mac november 2011 magazine

www.midlandsastronomy.com

Page - 12

Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine

Issue 28- November, 2011

Latest Astronomy and Space News

Kids Astronomy

Quizzes and Games

Monthly Sky Guide

Internet Highlights

Sky Guide - Beginner’s targets for November The Milky Way arches overhead passing through Cassiopeia and Perseus. The Summer Triangle reluctantly departs in the west, but the Square in Pegasus is still high in the south-west. Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus the bull and the yellow Capella stand prominently in the south-east, followed by Gemini and Orion which signal the approach of winter.

November Meteors Two meteor showers can be seen this month, the Taurids and Leonids. The Taurids has an extended maximum that lasts for several days either side of November 12th when about 10 meteors an hour may be seen coming from the region near the Haydes and Pliades clusters. Taurids are slow-moving and bright making a more impressive display than the low numbers might suggest. The Leonid shower which peaks around November 18th. Radiating from the constellation Leo the Leonids are swift, stabbing meteors, often flaring at the end of their paths often leaving persistent trails. Unfortunately the moon will rise around 22:45 on the evening of the 17th and spoil the view slightly.

Telescope Targets High in the sky this month is the hexagonal shape of Auriga representing a man driving a chariot. The identity of Auruga is somewhat shadowy, He is usually

said to be Erichthonius, a lame king of Athens who invented the four-horse chariot.

These is no mistaking the constellation’s brightest star, Alpha

(α) Aurigae, better known as Ca-

pella and is the sixth-brightest star in the sky. Its name comes from the Lat in mean ing “ l i t t l e she-goat”, and the charioteer has traditionally be depicted carrying a goat on his left shoulder. Capella is actually a pair of yellow giants forming a spectrospic binary, 42 light years away.

The stars Eta (η) Aurigae and

Zete (ζ) Aurigae are know as the

kids, the goats offspring, carried on

the charioteer’s arm. Zeta (ζ) Aurigae is one of two extraordinary eclipsing binary stars in the this constellation. It consists of an orange giant some 150 times larger than the Sun, orbited by a much smaller blue-white star, about four times the diameter of

our Sun. Normal Zeta (ζ) Aurigae shines at magnitude 3.7, but every 2 years and 8 months the small star is eclipsed by the red giant and the brightness falls by a third over a six week period.

Even more extraordinary is Epsilon

(ε) Aurigae, which has the longest

known period of any eclipsing binary of 27 years. The main star is an intensely luminous white

supergiant shining with the light of over 100,000 Suns and large enough to contain the orbit of the Earth and lies about 2,000 light years away. Auriga is notable for an impressive trio of star clusters, M36, M37 and M38, all three being visible in the same field of view through a wide-angle binoculars. In binoculars they appear as fuzzy patches, but small telescopes resolve them into individual stars. Each cluster has its own distinct character.

M36 is the smallest and most condensed of the trio, consisting of 60 or so stars lying 3,900 light

years away. In binoculars it appears the most prominent of the Auriga clusters. The largest and richest of the Auriga clusters is M37, containing about 150 stars and is 4,200 light years away. At its centre is a brighter orange star. The most scattered of the clusters is M38, containing about 100 faint stars, 3,900 light years away.

Well, that's about it for November, clear skies and happy hunting.

By Kevin Daly http://members.aol.com/kdaly10475/index.html

Three open clusters in Auriga, M37 (lower left), M36 (right of centre), and M38 (upper right). by Alexander Jäger

Auriga has many open clusters and other objects because the Milky Way runs through it. The three brightest open clusters are M36, M37 and M38, all of which are visible in binoculars or a small telescope in suburban skies. The clusters are about 4100, 4400, and 4200 light years distant, respectively.

Club Notes

Club Observing:

Remember the next club meets every first Friday of the month for our observing sessions held in the MAC grounds. If you wish

to be informed of these sessions please email your name and mobile number to [email protected] who will con-

firm if the session is going ahead (depending on weather).

MAC is a proud member of


Page - 11


Page - 2

Exercise your brainExercise your brainExercise your brainExercise your brain Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine

c o n t e n t sc o n t e n t sc o n t e n t sc o n t e n t s Latest Astronomy and Space News Alien solar system disk reveals birth of a Planet .................... 3

Holmberg II – Forever blowing bubbles ................................ 3

Uranus got knocked over by one-two punch ......................... 4

Gorgeous globular hides hundreds of rejuvenated stars ......... 4

A most beautiful object - the constellation Cepheus .............. 5

See Jupiter at its 2011 best .................................................. 5

How comets in distant solar systems could deliver oceans to exoplanets ........................................................... 6

Lunar Mining Coming Soon? ................................................. 6

Failed star is one cool companion ......................................... 7

Seven Supernovae found in single galaxy ............................. 7

Galaxy Zoo reveals curious ‘Violin Clef’ quadruple galaxy merger ..................................................................... 8

Bucket List Object #5: A Meteor Storm ................................. 9

Kids Section Kids Korner ....................................................................... 10

Quizzes and Games Exercise your brain ............................................................ 11

Monthly Sky Guide Beginners sky guide for this month .................................... 12

Internet Highlights Special content only available with the online version of the magazine ................................................................ 13

Front cover image: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina

Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the

smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the

unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away.

The Carina Nebula is home to young,

extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with

well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the brightest star at the left, near the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324). While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a

supernova explosion.

Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler and Ryan Hannahoe

MAC meets on the first Tuesday of

the month in the Presbyterian Hall, High Street, Tullamore from 8pm.

All are welcome to attend. It also holds infrequent Observing

Nights at its Observing Site in

Clonminch, or at a member’s house (weather permitting) on the first

Friday of every month..

You can see more about the club and its events on


or contact the club via e-mail at [email protected]

Meetings are informal and are aimed at a level to suit all ages.

1. A common problem with

refracting telescopes is a fringe of false colour

around the image. This is known as ______.

� astigmatism

� aberration

� achromism

� annulation

2. The point in which a bodies orbit is furthest

from the Sun is called

__________.

� apogee

� aphelion

� apex

� antipodes

3. The first constellation in

the Zodiac which represents a Ram is

_______.

� Aries

� Aquila

� Aquarius

� Andromeda

4. The brightest star in the constellation Taurus is

the red giant Alpha Tauri, better known as

______.

� Antares

� Aldebaran

� Altair

� Arcturus

5. A solar eclipse isn't always total. If the Moon

is far enough from the Earth, its umbra fails to

completely obscure the Sun. This is a called an

______.

� annular eclipse

� azimuth

� aurora

� antiapex

6. The Arecibo telescope in

Puerto Rico is the largest of its kind in the

world. What kind of telescope is it?

� orbiting space telescope

� 200 inch refractor

� 300 meter

radiotelescope � 300 inch Newtonian

reflector

7. The brightness of a star

as seen from Earth is m e a s u r e d o n a

logarithmic scale, and known as its _______.

� absolute magnitude

� apparent magnitude

� absolute brightness

� astrolight

8. Right next to Pegasus is this constellation named

after a mythical princess

rescued by Perseus and holds the nearest galaxy

to the Milky Way.

� Aquila

� Alcyone

� Andromeda

� Ara

9. Aristarchus of Samos in

280 BCE was one of the

earliest philosophers to suggest which model of

the solar system?

� galactocentric

� geocentric

� heliocentric

� lunacentric

10.A black hole is always

surrounded by an ___________.

� aurora

� accordion pleat

� accretion disk

� antimatter ring

8 4 1

1 7 3 6

8 4 7

3 9

5 8 3

7 9

5 9 8

7 9 8 2

2 6 5

SUDOKU

Check your answers

Answer 1: The correct answer was aberration. This was one of the

reasons Isaac Newton invented the reflecting telescope, which uses a

mirror instead of lenses.

Answer 2: The correct answer was aphelion. The opposite, the point at

which it is closest to the Sun, is called perhelion.

Answer 3: The correct answer was Aries which is considered first because

when the Greeks divided the apparent path of the sun into the twelve signs of

the Zodiac, the vernal equinox (the beginning of spring) took place in Aries.

Answer 4: The correct answer was Aldebaran, the eye of the Bull, is a red giant, four times the diameter of the

Sun.

Answer 5: The correct answer was annular eclipse. Annular, from the latin

word for "ring".

Answer 6: The correct answer was 300 meter radiotelescope. Three hundred

and five meters in diameter, the Arecibo radiotelescope is used to study pulsars, quasars and other radio

objects, and has been used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Answer 7: The correct answer was apparent magnitude. Apparent

magnitude is a star's apparent brightness, as opposed to absolute

magnitude, which is what its apparent magnitude would be if all stars were at a constant distance (10 parsecs).

Answer 8: The correct answer was Andromeda. The Andromeda galaxy, designated M31 in the Messier

catalogue, is two and a half million light-years away.

Answer 9: The correct answer was

heliocentric. Aristarchus demonstrated by geometry that the Sun must be larger than the Earth, so it must be the

center of the solar system. Unfortunately an even more famous A,

Aristotle, believed in the geocentric theory.


accretion disk. The accretion disk is a mass of gasses and other material which spirals into the event horizon,

emitting radiation as the particles disintegrate.


Page - 3 Page - 10

years." said Dr. Ireland. "Since then we've been trying to push the technique to its limits using the biggest telescopes in the world, especially Keck."

The discovery of LkCa 15 b began as a survey of 150 young dusty stars in star-forming regions. That led to the more concentrated study of a dozen stars.

"LkCa 15 was only our second target, and we immediately knew we were seeing something new," said Kraus. "We could see a faint point source near the star, so thinking it might be a Jupiter-like planet we went back a year later to get more data." In further i n v e s t i g a t i o n s a t v a r y i n g

wavelengths, the astronomers were intrigued to discover that the phenomenon was more complex than a single companion object.

"We realized we had uncovered a super Jupiter-sized gas planet, but that we could also measure the dust and gas surrounding it. We'd found a planet at its very beginning" said Kraus. Drs. Kraus and Ireland plan to continue their observations of LkCa 15 and other nearby young stars in their efforts to construct a clearer picture of how planets and solar systems form.

www.dailygalaxy.com

power of Keck's Adaptive Optics with a technique called aperture mask interferometry. The former is the use of a deformable mirror to rapidly correct for atmospheric distortions of starlight. The latter involves placing a small mask with several holes in the path of the light collected and concentrated by a giant telescope. With that, the scientists can manipulate the light waves.

"It's like we have an array of small mirrors," said Kraus. "We can manipulate the light and cancel out distortions." The technique allows the astronomers to cancel out the bright light of stars. They can then resolve disks of dust around stars and see gaps in the dusty layers where protoplanets may be hiding.

"Interferometry has actually been around since the 1800s, but through the use of adaptive optics has only been able to reach nearby young suns for about the last 7

Images have revealed that the forming planet sits inside a wide gap between the young parent star and an outer disk of dust. Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and colleague Michael Ireland of Macquarie University and the A u s t r a l i a n A s t r o n o m i c a l Observatory combined the power of the 10-meter Keck telescopes with a bit of optical sleight of hand.

"LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said Kraus. "This young gas giant is being built out of the dust and gas. In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

The optical sleight of hand used by the astronomers is to combine the

Astronomers have photographed first direct image of a planet in the process of forming around its star. What astronomers are calling LkCa 15 b, looks like a hot "protoplanet" surrounded by a swath of cooler dust and gas, which is falling into the still-forming planet.

Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine

Alien solar system disk reveals birth of a Planet

light years wide. But what makes this one really fascinating is that it’s expelling huge bubbles of gas…

Holmberg II – Forever blowing bubbles

Here the remnants of mature and dying stars have left thick waves of dust and gas, carved into shape by stellar winds. Some ended their lives as supernovae – sending rippling shockwaves through the thinner material to hang in space like fantasy ribbons. With no dense nucleus to deform it like an elliptical galaxy, nor distorting arms like a spiral, this irregular star-forming factory is the perfect place for astronomers to take a close look stellar formation in a new way.

Keep thinking bubbles, because Holmberg II is the perfect example

Kid’s�Korner�

Above: An artist's concept of LkCa 15b being surrounded by dust and gas.

of the “champagne” model of starbirth – where new stars create even newer ones. How does it work? When a bubble is created by stellar winds, it moves outwards until it reaches the edge of the molecular cloud that spawned it. At the exterior edge, dust and gas have been compressed and form a nodule similar to a blister. Here another new star forms... and triggers again… and again… similar to the chain reaction which happens when you open a bottle of champagne. According to the Hubble team, our little dwarf also has an ultraluminous X-ray source in the middle of three gas bubbles which appears in the image’s upper right hand corner. No one is quite sure of what it just might be! Maybe black hole bubbles?

www.universetoday.com

Holmberg II is an active little galaxy and one that’s full of holes – the largest of which spans 5500

“I’m forever blowing bubbles… Pretty bubbles in the air…” Its name is Holmberg II, and it’s part of the M81 Galaxy Group and one of the few that isn’t distracted by gravity from nearby peers.

That question is not as simple as it may sound. You might think that space appears dark at night because that is when our side of Earth faces away from the Sun as our planet rotates on its axis every 24 hours. But what about all those other far away suns that appear as stars in the night sky? Our own Milky Way galaxy contains over 200 billion stars, and the entire universe probably contains over 100 billion galaxies. You might suppose that that many stars would light up the night like daytime!

Until the 20th century, astronomers didn't think it was even possible to count all the stars in the universe. They thought the universe went on forever. In other words, they thought the universe was infinite.

Besides being very hard to imagine, the trouble with an infinite universe

is that no matter where you look in the night sky, you should see a star. Stars should overlap each other in the sky like tree trunks in the middle of a very thick forest. But, if this were the case, the sky would be blazing with light. This problem greatly troubled astronomers and became known as "Olbers' Paradox." A paradox is a statement that seems to disagree with itself.

To try to explain the paradox, some 19th century scientists thought that dust clouds between the stars must be absorbing a lot of the starlight so it wouldn't shine

through to us. But later scientists realized that the dust itself would absorb so much energy from the starlight that eventually it would glow as hot and bright as the stars themselves.

Astronomers now realize that the universe is not infinite. A finite universe--that is, a universe of limited size--even one with trillions and trillions of stars, just wouldn't have enough stars to light up all of space.

Although the idea of a finite universe explains why Earth's sky is dark at night, other causes work to make it even darker.

Not only is the universe finite in size, it is also finite in age. That is, it had a beginning, just as you and I did. The universe was born about 15 billion years ago in a fantastic explosion called the Big Bang. It began at a single point and has been expanding ever since.

Why is the sky

http://www.marcsobservatory.com

dark at night?

Above: This Hubble Space Telescope “deep field” image shows about 300 galaxies in a piece of sky only a few millimetres in size!!!

Above: A cloud of gas and dust, called a nebula. This one NGC 604, glows with light from newly formed stars.

Because the universe is still expanding, the distant stars and galaxies are getting farther away all the time. Although nothing travels faster than light, it still takes time for light to cross any distance. So, when astronomers look at a galaxy a million light years away, they are seeing the galaxy as it looked a million years ago. The light that leaves that galaxy today will have much farther to travel to our eyes than the light that left it a million years ago or even one year ago, because the distance between that galaxy and us constantly increases. That means the amount of light energy reaching us from distant stars dwindles all the time. And the farther away the star, the less bright it will look to us.

Left: Hubble’s famous images normally show elegant spirals or soft-edged ellipses. But these types are only representative of large galaxies. Smaller galaxies like Holmberg II come in many shapes and types that are harder to classify.



Page - 9 Page - 4


The model helps explain a long-standing mystery: Why do Uranus's moons also lie in unexpected positions?

Unlike the other seven planets, Uranus's rotation axis has a bizarre 98-degree tilt relative to the solar system's orbital plane. In other words, the planet seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the sun. Even odder, the rings and moons of Uranus circle the planet's tilted equator.

The widely accepted theory for how Uranus got knocked over is that a rogue Earth-size planet slammed into the ice giant billions of years ago. That lost world was mostly likely destroyed on impact. But previous computer simulations showed that a single extreme impact wouldn't have affected Uranus's retinue of more than 25 moons, and the moons should now

Instead, the most likely scenario involves a closely spaced double impact, Morbidelli's team found.

"Our computer simulations show that two sequential impacts occurred very early in the planet's history, when it was still surrounded by a protosatellite disk, and should have occurred relatively close in time," Morbidelli said. "So far, this is the only model that explains the equatorial orbits of Uranus's satellites."

Big Impacts Once the Norm Among Giants? The results suggest that giant impacts may have been more common than previously thought in the early days of the solar system, when today's planets were still sweeping up smaller objects from the large debris disk surrounding our young sun. In fact, big collisions could have been important factors in the formation of planets such as Saturn and Neptune, which both display 30-degree tilts in their axes.

"In general, scientists have thought that these planets formed by accreting only small planetesimals, and the Uranus tilting event was an

be circling the planet's poles instead of its equator.

Single Blow Would Have Meant "Backward" Moons To explore this conundrum, a team led by Alessandro Morbidelli, of the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur in France, ran several simulations of possible Uranus impacts.

The results showed that Uranus was most likely struck when its moons and rings were still forming from a disk of debris around the ice giant's equator. When Uranus was hit, this disk was disrupted but then reformed around the planet's tilted equator, eventually giving rise to the moons in the positions we see today.

In the new simulations, however, a single impact led to moons that orbit "backward"—in the opposite direction of the planet's spin.

exceptional event," Morbidelli said.

"But now we show that Uranus has to have been tilted at least twice, so these giant impacts were not exceptional events—they were the norm."And Pluto may be harbouring yet more diminutive moons that are waiting to be discovered, he added. With the New Horizons mission nearing its target, "we're going to go look and see."

www.nationalgeographic.com

century observers into a glazed stupor or near-catatonic terror. Nearly everyone awakened to see the bright meteors and attending commotion on the morning of November 12. The storm lasted nearly four hours. According to astronomer Agnes Clerke, “the frequency of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an average snowstorm”.

The meteors came so quickly during this 1833 storm, it was clear the radiant, or apparent source, of the meteors lay towards the Sickle of the constellation Leo. And the radiant moved with the stars during the evening, which finally made it clear that meteors came from outside the Earth's atmosphere. Until then, some believed meteors were an atmospheric phenomenon, the

A meteor storm! The very term makes an honest stargazer's heart beat faster. While a good meteor shower, like the Perseids, may show 50-60 meteors every hour, a meteor storm sprays shooting stars at a rate of hundreds or thousands an hour. During a spectacular storm in 1833, the sky seemed to “fill with falling fire” for nearly half the night.

While spectacular, a meteor storm, which comes in at #5 on our “Bucket L is t for Backyard Stargazers”, may be the most difficult to see because they are extremely brief and rare.

But take heart. NASA is already preparing to deal with a possible outburst next year from a usually lacklustre shower in Draco. And since such events are hard to predict, there may be more opportunities in the coming years. One thing for sure… if you do see a meteor storm, you'll never forget it.

The Leonid meteor shower, which peaks this week in the early morning of November 18th, has offered stargazers the most reliable opportunity to see a meteor storm. The shower flares up every 33 years to present a deluge of meteors for a few hours on the early morning on or around November 18th. Experts predict this year's Leonids will be quite tame, alas. So no meteor storm this year.

But there have been some remarkable Leonids in the past. The great Leonid meteor storm of 1833 was perhaps the most spectacular in recorded history. Visible from eastern North America, the storm produced as many as 200,000 meteors per hour, startling 19th-

belief of which coined the term “meteorology” to the s t ud y o f t he weather.

Astronomers looked at historical records to determine the Leonids peaked at multiples of 33 years… in 1799, 1533, 1366, 1202, and 1037, for example. We now know the peaks correspond to brief periods during which Earth passes through a concentration of debris left in the path of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids last peaked in 1999, with bonus

peaks in 2001 and 2002 (though they did not approach the dramatic peak of 1833).

Sadly, the Leonids will likely remain quiet this year, and for many years to come. Perturbations of the comet by Jupiter mean the Earth may miss the usual rendezvous with this stream of concentrated comet dust for many decades, perhaps.

So chances are, none of us may ever see anything like the outburst of 1833, or even 1999. But there are sti l l opportunities to see a respectable meteor storm, though it likely won't be the Leonids.

Your best near-term bet for a meteor storm lies with the Draconid meteor shower next year. The Draconids, so-named because the meteors streak across the sky from a point in the constellation Draco. With a little luck, you'll see a rich and remarkable spray of meteors. And you can check this event off your celestial bucket list.

www.oneminuteastronomer.com

The planet Uranus got knocked on its side not by a single, massive blow but by two powerful impacts, new computer simulations hint.

Uranus got knocked over by one-two punch

Bucket List Object #5: A Meteor Storm

Over the next several months, we present our totally subjective list of ten celestial sights to see before you die, or “kick the bucket”, as they say. We call it the “Bucket List for Backyard Stargazers”. Our list is targeted at the casual stargazer, with no special expertise or training or ambition other than to see some of the most beautiful, and in some cases, transient sights in nature. For some of these objects, you’ll need access to a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Others require travel and good timing and luck. And for others, you need to simply look up. But all these sights are not that hard to see, once you know how and when and where to look for them. We’ll help you with that.

Left: An en-

graving showing the 1833

Leonid meteor storm

In our galaxy, stars are so far apart that collisions between two of them almost never happen. But in globular clusters stars are so closely packed that many of them have apparently literally collided with each other, merging into objects called blue stragglers. Globulars are old, so having blue, massive stars is weird; they have short lifespans, and should’ve all blown up as supernovae or at least turned into red giants billions of years ago.

When these objects were first discovered in globulars they were really surprising, and while we still

Above: An artists rendition of the meteor storm over Niagra Falls in 1833.

Gorgeous globular hides hundreds of rejuvenated stars

don’t understand everything about them, it’s a fair bet they result from two stars having a very, very close encounter. If two older, low mass red stars pass close to each other at low speed, their gravity can cause them to become bound to each other (it helps if a third star is involved; it can steal away energy from the other two, making it easier for them to become stuck together). Over time, they can spiral together and merge, forming a single, more massive, hotter object: a blue straggler. They’re seen in many globular clusters, and tend to be more common

That is Hubble’s view of M53, a cluster of several hundred thousand stars crammed into ball about 60,000 light years away — well outside the Milky Way itself, but bound to it, orbiting our galaxy. It’s probably 12 billion years old, but it looks like some of the stars in it have opted for a little cosmetic surgery…

where stars are thickest, as you’d expect.

Over 200 of them have been found in M 53 alone, and at first glance, if you didn’t know better, you’d think they were far younger than the

Left: This picture was put together from visible and infrared exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 3.4 arcminutes across.

ancient stars around them. In a way, I suppose, they are.

But don’t judge. If you were a 12 billion year old star, you might want a facelift, too.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com

To help find your way around the night sky, Skymaps.com makes available for free each month. The Evening Sky Map is suitable for all stargazers including newcomers to astronomy and will help you to:

• identify planets, stars and ma-

jor constellations.

• find sparkling star clusters, wispy nebulae & distant galaxies.

• locate and follow bright comets

across the sky.

• learn about the night sky and astronomy.


Page - 5 Page - 8


ring system of molecules such as water, carbon monoxide, and silicon oxide. As the star has swollen, it has cooled to about 3,700K, which means it emits mostly red and infrared light. Including infrared radiation, the star shines 350,000 times brighter than our Sun.

Find mu for yourself under the house-shape o f Cepheus , southwest of zeta Cephei and southeast of Alderamin (alpha Cehei). The star is about 4th magnitude right now, so it’s not too hard to find in binoculars or a finder scope.

In a small telescope, mu reveals its deep red color. Herschel noted the star was “…very fine deep garnet colour… and a most beautiful object”. It’s now often called “Herschel’s Garnet Star”.

I see it more as a red-orange colour rather than garnet. It’s

Cepheus contains few bright stars, but it hosts a number of remarkable stars and deep-sky objects worthy of i nspect i on in a smal l telescope. One of the easiest to enjoy is mu Cephei, a gigantic swollen monster of a star in its last stages of life. This deep-red beauty is perhaps the largest star visible to the unaided eye…

As a massive star, mu Cephei has quickly burned through the hydrogen in its core, and now burns helium or carbon. This has caused it to swell into a red supergiant. But with a diameter of 2.4 billion miles, mu Cephei is a giant even among supergiants. If mu took the place of our sun, it would extend to the orbit of Saturn!

Mu also undergoes an irregular variation in brightness, along with steady mass loss. The star varies from magnitude 3.4 to 5.1 over a period of 2-3 years. And it’s surrounded by a cooler shell and

certainly not as red as a Hind’s Crimson Star, for example, in the constellation Lepus. Herschel recommended enhancing the perceived colour by observing a white star, such as nearby Alderamin, for several minutes beforehand. It works!

In time, over the next several hundred thousand years, mu

Cephei will run out of fuel in its core and explode as a supernova.

Mu Cephei lies next to the large and faint nebulous region IC 1396 which can be seen in a wide-field telescope or binoculars in very dark sky.


A most beautiful object - the constellation Cepheus The constellation Cepheus lies nearly overhead in the mid-evening hours for northern observers this time of year. The constellation represents the legendary husband of Cassiopeia, but it looks less like a king seated on a throne than a crooked stick-figure house drawn by a small child.

What about this merger make it so interesting to scientists? What can they learn from these type of galaxy mergers?

Galaxy Zoo contributor Bruno had some insights on what makes the merger so interesting, stating: “These are some really beautiful tidal tails – They are extremely long and thin and appear curiously poor

in terms of star formation, which is odd since mergers do tend to trigger star formation.” Bruno also added at the time of discovery: “There is no spectrum so we do not know the redshift of the object. It is also not clear if the objects at either end are associated or just a projection.”

Based on Bruno’s curious discovery, the Galaxy Zoo team put in significant efforts to learn more about this merger. Galaxy Zoo team member Kyle Willett provided an update this week, highlighting several new insights, along with more information on this merger’s significance. One of the additional reasons the system is of scientific interest is that while merging galaxies are quite common in our

that could form new stars?” Willett also added, “Or has the starburst already come and gone – and if so, how long-lived are these tidal tails going to be?”

By using analysing the light given off by the merging galaxies, researchers can obtain a treasure trove of information. By measuring how much the spectra is redshifted, researchers can determine an accurate distance. In the case of the Violin Clef merger, an accurate redshift would let the team know for certain if all four galaxies genuinely belong to a single interacting group.

Once researchers have a distance estimate, they can study UV and radio flux data and determine an estimate of the total star formation rate. Additionally, if researchers have very accurate data from light received (spectroscopy), it ’s possible to measure the relative velocities of each interacting galaxy, and build a sort of “3-D” picture of how the four galaxies are interacting.

Since there wasn’t any existing spectral analysis data of the merger system, Danielle Berg, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, observed the Violin Clef in September using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and provided the additional data needed to answer some of the questions the Galaxy Zoo team had about the system.

After the team analysed the spectral data, they learned that all four galaxies are at the same redshift (z=0.0956 +- 0.002), and as such, are most likely members of the same group. Further analysis reinforced the lack of evidence for strong star formation, which helps to confirm the red colors see in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

Based on these recent discoveries, the Galaxy Zoo team is putting out a second call for assistance on analysing the Violin Clef merger. According to the team, the next

universe, the merging process is fairly quick compared to the lifetime of a galaxy. What is not common is to observe a system with long tails and multiple compan ions , wh i ch g i ve s researchers an opportunity to test their models of galaxy interaction against a system “caught in the act”.

Researchers are also interested in the content of galaxies and their tails – specifically the gas and stars. In most mergers, there is a compression of gas by gravity, which leads to a short burst of new star formation in the galaxies and their tails.

The resulting star formation results in young, hot stars which are typically blue. (Note: Younger/hotter stars are bluer, older/cooler stars are redder). What is odd about the Violin Clef merger is that all four galaxies and the tidal tails are red. Willett stated “If that’s the case, then we want to estimate the current age of the system. Were the galaxies all red ellipticals to begin with, with very little gas

About a month ago, a Galaxy Zoo contributor named Bruno discovered a very unique galaxy merger in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The merger appeared to be a triple, or possibly quadruple system, which are indeed quite rare, and it includes curiously thin and long tidal tails. The Galaxy Zoo team has been informally referring to this merger as the “Violin Clef” or the “Integral” based on the unique shape as shown above.

Galaxy Zoo reveals curious ‘Violin Clef’ quadruple galaxy merger


step in the analysis will be working with simulations like the ones in Merger Zoo. Now that the team has confirmed the Violin Clef is almost certainly a quadruple merger, the number of merger models than need to be ran is greatly reduced.

How can citizen scientists help the Galaxy Zoo team with this step of their research? You can start by visiting the Galaxy Zoo mergers p r o j e c t p a g e a t : h t t p : / /mergers.galaxyzoo.org/

Learn more about becoming a Galaxy Zoo participant at: http://w w w . g a l a x y z o o . o r g /how_to_take_part


See Jupiter at its 2011 best The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, reaches maximum brightness the night of October 28. On that date, the planet lies opposite the Sun from Earth in our sky — this is called opposition. Jupiter will rise at sunset, appear highest around local midnight, and set as the Sun rises.

The king of planets will glow far brighter than any other point of light in the sky. The gas giant currently lies in Aries and is about 100 times more brilliant than the brightest star in that constellation. Look for Jupiter in the east at sunset and it will climb higher in the southeastern sky as the night wears on.

You can observe Jupiter’s disk through any size telescope, which makes the planet a great target for beginners. You’ll be able to spot its

dark equatorial cloud belts and even its four major moons, which align with Jupiter’s equator. The planet’s South Equatorial Belt returned in November 2010 after it mysteriously faded away for about six months.

Fast facts about Jupiter

• Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and all the other planets together make up only about 70% of Jupiter’s volume.

• It takes Jupiter about 12 years

to orbit the Sun once, but only about 10 hours to rotate completely, making it the fastest-spinning of all the solar system’s planets.

• Jupiter reflects 52% of the

sunlight falling on it, more than any other planet except Venus (65%).

• Jupiter’s four large

moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — are easily visible t h r o u g h s m a l l telescopes.

• Our line of sight lies in

the plane of the jovian moons’ orbits, so we see occultation's (when a moon moves behind Jupiter), eclipses (when Jupiter’s shadow falls on a moon), and transits (when a moon passes in

front of Jupiter) at various times.

• Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the

solar system’s largest satellite, with a diameter of nearly 3,300 miles which is greater than that of Mercury.

www.dailygalaxy.com

Shown at lower right is the Violin Clef galaxy merger.

Above: Close-Up view of Violin Clef galaxy merger.

same type of bombardment is happening at Eta Corvi.

So it sounds like comet clouds and water reservoirs are not uncommon at all. Perhaps around each star’s a pool of water — which could mean very interesting things for the search for extraterrestrial life.

www.popsci.com

the planet, delivering water and other things. (Earth was too hot after its formation to hold on to any native H2O.) Earlier this month, researchers using the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space

Observatory said they found the chemical isotope signature of Earth water out in the distant reaches of our solar system, suggesting that Oort Cloud comets may have been one source of this bombardment, not necessarily just asteroids. This new Spitzer study suggests the



Page - 7 Page - 6


A recent issue of the journal Science contains a paper describing cold water surrounding a young star called TW Hydrae, located in the Hydra constellation. Astronomers have previously found warm water around planet-forming regions, but not huge amounts of cold water. This cold reservoir demonstrates how comets form in a solar system’s outer reaches.

"Our observations of this cold vapour indicate enough water exists in the disk to fill thousands of Earth oceans," said lead author Michiel Hogerheijde of Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands. TW Hydrae is just 10 million years old, and it is believed the dusty disk surrounding it will eventually coalesce to form planets. The frosty water vapour will probably coalesce to form comets, some of which might rain down on those new planets.

This does indeed happen in other solar systems, as a separate study shows. Astronomers using the cold-observing Spitzer space telescope described finding a dusty band around a star called Eta Corvi, a billion-year-old star system in the constellation Corvus, the crow. The band’s contents strongly match that of an obliterated comet, suggesting a massive collision, perhaps with a planet. This sounded like what happened during Earth’s own Late Heavy Bombardment. The system has a second, bigger ring much farther out, just like our own Kuiper Belt. And the bombardment is even happening around the same time that ours did, about a billion years after the Earth formed.

Du r i n g t h e L a t e H e a v y Bombardment here, a cascade of frosty space rocks rained down on

A pair of new comet studies from two space telescopes show how other planets might grow oceans. For the first time, astronomers have detected a ring of cold water vapor encircling a young star’s dusty planetary disk. And a separate study in a different star system shows a hailstorm of icy bodies could be bombarding a young planet. Together, the studies bolster a theory about how comets may have delivered Earth’s oceans — and they show this is not a unique occurrence in the universe.

How comets in distant solar systems could deliver oceans to exoplanets

"As far as we know, only three supernovae in a single galaxy were found at once so far, but we can confirm seven supernovae [in a single galaxy], thanks to a 17-year monitoring of the radio sources in Arp 220." The unprecedented find may offer a unique cosmic laboratory for studying galaxy evolution. The prodigious galaxy, known as Arp 220, is thought to have formed from the merger of two smaller galaxies and is well known to host a very intense burst of star formation, easily seen in visible wavelengths.

Telescope Como Revealed Supernovae Each of the supernovae found in Arp 220 spans less than a light-year, and at such a great distance, each radio signal covers an angle in the sky less than 0.5 milliarcseconds across. "To give you an idea of how small this is, this size corresponds to what you would see if you would look into a straw of about 1,500 kilometres long. In order to see such small objects, we would need a telescope of 10,000 kilometres across, which is a bit less than the

diameter of the Earth itself. But since we can't build such gigantic telescopes, we use interferometry to simulate them."

In astronomy, interferometry uses the combined power of an array of telescopes—rather than a single, huge telescope—to create high-resolution images that can probe deep into the universe. Batejat's team used 57 of the largest radio telescopes on Earth, which are spread across two continents and five countries.

The heart of Arp 220 is highly obscured by dust that can't be penetrated by visible wavelengths. But radio waves can travel through such a dense environment to reach telescopes on Earth.

Supernova Discovery Is "Something Amazing" Ultimately the data revealed around

40 radio sources near the centre of Arp 220. By watching how these sources changed over time in two dif ferent radio wave lengths, astronomers could tell that seven of the objects were stars that had exploded around the same time.

Astronomers estimate that our galaxy sees only a single supernova every hundred years, on average but the highly active Arp 220 behaves more like how young galaxies probably did more than ten billion years ago. "We hope this might lead to interesting discoveries on how stars formed [and died] in the early universe," Batejat said. What's more, such relatively fresh supernovae "are rare, and they have short lives of a few decades maximum" before they settle into supernova remnants, he said. "So discovering seven such supernovae at once is something amazing."

http://www.universetoday.com

Failed star is one cool companion

WD 0806-661 B is a brown “Y dwarf” star that’s a member of a binary pair. Its companion is a much hotter white dwarf, the remains of a Sun-like star that has shed its outer layers. The pair is located about 63 light-years away, which is pretty close to us as stars go. The stars were identified by a team led by Penn State Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kevin Luhman using images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Two infrared images

There is a small chance, though, that it did form as a planet and gradually migrated out to its current distance. More research will help determine whether this may have been the case.

Brown dwarfs, first discovered in 1995, are valuable research targets because they are the next best thing to studying cool atmospheres on planets outside our solar system. Scientists keep trying to locate new record-holders for the coldest brown dwarfs, and with the discovery of WD 0806-661 B Luhman’s team has done just that!

http://www.universetoday.com

estimate the temperature of WD 0806-661 B to be in the range of about 80 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit (26 to 54 degrees C, or 300 – 345 K)… literally body temperature!

Six to nine times the mass of Jupiter, WD 0806-661 B is more like a planet than a star. It never accumulated enough mass to ignite thermonuclear reactions and thus more resembles a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn. But its origins are most likely star-like, as its distance from its white dwarf companion – about 2,500 astronomical units – indicates that it developed on its own rather than forming from the other star’s disc.

taken in 2004 and 2009 were overlaid on top of each other and show the stars moving in tandem, indicating a shared orbit.

Of course, locating the stars wasn’t quite as easy as that. To find this stellar duo Luhman and his team searched through over six hundred images of stars located near our solar system taken years apart, looking for any shifting position as a pair.

The use of infrared imaging allowed the team to locate a dim brown dwarf star like WD 0806-661 B, which emits little visible light but shines brightly in infrared. (Even though brown

dwarfs are extremely cool for stars they are still much warmer than the surrounding space. And, for the record, brown dwarfs are not actually brown.) Measurements

Astronomers have located a planet-like star that’s barely warmer than a balmy summer day on Earth… it’s literally the coldest object ever directly imaged outside of our solar system!

Above: Artist's impression of a brown-dwarf object (left foreground) orbiting a distant white dwarf --the collapsed-core remnant of a dying star.

Above: A Barrage of Comets: This artist's concept illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body.

Above: Cool, Clear Water The nearby star TW Hydrae has a burgeoning solar system with a sprawling cloud of cold water vapour. The vapour is cold enough to eventually form comets, which could deliver oceans to dry planets that are forming in the system.

Lunar Mining Coming Soon? A team from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University has created a map of the Moon that shows areas rich in titanium ores. The highest titanium abundances in similar kinds of rocks on Earth are around 1% or less.

The new map shows that titanium abundances range up to 10%. In the highlands, the abundance of titanium is less than 1%. As specific minerals reflect/absorb certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, the wavelengths detected can help scientists better u nd e r s t a nd t h e c h em i c a l composition of the lunar surface.

Arizona State University’s professor Mark Robinson had previously developed a technique using HST images to map the abundance of titanium around a small area centred on the Apollo 17 landing site. By comparing the Apollo data from the ground with the Hubble images, the team found that the

titanium levels corresponded to the ratio of ultraviolet to visible light reflected by the lunar soils.

To discover whether the technique would work across broader areas, or whether there was something special about the Apollo 17 area, Robinson’s team constructed a mosaic from approximately 4000 LROC WAC images. Using the technique they had developed with the Hubble imagery, they used the ratio of the brightness in the ultraviolet to visible light in the WAC images to deduce t itanium abundance, backed up by surface samples gathered by Apollo and Luna space missions.

www.dailygalaxy.com

Above: These two infrared images were taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2004 and 2009. They show a faint object moving through space together with a white dwarf.

Seven Supernovae found in single galaxy In a galaxy 250 million light-years from Earth, astronomers have spotted a record-breaking seven supernovae all found at the same time.

To help find your way around the night sky, Skymaps.com makes available for free each month. The Evening Sky Map is suitable for all stargazers including newcomers to astronomy and will help you to:

• identify planets, stars and ma-

jor constellations.

• find sparkling star clusters, wispy nebulae & distant galaxies.

• locate and follow bright comets

across the sky.

• learn about the night sky and astronomy.


Page - 5 Page - 8


ring system of molecules such as water, carbon monoxide, and silicon oxide. As the star has swollen, it has cooled to about 3,700K, which means it emits mostly red and infrared light. Including infrared radiation, the star shines 350,000 times brighter than our Sun.

Find mu for yourself under the house-shape o f Cepheus , southwest of zeta Cephei and southeast of Alderamin (alpha Cehei). The star is about 4th magnitude right now, so it’s not too hard to find in binoculars or a finder scope.

In a small telescope, mu reveals its deep red color. Herschel noted the star was “…very fine deep garnet colour… and a most beautiful object”. It’s now often called “Herschel’s Garnet Star”.

I see it more as a red-orange colour rather than garnet. It’s

Cepheus contains few bright stars, but it hosts a number of remarkable stars and deep-sky objects worthy of i nspect i on in a smal l telescope. One of the easiest to enjoy is mu Cephei, a gigantic swollen monster of a star in its last stages of life. This deep-red beauty is perhaps the largest star visible to the unaided eye…

As a massive star, mu Cephei has quickly burned through the hydrogen in its core, and now burns helium or carbon. This has caused it to swell into a red supergiant. But with a diameter of 2.4 billion miles, mu Cephei is a giant even among supergiants. If mu took the place of our sun, it would extend to the orbit of Saturn!

Mu also undergoes an irregular variation in brightness, along with steady mass loss. The star varies from magnitude 3.4 to 5.1 over a period of 2-3 years. And it’s surrounded by a cooler shell and

certainly not as red as a Hind’s Crimson Star, for example, in the constellation Lepus. Herschel recommended enhancing the perceived colour by observing a white star, such as nearby Alderamin, for several minutes beforehand. It works!

In time, over the next several hundred thousand years, mu

Cephei will run out of fuel in its core and explode as a supernova.

Mu Cephei lies next to the large and faint nebulous region IC 1396 which can be seen in a wide-field telescope or binoculars in very dark sky.


A most beautiful object - the constellation Cepheus The constellation Cepheus lies nearly overhead in the mid-evening hours for northern observers this time of year. The constellation represents the legendary husband of Cassiopeia, but it looks less like a king seated on a throne than a crooked stick-figure house drawn by a small child.

What about this merger make it so interesting to scientists? What can they learn from these type of galaxy mergers?

Galaxy Zoo contributor Bruno had some insights on what makes the merger so interesting, stating: “These are some really beautiful tidal tails – They are extremely long and thin and appear curiously poor

in terms of star formation, which is odd since mergers do tend to trigger star formation.” Bruno also added at the time of discovery: “There is no spectrum so we do not know the redshift of the object. It is also not clear if the objects at either end are associated or just a projection.”

Based on Bruno’s curious discovery, the Galaxy Zoo team put in significant efforts to learn more about this merger. Galaxy Zoo team member Kyle Willett provided an update this week, highlighting several new insights, along with more information on this merger’s significance. One of the additional reasons the system is of scientific interest is that while merging galaxies are quite common in our

that could form new stars?” Willett also added, “Or has the starburst already come and gone – and if so, how long-lived are these tidal tails going to be?”

By using analysing the light given off by the merging galaxies, researchers can obtain a treasure trove of information. By measuring how much the spectra is redshifted, researchers can determine an accurate distance. In the case of the Violin Clef merger, an accurate redshift would let the team know for certain if all four galaxies genuinely belong to a single interacting group.

Once researchers have a distance estimate, they can study UV and radio flux data and determine an estimate of the total star formation rate. Additionally, if researchers have very accurate data from light received (spectroscopy), it ’s possible to measure the relative velocities of each interacting galaxy, and build a sort of “3-D” picture of how the four galaxies are interacting.

Since there wasn’t any existing spectral analysis data of the merger system, Danielle Berg, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, observed the Violin Clef in September using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and provided the additional data needed to answer some of the questions the Galaxy Zoo team had about the system.

After the team analysed the spectral data, they learned that all four galaxies are at the same redshift (z=0.0956 +- 0.002), and as such, are most likely members of the same group. Further analysis reinforced the lack of evidence for strong star formation, which helps to confirm the red colors see in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

Based on these recent discoveries, the Galaxy Zoo team is putting out a second call for assistance on analysing the Violin Clef merger. According to the team, the next

universe, the merging process is fairly quick compared to the lifetime of a galaxy. What is not common is to observe a system with long tails and multiple compan ions , wh i ch g i ve s researchers an opportunity to test their models of galaxy interaction against a system “caught in the act”.

Researchers are also interested in the content of galaxies and their tails – specifically the gas and stars. In most mergers, there is a compression of gas by gravity, which leads to a short burst of new star formation in the galaxies and their tails.

The resulting star formation results in young, hot stars which are typically blue. (Note: Younger/hotter stars are bluer, older/cooler stars are redder). What is odd about the Violin Clef merger is that all four galaxies and the tidal tails are red. Willett stated “If that’s the case, then we want to estimate the current age of the system. Were the galaxies all red ellipticals to begin with, with very little gas

About a month ago, a Galaxy Zoo contributor named Bruno discovered a very unique galaxy merger in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The merger appeared to be a triple, or possibly quadruple system, which are indeed quite rare, and it includes curiously thin and long tidal tails. The Galaxy Zoo team has been informally referring to this merger as the “Violin Clef” or the “Integral” based on the unique shape as shown above.

Galaxy Zoo reveals curious ‘Violin Clef’ quadruple galaxy merger


step in the analysis will be working with simulations like the ones in Merger Zoo. Now that the team has confirmed the Violin Clef is almost certainly a quadruple merger, the number of merger models than need to be ran is greatly reduced.

How can citizen scientists help the Galaxy Zoo team with this step of their research? You can start by visiting the Galaxy Zoo mergers p r o j e c t p a g e a t : h t t p : / /mergers.galaxyzoo.org/

Learn more about becoming a Galaxy Zoo participant at: http://w w w . g a l a x y z o o . o r g /how_to_take_part


See Jupiter at its 2011 best The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, reaches maximum brightness the night of October 28. On that date, the planet lies opposite the Sun from Earth in our sky — this is called opposition. Jupiter will rise at sunset, appear highest around local midnight, and set as the Sun rises.

The king of planets will glow far brighter than any other point of light in the sky. The gas giant currently lies in Aries and is about 100 times more brilliant than the brightest star in that constellation. Look for Jupiter in the east at sunset and it will climb higher in the southeastern sky as the night wears on.

You can observe Jupiter’s disk through any size telescope, which makes the planet a great target for beginners. You’ll be able to spot its

dark equatorial cloud belts and even its four major moons, which align with Jupiter’s equator. The planet’s South Equatorial Belt returned in November 2010 after it mysteriously faded away for about six months.

Fast facts about Jupiter

• Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and all the other planets together make up only about 70% of Jupiter’s volume.

• It takes Jupiter about 12 years

to orbit the Sun once, but only about 10 hours to rotate completely, making it the fastest-spinning of all the solar system’s planets.

• Jupiter reflects 52% of the

sunlight falling on it, more than any other planet except Venus (65%).

• Jupiter’s four large

moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — are easily visible t h r o u g h s m a l l telescopes.

• Our line of sight lies in

the plane of the jovian moons’ orbits, so we see occultation's (when a moon moves behind Jupiter), eclipses (when Jupiter’s shadow falls on a moon), and transits (when a moon passes in

front of Jupiter) at various times.

• Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the

solar system’s largest satellite, with a diameter of nearly 3,300 miles which is greater than that of Mercury.

www.dailygalaxy.com

Shown at lower right is the Violin Clef galaxy merger.

Above: Close-Up view of Violin Clef galaxy merger.



Page - 9 Page - 4


The model helps explain a long-standing mystery: Why do Uranus's moons also lie in unexpected positions?

Unlike the other seven planets, Uranus's rotation axis has a bizarre 98-degree tilt relative to the solar system's orbital plane. In other words, the planet seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the sun. Even odder, the rings and moons of Uranus circle the planet's tilted equator.

The widely accepted theory for how Uranus got knocked over is that a rogue Earth-size planet slammed into the ice giant billions of years ago. That lost world was mostly likely destroyed on impact. But previous computer simulations showed that a single extreme impact wouldn't have affected Uranus's retinue of more than 25 moons, and the moons should now

Instead, the most likely scenario involves a closely spaced double impact, Morbidelli's team found.

"Our computer simulations show that two sequential impacts occurred very early in the planet's history, when it was still surrounded by a protosatellite disk, and should have occurred relatively close in time," Morbidelli said. "So far, this is the only model that explains the equatorial orbits of Uranus's satellites."

Big Impacts Once the Norm Among Giants? The results suggest that giant impacts may have been more common than previously thought in the early days of the solar system, when today's planets were still sweeping up smaller objects from the large debris disk surrounding our young sun. In fact, big collisions could have been important factors in the formation of planets such as Saturn and Neptune, which both display 30-degree tilts in their axes.

"In general, scientists have thought that these planets formed by accreting only small planetesimals, and the Uranus tilting event was an

be circling the planet's poles instead of its equator.

Single Blow Would Have Meant "Backward" Moons To explore this conundrum, a team led by Alessandro Morbidelli, of the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur in France, ran several simulations of possible Uranus impacts.

The results showed that Uranus was most likely struck when its moons and rings were still forming from a disk of debris around the ice giant's equator. When Uranus was hit, this disk was disrupted but then reformed around the planet's tilted equator, eventually giving rise to the moons in the positions we see today.

In the new simulations, however, a single impact led to moons that orbit "backward"—in the opposite direction of the planet's spin.

exceptional event," Morbidelli said.

"But now we show that Uranus has to have been tilted at least twice, so these giant impacts were not exceptional events—they were the norm."And Pluto may be harbouring yet more diminutive moons that are waiting to be discovered, he added. With the New Horizons mission nearing its target, "we're going to go look and see."

www.nationalgeographic.com

century observers into a glazed stupor or near-catatonic terror. Nearly everyone awakened to see the bright meteors and attending commotion on the morning of November 12. The storm lasted nearly four hours. According to astronomer Agnes Clerke, “the frequency of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an average snowstorm”.

The meteors came so quickly during this 1833 storm, it was clear the radiant, or apparent source, of the meteors lay towards the Sickle of the constellation Leo. And the radiant moved with the stars during the evening, which finally made it clear that meteors came from outside the Earth's atmosphere. Until then, some believed meteors were an atmospheric phenomenon, the

A meteor storm! The very term makes an honest stargazer's heart beat faster. While a good meteor shower, like the Perseids, may show 50-60 meteors every hour, a meteor storm sprays shooting stars at a rate of hundreds or thousands an hour. During a spectacular storm in 1833, the sky seemed to “fill with falling fire” for nearly half the night.

While spectacular, a meteor storm, which comes in at #5 on our “Bucket L is t for Backyard Stargazers”, may be the most difficult to see because they are extremely brief and rare.

But take heart. NASA is already preparing to deal with a possible outburst next year from a usually lacklustre shower in Draco. And since such events are hard to predict, there may be more opportunities in the coming years. One thing for sure… if you do see a meteor storm, you'll never forget it.

The Leonid meteor shower, which peaks this week in the early morning of November 18th, has offered stargazers the most reliable opportunity to see a meteor storm. The shower flares up every 33 years to present a deluge of meteors for a few hours on the early morning on or around November 18th. Experts predict this year's Leonids will be quite tame, alas. So no meteor storm this year.

But there have been some remarkable Leonids in the past. The great Leonid meteor storm of 1833 was perhaps the most spectacular in recorded history. Visible from eastern North America, the storm produced as many as 200,000 meteors per hour, startling 19th-

belief of which coined the term “meteorology” to the s t ud y o f t he weather.

Astronomers looked at historical records to determine the Leonids peaked at multiples of 33 years… in 1799, 1533, 1366, 1202, and 1037, for example. We now know the peaks correspond to brief periods during which Earth passes through a concentration of debris left in the path of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids last peaked in 1999, with bonus

peaks in 2001 and 2002 (though they did not approach the dramatic peak of 1833).

Sadly, the Leonids will likely remain quiet this year, and for many years to come. Perturbations of the comet by Jupiter mean the Earth may miss the usual rendezvous with this stream of concentrated comet dust for many decades, perhaps.

So chances are, none of us may ever see anything like the outburst of 1833, or even 1999. But there are sti l l opportunities to see a respectable meteor storm, though it likely won't be the Leonids.

Your best near-term bet for a meteor storm lies with the Draconid meteor shower next year. The Draconids, so-named because the meteors streak across the sky from a point in the constellation Draco. With a little luck, you'll see a rich and remarkable spray of meteors. And you can check this event off your celestial bucket list.


The planet Uranus got knocked on its side not by a single, massive blow but by two powerful impacts, new computer simulations hint.

Uranus got knocked over by one-two punch

Bucket List Object #5: A Meteor Storm

Over the next several months, we present our totally subjective list of ten celestial sights to see before you die, or “kick the bucket”, as they say. We call it the “Bucket List for Backyard Stargazers”. Our list is targeted at the casual stargazer, with no special expertise or training or ambition other than to see some of the most beautiful, and in some cases, transient sights in nature. For some of these objects, you’ll need access to a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Others require travel and good timing and luck. And for others, you need to simply look up. But all these sights are not that hard to see, once you know how and when and where to look for them. We’ll help you with that.

Left: An en-

graving showing the 1833

Leonid meteor storm

In our galaxy, stars are so far apart that collisions between two of them almost never happen. But in globular clusters stars are so closely packed that many of them have apparently literally collided with each other, merging into objects called blue stragglers. Globulars are old, so having blue, massive stars is weird; they have short lifespans, and should’ve all blown up as supernovae or at least turned into red giants billions of years ago.

When these objects were first discovered in globulars they were really surprising, and while we still

Above: An artists rendition of the meteor storm over Niagra Falls in 1833.

Gorgeous globular hides hundreds of rejuvenated stars

don’t understand everything about them, it’s a fair bet they result from two stars having a very, very close encounter. If two older, low mass red stars pass close to each other at low speed, their gravity can cause them to become bound to each other (it helps if a third star is involved; it can steal away energy from the other two, making it easier for them to become stuck together). Over time, they can spiral together and merge, forming a single, more massive, hotter object: a blue straggler. They’re seen in many globular clusters, and tend to be more common

That is Hubble’s view of M53, a cluster of several hundred thousand stars crammed into ball about 60,000 light years away — well outside the Milky Way itself, but bound to it, orbiting our galaxy. It’s probably 12 billion years old, but it looks like some of the stars in it have opted for a little cosmetic surgery…

where stars are thickest, as you’d expect.

Over 200 of them have been found in M 53 alone, and at first glance, if you didn’t know better, you’d think they were far younger than the

Left: This picture was put together from visible and infrared exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 3.4 arcminutes across.

ancient stars around them. In a way, I suppose, they are.

But don’t judge. If you were a 12 billion year old star, you might want a facelift, too.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com


Page - 3 Page - 10

years." said Dr. Ireland. "Since then we've been trying to push the technique to its limits using the biggest telescopes in the world, especially Keck."

The discovery of LkCa 15 b began as a survey of 150 young dusty stars in star-forming regions. That led to the more concentrated study of a dozen stars.

"LkCa 15 was only our second target, and we immediately knew we were seeing something new," said Kraus. "We could see a faint point source near the star, so thinking it might be a Jupiter-like planet we went back a year later to get more data." In further i n v e s t i g a t i o n s a t v a r y i n g

wavelengths, the astronomers were intrigued to discover that the phenomenon was more complex than a single companion object.

"We realized we had uncovered a super Jupiter-sized gas planet, but that we could also measure the dust and gas surrounding it. We'd found a planet at its very beginning" said Kraus. Drs. Kraus and Ireland plan to continue their observations of LkCa 15 and other nearby young stars in their efforts to construct a clearer picture of how planets and solar systems form.

www.dailygalaxy.com

power of Keck's Adaptive Optics with a technique called aperture mask interferometry. The former is the use of a deformable mirror to rapidly correct for atmospheric distortions of starlight. The latter involves placing a small mask with several holes in the path of the light collected and concentrated by a giant telescope. With that, the scientists can manipulate the light waves.

"It's like we have an array of small mirrors," said Kraus. "We can manipulate the light and cancel out distortions." The technique allows the astronomers to cancel out the bright light of stars. They can then resolve disks of dust around stars and see gaps in the dusty layers where protoplanets may be hiding.

"Interferometry has actually been around since the 1800s, but through the use of adaptive optics has only been able to reach nearby young suns for about the last 7

Images have revealed that the forming planet sits inside a wide gap between the young parent star and an outer disk of dust. Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and colleague Michael Ireland of Macquarie University and the A u s t r a l i a n A s t r o n o m i c a l Observatory combined the power of the 10-meter Keck telescopes with a bit of optical sleight of hand.

"LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said Kraus. "This young gas giant is being built out of the dust and gas. In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

The optical sleight of hand used by the astronomers is to combine the

Astronomers have photographed first direct image of a planet in the process of forming around its star. What astronomers are calling LkCa 15 b, looks like a hot "protoplanet" surrounded by a swath of cooler dust and gas, which is falling into the still-forming planet.


Alien solar system disk reveals birth of a Planet

light years wide. But what makes this one really fascinating is that it’s expelling huge bubbles of gas…

Holmberg II – Forever blowing bubbles

Here the remnants of mature and dying stars have left thick waves of dust and gas, carved into shape by stellar winds. Some ended their lives as supernovae – sending rippling shockwaves through the thinner material to hang in space like fantasy ribbons. With no dense nucleus to deform it like an elliptical galaxy, nor distorting arms like a spiral, this irregular star-forming factory is the perfect place for astronomers to take a close look stellar formation in a new way.

Keep thinking bubbles, because Holmberg II is the perfect example

Kid’s�Korner�

Above: An artist's concept of LkCa 15b being surrounded by dust and gas.

of the “champagne” model of starbirth – where new stars create even newer ones. How does it work? When a bubble is created by stellar winds, it moves outwards until it reaches the edge of the molecular cloud that spawned it. At the exterior edge, dust and gas have been compressed and form a nodule similar to a blister. Here another new star forms... and triggers again… and again… similar to the chain reaction which happens when you open a bottle of champagne. According to the Hubble team, our little dwarf also has an ultraluminous X-ray source in the middle of three gas bubbles which appears in the image’s upper right hand corner. No one is quite sure of what it just might be! Maybe black hole bubbles?


Holmberg II is an active little galaxy and one that’s full of holes – the largest of which spans 5500

“I’m forever blowing bubbles… Pretty bubbles in the air…” Its name is Holmberg II, and it’s part of the M81 Galaxy Group and one of the few that isn’t distracted by gravity from nearby peers.

That question is not as simple as it may sound. You might think that space appears dark at night because that is when our side of Earth faces away from the Sun as our planet rotates on its axis every 24 hours. But what about all those other far away suns that appear as stars in the night sky? Our own Milky Way galaxy contains over 200 billion stars, and the entire universe probably contains over 100 billion galaxies. You might suppose that that many stars would light up the night like daytime!

Until the 20th century, astronomers didn't think it was even possible to count all the stars in the universe. They thought the universe went on forever. In other words, they thought the universe was infinite.

Besides being very hard to imagine, the trouble with an infinite universe

is that no matter where you look in the night sky, you should see a star. Stars should overlap each other in the sky like tree trunks in the middle of a very thick forest. But, if this were the case, the sky would be blazing with light. This problem greatly troubled astronomers and became known as "Olbers' Paradox." A paradox is a statement that seems to disagree with itself.

To try to explain the paradox, some 19th century scientists thought that dust clouds between the stars must be absorbing a lot of the starlight so it wouldn't shine

through to us. But later scientists realized that the dust itself would absorb so much energy from the starlight that eventually it would glow as hot and bright as the stars themselves.

Astronomers now realize that the universe is not infinite. A finite universe--that is, a universe of limited size--even one with trillions and trillions of stars, just wouldn't have enough stars to light up all of space.

Although the idea of a finite universe explains why Earth's sky is dark at night, other causes work to make it even darker.

Not only is the universe finite in size, it is also finite in age. That is, it had a beginning, just as you and I did. The universe was born about 15 billion years ago in a fantastic explosion called the Big Bang. It began at a single point and has been expanding ever since.

Why is the sky

http://www.marcsobservatory.com

dark at night?

Above: This Hubble Space Telescope “deep field” image shows about 300 galaxies in a piece of sky only a few millimetres in size!!!

Above: A cloud of gas and dust, called a nebula. This one NGC 604, glows with light from newly formed stars.

Because the universe is still expanding, the distant stars and galaxies are getting farther away all the time. Although nothing travels faster than light, it still takes time for light to cross any distance. So, when astronomers look at a galaxy a million light years away, they are seeing the galaxy as it looked a million years ago. The light that leaves that galaxy today will have much farther to travel to our eyes than the light that left it a million years ago or even one year ago, because the distance between that galaxy and us constantly increases. That means the amount of light energy reaching us from distant stars dwindles all the time. And the farther away the star, the less bright it will look to us.

Left: Hubble’s famous images normally show elegant spirals or soft-edged ellipses. But these types are only representative of large galaxies. Smaller galaxies like Holmberg II come in many shapes and types that are harder to classify.


Page - 11


Page - 2

Exercise your brainExercise your brainExercise your brainExercise your brain Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine

c o n t e n t sc o n t e n t sc o n t e n t sc o n t e n t s Latest Astronomy and Space News Alien solar system disk reveals birth of a Planet .................... 3

Holmberg II – Forever blowing bubbles ................................ 3

Uranus got knocked over by one-two punch ......................... 4

Gorgeous globular hides hundreds of rejuvenated stars ......... 4

A most beautiful object - the constellation Cepheus .............. 5

See Jupiter at its 2011 best .................................................. 5

How comets in distant solar systems could deliver oceans to exoplanets ........................................................... 6

Lunar Mining Coming Soon? ................................................. 6

Failed star is one cool companion ......................................... 7

Seven Supernovae found in single galaxy ............................. 7

Galaxy Zoo reveals curious ‘Violin Clef’ quadruple galaxy merger ..................................................................... 8

Bucket List Object #5: A Meteor Storm ................................. 9

Kids Section Kids Korner ....................................................................... 10

Quizzes and Games Exercise your brain ............................................................ 11

Monthly Sky Guide Beginners sky guide for this month .................................... 12

Internet Highlights Special content only available with the online version of the magazine ................................................................ 13

Front cover image: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina

Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the

smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the

unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away.

The Carina Nebula is home to young,

extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with

well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the brightest star at the left, near the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324). While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a

supernova explosion.

Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler and Ryan Hannahoe

MAC meets on the first Tuesday of

the month in the Presbyterian Hall, High Street, Tullamore from 8pm.

All are welcome to attend. It also holds infrequent Observing

Nights at its Observing Site in

Clonminch, or at a member’s house (weather permitting) on the first

Friday of every month..

You can see more about the club and its events on


or contact the club via e-mail at [email protected]

Meetings are informal and are aimed at a level to suit all ages.

1. A common problem with

refracting telescopes is a fringe of false colour

around the image. This is known as ______.

� astigmatism

� aberration

� achromism

� annulation

2. The point in which a bodies orbit is furthest

from the Sun is called

__________.

� apogee

� aphelion

� apex

� antipodes

3. The first constellation in

the Zodiac which represents a Ram is

_______.

� Aries

� Aquila

� Aquarius

� Andromeda

4. The brightest star in the constellation Taurus is

the red giant Alpha Tauri, better known as

______.

� Antares

� Aldebaran

� Altair

� Arcturus

5. A solar eclipse isn't always total. If the Moon

is far enough from the Earth, its umbra fails to

completely obscure the Sun. This is a called an

______.

� annular eclipse

� azimuth

� aurora

� antiapex

6. The Arecibo telescope in

Puerto Rico is the largest of its kind in the

world. What kind of telescope is it?

� orbiting space telescope

� 200 inch refractor

� 300 meter

radiotelescope � 300 inch Newtonian

reflector

7. The brightness of a star

as seen from Earth is m e a s u r e d o n a

logarithmic scale, and known as its _______.

� absolute magnitude

� apparent magnitude

� absolute brightness

� astrolight

8. Right next to Pegasus is this constellation named

after a mythical princess

rescued by Perseus and holds the nearest galaxy

to the Milky Way.

� Aquila

� Alcyone

� Andromeda

� Ara

9. Aristarchus of Samos in

280 BCE was one of the

earliest philosophers to suggest which model of

the solar system?

� galactocentric

� geocentric

� heliocentric

� lunacentric

10.A black hole is always

surrounded by an ___________.

� aurora

� accordion pleat

� accretion disk

� antimatter ring

8 4 1

1 7 3 6

8 4 7

3 9

5 8 3

7 9

5 9 8

7 9 8 2

2 6 5

SUDOKU

Check your answers

Answer 1: The correct answer was aberration. This was one of the

reasons Isaac Newton invented the reflecting telescope, which uses a

mirror instead of lenses.

Answer 2: The correct answer was aphelion. The opposite, the point at

which it is closest to the Sun, is called perhelion.

Answer 3: The correct answer was Aries which is considered first because

when the Greeks divided the apparent path of the sun into the twelve signs of

the Zodiac, the vernal equinox (the beginning of spring) took place in Aries.

Answer 4: The correct answer was Aldebaran, the eye of the Bull, is a red giant, four times the diameter of the

Sun.

Answer 5: The correct answer was annular eclipse. Annular, from the latin

word for "ring".

Answer 6: The correct answer was 300 meter radiotelescope. Three hundred

and five meters in diameter, the Arecibo radiotelescope is used to study pulsars, quasars and other radio

objects, and has been used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Answer 7: The correct answer was apparent magnitude. Apparent

magnitude is a star's apparent brightness, as opposed to absolute

magnitude, which is what its apparent magnitude would be if all stars were at a constant distance (10 parsecs).

Answer 8: The correct answer was Andromeda. The Andromeda galaxy, designated M31 in the Messier

catalogue, is two and a half million light-years away.


heliocentric. Aristarchus demonstrated by geometry that the Sun must be larger than the Earth, so it must be the

center of the solar system. Unfortunately an even more famous A,

Aristotle, believed in the geocentric theory.


accretion disk. The accretion disk is a mass of gasses and other material which spirals into the event horizon,

emitting radiation as the particles disintegrate.


Page - 12

Midlands Astronomy Club Magazine

Issue 28- November, 2011

Latest Astronomy and Space News

Kids Astronomy

Quizzes and Games

Monthly Sky Guide

Internet Highlights

Sky Guide - Beginner’s targets for November The Milky Way arches overhead passing through Cassiopeia and Perseus. The Summer Triangle reluctantly departs in the west, but the Square in Pegasus is still high in the south-west. Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus the bull and the yellow Capella stand prominently in the south-east, followed by Gemini and Orion which signal the approach of winter.

November Meteors Two meteor showers can be seen this month, the Taurids and Leonids. The Taurids has an extended maximum that lasts for several days either side of November 12th when about 10 meteors an hour may be seen coming from the region near the Haydes and Pliades clusters. Taurids are slow-moving and bright making a more impressive display than the low numbers might suggest. The Leonid shower which peaks around November 18th. Radiating from the constellation Leo the Leonids are swift, stabbing meteors, often flaring at the end of their paths often leaving persistent trails. Unfortunately the moon will rise around 22:45 on the evening of the 17th and spoil the view slightly.

Telescope Targets High in the sky this month is the hexagonal shape of Auriga representing a man driving a chariot. The identity of Auruga is somewhat shadowy, He is usually

said to be Erichthonius, a lame king of Athens who invented the four-horse chariot.

These is no mistaking the constellation’s brightest star, Alpha

(α) Aurigae, better known as Ca-

pella and is the sixth-brightest star in the sky. Its name comes from the Lat in mean ing “ l i t t l e she-goat”, and the charioteer has traditionally be depicted carrying a goat on his left shoulder. Capella is actually a pair of yellow giants forming a spectrospic binary, 42 light years away.

The stars Eta (η) Aurigae and

Zete (ζ) Aurigae are know as the

kids, the goats offspring, carried on

the charioteer’s arm. Zeta (ζ) Aurigae is one of two extraordinary eclipsing binary stars in the this constellation. It consists of an orange giant some 150 times larger than the Sun, orbited by a much smaller blue-white star, about four times the diameter of

our Sun. Normal Zeta (ζ) Aurigae shines at magnitude 3.7, but every 2 years and 8 months the small star is eclipsed by the red giant and the brightness falls by a third over a six week period.

Even more extraordinary is Epsilon

(ε) Aurigae, which has the longest

known period of any eclipsing binary of 27 years. The main star is an intensely luminous white

supergiant shining with the light of over 100,000 Suns and large enough to contain the orbit of the Earth and lies about 2,000 light years away. Auriga is notable for an impressive trio of star clusters, M36, M37 and M38, all three being visible in the same field of view through a wide-angle binoculars. In binoculars they appear as fuzzy patches, but small telescopes resolve them into individual stars. Each cluster has its own distinct character.

M36 is the smallest and most condensed of the trio, consisting of 60 or so stars lying 3,900 light

years away. In binoculars it appears the most prominent of the Auriga clusters. The largest and richest of the Auriga clusters is M37, containing about 150 stars and is 4,200 light years away. At its centre is a brighter orange star. The most scattered of the clusters is M38, containing about 100 faint stars, 3,900 light years away.

Well, that's about it for November, clear skies and happy hunting.

By Kevin Daly http://members.aol.com/kdaly10475/index.html

Three open clusters in Auriga, M37 (lower left), M36 (right of centre), and M38 (upper right). by Alexander Jäger

Auriga has many open clusters and other objects because the Milky Way runs through it. The three brightest open clusters are M36, M37 and M38, all of which are visible in binoculars or a small telescope in suburban skies. The clusters are about 4100, 4400, and 4200 light years distant, respectively.

Club Notes

Club Observing:

Remember the next club meets every first Friday of the month for our observing sessions held in the MAC grounds. If you wish

to be informed of these sessions please email your name and mobile number to [email protected] who will con-

firm if the session is going ahead (depending on weather).

MAC is a proud member of


Page - 14 Page - 13

Each month we will try and bring you the best of the web for astronomy online resources such as movies, podcasts and free software. If you have any suggestions for content in these pages please contact us at [email protected]

Please click on the links provided to view the material and not the images.

This vigorous discussion on "Our Future In Space" featuring Phil Plait from the Bab Astronomy blog, Pamela Gay from Astronomy Cast, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of the most memorable moments at TAM 2011 Las Vegas.



TAM Panel - Our Future in Space

Internet Highlights

Useful free astronomy resources

IFAS Website

h p://www.irishastronomy.org

Stellarium

h p://www.stellarium.org

Virtual Moon Atlas

h p://www.astrosurf.com/avl/UK_index.html

Celes'a

h p://www.sha ers.net/celes'a/index.html

Sky Maps

h p://skymaps.com/index.html

Heavens-Above

h p://www.heavens-above.com/

Cosmic Journeys: Mysteries of a Dark Universe

http://youtu.be/OM4tL6AM_bo

An Asteroid impact can ruin your whole day. And your species

Neutrinos faster than light - Sixty Symbols

http://youtu.be/qJ0m13iJw0k

Podcast: Einstein Was Right

http://www.astronomycast.com/

High Altitude Rocket with on-board video

On September 30, 2011 at 11:08am, Derek Deville's Qu8k (pronounced "Quake") launched from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to an altitude of 121,000' before

returning safely to earth.

http://youtu.be/rvDqoxMUroA

Midlands Astronomy Club have created a Facebook page so that our members and non-members alike can:

• Keep up-to-date on future out-

reach events.

• Be informed of upcoming

lectures.

• Have online access to the

latest astronomy news as it happens.

• See photos of all club events

and activities.

Find us on www.facebook.com

At least once a week we get an email claiming that Einstein was wrong. Well you know what, Einstein was right. In fact Einstein made a series of predictions about what experiments should discover. Some explained existing puzzles in science, while others made predictions that were only recently proven true.

Podcast: The Jodcast

http://www.jodcast.net/archive/

A podcast about astronomy including the latest news, what you can see in the night sky, interviews with astronomers and more. It is created by astronomers from The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank for anyone interested in things out of this world.

http://vimeo.com/30742999

600 Mysteries in the Night Sky

http://youtu.be/QUpWCRadIIA

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope recently produced a map of the night sky. Out of 1873 new sources, nearly 600 were complete mysteries. In this episode

researchers speculate on the nature of the mystery objects.

http://youtu.be/gNpH0kBmtFQ

mac november 2011 magazine

Documents

light years

small star

stars eta aurigae

alpha aurigae

zete aurigae

main star

epsilon aurigae

constellations brightest