Constellations, deep-sky objects, planets and events, Tonight’s Sky, Highlights of the May Sky

Evening Planets

Venus makes its descent into the western horizon soon after sunset. Act quickly to catch a glimpse of it with a telescope.
Saturn and Mars grace the southern sky in the evening. Watch them move into the west as the night progresses.

Constellations and Deep-Sky Objects

Looking toward the south, we’ve turned away from the crowded center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Thus we see farther into the universe.
The large constellation Virgo fills the southern sky in the late evening. One of the zodiacal constellations of ancient times, Virgo honors the life-giving virtues of women.
Using a pair of binoculars, visit the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. These tiny smudges of light are galaxies, far away from our own Milky Way, each aglow with the light of billions of stars.
The Sombrero Galaxy, M104, lies in the southern part of Virgo. Its dark dust lane makes it look like a large hat, hence its name.
Two smaller constellations lie above Virgo.
Coma Berenices honors a queen who gave her long hair to the gods to ensure her husband’s safe return from war. M64, a spiral galaxy, can be found tangled in Berenice’s Hair.
Canes Venatici represents the hunting dogs of the gods. The brightest star in Canes Venatici is Cor Caroli, the Heart of Charles, named for Charles 1 of England.
M51, in Canes Venatici, is known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. It is one of the most beautiful face-on spirals in the sky.

Events

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks on the morning of May 6th. Look toward the eastern sky after midnight to see up to 10 meteors per hour. The full Moon may wash out all but the brightest meteors.
On May 20th, sky watchers in southern China, Japan, and the western United States will be treated to an annular solar eclipse. Observers in other parts of eastern Asia and most of North America will see this event as a partial eclipse.

The night sky is always a celestial showcase. Explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Credits

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Office of Public Outreach
Starfield images created with Stellarium
Mythological constellation forms from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive
Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory
Venus image courtesy of Mario Weigand
Saturn image courtesy of John Endreson
Mars image courtesy of Matt Wedel
Virgo Cluster image based on image courtesy of NOAO/AURA/NSF
M104, M64, and M51 images courtesy of the MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network
Annular solar eclipse images courtesy of Larry Hubble and Leo Heppner
Partial solar eclipse image courtesy of Franklin A. Holub
Narrated by Nancy Calo
Music written by Jonn Serrie
Production: Lucy Albert, Greg Bacon, John Bintz, John Godfrey, and Vanessa Thomas

Celestial Lights from Ole C. Salomonsen on Vimeo.

Lyrids Radiant Credit: Adrian West

April showers? Yes! The 16th to the 26th this month brings us the April Lyrid Meteor Shower, with the peak occurring on April 22nd.

The meteors in this shower tend to be bright and leave persistent trains as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. In recent years the shower has averaged 10 to 20 meteors per hour.

You may think that this sounds like a fairly mediocre shower and not worth bothering with, but it has been known for the Lyrids to surge and rates rise rapidly to over 100 per hour! This is what makes this shower so interesting and difficult to predict. Will it be a biggy this year or not?

Lyrid meteors radiate from a point (radiant) in the constellation of Lyra and this is where this shower gets its name. The best time to look for Lyrid meteors will late in the evening on April 22nd after 10 pm as the constellation of Lyra rises up from the northeast horizon.

Long Exposure Photograph of the ISS Credit: Mark Humpage

If you have seen the International Space Station (ISS) pass over a few times with your own eyes, (here’s a guide to seeing it) you may want to have a go at photographing it.

Photographing the ISS is very worthwhile and gratifying. There are two basic methods; one being easy and the other being a little more difficult. Both methods are incredibly rewarding and good results can be obtained fairly quickly, once you have mastered the basics.

Method 1:

Discovery and ISS pass over the UK on March 7, 2011, captured by Will Gater.

You will need a DSLR camera or another type of camera which is capable taking long exposures. Incredibly important is having a tripod or somewhere you can place your camera without it getting vibrations or movement.

Find out when and where the ISS will be passing over your location and choose a part of the sky the ISS is passing through at which you can point your camera.

Experiment with your camera settings, to get colours and exposures correct beforehand and do a couple of long exposure test shots of anything from 15 to 60 seconds. You can do shorter or longer exposures but this is up to you, depending your equipment and how artistic you want to be.

This method will produce a long white streak or line, which will show the path taken of the International Space Station as it passes over. This is the most common method for amateurs.

Method 2:

The ISS and shuttle Discovery during the STS-131 mission. Credit: Ted Judah

You will need a telescope, a webcam, and a strong mount or tripod. Set up your telescope and mount, along with webcam with a laptop and make sure of the time and where the ISS will be passing over your location.

In this method we will use the telescope to magnify and see the ISS up close while recording a movie (AVI). We will then stack the frames of the recorded movie in a specialist image enhancing program such as Registax.

Insert your WebCam into the telescope focusing tube using an adapter (available from astronomy stores) and connect the cables to your laptop. When the ISS is due, start recording and track the space station using a finder scope or computerized mount.

The difficult part of this method is tracking the ISS and keeping it in the field of view of the telescope while recording the video file. It is recommended that you set your mount in “Alt/ Az” mode or use a Dobsonian telescope so that you have free movement of telescopes optical tube assembly. You will basically be using the telescope as a giant video camera and you need to keep the ISS in shot for as long as possible.

This method is very difficult as the ISS has been magnified highly while moving very quickly and can be easily lost out of the field of view, or there can be too much movement (shaking) in the video. This method requires much practice.

Once you have been able to get a video of the ISS passing over, you can feed your video file into software such as RegiStax and the program will sort each individual frame, removing bad frames and stacking good frames to create a very clear image.

This method is fantastic for creating close up images with detail on the International Space Station; you can also see docked spacecraft. You can also use this method for trying to image other Earth-orbiting satellites, too.

The ISS and shuttle Discovery as captured -- and annotated -- by Thierry Legault

It would be great to see your ISS photographs, so please send them into us via our Flickr site. Good luck!

The International Space Station Credit: @VirtualAstro

The ISS is a huge space station orbiting Earth that serves as an orbital laboratory, factory, testing ground and home; crew members conduct experiments from biology to astronomy, including experiments for prolonged exposure to life in space for future missions to the Moon and beyond.

The ISS is major accomplishment for NASA (US), ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan) CSA (Canada) and all the countries involved (16 in all). The space station is just over 72 m long by 108 m wide and 20 m high; it is maintained at an orbital altitude of between 330 km (205 mi) and 410 km (255 mi) and travels at an average speed of 27,724 kilometres (17,227 mi) per hour, completing 15.7 orbits per day.

One of the best things about the ISS is that you can see it with your own eyes from Earth! It’s very easy to watch the International Space Station pass over your own backyard!

All you need to do is understand when the ISS is going to be passing over your location and where to look for it in the sky. You can check this by using an ISS pass predictor app/website or follow VirtualAstro on twitter for updates

Once you have found out when the ISS will pass over your location, all you need to do a few minutes before the pass is go outside and start looking in the right direction of the sky.

The International Space Station always passes over starting from a westerly part of the sky, but not always from the same point. It can be low on the horizon for some passes and very high others. Most of the apps or websites will tell you what direction in the sky the pass will start and end and how many degrees above the horizon the starting and ending points are. Also included are the highest altitude the ISS will be. For example, if the maximum elevation is listed as somewhere between 74-90 degrees above the horizon, the ISS will be passing almost straight overhead (Just like you learned in geometry, 90 degrees would be straight up). If you aren’t sure about where to look, a good rule of thumb is that your fist outstretched at arm’s length is 10 degrees. If the ISS will be first be seen 40 degrees above the horizon, look four fist-lengths above the horizon. Check apps and websites for where and what track the ISS will take on each individual pass.

When the station passes over it will travel from a westerly direction, heading in an easterly direction. An average good pass can last about 5 minutes.

The ISS looks like an incredibly bright, fast-moving star and can be mistaken for an aircraft. However, the ISS has no flashing lights and it can be much brighter. It seemingly just glides across the sky.

Short passes can last a few seconds to a few minutes and you can see the international space station slowly move into the Earth’s shadow, good bright passes will show the ISS moving across the sky from horizon to horizon.

ISS long exposure photograph over Donnington Castle UK Credit: www.Perfexion.com

The International Space Station usually takes around 90 minutes to orbit our planet, so if you’re really lucky you can get two, or maybe even three or four passes in an evening or morning.

Not only can you see the ISS in the evening but you can also see it in the mornings as both the ISS and Sun are in the ideal position to illuminate the spacecraft at this time. The light we see from the ISS is reflected sunlight.

You can’t watch the ISS pass over during the middle of the day because in the daytime the sky is too bright (although some people with specialized equipment have seen it) and you cannot see the space station in the middle of the night, as it is in the Earth’s shadow and no light is being reflected from it.

The position that the ISS will be in the sky changes every night. The space station does not take the same track or orbital path for each orbit and this change provides good visible passes roughly every 6 weeks in each location on Earth.

Occasionally if a spacecraft such as a Soyuz crew capsule, ATV, or a Progress resupply vehicle has been sent to the ISS, you will see objects preceding or trailing the station as it moves across the sky. These can either be very close to the station or the distance between the objects can be measured in minutes. To check if there are any other spacecraft with the international space station during a pass, use the pass prediction app, or the Heaven’s Above Site.

Seeing the ISS is an incredible sight! Just remember there are people on board that fast moving point of light!

Good luck!

ISS long exposure photograph Credit: Mark Humpage

Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (Credit NASA) Click for a zoomable image

We live on a planet which orbits a star, and along with a hundred billion other stars, our Sun orbits the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. It doesn’t just stop there; our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in our Universe that gravitationally clump together in groups or clusters.

Throughout Spring in the northern hemisphere, astronomers and people interested in the night sky are going to be in for a galactic treat, as this is the time of year we can see the Coma/Virgo Super cluster or “Realm of Galaxies”.

Galaxies are massive islands of stars, gas and dust in the Universe; they are where stars and planets are born and eventually die. Galaxies are cosmic factories of creation — where it all happens on a very grand scale. To give you an idea of size, it would take you roughly 100,000 years to travel across the disc of the Milky Way at the speed of light!

Andromeda Galaxy.

The Milky Way is the second largest member of our local group of galaxies with Andromeda being the largest. Other members of our local group include the Triangulum galaxy and large and small Magellanic Clouds.

Virgo Galaxy Cluster - NOAO/AURA/NSF

The Coma/ Virgo Super cluster dominates our intergalactic neighbourhood; it represents the physical centre of our Local Super cluster and influences all the galaxies and galaxy groups by the gravitational attraction of its enormous mass.

Unfortunately galaxies are almost impossible to see with the naked eye, so you will need powerful binoculars or a large telescope, such as a Dobsonian to see most of the brighter galaxies in this region.

The cluster contains approximately 2,000 elliptical and spiral galaxies of which approximately 20 or more are observable using amateur equipment. This includes 16 Messier objects such as the Black eye spiral Galaxy M64, and elliptical galaxies, M86 with its plume, massive M87 at its centre and beautiful spiral M88, to name just a few.

From Left to Right M64, M86 and M88 (Credit NASA)

To find the approximate location of the Realm of Galaxies, first find the constellation of Leo – the lion — easily found in the South East this time of year with the backwards question mark overhis head. Go past Leo’s rear end and you will be in the bowl asterism of Virgo, to the bottom left of Leo and the faint constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenices hair) top left of Leo. This is the Realm of Galaxies!

Star Chart to help you find the Realm of Galaxies (Credit VirtualAstro)

Download a map of this region or use a star atlas to find your way around this area and try and spot as many galactic delights (faint fuzzies) as you can. As a bonus, the ringed Planet Saturn is just below this area too at the moment!

Give yourself plenty of time, wrap up warm and just think, you are looking for the largest structures in the Universe, hundreds of millions of light years away from Earth.

Originally posted by VirtualAstro on Universe Today

Constellations, deep-sky objects, planets and events, Tonight’s Sky

Highlights of the April Sky Transcript:

Evening Planets

In early April, four planets grace the sky at nightfall.

In the west, Jupiter hangs low on the horizon. Around mid-month, the planet disappears into the sunset.

Venus blazes just above Jupiter in the west. Use a telescope to see its crescent phase.

In the south, Mars is already climbing high. It will remain visible into the early morning.

Saturn will shine low in the east in the evening but climb higher during the night. On April 15th, Saturn reaches opposition, meaning it is opposite the Sun in Earth’s sky. It is also closer to Earth than it’ll be the rest of the year, making it
appear slightly bigger and brighter.

Constellations and Deep-Sky Objects

Late in the evening, high in the northern sky lies the Great Bear, Ursa Major.
The constellation of Ursa Major contains the well-known star pattern, the Big Dipper. It resembles a large drinking cup with a handle.

The two stars that make up the front side of the cup are called “pointer stars” because they point toward the star Polaris, also known as the North Star. The Big Dipper overflows with interesting stars and deep-sky objects.

The stars Mizar and Alcor make up a double-star system that can be seenwithout a telescope. In ancient times, when Mizar and Alcor were even closer together, they were used as a test of keen eyesight.

M81 and M82 are a magnificent pair of galaxies, showpieces of the northern night sky. M82 has an irregular shape, bestowed by a collision with its larger neighbor, M81.

Turning to the south, we see Leo, the Lion, heralding the coming of spring. In Greek mythology, Leo is the great beast slain by Hercules.

The star Denebola, which in Arabic means “tail,” represents exactly that. The bright star Regulus is the heart of the Lion.

Leo has several galaxies in his belly. M65, M66, and NGC 3628 make up the “Leo Triplet,” a lovely grouping of galaxies easily seen with a telescope. Close by is another group. M95 and M96 are large spiral galaxies.

Between the Big Dipper and the head of Leo are three pairs of bright stars known to ancient Arab astronomers as “The Three Leaps of the Gazelle.”

Events

The Lyrid meteor shower will be best seen in the early morning hours of April 22nd. Under a dark sky, you can expect to see up to 20 bright meteors per hour.

The night sky is always a celestial showcase. Explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Credits:

www.hubblesite.org

The night sky for March 2012 Credit: hubblesite.org