Despite weather forecasts indicating that an early rise might have been a wasted one, a few CNY amateur astronomers braved the 4 a.m. skies and temperatures in hopes of watching our Moon all but disappear from most of the visible light spectrum. The total lunar eclipse on the morning of October 8th marked the second eclipse of the year (with the first occurring on a washed out April 15th) and the second in a series of four (known as a tetrad) that will complete with two more total eclipses on April 4th and September 28th of 2015.
Those keeping track of the local eclipse news will very likely have found Glenn Coin’s (at syracuse.com, twitter: @glenncoin) two reports (“Will full lunar eclipse…” and “To see total lunar eclipse…“) about the eclipse and the potential for us in CNY to see it, with the second article featuring a few snippets from myself and Bob Piekiel. Our continued thanks to Glenn for keeping astronomical phenomena appearing on the syracuse.com website!
Bob Piekiel reported an excellent session at Baltimore Woods that morning, producing the series of images below before cloud cover obstructed any additional views:
The lunar eclipse from Baltimore Woods. Click for a larger view.
We had a crystal-clear break in the clouds for nearly an hour on Wednesday morning, enough to get some good views of the eclipsed Moon, as well as Jupiter, and some amazing views of M42 as the sky darkened with the setting Moon. The Moon’s covered area did indeed turn a bright red, noticeable even as the twilight approached, right up until we lost sight of it in some low clouds above the tree line.
My part of the lunar eclipse viewing was performed from my downtown rooftop. Unlike much of what we observe in the Night Sky, lunar eclipses are good from anywhere regardless of the amount of light pollution. I watched Bob’s clearing float East (the view at 4:20 a.m. Around the Moon as as perfect as one could hope for), then watched the Moon become consumed, then caught just enough of an opening to take the three images below.
The progressing lunar eclipse. Click for a larger view.
With the camera still out and the view above me clear, I also decided to grab a quick view of Orion’s Belt and M42 (this with just a 5 second exposure – and still from downtown).
Orion’s Belt and the Orion Nebula (M42). Click for a larger view.
With only a short window of observing to be had, the early wake-up call was well worth it (one surprise clearing is worth about two cups of coffee). With the eclipse image above and the standard CNYO presentation gear in tow, the astronomy morning ended at the Syracuse Academy of Science for their 8th Annual College & Career Fair, with over 100 students stopping at the booth to hold a piece of Mars, learn why Polaris doesn’t move in the sky, and grab all of our social media info to attend an upcoming CNYO observing session.
From the booth at the Syracuse Academy of Science. Click for a larger view.
The peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower this year turned into a pair of observing sessions for several CNYO members. Both sessions, I am happy to report, included the observation of several Perseids by attendees and good-to-excellent clear, dark skies.
The first session occurred on August 10th (with Friday, August 9th having been a near-total cloud-out) after an announcement from New Moon Telescopes owner and CNYO member Ryan Goodson that his observing grounds in West Monroe were going to be open for some deep sky observing. Those who hadn’t yet been to West Monroe (a good 40 minutes north of Syracuse) for a session were introduced to some of the darkest skies in Central New York, including the noticeable absence of big city lights along the horizon. The skies were crystal clear throughout the session, making the Andromeda Galaxy an obvious Naked Eye object and the Milky Way a nicely detailed object of one Great Rift and many clusters and nebulae visible as non-pinpoint patches along the galaxy’s plane.
The Northern Sky, including Cassiopeia and M31. Click to enlarge.
The driveway and front lawn of NMT HQ were dark enough that, because of my late arrival, I wasn’t entirely sure just how many people were there in total. Ryan estimates the 20 to 25 range over the course of the 5 hour session. Several NMT Dobsonians were present on the grounds along with John Giroux’s considerable imaging setup. With a choice of NMT Dobs to look through (certainly the best way to populate a star party in NY), I packed light for the evening, bringing only a pair of Zhumell 25×100’s. Also in tow was a new Canon Rebel T3i and several new lenses to attempt my first round of dark sky astrophotographic panoramas (with the hope of capturing at least one meteor trail).
For those who’ve not traveled far north of Syracuse for any kind of observing, it is difficult to describe just how much better the skies (and, specifically, the horizon) away from city lights can be. My view from downtown Syracuse is largely limited to 3.5ish magnitude stars, meaning the Big Dipper is easy, but only the handle-end (Polaris) and bowl-end stars of the Little Dipper are identifiable without considerable work to make out the remaining stars. For diffuse objects, the nebulosity of the Orion Nebula is about all one can make out through low-power (and just barely Naked Eye).
The dark skies of West Monroe (and surroundings) fill in all of the gaps, making all of the constellations (and their component stars) clearly visible (almost too many stars for people first learning the sky). Furthermore, the Andromeda Galaxy becomes an easy Naked Eye objects, the Double Cluster in Perseus appears as a bright, diffuse nebula (requiring magnification to see that the cloudiness is really closely-packed stars), the whole of the Milky Way jumps right out, and the colors of stars become more apparent. Arizona desert observers might complain that the West Monroe skies are a “little murky,” but one can’t help but gain a new appreciation for the our local stellar neighborhood when making the relatively short trip away from city lights.
Of course, these dark skies make meteor showers even more enjoyable, as even dim meteor trails stand out against a starry backdrop uncluttered by terrestrial photons. As for the best trails of the evening, the dark sky makes these bright enough to read by! Michelle M, the most dedicated of the meteor shower observers that evening (that I knew was there, anyway), put the final count at 20. John Giroux and I both caught at least one during our imaging sessions (one of mine is shown below above the observes and their scopes):
The group, the Milky Way, and one meteor trail. Click for a larger version.
The individual observing lists were likely varied and lengthy. High points for me included M31 at low magnification (a great view in 25×100 Zhumells), Neptune in Ryan’s 16″ Dob (and swiftly moving at high magnification – only slight coloring but the disc of the planet was obvious), and the image below of the Milky Way, generated from a 2 minute exposure at ISO 1600 with a Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens.
The Great Rift of the Milky Way. Click for a larger version.
From John: Messier 2 or M2 (also designated NGC 7089) is a globular cluster in the constellation Aquarius. Canon T2i, 120 sec x 10 stacked, 120 sec x 10 dark frames, ISO 800, processed in Nebulosity 2.5 & Photoshop Elements 10. AstroTech AT6RC 6″ F/9 Ritchey-Chrétien.
From John: Messier 71 (also known as M71 or NGC 6838) is a globular cluster in the constellation Sagitta. Canon T2i, 120 sec x 20 stacked, 120 sec x 10 dark frames, ISO 800, processed in Nebulosity 2.5 & Photoshop Elements 10. AstroTech AT6RC 6″ F/9 Ritchey-Chrétien.
I left John Giroux and Ryan around 1:30 a.m. wearing three layers and with the car heater up half-way (not entirely expected for mid-August in CNY). The skies were well worth the cold! For those interested in joining CNYO and others when Ryan makes observing announcements, be sure to “like” NMT’s Facebook page and join them on Twitter.
This article has been posted in preparation for our Perseid Session and International Starry Night event at Baltimore Woods this coming Monday, August 12th (with the 13th as the weather-alternate). We might even get a view or two of the Perseids at our Thursday, August 8th Beaver Lake Nature Center lecture!
The Perseid Meteor Shower is an almost perfect combination of location and timing for amateur astronomers and the general public, as the Earth grazes a rich debris field from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle during the peak of the Northern Summer. We’ll cover the details of this confluence below so you know what makes the Perseids the most anticipated (and observed) meteor shower of the year.
One Thousand And Thirty Words (And Two Numbers)
Comedian: “Ask me what the key to comedy is.”
Assistant: “What’s the -”
Comedian: “Timing!”
The image above shows all of the important pieces of the Perseid puzzle. We find the Earth in its orbit around the Sun as it approaches a mid-August position (the 10th to the 14th, although one may see meteors at the fringe of Perseid territory several nights before and after) that finds Earth (and us) scraping against the edge of a debris field produced by Comet Swift-Tuttle on its 133-year orbit around the Sun. Last seen in our vicinity in 1995, observers will have to wait until the 2120’s for another good view of its flaring core. Fortunately, it leaves enough tiny pieces of itself as it draws close to the Sun to provide us with a brilliant reminder of its existence every mid-August.
Unlike Halley’s Comet, which passes close to Earth’s orbit on its way toward (producing the Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower in early May) and away from (producing the Orionid Meteor Shower in late October) the Sun, Comet Swift-Tuttle’s eccentric orbit finds it passing close to Earth only at one point, like a snapshot capturing a hula-hoop (Swift-Tuttle’s orbit) as it touches the belt buckle (Earth) of a gyrating dancer whose waist is Earth’s orbit in circumfrence.
What’s In A Name?
We refer to this meteor shower as the “Perseids” because the meteors associated with Swift-Tuttle appear to streak across the sky from a point (known as a “radiant“) originating in the direction of the mythical constellation Perseus. The shower itself has nothing to do with the stars of the constellation Perseus, only the part of the sky that Perseus occupies on the late nights and early mornings in mid-August. One might even consider Perseus the beneficiary of this shower, as the constellation has taken on a new-found importance to astronomers over the last several millennia as the marker for this shower in the August skies.
It’s All Relative
Anyone caught driving late at night during a snow storm knows the sensation of making the Millenium Falcon’s “jump to lightspeed” as the snowflakes appear to shoot towards, then past or onto, your windshield. To the driver cruising at 65 mph on a highway, the snowflakes appear to have no motion but the one directly towards the windshield. If you were standing on a snowflake, you’d notice the very slow decent to the Earth’s surface, the rapidly oncoming car headlights, then the swift rush across the windshield as the aerodynamics of the windshield combined with the high speed of the car.
This same state of “relative observation” occurs during all meteor showers as the Earth revolves around the Sun. The meteors, themselves mostly no larger than grains of sand, are not moving rapidly towards the Earth’s atmosphere. They lie scattered about the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, a result of the comet heating enough as it approaches the Sun to lose small pieces of its surface. If Swift-Tuttle were a massive gravel delivery truck (to continue the driving analogy), these small grains would be the random pieces of rock that fall to the ground as the truck bumps over uneven pieces of highway.
Clash Of The Tinys
It is the Earth, revolving around the Sun at a dizzying 110,000 km/hour (that’s 30 km/second!), that powers the meteor shower we see on the ground. As the Earth rushes through the debris field of Comet Swift-Tuttle, these tiny grains of comet come into contact with our atmosphere at speeds so great that they ignite the air around them, causing brilliant streaks of light as the tiny grains are incinerated.
The number of meteors one can observe over a Perseid session is determined by (1) your looking at the right place at the right time (no long blinks!) and (2) the density of tiny Swift-Tuttle-ettes in the comet’s orbit as Earth passes through it. There are some meteor showers where one is lucky to see a few per hour. Because the Earth passes through a generally rich part of Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, two or three per minute may not be uncommon for a “usual” Perseid session. Those outside for the 1972 Perseid Meteor Shower were treated to what many believe to be the best meteor shower in recorded history (and those outside for the 1998 Leonid Meteor Shower (a close second by all metrics) know what it’s like to see thousands per hour raining down on dark skies).
Finding Perseus
The Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus. For your best chance of seeing Perseid meteors, it is not your eyes that should be transfixed on the heart of Perseus. Instead, you should anchor the bottoms of your toes towards Perseus, then find a comfortable piece of ground (or reclining chair) that gives you a clear view of the sky right above you. Perseid meteors will then, with a thick patch of debris field and a bit of patience, appear to blaze across the night sky from your toes (Northeast) past your head (to the Southwest).
Perseus will appear to rise above the Northeast horizon after 9:00 p.m. Directly above the stars of Perseus resides Cassiopeia – a giant and prominent “W” in the night sky that, for many hours after sunset, will appear as a West-facing throne for this ancient Ethiopian queen. Those familiar with the many tricks amateur astronomers use to learn the Night Sky will simply find Polaris, perhaps using the two end stars of the bowl of the Big Dipper and an imaginary line along these stars in the direction of the bowl’s open face to pick out the dim North Star. Polaris does not shine with the brightness one might have imagined for the second most important star in the sky (after our own Sun), but it is in a piece of sky that contains few brighter stars, making it the most obvious member of a very modest piece of northern sky.
If you’re still too new to constellation hunting, the solution is simple! Grab a compass (or a compass app in your smart phone) and find Northeast the new-fashioned way. With luck, the Perseids will race to the Southwest at a rate of a few per minute, increasing in count, then decreasing, from around 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. local time. With the good fortunes of all the Olympian Gods, we’ll all be treated to many, many more.
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.
