The Leonids can be impressive and impressively bright, with up-to 20 meteors per hour expected this year. This shower will be improved by the lack of a Moon in the nighttime sky during the peak. To optimize your experience, lie flat on the ground with your feet pointed towards Leo and your head elevated – meteors will then appear to fly right over and around you.
Using Orion et al. to find the backwards question mark of Leo the Lion.
* With Orion out and about at a reasonable hour, the Orion-star-finder has been brought back from the UNY Stargazing archives (again):
Caption: Orion can guide you around its neighborhood. Red = belt stars to Sirius and Canis Major; Orange = Rigel and belt center to Castor and Pollux in Gemini; Yellow = Bellatrix and Betelgeuse to Canis Major; Green = Belt stars to Aldebaran and Taurus; Blue = Saiph and Orion’s head to Capella in Auriga. Click for a larger view.
* While UNY is predicted to be clouded out this November 13th morning, others will hopefully get to see an impressive conjunction between Venus and Jupiter before sunrise.
A very close pairing of Venus and Jupiter, with Mars and the Moon to boot.
* And, finally, we complete our survey of the circumpolar constellations by explaining just what they are and why they’re excellent first targets for new observers:
A walk through Nov. 1 in 6-hour increments. Focus on the six constellations in the blue circles. Day or night, all throughout the year, these constellations are always above the horizon for NY observers.
With Perseid Week just behind us, Bob Piekiel and I set up shop for one final Summer 2015 observing session at Clark Reservation. As was mentioned in a Clark Reservation post from last year, it isn’t a great location for heavy-duty amateur astronomers – Syracuse (and its light pollution) lies very close to my hometown of Jamesville (or vice versa, I guess) and even thin cloud cover acts as a dirty mirror to brighten the ground (and sky) around us. For the new observer, however, Clark Reservation is an excellent spot to get one’s feet dewy – it’s close to civilization (and easy to find) and the light pollution wipes out many of the dimmest stars (it probably isn’t far off to say that the sky goes from 2000 to only 400 visible stars thanks to stray city light), making constellation identification significantly easier.
Early attendees listening to the first welcome lecture.
The session started slowly enough around 8:00 p.m. with a small group of attendees present for our introductory observing lecture/white light warning/usual canned schtick. It wasn’t until after we hit the 40 people mark that I found out that this session was mentioned in the Post-Standard paper as a Weekend’s Best. As we hit the near-80 people mark, we both turned up the lecturing knob to keep people informed and entertained as the observing lines cycled through our two scopes. The crowd was excellent, interactive, and very patient.
A shot of half the crowd waiting for the ISS.
Every year, I find that some aspect of observing gets a kind of special attention that then becomes part of session dogma (past years being the focus on the hiding of smartphones and flashlights, the very deliberate explanation of how to (and how not to) observe through the scope, and the emphasis on the circumpolar constellations as the best way to get into seasonal constellation identification). The purposes of each of these is, simply, to simplify the session for the attendees (call it a “crash course” in observing). This year, it’s been observation by way of a “hierarchy of observables” (something that Bob and I both have used often). It goes as such:
Early in the evening (including before sunset), non-solar observers have the Moon in all its grandeur (itself possibly the best observable there is for amateur astronomy). While all of the classical planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) can also be observed, they require a little more time to get to the point of being interesting. Maybe 20 minutes after sunset. By the time that Vega, Arcturus, Deneb, Antares, and Altair are visible (usually coincident with the planets), the most prominent double stars in the sky are visible enough for decent magnification (here, specifically mentioning Albireo in Cygnus and Mizar and Alcor in Ursa Major). Another 20 minutes later, the brightest Messiers are visible – specifically M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra and M13 in Hercules. 20 minutes later, some of the dimmer Messiers become (just) observable – here, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31 and M32) in Andromeda, and M27, the Dumbbell Nebula in Velpecula. 20 minutes later (so we’re now 80 or so minutes after sunset), the Messier gates flood open and one can begin to make out more objects than can usually be gotten through with a +40 crowd in 2 hours anyway.
Add to this list the ISS, Iridium Flares, random other satellites, a few shooting stars, and some of the detail of the Milky Way inside of Cygnus and down to as much of Sagittarius as the tree line will allow, and you’ve (hopefully) gone a long way to introducing a brand new observer to some of the very best sights available in the nighttime sky (with the above list obviously biased towards the Summer and Fall skies).
To the list above (with only Saturn and Neptune in the planetary observing list), we added at least two meteors (one in the right direction for a Perseid, one not) and a dimmed, by still present, Milky Way band. The lecturing itself didn’t stop for the entire two hours, and we were thankful for the questions that kept us (and others around us) occupied.
With the end of Summer in sight, part of CNYO’s yearly outreach will now include more library lectures and, of course, Bob’s monthly sessions at Baltimore Woods. Stay tuned for event announcements!
Our summer CNYO observing session at Beaver Lake Nature Center was a reminder to always have something else to say when the skies prohibit observing. In the case of Thursday, August 8th, we had kept track of the weather conditions all morning and afternoon in hopes of seeing a clearing or two over Baldwinsville, NY. While the skies favored a canceling of the session in favor of an August 15th re-scheduling, Beaver Lake already had a healthy list of attendees and inability to contact them all by the time of any official decision, so Larry Slosberg, Bob Piekiel, and I headed out with both observing gear and lecturing gear in tow.
Having taken the advice of Stu Forster a few years before, a prepared observing host is only ready for anything when they can move the group indoors for one of several new or canned astronomy lectures. The muggy evening of August 8th was just such an instance, as the skies remained 98% or so overcast for a good 3 hours, opening up tiny holes only briefly. Larry and Bob kept watch for potential clearing outside while I extended the discussions of a three-part lecture in hopes of one of them running inside with good news. Over the course of an 80 minute lecture (that likely seemed longer to the 16 attendees), no luck.
Speaking of lectures (and on the bright side for the night), I am pleased to report that Beaver Lake now has an LCD projector to go along with their large screen (so future lecturers can rely on Powerpoints and/or leave their own gear at home).
And as part of trying to keep the observing sessions entirely outdoors, CNYO has several brochures available to help direct discussions (with cheap red flashlights in tow) that were also available indoors for future reference. They continue to be well-received and without major error yet – and were even used during the lecture to address an easy way to start learning the constellations (starting with the circumpolar constellations) and to introduce the Perseid Meteor Shower to attendees. We encourage you to download them and hopefully find them useful. All of them are summarized on our CNYO CHEAT SHEET.
Meantime, we are currently planning our winter session at Beaver Lake. stay tuned!
One of the great joys of public observing sessions is introducing non-observers to the immensity of our local sliver of the universe. Hubble imagery and the amazing ground-based astrophotography of the last 25-or-so years is all well and good, but to explain to a new observer that the photons from the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) currently hitting their retina have been on a 23 million year voyage, or to put all of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) into the field of view and explain that the photons on one side of the eyepiece have been traveling 150,000 years longer than the photons on the “other” side of the eyepiece, or to aim a Coronado PST at the Sun and point out that the sunspots on the surface are 3 or more Earths across – these are the images that really put the universe, and our place in it, into perspective.
One of the great joys of lecturing on introductory astronomy is being able to describe all of these visuals in greater detail, showing how observation and the rest of the Scientific Method have produced great order in our Nighttime Sky (for, at least, the parts of the sky we can see in the backyard on a clear, dark night). As is true for many of the other physical sciences, a book chapter or wikipedia page alone can be far less informative, and is definitely far less engaging, than a chance to have a conversation with someone who knows the topic well enough to relate complicated concepts by drawing from many additional resources.
And, at a time when we continually fret the state of STEM education in the US, there is nothing better for an academically-inclined scientist (me) than to have someone many years their (my) junior process the information on a slide and ask a question that (1) clearly shows a grasp of the physics involved and (2) they (I) don’t have a good answer to. Lecturing keeps the lecturer just as sharp!
It is with those points in mind that CNYO hosted a Girl Scout lecture on Saturday, June 1 at Camp Comstock in Ithaca, NY as part of their requirements for earning their Night Sky badge. Unfortunately, the mostly cloudy and otherwise unpredictable night before made the Nighttime Sky observing component impossible, compacting the badge requirement section into a combined lecture/solar observing session that went well over allotted time with no (voiced) complaints.
Instead of highlighting lecture points, my goal here is to provide a few pointers for perspective astro-lecturers of kids and young adults (although I suspect the same applies for all generations).
1. Plenty Of Lead Time For Setup
In my case, my leisurely 1 hour drive turned into a compressed 40 minute drive as I waited for a police officer to take my eyewitness statements after a fender-bender on Route 13. Lesson #1 – Don’t text while driving!
2. Short Sections
Based on the Night Sky badge requirements, I had a very good template by which to design seven short lectures that would fit nicely into a 60 minute presentation (that, with questions, then went on for two hours). A full hour on a single topic to a general audience can be way too much for even a focused audience. Make this an audience of young adults and add an un-air conditioned, 85 oF room to the mix just after lunch, and you’ve got a recipe for a very… red-shifted lecture. A very good approach for you and the audience is to pick several topics and try to make a complete mini-lecture out of each. This makes your preparation time more productive (because you can divide-and-conquer as well) and it allows you to give the audience a minute between mini-lectures to digest and freshen up for the next one. In the Night Sky badge case, my seven sections were:
– An overview of Western constellations and the stars that define them, including a little discussion of stellar variety (color, age, size)
D. Why Learn The Constellations?
– Stress the historical meaning of the Constellations, then their use for direction (Follow The Drinkin’ Gourd) and use for marking deep sky objects (specifically, the Messiers)
E. Don’t Panic!
– How to learn the constellations, including the circumpolar-first approach, seasonal heavy-hitters, and the Zodiac
F. Solar System Formation
– Two videos I always keep handy in the back of a presentation are “Birth Of Our Solar System” (a nice animation of the formation of the whole Solar System)…
… and “How The Moon Was Born” (a video that shows the history of the Earth-Moon system and the ever-impressive Theia impact).
G. Light and Air Pollution
– Light pollution is bad, but it does help new astronomers find the bright starts in constellations. Air pollution also helps, but at a much higher cost. We should be avoiding both!
3. Ask Lots Of Questions
The biggest lesson I learned from watching professionals present to kids is to ask those kids lots of questions and let them be A driver in the presentation (but not THE driver, as you may never get the wheel back). It keeps the audience engaged, it lets others try to explain a concept in a way that the other-others may benefit from, it breaks up the monotony of the single-presenter approach, and it gives kids a chance to “show off” their scientific knowledge (which some of them love to do).
The best kinds of questions are (1) the very easy ones (how many planets) and (2) the ones that no one there (likely) has the answer to but that all can think about and take a swing at (alien life, what happens at a black hole, how big is the Sun, etc.).
If you’re lecturing to a group of 10 year olds, find a friend with a 10-year-old and see what they (don’t) know. If the kid isn’t astronomically-inclined, assume that their knowledge is similar to that of other 10 year olds in a Regents-guided state. The Girl Scout lecture was to a room of 13 to 17 year olds, and I am pleased to report that I had to move on to the “heavy questions” quite early in the lecture.
4. Preparing For The Power-Less Lecture
The Girl Scout lecture could have been done outdoors with demos or indoors with slides. Being a very visual science, astronomy lends itself better to slides unless you’ve several really good demos planned out beforehand (or brochures to help guide the discussion). There are several demos one can use to help get away from the slide-driven lecture and I hope to eventually get to the point of not needing any power. Simple demos (that will be expanded on in future articles) include:
A. Flashlights to demonstrate optical vs. true binaries (differently-colored flashlights are great for multi-star systems)
B. A tape measure and rubber balls to demonstrate the distances within the Solar System (if you’ve a 15 meter tape measure, you can place the planets at: 14.8 cm (Mercury), 27.3 cm (Venus), 38.0 cm (Earth), 57.0 cm (Mars), 197.7 cm (Jupiter), 360.8 cm (Saturn), 729.1 cm (Uranus), 1143.0 cm (Neptune), and 1500 cm (Pluto)
C. An armillary sphere (or big labeled ball) to demonstrate Earth’s axial tilt and its motion around the Sun (with a laser pointer serving as “Polaris,” a walk around an audience member serving as the Sun works perfectly well to help explain the circumpolar constellations
5. Anticipating The Unexpected Question(s)
When I think about the Sun, the first two questions that come to mind are not (1) Isn’t there a disease where you can’t be in the Sun because your skin breaks apart? and (2) I heard that some people try to live on only sunlight with no food. Isn’t that crazy (answer: yes)?
6. The Daytime Is The Right Time
As CNYO’s Larry Slosberg has determined for his observing sessions, the afternoon sky is a perfectly good substitute for the nighttime sky provided you (1) have a solar filter and (2) plan around the first quarter Moon. In the case of (1), the Sun is an excellent observing target for new observers because they very likely have never looked at it through filters and, as you can stress in your discussion, it is the reason why we’re here.
As for (2), it is also a reason why we’re here, but the magnified Moon, either against a black or blue afternoon backdrop, never fails to impress. To help lead discussion at subsequent daytime observing sessions, the solar-centric Girl Scout session instigated the CNYO solar observing brochure available for download at: A Guide For Solar Observing.
The Constellations have been with us for thousands of years, but there are only a few good, clear nights each month to memorize their positions as they slowly move across the sky! This outdoor lecture by the CNY Observers (www.cnyo.org) will briefly describe the history and importance of the Constellations as mythological, agricultural, and navigational guides, then will describe a simple system to begin to learn their relative positions. At the same time, Jupiter and Saturn are on opposite sides of the Southern sky, making excellent targets for binocular and telescope observing. Free and open to the public.
While the week including May 2nd will be known to some as a particularly bad week for maple tree allergies, the nighttime sky stayed quite clear and the bugs eventually froze around us to produce an excellent session. The attending crowd of about 35 served as test subjects for both our two new brochures (How The Night Sky Moves and Guide For New Observers) and our first official completely outdoors (Powerpoint-free) lecture (which, despite astronomy being such a visual hobby, worked will with just the brochure contents). In anticipation of some nighttime brochure reading, I put together some red light flashlights on the cheap locally. For anyone attempting similar, I found a four-pack of Dorcy AAA 6 LED Flashlights at Dicks Sporting Goods for $10. Some very minor surgery is needed to remove the top caps, but conversion to red light flashlights is straightforward with the help of a four-layer stack of red acetate purchased many moons ago from Commercial Art Supply in Syracuse.
Despite a little confusion about the start time (7:30 or 8:00), everyone had pulled in by 7:45 p.m., so we began the session with a good 30 minutes of physics. The goal of these Beaver Lake lectures is to not only observe objects, but to explain why the sky moves as it does so those trying to learn new constellations will understand what to expect both over the course of a night and over the course of a year. This began at the ground floor – understanding how the Earth moves around the Sun. With the help of an armillary sphere (which holds the Earth at its 23 degree tilt – see the image at left from wikipedia), the Earth’s movement around the Sun was demonstrated, specifically showing that the rotation axis stays pointed the same way as we revolve – thus resulting in Polaris appearing not to move over the course of the year despite the Earth shifting position by 300 million kilometers (2 astronomical units) every 6 months. Knowing that Polaris is always in the same place in the sky (whether it’s daytime or not) leads smoothly into a discussion of the circumpolar constellations and the benefit of learning these six constellations first (for this discussion and some how-to’s, I refer you to the CNYO brochure: Guide For New Observers).
Running a sunset-to-late-night session with a non-cycling crowd has (at least) two distinct advantages. First, the importance of dark adaption and the need to avoid smart phones (or avoid their use around others) can be stressed early in the evening. While enforcing protocols to maintain dark adaption at any kind of public lecture is usually a losing battle, anyone answering a phone did it in a very non-obvious manner, which was most welcome. Second, the mechanics of my Dobsonian telescope and Larry and Bob’s two motorized SCTs could be presented while still visible to attendees. More importantly, the proper observing technique for all could be demonstrated by showing (a) how to approach an eyepiece (I tell people to put their hands behind their back and simply lean into the eyepiece) and (b) just how easy it is to nudge a scope away from its target. Specifically for the Dob, I’m sure anyone who’s brought their scope to a public session has had at least one person lean on or pull closer an eyepiece. I’m pleased to report that, once the observing started, our collective intro to scope workings made my Dob-running life simple with no unplanned re-adjustments (just adjustments of the unmotorized kind).
As stated in a previous post (2013 March 8 – At The Syracuse Inner Harbor), new observers are best introduced to observing with easy objects that don’t require training. Deep, dim, distant galaxies are not useful starters for someone with no background in eyepiece observing. For my part, a good 70 minutes were spent on Jupiter (low in the Western Sky with all four Galilean moons present), Saturn (low in the Eastern Sky and my first view of it this year), Arcturus in Boötes (its shimmering in the sky both with and without magnification was a point of discussion for several near my scope), M13 (the globular cluster in Hercules, which served as a first “way out” object and an example of using the constellations as a “coarse adjustment” for finding Messier and other objects), and the pair Alcor and Mizar in the handle of the Big Dipper/tail of Ursa Major (to show the separation and additional detail that comes with magnification).
With a much smaller crowd around 9:30 p.m., I did treat a few interested parties to some more difficult observing in my scope – The Leo Triplet – after first briefly explaining the mechanics of averted vision. Of the five people who looked, all could make out M65, all could at least tell that something “was there” where M66 rested, and three people could tell that “something else” was there at NGC 3628‘s position. And I did miss a golden opportunity to observe NGC 4565 (my personal favorite) in Coma Berenices.
We closed up shop at 10 p.m., just as Cygnus and Lyra began to peak out over the horizon and announce the approaching return of our Summer Constellations. I am pleased to report that we will be hosting a Summer Session on Thursday, August 8th (with an August 15th rain date) where we will again do a little bit of mechanics and instruction outdoors, followed by Saturn, Venus, and all that our summer view of the Milky Way can provide.
August 8 – Stargazing with CNY Observers & Observing
CNY Observers (CNYO) hosts an introductory lecture to the Night Sky, focusing on planets and other objects observable during August and September. Part of the lecture will discuss some simple ways to learn the Constellations, while the rest of the lecture will provide details about meteor showers, observing satellites and the ISS, and the ever-expanding description of our own Solar System. If time and weather permits, some early evening views of Venus and Saturn will be had from the Beaver Lake parking lot. Free for members; $2 for nonmembers.
