A comet's tale

Oneonta weather giveth and Oneonta weather taketh away.

With comet C/2011 L4 (PAN-STARRS) having crossed into the northern hemisphere skies over the last week and a half, I have been excited to not only get to see it myself but potentially have my students observe it during an outdoor lab. I even entertained the thought of a public observing night, having already been scheduled for the 20th, where visitors could view the comet through the telescope. However, nature seems to have had other plans.

Cloudy night after cloudy night passed following the comet's venture into northern skies. With each evening's observations foiled, I grew less and less hopeful that there would ever be an opportunity to see the comet with the unaided eye before it began to fade. But on the evening of March 17, the spirit of St. Patrick must have been strong enough to force the clouds apart over our fair town and my new friend Stash alerted me to clear skies that night. Since the comet was at this point still fairly low in the western sky after sunset, we headed over to the baseball fields above the SUNY Oneonta campus - unfortunately, the observatory at College Camp does not have an ideal view of any horizon.

As we waited for the evening twilight to fade, our eyes scoured the horizon looking for something comet-like. We knew that it should be visible, albeit barely, but after waiting 30-40 minutes we still didn't see it. Stash, wondering if it had set already, got out his phone and pulled up an app that showed its position...and it was evidently still above the horizon. He had brought his 12-inch Dobsonian telescope with him and began to methodically survey the horizon, looking for anything fuzzy. In the meantime, I had my Canon Rebel T3i DSLR camera pointed to the west and was snapping 5-second exposures of the sky, trying to extract any detail out of the fading twilight.

After a few minutes, Stash found it! We were able to see through his telescope the comet's bright coma and tail, reddened slightly due to its low altitude above the horizon. I ran back to the camera and refined its aim, then took an 8-second exposure...and there it was!


I had just received the camera in the mail the previous Friday, so I was (and still am) in the process of learning how to adjust the settings to make a nice image. I took a number of pictures and we spent some time viewing it through the telescope and with our eyes alone. Once we knew where it was, we could see it just above the treeline, though it was admittedly not easy. What a thrill it was to have found the elusive object after what felt like a long wait! We both agreed that this may have been one of the most exciting astronomical objects we've seen, and eventually packed it up for the night when we could no longer feel our fingers.

Unfortunately, the student lab nights and the public viewing night were all clouded out. Next week is spring break, so by the time the students return the comet will be a telescope target instead of a naked-eye object. However, it should still look pretty nice through an eyepiece so maybe we'll get some nice weather. Over the next few weeks, the comet will dim as it moves gradually into the northern sky. In early April it will pass by the Andromeda Galaxy, so that should make for an excellent photo opportunity with the zoom lens. Now I'm hoping for clear skies that night!

C/2013 A1...meet Mars.

October 19, 2014 could be a big day for Mars, and the robots that currently roam about its surface. According to preliminary observations, a newly discovered comet named C/2013 A1 may be on a crash course for our red neighbor. I came across this report from Discovery News this morning and found it to be terribly interesting! Projections right now have the comet missing the Red Planet by a mere 63,000 miles (for comparison, that's about 1/4 the distance between Earth and the Moon). Imagine a comet flying between Earth and the Moon! Picture how brightly it would light up the sky! Amazing!

At this point, it's unknown how large the comet is. Comets are smaller than planets, typically between a few hundred meters and several miles in diameter, so if it does impact the planet it won't destroy it. However, the impact would be devastating and would spur on a global event the likes of which nobody alive has ever seen. If the comet is a few miles in diameter, it would produce a crater some 10-30 miles miles in diameter and probably kick up enough debris to completely enshroud the planet. We would get a first-hand look at the awesome power of nature, and perhaps a glimpse into the potential future for our own Earth.

At this point, measurements are too few (and the interaction too far in advance) to accurately determine whether there will be an impact or not. As more observations are made, the window through which the comet will pass will become smaller as its orbit is more precisely defined. Even if the comet misses Mars, it is still bound to be an exciting event - and with any luck, some of those roaming robots will get an opportunity to turn their cameras skyward and snap an image of the passing interloper from the outer solar system.

Speaking of exciting events, comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) continues to grow in brightness. Images from several sources, including Spaceweather.com, show the comets tail growing with time as viewers in the Southern Hemisphere are already able to see it with the naked eye.

Southern Hemisphere viewers actually have two comets: PANSTARRS and Comet C/2012 F6 (Lemmon). This video created by Alex Cherney shows both comets visible. Look for one comet (PANSTARRS) on the left side of the frame, and the other (Lemmon) near top-center, displaying a nice green hue:

Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS sweeping through the Southern Skies from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.
Two comets - C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) and C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) can be seen moving through the Southern Sky in this short time lapse video.

By mid-March, we in the Northern Hemisphere should get a glimpse of PANSTARRS, so hopefully my posts in the near future will contain my own images of the sight. Happy viewing!

SUNY Oneonta Astronomy, now on Facebook!

The SUNY Oneonta Astronomy program now has a presence on Facebook. This is a page where schedules can be found for upcoming events, status updates will be posted for public observing and planetarium shows, images will be posted taken at our observatory, articles will be posted of general astronomy interest, and more. Check us out and "Like" us here: www.facebook.com/SUNYOneontaAstronomy.

Our planetarium was down for repairs during the month of January, which unfortunately meant we had to cancel one of our public shows. This brought be great pain! However, it has been repaired after a marathon session working with the computers, meaning our February 27 show is still a go. For those of you who were unable to register for it before it sold out, keep up with our schedule as I will be posting dates for the late spring and summer months soon.

The weather up here has been terrible lately. I could probably count on one hand the number of clear nights I've seen since 2013 began, which means that my ASTR 271 (Stars and Galaxies) students haven't been up to the observatory at all. One student doing a research project with me has been up once to take images of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, but that has been it. It would be a travesty if we were unable to get up there as a class for lab - I know many of my students are eager to use the telescopes.

While we wait for the Comet PANSTARRS to make its appearance next month, in the news recently has been the upcoming near-miss of the asteroid 2012 DA14. This space rock is expected to approach within just 17,000 miles of Earth, meaning it will actually fly inside the orbits of some of our orbiting satellites. There is no danger, however. NASA scientists have said that this asteroid will miss us and never pose a threat. What it WILL provide is an excellent opportunity to study the object up close. As space engineers go about planning a manned landing of an asteroid in the next decade, being able to study these rocks up close should provide valuable information about their surface terrain, composition, rotation, and more. NASA has provided this diagram depicting the asteroid's trajectory as it flies by:

On this image's scale, the Moon is roughly as far away as the width of this blog entry (depending on the size of your monitor). For those on the night-time side of Earth, this asteroid will still require a telescope to view but it will be moving really fast.  For those of us here in Oneonta, we'll be in daylight and won't be able to view it during its close approach.  We'll see it as it is receding away from us by the time the Sun has set here.

For more information about the flyby, check out this article from Space.com. I'm willing to bet that the SLOOH Space Camera will be airing the flyby online in real-time too!

Comet #1 of 2013...coming soon!

There has been growing excitement in the amateur and professional astronomical communities lately as 2013 opens before us. This year holds the potential for two (TWO!) naked-eye comets. These two comets are called C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) and C/2012 S1 (ISON). Since ISON won't be showing up for awhile, I'll discuss PANSTARRS in this post.

Comet PANSTARRS "baby picture", upon initial discovery.

While ISON seems to be getting more of the media headlines, PANSTARRS is actually the one we will get to see first. Originating in a distant region of the solar system called the "Oort Cloud", this comet, like ISON, appears to be making what may be its first every inward sojourn into the inner solar system.  This is exciting news for viewers, because this means its condition is pristine and any volatile materials on the surface have not yet been melted or sublimated away.  As the comet heats up, potentially for the first time ever, all the ices that are frozen in place will gradually sublimate into space, releasing a tremendous amount of dust in the process.  This material produces the fantastic tails that characterize comets.  As a comet makes more and more trips through the inner solar system, it is believed that the surface should gradually become tarnished as the ice and loose dust is removed and firmer rock is left behind.  Thus, a veteran comet isn't expected to produce much of a show...but a rookie should look fantastic!

There is always the possibility that because this comet hasn't been tested yet, it may be a dud.  It could break up as it warms, leaving us with nothing but a debris trail.  But let's not think about that.

Instead, here is a diagram from a recent Astronomy magazine I received, predicting the brightness of the comet ("apparent magnitude") and altitude in the sky.  The first (yellow) track from January to March is the altitude from the southern hemisphere, while the second (white) track from March to May is the northern visibility.  On the magnitude scale, smaller numbers mean that it's brighter.

Visibility track for comet PANSTARS.  Copyright: Astronomy magazine.

For us northerners, we are waiting for March when it finally pops up above the horizon.  By that point, it will have made its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and should look quite bright in the night sky.  From our friends in the south, we'll know whether it's living up to expectations or not.

Those of you who have never seen a naked-eye comet before (and that includes me), let's join together for some anticipation.  We will look for it at the observatory in the spring at our public observing nights, so even as it fades in brightness in April we should still be able to see it easily in a telescope.

I can only imagine viewing a beautiful bright comet through our 1-meter telescope!

Do we really need all this automation?

As I peruse recent issues of Astronomy magazine I can't help but wonder if the newest technologically-advanced amateur telescopes are actually ruining stargazing. We live in a very fast-paced, instant-reward world where it's easy to expect, or even feel entitled, to get results without the work. The newest motorized telescopes are now coming equipped with built-in digital cameras that automatically take images of the night sky and compare them to their internal databases, allowing it to figure out where on Earth it's located without human input. This means that the user no longer needs to learn how to align their telescope because it will do it on its own.

I get that aligning the telescope can be a pain, particularly if it isn't computerized at all. Once the telescope auto-aligns, it then provides the user with access to a built-in catalog of thousands of night-sky objects that can be found with the click of a button. This means that the user no longer needs to know how to read a star map or locate objects by hand - the telescope finds them automatically and (provided that its auto-alignment went well) the user is rewarded.

Does this help the novice access the night sky? Yes. Does it make it faster to find an object when you're doing a public viewing or star party? Absolutely. But I also believe it acts as a crutch that is too easy to lean on to resist. You don't need to have a mental concept of the celestial sphere, or even be able to identify the location of Pegasus, anymore. Just turn it on, wait a minute, then type in your object. Is it even above the horizon? Who knows, but the computer will tell you! I'm predicting that the next-generation telescope will collimate itself, focus itself, and even have a built-in zoom eyepiece that magnifies and focuses on command. Maybe it'll even have a coffee-maker built in to keep you warm!

I'm a purist, I suppose. The only camera I want is for imaging my target, the only computer I need is one back inside for processing the data afterward. Instant gratification is providing us with the tools to never have to think again, never have to wait too long, and not know how to fix something if anything goes wrong. Grumble, grumble, grumble...oh but it sure is fancy and easy to use! Yes, part of me has great disdain for such a crutch, while another part of me still wants to use it so I don't have to do the darn alignment myself.

Okay, I'm climbing off my soap box, stashing my crotchetiness in my desk drawer, and getting back into the normal mode!

Jupiter is looking wonderful this month. As we approach opposition, the planet is visible all night long and is wonderfully big and bright. Once Taurus rises in the evening, Jupiter is easily spotted as the brightest object around (unless you're looking at the Moon). Keeping track of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a good test of your optical equipment, and fortunately Sky & Telescope provides a great tool for identifying when it will be visible on a given day. Observing a jovian moon transit (Io passes in front of the king of planets just after midnight EST on the night of December 7/8) is also rewarding for the perspective it provides.

Imagine standing on the surface of Io and looking up at Jupiter dominating your sky! Or better yet, visit Jeff Bryant's website that contains his artistic renderings of this scene, and a multitude of others.

Last month at the public observing night I had the opportunity to view NGC 7009 (the "Saturn Nebula") through the 16-inch and it looked great. There is something very fulfilling about viewing a new object every month. If you have a moderate-sized telescope, give it a try. It's in Aquarius, though, so don't wait too long into the night.

For those of you who are curious...yes, I used the telescope's computer control paddle to find the nebula. I don't have all night ;-)

Happy viewing!

The Oneonta Stargazer is now on Twitter!

If you're interested in keeping up with the observing conditions at the SUNY Oneonta Observatory, located at College Camp just north of campus, then you can follow us on Twitter:

Follow @OneontaStargaze

Yes, I know, this blog is called "Oneonta Stargazer" while the Twitter handle is "OneontaStargaze." It turns out, there is a character limit in the length of a Twitter handle and I figured it was easier to tell people "OneontaStargaze" rather than try for "OneontaStargazr" and explain that the last 'e' is missing. So, there it is.

Here I will post updates regarding the status of any public observing nights in real-time, and any other updates that are astronomy-related as well. Follow the Oneonta Stargazer on Twitter!

Jovian transits

Jupiter has been on the rise earlier and earlier each evening lately. Look for it peeking above the eastern horizon after 8:00 p.m. (EDT) tonight - but don't confuse it for the reddish-orange star Aldebaran right next to it!

With binoculars or a telescope you can see the four Galilean moons, those moons observed by Galileo when he first turned a telescope toward the stars, as they continue their eternal march around the king of planets. While these moons all orbit along the same general plane, and this plane is mostly oriented along our line of sight, catching any one of these moons in the act of being anywhere but off to the side is challenging. However, on November 7th we get just such an opportunity as the volcanic moon Io ("eye-oh") can be seen transiting its host planet that evening. This event actually reoccurs on November 30, in case you miss it on the 7th. During these two transits, the shadow of Io appears first against the disk of Jupiter because we have not yet passed Jupiter in our orbit around the Sun:

The shadow being cast by Io extends straight back away from the Sun, but because we are viewing the alignment from an angle we see the shadow cross in front of Jupiter first, then Io appears soon after. The shadow makes its first appearance at 10:11 pm EST (NOTE: daylight savings time ends this weekend, so when you're viewing the transit you will be on standard time). Io the crosses against the jovian disk about a half hour later. In case it's cloudy that night, you can see the same event happen again on Nov 30, with the shadow's first appearance at 10:22 pm EST, with Io appearing only about 5 minutes later. This difference in appearance delays reflects the fact that our viewing angle is shrinking as Jupiter approaches opposition (actually, it's due to our movement, not Jupiter's). If the transit occurred exactly at opposition, both the shadow and Io would appear at the same time.  Viewed from Earth with a modest telescope, Io will be very difficult to see - so look for the shadow instead.

If it's cloudy both nights, then check out this nice NASA image of a transit as viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope and pretend you're watching it happen live.

I for one will be hoping it is clear that night so I can watch it from the SUNY Oneonta observatory with my students, who will (hopefully) be enjoying an outdoor lab that night.

Happy viewing!