Orion Nebula

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!!!!!!

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.

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

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.