Leonid Meteor Shower

As the Earth moves around the Sun in its orbit, we periodically pass through debris trails left behind by comets. As these small bits of dust (many of them only slightly larger than microscopic) get swept up by our planet like a Swiffer sweeper, the particles plummet through our atmosphere toward the ground. During this plunge, they compress the air in front of them, causing it to heat up (and therefore heat up the particle as well) and the result is a glowing streak (a meteor) flying through the air. When we pass through a comet trail and experience a large number of meteors, we call this a meteor shower.

This Thursday night / Friday morning, we are set to experience the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. While the performance of this meteor shower from year to year is somewhat inconsistent, the Leonid meteor shower is typically one of the better showers of the year. Predictions of the number of meteors per hour can vary, but seeing at least one meteor per minute is not uncommon for this shower. The particles are moving extremely fast, at roughly 72 km/s, so you'll have to have a sharp eye out for those streaks as they light up the sky!

The shower is called the Leonid meteor shower because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Leo. Meteors are best viewed after midnight, as the viewer is on the leading side of the Earth in its rotation (think of a car's front windshield catching more rain drops than the rear windshield), but this year the bright third-quarter moon may wash out all but the brightest meteors. However, while the meteor showers are typically best viewed after midnight, meteors can be seen all night long and so it's worth stepping outside for 5-10 minutes in the evening before the moon rises to see if you can spot them. Face east, and look up.

Happy viewing!

Venus is becoming visible

Venus is becoming more easily visible after sunset. The image above, taken from my apartment's balcony, shows this brilliant planet glittering through the tree limbs. As our sister planet continues to emerge from behind the Sun, it will become increasingly bright and more easily seen. Its elongation (angular separation) from the Sun will increase for several weeks, shining brightly in the post-sunset evening. You can use this Solar System Simulator from NASA to see what relative positions the planets in our solar system are in to cause the changes in Venus' position from night to night.

Asteroid Flyover

Headlines were in abundance early this week about the flyover of the asteroid 2005 YU55, whose orbital path around the Sun took it inside the orbit of the Moon on Tuesday night (eg. see this article from Yahoo! News). This asteroid made a close pass by the Earth, being just 201,000 miles away. The asteroid was in no danger of hitting Earth, which NASA officials were quick to point out, but the fact that a 400-meter asteroid might come so close was enough to remind us all that a bad day is just one asteroid away. Having the opportunity to see an asteroid (or anything that's not man-made) move noticeably through the sky was enough to send me up to the observatory for a look.

I went up with two students, and a few folks from the public showed up as well. Using the 16" telescope we were able to identify the asteroid and track its motion across the sky for a couple of hours. Looking through the eyepiece, which had a field of view of about 1/2 a degree, the asteroid was moving quickly. Its motion with respect to the stationary stars was imperceptible until you saw it, at which point you couldn't NOT notice it moving. While it was not particularly bright, everyone present was able to see it. I was quite surprised at how rapidly it moved. I'm accustomed to seeing asteroids on CCD images make small streaks against the stars as they move across the CCD field of view, but seeing an object moving this rapidly (at its fastest it was moving at about 16 Moon-widths per hour) made quite an impression.

We attempted to take some images of it but experienced some trouble with the equipment. The CCD camera we were using was not one I had used before and we had difficulty identifying the field of view on the computer screen - it was smaller than the eyepiece. While we were unable to get any images of the asteroid, some had better luck. You can bet I'll be better prepared the next time something large flies by! By then perhaps we'll have the 1-meter telescope up and running for some real viewing.

For those who are privileged to see a beautiful sunset on the western horizon, keep your eyes peeled in the fading orange for a bright point of light above where the sun fell below the horizon. This bright point of light is Venus, our sister planet finally reappearing from behind the Sun. The eagle-eyed viewer might even see Mercury just next to Venus, although Mercury's brightness is quite a bit dimmer. For the next week, both planets move away from the Sun, being visible for longer and longer after sunset. After November 14, Mercury begins to move back toward the Sun, while Venus continues on in its wider orbit. The next time you have a clear view of the sunset, take a peek and see if you can spot both planets!

Large Sunspot 1339

Moving across the face of the Sun right now is a massive sunspot, given the innocuous name "Sunspot 1339." This sunspot is approximately 17 times the size of the Earth and harbors the strong magnetic fields that are capable of producing X-class solar flares - the type that generate brilliant northern lights on Earth and sometimes threaten satellites in orbit. Viewing this through the little 4.5-inch telescope I have here using a solar filter, I took a picture of it by holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece:

Though it's a bit blurry (the camera autofocuses and I couldn't get it any better without owning a digital SLR), the massive sunspot group is clearly visible. Compare this to the image on www.spaceweather.com.

I came across a small color CCD camera made by Meade among the equipment up at the observatory and decided that it might be light enough to test out on this small telescope. However, it has been a struggle to get it to produce sharp images and without the ability to track an object steadily the target continually moves through the field of view. Jupiter's moons were clearly visible through the telescope but no image could be taken where the points of light weren't stretched into streaks. However, I did get a decent image of the Moon:

Short post today. After all...it's the weekend :-)

Weekend viewing

The Weather Channel indicates that this weekend's forecast is extremely favorable for nighttime viewing of the sky. While the waxing gibbous moon will make the sky rather bright, you can still find some things if you look up.

Jupiter shines bright in the east just after sunset and is visible all night. Even a modest pair of binoculars can reveal 3-4 points of light around it - the Galilean moons. Galileo was the first to observe these 4 large moons of Jupiter and the fact that they orbit Jupiter, not Earth, was one of the first major pieces of observational evidence supporting the heliocentric, or Sun-centered, model of the Solar System. Turn your binoculars to them and over the course of just an hour you can see them change position with respect to one another.

While you have your binoculars out, check out the nearby Pleiades star cluster. This group of stars, located in the constellation of Taurus, rises around 7:30 p.m. and is visible all night. It looks like a miniature Dipper and can be seen near the center of the image below:

This star cluster is littered with young stars, which appear blue because they are quite massive and therefore quite hot - much hotter than the Sun. 7 are visible to the unaided eye, but through binoculars or a small telescope the cluster really comes to life. Check it out!

Also, keep your eyes peeled for the occasional meteor. The November Leonid meteor shower is approaching in a couple weeks, so spotting one or two random meteors while you are outside this weekend can help build the anticipation for this upcoming meteor shower, which typically puts on a great show.

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy

Tuesday night was a beauty here in Oneonta. A few students and I went up to College Camp to take some images with the 16-inch telescope using a mounted digital SLR camera, which I will feature in the next few postings. Initially the camera was piggybacked to the telescope to take wide-field images. With autumn comes the appearance of Andromeda, and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), so this was a prime target. Here is an image that came out of it:

Seven images were stacked to produce this image. Despite it being at a distance of 2.5 million light-years from Earth, the Andromeda Galaxy can actually be seen with the naked eye from a dark location. In the autumn season, go outside after sunset and look high in the eastern sky for a big square of relatively bright stars. This is Pegasus. To the north (left) of Pegasus is Andromeda, appearing in the image below as the flying horse's back legs:

The light blue oval above Andromeda is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Looking right at it makes it difficult to see, so you may need to avert your eyes to the side just a bit and look for a faint fuzzy. That faint fuzzy is light that has been traveling for 2.5 million years to be absorbed by your eyeballs. Let that sink in!

Solar Observing

Sunday was a beautiful day! The sun was shining, the snow was melting, and at least for most of the day there wasn't a cloud in the sky. This afforded me the opportunity to get out the 4.5-inch Orion reflecting telescope to look at the Sun. Of course, I had a special solar filter that fit over the open aperture of the telescope, which made looking at the Sun safe for my eyes. (Note: Never look at the Sun through a telescope without a special filter!)

The Sun's activity has been on the rise recently, meaning the occurrence of northern lights will likely be increasing over the next couple years. We just had a nice show last week - which Oneonta missed due to rain that night - but hopefully there will be more to come. An increase in solar activity is typically tied to an increase in the number of sunspots, and it was sunspots that I was hoping to observe.

While there were no giant sunspots, there was one set of spots that was nicely visible through the eyepiece at 17X magnification, along with a few tiny ones peppered across the Sun's face. Here is an image I took by holding up my digital camera to the eyepiece:

In the upper-left "quadrant" you can see a small dark sunspot. The image is rotated such that the "top" of the Sun is actually to the bottom-left (a result of the Newtonian design of the telescope). Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a sharper picture of the sunspot with the camera, but the view through the eyepiece was great!

After sunset I noticed that the sky was clear so I put on warm clothes and drove up to the observatory at College Camp. However, by the time I got there (~9:30 p.m.) it had mostly clouded over so I went home disappointed. Jupiter rises at sunset these days, so you can see it shining brightly in the east after the Sun goes down. Through even a modest-sized telescope the 4 Galilean moons are easily visible, and I had hoped to observe the motion of those moons over the course of the evening. No luck this time, but the weather forecast is looking promising for tomorrow or Wednesday.