See Uranus while it's easy to find!

For thousands of years, people have been familiar with planets visible in the night sky. Jupiter and Venus stand out dramatically, Saturn and Mars are also easily seen, and even Mercury can be observed on those (albeit brief) times it emerges from the Sun's glare. However, Uranus and Neptune are a different story. The first planet to be discovered with a telescope, Uranus (pronounced "YOOR-in-us") shines faintly right around the limit for naked-eye detection. What this means is that if you have extraordinary vision, and know precisely where to look, you may be able to detect its faint glow without optical aid if you are in an absolutely dark location - but most likely you will need some sort of assistance. In the case of Uranus, simple binoculars will work.

Being so faint, it can be somewhat challenging to locate the greenish-blue planet among the background stars. Fortunately, nature is giving us a great opportunity to find it using another solar system object: Venus. Venus happens to be extremely easy to find in the sky right now - just look to the west after sunset and this yellow planet is the brightest point of light you'll see.

Now go grab your binoculars, or a telescope if you have one. On February 9th, Uranus will appear right next to our brightest neighbor in the sky (to the South). The image below shows its position on the evening of February 9th as it would appear looking westward (meaning north is to the upper-right and east is to the upper-left). In red are shown the planets' orbits, which you can use to detect Uranus on any of the other upcoming nights as well. Uranus moves very slowly compared to Venus, so even if Venus has moved with respect to the background stars, you can still use the background stars to identify Uranus.

If you're using binoculars, this is how the image should appear. If you're using a telescope, be careful: the optical system of most telescopes will flip the image upside down unless you are using a diagonal mirror to hold your eyepiece. Orient the image above accordingly.

Happy planet hunting!

C/2009 P1 (Garradd), meet M92

As the winter nights press on, it can be frustrating to notice the paucity of good clear skies. Night after night of clouds can make it difficult to keep track of the progression of the Moon, let alone the motion of Jupiter and Venus. This means that when the clouds do part, an observer needs to be ready with binoculars or telescope in one hand and target list in the other. As soon as you see the friendly glow of Venus over the western horizon after sunset, quickly put on your thermal underwear, heavy clothes, two layers of socks, a snowmobile suit, gloves, hat, ski mask, and scarf and hurry outside! Don't forget the hand-warmers either. It's cold out!

This time we will be looking to the north-east late in the night (around 2:30 a.m.). Rising in this direction will be the bright star Vega, and to the upper-right of this the trapezoid-shaped chest of Hercules. To the left of this trapezoid is the head of Draco, the great dragon. The star field is shown below in this image, oriented how you would see it looking north-east at 2:30 a.m. on February 2:

The constellation names are given, and various stars are labeled with their Bayer designation (Greek letters). Near the center of the image is M92, a brilliant ball of hundreds of thousands of stars all bound together gravitationally:

Sliding near M92 from February 1st through the 5th will be the comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd), which put on a nice evening showing last autumn. Making its reappearance in the morning sky, this comet is still a fairly bright target and should appear as a fuzzy spot which moves over the course of a day. The finder chart below, courtesy of Astronomy Magazine, will help you track its motion during the month:

Just be aware that in this finder chart, north is up, while in the first image posted above north is to the left. This is why I have labeled the stars with the Greek letters as they are in the finder chart.

Be sure to let your eyes adjust to the darkness first. This will help the faint details of the comet become more apparent. It may further help to use averted vision - looking off to the side a bit and letting your peripheral vision (which is more sensitive to light) detect its location.

Happy viewing!

That crisp winter air

Hello Oneonta! I'm back at it and, with the spring semester about to begin, just as busy as ever. That two week trip to Michigan was great, followed by a week down in Texas where it was moderately warmer than it is here in Oneonta...very nice. Although nature is bringing on that icy air which, while refreshingly crisp, has an uncanny ability to penetrate to the very depths of one's bones, I'm still going to give you some suggestions on heading outside to look up. Why? Because the coldest nights of winter are often the clearest, and you don't want to miss the night sky for the next few months!

Head out around 7:00 p.m. and you'll be greeted by the mighty Orion hanging in the southeastern sky. This recognizable constellation serves as a navigation tool for locating a handful of easily spotted constellations and stars in the winter sky. While I won't discuss those in this post, since it's easier seen than described, I do recommend you check out a planetarium show at the SUNY Oneonta Planetarium if you're curious. The planetarium shows this semester will be immediately followed by public observing at the College Camp Observatory (weather permitting)!

Grab your binoculars and find something to lean on (or buy yourself a pair of those really cool image-stabilized binoculars!) and turn your sights on the middle star in Orion's belt. Scanning just below the belt you will see three points of light that look like stars which constitute the "sword" or "sheath" hanging from his belt. Focus on the middle of those three and your eyes will be greeted by a wispy cloud of gas: the Orion Nebula. This is a relatively nearby star-forming region called a diffuse nebula which contains a tight cluster of stars in the center referred to as the Trapezium. These hot young stars emit copious amounts of high-energy radiation which causes the gas surrounding them to glow with a reddish color.

The image above was taken at the College Camp Observatory with the 16-inch telescope. Unfortunately, your view through the binoculars won't look this good, but if you find a dark location you may see some color.

A more easily seen spectacle will occur on January 26th when the thin waxing crescent Moon will be positioned right next to Venus in the western sky. Venus has been that blazing bright spot in the western sky after sunset and will be the center of several great conjunctions in the coming months. The view will resemble the view below that occurred in December 2008:

As the days and weeks go by, that other bright point of light high in the southern sky to the right of Orion (Jupiter) will be rapidly approaching Venus until we have a month-long conjunction of the two bright planets from February through March. This will be a sight you won't want to miss, so every clear night take a peek at them to watch their progress. If you have a clear view of the eastern horizon later in the evening (9 or 10 p.m.), look for a reddish point of light - this is Mars and I will make more mention of it as it becomes more easily visible in the coming weeks and months.

This Saturday night keep your eyes peeled for Northern Lights! A coronal mass ejection from the Sun may cause some geomagnetic storms this weekend if we are lucky.
The winter sky is filled with treasures that are easily seen, so check back often for updates and additional recommendations.

Conference time!

This winter break has been a busy one and I have traveled uncountable miles from New York to Michigan, back to New York, and now to Texas. It's time again for the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference, and this year we're in Austin, TX. The president's address this morning indicated (if memory serves me) that there are some 2500 astronomers in attendance this year. Lots of interesting things on the docket this year, including updates about extrasolar planets, a screening of the "Saving Hubble" film, reports from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey about the current view of the Milky Way from the SDSS-III survey, and more. You can keep up with blog and Twitter posts from the folks at www.astrobetter.com and astrobites.com throughout the week. You should also keep an eye on the news headlines (particularly www.space.com) as some of the top stories will come out in press releases. Here is one example about "sniffing" alien planet atmospheres. If I get a chance to take some pictures, I'll post one or two here.

These conferences are a great opportunity for professional astronomers to network with each other, report on research results, and collaborate on new projects. For postdocs and grad students, this is where you give a talk or present a poster in the hopes of getting hired for a job. Undergrads can get valuable experience presenting
results or simply learning about the research process. I'm looking forward to meeting new colleagues and coming home with new research ideas.

Update: The comet lives on!

Comet Lovejoy managed to survive its pass around the Sun - a mere 140,000 kilometers above the Sun's surface - and has reappeared on the other side! Despite the million-degree temperatures of the solar corona, this comet must have been robust enough to have avoided completely melting, although it now seems to lack a tail for the moment. This lack of a tail may be the result of the rapid orbital speed as it was "slung" around the Sun, being basically ripped away from its tail due to its increased velocity. It may also be the case that the Sun's heat melted away much of the ice that was exposed at its approach and there is now a significantly less amount of debris being streamed out behind it - lost in the glare of the Sun and the glowing comet head. We'll see if a tail reappears in the coming hours. For now, check out the videos and images posted by the SOHO space observatory:

SOHO Pick of the Week

A comet's final day

While we can't see it from Oneonta today because of the clouds, comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) is putting on a remarkable, unexpected show. Discovered last month as a large fragment of a comet that broke up, its orbit is taking it on what appears to be a suicide mission, plunging it deep into the Sun's atmosphere. This close approach will likely lead to the demise of the comet.

Comets are visitors from the outer regions of the solar system and are comprised of mostly ice and dust. Ranging in size from about 100 meters to nearly 50 kilometers, these objects are often referred to as "dirty snowballs." As it approaches the Sun, a comet's surface begins to vaporize, releasing a trail of dust and gas that streams out behind it as it flies through space. Often there exist two such tails, one of dust which basically follows the orbital trajectory traced out by the comet's motion, and another consisting of ionic gas which is pushed radially outward away from the Sun by the solar wind.

As Comet Lovejoy approaches the Sun, its vaporization causes it to grow brighter over time. Current predictions are that it may grow bright enough to see with the naked eye just after sunset today, provided that you have a clear view of the horizon. But look fast! If you miss it today, it'll be gone tomorrow.

For a consistently updated (often hourly) description as the situation changes, follow this blog here: SOHO and STEREO Sungrazing Comets.

Planets galore!

Ah, the end of the semester. Students are frantically studying for finals, and professors are frantically grading and wrapping everything up. These sorts of thing have caused me a delay in posting. However, for the moment I seem to be caught up.

We got snow here a couple nights ago, which means I now need to be thinking of a few things up at the observatory: shoveling a walking path to the dome from the road, anticipating a frozen dome on a clear night, and getting snow tires for the drive up to College Camp. Snowy winter months can often have the clearest nights with the best seeing (little heat circulation means very stable air - limited twinkling). But those nights are often the coldest, which makes for somewhat unpleasant conditions. Nevertheless, let's get those telescopes or binoculars out and see what's visible!

On Saturday, December 10th the full Moon will pass through the Earth's ruddy shadow, resulting what is known as a total lunar eclipse. Anyone witnessing this event will see the Moon slowly begin to disappear, as if a bite was being taken out of it, until it is fully within the Earth's shadow - at which point, it will appear a rusty reddish-orange color. This view can be shocking to anyone who doesn't see it coming. Unfortunately for us Oneonta viewers, we won't see it at all.

If you keep your eyes to the night sky, you may eventually notice that not all points of light are stationary. Some move across the sky at fairly rapid rates! If they're not blinking (which would mean they're airplanes) then you can be fairly certain they're actually orbiting objects - either satellites or space junk. Russia just deposited a large piece of space junk into low Earth orbit in the form of a failed spacecraft that was supposed to travel to Mars to sample the surface material of its moon Phobos. Since this spacecraft failed to leave Earth's orbit, it is now expected to plunge into our atmosphere sometime in mid-January. While it isn't unusual for space junk to fall out of the sky, these things typically burn up before they hit the ground. However, there are some notable examples within the last few months (e.g. the ROSAT X-ray telescope and NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) of objects so robust that some parts actually make it to the Earth's surface. This Russian craft, called Phobos-Grunt, will likely join that club, though it isn't yet known precisely where its debris may land. For now, you can see it, and many other orbiting satellites, as they pass overhead. Check out Spaceweather.com's Satellite Tracker for information on when certain satellites will pass overhead and where to look.

Venus is easily visible now after sunset as a bright point of light above the orange glow on the southwestern horizon. At the same time, Jupiter is also easily visible toward the east. For those who get up before the sun rises (or who stay up that late!) Saturn is visible rising in the east before the sun. Finally, Mars is also visible after midnight. You can find it by starting at Betelgeuse (the orange-ish star in the constellation of Orion), drawing a line through Procyon (which is due east) and continuing on until you reach another reddish light source in the sky, which is Mars. It's becoming a busy time for planets in our sky, and it will only get better as Mars and Saturn trek more and more into the earlier parts of the night over the coming months.