Jane Houston Jones » Morris Jones

Spring stargazing: the Milky Way and beyond!

jane — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:56:35 +0000

Follow the dipper arc to Arcturus, then spike to Spica

Omega Centauri globular cluster 35 degrees below Spica

Springtime is my favorite observing season. In the course of an evening you can face away from our own galaxy and feast your eyes on other Milky Ways, while tracking down some of the most spectacular objects tangled among the stars and dust of our own galaxy.

Omega Centauri is one of them. It’s the largest of the 150+ globular clusters discovered in our own Milky Way Galaxy. There may be even more undiscovered globular clusters hidden behind the gas and dust of our galaxy. Omega Centauri was discovered by Edmund Halley in 1677 as a nebula, but it had been listed in Ptolemy’s catalog 2000 years ago as a star! It’s located about 15,800 light-years from Earth and contains several million Population II stars. The stars in its center are so crowded that they are estimated to average only 0.1 light years away from each other. It is about 12 billion years old, and there is some speculation that Omega Centauri may be the core of a dwarf galaxy which was disrupted, destroyed and absorbed in an encounter with the Milky Way.

This spectacular object is well known to southern hemisphere observers, but it may come as a surprise that it can be seen from many northern hemisphere locations as well. If you are south of the 25th parallel or 25° (degrees) North latitude you should be able to see it 20° above the horizon, and located 35° below Virgo’s great blue-white star, Spica. I’ve observed it from 37° North (Lake Sonoma, CA) several times (from a hill with a negative horizon) and at 33° N in this writeup, where it appeared less than 20° above the horizon definitely! It’s been seen from 42° North as well, from a very flat horizon. It’s a naked eye object, but often the horizon is hazy, so scan with binoculars if you don’t see it with your eyes.

NGC 5128, Centaurus A Galaxy, and NGC 5139 Omega Centauri, the largest Globular Cluster in our Milky Way

To find Omega Centauri, you’ll first have to find Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. It helps right now that golden Saturn is near by. To find Spica, continue the curve of the big dipper handle and “arc to Arcturus, and then spike to Spica”. Spica transits — when it reaches its highest point in the sky — at around midnight daylight saving time. Use this table of transit times for major solar system objects and bright stars and select your observing dates, object (Spica in this case) and your location and press “compute”. “Alt” next to the transit time at your location indicates Spica’s altitude above the horizon. Spica and Omega Centauri transit at the same time, so look about 35° (one clenched fist is 10°) directly below Spica to look for an oval hazy cluster the size of the full moon. Can you see individual stars? Does it look round or oval? Try with your eyes, then with binoculars.

After confirming my view of Omega Centauri and making this little sketch (sketch view as seen through my binoculars), I opened my Herald Bobroff AstroAtlas to the Centaurus constellation pages and looked at what else was in the vicinity of Omega Centauri. I remembered a favorite galaxy, NGC5128, officially named Centaurus A, but nicknamed the hamburger galaxy for obvious reasons. Now I’ve seen both of these objects from Australian skies where they are not hugging the horizon. But even through a partially cloudy horizon, I was able to see this fabulous object, with its dark dust lane bisecting the oval galaxy.

NGC5128 is one of the closest radio galaxies to Earth, so its active galactic nucleus has been extensively studied by professional astronomers, and a supernova was detected in the galaxy’s dust lane in 1986. The Spitzer Space Telescope studies have confirmed that Centaurus A is colliding with and devouring a smaller spiral galaxy! Centaurus A is located approximately 4° north of Omega Centauri, and because the galaxy has a high surface brightness and relatively large angular size (2/3 the apparent size of Omega Centauri), it’s visible to the naked eye under good conditions. My sketch was made with difficulty, by aiming my 14.5-inch reflector (with a 10mm Radian eyepiece for 200x) nearly horizontal and half-perched uncomfortably on the bottom step of my observing ladder.

M68 cluster in Hydra, NGC2903 Galaxy in Leo

Before moving on, I observed another object in the southern sky line between Spica and Omega Centauri, Globular Cluster M68, or NGC4590 in the constellation Hydra. I sketched an oval glow of stars within a diffuse squarish haze of fainter stars.

Now it was time to get vertical and observe some other objects higher in the sky. The beautiful constellation Leo was still well placed in the southwest sky after midnight. I opened my Night Sky Observer’s Guide Volume 2, the Spring and Summer volume to Leo. Gamma Leonis, or Algeiba, is a beautiful deep yellow/orange and pale yellow double star in the sickle (or backwards question mark or lion’s mane) of Leo’s head. Next, I moved to a fascinating red dwarf, Wolf 359, near the famous Leo galaxies M95, M96 and the Leo “trio” of galaxies. Wolf 359 moves 4.71″ (arcseconds) per year or 8′(arcminutes) in a century. It’s the third closest star to the sun, at 7.75 light years away. Only Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star are closer. At magnitude 13.6 (similar to Pluto’s magnitude) it’s faint, but the striking red color helps distinguish it from the other nearby stars.

Leo 1 near Regulas, Leo’s heart was my next target. A faint dwarf galaxy overshadowed by bright Regulus is a member of the local group of galaxies, and may be one of the most distant satellites of the Milky Way. Faint NGC2903 — a very pretty magnitude 9 barred spiral galaxy tangled in the starry lion’s mane was worth a sketch. It’s 31 million light years away, local but not attached to any local galaxy group. I had to go and have a look at the supernova in Leo’s M65 galaxy – here is Mojo’s animation of M65,combining two images of M65, one shot on 3/9/13 at Amboy Crater, and one shot on 4/6/13 at Chuckwalla Bench located at N 33° 39′ 37″, W 115° 32′ 26″

Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) shot before dawn on 4/7/13, five-minute exposure

It dawned on me I hadn’t observed Saturn yet. Under fabulous steady skies, I was able to pump up the magnification of my 15-inch Litebox reflector to over 300x using a 6mm Televue Radian eyepiece. When I say “my” 14.5-inch Litebox, I mean Mojo’s — I have a 12.5-inch and 17.5-inch version of these fabulous time machines. This image taken by Anthony Wesley the same night shows Saturn as I viewed it. My visual view was not quite this vivid, but the contrast of the colors is very similar to what I saw, including the dark north polar region, so famous in the Cassini North Polar Hexagon images. The distinct band colors and darker north polar area I saw and sketched were varying shades of butterscotch and chocolate.

All that was left now was Comet PanSTARRS, and we had to wait until about 4:00 a.m. for Andromeda to rise in the northeastern sky. I observed it in my 7×50 Carton Adlerblick binoculars quickly and then pooped out and went to sleep until well after dawn. Mojo stayed up and took this lovely image, plus several more including a time sequence showing the comet’s motion. It’s really worth a look and a read and here’s the link. Until next dark sky observing night on May 11, I’m signing off!

Mojo’s images and report from the same night

Observing in the neighborhood

jane — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 05:09:52 +0000

Summer Milky Way, Scorpius and dark nebulae, image by Morris Jones

Observing near the summer solstice means a short observing night sandwiched between a late sunset and an early dawn. Rather than rush through an observing project I find it’s a great time of the year to sit back and trace familiar constellations in my minds eye, and marvel with anticipation as the eastern horizon brightens. Soon, the stars of Scorpius and Sagittarius will rise and the “clouds” on the horizon take shape as lumps and glittery clusters, bisected by dark nebulae — those mysterious star-less regions within our Milky Way Galaxy.

It’s hard not to just sit and gaze at the unfolding spectacle. So for the first hour or two after darkness last Saturday night (June 16, 2012) I sat in my meteor observing chair and observed the sky with my own eyes. Every now and then I jumped up and eyeball-aimed Mojo’s 15-inch Litebox reflector at this cluster or that nebula. The sky conditions at Amboy Crater were near perfect.

We have 360 degree perfect horizons at this site, with small light domes from 29 Palms, and from departing trains. Temperatures are warm with just a hint of breeze, hot before sunset, shirtsleeve observing all night long, humidity 10% rising to 20% at dawn. Conditions are dry and warm. No dew. Ever! Here’s the Clear Sky Chart for Amboy Crater.

Lyra

Ophiuchus and Poniatowski's Bull

the demoted constellation Poniatowski's Bull and Ophiuchus

As I was looking at the constellation Lyra and its gem-of-a-telescope-target, the Ring nebula, M57, I spotted an asterism nearby, in the northeastern section of Ophiuchus that looked just like Lyra, except it was upside down.

That looked like a good place to select an observing project, so I cracked open my copy of the Night Sky Observers Guide, volume 2 Spring and Summer to the constellation Ophiuchus. I noticed this little group of stars that looked like Lyra were part of an open cluster, and that there was another pretty cluster in the neighborhood.

Best of all, Barnard’s Star was within the cluster! Barnard’s Star is the second closest star to the Earth — only 6 light years away, shining at a faint magnitude 9.5. The Alpha Centauri system, including Proxima Centauri, together are about 4 LY away, but we can’t see them from the US. Barnard’s Star has the greatest proper motion — the angular annual movement across the line of sight against the distant stellar background of any star. It moves 10.4 seconds of arc per year. That compares to a quarter of a degree in a human lifetime, roughly the angular diameter of the full Moon.

Amateur astronomers, carefully sketching or imaging Barnard’s Star once a year for a couple years can actually track the movement of the star. It’s a cool red dwarf. And it’s listed in Jim Kaler’s fabulous book The Hundred Greatest Stars. Jim writes “Barnard’s Star has a metal content only 10 percent that of the Sun. That coupled with its high velocity shows it to be a special, rather rare, kind of star called a “subdwarf” that more belongs to the metal-poor and ancient halo of our Galaxy (the Sun belonging to the disk). It is merely passing through our local neighborhood.”

You’ll definitely need a star chart to find it. Here’s one showing Barnard’s Star within the Melotte 186 star cluster with pretty IC 4665 nearby. This tiny faint red dwarf is a challenge, but it’s worth it, as are the two clusters.

The neighborhood it’s passing (to our line of sight), is through the demoted constellation Poniatowski’s Bull. This V- shaped set of stars looks like a bull’s head and horns in northeastern Ophiuchus. I see Lyra, instead, by adding a few other stars. It was named Poniatowski’s Bull (Taurus Poniatovii), to honor Stanislaus Poniatowski, King of Poland from 1764 to 1795. Named by Polish-Lithuanian astronomer and mathemetician Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt whose observatory at Vilnius gained royal favor from the King.

So now, when you are looking at our Milky Way, notice Vega and her constellation Lyra. Then turn your head ever so slightly to the right, and you’ll see huge Ophiucus, which looks like a big percolator coffee pot to me. It’s above and between Scorpius and Sagittarius. The left star of the “lid” of the coffeepot is part of my “upside down Lyra”.

Nothing beats visual astronomy. Without taking the time to sit down and just look at the sky, and trace the constellations I never would have discovered this lovely demoted constellation for the first time!

There is always something to observe that you’ve never seen before, even if it is the same old stars. That’s what makes visual astronomy my go-to hobby. Pun intended!

Mojo’s images and writeup from the same night: predawn planets & astrophotography

More Fast Moving Stars

More Demoted Constellations

Early morning hikes – the Chuckwallas of Amboy Crater

Autumn observing – around the South Galactic Pole

jane — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:55:05 +0000

Herald-Bobroff Astroatlas

Astroatlas B Chart page for Grus and Telescopium, well below Capricornus and Sagittarius

NGC131 and 134 and a 5-spot of mag 10 stars

NGC55 image by Morris Jones, used with permission

While Mojo and I were observing at Amboy Crater on October 22, 2011, Cliff, another observer at the site pointed out the constellation Grus, The Crane, low on the southern horizon. Grus isn’t a constellation I’ve paid attention to before – you need to be able to see down to the southern horizon in the fall, and you need to be observing at +34N Latitude or further south. If you can see well below Capricornus, Sagittarius and Sculptor in the autumn, give it a try!

None of the star charts I brought on that occasion showed Grus, but I had just the startool at home for the following weekends (October 29) outing — the Herald-Bobroff Astroatlas! I hadn’t needed this lovely atlas since my 1999 Ayer’s Rock Australian observing trip with 20 other astronomers, and welcomed reacquainting myself with it. The atlas begins with the A Charts – wide swaths of the sky, showing several entire constellations. From there you are directed to the B Charts (image at your left), showing smaller segments of the sky and bright stars. The C Charts (9th mag stars and 14th mag. deep sky objects) are where I headed for this night’s observing, but in the past I have drilled down to the D (11th mag. stars and 15th mag deep sky objects), E and F charts for detail showing Coma and Virgo galaxy clusters and the Magellanic Clouds.

There aren’t any bright galaxies to hunt for in the constellation Grus, and observing low to the horizon doesn’t afford the best views, either. But even so, I quickly observed the top ten or so – including some lovely galaxy clusters. First I went for NGC7590 and 7599, a pretty pair of spiral galaxies discovered by John Herschel and Charles Dunlop. I didn’t see the distant Abell 1111 cluster, 2 billion light years away, just the two brighter galaxies.

Next I hunted down a group of galaxies near NGC7418 – a face-on spiral galaxy nestled in a pretty string just below Fomalhaut on the Grus Sculptor border. Here’s a photo of the galaxies I observed. 7418 was discovered by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope with an 18-inch f/13 speculum telescope in 1847. A supernova erupted in this galaxy in 1983. And Allan Sandage (1975, Astrophysical Journal, 202, 563-582) notes that this galaxy is a member of the IC1459 Grus Group.

Well after midnight on this perfect observing night, our friend Dave came over and told me he had just observed some objects he had not logged before. “A pair of galaxies, with a little dice-shaped asterism of five stars next to it”. Soon I was on my own hunt for NGC131 and 134. It’s to the lower left of big open cluster Blanco 1 on the star chart. The smaller 131 was discovered by John Herschel in 1834, and the larger 134 was discovered in 1826 by James Dunlop in Australia. They are part of our local group of galaxies (LGG), and the galaxy group is also known as LGG-007 located 63 to 82 million lights years away. My sketch is to the left.

This part of the sky is littered with easy to find galaxies, and I spent several hours hopping from one to another. I was observing NGC55, an interesting barred irregular galaxy only 7 million light years away. It’s one of the closest galaxies to our own local group! I encouraged Mojo image it, even though it was low to the horizon. I love his image, and it looked a lot like this through the eyepiece, too. I made a rough sketch of the galaxy, and when I looked at Mojo’s image we both showed the pretty lineup of stars outlining the galaxy.

This is just a sample of the dozens of galaxies I looked at in the deep southern sky on a late October evening. Fall offers long nights of darkness for galaxy starved amateur astronomers tired of all the bright milky way objects of summer. So ladies and gentleman, start your telescopes, and point as low as you can go. Aim your telescopes where the wings of the southern birds Grus and Phoenix fly. If you can’t go that low, Sculptor offers dozens of amazing objects to view. Open your atlas to the constellations around the South Galactic Pole near Sculptor, and you’ll enjoy hours of surfing the southern skies.

Here are Mojo’s Astrophotos from October 29, 2011. I enjoyed visually observing these objects, and then seeing these postcards sent from the universe through Mojo’s astrophotography.

Diagram of the Observable Universe

Review of the Herald-Bobroff Astroatlas

Images showing our observing spot at sunset and waiting for moonset

Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group, Extragalactic observing

jane — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 02:10:56 +0000

Comet/2010 G2 (HILL)

NGC7380 emission nebula and cluster

The Great Galaxy in Andromeda, M31, with M32 and M110 nearby

The Pegasus 1 galaxy cluster

I love to take my telescope out to observe the sky, and I find that the objects studied or discovered by scientists (from the past or the present) make for an even more rich observing (and learning) experience. Here are just a few observations from a fantastic night at Amboy Crater October 22, 2011. Amboy Crater is well worth a visit for daytime hikes as well as for spectacular stargazing at night.

IAU circular No. 9134, issued on 2010, April 11, announced the discovery by R. E. Hill of a new comet on Apr. 10, 2010, in the course of the Catalina Sky Survey. After posting on the Minor Planet Center’s NEOCP webpage, many observers checked out this 19.5 magnitude object, designated C/2010 G2 (HILL). (HILL) is well known and well respected Rik Hill of the Lunar and Planetary Lab at University of Arizona, Tuscon. He literally wrote the book about observing sunspots for the A.L.P.O. Sunspotter program. I used this book to sketch sunspots and complete the ALPO Sunspotter program last solar maximum in 2002, and I encourage you to complete this amazing program now, as solar maximum is coming up! I observed Rik’s comet on October 22, 2011, when it was magnitude 10.78 and 1.5 AU distant from Earth. It was small, the coma diameter was 6.2′ – and it was very hard to find! Here’s Mojo’s lovely image from that night. In the eyepiece the green color was absent, in fact it was nearly a no-see-um! Here’s a finder chart. Now, off to explore the Milky Way.

NGC7380 is an open cluster sometimes referred to as the Wizard Nebula located in the constellation Cepheus. It’s about 7,000 light-year away from Earth. The stars of NGC7380 have emerged from the star-forming region in the last 5 million years or so, making it a relatively young cluster. Here’s the image from NASA’s WISE Mission of NGC7380 in 2010. It’s a mosaic of images spanning an area on the sky of about 5 times the size of the full moon. Caroline Herschel discovered this cluster on August 7, 1787 when her brother William Herschel was away in London. She discovered many objects, include comets on the nights she was not recording William’s famous observations. Let’s check out a galaxy in our local group now.

Everyone with a telescope observes the great Andromeda Galaxy, M31 as soon as convenience and sky conditions allow. It’s the largest galaxy of our galactic family, the Local Group, which consists of not only the Andromeda Galaxy, and our own Milky Way galaxy, but also the Triangulum Galaxy, M33, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It’s visible with the unaided eye if you know where to look from a dark sky. It’s magnificent in binoculars, and unsurpassed in a telescopic view, no matter how big or small the telescope might be. Here’s the image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope which studied our neighbor galaxy. Mojo reprocessed this image a week later. Now let’s move out beyond our local group and check out something extragalactic.

Perseid 1 Galaxy Cluster is 250 million light years distant. It’s not in the local group! The brightest members are a pair of magnitude 11 elliptical galaxies — NGC7619 and NGC7626 — which you can see in Mojo’s first image from October 22. Here’s a fascinating (and local) report on NGC7619 by Mt. Wilson Observatory’s Milton Humason written in 1929. In the early twentieth century, the construction of big telescopes at Mount Wilson (the 60-inch and 100-inch) allowed astronomers to determine the motions of galaxies for the first time.

Milton Humason used the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson. He writes “During the past year two spectrograms of N. G. C. 7619 were obtained with Cassegrain spectrograph VI attached to the 100-inch telescope. This spectrograph has a 24-inch collimating lens, two prisms, and a 3-inch camera, and gives a dispersion of 183 Angstroms per millimeter at 4500. We present new observational results of NGC 7619, an elliptical galaxy with a prominent X-ray tail and a dominant member of the Pegasus group”.

More recently, Chandra and XMM-Newton observations confirmed the presence of a long X-ray tail on NGC7619. I love seeing objects our space telescopes study and image! And I often spend many enjoyable hours learning the science behind my stargazing targets when I’m back at the armchair.

Here is Mojo’s blog + photos from October 22 at Amboy Crater.

Here is Mojo’s blog + photos from October 29 at Red Cloud Road.

A Micro-Vacation to Savannah Georgia

jane — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:45:16 +0000

A room with a view - overlooking beautiful Jones Street

Chippewa Square, location of Forrest Gump's bench scenes

Back in November 2010 I took a micro-vacation to Savannah, Georgia. Even though my visit was less than 24 hours long, I packed a lot of sightseeing into my short visit. I was traveling from Atlanta, Georgia, to meet up with Mojo in Orlando, Florida, and took an extra day to see Savannah. As I left Decatur, Georgia, I was thinking of the Civil War and the destruction of Atlanta. When I crossed the Oconee River I realized I was following William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea in November and December 1864.

I arrived in Savannah at about 3 p.m. in the afternoon on a bitterly cold late November day. I meandered through the historic district to the Eliza Thompson House, an exquisite 1847 inn located on W. Jones Street. I settled into my room — the tiny but lovely Lee Room, with a 12-foot ceiling, plantation shutters and a bay window overlooking the beautiful oak trees on Jones Street. A charming exposed brick wall separated the bedroom and bath.

Then I set out for a pre-dinner walk through some of the famous squares of Savannah. As I walked down the Factors Walk, where cotton was bought and sold, I figured an early dinner was in order. I didn’t want to walk the mile back to my hotel, and it was about 20 degrees outside. As I wandered along River Street, I found just the restaurant and view I was looking for. And so I ended up having fried green tomatoes plus wild Georgia shrimp and grits at Vic’s on the River Restaurant and Bar, watching the sunset darken the skies over the Savannah River as I ate.

During my Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday morning walks the next morning, I visited half a dozen of Savannah’s famous squares, the Colonial Park Cemetery, the Savannah River, writer Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home, the birthplace of Girl Scouts of America founder Julia Gordon Low, and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Why not take a stroll through Savannah in my photo essay? I’m sure it will whet your appetite for a visit to this lovely city!

My Savannah Photojournal

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month – updated 2012

jane — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:44:44 +0000

Every where you turn, you will be running into pink this month. Pink tic tacs, pink yogurt lids, pink Harry and David pears, pink airplanes, and even pink buckets of fried chicken! It’s Pinktober, aka Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There are some cancer survivors who hate the pink, calling it pink nausea, reminding us that cancer is not pretty.

The images of those who are dying of breast cancer aren’t shown alongside the pink ribbons or on the chicken buckets. And those with metasatic breast cancer, or incurable breast cancer do not adorn the pink promo advertisements, either.

Other cancer survivors — like my sister Wendy — sometimes carry a pink reminder of their survivorship, and not just during October, either. I understand both feelings and can agree with both sentiments.

This weekend, at a family get-together, Wendy had a recyclable black shopping bag with a big pink ribbon sewn into the front and back. It’s a gorgeous bag, and one that means something unique to her, as a breast cancer survivor. She sometimes wears her pink breast cancer survivor baseball cap from a cancer walk. Or a diamond “ribbon” pendant. When she does, sometimes a person will stop and ask a question, or just smile at her. But she knows these symbols carry more meaning to her, more than a purchase.

40,000 women and 400 men die each year from breast cancer, and that number is not going down. I’m glad Wendy is here to wear her pink cap, and carry her black and pink bag. I mourn for others who have lost their loved ones to breast cancer. I mourn the friends I have lost.

What I want to promote is funding for Breast Cancer Research and Metastatic Cancer Research, specifically. That is where I want my donations to go. I followed my friend Susan Niebur’s advice: to turn awareness to action: donate, educate, advocate, volunteer. I am trying to do all four this year, narrowing down my own small impact to breast cancer research. I want those numbers of men and women who die every year to go down, not stay the same.

Here’s a great post called 7 Smart Tips for Supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month The Right Way. It distills Susan’s suggestions, suggesting you research the charities the pink grocery products support, that you ask where the money goes, and/or that you donate directly to research.

I joined the Army of Women 2 years ago in honor of my sister Wendy, who is cancer free now after breast cancer surgery and radiation. The army is looking for volunteers to partner with scientists and researchers seeking to unlock the key to preventing breast cancer. The Army of Women welcomes women (and men) of all ages, all ethnicities and all risks. It is a chance for women, and men too — who have had breast cancer or not — to directly participate in research, through questionnaires, phone calls, blood samples or diet and exercise studies. Volunteers receive emails with research studies, which they can choose to participate in or not. I joined this army to save lives, because there is no cure for breast cancer.

Here’s Susan’s suggestion blog: Turning awareness to action: donate, educate, advocate, volunteer

There’s a great Breast Cancer weekly tweetchat Mondays at 9pm ET, 6pm Pacific: Tweetchat #BCSM for those interested in a weekly Twitter dialogue between those who have breast cancer, those who treat breast cancer, research advocates, research foundations, supporting family members, and interested lurkers and learners (like me). For those who are on Twitter, look at these hashtags in addition to #BCSM: #pink #pinktober #IBC (Inflammatory Breast Cancer) #MBC (Metastatic Breast Cancer) #pinknausea (offensive commercialism) #redefinepink and find your place or your interests, and read along or join the groups. You don’t even need to be on Twitter to read the posts!

In the meantime, I know some people are sick of the pink, especially excessive commercialism or are disgusted by Facebook breast cancer memes. But I know others who embrace the pink because it did make them aware, helps them communicate breast cancer awareness, research, or provides their own storytelling backdrop. All of these scenarios are ok with me! We must find a cure for breast cancer!

My other blog posts about cancer awareness
Stay strong and fight cancer
Some thoughts about cancer
Lymphedema Sleeves Demystified

Some good links
Think Green for Karen: California Lyme Disease Association
Think Blue for Mojo: American Prostate Cancer Foundation
American Cancer Society Relay for Life

A warm-up act for the Perseids

jane — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:22:56 +0000

See the moon and planets low in the west August 12, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

The view from Earth - the planetary lineup in orbital perspective courtesy NASA's Solar System Simulator, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars and moon imaged same day with same equipment (in 2005) courtesy Jim Keen

A trio of planets, without the moon August 7, 2010, courtesy Morris Jones

Are you eager to see the annual Perseids on Thursday night? You’ll have to wait until after 10:00 p.m. local time to see them, so why not pass the time until showtime by viewing the planets right from your doorstep? Step outside for the planetary warm-up act.

All you have to do is look towards the west as soon as the sun sets. Bright Venus is the first to appear. It’s really bright, and you can’t miss it! Now, hold your clenched fist up to the sky covering Venus. To the right of Venus, about 1/2 of a clenched fist away is a second planet. That’s Saturn. And to the upper left of Venus is another planet… That’s Mars.

But wait, there’s more! Look below Venus for the slender crescent moon. If you don’t see the moon, look again Friday night – it will be a larger crescent to the left of Venus a day later.

Though the three planets appear together in our line-of-sight they are really far apart from each other and from us on Earth. Mars is about 300 million km (186 million miles) from Earth, while Venus is 112 million km/70 million miles distant. Saturn? It’s 1,535 million km/954 million miles from Earth right now. The moon? 363 thousand km, or only 225 thousand miles away. It’s fun to compare the size of the moon and Mars, especially if you received that annual email (which incorrectly) states that Mars will be as big as the moon this month. Do the math. It’s impossible!

The Solar System Simulator is a great public resource for geeks. You can see any planet or spacecraft from any vantage point on any date you select. I picked August 12th to show the view of the planets and moon from Earth.

I hope you can sense the three-dimensional orbits of nearby Venus, far-away Mars and distant Saturn. Have some fun with it! Every day the Cassini Mission website shows a view of Saturn from Earth, from Cassini, and right now Enceladus, as we close in on a flyby of that exciting moon later this week.

In this image of the moon and Mars, Jim Keen made a “true-to-life” size comparison. He made a “blended” image of the Moon and Mars back in July 2005. He recalls, “I had set up my telescope in my backyard and stuck a camera on the back of it. I took separate images of the Moon and Mars – both of which were “up”, but in separate areas of the sky – and later combined the two images to get one, showing the actual size difference using the same equipment, same camera, same magnification, and taken within a few minutes of each other.”

Jim’s image shows the apparent size of the moon and Mars really nicely! If he took the same image this month, Mars would appear super tiny! In the 2005 image Mars was about 50 million miles from Earth, and today it is 186 million miles away.

The final image shows the trio of planets imaged Saturday night August 7th by my hubby, Morris (aka Mojo) Jones. Click on the image to see the two fainter planets above Venus. He posted several images in his blog post called Sky full of planets and lightning. It’s really worth a read! The lightning was amazing Saturday night!

I hope this little planetary warm up act will whet your appetite for more sky watching this week. The Perseids will be a real spectacle, especially if you can get away from the city lights. I’ve pretty much decided to head out to the Mojave desert and see the star show from Amboy Crater. Clear Skies everyone, and happy solar system observing to you all!

California Clear Sky Chart Black dots indicate the darkest observing areas. Amboy Crater, on the southern border of Mojave National Preserve is the closest “black dot” dark observing area and will require a drive of over 200 miles for Thursday’s Perseids.

NASA’s Solar System Simulator Check out where the Voyagers are right now!

My Mars in August website, updated each year since 2005.

Moonrise over Chuckwalla Mountain

jane — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:12:51 +0000

Moonrise over Chuckwalla Mountains July 3, 2010 about 11:30 p.m.

Third quarter moon, a half hour later

My small 70mm Televue Ranger was used for the moon images

Summer dark sky observing means short nights, and it’s usually too hot for comfort in the Colorado desert location we love. But Mojo and I decided to pack a cooler full of ice cubes, and take our chances. The predicted daytime high was 102 F, and it would be (we persuaded ourselves) a few degrees cooler at “our” spot. The low temperature for the night was forecast to be 75 degrees. We could live with that!

It didn’t get dark enough to observe anything except planets until 9:00 p.m. and so we only had two and a half hours of dark sky before moonrise would make it too bright.

One of the benefits of living and observing in Southern California is that at latitude 33N, we can see deep into the southern skies.

Summer nights are just made for observing Scorpius. The Bug Nebula NGC 6302 is one of my favorites ever since I saw and sketched it high in the Australian skies in 1999. NGC 6231, the Table of Scorpius is another favorite. It’s an open cluster near Zeta Scorpii, the first star marking the Scorpion’s curvy tail.

This is a delightful region (great with binos too) full of Milky Way wonders, including emission nebula IC4628. Mojo captured the area beautifully in his image of Scorpius last night. The star cluster center bottom is NGC 6231, and the reddish patch just above it is the emission nebula IC4628.

This is the area I was aiming my big telescope at until about 11 p.m. when we could see the lunar light dome emerging. We finished up our projects and waited for that first “wedge” of moonlight to breech the mountain ridge to the east.

I took some afocal images using my Canon Powershot SD870IS Digital camera held at the eyepiece of my small refractor. I’m pretty happy with the results.

Since it was a short night, this is a short observing report.

Mojo’s report from the same night

The Chuckwalla Bench observing site. Scan the topography to see Chuckwalla Mountain to the east of our observing site (the green arrow).

Another third quarter moon observation

A morning comet

jane — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:04:20 +0000

Use a chart like this to locate where to look for your object

Can you find the constellation Perseus and comet McNaught in Mojo's lovely skyscape?

Mojo's photo of Comet McNaught

Quick comet sketch with notes. See the long ion tail, the bright coma, and the short dust tail in my sketches

Comet C/2009 R1 (McNaught) June 13, 3:45 am from Chuckwalla Bench observing site, Colorado Desert. Lat 33N, Long 114W, Elev 1400 ft

I wish everyone in the world could see just one comet! Right now, there is one visible just as the dawn brightens the night sky. Unfortunately, it’s not easy or convenient to see this one, and in another ten days it will disappear below our horizon. It’s just barely visible to the unaided eye. Timing your viewing window is tricky, too. You have to find a balance between the time the comet rises high enough to see, and the coming of dawn, which robs the night of its darkness and guidepost stars an hour or two later.

Here are some tips to help you have a successful comet viewing experience now or in the future. When you first hear about a visible comet, you can usually find some online sky charts from astronomy magazines such as Sky and Telescope and Astronomy. Many online sources can offer guidelines and observations, too.

Star charts are fine, but you have to go out and navigate the real sky to find unfamiliar constellations. From the city, or close to dawn, this is a real challenge. You may only see a few bright stars in the sky. Try to see the stars making up the constellation Perseus in Mojo’s image. I’ll admit, it isn’t easy, especially when you are rushing against time. Now, compare his image to the star chart. And you’ll soon see the figure of the hero, Perseus, starting to emerge.

I use the familiar “W” shaped constellation Cassiopeia as a signpost to locate Perseus. Then I see Perseus with his two running legs, joined at the bright star Alpha Perseus (Mirfak). Nearby you can see the naked-eye open cluster known as either Melotte 20 or the Alpha Perseii cluster. Next, I make a mental triangle out of Alpha, Delta and Kappa Perseii, the three bright stars closest to the comet shown on the star chart.

Finally, I aim my binoculars at the triangle of stars and hold my breath. Then I see it, and I quietly say “hello” to the swift celestial traveller. I get chills every time I see a comet. And this time is no different. A little green fuzzball is right where the comet should be.

Now I jump into action. I dust the cobwebs out of my brain, as well as I can at 3:45 am in the morning. I’ve just woken up from a short nap. I quickly sketch what I see in the eyepiece of my big telescope, taking care to mark any stars nearby, and note the time. Then I call everyone who is awake over for a look. We all move sluggishly in the near dawn light, like we are walking through sandy molasses. We share views with one another, through binoculars and a variety of telescopes large and small.

Overhead, the Milky Way has disappeared, and the glow of twilight grows brighter. I have yet another predawn observing target, so I quickly make a second sketch with a little more detail. Then I nod goodnight to the beautiful green comet, aim my binoculars just a little to the east and wait. It will be nearly one hour before Mercury will rise over the mountains.

This comet is making its first approach around the sun, in its long hyperbolic orbit from the Oort Cloud. At the time of my observation, the comet was 0.6 AU from the Sun and 1.1 AU from Earth. By the end of June, it will be lost to our view. It reaches perihelion on July 2nd when it is about 0.4 AU from the sun. Then it will fade and be seen no more.

Added postscript: According to this Space.com article, the comet may be visible “after June 22 both in the evening sky for a short while just after sunset very low above the north-northwest horizon and in the morning sky just before sunrise very low above the north-northeast horizon.” I’ll update if/when I learn more.

See more of Mojo’s photos from this observing night.

Read my other observing writeup from this same night.

Join our Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers email list and find out when our next dark sky outing will be. Or join us at our next in-town new telescope users clinic and planet/moon viewing event. Hey, that’s tonight, June 19! Clinic (RSVP required) begins before dark at 7 p.m. Star Party continues until 9:30 p.m. at Library Park in Monrovia, CA.

The Chuckwallas of Amboy Crater

jane — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:37:04 +0000

Once a year the Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers pack tents and telescopes and caravan to Black Canyon Group Campground in Mojave National Preserve, an hours drive from Amboy Crater and about 3 hours from home.

Once the tents are pitched we put on a star party with assistance from the National Preserve staff, leaders of the National Park Conservation Association and the Mojave National Preserve Conservancy plus many of their friends and members. The public is invited too, and unsuspecting nearby campers were thrilled to chance upon a starshow. Best of all, once the star party is over, we get to explore the national preserve!

On this trip (April 2010) my observing project was to see a Chuckwalla, the big pot-bellied lizard living in this desert area. We searched for them last year with members of the Southwest Herpetologists Society but didn’t see any.

Sunday after the star party, when tents & telescopes were stowed back in our cars we headed off to Amboy Crater in search of wildflowers, and hopefully, our first Chuckwalla.

Amboy Crater — well worth a trip for Geology, spring wildflowers, and lizard hunting — was formed by ash and cinders, and last erupted 10,000 years ago. The lava field terrain (43 square miles of it, actually) surrounding the crater is prime Chuckwalla territory. It’s easy to reach Amboy Crater from Barstow or Twentynine Palms, and you even get to drive on old Route 66. It is well worth a journey!

Chuckwallas can reach 16 inches in length, weigh up to 2 pounds and are specially adapted for desert living. They are strictly vegetarians and store water from plants in special glands to survive the harsh desert heat. The surrounding landscape is very salty and the Chuckwalla absorbs enough salt to kill most living things. But they have salt-removing glands in their nostrils, and as salt builds up on these glands, the lizard sneezes, and this expels the crystallized salt!

We were walking towards the crater and most everyone was way ahead of me. I was lagging behind, checking every lava outcrop for my first Chuckwalla sighting.

I stopped at one especially large outcrop, and scanned the sunny ledges. There, sunning herself, was Mrs. Chuckwalla! She was flattened against the rock to prevent airborne predators from seeing her shadow. Her round midsection was prominent, leading one herpetologist to suggest she was pregnant. I called to my hiking party who all quickly returned to see her. Soon, this poor shy girl was the subject of paparazzi!

Then Mr. Chuckwalla came out to see what the fuss was about. Male Chuckwallas have more of the red color (and black heads) and females are more tan/yellowish brown. They are majestic large lizards, and adapt their coloring to the rocks they inhabit. They’re not really fast, and need some sunshine to warm up in the morning. So, when danger approaches, they scoot into rocky crevices, puff up by gulping air, and wedge themselves into the cracks in the rock. This makes them difficult for predators to reach.

We also observed dozens of spring wildflowers on this hike and our earlier hike to Teutonia Peak, which I didn’t even write about here. Have a look at these images of our wonderful adventure, and put a Mojave spring wildflower/Chuckwalla play-date on your calendar. This is also a prime Desert Tortoise sighting location, but it was a bit windy on this weekend, and the tortoises were in their burrows.

Mojo’s amazing panoramas and additional images from both hikes are worth a look and will encourage you to put this park on your to-visit list. You will not be disappointed!