The Four Ages Of Sand

A stunning galaxy with black holes in purple

There is a galaxy in the constellation The Pough, which I'd been trying to find over the last couple of months and I finally bagged it last week. M51 is about 30 million light years away, and it's special because you can see the spiral arms, and because it's interacting with another smaller galaxy close by (NGC 5195) and the two are joined by a "bridge" of stars and dust. I could just make out the spiral arms and it was a beautiful sight but here is a NASA image showing it in all it's glory.

This composite image shows dramatic new details because it's taken using a variety of orbiting observatories. The Chandra X-ray Observatory shows black holes and neutron stars as purple dots, and the Spitzer Space Telescope shows long red lanes which are stars and gas laced with dust.

There are a lot of amazing NASA images around but this is something special...

I was going to say there was something "other-worldly" about it, but that really would be stating the obvious:

(click on image)  Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R. Kilgard; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith & The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Az/R. Kennicutt

Objects in other galaxies.

I was looking at another galaxy last week. It's called M33 and it lies about 3 million light years away. Because the skies were quite dark, I could make out much more detail than I'd seen before and I noticed a fuzzy blob away from the centre. I checKed on the internet later (how did we find stuff out before the internet?) and discovered that it is a huge cloud (nebula) in which stars are forming, named NGC604. I never realised I'd be able to make out detail in extragalactic objects. Can't wait for the next clear dark sky to take a closer look and to try and spot some more:

Image credit The NGC/IC Project. Webpage: http://www.ngcic.org/dss/n/0/n0598.jpg

The Finest Object in the Autumn Sky?

Most of the nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters are fairly dim objects that take time, dark skies and a bit of experience to fully appreciate. M42 is the exception: it's a vast cloud of dust and gas in which new stars are forming and it's a stunning sight through any instrument, even binoculars show it well. Through a large telescope, it's a glorious sight.

As winter approaches, it gets highter in the eastern sky (more about that nearer the time) but at the moment it rises late and stays close to the horizon so I wasn't expecting much of a show. I was completely amazed to see this on Saturday night:

This lovely image is from the YAS website and was taken by Paul Buglass

It shows pretty much the level of detail I could see last night, though through my nebula filter, it was a gorgeous deep blue colour.

The blue snowball (NGC 7662)

Here's another object from my marathon session on saturday night. Once again, it doesn't look like much but it has a lovely deep blue glow against the black sky which is quite hypnotic. It's called a planetary nebula because it looks like a planet but is actually a shell of material ejected from a dying star 2200 light years away. It can be seen in binoculars but it's one of the smaller planateries and will just look like a faint star.

Image credit: Michael Unibonn

Living on the edge ;-)

Friday night was easily the worst night I've ever had with a telescope. I spent ages getting everything set up out of town at what I thought was a dark sky area, but the light pollution was awful. Then the fine mist rolled in followed by cloud. I got home cold and tired after 3 and a half hours without managing any observing at all. 

Then last night I just dragged the scope out into the back garden for a quick look and ended up having the best session of my life! I saw 10 deep sky objects, including 6 I'd never managed to find before. I'll post the best of them over the next few days starting with this:

This is M33 taken by Ray Grover and is a good approximation of what I could actually see last night.

A lot of astronomy is visually mindblowing; seeing mountains on the Moon or the rings of Saturn takes your breath away. Then there are the subtle pleasures of seeing something like this that just looks like a smudge of light. The sense of wonder only comes when you realise what you are looking at; It's a spiral galaxy, and lies 3 million light years away, which is the furthest I've seen into space so far.It is 700,000 light years in diameter - half that of the milky way. 

It's quarter past two in the morning...

I just got in from a great observing session. I got out of Potters Bar to try to get to some good dark skies but there was a lot of mist and fine cloud around. Another problem was that after 3 hours, I lost the feeling in my toes and fingers. What makes it great? I found some lovely deep sky objects and added 3 to my "life list."  The first is M32. M31 is the Andromeda Galaxy, and at 2.2 million light years away, it's the most distant object visible to the naked eye. I'd seen it many times before but never spotted the satellite galaxy which you can just see at the top right of the picture. This image, from Russell Sipe actually shows more detail than I could see because of the poor conditions. There are more than 100,000,000,000 stars in M31:

The next is M36, an open cluster of stars, but best of all is M76, the Little Dumbell. This is  planetary nebula; a star at the end of its life which has thrown off its outer shell into space.

This image from Jim Burnell again shows slightly more detail than I could see tonight:

Deep Sky Astronomy

I've just started getting into deep sky astronomy. This means studying objects outside the Solar system; stars, galaxies, nebulae, open and globular star clusters etc. Up to now I've tended to stick to the Moon and planets because it's so easy, whereas deep sky stuff needs clear dark skies with no Moon, and generally means putting the scope in the car and heading away from towns and cities. Also, it takes AGES to search for faint smudges of light and often you can spend hours without finding what you are looking for, hard work on a freezing winter's night. But with a bit of effort and luck, there are so many amazing things out there to be seen, even with binoculars.

If anyone out there wants to get into deep sky astronomy, the best book I've come across is Star Watch by Philip S. Harrington. He descibes more than 125 objects in the night sky, most of which can be seen with binoculars, and he gives detailed maps on where to find each object and describes exactly what you can expect to see.

Here's the first in what I hope will be a long list; M57 the Ring Nebula. I saw this on Tuesday from the back garden. Even though the Moon was up and there was lots of misty cloud, it still looked lovely, like a smoke ring hanging in space. It can be seen through binoculars but just looks like a slightly fuzzy star. This photo is from Intricate Micro Systems and was taken with a 12" diameter telescope. I'd love to take my own photos but taking images like this is a difficult business and something for the future.

The ring is an expanding torus of material ejected by the star as it reached the end of its life. It's 2,300 light years from Earth and is almost a light year in diameter. (A light year is the distance travelled by light in one year. The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second. The moon is around 1.5 light seconds away, the sun around 8 light minutes, and the furthest planet, Neptune, around 4 light hours. The nearest star visible in the Northern hemishere, Sirius, is around 8 light years from us)

Last night I found M103 in the costellation Cassiopeia. It's a cluster of blue/white stars with a beautiful orange one near the centre. I was really pleased with this one because I didn't know what it was so I sketched the position, brightness and colour of the stars, then identified it on the internet the next morning.

Credit and copyright:

NOAO/AURA/NSF

And the last one I managed last night before the clouds rolled in is NGC457; another open cluster in Cassiopeia, also known as the Owl Cluster, because the stars make the (upside down) shape of an owl with its wings outstretched. The two bright stars at the bottom which make up the "eyes" of the owl seem to be moving through space in the same direction as the rest of the cluster but that presents something of a mystery. The cluster is 9000 light years away but the two stars shine so brightly that either they don't belong in the cluster and are much closer to us, or they are two of the brightest stars in the gallaxy. the one on the left would have to be 250,000 times more luminous than our Sun!

Image Source: Misti Mountain observatory