We are now the proud guardians of a 14″ newtonian reflecting telescope. It has three times the light gathering power of our 8″ Schmidt Cassegrian and double the light collecting ability of our 10″ Dobsonian. It will be great for viewing all those distant nebulae and galaxies during the coming months.
An open star cluster is a group of up to a few thousand stars that were formed at the same time. Star clusters are held together by gravitational attraction when young, but usually only survive for a few hundred million years. As they make their epic journey around our galaxy they gradually break up as they pass close to other clusters and clouds of gas.
More than 1,100 open star clusters have been discovered in the Milky Way. Here are my magnificent seven, over half of which can be seen with the naked eye from our Dark Sky Park under good conditions. They are visible in the south to south west during late winter and early spring evenings.
The Hyades is our nearest open star cluster – just 153 light years away. This makes it a prominent object that is easily seen with the naked eye. It can be found in the constellation of Taurus where its brightest stars form a “V” shape along with the still brighter Aldeberan. Aldebaran itself however is not part of the Hyades because it is much closer to Earth and merely happens to lie along the same line of sight.
Around a dozen stars are visible to the naked eye, but several dozen can be seen through binoculars. Because the Hyades span over five degrees of sky they look far better in binoculars than a telescope which cannot fit them all in!
The age of the Hyades is estimated to be about 625 million years. In England the cluster was known as the “April Rainers” from an association with April showers, as recorded in the folk song “Green Grow the Rushes O”.
The Pleiades are also easily visible with the naked eye, but at 444 light years are further away than the Hyades. They can be found to the north west of the Hyades. A prominent sight in winter and early spring, they have been know to cultures all around the world since antiquity.
The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named after the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno and Alcyone. These were the daughters of Atlas by Pleione.
The cluster has over 1,000 members and is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years.
To the naked eye the Beehive looks like a large area of nebulosity covering almost three times the diameter of the full moon. You can find it on the western side of the centre of the constellation of Cancer.
Ancient Greeks and Romans perceived this star cluster as a manger from which two donkeys are eating. The adjacent stars Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis are the donkeys themselves.
Containing over 350 stars it lies a little further away then the Pleiades at a distance of 577 light years. Viewed through binoculars it springs to life, filling a good proportion of the field of view with dozens of stars sprinkled over a hazy background. A modest telescope reveals groups of bluish-white stars arranged in pairs and triplets. Their age and proper motion within our galaxy coincides with those of the Hyades, suggesting they may share similar origins.
At 3,900 light years Messier 35 is much further away than the Pleiades. It is nevertheless visible to the naked eye from our Dark Sky Park under good conditions. Look in the constellation of Gemini where it appears as a faint misty glow just above the end of Castor’s foot. It has around 400 member stars covering an area almost the size of the full moon.
Through 10 x 50 binoculars, the cluster appears as a hazy rectangle with around a dozen individual stars visible. An 80mm telescope reveals many more stars scattered across the face of the cluster.
Messier 37 is the richest and brightest of the three Auriga clusters and is about 4,500 light years from Earth. However it lies at the limit of naked eye visibility so binoculars will be needed. It can be found just to the south east of the “Pentagon” shape formed by the five main stars of Auriga.
A pair of 10 x 50 binoculars will reveal a large hazy patch of light. Through a small (100mm) telescope about a dozen or so tenth magnitude stars can be seen concentrated towards the centre of the group. The stars appear faint and surrounded by a misty haze, giving the impression of a sprinkling of diamonds or stardust!
Messier 36 is also at the limit of naked eye visibility and lies around 4,300 light years distant from Earth. It can be found to the north west of M37, just inside the Pentagon.
Through binoculars it appears as a small fuzzy patch of light which has at least 60 members. When viewed through larger binoculars or a small telescope, the fuzziness of M36 is transformed into a sprinkling of stars. An 80mm telescope at low / medium powers reveals about 15 or so bright stars scattered throughout the cluster. Most of them appear white or bluish white and are arranged in an “X” shape.
Although Messier 38 is too faint to be seen with the naked eye it is still an easy binocular target. Lying some 3,500 light years away from Earth, it can be found just south of the centre of the Pentagon.
When viewed through 10 x 50 binoculars, it appears large and misty with the brightest stars just about resolvable. A modest telescope will reveal many more individual stars. Some say that this cluster reminds them of a starfish!
Comets have been observed and recorded by many cultures since ancient times. They have often been interpreted as harbingers of doom. In the past they were thought to foretell of events as diverse as earthquakes, floods, hail storms, heat waves, poor harvests, epidemics, war and high prices!
But by 1700 most scholars had concluded that these events happened whether there was a comet or not.
Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gas, rock and dust that orbit the Sun.
They usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits. The time they take to orbit the sun is very variable. Some take only a few years, whereas others may have orbits lasting as long as several million years. Short period comets originate in the Kuiper belt which lies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Long period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud which extends from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to our nearest star!
Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. When comets get closer to the Sun they warm up and begin to release gas and dust. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma. A comet’s coma may be up to fifteen times the Earth’s diameter. Some comets can get bright enough to be seen from Earth without the aid of a telescope.
As a comet approaches the sun, some of the gas and dust in the coma is blown away by solar radiation. This force exerted by the Sun is large enough to create an enormous “tail” from the dust and gas.
The streams of dust and gas form distinct tails, each pointing in slightly different directions. The dust is pushed out of the coma by radiation pressure. It then continues to follow the comet’s orbit around the sun often forming a curved tail. On the other hand the gas in the coma is ionised by the solar radiation. Because these charged particles are more strongly affected by the solar wind they form a separate tail that always points directly away from the Sun. Comet tails can stretch as far as the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen is a short-period comet with an orbital period of 5.4 years. It is relatively small in size, with an estimated diameter of just 1.2 kilometers.
However this one came really close.
On December 16th it passed by at a distance of only 7 million miles from Earth. By then it was neatly positioned between the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters – a really favourable place for us to see it high in the sky after sunset.
This icy space rock was luminous enough to be just visible with the naked eye. It was the brightest comet that we are likely to encounter for at least another five years.
We hope you didn’t miss it!
Meteor showers are caused when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by a passing comet. This debris is moving at extremely high speeds and usually burns up on entering the atmosphere to create shooting stars. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.
Because meteor shower particles are all travelling on parallel paths, and at the same speed, they appear to come from a single point in the sky. That point is called the radiant. Meteor showers are almost always named after the constellation in which the radiant is situated.
Great news. We have just been awarded International Dark Sky Park Gold status by the International Dark Sky Association. Read more about it at the International Dark Sky Association.
Moray Council have just finished installing replacement street lighting in Tomnavoulin with “full cut off” LED units. A great improvement because as you can see they only illuminate downwards where we need the light. Also good for our wildife, reducing our carbon footprint and the cost of running the lighting. It all helps to keep our council taxes down in future.
Brand new interpretation boards were installed at our three Dark Sky Discovery sites last week: The Field of Hope, The Carrachs and Blairfindy Moor. They have got information to get you started on your star gazing adventures. But you will need to visit all three to get the whole story.
Here’s where to find them:
To find Cassiopeia first find the Plough. Then draw an imaginary line through the Pole Star from the star that joins the handle of the Plough to it’s body. That will take you to the big “W” of Cassiopeia.
Cassiopeia was the wife of Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, and mother of princess Andromeda. She boasted that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids. Poseidon, who was the Nereids father did not agree. So he sent a monster, Cetus, to terrorise the Ethiopian coast. When Cassiopeia and Cepheus consulted an oracle to find out how to get rid of the monster they were told to tie Andromeda to a rock for the monster’s dinner.
In a gross dereliction of parental responsibility Cassiopeia and Cepheus followed the oracle’s recommendation. However just in the nick of time along comes Perseus, rescues Andromeda and they all lived happily ever after… except for Cassiopeia and Cepheus: Zeus had them chained to their thrones and put them in the night sky to spin around the Pole Star for ever as punishment for their despicable behaviour.
Now get those binoculars out and check out these two star clusters in Cassiopeia:
NGC7789 is also known as “The White Rose” Cluster or “Caroline’s Rose” because when seen visually, the loops of stars and dark lanes look like the swirling pattern of rose petals as seen from above. It was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783.
NGC 457 is also known as the Owl Cluster or ET Cluster. It has two bright stars – the eyes of the Owl or ET, that can be seen staring back at you as you spy the cluster through your binoculars.
In Greek mythology Pegasus was a winged horse with magical powers. There are many stories told of his exploits: He helped Perseus slay the gorgon Medusa and Bellerophon to kill the Chimera. He was also the bearer of thunder and lighting for Zeus, the chief of the gods.
The constellation of Pegasus can be recognised from the “Square of Pegasus” – a large and conspicuous feature of the autumn night sky.
Right out on the western edge of Pegasus is M15 – a globular cluster. Globular star clusters are believed to be the remains of ancient galaxies cannibalised by the Milky Way. Some of them are almost as old as the universe itself.
Through binoculars M15 will appear as a small fuzzy ball of light. In reality it contains over 100,000 stars and is 12 billion years old. You can find it using the star map above.
A blood moon was a dramatic event for early civilisations. Here are some tales from long ago:
According to Viking mythology the monstrous wolf Fenrir had two sons, Sköll and Hati. Sköll
would chase the Sun whilst Hati ran after the Moon. If either the Sun or Moon were caught then there was an eclipse.
During an eclipse the Vikings used to try and rescue the Sun or Moon by making as much noise as possible to scare off the giant wolves.
The ancient Mesopotamians also saw lunar eclipses as an attack on the moon. But in their stories, the assailants were seven demons.
Now the Mesopotamians regarded an attack on the Moon as an assault on their king. But being fairly good at predicting eclipses they could make preparations in advance.
So during the attack they would install someone expendable as a substitute king whilst the real king pretended to be an ordinary citizen. Afterwards the substitute would quietly disappear, possibly by poisoning, and the real king would resume his duties.
The south American Inca believed that during a lunar eclipse a jaguar attacked the moon and ate it. The feline assault explained why the moon turned blood red.
During lunar eclipses the Inca would shake their spears and beat their dogs. They hoped that this would make enough noise to frighten the big cat away and stop it eating anyone.
The Hupa tribe, also in the Americas, believed that the moon had twenty wives and many pets. Most of the pets were mountain lions and snakes. When the moon didn’t bring them enough food they attacked him until he bled. However before long the moon’s wives would come to his rescue and collect his blood to restore him to health. And so the eclipse would end.
A “blood moon” occurs when the Moon is in total eclipse.
The Moon takes about 27 days to orbit the Earth. Roughly once per month the Moon is directly opposite the Sun. But because the Moon’s orbit is at a slightly different angle to the Earth’s orbit the Earth does not usually get in the way of the sun and we see a full Moon.
However sometimes the orbital plane of the moon lines up with the orbital plane of the Earth and the Earth blocks the sunlight from falling on the Moon. That is what causes a lunar eclipse.
When the sunlight is only partially blocked by the Earth we get a partial eclipse and the Moon darkens slightly. As the eclipse begins a dark shadow can be seen taking a bite out of the edge of the Moon. When the Moon moves directly behind the Earth then we get a total eclipse and the moon goes very dim. The colour turns red because a small amount of light still reaches the lunar surface, refracted through Earth’s atmosphere.
So the red colour of the Blood Moon is the light of every sunrise and sunset on Earth being simultaneously reflected back at us from our Moon.
Our new Dark Skies video is now welcoming visitors to both the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Discovery Centre and the Glenlivet Estate Visitor Centre.
We were delighted to hear this week that planners will be backing our bid to become an International Dark Sky Park. Both the Cairngorms National Park Authority and the Moray Council have written to confirm that they will be using our Lighting Management Plan as a material consideration in determining planning applications within our proposed Dark Sky Park.
