view of Orion I’ve seen since March, and the first sighting I’ve had of Mars since last winter.

I’ll be away until from today until mid December so this will be the last Scilly Stars until the 16th of December. So this week the plan is to give you any highlights that occur over the next 6 weeks. But sadly there aren’t any except possibly the Geminids meteor shower which appears to radiate from the constellation Gemini. They can be seen as early December the 6th when one meteor every hour or so could be visible. During the next week, rates increase until a peak of 50-80 meteors per hour is attained on the night of December 13/14. The last Geminids are seen on December 18, when the rate drops to one every hour or so. Have a look on the Scilly Star map on the blog and set the date for the 13th of December. Gemini rises around 6 and is high in the South by midnight with Mars trailing about an hour behind.

Video Of The Geminids

Most of the other highlights are for diehards, involving Jovian moons or Asteroids. But there is one it should be hard to miss, the full moon on the second of December, not so interesting in itself, but the next one is the last of the year and falls on New Years Eve, which makes it a blue moon, so why not celebrate.

Throughout the whole period Jupiter will be in the Southern Sky at sunset, edging further to the SW as the nights go by, and setting around 9pm by mid December.

Tomorrow morning if your out and about at 6:30 you’ll be able to see Venus near the South Eastern horizon with Saturn further south, very close to the moon and a little further to the west Mars. As the weeks go on Venus sinks into the sun, to reappear in the New Year, but Saturn and Mars are still there moving a little to the west each day, which means they are rising earlier every night.

Mars appears in the East tonight at about 10pm, Saturn at around 4am. By mid December Mars appears north east at 9, as Jupiter sets and Saturn rises around 1:45 am. We’ll have to wait until January before we see Saturn before midnight.

I’ll update the blog while I’m away, when I can, but there’s always the Scilly Star Map link over on ther right which will give you a map of the sky between now and eternity.

That was you night sky for the 5 weeks ending on 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

All you ever wanted to know about Magnitudes

2009-11-06T10:20:00.006Z

The Crag Nebula (Huuble)

Firstly today I’m going to bang on about Stellar Magnitudes, these range from -26.73 for the sun, to 31.5 which is the dimmest object visible by Hubble, the sun from Neptune is – 19.3, which is brighter than the full moon from the earth at -12.6. You’ve probably noticed by now that the brighter an object is then the lower is its apparent magnitude. Its not a particularly linear scale, the moon is 14 orders of magnitude dimmer than the Sun but is actually 450,000 times less bright. Venus ranges from -4.6 to -3.8 and even at its dimmest is brighter than Jupiter and Mars at their brightest at -2.9. Very occasionally, there’s a supernova which frightens everyone to death, for example the Crab Supernova of AD 1054, now the crab nebula in Taurus, which was a dazzling -6.5, which is pretty bright con (6500 light years away).

That was clear wasn’t it, and it will make my life a lot easier, now what have we got this week,

Look low in the east around 10 or 11 p.m. and you'll see the bright winter constellation Orion already on the rise. Above Orion is orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran is the fingertip-size Pleiades star cluster. On Friday the waning Moon will be shining to Orion's left in the middle of Gemini, as shown in the blog.

Mercury is in superior conjunction, behind the glare of the Sun.
Venus (magnitude –3.9) is sinking lower in the dawn every week. Look for it low in the east 60 to 30 minutes before sunrise.

Mars (magnitude +0.4, remember +tive means dimmer, in central Cancer rises around 11 p.m. below Castor and Pollux in the east. It's very high in the southeast before dawn.
Jupiter magnitude –2.4, shines brightly in the south at dusk and lower in the southwest later in the evening. It sets around midnight.

Saturn (magnitude +1.1, in the head of Virgo) is getting higher the east-southeast before and during dawn. More than 20° to its lower left is bright Venus.
And its my birthday in 16 days, I don’t mind what you get me as long as its expensive, if your poor, why not club together, and did you know that if you look on Google maps you can see Barbara burying her ill gotten gains from space, I won’t tell you where, until I see what I get for my birthday.

That was your nights sky for the week ending on the 2nd anniversary of King Juan Carlos I of Spain saying to Chávez, President of Venezuela, "Why don't you [just] shut up?" at the 2007 Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile.

The Night Comes Down

2009-10-28T00:33:00.002Z

Not much to report this week except that everything has shunted forward an hour. And on that subject something occurred to me this week, whilst bickering with George in the Atlantic. George is pretty evangelical about British Summer Time, he loathes it with an unnatural passion, whereas I’m all for 2 hours in the summer and one in the winter. And by the way Giles, if you’re listening George still has your hammer. But I digress, this is what occurred to me, the hour goes back 5-6 weeks after the autumn equinox, which you may have noticed, but goes forward on the last Sunday in March, a week or so after the vernal equinox. Surely to maintain equilibrium it should go forward 5-6 weeks before March 21st, the first Sunday in February, which would be a real shot in the arm in that most dismal of months. And if you’re a Scottish farmer and don’t like the idea, well do something else. Well that’s what I think, and if you disagree then your wrong.

Anyway the upshot is everything is now up a little earlier. Orion is now clearly visible in the just south of east before 11:30, followed soon after by Mars further to the north. And speaking of Orion did anybody see any of the Orionids, which is by the way a rhetorical question, in that I’m not expecting a reply. I looked on one of the few clear nights we had last week, but sadly not a sausage.

The outlook for this week is about as exciting as Island Parish, the planets are much the same as last week, as you’ve no doubt come to expect.

Mercury has become lost in the glow of sunrise.

Venus is also getting lower in the east at dawn, but much more slowly; it's still moderately well up. It’s so bright that it's easy to spot if you look low in the east 60 to 30 minutes before sunrise time, it rises around 6.

Mars rises around midnight and is very high in the south before dawn. It's below Gemini's head stars, Pollux and Castor. If you’re a fanatic then why not use binoculars to watch Mars closing in on the Beehive Star Cluster; it will cross the cluster from the mornings of October 31st to November 2nd.

Jupiter shines brightly in the south after dark and lower in the southwest later in the night. It sets around 1 a.m. And I have a 6 inch reflector available now if anyone would like to come up and take a look. Give me a ring or plague Keri with emails if you’re interested.
Saturn, not overly bright is lying in the head of Virgo and is getting higher the east-southeast during early dawn. Look for it to the upper right of low Venus.
As usual there’s a little more information on the blog, and the local star map if you need a little help.
And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 52nd anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika, who achieved fame at no small personnel cost.

Orionides

2009-10-21T14:58:00.000+01:00

Bolides

2009-10-13T23:40:00.009+01:00

Better Later Than Never

A Bolide

Because Chris is to idle to put Scilly Stars up in the listen again section of the web page I may as well use a piece of music in the background that’s in copyright, and this week it’s the Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny.

Anyway off we go, if you remember last week I told you that we have The Orionids meteor shower this months which is expected to reach peak activity this year on the 21st, 2009. This meteor shower comes from Halley's Comet, since like most comets; it leaves a dusty trail as it orbits the sun. The particles in this trail eventually become meteors as they burn up in our atmosphere.

The Orionids have been producing rather bright meteors in the recent past, so it should be a good show. The shower reached a maximum of only 20-30 meteors per hour last year, but is still a worthwhile observing event! This is because the Orionids typically are very colourful meteors, sometimes being yellow or green and sometimes even producing fireballs called bolides. Also, this year's shower will be perfectly timed with a very thin crescent Moon, so the views of the meteors won't be impeded by moonlight!

As usual, the best time to observe this meteor shower is during the early morning hours, around 2-5 AM. This is because as the Earth rotates into the sunlight, we are moving into the meteor field. This increases the number of meteors entering our atmosphere over any given location. If you rather not stay up until 2, start watching for the meteors at local dusk, and they'll really start to pick up towards 11 PM or midnight. The Orionids have a very broad peak, so any night during the week of October 18th to October 24th will do. Last weeks blog shows you where to look in Orion which is just peeping over the Eastern horizon by 11pm.

And again for early risers its still all happening in the East, Venus and Saturn are almost on top of each other in the predawn sky this week. Venus will be very bright and unmissable in a clear sky just above the horizon, shadowed by a much dimmer Saturn with Mercury following shortly behind. And on Friday they’re joined by the sliver of a very old moon. As usual there’s a guide on the blog.

If like all right minded people your asleep at sun up, there’s still Jupiter now almost due south when it first appears at about 7pm. I got hold of a 6 inch scope last week and had a look it. Because Jupiter is so low this time round the best views were at a low magnification but it was still a very clear little disc, with striping if you used your imagination, and the 4 Galilean moons were very clear. It looked very lovely in deed and its quite sobering looking at it when you think it’s a half a billion miles away. Anyway if anyone would like come and have a look give me a shout. It won’t take long, aside from the three quarters of an hour required to line the scope up.

And we mustn’t forget Mars which is still fairly dim but getting brighter, the red planet rises in the S East at midnight and will be well up in the eastern sky by 3.

That was your night sky on the 28th anniversary of the collapse of The Nepalese Stock Exchange.

2009-10-08T10:48:00.004+01:00

The moon against the Pleiades on the 7th.

Dawn on the 10th.

The Orionids around the 21st.

It’s the first Wednesday in October so here we have some highlights, and there are some this month.

Tonight In the early evening an 85% illuminated waning gibbous will be seen to pass below the Pleiades Cluster, low in the east-north eastern sky, and easy to spot for once.

On Friday morning, the three planets, Venus, Saturn ad Mercury lie close together in the early morning sky. By the 16th, they have separated somewhat bur are joined by the waning crescent Moon. If clear, this should make a wonderful skyscape, but alas to early for me, but perfect for Keri who’ll be skipping to week with a twinkle in his eye as they rise above the eastern dawn horizon.

In October we have another big meteor show, for the clouds to obscure like they did in August. It is worth looking out for them for a week around the 21st as the shower is long lived. They will best be seen in the hours before dawn when Orion is high in the southern sky. But more about that next week.

Jupiter, now lying in Capricorn, will dominate the southern sky all night, in the south east at twilight and setting about 1.

Saturn reappeared in the pre-dawn sky last week and will be best seen at months end when, at magnitude +1.1, it will rise at about 4am, three hours before the Sun.
Mercury reaches western elongation (when it was at its greatest angular distance from the Sun) before dawn yesterday. It was Mercury's most favorable dawn apparition this year but it’s good for a while yet, so as the Sun rises, Mercury will be 15 degrees above the horizon - in company with Venus and Saturn. See the blog.

Mars is becoming more prominent in the morning sky rising by half 11 in the middle of the month. It starts the month in Gemini but moves into Cancer on the 12th October. It will be due south, so highest in the sky at 06:30 am in mid month. We will have to wait a month or so until it will be seen more easily as the nights get longer and it rises earlier. The Earth will, soon be overtaking Mars "on the inside track" so we will come closer to it and its angular size will increase so allowing more features on the surface to be seen.

Venus is now drawing closer to the Sun and can be seen low in the east rising a couple of hours before sunrise. It will be close to the thin crescent Moon on the 16th October. It is now on the far side of the Sun from us so it’s getting pretty small. An interesting fact about its brightness is that it stays pretty constant for most of the time even though the apparent phase changes greatly. When the phase is thin, Venus is nearer to us, when near full much further away so it’s angular size is far less. As a result, the effective reflecting area of Venus as seen from Earth remains pretty constant.

And if the family silver gone AWOL don’t be to harsh on Barbara, it seems she’s a post modernist Robin Hood, and all her ill gotten gains go to a worthy cause, a home for bewildered cat burglars in Manly Gusset Staffordshire, and she’s patron as well.

And that’s was your night’s sky for the week ending on 97th anniversary of the opening of the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Pointlessly World Wide

2009-10-01T10:57:00.001+01:00

I got this from Statcounter, it shows the global distribution of hits the blog got over the last week. Odd really because it only really works for Western Europe. And sadly no South Korea this week.

Knitting at the Lib Dem Conference

2009-09-30T10:42:00.007+01:00

Stars spinning around Polaris

It's all much the same this week as you may well have anticipated. Jupiter is still blazing away in the southern sky very close to the waxing moon until it sets at about 1am, just as Mars becomes visible in the east sou eastern sky. Venus is moving further away from Mars toward the sun and shines very brightly in the east 2 hours before dawn in the east from about 5 am. Where’s it joined by Mercury and then Saturn around 6:30 am shortly before sunrise. Venus will be easily visible for early risers in the east but Mercury and Saturn are pretty well reserved for those of us on Tresco and St Martins because they are so low on the horizon they’ll be obscured by hills. But both are to close to the rising sun to be worth a look at the moment. But there’s a guide on the blog if you’re grimly determined.

September and early October are very much a transient time for the stars. The familiar winter constellations are not quite there yet. The Pleiades and the V of Taurus with its giant bright red malignant eye Aldebaran is well up in the east by 11, but it’s another month until my favorite constellation Orion is around much before midnight. And then Orion will be with us until late April when the summer stars are beginning to appear. The whole thing is centered on Polaris the pole star which the whole sky seems to revolve around including the moon and the sun, this is because the pole star hangs almost directly above the North Pole and doesn’t appear to move. It is in effect in line with the imaginary axle the earth spins on. With a long exposure the stars weave a circle of light around Polaris, the North Star, and the stars near Polaris will always be in the sky. The Northern constellations like the plough or Cassiopeia are there in the sky every night and during the day, if they could be seen. Orion and Taurus even the sun also appear to revolve around Polaris but the circle they carve goes way over the horizon so they come and go. And with the earth spinning at 23.5 degrees the southern horizon shifts up and down by twice that between December and June, which is about a ¼ of the sky, which is why stars on the North and Southern horizons only appear at certain times of the year. I’ve completely confused my self now but sadly theirs more to come. Many constellations are over the horizon at some point every day but for half the year they will be up with the sun, the summer zodiac constellations are never seen in the summer, for example Taurus and Gemini are only just now putting in an appearance, now. And that’s enough of that especially at 7:30 am. But why should I care, I’m asleep, but probably dreaming about it.

Moving on, we have the harvest full moon on Saturday, and when the full moon comes this early in the month it means we’ll have a blue moon soon, October and November just miss it but we have the second full moon in December on the 31st, so we have a blue moon on New Years Eve which is as good a reason as any to celebrate I suppose.

And finally for the 55th time theirs a new definitive answer to whether there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth. A bunch of mathematicians from Hawaii, presumably to effete to surf have determined that there are 1 with 19 zeros grains of sand on the earth whilst there are 1 with 22 zeros stars, I read how they worked it out but its pretty tedious. But sand does have the last laugh because it only a thousand times more and there must be billions of planets out there full of sand, so in the final analysis sand wins hands down.

Knitting at the Lib Dem Conference

Interpol

2009-09-23T10:50:00.004+01:00

The sun scarperd over the horizon yesterday to make sheep all over the Falkland Islands hot and sweaty and desiccate forests all over Australia for the seasonal Christmas bush fires, and plunged us into autumn. And you can tell autumn’s here if you look at the eastern horizon after midnight. Taurus with its brilliant red eye Aldebaran is already well up. Mars and Orion put in a tentative appearance at about 12:30. Mars is in Gemini and will be clearly visible in the north east after 2am.

If you bizarrely you’d rather be in bed at 2 then we still have Jupiter blazing away in the Southern sky for most of the night. Look at it through binoculars and you’ll see a clear disc and up to 4 of the Galilean moons, named after Galileo who is credited with being the first man ever to see them. I know I keep saying this week after week but the heavens, mercifully, are renowned for slow sedate change, which is an anathema in this day and age, and certainly if they were a soap then no one would bother watching.

Before the dawn Venus is shining brightly in the east with much dimmer Mercury a little lower slightly to the North, but Mercury will probably be lost in the sunrise, as certainly will be Saturn a little behind it. And just for a change I didn’t look any of that up but rather gleaned it all from the wonderful Scilly Star map which is linked to on the Scilly Stars blog. But who in there right mind is up that early, even Scarborough Bimpson, real name withheld at the insistence of Interpol, who are running a covert surveillance operation, well less covert now, anyway even Scarborough is in bed by then having deposited her nightly stash in her two bulging warehouses hidden beneath mount Moorwell. And then of course there’s poor Chris who’s right at the start of his first morning show, playing music he can’t bear to people he has yet to learn to love, and like Caviar they are an acquired taste Chris.

If you look to the Southwest up to the weekend you’ll see the waxing moon rising through Scorpio and on to the Sagittarius Teapot. Libra is a little further to the Southwest of Scorpio with the Sun, which is why we’ve just gone in to Libra, and Scorpio is next in the spot light then Sagittarius you can probably see the emerging pattern. In fact the one sign of the zodiac that you’ll never ever see is the one we’re currently in. And that’s about it except.

It seems there’s been a flurry of UFO activity in Germany over the last month, but nothing here alas. I never quite know what to think of UFOs, I’m sure there’s a possibility, but it seems a long way to come just to flash a few lights and zoom off, and by the way why do aliens only kidnap people who like country and western music. And of course Fallon Colby, Alexis and Blake Carrington’s daughter in Dynasty and when she came back Jeff her husband didn’t even notice, and neither did anyone else.

That was your night sky for the week ending on the 38th anniversary of Oman joining the Arab League.

Benson The Giant Carp

2009-09-19T11:52:00.006+01:00

Benson the Giant Carp, star of Request Stop 18.

The Walk

2009-09-16T21:28:00.008+01:00

Firstly, I’ve done 87 of these now and I deserve a medal, email in if you agree. And as always there’s a little more information on the blog.

This week Mercury is hidden in the solar glare, as is Saturn. Venus is receding now and slowly moving away from us behind the sun, and so is starting to dim after a very bright run starting late last year. After the moon its still the brightest object in the sky and still dominates the dawn sky. Venus’s decent into the sun is a pretty slow one and it won’t be until February when Venus will return to the evening sky again, just as Jupiter disappears into the sunset. So basically what I’m saying is you can’t win, but don’t shoot the messenger.

And Jupiter is still there as blatant as an Oran U Tang in an ice cream van dominating the southern sky all night. This week is a particularly good week to look at it, the sky was wonderfully clear on Monday, and the easterly winds shouldn’t carry much moisture.

Its some consolation that Mars has now firmly escaped the clutches of the dawn, which sounds like a Michael Moorcock book, which he mercifully didn’t write, though I must say in my mid teens I was a great Michael Moorcock fan, which is no recommendation at all, the clutches of the dawn, it has a certain ring to it. Anyway Mars is now timidly peeping over the eastern horizon by 1am, but isn’t really showing well till 4am when its hanging around Gemini in the e sou east sky, tonight in almost a straight line with Venus and the moon.

Saturn is lost behind the Sun, and it’s just had its equinox, because the rings were edge on to us, but we can’t see them anyway, and we’re about to get ours. Next Tuesday, not Monday the 21st, when everywhere in the world whether you live in Canberra or God have mercy on you Camborne, will have a twelve hour day, and we leave the embers of summer behind and slide into Autumn cruel grasp. Which means I can talk about the autumn equinox when the earth’s orbital axis is perpendicular, or at a right angle, to its orbital plane with respect the sun. So far the next 6 months the South Pole will be angled towards the sun and the north away. So if you are one of our many Antarctic listeners working at the pole, its only another 3 weeks until the first plane since February comes in, but you may have known that already. For us Hiboreans, the frozen folk who live beyond the North Wind, it means autumn then winter, but we can console ourselves that Orion will soon be back with us, dominating the southern sky till next spring.

And if you’re one of the hardy folk walking between the Islands on Sunday, its all been made possible by the equinox. The Equinoctial Spring Tides this year fall on a new rather than a full moon, the tides are big because the earths axis is perpendicular to the ecliptic, the plane of the moon and the sun, so the tidal bulge is undistorted by any angular momentum effects. But if you are going be aware that Barbara will be know precisely who’s walking the walk and you could well come back to find that your house has been entirely cleaned out, an empty shell, gutted.

That was your nights sky for the week ending next Tuesday on the 230th anniversary of the establishment of the position of United States Postmaster General. The first one being one Samuel Osgood

Whale Meat Again

2009-09-09T11:51:00.005+01:00

This year, Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been nicely bordered by the thick white line of the Red Spot Hollow, which indents the dark South Equatorial Belt. Note the very dark red barge following behind the pale Red Spot. The North Equatorial Belt is full of turbulence, including a big blue plume. Far to the right (celestial east), Ganymede and Europa are in conjunction. S&T's Sean Walker took this image at 1:15 UT September 3, 2009. South is up. Stacked-video images like this show much more detail than you're ever likely to see visually on Jupiter.

An example from the Scilly Star Map link.

Very little change if any since last week Mercury and Saturn are lost in the sunset, It’s a shame about Saturn because on September 4th its rings turned edge-on to Earth, and are invisible bar a dark line around Saturn’s equator. Venus is still blazing away in the pre dawn sky, with Mars moving away from it now and rising around 1pm, some where between Taurus and Orion. Aldebaran, in Taurus and Betelgeuse in Orion, all three are similarly coloured and bright, Mars is the most North Easterly.

The sky hasn’t been all that clear recently but over the weekend the full moon broke through and it was nice to see the Chinese lantern things; I’ve no idea what the proper name is crossing the path of the almost full moon and Jupiter on Saturday night. The moon is on the way out now its in its last quarter on Friday and if we get the clear skies predicted Jupiter will worth looking at with binoculars, dominating the southern sky all night. And the Milky Way will be over head arcing from the North east to the South West and it’s always worth a look.

You’ve probably gathered by now that I’ve haven’t got a whole lot to tell you this week, but if there’s anything you’d particularly like to have a look at, if you go to the Scilly Stars blog, look at the links and click on Scilly Star Map, I’ve finally set it up so it’s no longer exclusively for out Tasmanian listeners. The page has a set of basic but adequate tools for you to drill down to get what you’re looking, any time of day in fact any time at all. For example the 25th of October 1745 was completely useless all the planets were up all day long and if you were very lucky you might have caught a glimpse of Mars as it set at seven. October 25th is a lot better this year at 11pm we have mars rising as Jupiter sets. And in the year 2525 if man is still alive on October the 25th the moon is very close to Saturn in the South. See endless hours of free fun, I think I’d better stop now.

Someone from one of those green dots that mar our horizon from the South West to the North East told me in the co-op the other day that the off islands are under represented in Scilly Stars, well I don’t wish to offend anyone, so for the best view go up the garrison, any night you want, look just above the horizon due west and you’ll see the lights of St Agnes to the North you’ll catch a glimpse of the lights of Bryher behind Samson with Tresco next door and in the extreme North East you’ catch St Martins, though all of them are fairly easy to during the day, and I’ve been led to believe that there are manned expeditions to these Islands of light everyday. Scilly Stars is nothing if its not inclusive.

That was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 74th anniversary of Germany adopting a new national flag with the swastika.

The Bat, the Custard, the Labradoodle

2009-09-01T22:03:00.012+01:00

The Bat
The Custard
The Labradoodle

Although the Moon and Jupiter look close together on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, Jupiter is actually 1,500 times farther away — and 40 times larger in diameter. Faint, 8th-magnitude Neptune is 7 times farther than Jupiter.

I was up very early on Tuesday Morning at 4:30, for reasons that will remain between me, the bat, the drum of lukewarm custard and the Labradoodle. The sky was icily clear the moon had set and there was no hint of the approaching dawn. Venus was blazing above long stone Orion was up to its right and Mars was between Taurus and Gemini, and the Pleiades, now up around midnight, were high in the south-eastern sky, Jupiter sadly had by that time sunk below the garrison. It was nice to see them all because I talk about the predawn sky every week but never see it and it all goes to confirm that I haven’t been lying to you for the last 3 months. Eventually it got a little to cold and I went back to bed, but before I did I’m sure I espied a shadowy figure creeping stealthily down church road, which could well have been Barbara S returning home with her nightly haul.

The sky this September sky has two celestial conjunctions.

The solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, is now rising early enough for even younger children to catch a glimpse. It rises above the south-southeast horizon anytime after dark. Other than the Moon, and Venus at dawn, Jupiter is the brightest object in the night sky.

Even low-powered binoculars will reveal Jupiter’s four Galilean moons.

Near the end of the month, watch for the waxing gibbous Moon to rise with Jupiter. On the 29th, the two will be separated by less than two degrees. Of course, the Moon will be bright, so Jupiter may seem lost at first glance.

Earlier in the month the moon pairs as a waning crescent with our red neighbour, Mars. You will find the two in Gemini, in the hours before sunrise on the 13th, on your East horizon. That bright star in the same field of view is Mebsuta. Mebsuta is a super giant star located some 900 light-years distant. Mars, on the other hand, is currently just about 14 light-minutes away, while the Moon is a mere 1.3 light-seconds away … three very different objects appearing together to form one beautiful triangle.

Saturn has nipped behind the sun, maybe to eat some more of his kids, there’s a charming picture by goya on the blog, and some guides as well.

Venus (magnitude –4.0, in Cancer) blazes in the east before and during dawn.

Mars (magnitude +1.0, in the feet of Gemini) is high to the upper right of Venus before dawn.

Jupiter comes into view in the southeast as twilight fades — the first "star" to appear after sunset. And tonight you’ll see Jupiter just to the right of the moon, with Neptune, 20,000 times dimmer which you won’t see just to the moons lower left.

And sticking with tonight and Jupiter, if you’ve never seen Jupiter’s moons and don’t want to anyway, tonight’s the night not to see them, because tonight Jupiter displays no visible moons in a small telescope from 12:43 to 2:29 a.m. Thursday morning EDT (9:43 to 11:29 p.m. Wednesday evening PDT and this won't happen again until 2019, which is a strange sort of non event.

That was your weeks sky ending on the 43rd anniversary of Star Trek first appearing on NBC.

Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823.

Not A Lot

2009-08-19T09:01:00.004+01:00

Not unexpectedly last week’s Persied meteor shower was obscured by clouds for its entire duration, I did have a look on Friday when the sky was crystal clear just in case there were any late comers, but not a flipping sausage, never mind there’s some more in October.

First up is the Draconids, on the 8th and ninth and then the Orionids, a major shower of shooting stars, on October 20-21.

You’ve probably guessed that there’s not a whole lot going on this week already, or why would I be bleating on about October.

Mercury and Saturn appear near each other in bright twilight just above the horizon due west. Use binoculars to look for them about 30 minutes after sunset. At the beginning of the week Saturn is above Mercury; later it's to Mercury's upper right, check the blog, but even with a clear night you’’ need binoculars.

Venus is in Gemini and blazes in the eastern sky before and during dawn, and is unmistakeable. It’s still about as bright as it was in February when it wasn’t keeping antisocial hours and was setting up to 3 hours after sunset in the west.

Mars still on the dim side but improving rises about an hour and a half before the sun, passing between the horn tips of Taurus is high to the upper right of Venus before dawn. To its own upper right is similar-looking Aldebaran. To its lower right is similarly coloured Betelgeuse, which is the bright star to the top left of Orion. So although Mars will have moved a little by October when Orion returns to the evening star, it will be easily found and at its closest to the earth for a long time.

Jupiter, in Capricorn was at opposition on August 14th. So now it’s with us for the whole night It comes into view low in the southeast early in twilight — the first "star" to appear after sunset. It's higher in better telescopic view by 11 or midnight. You can’t miss it it’s the extremely bright star that arcs across the southern sky throughout the night.

But even with out a blockbuster feature, we’ve still got all the usual stars, and the most spectacular sight at the moment is the Milky Way, it arcs across the sky from north east to the south west and is always worth a look with binoculars, even with poor binoculars you’ll see at least 10 times as many stars. And the Milky Way although it’s a run of the mill spiral galaxy, amongst billions of the things, it still has some pretty impressive statistics.

The stellar disk of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is an average, about 1,000 thick. With between 200 billion 400 billion stars, and its just our look that out of all those stars its our Solar System that produces Britain’s got talent.

Persid Meteor Shower

2009-08-11T10:49:00.016+01:00

Persid Meteor Shower

The Perseid meteors appear to stream away from their radiant near the border of Perseus and Cassiopeia. And while you're outside on a dark night, don't forget to look for the Double Cluster and the Andromeda Galaxy, two of the easiest "faint fuzzies" to spot with your unaided eye.

Dawn Sunday/Monday

Jupiter's impact scar is the small dark mark in the planet's South Polar Region (top). The black dot on the edge of the South Equatorial Belt is the shadow of Callisto. Note the Great Red Spot just about to rotate out of sight on the celestial west limb (left). Sky & Telescope's Sean Walker used a 14.5-inch reflector for this stacked-video image 8:45 UT July 23, 2009.

This week’s big issue is the Persied meteor shower. The little bits of interplanetary grit making up the Persied meteoroid stream orbit the Sun with a period of about 130 years, like their object of origin, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. The richest part of the stream is strung out near the comet itself, which last dipped through the inner solar system in 1992. So the shower's annual sky show has waned of late —the great Persied meteor displays of the early 1990s are gone.

This year's Persied peak was predicted to come around 18h Universal between 11pm and dawn last night. But there should be still a few around for a few days yet. After 10 pm look to the north east for the radiant, straight down a few degrees from the first star in the Cassiopeia W, an easy constellation to spot, a misshapen W. There’s a diagram on the blog.

The waning Moon is nearly at last quarter. It rises an hour or two after dark and will brighten the sky somewhat during the best Persied-activity hours, from 11 p.m. until dawn. Nevertheless, but this is a pretty reliable shower, and some Perseids should be there for the catching.

If you’re really serious about Meteor watching, I found some instructions on S and T.com. Find a spot with an open view of the sky, wrap up warmly in winter clothes, perhaps an anorak or a sleeping bag, and use mosquito repellent where you're not wrapped. Lie back in a lounge chair and watch whatever part of your sky is darkest. Be patient. You may see a meteor zipping into the upper atmosphere every few minutes on average.

On Friday, Jupiter is at opposition, big and bright. It's opposite the Sun in the sky: rising around sunset, shining highest in the middle of the night, and setting around sunrise. And I’ve put a nice picture of Jupiter’s new black spot up on the blog.

During Sunday’s dawn morning the thin waning crescent Moon hangs with Mars, when early risers can watch the waning crescent Moon pass Mars and then Venus in the dawn. there’s a guide on the blog.

You can still catch Venus blazing away in the dawn sky, with Mars nearby between the horns of Taurus, but bear in mind they’re only horns if you have a vivid imagination or know a horribly misshapen bull.

Green Flash

2009-08-05T00:53:00.007+01:00

Remains the same much of the week, for both images.

Green Flash

Tonight we have a full moon, the last but one of this summer and we have a slight penumbral eclipse, which means only a very slight dimming probably, too slight for any shading to be detectable at all by eye. If you want to try and spot it, the mid point is at 1:40am. If you can’t see it never mind, Jupiter will be easily visible near the moon, for the next two or three days.

I haven’t checked the tides, the bus is strangely unaffected by them, but I imagine they should be pretty big this week, with Jupiter the moon and the sun lining up, though Jupiter being so far away will only add a couple of inches.

On Thursday, the Moon rises in the dusk with a menacing Jupiter just 4° to its right.
Mercury is having a poor apparition deep in the glow of sunset. Look for it very low in the west-northwest in bright twilight.

Venus in the feet of Gemini blazes in the eastern sky before and during dawn.
As recently happened with Jupiter, an amateur planetary imager has found a newly-appeared marking on Venus! Frank Melillo of Holtsville, New York, discovered that Venus had unexpectedly grown a "Great White Spot" in ultraviolet light when he imaged it on the morning of July 19th. The European Space Agency's Venus Express probe, currently orbiting Venus, has imaged the spot in detail.

Mars getting a little brighter now, in the horns of Taurus is well to the upper right of Venus before dawn. Not far to Mars's right or upper right is Aldebaran, a close match for it in both brightness and color. The two are 7° apart on August 1st, 10° apart by the 8th.
Jupiter very bright in Capricorn shines low in the east-southeast during twilight. It's higher the southeast by midnight.

Saturn (magnitude +1.1, in Leo) is getting very low in the west after sunset. Pretty well lost to us now, and the rings have about vanished. They turn edge-on to the Sun and go black on August 9–10.

Now I’m about to take all the romance out of the fabled green flash. The reason for a green flash lies in refraction of light in the atmosphere, light moves more slowly in the lower, denser air than in the thinner air above, so sunlight rays follow paths that curve slightly, in the same direction as the curvature of the Earth. Higher frequency light (green/blue) curves more than lower frequency light (red/orange), so green/blue rays from the upper limb of the setting sun remain visible after the red rays are obstructed by the curvature of the earth. I’ve put a lovely picture on the blog which I’d love to say I took, but I didn’t
Though if you firmly believe it’s an omen for the imminent end of the world you won’t believe a word of that will you.
That was your night sky for the week ending on Al Qaeda’s 21st birthday.

The Prettiest Star

2009-07-28T20:29:00.005+01:00

Better Late Than Never

Orion's Back

The Eagle Nubula (photo Nasa/Hubble)

On Thursday, the red long-period variable stars V Bootis, R Bootis, and S Hydrae should be about at maximum light (7th or 8th magnitude) this week. V Boo is easy to locate with binoculars less than 1° from 3rd-magnitude Gamma , doesn’t mean a lot to me either

I was asked on the bus about meteor showers, well the next reasonable shower will be the Perseids peaking on August 12, so more about that next week.

Venus and Mars both in and near Taurus) are in the east during dawn. Venus is a dazzler; Mars, well to Venus's upper right near Aldebaran, is 110 times fainter. They're moving farther apart: from 13° to 16° separation this week.

Aldebaran, similar to Mars in both brightness and colour, twinkles about 5° or 6° to Mars's lower right or right. Higher above them are the Pleiades. Far left of them shines bright Capella. And look lower right of Venus for Orion everybody’s friend. Which is mercifully back again until next spring

Jupiter the roman god of the moment shines low in the east-southeast during twilight. You can’t real miss low in the South East after 9:30 and moving higher and further south as the night progresses any binoculars will show it as a disc. And it just had a thump a black dust mark, like those of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts in 1994, appeared suddenly in Jupiter's South Polar Region around July 18th. It's now spreading out. So it looks like its had another impact. Probably our turn next, maybe on the first of the 4th next year.

Saturn in Leo is getting very low in the west after sunset, there a slightly out of date guide on the blog, which I’ll remember to do this week.

I discovered another anniversary on the internet this week, it seems that that the Eagle Nebula, made famous by Hubble, 3004 light years away, was formed 5000 years ago this year by a super nova, which when it blew dominated the night sky for some weeks. If you do the math, it would have been visible here around 4 AD. Which would be plausible, except that the Eagle Nebula is 6500 light years away, it gets dafter though it seems that a highly advanced peace loving humanoid species were wiped out in the cataclysm. Which would make it a hell of Christmas decoration, and as you know everything on the internet is true.

That was your nights sky for the week ending on the 95th anniversary of the outbreak of world war one.

Man In The Moon

2009-07-14T22:48:00.004+01:00

Unless you’re in a coma you’ve probably heard that tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. If your old enough I’m sure you can remember the excitement. I was allowed to stay up and watch the landing at about 3 am but I fell asleep. I had all the models, all the posters and any magazines I could get hold of; in short I was a boring little Herbert. It’s easy to forget what a staggering achievement it was. When JFK announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade, all they’d so far managed was 16 minute sub orbital flight with Alan Shepard aboard. This is the equivalent of promising to circumnavigate the world when all you’ve actually done is rowed across Port Melon in a bath tub, but they did it. When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat in Mercury 3, waiting for lift-off, he replied, 'The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder”.

90% of Apollo 11 was fuel to get the tiny command and lunar modules out of Earth Orbit, at launch it was 365 ft high, I still remember that and all that came back was the Command Module was a truncated cone measuring 10 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 12 feet 10 inches across the base. It took 3 days to get the moon, 3 days of excitable waffle by Patrick Moore and James Burke; Steve Watt would have been in his element. And then on the 20th they landed, though they should have aborted but Aldrin ignored procedure and landed with about 15 seconds of fuel left. The Neil Armstrong got this wrong, but he might have been nervous. Then they came back to a well disturbed heroes welcome, Buzz Aldrin went slightly mad for a bit, Neil Armstrong became a recluse and Mike Collins is now managing a fish and chip shop in Enfield, maybe.

They went back 5 more times but the public lost interest, which is why all NASA does now is probes and low earth orbit missions, they have the technology, but not the funds, to build a moon base, ands go to mars they even have plans for an interstellar mission. And after all the best way to sort out global warming is to find a new planet to ruin, but at least we got Sky TV and Sat Navs out of it, god bless America.

And there’s another anniversary this week. On July 16th 1994, the first piece of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter, speaking of which, Jupiter rises around 10 p.m in Capricorn and shines highest in the south before dawn, dominating the South Eastern sky for most of the night.

Like all the best cowboys Saturn has just about disappeared into the sunset.

Venus and Mars are still faffing about due east during dawn. Venus is very bright, Mars, to Venus's upper right, isn’t.

I’ve put some Apollo pictures up on the blog, and a guide to Mars and Venus if you’re daft enough to be up at 3:30 am

The middle of the year

2009-07-01T00:16:00.004+01:00

The Pleiades above Venus

The Pleiades through a scope, claerly a star cluster

Not that its got much to do with the night sky, but today is the halfway point in the year, day 183, so we’re 182 days away from new years day, and next new years eve, and we’re closer to next Christmas than the last one, and bizarrely there’s still no Christmas crackers on sale in the co-op.

10 days ago we had midsummer’s day, last Saturday was the latest sunset and on Friday we have another turning point, though after this one things start getting hotter rather than colder, not that we’ll notice. On Friday Earth is at aphelion, it’s at its farthest from the Sun for the year about 3 million miles further from the sun than it is in January, but to be brutally frank, its quite hot enough isn’t it, and we should all take this opportunity to be smug that its even colder in Melbourne at the moment, because of it.

Mercury is having a poor apparition deep in the glow of dawn. Look for it early in the week about 28° lower left of Venus and Mars. Binoculars will help, but don’t get up especially for it.
A very bright Venus and Mars remain together due east during dawn. Venus is a dazzler; Mars is 130 times fainter. Mars was only 2.6° above Venus on the morning of June 26th; it widens to 5° above Venus by July 4th. Early in dawn, look for the Pleiades to their left. And the position of the Pleiades, or the seven sisters, and look on the blog if you’re unsure what it looks like, gives a fair indication of how different the summer sky is from the winter sky. From October to March the Pleiades are high in the southern sky way up to the left of Orion, which completely dominates the southern winter sky. Orion’s still there, in fact it’s with us all day long, which is why we can’t see it. The stars we are seeing at the moment are the ones that are up during the day in the winter. The constellations we see all year round such as the plough and Cassiopeia are the northern ones, effectively above us and the sun, so they never drop below the horizon.

Jupiter is in Capricorn at the moment and rises around 11 p.m. and shines brightly in the south at dawn. Any binoculars, even the ones I found in a skip 20 years ago will show it as a disc.

Saturn is still fairly high in the west at dusk, but it sinks lower as evening advances.

Uranus is still very dim in Pisces, is high in the southeast before dawn, but to be honest I wouldn’t know it if I was looking at it.

Summer Nights

2009-06-24T13:19:00.001+01:00

The nights are finally getting longer again, not that you’ll really notice until late July, and the latest sunset of the year is Saturday this week. Also on Saturday the Moon is to the lower left of Saturn, there’s a guide on the blog

And this is quite an interesting month if you can stay awake, or are out in the early hour’s breaking and entering, Barbara. Because during the second half of June, six of the seven planets (not counting Earth) are positioned at dawn within a 100° span of sky, from low in the east to fairly high in the south. From left to right they're Mercury, the Venus-Mars pair, Uranus, and the Jupiter-Neptune pair, only Saturn isn’t joining the party

This comes 25 years after very the rare gathering of all seven planets — and then-planet Pluto — into a span of only 60° in January 1984.

But as usual it’s all happening in the predawn, between 3 and 4 am, over to the east.

We have a new moon this week and after 12:30 fairly dark skies, and with the arrival of summer, the Milky Way now arches across the eastern heavens after the last lingering twilight finally fades away. The Milky Way runs from Cassiopeia low in the north-northeast through lower Cepheus, then across Cygnus, the Summer Triangle, and Aquila, and down to Sagittarius and Scorpio in the south-southeast. It should be obvious as a bright arch over head.

Mercury is having a poor apparition deep in the glow of dawn. Look for it in morning twilight about 25° lower left of Venus and Mars. Binoculars will help.

Venus and Mars remain together due east during dawn. Venus is a dazzler; but Mars is getting brighter and is now only about 150 times fainter than Venus. They're only 2° or 3° apart this week, hardly more than a finger's width at arm's length. June 22nd was their conjunction date, when they're separated by 2.0°. Look for Mars to directly above Venus later in the week

Jupiter in Capricorn now rises before midnight and shines brightly in the south by dawn. The sharpest telescopic glimpses may come during morning twilight, when the atmospheric seeing sometimes turns very steady.

Saturn is still the only planet showing in the evening sky, and it’s still fairly dim because all year the rings' tilt to the Sun has been steadily decreasing, and accordingly, the rings have been getting darker and darker. Saturn is now becoming harder to observe as it moves lower in the west each evening.

Uranus is Pisces is between Venus and Jupiter before dawn.

Neptune in Capricorn remains only 3/4° from Jupiter, but it's 16,000 times fainter. And will be difficult to spot even with Binoculars

You may have noticed over the course of the last 18 months or so, that the planets tend to hang around the constellations of the zodiac, this is no coincidence. The solar system is essentially a huge flat disc centred on the sun and the constellations of the zodiac are on the same plane. The sun is in cancer at the moment, a constellation we obviously can’t see at the moment, Saturn is in Leo, Uranus is in Pisces and Jupiter is in Capricorn. The moon also moves through the Zodiac, hence there are endless variations of mumbo jumbo to be derived from all the limitless permutations.

Summer

2009-06-16T23:46:00.005+01:00

Winter

Summer

This week’s major event has to be summer starting early on Saturday morning; the Solstice is on the 20th this year. So on Saturday night we begin the inexorably plunge back to midwinter. At the winter Solstice the North Pole is tilted 23 and a half degrees away from the sun and the sun is always over the horizon, at summer solstice it’s tilted 23.5 degrees the other way and the sun never sets. So the divergence between mid winter and midsummer is a massive 47 degrees which goes some way to explain the huge difference. At noon on Saturday the sun will be almost 80 degrees above the horizon in midwinter it barely scrapes 31, and if you imagine a compass Sunrise on the Summer solstice is diametrically opposite Sun Set on the winter solstice, and we get about 8 hours more daylight.

Another thing you may have noticed is that the length of the day isn’t changing much at all at the moment, the sun’s been setting at about 9:30 for more than a month. This is best explained if you think of the change in seasons as a pendulum. At the moment the days are still getting longer but on Saturday it all stops and goes in to reverse, the pendulum reaches the top of its swing. It starts falling back and accelerates to the bottom of its swing at the equinox in September when it changes by up to 4 minutes a day. It then starts decelerating to ward the winter solstice after which it then starts to fall away again toward the spring.

There are a number of distinct overlapping periods during the yearly cycle, in winter and Spring the days are lengthening, and shortening during Summer and Winter, during Autumn and Winter the nights are longer the days and vice versa in Spring and Summer. It’s a combination of two variables define the seasons, day compared to night and lengthening or shortening, which. In winter days are lengthening but nights are longer, spring days are lengthening but nights are shorter. In summer nights are lengthening but days are longer, and autumn gives us the worst of both worlds, longer and lengthening nights.

All this is pretty obvious if you think about it, and I’ve just used nearly 400 words to tell you summer starts early Saturday morning, but then again there’s not much else going on this week, unless you’re out and about between 3 and 4am.

During dawn Friday morning the crescent Moon hangs about 6° above Venus and Mars.

At the end of the official Midsummer Night, busy things are happening at dawn Sunday morning. About 45 minutes before, you can spot a very bright Venus in the east with faint little Mars just to its upper left. Using binoculars, look well left of Venus for the Pleiades, and look about 24° to Venus's lower left to pick up the thin crescent Moon and look lower right of the Moon for Mercury.

Jupiter is rising earlier all the time and now appears in the east before midnight and shines brightly in the south by dawn.

As Jupiter is in the ascent, we’re slowly loosing Saturn; it’s in the southwest at dusk and sinks lower in the west as the evening advances.

The vivid meteor shower on Tuesday night could have been one of three showers forecast: for June, meteor showers happen when the earth crosses the orbital path of a comet. If the comet happens to be there at the same time we get a mass extinction and nobody sees much of anything at all.

The Mars Email

2009-06-10T02:02:00.002+01:00

MARS

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular in August of 2009!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th 2009 when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August 2009 it will rise in the east at 10 PM and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.

Share this with your children and grandchildren.

NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN

First this week I’d like to clear something up, I’ve had a few people who’ve ask me about an email that’s been going around about a close encounter with Mars on the 27th of August this year, when Mars will be as close as 34 million miles, and will look as big as the full moon. Well it’s a hoax, at the moment we’re chasing Mars around the Sun, its on the other side at the moment, and a long way away about 250,000,000 miles, which is why its so dim in the dawn sky, we’ll lap it on the 19th of October when it will be only 43,000,000 miles away, it could get as close as 34,000,00 mikes though, if the earth were at its furthest from the sun and Mars was at its closest and in opposition.

The email, tells us that Mars will look as large as the full moon, and ends with “no one alive will ever see this again”, it should be there’ll be no one alive to see anything again. For Mars to be that big it would have to be less than a million miles away, and if it didn’t collide with us, which it almost certainly would, we’d have massive tides, and our orbit would savagely adjusted further out or perhaps further in, which would give us an Indian summer that no one would know about. So it just a pretty harmless joke. It’s a rehash of a real event, another encounter with Mars, six years ago, on August 27, 2003. That was the closest in recorded history, by a whisker, and millions of people watched as the distance between Mars and Earth shrunk to 35 million miles. This October’s encounter, at 43 million miles, is similar. To casual observers, Mars will seem about as bright and beautiful in 2009 as it was in 2003. But sadly there’ll be nobody to see it because we have an asteroid the size of Australia due to hit 4 miles north of Bude early on Sunday morning.

Well it was nice to have something else to talk about, because not much has changed since last week, though it starting to. At last Jupiter is moving up and away from the dawn sky; soon after midnight on Friday, look to the lower left of the waning Moon in the east for Jupiter on the rise, as shown above. They both stand high in the southeast by dawn.

Mercury is both faint and buried deep in the glow of sunrise, very far lower left of Venus, and not worth the effort.
Venus still outshines all the opposition due east during dawn. In a telescope Venus appears about half lit. It's
A very dim Mars in Aries has closed to within only about 4° to Venus's left. But it's 160 times fainter! But as you just heard we’re chasing it and it will improve over the next couple of months
Saturn in Leo is now in the southwest at dusk. It moves lower to the west later in the evening, and pretty soon we’ll lose it altogether, but a much brighter Jupiter will replace it.
Uranus (magnitude 5.9, in Pisces) is between Venus and Jupiter before dawn, but it’s very dim.
Of course all this presupposes at least clear sky’s and I have to say I’m cautiously pessimistic about getting one, that’s the trouble with having sub tropical climate, sometimes the sub takes over.

Saturn, Neptune and Pollux

2009-05-26T22:36:00.005+01:00

Once a month, the Moon poses with Regulus and Saturn on successive nights.

Neptune, invisible to the naked eye, lurks behind Jupiter before the first light of dawn.

The crescent Moon moves across the Gemini twins in the west as it waxes from Monday through Wednesday.

Splodges From The Dawn Of Time

2009-04-29T15:48:00.008+01:00

Nasa pictures from 13 billion years ago

You may have heard on the news yesterday squeezed in between, the apocalyptic menace of Swine fever and the unacceptable behaviour of the home secretaries husband, that a Nasa Space Telescope, Spitzer, managed to capture a few photons that began their journey 13 billion years ago, very near the beginning of time and space for that mater, that doesn’t mean they know what they’ve photographed though. I’ve put the picture on the blog. To a casual observer it could be the psychedelic creation of a mischievous puppy that has dipped its paws in paint. But it may be one of the most extraordinary pictures ever snapped. One possibility is stars, the first to light up after the dawn of time. They would have been "humungous", said NASA, "more than 1000 times the mass of our sun".
But let’s get back to what we can see, tonight, the Moon shines in the middle of Gemini this evening: below Pollux and Castor, which are lined up almost horizontally. So if you want to find Gemini and the twins tonight’s the night
The Moon which is waxing again shines under Regulus on May 2nd and Saturn on May 3rd.

Mercury is still there low in evening twilight, but starts to fades rapidly this week. Look for it low in the west-northwest about an hour after sunset. As the sky gets darker, the Pleiades glimmer into view very near it. The Pleiades are above Mercury early in the week, and to the right of it by May 1st and 2nd, again take a look at the blog.

Venus shines low in the east during dawn. Don't confuse it with Jupiter, higher and far to the right in the southeast. In a telescope, Venus is a thickening, shrinking crescent.

Mars remains about 5° from Venus all week. It's below Venus early in the week, and lower left of it toward the week's end, but definitely not worth getting up early for

Jupiter still with Venus and Mars shines in the southeast before and during dawn.

Saturn is far away the most social able of the planets is high in the south during evening. In a telescope, Saturn's rings appear 4° from edge on, their widest for the year.

I had a comment on the blog last week, from Boston Mass, asking a question, which was heartening, because unlike you lot Americans don’t know that I haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m talking about.

Look To The West

2009-04-21T13:50:00.009+01:00

April's highlight is on the 26th in the west just after sun set.

So get your cameras out.

We have a bit of a celestial treat this Sunday in the late evening just after Sunset; it may be even be worth a trek up the garrison for it. Though if you’re lucky enough to live on St Agnes, or even Bryher, you should get a lovely view across the sweep of the western rocks.

On Sunday The Pleiades a very pretty little constellation and star cluster will be sparkling in the early evening sky between a thin crescent moon and the planet Mercury. You’ll need a clear view of the western sky just after sunset. This should make for fine viewing with the naked eye or with binoculars, but it would be nice if someone with a decent camera with a telephoto lens could catch a picture and email it in or maybe put it up on the Scillywebcam. There’s a guide on the blog, which means there’s no excuse so out with your cameras just after sunset on Sunday and that’s an order.

We have a new moon on Friday and after sunset, the elusive, extremely thin young crescent Moon displays its early-springtime upright smile. Look for it just above the west-northwest horizon, to the lower right of Mercury.

Mercury (about magnitude –0.5) is having its best evening apparition of the year. Look for it low in the west about an hour after sunset. Especially on Sunday when it hooks up with the Pleiades.

Venus still very bright shines low in the dawn. Look for it above the horizon due east about 60 to 40 minutes before sunrise. Don't confuse it with Jupiter, which is much higher, much dimmer, and much farther to the right in the southeast.

Mars is still loitering below Venus in the dawn and still isn’t up to much.

Jupiter is setting brighter and shines in the southeast before and during dawn.

Saturn is still the only planet which is with us all night it shines high in the southeast at dusk and highest in the south around 9 p.m.

We’ve had our first month of spring and the winter stars are fast disappearing. Look for a bright, bright star in the south west before 11 pm, this is Sirius, Orion dog.. As spring advances, bright Sirius is getting lower in the southwest at dusk. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest. It’s actually 2 stars, Sirius A and Sirius B, Sirius A is the one we can see, and if you stare at it, it seems to change colour ranging form white through yellow to blue. And its pretty close, which is why its so bright, at a distance of only 8.6 light-years, the Sirius system is one of our near neighbours.

Sirius A is about twice as massive as the Sun and is 25 times more luminous than the Sun, Sirius B is a white dwarf and well past its sell by date. The system is between 200 and 300 million years old it was there even before Nora started working at the paper shop, and its nice to see her back. And sadly, Sirius will on the other side of the sun until the autumn.

See you next week, if you can cope with it.

V enus, Mars, Saturn and its moons in transit.

2009-03-18T11:05:00.005Z

Saturnian Moons In Transit, courtesey of Hubble.

Scilly Stars 18th March 2009

Mercury was back briefly, and now before one gets chance to catch ones breath it’s gone again disappearing back into the sunrise. And if that’s not bad enough we’re about to lose Venus which still shines brilliantly in the west during evening twilight, but alas is getting lower every day. And it's changing rapidly as it swings toward inferior conjunction between Earth and Sun. In a telescope Venus is an eerily thin crescent, waning from 7% sunlit on March 14th to just 3% on the 20th. And it's big: nearly an arc minute from cusp to cusp, which is one 60th of a degree.

Some people have claimed they have resolved the thin crescent of Venus with the naked eye. If you want to try, look right after sunset in a bright sky before the planet's glare becomes a problem. To reduce the effects of your eye's optical aberrations, try looking through a small, round hole 1 or 2 mm wide in a piece of aluminium foil or cardboard. But hurry up because this is the last week that Venus will be with us, in a few days the planet will cross in front of the sun to re-emerge in the April dawn.

If your up early enough and have a clear view of the Eastern Horizon, which eliminates St Agnes, most of Bryher, Tresco and St Mary’s, so just St Martins really, there’s a fairly dim Mars showing very low in the sunrise glow. Look for it just above the east-southeast horizon, well to the lower left of much brighter Jupiter, about 30 minutes before sunrise. Or even better wait until the summer.

Jupiter a much better bet is getting a little higher in the dawn sky each week. Look for it very low in the east-southeast about an hour before sunrise. On March 22nd, Jupiter shines just to the left of the waning Moon. Although they look close together, Jupiter is actually 2,200 times farther away at the moment, and 40 times bigger.

Saturn is just past opposition and is glowing yellow and bright, low in the east at dusk; well up in the southeast by midevening; and highest in the south around midnight. And there was a quadruple transit of Saturn’s moons across the planet's face on February 24th? Hubble was looking, and very kindly has released the images. Which I’ve put on the blog along with some other equally riveting stuff.

But the big event this week, whether you’re interested in the stars or not, happens on Friday; the first day of spring; which this year is on the 20th rather than the 21st. At 3:44 am on Friday the North Pole flips from pointing away from the Sun and starts to point toward it for the next 6 months. 6 months of unbroken sunshine apart from a little light early morning drizzle on the 11th of July.
That was your night sky for the week ending the 24th March 2009.

Ceres, Comet Lulin, Venus and the Moon 24.02.09

2009-02-24T11:59:00.013Z

Comet Lulin

The Path of Comet Lulin, close to Saturn in the North East this week.

Venus and the Moon

Comet Lulin

The path of Ceres through Leo in the North Eastern Sky

This Weeks Scilly Stars.

We have an adrenaline drenched week this week, with a comet on fly by, our largest asteroid only 60 million miles away, Neptune’ s on the way back, and there’s an important anniversary, not the big one but the big ones granddad.

Comet Lulin this week is at its brightest and closest to Earth — right when the sky is conveniently moonless. Use binoculars or a telescope to look for it once it's well up in late evening. The comet is glowing at about magnitude 5.6 as it moves rapidly westward across Virgo just skirting Leo, and very close to Saturn all week, in the North East around 9pm. In recent days the comet's dust-spike has grown longer and stronger, completely outclassing its "true" tail, which points properly away from the Sun like a comet's tail should. It’s dim but easily visible with binoculars and both tails should show. It will be visible for most of the night, look at the blog for a find it guide.

And sticking with Leo, Ceres the largest of the Asteroids is at the closest and best viewing position of our lifetimes and a lot of subsequent lifetimes for that matter. Ceres will pass closer to Earth than it has been since 1857, it won’t be this close again until 4164, an occasion I may well miss. You can spot it with binoculars, which are essential, in Leo, again close to Saturn using the chart at on the blog.
And Friday is a red letter day for Uranus when its as far as it gets from the Sun as it can in its 84-year orbit. So we can all take comfort knowing that no matter how bad things get, for the rest of our lives, Uranus will be just a touch closer every day.

Of the planets Venus and Saturn are the only two really showing at the moment. Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars remain very low in the glow of sunrise, where they're changing configuration daily. Mars is very faint and may require binoculars. But Venus is still dominating the western sky until 9pm, someone asked my mum to ask me what the very bright star above Star Castle perhaps pre-empting the second coming is, well it’s Venus, which I may have mentioned previously on Scilly Stars.

The planet sets about 9pm and if you want to catch it and Saturn together find Venus around 8:30, turn 180 degrees and almost diametrically opposite you will see the yellowish glow of Saturn, in the same area of the sky where you will also find Ceres and Comet Lulin.

March the 3rd is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 9, which was the third manned mission of the Apollo Program, and proved the Lunar Module worthy of manned spaceflight. Further tests on Apollo 10 would prepare the Lunar Module for its ultimate goal, landing on the Moon.

That was you nights sky for the week ending next Tuesday.

Stars 18th Feb, The Orion Nebula

2009-02-17T17:55:00.006Z

Above and below, Hubble Pictures of the Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula, the Trapezium on the lower left.

Scilly Stars Script 18.02.09

This week and for a while yet most of the action is in the dawn sky just before sun up.

Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars are low in the glow of sunrise, where they're changing configuration daily. They start the week with Jupiter and tiny Mars close together well to Mercury's lower left; Mercury moves in on them day by day. Bring binoculars and look just above the east-southeast horizon about 30 minutes before sunup. On the 24th they’ll be all in a nice line in the predawn sky. So on Sunday go out a half hour before sunrise if the sky is clear, look low in the east-southeast with binoculars, and you'll be rewarded with a diagonal line-up of the crescent Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, and maybe even faint Mars, you shouldn’t need one but there’s a diagram on the blog, (see last weeks post).

Venus, still apparently stationary in Pisces) is the dazzling "Evening Star" high in the west during and after twilight. It's at its peak brightness now, and it doesn't set until about 9 p.m. In a telescope Venus is a thick crescent (31% sunlit) about 37 arc seconds from cusp to cusp. But from this week onwards Venus will start to dim as the planet moves away from us toward the other side of the sun.

Saturn is still hanging around near the hind foot of Leo, perhaps still waiting to be kicked. Saturn rises around 7 p.m., shines well up in the east by 9 or 10, and is highest in the south around 1 a.m. Don't confuse it with similarly-bright Regulus (two fist-widths at arm's length) to its upper right after they rise, and more directly to its right in the early-morning hours. Saturn is pale yellow and shines with a steady light, while Regulus is white with a touch of blue and twinkles slightly.

Uranus and Neptune are lost behind the glow of the Sun, and wouldn’t be able to find them anyway.

Now its time to bang on about Orion again. This is the time of year when Orion stands at his highest due south around 7 or 8 p.m. If you look at his sword you should be able to see a fuzzy blob in the centre. This is the Great Orion Nebula which is around 1300 light years from us. Through binoculars or better still a telescope you should be able to resolve the Trapezium, which is a group of hot white young stars, a sort of interstellar rat pack. The ones we can see easily are the brightest of a cluster of up to 2,000 in a 10 light year radius. The Orion Nebula is an example of a massive dust cloud and is in effect a stellar nursery where new stars are being born. Any planets around these stars will have a truly spectacular night scar, but on the down side with so many stars around it would be a little unstable, deadly in fact and to make matters worse you’d be almost 763 million, million miles from the nearest toilet.

That was your night sky for the week ending the 24th February 2009.

Mars Is Coming Back

2009-02-11T09:25:00.003Z

The Line up, due on Sunday the 24th in the Dawn Sky.

The Moon and Saturn in the Eastern Sky.

Recent Pictures of Saturn with the rings edge on, almost.

A terrible pic of Orion Rising over Bluemont Farm somewhere in Virginia.

Comet Lulin, the Moon in Gemini

2009-02-05T11:33:00.004Z

The Moon In Gemini Thurs 5th-Sat 7th Feb

Comet Lulin: Above till Feb 14th, below until March 2nd.
Look in the dawn sky with binoculars. (Click to enlarge)

Uranus Venus Conjunction

2009-01-20T21:10:00.003Z

Uranus will be much dimmer then Venus, use Binoculars.

Couldn't be simpler could it.

Conjuctions Ago Go and Stravinsky

2008-12-30T21:24:00.004Z

The New Years Eve Conjunctions

Stravinsky

December 10th Guides

2008-12-10T09:32:00.004Z

Small boy riding giant tortoise bareback!

December Stars and New Planet

2008-12-03T10:56:00.005Z

11pm on Christmas Eve

First Exo Sol Planet Ever Seen With Visual Light

The Venus Jupiter Conjunction

2008-11-26T12:23:00.005Z

November/December Sky

Venus/Jupiter Conjunction

Venus/Jupiter conjunction again!

Nov 16th-25th

2008-11-21T11:20:00.004Z

Saturn Taken 13th November. The Rings almost edge on.

Jupiter taken on the 7th November.

November Skies

2008-11-08T12:55:00.011Z

November Skies at around 11pm

North

East

South

West

Overhead