Skye Scope May 2012

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Great Sights on Saturn p. 54 18

THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY
p. 26
Visit SkyandTelescope.com
THE DARK-SKY FRONTIER
in National Parks
ASTRONOMY
Shoot the
Planets with
Your DSLR p. 72
Comet Lovejoy:
Solar Survivor
p. 36
Mays Ring of
Fire Eclipse
p. 50
Raging Below
Saturns Rings
p. 20
MAY 2012
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COVER
STORY
PARK PHOTO:
TYLER NORDGREN
May 2012 VOL. 123, NO. 5
On the cover:
The breathtaking
scenery of
Yosemite Valley
gives a superb
setting to
celestial jewels.
SKY & TELESCOPE (ISSN 0037-6604) is published monthly by Sky & Telescope Media, LLC, 90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264, USA.
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OBSERVING IN MAY
43 In This Section

44 Mays Sky at a Glance
45 Binocular Highlight
By Gary Seronik
46 Planetary Almanac
47 Northern Hemispheres Sky
By Fred Schaaf

48 Sun, Moon, and Planets
By Fred Schaaf
50 Celestial Calendar
By Alan MacRobert
54 Exploring the Solar System
By Alan MacRobert
56 Deep-Sky Wonders
By Sue French
60 Going Deep
By Alan Whitman
S&T TEST REPORT
64 S&T Test Report
By Johnny Horne
ALSO IN THI S I SSUE
6 Spectrum
By Robert Naeye
8 Letters
10 75, 50 & 25 Years Ago
By Roger W. Sinnott
12 News Notes
68 New Product Showcase
70 Telescope Workshop
By Gary Seronik
76 Gallery
86 Focal Point
By Thomas Watson
FEATURES
20 Saturns Raging Superstorm
A mysterious Great White Spot
erupted on Saturn in late 2010, the
sixth such storm in recorded history.
By Agustn Snchez-Lavega
26 Stars Above, Earth Below:
Astronomy in National Parks
Renowned for their terrestrial beauty,
U.S. national parks are among the
best places to revel in the splendor of
the night sky.
By Tyler Nordgren
36 The Remarkable Case
of Comet Lovejoy
Against the odds, Comet Lovejoy
survived its swing by the Sun and
became one of the most spectacular
comets of the past few decades.
By John E. Bortle
72 Planetary Imaging
with Your DSLR Camera
Chances are you already own a great
planetary camera, but didnt know it.
By Jerry Lodriguss
W
SKY SKY
W
SKY SKY
WEEK
Betelgeuse
Venus
Moon
May 21
Moon
May 22
Moon
May 23
Looking West-Northwest
`Tau
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Robert Naeye
Spectrum
Founded in 1941
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and Helen Spence Federer
The Essential Magazine
of Astronomy
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Heafner, Ken Hewitt-White, Johnny Horne, E. C. Krupp, Emily Lakdawalla, Jona-
than Mc Dowell, Donald W. Olson, Fred Schaaf, Govert Schilling, Gary Seronik,
William Sheehan, Mike Simmons, Charles A. Wood, Robert Zimmerman
Contributing Photographers P. K. Chen, Akira Fujii, Robert Gendler,
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Skies, Night Sky, SkyWeek, and ESSCO.
cover story about astronomy
in U.S. national parks triggered some of the fondest memories of my life,
and not just from my time in astronomy. From 2000 to 2003 I worked for
the Astronomical Society of the Pacic in San Francisco. Soon after moving
to California I learned that most of the Bay Area amateur astronomy clubs
participated in the Yosemite Star Party, held every Friday and Saturday night
throughout the summer at one of the worlds most spectacular overlooks,
Glacier Point. Every club was assigned a weekend. I ended up joining ve
clubs partially because I wanted to go to these events several times each year.
An hour or so before sunset, club members would set up telescopes in
a small amphitheater and would give an astronomy slide show as twilight
faded. For the rst hour or two after sunset my fellow astronomers and I
basically held a public star party, where
we shared views of various objects
with dozens to hundreds of visitors,
with many dierent languages being
spoken. After the tourists headed back
to their lodges and campsites, we had
Glacier Point all to ourselves, all night.
Under exceptionally dark skies
and an elevation of about 7,200 feet, I
enjoyed incredible views of deep-sky
objects through my 12 -inch Portaball
reector and the scopes of other club
members. It was there that I fell in
love with observing the Veil Nebula
through an O III lter. I also gained a
fuller appreciation for the superb deep-
sky capabilities of my 102-mm Tele Vue refractor. When I scrutinized dark
nebulae, no longer were they simply regions devoid of stars. The refractors
outstanding contrast dramatically showed these clouds as they really are:
beautiful discrete objects in front of background star elds.
We also scoped out the headlamps of rock climbers suspended against
the cli face of Half Dome. And always in the background were the soothing
rumbles of Nevada and Vernal Falls. My most memorable sight, however, was
using my refractor to watch the Moon rise over a faraway Sierra Nevada peak,
with a distant ponderosa pine silhouetted in front. The air was so steady that
night I could resolve individual branches. It was a Wow! moment.
The California astronomy clubs are still holding Yosemite Star Parties.
If youre in or near Yosemite National Park this summer, check out Glacier
Point on Friday or Saturday night!
Editing Tyler Nordgrens
Going Deep at Yosemite
Editor in Chief
S&T: ROBERT NAEYE
San Jose Astronomical
Association, 2003
Letters
Write to Letters to the Editor, Sky & Telescope, 90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264,
or send e-mail to [email protected]. Please limit your comments to 250 words.
Another Black Hole Spy?
As a follow up to your article Einsteins
Shadow (S&T: February 2012, page 18), I
have the following question: the Russian
radio telescope RadioAstron was recently
launched into space and has started opera-
tions. Is there an intention to include this
instrument in the Event Horizon Tele-
scope, thereby extending the interferom-
etry baseline into space?
Valentin Petrov
Moscow, Russia
Editors Note: Sadly, no. RadioAstron will
not be part of the EHT because its frequency
bands (highest is 18-25 GHz) are far lower
than the EHTs (230 GHz and 345 GHz, the
latter being preferred). Some of RadioAstrons
bands overlap ones observed with the NRAOs
Very Long Baseline Array, but while astrono-
mers have used the VLBA to look at M87s
core, the higher frequencies are needed to peer
deeply at black holes.
The Black Drop Eect
A box in the important preparatory story
by Fred Espenak and Jay Anderson about
observing June 5/6s transit of Venus (S&T:
January issue, page 70) correctly states that
the smaller the telescope and the worse
the atmospheric seeing, the more obvi-
ous the black drop eect is. But the three
causes the article mentions leave out an
additional, important explanation. Glenn
Schneider (University of Arizona) and I
showed, based on space observations of the
1999 transit of Mercury made in collabora-
tion with Leon Golub (Harvard-Smithson-
ian Center for Astrophysics), that the Sun
itself also plays a role. So-called limb-
darkening is the culprit there, whereby the
brightness of our Sun diminishes rapidly
and drastically very near the edge of its
disk. Only when limb-darkening is also
included can the observed black drop be
accounted for.
Another eect observers should look
for during the June transit is the Venusian
atmosphere, which our space observations
of the 2004 transit showed begins to be vis-
ible about a half hour before second contact
and remains visible for about a half hour
after third contact.
This year my colleagues, students, and
I will study Venuss atmosphere with mul-
tiple ground- and space-based telescopes
in order to leave the best possible legacy for
the astronomers preparing to observe the
next transits, in 2117 and 2125 just as we
have benetted from detailed descriptions
from 1761, 1769, 1874, and 1882.
Jay M. Pasacho
Williamstown, Massachusetts
In Horrockss Footsteps
I was interested to read Eli Maors article
in the January 2012 issue on Jeremiah
Horrocks and the 1639 transit of Venus. I
am arranging a June visit to Carr House
at Bretherton and St. Michaels Church in
the village of Much Hoole on behalf of the
Society for the History of Astronomy. In
preparation, I recently met Carr Houses
owner, Dr. Clive Elphick, and was shown
the window from where Jeremiah Horrocks
is thought to have made the rst observa-
tion of Venuss transit.
My visit on December 3rd was timed
to closely match the date of Horrockss
observation. This oblique photograph
was taken at 14:41 UT, within 25 hours
of the 372nd anniversary. The Sun just
peeks around the window mullion. There
is no doubt that the sightline is tightly
squeezed. I returned in January to watch
the Sun sink within 3 arcminutes of the
1639 sunset. My tests suggest that an expe-
rienced observer like Horrocks almost
certainly wouldnt use this window.
Kevin Kilburn
New Mills, England
Ingenious Design
By far my favorite of Gary Seroniks
articles thus far is the one about Mel Bar-
tels design for a Dobsonian (S&T: January
2012, page 62). The design is perfect for
people like me, who purchased a bulky
Dobsonian back when I had my own
condominium backyard but have since
downsized to a third-story apartment in a
village for active seniors. In my opinion,
Mr. Bartels design deserves its own name
or at the very least, a hyphenated name.
Bartelian-Dobsonian scope, perhaps?
Eric F. Diaz
Indianapolis, Indiana
Norman Edmundss Death
My uncle was Norman Edmundss TV
repairman, and it was through my uncle
that I met the renowned Mr. Edmunds.
We talked for a long time about my
interest in telescopes. He was indeed a
gracious person, sharing his wisdom with
my childhood self. After that meeting, my
family and I went back to his store, where
I used my savings to buy my rst real
telescope, a 3-inch white tube reector.
That scope oered me my rst wonderful
view of the Moon, paralyzing me until my
mothers insistent calls brought me in for
dinner. I still have the scope.
I owe Norm and his sta a lot. His
store was the only place I knew in which
a kid could learn, touch, explore, and
discover the world of science. They were
never too busy; they didnt care if you were
spending $0.75 or $750. For me, there will
never be another place like Edmunds, and
I will always appreciate men like Norm.
Nick Oshana
Bristol, Connecticut
Theres Nothing Like Paper
In 1963 S&T captured my imagination
su ciently for me to grind a 6-inch mir-
ror at age 15. Today I have a small dome
Jeremiah Horrocks may have observed the 1639
transit of Venus through this window, but as
apparent above, the view of the Sun is a tight t.
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Letters
For the Record
The March cover story listed Simon Portegies Zwarts institution as the University of
Amsterdam. He works at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
In the timetable on page 69 of the February article Mays Great Annular Eclipse, the
times for Arizona were wrongly corrected for Daylight Savings Time. (Arizona does not
observe DST.) All times listed for Arizona should be one hour earlier. You can also go to
the map at eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov to see predictions in Universal Time.
For a list of past errata, please go to SkyandTelescope.com/Errata.
75, 50 & 25 Years Ago Roger W. Sinnott
This nding came
from his spectroscopic
study of the unusual 20.4-
year binary. . . . [Knowing
the orbits sizes,] the
Indiana astronomer could
evaluate the diameter of
the M star from the orbital
elements and the known
duration of the eclipses. This red supergiant, he
nds, is so enormous that the orbit of Jupiter
could be tted inside it.
Peerys result holds up well today. VV Cephei
has just a few contenders for largest known star;
recent studies put it from 1,600 to 1,900 times the
Suns diameter, nearly the size of Saturns orbit.
May 1987
Neutrinos from Hell Neutrino astronomy, for
decades the sole concern of theorists, became
a genuine observational science early on Febru-
ary 23rd. That day, a handful of these elusive
particles were detected from Supernova 1987A
in the Large Magellanic Cloud. . . .
The observations rep-
resent the rst neutrino
detections from a known
extraterrestrial source.
Technical editor Ronald
A. Schorn spearheaded
S&Ts coverage of the near-
est supernova observed in
modern times.
f
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t
I
e
t
e
duration of the eclipse
MayJune 1937
Ghost Images Not long ago the discovery
of a faint southern comet was announced [by
Harvard Observatory, relayed from a Southern
Hemisphere amateur astronomer]. But, alas!
there was no new comet. The experienced ama-
teur was not careful enough about the reection
in his telescope from
the nearby planet Mars.
He had observed and
reported a ghost. . . .
[Ghost images] are
even more dangerous
than the nebulae and
star clusters that try to
look like comets, since
the ghost will appear to
move in the course of an hour because of [the]
changing relative position of observers eye
and telescope . . . and this apparent motion of
an apparent comet so excites the observer that
judgment abandons him and he dashes for the
telegraph o ce.
Then as now, ghost images are usually caught
before the o cial announcement of a new
discovery.
May 1962
Stellar Giant One of the largest known stars
the red supergiant component of the eclips-
ing binary VV Cephei has a diameter 1,620
times the suns, according to Indiana University
astronomer Benjamin F. Peery, Jr.
i
t
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r
e
t
s
l
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i h f
r
d
e
A
S
e
m
in my front yard with a 5- and 8-inch
Schmidt-Cass. After retiring from 30
years of social work, I now nd myself the
lucky director of a small planetarium in
Ohio, where your magazine continues to
prove invaluable. I just nished reading
the March issue, but I rst read the online
version last week. The digital edition looks
splendid, is well designed, and is easy to
navigate . . . but the paper copy I hold in
my hand is irreplaceable. Of course, thats
only the opinion of one old guy.
iPhone-, iPad-, and Kindle-less at the
Hoover-Price Planetarium
David L. Richards
Canton, Ohio
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News Notes
To get astronomy news as it breaks, visit
SkyandTelescope.com/newsblog.
T
SSS
Vast New Trove of Variable Stars
Phase
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0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
14.6
15.0
15.2
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RR Lyrae type
14.8
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Algol type
These light curves of faint variable stars were plucked from
the tens of thousands now online courtesy of the Catalina
sky surveys. The thin vertical lines are the error bars for
each brightness measurement. Algol stars are eclipsing
binaries in which the two stars are separated; W Ursae
Majoris stars are contact binaries resembling gure 8s; RR
Lyraes are pulsators. These three variables have periods of
0.536934, 0.74429, and 0.331798 days, respectively.
S&T: LEAH TISCIONE, SOURCE: CATALINA SKY SURVEY / ANDREW DRAKE
We live in a golden age of automated sky surveys, and
its getting more golden all the time.
One way that massive sky surveys are changing
astronomy is by producing gigantic numbers of uniform,
high-quality light curves for new variable stars. Usually
these are merely the byproducts of surveys designed for
other purposes. But when some project measures the
brightnesses of millions of stars over and over, why not
save the data and mine it?
The largest such variable-star database yet has been
compiled by the Catalina Sky Survey and the Catalina
Real-Time Transient Survey. Their main jobs are looking
for near-Earth asteroids and watching for transient events
among the stars and galaxies. But along the way they
have collected 20 billion brightness measurements of 198
million stars and other objects since 2004. Thats an aver-
age of 100 magnitude measurements for each one. The
objects range from magnitude 12.5 to 20 and span a little
more than half the celestial sphere.
The new light curves include more than 1,000 distant
supernovae, some of unusual or new varieties; about
3,000 other transient objects including are stars, dwarf
novae, and erupting galactic nuclei; and tens of thousands
of other new variable stars of every kind.
By comparison, the o cial General Catalog of Variable
Stars, the bible of the eld since 1948, contains 43,675
named variables.
The Catalina light curves are uniform and consistent,
with measurements typically accurate to 0.06 or 0.08
magnitude. This set is an order of magnitude larger than
the largest previously available data sets of the kind, says
Andrew Drake (Caltech) of the Catalina project. He also
notes, We discover transient events and publish them
electronically in real time, so that anyone can follow them
and make additional discoveries.
In this way the program is a precursor to the much
bigger Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project,
which should begin watching the sky with a unique,
wide-eld 8.4-meter scope around the end of this decade.
The LSSTs capabilities will be mind-boggling: its
designed to measure everything across half the celestial
sphere from magnitude 16 to 24.5 in six colors an average
of once every three or four days for at least 10 years.
Catalinas observations so far come from the Univer-
News Notes
sity of Arizonas 0.7-meter telescope on
Mt. Bigelow in Arizona. The team plans to
start including data taken with a 1.5-meter
telescope on Mt. Lemmon in Arizona and
a 0.5-meter telescope in Australia.
Such data riches do not make tradi-
tional variable star observing obsolete,
Drake emphasizes. The Catalina surveys
cant measure stars brighter than 12th
magnitude; they saturate the pixels. And
the surveys avoid the broad band of the
Milky Way completely, because there the
stars are so numerous that their images in
the system often overlap.
More broadly, amateurs in the com-
ing decades will have plenty of new work
doing fast, detailed follow-ups on interest-
ing objects as surveys discover them.
A Light-Echo Replay
of Eta Carinaes Blast
Weighing in at about 90 Suns, the hot
supergiant star Eta Carinae shines inside a
massive, double rose-blossom of a nebula
called the Homunculus. The two outward-
spraying globes were thrown o during
the stars so-called Great Eruption from
1838 to 1858, during which Eta Carinae
peaked as the second-brightest star in the
night sky after Sirius. The globes contain
an impressive 10 solar masses of ejecta.
Somehow the rest of the star survived, and
with its remaining high mass, its a prime
candidate to have an even brighter blast
someday as the next supernova in our part
of the Milky Way.
The cause of the Great Eruption is
without doubt one of the biggest puzzles
in stellar astronomy, says Michael Corco-
ran (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center).
Astronomers have long wished they could
take modern instruments back in a time
machine to watch what really happened.
Now, in a sense, they can. A team using
sensitive detectors on large telescopes has
found light echoes of the Great Eruption
light from the outburst reected o nebu-
lar matter more than 80 light-years from
Eta Carinae itself. This light is providing a
replay of the 19th-century eruption.
And already it presents a surprise.
A prime theory has been that radiation
pressure from an increase in Eta Cars
luminosity blew a massive, opaque stellar
The Hubble
Space Tele-
scope imaged
the expanding
debris from Eta
Carinaes Great
Eruption in
unprecedented
detail
The diameters of
Earth, GJ 1214b, and
Neptune are com-
pared in this artists
concept. Although its
atmosphere seems to
be mostly steam, the
waterworlds actual
appearance is unknown.
wind from the stars surface. But Nathan
Smith (University of Arizona) suggested
a few years ago that an internal explo-
sion, perhaps a sort of pre-supernova, was
the cause instead. He and his team have
analyzed the faint light-echo light and nd
that the Great Eruptions temperature was
about 5,000 kelvins (8,500F), which he
says is at least 2,000 kelvins too low for the
wind model to work.
Other astronomers say the evidence
still falls short of ruling out the wind
scenario. But the light echoes, though
dim and elusive, may have more to say on
the matter. In particular, they may show
whether the initial brightening was a slow
rise or a sudden spike, says Theodore Gull
(also of NASA Goddard). That will be the
proof of the pudding.
GJ 1214b: A Steam-Bath World
The case has rmed up that exoplanet
hunters have identied a waterworld, a
planet thats not just completely covered
with water but consists of water for much
of its bulk. Earth, by comparison, is only
0.02% water by mass, despite the fact that
oceans cover 71% of its surface.
GJ 1214b is a super-Earth with 2.7
times Earths diameter, orbiting a red-
dwarf star 40 light-years away in Ophiu-
chus. Its close enough to the dim little
star that its average temperature must
be several hundred degrees Celsius, well
above the boiling point of water at Earths
normal pressure. What makes the planet
so interesting is that we also know its
mass (from the gravitational wobble it
induces in the star) and hence its density:
1.9 grams per cubic centimeter. Thats too
low for rock and too high for gas, but a
water-rock combination would t. In fact,
follow-up spectroscopic studies with the
Very Large Telescope suggested that its
atmosphere is dominated by steam.
That looks more likely now, thanks to
near-infrared spectra collected by Hubble.
A team led by Zachory Berta (Harvard-
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
examined the stars light while the planet
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News Notes
was, and was not, silhouetted in front of
it. The dierence between the two states
included a tiny fraction of the stars light
skimming the planets edges through its
upper atmosphere on its way to us. From
this, the group was able to derive a crude
absorption spectrum for GJ 1214bs upper
air. Their conclusion: water vapor seems to
be at least 50% of it. On Earth, water vapor
is only about 1% of the atmosphere.
Although the exoplanets roasting heat
must increase with depth, higher pres-
sures at greater depth should make the
water liquid rather than gas a weirdly
alien ocean. In the very deep interior,
the extreme pressures and temperatures
should turn the water into unearthly
phases of superuid and white-hot ice.
An Unexpected
Secret of Sunspots
Hydrogen is by far the most abundant
element in the universe, but most of
it is atomic hydrogen: single H atoms.
The molecular hydrogen familiar here
on Earth, H
2
, is rare in the cosmos; its
mostly conned to interstellar-cloud inte-
riors that are cold and dense enough, and
protected enough from ultraviolet radia-
tion, for the molecules to hold together.
So you might not expect to nd H
2
on
the Sun. But a team from the University
of Hawaii and the National Solar Observa-
tory has measured it there and nds
that it plays a role in the formation and
maintenance of sunspots.
Sarah Jaeggli and colleagues used the
National Solar Observatorys Dunn Solar
Telescope in New Mexico to observe 23
sunspot regions. They inferred the pres-
ence of H
2
amounting to as much as 2.3%
of the hydrogen over cool sunspot umbrae.
Sunspots form where bundles of
magnetic-eld lines emerge from the
Suns interior. The magnetic eld locks
ionized solar gas in place, preventing it
from participating in the general up-and-
down boiling of the solar surface and thus
allowing it time to cool. And this opens a
window of opportunity for H
2
to form.
The group argues that the formation
of H
2
in turn encourages a rapid intensi-
cation of the magnetic eld, helping to
keep sunspots compact and long-lasting.
Replacing two atoms with one molecule
lowers the gas pressure inside a spot, caus-
ing the gas to shrink inward dragging
the magnetic-eld lines with it.
This may add an important new piece
to the puzzle of sunspots compactness
and persistence, and may ultimately help
improve forecasts of solar ares and space
weather in Earths environment.
Closure for the
Keck Interferometer
The twin 10-meter Keck telescopes atop
Hawaiis Mauna Kea are nearly the largest
optical telescopes in the world. A prime
reason for building two of them was to
use them as an interferometer: combining
their light beams with extreme precision,
light wave to light wave, to gain super-high
resolution approaching that of a single
telescope aperture as wide as their separa-
tion: 85 meters (280 feet). It wasnt easy
large optical interferometry is right at the
edge of modern precision engineering
but Keck Observatory got the system work-
ing. It has been used to measure disks of
stars and the dust structures of planetary
systems forming around young stars.
But no more. Last summer NASA man-
agers quietly decided to stop funding the
interferometer, and it will be mothballed
in July. After that, the two Keck telescopes
will always each work alone.
NASAs o cial position is that the
Keck Interferometer has completed its
primary task of examining dusty disks
around nearby stars. That fooled nobody.
The reason is that it simply proved too dif-
cult and expensive to link the giant eyes
through the necessary system of optical
pathways and adjustments, for use just a
few dozen nights each year.
This is tremendously bittersweet to
me, laments Gerard van Belle (Lowell
Observatory), whose team has been using
the Keck Interferometer on dim dwarf
stars. I spent hundreds of nights on the
summit from 1998 to 2001 getting this
system to work.
Another reason for the closure was
Keck Observatorys inability to add the
four smaller, 1.8-meter outrigger tele-
scopes that were intended to combine with
the large two to create a more complete
interferometer. The sideKecks were built
(at a cost of about $15 million) but remain
in storage, victims of NASA budget cuts
and the touchy Hawaiian politics of add-
ing more domes to the mountaintop. The
sideKecks have been turned over to the
U.S. Naval Observatory, which hopes to
integrate them into its Navy Optical Inter-
ferometer in northern Arizona.
This leaves the European Southern
Observatorys Very Large Telescope
Interferometer in Chile, with four 8.2-
meter scopes and four movable, 1.8-meter
outriggers, as the unchallenged leader in
large-aperture optical interferometry.
For more: skypub.com/may2012keck.
Formation of hydrogen molecules (H2) in
sunspots should intensify the strong magnetic
elds that keep sunspots compact and long-
lasting. Astronomers using the 1-meter Swedish
Solar Telescope took this high-resolution image
on July 15, 2002.
Light from Keck Observatorys two 10-meter
telescopes can be microscopically matched,
wavefront to wavefront, to create the worlds
most sensitive optical interferometer until
the system is shut down in July.
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News Notes
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5.6 air m
asses
The lower a star appears over your horizon, the more air its light has to go through to reach you. The
amount of air straight over your head (whatever your height above sea level) is called one air mass.
Claudius Ptolemy (circa 150 A.D.) as imagined
by a 16th-century artist.
Ancient Astronomers:
Smarter Than We Knew?
Ancient astronomers were clever in lots
of ways, and with so many of their texts
now lost, they probably had more going
on than we know. Now Bradley Schaefer
(Louisiana State University) thinks he
has found a new piece of astronomical
knowledge they used: a formula for the
dimming of starlight by Earths atmos-
phere. He says they apparently corrected
for this eect ages before anyone had a
physical model for why it happens.
The dimming is called atmospheric
extinction. It happens because a star at
a low altitude is seen through more of
Earths atmosphere than a star overhead.
This is why the Sun and Moon look
dimmer near the horizon than when
theyre high. If the amount of air straight
up is dened as one air mass, you look
through 2 air masses when you look 30
above the horizon, 5.6 air masses at 10,
and 40 at the horizon. Any naked-eye
skywatcher notices the eect. But putting
good numbers to it is another matter.
Astronomers compiled the rst large
star catalog about two millennia ago.
Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria included
it in his great compendium of 13 books
on astronomy known as the Almagest
around 150 A.D. It classies 1,022 stars
by their magnitude, setting the basis of
the brightness-measuring system we use
today. But historians have debated whether
Ptolemy observed the stars himself or
copied the star data from a now-lost
catalog made by Hipparchus of Rhodes
about 300 years earlier.
Schaefer had a brainstorm for a new
way to try to nd out. Rhodes is at 36
north latitude; Alexandria is at 31. So in
the southern part of the sky, stars would
appear 5 lower and therefore dimmer
from Rhodes than from Alexandria.
Would the magnitudes in the Almagest
give away the latitude of the author?
To take an extreme example, Canopus
at its highest would have looked 4th or
5th magnitude to Hipparchus but 2nd
magnitude to Ptolemy.
Schaefer, however, discovered a prob-
lem. No such eects appear at all. No
matter how near the horizon stars were
viewed (from whatever latitude), any
eect of extinction averages out to about
zero. Somehow somebody corrected the
Almagest magnitudes for extinction, says
Schaefer. Its the only way.
When Schaefer examined catalogs
from two later astronomers, al-Su in the
10th century and Tycho Brahe in the 16th,
he also found extinction corrections.
This is a surprise, because no records
mention extinction at all until the 1700s.
Says Schaefer, Its rather surprising that
[the ancients] did a sophisticated and
pretty accurate correction for something
they dont talk about and no one ever knew
they knew about.
Several astronomers remain skeptical
and argue that scatter in the data may
undermine Schaefers result, which he
has not yet published. Still, the consensus
seems to be that hes onto something.
How did the ancients do it? Probably
they watched stars that traversed a large
range of altitudes, determined how
bright they appeared at dierent heights
compared to stars at greater heights, and
compiled a correction table accordingly.
Schaefer did this himself while vacation-
ing in the American Southwest, with
pretty good results. He says it was naked-
eye backyard astronomy to the rescue of
historical astronomy.
End of an S&T Era
The buildings that housed Sky & Tele-
scopes editorial o ces for nearly half a
century bit the dust on February 24th,
literally, while camera-wielding former
occupants looked on with mixed emo-
tions. The former houses at 48 and 50 Bay
State Road, Cambridge, Mass., served as
our o ces from 1957 until 2006 when we
moved to more modern quarters nearby.
Condos are going up in their place.
But a proud memorial stands across the
street: S&Ts third and much larger for-
mer building now houses the American
Association of Variable Star Observers.
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Clearing out the former editor in chiefs o ce.
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Monetary prizes of $5,000$50,000 will be awarded to about 16 winners.
The competition aims to inspire students to consider careers in science and to nurture
their enthusiasm for the subject. Educators are encouraged to inform talented
students of this extraordinary opportunity. This program is being organized as part
of the New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology: An International Grant Competition
for Scientists. Winners will be notified September 2012.
Essay deadline: June 15, 2012 22:00 UTC
Visit www.NewFrontiersinAstronomy.org for details.
We seek essay submissions from talented, scientifically minded
students addressing two of the Big Questions we face today
in astronomy and cosmology.
High School Essay Topic:
Are we alone in the universe? Or, are there other life and
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College Essay Topic:
What is the origin of the complexity in the universe?
Led by The University of Chicago
Funded by the John Templeton Foundation
Stormy Weather
A mysterious Great White Spot erupted on Saturn in
late 2010, only the sixth such storm in recorded history.
agustn snchez-lavega
Superstorm
Saturns Raging
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SkyandTelescope.com May 2012 21
S&T I wrote about the
most spectacular meteorological phenomenon in Saturns
atmosphere: a Great White Spot (GWS). Only four GWS
events were known at that time, occurring in 1876, 1903,
1933, and 1960. Information on them was rather sparse,
just a few photos and drawings. But the apparent regular-
ity of this phenomenon, with one GWS per Saturn year
(29.46 Earth years), encouraged me to predict that a new
one would soon break out.
Sure enough, the fth storm erupted in September
1990, in the planets equatorial zone, just like the 1876 and
1933 events. Professional astronomers imaged the storm
with new CCD cameras on ground-based telescopes and
with the still-uncorrected optics on the Hubble Space Tele-
scope. This fth storm bolstered our view that the GWS
phenomenon is seasonal and concentrated in the summer
of Saturns northern hemisphere. According to this peri-
odicity, the next event should have ared up around 2020.
But to our great surprise, in early December 2010
amateur astronomers around the world obtained images
of the outbreak of a sixth GWS, again in the northern
hemisphere, but at mid-latitudes as was the case in 1903.
The storm erupted in the northern hemispheres early
spring, about 10 years before summer.
This time, astronomers were equipped with better
astronomical detectors in the visible and infrared, both
from the ground and from NASAs Cassini spacecraft
in orbit around Saturn. Amateur astronomers using
advanced imaging techniques provided daily cover-
age that gave scientists their most detailed view yet of a
storms evolution. Papers later published in the presti-
gious journals Science and Nature included the contribu-
tions of several dozen amateur astronomers, among them
S&T imaging editor Sean Walker.
Discovery by Amateurs
Amateur astronomers Sadegh Gomizadegh in Iran and
Teruaki Kumamori in Japan provided the rst clear
evidence of the 2010 GWS outbreak in images taken on
December 8th and 9th, respectively. But a reanalysis of
earlier Saturn images showed that in a December 5th
picture from Japanese observer Toshihiko Ikemura, a very
small white spot was located at the same position (latitude
37.7 north) as the eruption.
This date coincides with Cassinis rst detection of the
spot with two instruments. Its Radio Plasma and Wave
Science (RPWS) experiment captured powerful radio
emissions from intense lightning activity coming from
the spots position, and in its routine study of the planet,
the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) caught a 1,000-km-
wide bright spot.
From humble beginnings, the GWS quickly swelled
to a complex phenomenon of planetary scale. Decem-
ber 10th images from Anthony Wesley in Australia and
SATURN STORMS Left: Cassini took this
image of the storms tail on February 25, 2011.
Right: All six observed Great White Spots broke
out in the northern hemisphere. The white dots
on this Cassini image show the latitudes where
each storm erupted. Below left: Spanish astrono-
mer Josep Comas I Sol drew this illustration of
the 1903 storm, which erupted at a similar lati-
tude as the 2010 GWS. Below right: A GWS broke
out near Saturns equator in September 1990. In
November 1990, before corrective optics were
installed, the Hubble Space Telescope took this
image after the storm had wrapped around the
planet. North is up in all images in this article.
1960
1990
1933 1876
1903
2010
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In the august 1989
Stormy Weather
Jean-Jacques Poupeau in France showed that the spot
had grown to a width of 8,000 km while simultaneously
increasing in brightness at red, green, and blue wave-
lengths. Two days later, images from multiple observers
around the world showed that the spot was expanding
eastward, developing a tail. All of these lines of evidence
the large size, high brightness, and zonal expansion
were unambiguous signatures of a sixth GWS event.
In a matter of a week its head (the GWS proper, i.e.
the source of the disturbance) grew to 10,000 km in
diameter almost the width of Earth. The features
brightness made it easily visible through small amateur
telescopes against Saturns usual pale-yellow clouds and
featureless disk. The GWS was magnicent in its high
reectivity at visible wavelengths and in its size, about six
times that of the most frequent bright spots detected from
Earth-based telescopes under good seeing conditions.
Amateur images were of fundamental importance to
capturing the initial stages of the disturbances evolu-
tion. They enabled my planetary science colleagues and
I to determine the spots growing size and brightness,
which in turn allowed us to constrain the storms early
dynamics and vertical cloud structure. Except for the
ISSs initial December 5th image of the spot, no Cassini
picture was obtained until December 22nd. During this
critical period, amateurs around the world took images
every planet rotation (about 10 hours, 39.37 minutes). This
major eort provided the most complete database of high-
quality images of a GWS. You can see these contributions
at the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratorys
website at www.pvol.ehu.es/pvol.
The Spot Grows a Tail
The head remained alive for several months. But high-
speed winds quickly drove the disturbance eastward,
forming a tail. Similar to previous storms, the tail of the
2010 GWS fully encircled the planet in about 55 days, pro-
ducing a band of patchy bright clouds ringing Saturn.
The tails pattern resulted from the complex turbu-
lent motions and eddies generated in the heads wake
as it interacted with high-altitude winds. The shapes of
the storms head and tail were sculpted by the shear of
the permanent zonal winds, which consist of parallel
bands that alternately blow east and west. The 2010 GWS
head, centered at 40 north, moved westward, dragged
by easterly winds of 30 meters per second (67 mph). But
at 35 north, the wind blows eastward and the speed
increases to 50 m/s (112 mph). At 44 north, the winds
blow eastward at only 20 m/s (45 mph). Thus the tails
structure depended on the outbreak latitude and how the
winds changed in speed north and south of the outbreak
point. In the 1990 equatorial event, for example, the cloud
pattern moved eastward and westward from the head,
forming a tail on each side of the original GWS.
OUTBREAK These amateur images from December 2010 were critical in showing the eruption and early expansion of the Great White Spot.
THE SPOT EMERGES The new Great White Spot was discov-
ered in amateur images taken on December 8 and 9, 2010. But
analysis of this Cassini image taken on December 5th revealed
a small white spot at the site of the eruption.
S. Gomizadegh
12/8
T. Kumamori
12/9
A. Wesley
12/10
M. Delcroix
12/11
C. Go
12/13
T. Akutsu
12/13
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(
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Rising from the Deep
Amateur data also helped scientists decipher the storms
vertical motion. In Florida, Donald Parker obtained a
series of images at ultraviolet wavelengths sensitive to
cloud altitude and another sequence at a methane (CH
4)
absorption band in the infrared. Together with pictures
taken by professionals at Pic du Midi Observatory in
France and at Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory
in Spain, the data showed the GWS to be 10% to 20%
brighter at optical wavelengths than its surroundings.
The storms brightening at all wavelengths indicated that
the GWS contained highly reective particles (probably
ice crystals) that ascended with warm gas from deeper
layers, with few of the contaminating aerosols that are
abundant in Saturns upper hazes.
But the original disturbance showed up only slightly in
the methane-band images. Dierent lters show clouds
at dierent altitudes, giving us important clues about the
GWSs vertical structure. High clouds have little meth-
ane gas above them, so they reect sunlight and shine
brightly in methane-band images. Deeper clouds have
more methane above them, so they reect less sunlight
and thus appear dark in the same band. Due to low tem-
peratures in Saturns atmosphere, its upper clouds consist
of ammonia (NH
3) ice crystals that form around the alti-
tude level of 1 bar, the same pressure at sea level on Earth.
According to our calculations, the icy cloud tops of the
GWS disturbance were immersed in a 100-km-thick haze
layer that pokes about 40 km on average above the ammo-
nia clouds. With its high altitude, the GWS appeared
bright in the ultraviolet but dark in the methane band.
The GWS disturbance also made its presence felt high
above the clouds, in Saturns normally calm stratosphere.
The storm produced two strong temperature anomalies
nicknamed beacons on each side of the central distur-
bance. These beacons were distinct oval-shaped regions
of air with temperatures much higher than their immedi-
ate surroundings, causing them to shine brightly when
viewed in infrared light between 7 and 14 microns. The
beacons size and intensity varied during the storm, with
a maximum horizontal extent of around 50,000 km.
Recent observations of Saturns upper atmosphere
showed that the two beacons intensied and merged
in late April 2011, creating a large single mass of warm
air some 70 to 80C (125 to 145F) warmer than the
quiescent part of the atmosphere. This warm beacon has
persisted long after the storm had ceased at deeper alti-
tudes. The temperature dierences induced high-altitude
THE TAIL SPREADS Amateur images from December 2010 to mid-2011 captured the dramatic eastward expansion and evolution of the tail.
0
West East
40
30
35
40
45
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40 80
Wind velocity (meters per second)
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MODEL VS. REALITY Top: A false-color Cassini image of
the head and tail, taken on March 6, 2011, is compared to
wind-velocity measurements by latitude taken before the storm
erupted. Above: A computer model of the tail from the authors
research group closely matches the actual storm, indicating a
general understanding of how upper atmospheric winds caused
the tail to spread eastward.
T. Barry
12/26
B. G. Combs
1/15
T. Akutsu
2/9
D. Peach
3/28
E. Morales Rivera
5/25
E. Morales Rivera
6/14
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Stratospheric haze Stratosphere
Tropopause
Troposphere
Great White Spot
Tropospheric haze
Water (H
2O) clouds
Ammonia hydrosulde
(NH
4SH) clouds
Ammonia (NH3) clouds
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Upward
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150
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(335 mph)
Stormy Weather
changes in the stratospheric winds and in the abundances
of some minor gases that were detected with infrared
instruments on ground-based telescopes and Cassini.
A Giant Thunderstorm
All of the evidence suggests that the initial GWS was a
giant thunderstorm about 100 times the size of typical
Earth storms. For example, intense lightning activity
within the storm produced the radio outbursts in the head
detected by Cassini on December 5, 2010.
My colleagues and I have developed computer mod-
els of the GWS phenomenon that try to reproduce the
observations and also probe the dynamical structure of
Saturns atmosphere below the upper ammonia cloud
layer. According to our models, Saturns 2010 GWS grew
rapidly in brightness and area due to the formation and
expansion of dense cumulus clouds of ammonia crystals
behavior somewhat like terrestrial thunderstorms. This
is why we usually say that the GWS erupts in the planet.
Accordingly, the storm clouds in the head resulted
from hot, moist gas rising rapidly from Saturns deeper
atmosphere. On Earth, the air is a mixture of nitrogen
and oxygen, with water providing moisture. In contrast,
Saturns drier atmosphere consists mainly of hydrogen
and helium, with ammonia and water providing most
of the moisture. Based on models of moist convection
in Saturns atmosphere, we think that within the storm
head, water-moist gas ascended from a depth of about 250
km below Saturns upper clouds at speeds of 150 meters
per second (335 mph), about three times faster than the
velocities typical of severe thunderstorms on Earth.
High-resolution Cassini images of the GWS head
showed abundant clusters of cumulonimbus (tall, verti-
cal) clouds that appeared as a single compact bright spot
in unresolved ground-based images. This observation
supports our thunderstorm model.
Another important conclusion from our models is that
Saturns water abundance must have been high where the
GWS erupted, about ve times or more than the amount
we expected from the Suns abundance of oxygen, which
is taken as a reference for the giant planets because they
SATURN S SEASONS
Saturn seasons are due to the 26.7 tilt of the planets
rotational axis with respect to the orbital plane. But at
tropical and equatorial latitudes, the ring shadowing of
the upper atmosphere varies during Saturn's orbit, which
amplies seasonal eects. Measurements of Saturns east-
west zonal winds during the last Saturn year show that they
remained stable despite the planets strong seasonal cycle.
PROBING THE DEPTHS Don Parker took these images on
January 2, 2011. The GWS appeared bright through an ultraviolet
lter but was barely visible in an infrared (methane) lter. Images
such as these show conditions at dierent altitudes, and support
the idea that the original disturbance consisted of warm gas and
ice crystals that ascended from deeper in the atmosphere.
Ultraviolet
Methane
CLOUD STRUCTURE According to the authors model, the 2010 Great White Spot originated as a thunderstorm in a water
cloud deep below the visible layers of Saturns atmosphere. The storm ascended rapidly into the troposphere, where it could be
easily spotted by amateur and professional astronomers.
S&T: LEAH TISCIONE / SOURCE: AGUSTN SNCHEZ-LAVEGA
all formed from the same elements in the solar nebula.
In order to reproduce the structure and motions of the
GWS clouds, the winds we measured at the upper-ammo-
nia-cloud level must extend in depth without diminished
speed to at least the water clouds, below the level where
solar radiation penetrates. The development of the GWS
produced small changes in the structure of the wind
system at the latitude of the storm. But the westward jet at
40 north remained essentially unchanged by the action
of the GWS.
All of these characteristics of Saturns winds suggest
that motions in the upper cloud layers are probably deeply
rooted to the massive atmosphere that extends down to
about half the planets radius (30,000 km). The internal
heat emanating from Saturns depths, coupled to the
planets rapid rotation, could be driving the high-speed
winds we observe at the cloud tops. This is dierent than
on Earth, where winds are driven by solar radiation.
Remaining Mysteries
Despite the groundbreaking observations of the 2010
storm, there are many unsolved questions raised by the
GWS phenomenon. For example, why are these giant
storms so rare, with only one per Saturn year? Probably
dierent contributing factors must occur simultaneously
in the atmosphere to trigger a GWS. On the other hand,
if these giant storms are seasonally forced, how does the
small and slow seasonal temperature variation in the
upper atmosphere propagate 250 km downward to the
water cloud level? And why did the 2010 event take place
about 10 years before the usual summertime period when
other Great White Spots were observed?
Another mystery is the GWSs connement to three
latitude bands in the northern hemisphere (three at the
equator, two at mid-latitudes, and one at a sub-polar
latitude). Perhaps this eect is related to the shear of the
zonal jets that change with latitude. But Saturns jets are
symmetrical by hemisphere, and dont seem to favor the
north or south. Its possible that GWS phenomena many
decades ago went undetected in the southern hemisphere,
where they were obscured by the rings and their shadows
on the globe, or that they took place when Saturn was hid-
den behind the Sun from Earths perspective.
If the GWS occurs at a rate of one per Saturn year, the
next one should not erupt until the 2040s. Perhaps then
new observations will solve these and other mysteries. But
before the next outbreak, scientists will continue to ana-
lyze and interpret the plethora of data from the 2010 storm
retrieved by Cassini and ground-based observatories.
Agustn Snchez-Lavega is Professor of Physics at the
Universidad del Pas Vasco in Spain. He is author of the book
An Introduction to Planetary Atmospheres (2011).
THE STORM SUBSIDES This Cassini
image taken on January 17, 2012, shows
that the storm and tail have subsided
to a level where there remains very few
traces of their former glory.
Storm remnant
zone
To see more images of Saturns super-
storm, visit skypub.com/saturnstorm.
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Astro Tourism
Stars Above, Earth Below:

TYLER NORDGREN
The Milky Way and Scorpius rise above Zion
Canyon, the centerpiece of Zion National Park
in southern Utah.
in
As a professional astronomer,
my luggage is covered with but-
tons and stickers from places
familiar to astronomy enthusiasts, sites such
as Palomar, Mauna Kea, Siding Spring, and
Arecibo. But for the past ve years my astro-
nomical career has taken me to new destina-
tions with names like Yellowstone, Yosemite,
Grand Canyon, and Glacier. As articial lights
creep toward our observatories and make it
increasingly di cult to see stars from urban
areas, the national parks that protect our last
unspoiled wilderness by day are also protect-
ing our sky at night.
Tonight Ive driven to Great Basin National
Park in central Nevada. Created around
Lehman Caves National Monument in 1986,
Great Basin is one of the newest national
parks, and its isolation invokes a feeling of
having stepped back into yesteryear. Instead
of long lines of cars at multiple entry stations,
theres a single lonely road leading up into
mountains that are dotted with aspen trees and
that still carry patches of snow in July.
This feeling of having stepped back in
time continues after nightfall. As far as my
eyes can see to the distant mountains, theres
not a single city light dome visible at all, and
only a dozen or so house lights shine faintly
in the distance. I cant remember when I last
saw a sky this dark. Even with the lights of my
GPS and dashboard streaming into my eyes,
I can still discern detail in the Milky Way that
normally takes forever to tease out of the skys
background glow. In Great Basin National
Park, like the mountains, caves, aspens, and
glacier that attract visitors by day, the galactic
plane overhead is preserved the way everyone
used to see it.
Star Parties and Festivals
Current estimates suggest that 60% of Ameri-
cans no longer live where the Milky Way is
even faintly visible, and worldwide roughly
half of the children born in 2012 are expected
to never see it at all. U.S. national parks are
among the greatest locations guaranteed to
reveal the splendor of the night sky. The public
has noticed this. Surveys reveal that a star-
lled sky is now as integral to a visitors park
experience as seeing waterfalls and wildlife. To
help protect this celestial resource for future
generations, a small team of park rangers and
professional astronomers are working together
to measure and monitor the night sky of the
parks, looking to quantify its darkness and the
major sources of light pollution from inside and
outside the park (see sidebar, page 32).
The National Park Service Night Sky Team
not only travels the country monitoring light
pollution, it also helps coordinate astronomy
volunteers for those parks looking to put on
evening astronomy programs. These programs
take the form of everything from hikes under
a full Moon to telescope tours around the time
of new Moon, all of which are among the most
popular evening programs that parks oer. In
smaller parks, these night-sky programs may
stem from the astronomy passion of a single
ranger or volunteer, while at larger parks, local
astronomy clubs work with rangers to regularly
operate multiple telescopes for the publics
enjoyment.
In Yosemite National Park, California
astronomy clubs take turns setting up tele-
scopes every summer weekend at Glacier
Point, a spectacular vista that overlooks Half
PHOTO BY WALLY PACHOLKA
Renowned for their terrestrial beauty,
U.S. national parks are among the best places
to revel in the splendor of the night sky.
National Parks
ZION NATIONAL PARK
Dome and Yosemite Valley (see page 6). In Rocky Moun-
tain National Park, near Boulder, Colorado, the local Estes
Valley Astronomical Society has teamed up with park
rangers to install permanent polar-aligned telescope piers
in the Upper Beaver Meadows picnic area. These piers
are pre-drilled for most standard Meade or Celestron
telescopes and are free to use on a rst-come, rst-served
basis. Just bring your own telescope and screws.
In addition to nightly astronomy programs, an increas-
ing number of parks have begun to host multi-night
astronomy festivals. Im here in Great Basin for its second
annual Night Sky Festival, where amateurs from the Las
Vegas and Salt Lake Astronomical Societies have driven
four hours to set up telescopes for visitors. During the day,
a series of Astro 101 sessions teach visitors where we t
into the universe and what they can expect to see at night.
In addition, the Nevada Arts Council has helped bring a
couple of writers to the park for readings on the beauty of
the night sky. One such author is Paul Bogard, editor of an
anthology of night-sky essays titled Let There Be Night: Tes-
timony on Behalf of the Dark. Once the Sun sets, the park
hosts a series of speakers, followed by guided trips to the
telescope eld for stargazing. For a few nights each year,
HOW YOU CAN HELP
If youre an astronomer and want to reach out to visitors in a national park, con-
tact the park and ask if a ranger gives evening programs. Oer to volunteer time
with your telescope, or present astronomical information as a scientic resource.
And since astronomy programs generally occur after typical business hours when
many park administrators have gone home, the next time you enjoy the night sky
at a park, drop by the visitor center the next day and let the sta know how much
you valued the star-lled sky. Youll raise the prole of astronomy and ensure that
the night sky continues to be a resource protected for future generations.
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK
MESA ARCH, CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK
Carved by the Colorado River over millions of years, the Grand
Canyon (in northern Arizona) is one of Earths greatest natural
wonders. About 5 million tourists visit the park each year.
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Astro Tourism
astronomy volunteers become honorary dark rangers
who help show visitors the beauty of the sky.
Although the 2012 Great Basin Night Sky Festival (the
weekend of June 1416) will only be its third, other parks,
such as Bryce Canyon, have put on festivals for much
longer. This year marks the 12th annual Bryce Canyon
Astronomy Festival (May 1720), with three parallel eve-
ning ranger astronomy talks and free shuttle buses to carry
visitors to the telescope eld, where Salt Lake astronomers
set up more than four-dozen telescopes. Past speakers at
Bryces festival have included astronaut Story Musgrave
and lmmaker Ian Cheney, who showed his award-win-
ning light-pollution documentary The City Dark.
In September 2011, Acadia National Park in Maine
hosted an Astronomical Society of the Pacic training
program for rangers coinciding with its annual astronomy
festival. The Acadia Night Sky Festival was created four
years ago when local advocates partnered with the park
and the regional Chamber of Commerce to demonstrate
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
Right: Upper Yosemite Falls is one of many attractions in Yosem-
ite National Park, which is centered around a glacier-carved valley
in central California. Below: You can see actual glaciers in Glacier
National Park in northern Montana. The brightest point of light is
Saturn, hovering over Swiftcurrent Lake.
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Astro Tourism
that dark, starry skies could be an important tourist draw
along with the more traditional fall leaves and lobsters.
This years event will take place September 1317.
See Mars on Earth
The opportunity to be an astronomical tourist doesnt end
when the Sun rises. The parks protect many landscapes
that are the result of geological forces that are also at work
on other planets and moons in our solar system. A visit to
our national parks can be a surrogate to a visit to worlds
beyond Earth and a chance to see our world as one of an
increasing number of known planets in our galaxy.
The next time you visit Yellowstone National Park and
are waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, consider the follow-
ing: volcanism produces the heat that warms the water
that fuels the high-pressure geyser youre about to see.
Thanks to NASAs Cassini spacecraft at Saturn, we now
know that tidal heating of Enceladus warms the interior
Erosion carves stone arches as water dissolves the bonds that
hold sandstone together in Arches National Park, Utah.
Old Faithful geyser, captured here at night, is
one of the iconic symbols of the entire U.S.
National Park system.
ARCHES NATIONAL PARK
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
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rock that melts the overlying ice, producing pockets of
water that erupt as plumes similar to Earths geysers.
Computer simulations indicate that as Enceladus orbits
Saturn, changing tidal forces may regularly open and
close the cracks through which the plumes erupt. The
plumes on Enceladus may therefore be Cold Faithfuls.
At Great Basin, and indeed all across the American
Southwest, the most obvious planetary parallels are
to Mars. Eleven thousand feet up in the tiny range of
mountains at the center of this park sits Nevadas last
remaining glacier. At the base of this glacier is a rock
glacier, a river of stones held together by buried ice that
slowly ows down the glacial ravine. Imagery from
NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a number
of features that may be similar to rock glaciers on the
Red Planet, evidence of water ice just beneath the dry,
dusty surface.
One primary line of evidence that Marss climate has
Each year thousands of visitors are shown the beauty of the
Milky Way as local astronomers and park rangers set up tele-
scopes for Bryce Canyons Night Sky Festival.
In Maines Acadia National Park, the local community helps
protect one of the premier dark-sky sites in the eastern U.S.
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
changed, and that subsurface water was once liquid,
is found in the Martian blueberries imaged by the
rover Opportunity on Meridiani Planum. These small
hematite-rich spheres form where iron, carried by
water in solution, precipitates out to form small pearl-
like spherules. Journey to Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument in the red-rock country of southern
Utah and you can see similar iron spheres littering the
sandstone surfaces. If you want to know what it might
be like to explore Mars, visit Utah.
Astronomers of Years Past
But theres even more astronomy in the parks that cant
be revealed by spacecraft or telescopes. For more than
10,000 years, astronomers have lived in and around what
would become the national parks. Observing the sky
is common to cultures all over the world, and out west
where rock and wood are not covered by lush vegetation
(and do not rot under the moisture of centuries), their
creations from the past are still in evidence. Consider
Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwest-
ern New Mexico. Archaeologists have found that the
enormous, thousand-year-old stone Great Houses that
dominate the broad canyon have numerous astronomi-
cal alignments. Every year on the summer and winter
solstices, visitors ock to this remote park, as they did
a millennium ago. They see the rst rays of the rising
Sun shine through carefully constructed windows to
illuminate specic niches and alcoves as ceremonial
markers for the changing seasons.
A New Ally for Amateur Astronomers
Dark skies are a eeting sight, and the U.S.
National Park Service (NPS) has not overlooked
this sobering trend. In 1999 two park scientists with
amateur-astronomy backgrounds Dan Dursicoe
and I joined to form the NPS Night Skies Team.
We rst set out to develop instruments and meth-
ods to accurately quantify night-sky brightness.
To date, the NPS all-sky camera system has been
CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK
Six-mile-wide Crater Lake in southern
Oregon formed about 7,700 years ago when
the large volcano Mount Mazama erupted
with such tremendous force that it blew o
the entire mountaintop.
10-17.7 18 19
Magnitude per Square Arcsecond
N
S
E W
YOSEMITE
Astro Tourism
deployed at 94 parks, allowing the agency to
quantify light pollution and track its sources.
Our data shows that parks such as Great
Basin oer outstanding skies. From atop one
of the parks highest peaks, Las Vegas and
Salt Lake City are barely evident in our CCD
imagery. Large metropolises can leave their
mark at distances exceeding 200 miles (320
km). In more than 10 years of data collection
and thousands of hours in the eld, only a
handful of Bortle Scale Class 1 skies have ever
been glimpsed (www.skyandtelescope.com/
resources/darksky/3304011.html). Our work
illuminates the hard truth that a pristine night
sky is exceedingly fragile, and what many
stargazers consider to be a dark sky is often
far from it. Without action, future generations
may lose the opportunity to look beyond our
planet into the deep cosmos.
Today, our NPS team has expanded to ve
full-time scientists and has widened its scope
to all aspects of the protection and restora-
tion of natural lightscapes. Current projects
include the development of a sky-quality
index, establishment of park-appropriate light-
ing guidelines, retrotting in-park lighting,
light-pollution education, and leveraging parks
as the core of dark-sky reserves. The NPS
works closely with the International Dark-Sky
Association, amateur astronomers, and other
public-land managers to protect the inspira-
tional view of the cosmos and the darkness
that is essential for a balanced ecosystem.
Such an ambitious vision requires broad
public support, and this is where national
parks and amateur astronomers can form
potent partnerships. Visitors to parks and
other areas are attuned to nature and feel rela-
tively free of the hurried urban lifestyle that
takes the sky for granted. A wellorchestrated
viewing of the cosmos paired with a night-sky-
conservation message can make a dierence.
The NPS Night Skies Team manages a
nationwide Night Sky Ambassador program
(http://nature.nps.gov/air/lightscapes/
astroVIP) where service-oriented amateur
astronomers can work alongside park rangers
to interpret the cosmos for starlightdeprived
citizens. Such programs being undertaken in
nearly 20 parks take star parties to a new level
of astronomy outreach; and these programs
are typically paired with crosstraining for
both telescope operators and park rangers.
Though some astronomers may have resigned
themselves to a future without the delicate
structure of the Milky Way arching overhead,
others nd hope in those dark places that still
remain. For the latter, you have a new ally.e
For 12 years Chad Moore (chad_moore@nps.
gov) has led the U.S. National Park Service
Night Skies Team. He still drives a 6-inch
Newtonian hes owned since age 16.
20 21 22
N
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WALLY PACHOLKA
GREAT BASIN
Astro Tourism
To view more images and to
listen to an interview with
author Tyler Nordgren, visit
skypub.com/natparks.
Listen to a BONUS AUDIO INTERVIEW
From the great houses of Chaco to the cli palaces of
Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, and even to the
remains of a contemporaneous Freemont Culture village
outside Great Basin, we see signs of inhabitants who paid
attention to the sky and the motions of the Sun and pos-
sibly the Moon in order to survive. These astronomical
traditions live on in the modern pueblos of the Southwest today and are therefore our link to people across cultures
and time. Astronomers have long been here.
As I get ready to leave Great Basin National Park and
prepare for my long drive back to the bright lights of Los
Angeles, I take a moment to reect and walk through a
small cabin set up next to the old Lehman Caves National
Monument visitor center. On its walls are framed photos
of the rst Westerners to come here looking for gold, then
tourism. On the very last wall I see a newspaper article
from April 1885 announcing the discovery of these
caves of wondrous beauty and that a stalactite weighing
about 500 pounds (230 kg) has been removed from inside
the cave and placed there beside a monument to mark the
recent transit of Venus. Yes, astronomers have been here
for a very long time, and due to the encroaching lights of
civilization, now more than ever the parks will be a haven
for astronomers in the future.
Tyler Nordgren is an astronomer at the University of Red-
lands and author of the 2010 book Stars Above, Earth
Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks.
FOUR ANNUAL
NIGHT SKY FESTIVALS
Bryce Canyon
May 1720, 2012
Great Basin
June 1416, 2012
Grand Canyon
June 1623, 2012
Acadia
September 1317, 2012
CHACO CULTURE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
Ancient Pueblo Peoples created Casa Rinconada approximately
1,000 years ago, in what is now northwestern New Mexico.
Contact local astronomy
clubs for more information
about smaller star parties in
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Sungrazer
Despite the odds against it, Comet Lovejoy survived its swing by the Sun and
became one of the most spectacular comets in the past few decades.
The comet left only the
vaguest smudge on the
November 27th discovery images. Nevertheless, it was
enough for keen-eyed Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy
to pick it out from background stars. Although it didnt
look like much at the time, only three weeks later it would
become the most spectacular comet in years! And its
discovery gave us an unprecedented opportunity to study
a sungrazing comet before, during, and after its brush by
the Suns surface.
Comet Lovejoy, C/2011 W3, was o cially announced
on December 2nd (see page 41). But the real rush of
excitement came a few days later when its orbit revealed it
to be a sungrazer that would rendezvous with the Sun on
December 16th, passing within a scant 200,000 kilome-
ters (125,000 miles) of its visible surface.
Among the most extraordinary of all comets, the fam-
ily of sungrazers is thought to be the remnants of a huge
comet that broke apart millennia ago, and it might even
have been the one Aristotle wrote about in the year 371
BC that had a tail that spanned a third of the heavens.
Progressive fragmentation at each subsequent swing by
the Sun broke up the major fragments of this progenitor
to spawn a host of ever smaller pieces.
When near perihelion, the largest of these surviving
pieces become so brilliant that they are visible in the
daytime and thereafter may unfurl tails as long as 60.
Some Sky & Telescope readers will undoubtedly recall the
john e. bortle
brilliant sungrazer Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965, which was
one of the most spectacular comets of the 20th century.
In addition to these showpiece comets, several solar-
monitoring satellites have discovered more than a thou-
sand pygmy sungrazers during the last three decades. They
are the otsam from the repeated break-ups experienced
by the larger pieces at previous perihelion passages, and
they now form an almost steady stream of debris spread
along the parent comets orbits. These fragile fragments
are more than a thousand times fainter than sungrazers
such as Comet Ikeya-Seki and are unable to withstand the
Suns furious heat and gravity. Not one of them has been
observed to survive its ery brush with the Sun, typically
vaporizing completely in the nal hours before perihelion.
At the outset it seemed that Comet Lovejoys intrinsic
faintness grouped it with the pygmy sungrazers, but the
internet was still set abuzz by an early suggestion that the
comet might reach magnitude 7 before its demise in the
solar inferno. Nevertheless, the faintest sungrazer seen to
survive its perihelion had an intrinsic brightness of about
magnitude +7 or +8, or roughly a thousand times brighter
than Comet Lovejoy. Thus, it seemed that the odds were
all but nil that the comet would come through its rendez-
vous with the Sun unscathed.
In the days leading up to Christmas 2011, Comet Lovejoy appeared
increasingly spectacular as it rose higher in the Southern Hemi-
sphere morning sky. This was the view on December 23rd.
Lovejoy
Comet
The Remarkable Case of
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I trust that most here appreciate that we are witnessing
one of the most extraordinary events in cometary history.
John Bortle writing on the Comets Mailing List on December 16th after Comet Lovejoy had rounded the Sun.
Sungrazer
Approaching the Sun
Terry Lovejoy was able to spot his comet visually late
on December 3rd with his 30-cm (12-inch) telescope. It
appeared as a small, modestly condensed mass, just 1
acrminute in diameter and glimmering at magnitude 11.6.
As the comet slid deeper into the netherworld of morning
twilight, visual sightings grew sparse, but astrophotog-
raphers in the Southern Hemisphere were able to keep
the vigil against the ever-increasing dawn background.
Participants in various internet comet forums could hardly
contain their excitement as they awaited each mornings
new images.
On December 8th, Comet Lovejoy, now with a gossa-
mer tail that grew ever longer by the day, was estimated to
be near 8th magnitude and perhaps as bright as magni-
tude 6 only three days later. Thereafter, with its distance
from the Sun shrinking daily, Comet Lovejoy was lost to
ground-based observers. It was, however, soon to be fol-
lowed by solar-monitoring spacecraft.
1.
Above: Rising tail rst in the morning twilight after its swing
around the Sun, Comet Lovejoy was described by many
Southern Hemisphere observers as looking like a search-
light beam. Its easy to see why from this photograph taken
by Robert McNaught on December 21st.
The extreme-ultraviolet camera onboard NASAs orbiting Solar
Dynamics Observatory captured these extraordinary images of
Comet Lovejoy (indicated by the tick marks) before (1) and after (2)
its swing behind the Sun on December 16th. N
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SkyandTelescope.com May 2012 39 SkyandTelescope.com May 2012
A new rush of excitement met the rst glimmers of
Comet Lovejoy when it entered into the eld of view of
the STEREO/SECCHI A and B spacecraft on December
12th and then SOHOs C3 coronagraphic instrument on
December 14th. At about 14:00 Universal Time on the 14th,
the comets brightness in SOHO images seemed close to
magnitude +1, making it several magnitudes brighter than
most of the larger pygmy sungrazers seen similar at solar
distances. A scant two hours later people monitoring each
newly posted SOHO image were stunned to see a tiny com-
panion traveling slightly ahead of Comet Lovejoy. And not
long afterwards another comet was spotted slightly trailing
the pair.
But the main show was still Comet Lovejoy, which was
now brightening dramatically hour by hour. Several expe-
rienced observers tried spotting the comet visually in the
daytime sky, as had been done with Comet Ikeya-Seki. In
New Zealand, John Drummond reported trying to see the
comet when it wsa a mere 1.9 from the Sun. His eorts,
like those of others observers, proved fruitless.
The SOHO images obtained around 4:00 UT on
December 15th showed the comet was about magnitude 1
and sporting a long, bright, slightly curving dust tail. Also
visible was a long but decidedly fainter tail of ionized gas,
which was a bit of a surprise because an ion tail had never
been positively seen on earlier pygmy sungrazers.
As the time of perihelion grew near, the astronomical
fraternity remained appraised of the comets develop-
ments in almost real-time with updates that Karl Battams
posted on the SOHO Sungrazer Comet website. They
included extraordinary images from spacecraft along with
a running commentary on their implications. In the nal
hours before perihelion on December 16.01 UT, observers
around the world watched the updated SOHO images in
fascination, thinking they were witnessing Comet Love-
joys nal death plunge.
Solar Survivor
When the comets head disappeared behind the occulting
disks of SOHOs coronagraphs, NASAs Solar Dynamics
Observatory (SDO) team took up the challenge of fol-
lowing the comet with the extreme-ultraviolet camera
onboard the orbiting SDO. Its images showed the comets
tail being violently distorted by the solar corona, looking
like cigarette smoke in a turbulent breeze, just before
the comet disappeared behind the solar limb. Incredibly,
however, the same camera soon captured images of the
comet emerging from behind the Suns opposite limb.
Comet Lovejoy had somehow survived its hellish passage
through the solar atmosphere.
In the hours that followed, the SOHO cameras also
obtained images of the now-outbound comets extraordi-
nary appearance. The old tail was visible southeast of the
solar disk, still drifting sunward. To the southwest of the
of the Sun, and no longer connected with the tail, stood
the brilliant star-like head of Comet Lovejoy. At mag-
nitude 2, or perhaps even 3, it was even brighter than
it had been before perihelion! Furthermore, the comet
began growing a brilliant new tail.
Once again, ground-based visual attempts to see
the comet in daylight failed, but it was captured in
photographs, especially those taken at near-infrared
wavelengths. And beginning about December 19.5 UT,
amateurs in the Southern Hemisphere were photograph-
Below: Observers around the world awaited each updated image
from the coronagraphic instrument aboard the orbiting Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory as Comet Lovejoy made what most
people thought was its death plunge toward the Sun. But the comet
survived its ery encounter and emerged tailless (third image in
sequence) early on December 16th, even while its pre-perihelion tail
was still visible on the inbound side of the Sun. Within hours the
comet grew a new tail that was far more spectacular than before.
2.
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Dec. 15 9:30 UT Dec. 16 9:30 UT Dec. 16 23:54 UT Dec. 15 15:30 UT
Sungrazer
In the days following perihelion, the bright central condensa-
tion at the comets head evolved into a slender ray-like feature
that is thought to have formed as debris from the disrupted
nucleus spread outward into the tail. This view was obtained at
17:49 UT on December 24th with the Uppsala Schmidt Camera
at Australias Siding Spring Observatory.
ing the comets tail projecting up from the brightly lit
dawn horizon.
Until this point, Comet Lovejoys coma displayed a
normal, condensed appearance. But this abruptly changed
on December 20th when the comets head exhibited a long,
bright tailward-pointing ray instead of a compact central
condensation. This ray grew longer each day as the comets
head became weaker and more diuse. Comet expert
Zdenek Sekanina at JPL proposed that Lovejoys nucleus
completely disrupted about December 17.6 UT, and that
the stream of resulting debris was moving rapidly out-
ward into the tail, forming the ray-like feature. This debris
ranged from boulder-sized pieces nearest the position of
the comets former nucleus to micron-sized dust stretching
well out into the tail. We may well have been witnessing
the creation of innumerable future pygmy sungrazers.
With the comet moving away from the Sun and the
tailing growing longer each day, Comet Lovejoy looked
like a searchlight beam projecting up from the horizon
before it was washed out by increasing twilight. On the
morning of December 22nd, observers were describing
the comets dust and ion tails as each about 16 long and
similar in brightness to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
That same day the crew of the International Space Station
watched the comet as it rose over Earths curving limb.
While some observers thought that the fading of the
comets head heralded a rapid demise of the tail, the
performance of past sungrazers suggested that the show
was just beginning and that Comet Lovejoy might unfurl
a truly enormous tail in coming days. And it did just that.
By Christmas morning the tail had grown to at least 28!
As the New Year opened, there were reports of the
comets dust tail stretching across 40 of sky, but the
head had faded so much that it could hardly be seen with
the unaided eye. Like the Great Southern Comet of 1887,
Comet Lovejoy had essentially become only a tail.
The searchlight appearance of the tail was maintained
The changing appearances of Comet Lovejoys brilliant, sweep-
ing dust tail and slender, straight gas tail are evident in this daily
sequence obtained by the Heliospheric Imager on the STEREO A
spacecraft between December 16th and 19th as the comet moved
away from the Sun. Streaks emanating from bright objects are
artifacts due to overexposure. The notably bright stars in the
eld are the planets Mercury (fainter of the pair) and Jupiter, which
appeared relatively close together from the spacecrafts vantage
about 45 ahead of Earth on our orbit around the Sun.
as it faded and grew ever more ghostly and transparent
with the passing days. Although the end of the tail faded
into the Milky Way in Crux and Centuarus, images showed
that its length was an astounding 45 when it peaked in
mid-January. This corresponded to a truly enormous 1
astronomical units! But because of its faintness, the tail
was noticeably shorter to the unaided eye. By January 20th,
the comet could only be seen visually from the darkest,
pristine observing sites. Photographs in February captured
only hints of the grand visitor as the comet disappeared
from view, but Comet Lovejoys legacy will surely be
remembered for a long time to come.
Amateur astronomer John Bortle has a long history of
observing and writing about comets, variable stars, and lunar
eclipses from his home in Stormville, New York.
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Dec. 16, 2011 Dec. 17, 2011
Dec. 18, 2011 Dec. 19, 2011
By TERRY LOVEJOY
The discovery of C/2011 W3 hap-
pened on the morning of Novem-
ber 28th (local time) as part of
my routine comet survey. On this
morning I imaged 200 separate
elds, taking three exposures per
eld, between declination 35
and 55 and right ascension 9h
00m and 13h 30m. The patrol is
set up so that exposures for the
same eld are separated by 9 min-
utes, making it easy to detect the
movement of comets by blink-
ing the images in rapid succes-
sion on a computer monitor.
When examining the images
the following evening, I imme-
diately noticed a diuse object
moving rapidly eastward in Cen-
taurus. At rst I thought it was a
reection from Gamma Centauri,
which was a little outside my eld
of view. But the objects motion
was uniform, compelling me to
make follow-up observations.
On the morning of November
30th there were enough breaks
between the clouds for me to take
several short exposures. I was
elated to nd a diuse object at
almost the exact location I had
projected from the November
28th positions! Because I was
now quite certain this was a new
comet, I asked other observers for
independent conrmation.
At rst there was disappoint-
ment. On November 30th two
fellow Australian amateurs failed
to see the comet Andrew
Pearce searched visually with
his 8-inch reector, and Michael
Mattiazzo did not capture it with
a Canon 300D DSLR and 300-
mm lens. I also heard from Alan
Gilmore at New Zealands Mount
John Observatory who could not
perform follow-up observations
because of high winds. The fol-
lowing night, however, Gilmore
and Pam Kilmartin imaged the
comet with the observatorys 1.0-
meter reector. The comet was
o cially announced on Decem-
ber 2nd by the Central Bureau
for Astronomical Telegrams as
C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy).
This was my third ground-
based comet discovery in addition
to 11 I found by examining images
from the SOHO satellite. While
I was focused on nding Kreutz
Sungrazing comets in the SOHO
images, my ground-based survey
was not. So I was very pleased
that this latest discovery turned
out to be a sungrazer!
The Discovery of Comet Lovejoy
Appearing as little more than a smudge near the center of these three
November 27th (Universal Time) discovery images, the comets motion
was su cient to warrant follow-up observations.
Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy with the imaging gear used for his
latest comet discovery. The cooled monochrome QHY9 CCD camera
and 8-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope are set up for f/2
HyperStar imaging. His previous two ground-based comet discoveries
were made with a DSLR camera and telephoto lens.
Observers on the ground werent the only ones getting a
spectacular view of Comet Lovejoy as it rose above the horizon.
Astronaut Dan Burbank aboard the International Space Station
captured this image of the comet on December 21st. The green
layer above the blue twilight glow is due to oxygen atoms about
60 miles (130 km) above Earths surface.
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NASA / DAN BURBANK
May 22nd - May 24th
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Sky & Telescope 2011 Compilation CD
OBSERVING
May 2012
In This Section
The Western U.S.
will enjoy an annular
eclipse on May 20th.
44 Sky at a Glance
44 Northern Hemisphere Sky Chart
45 Binocular Highlight: M68 and M83
46 Planetary Almanac
47 Northern Hemispheres Sky:
How Bright Is Bright?
48 Sun, Moon, and Planets:
The Plunge of Venus
50 Celestial Calendar
50 The May 20th Annular Eclipse
52 Occultation of Zeta Tauri
53 V Canum Venaticorum
53 Lunar Librations and Phases
54 Exploring the Solar System: Guide to Saturn
56 Deep-Sky Wonders: M88, M91, and Neighbors
58 Web Links
Additional Observing Stories:
60 Going Deep: The Coma Galaxy Cluster IMAGE: S&T PHOTO ARCHIVE
OBSERVING
Sky At A Glance
EXACT FOR LATITUDE
40 NORTH.
Galaxy
Double star
Variable star
Open cluster
Diuse nebula
Globular cluster
Planetary nebula
Planet Visibility
Moon Phases
Using the Map
Go out within an hour of a time
listed to the right. Turn the map
around so the yellow label for the
direction youre facing is at the
bottom. Thats the horizon. Above
it are the constellations in front of
you. The center of the map is
overhead. Ignore the parts
of the map above horizons
youre not facing.
+ 6 0
0
40
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ay 5
3 Evening: Spica and brighter Saturn are left
or lower left of the waxing gibbous Moon.
4 Evening: The Moon is now below Saturn
and Spica.
5 Evening: The largest full Moon of 2012
occurs at 11:35 p.m. EST.
7 Dawn: Antares is lower left of the waning
gibbous Moon.
20 An annular solar eclipse is visible along
a path from southern China through southern
Japan to northern California and ending in
northern Texas. The partial phase is visible
across much of Asia, the Pacic Ocean, and
North America; see page 50.
21 Dusk: Look for the extremely thin crescent
Moon far below Venus very low in the west-
northwest 15 to 30 minutes after sunset;
see page 48.
22 Dusk: The thin crescent Moon forms a line
with Venus and Elnath low in the west-north
west. Telescopes show that the Moon is also
very close to 3rd-magnitude Zeta Tauri. Some
parts of the U.S. can watch Zeta Tauri disappear
behind the Moons dark limb or reappear from
behind the bright limb. See page 52 for details.
28 Evening: Mars shines above or upper left of
the Moon.
31 Evening: Spica is just above the waxing gibbous
Moon, with brighter Saturn above Spica.
MI DNI GHT SUNSET SUNRI SE
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
PLANET VISIBILITY SHOWN FOR LATITUDE 40 NORTH AT MID-MONTH.
S W
W S SE
Hidden in the Sun's glow all month
Hidden in the Sun's glow all month
NW W
6
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27 28 29 30 31
S U N MON T U E WE D T HU F R I S AT

Binocular Highlight
Watch a SPECIAL VIDEO
When
Late Month 11 p.m.
Early Month 10 p.m.
Late Month 9 p.m.
Early Month 8 p.m.
Late Month Dusk
These are standard times.
To watch a video tutorial on how to use
the big sky map on the left, hosted by
S&T senior editor Alan MacRobert, visit
skypub.com/maptutorial.
Messiers in Hydra
What Hydra lacks in distinctiveness it more than makes
up for in size. Its huge! Hydra sprawls across much
of the spring sky, from Libra to Cancer. Yet in spite of
the fact that it occupies a greater chunk of the celestial
sphere than any other constellation, only three Messier
objects call Hydra home: M48 (discussed in this
column three years ago), M68, and M83.
Lets begin our Hydra hunt with M68, a 7.8-mag-
nitude globular cluster. Its easiest to nd starting
from 2.6-magnitude Beta () Corvi. The cluster
is positioned less than one binocular eld south-
southeast of Beta, and next to a right triangle of
5th-magnitude stars. M68 isnt an easy catch, but Im
able to see it under decent skies with my 1030 image-
stabilized binoculars. Thanks to the clusters proximity
to the triangle and its slightly fuzzy appearance,
identifying M68 is quite straightforward.
While Hydras Messier globular is near a reasonably
bright star, the spiral galaxy M83 lies in a bit of a
nowhere land. Luckily, its the only conspicuous
faint fuzzy in that stretch of sky. Indeed, I have little
di culty locating it in my 1030s by carefully sweeping
the area southeast of 3rd-magnitude Gamma ()
Hydrae. M83 resides within an attractive, cascading
curve of 6th- and 7th-magnitude stars that resembles
the constellation Scorpius but without Antares. The
galaxy is situated between the stinger and the body of
this miniature scorpion.
My 1030s show M83 as a fairly large, round, evenly
illuminated glow. Even though its listed as roughly
the same brightness and size as M68, I nd the galaxy
much easier to snag because it appears both bigger and
brighter. Is this how it looks to you?
Gary Seronik
M68
M83
HY DR A
C OR V US
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When
Late March 2 a.m. *
Early April 1 a.m.*
Late April Midnight*
Early May 11 p.m.*
Late May Dusk
*Daylight-saving time.
1
Star
magnitudes
0
1
2
3
4
Sun and Planets, May 2012
OBSERVING
Planetary Almanac
The Sun and planets are positioned for mid-May; the colored arrows show the motion of each during the month. The Moon is plotted for evening dates in the Americas when its waxing (right
side illuminated) or full, and for morning dates when its waning (left side). All Moon dates are in May. Local time of transit tells when (in Local Mean Time) objects cross the meridian that is,
when they appear due south and at their highest at mid-month. Transits occur an hour later on the 1st, and an hour earlier at months end.
Rigel
Betelgeuse
C A NI S
MA J OR
Sirius
OR I ON
Pleiades
CANCER
Pollux
Castor
Procyon
Arcturus
CORVUS
GE MI NI
V I R GO
B O T E S
L I B R A
L E O
H Y D R A
Regulus
P E GA S US
CAPRI CORNUS
AQUARI US
Fomalhaut
PI SCES
Vega
HE R C U L E S
C Y G N U S
SCORPI US
OP HI UC HUS
SAGITTARIUS
AQUI LA
CETUS
ERIDANUS
A R I E S
A U R I G A
TA UR US
Spica
E QU AT OR
Midnight 2 am 4 am 6 am 8 am 10 am 8 pm 6 pm 4 pm 2 pm
LOCAL TIME OF TRANSIT
+30
+40
10
20
30
40
+10
+30
0
10
20
30
40
RIGHT ASCENSION
D
E
C
L
I
N
A
T
I
O
N
0
+10
10 pm
18
h
20
h
22
h
0
h
2
h
4
h
6
h
8
h
10
h
12
h
14
h
16
h
ECLI PTI C
Antares
10
13
16
7
28
30
May
5 6
May
25
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Mercury
Venus
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
10"
May 1 11 21 31
16
16 31 1
16
16
31
1
May Right Ascension Declination Elongation Magnitude Diameter Illumination Distance
Sun 1 2
h
33.7
m
+15 05 26.8 31 45 1.008
31 4
h
32.5
m
+21 55 26.8 31 33 1.014
Mercury 1 1
h
05.9
m
+3 58 24 Mo 0.1 6.4 64% 1.042
11 2
h
05.9
m
+10 32 18 Mo 0.6 5.6 80% 1.189
21 3
h
20.7
m
+17 46 8 Mo 1.5 5.2 95% 1.300
31 4
h
50.6
m
+23 34 4 Ev 1.9 5.1 98% 1.309
Venus 1 5
h
15.2
m
+27 45 39 Ev 4.7 37.4 27% 0.446
11 5
h
30.3
m
+27 39 33 Ev 4.7 44.0 18% 0.379
21 5
h
29.8
m
+26 38 23 Ev 4.5 51.1 8% 0.326
31 5
h
12.6
m
+24 33 10 Ev 4.1 56.7 1% 0.294
Mars 1 10
h
30.9
m
+11 34 114 Ev 0.0 9.9 91% 0.943
16 10
h
44.2
m
+9 42 103 Ev +0.3 8.8 90% 1.060
31 11
h
03.4
m
+7 16 94 Ev +0.5 7.9 89% 1.180
Jupiter 1 3
h
11.3
m
+16 58 9 Ev 2.0 32.9 100% 5.988
31 3
h
40.1
m
+18 45 13 Mo 2.0 32.9 100% 5.987
Saturn 1 13
h
36.2
m
7 03 164 Ev +0.3 19.0 100% 8.755
31 13
h
29.5
m
6 29 133 Ev +0.5 18.4 100% 9.012
Uranus 16 0
h
27.0
m
+2 10 48 Mo +5.9 3.4 100% 20.728
Neptune 16 22
h
20.1
m
10 59 82 Mo +7.9 2.3 100% 30.113
Pluto 16 18
h
38.4
m
19 14 136 Mo +14.0 0.1 100% 31.493
The table above gives each objects right ascension and declination (equinox 2000.0) at 0
h
Universal Time on selected
dates, and its elongation from the Sun in the morning (Mo) or evening (Ev) sky. Next are the visual magnitude and
equatorial diameter. (Saturns ring extent is 2.27 times its equatorial diameter.) Last are the percentage of a planets disk
illuminated by the Sun and the distance from Earth in astronomical units. (Based on the mean EarthSun distance, 1 a.u. is
149,597,871 kilometers, or 92,955,807 international miles.) For other dates, see SkyandTelescope.com/almanac.
Planet disks at left have south up, to match the view in many telescopes. Blue ticks indicate the pole currently
tilted toward Earth.
Fred Schaaf

Northern Hemispheres Sky
Fred Schaaf has authored 13 books on astronomy.
Arcturus, in Botes,
is the brightest star of
the spring sky about
7% brighter than Vega.
The all-sky map on page 44 shows the sky at a time on
April and May nights when bright stars and planets are
very numerous. Four stars brighter than magnitude 1.5
(Sirius, Aldebaran, Rigel, and Betelgeuse) have recently
set at this time. But nine more are still in the sky, with a
tenth (Altair) about to rise. Added to that number are two
planets near zero magnitude, Mars and Saturn and
one more, Venus, that shines immensely brighter, though
its setting at map time.
With all the bright objects visible at this hour, its a
good time to ask a key observational question: How bright
is bright?
Super-bright versus bright. One way to start
answering that question is to compare the objects that are
currently visible. And in that endeavor we certainly know
where to begin with breathtakingly brilliant Venus.
In late April and early May 2012, Venus shines at a
magnitude of 4.7, its maximum brightness during this
apparition. Its also exactly 5 magnitudes (or 100 times)
brighter than Saturn, at magnitude +0.3.
A few stars on our all-sky map are slightly brighter
than Saturn is at the start of May: Arcturus and Vega at
magnitude 0.0 and Capella at magnitude 0.1. But Vega is
low enough at this hour to be dimmed signicantly by
atmospheric absorption and thats even more true for
Capella, which is very low in the northwest.
Mars, Saturn, and their companions. Mars shines
at magnitude 0.0 as May begins, also a little brighter than
Saturn. But Saturn fades substantially over the next two
months, and Mars fades even faster, becoming dimmer
than Saturn in June. You can get a better feel for this by
comparing them to each other and to the 1st-magnitude
stars theyre near. Mars was closest to 1.4-magnitude
Regulus in April, but moves rapidly away in May. Sat-
urn remains within 5 of 1.0-magnitude Spica through
August. August is also when greatly faded Mars will catch
Saturn and Spica, forming a dramatic close grouping with
them on several nights. Check Sun, Moon, and Planets
now and in the months ahead to keep track of the chang-
ing magnitudes and separations of Mars and Saturn.
Brighter than 10,000 stars. But lets come back to
our original statement that Venus is 100 times brighter
than Saturn as May begins. Its correct in terms of actual
measurable light output from the two objects, but its
deceptive in terms of our impression of the two objects
especially if we imagine 100 separate Saturns shining in
the sky to produce the light output of a single Venus.
Why? Because our eye-brain system actually seems to
perceive brightness logarithmically. The ancient Greeks
divided stars into magnitude classes based on their
intuitive impressions. And when scientists acquired the
technology to measure star brightnesses, the rst class
turned out to be 2.5 times brighter than the second class,
second 2.5 times brighter than third, and so on down to
6th magnitude.
Venus is 10,000 times brighter than a star of magni-
tude 5.3 perhaps about the average naked-eye limiting
magnitude in a technologically advanced country with
lots of light pollution. Now lets turn the ancient magni-
tude system around, so that brighter objects get higher
numbers. If the faintest star visible in a typical suburb is
1, Saturn would be a 6 and Venus an 11.
How Bright Is Bright?
Nine stars and three planets shine at 1st magnitude or brighter in May.
A
K
I
R
A

F
U
J
I
I
OBSERVING Aprils Sun, Moon & Planets
OBSERVING
Sun, Moon & Planets
The Plunge of Venus
The brightest planet rushes toward the Sun in May.
People along a band from southern China
through southern Japan to parts of the
western U.S. can witness an annular
eclipse of the Sun on May 20th or 21st.
The partial aspect of this solar eclipse is
viewable over a huge surrounding area,
including much of Asia, the Pacic,
and North America (see page 50). And
observers worldwide can see Venus in its
last month of visibility before it makes a
historic transit across the Suns face on
June 56.
Seen from mid-northern latitudes,
Venus takes a steep, majestic fall in the
western twilight over the course of May,
appearing noticeably lower each evening.
Mars is high in the south to southwest in
early evening, and Saturn is moderately
high in the southeast to south.
DUS K A ND E V E NI NG
Venus is outstandingly conspicuous at the
beginning of May, shining at its maxi-
mum brilliance of magnitude 4.7. This
is due to Venus achieving, on April 30th,
its greatest illuminated extent the
largest area of sunlit surface in square
arcseconds. On May 1st Venus displays a
38-wide disk thats 27% illuminated.
At mid-northern latitudes, Venus is
also quite high as May starts. Viewers at
latitude 40 north can see it 36 high at
sunset and still 28 up when twilight is
deepening 45 minutes after sunset. And
Venus doesnt set until fully 3 hours
after the Sun, around 11:30 p.m. daylight-
saving time. But the fall of Venus during
the rest of the month is breathtaking.
Venuss sunset altitude drops to 25 by
May 16th and just 6 or 7 by months end.
Venuss brightness declines only a little
during the rst part of the month; it still
shines at magnitude 4.5 on May 20th,
when its crescent is 51 long and 8% lit.
After that it changes rapidly, dimming to
magnitude 4.1 and less than 1% lit on the
American evening of May 31st, even as the
crescent lengthens to 57. During the last
week of May Venuss crescent should be
easy to see in binoculars, and may even be
visible to sharp naked eyes.
E V E NI NG A ND NI GHT
Mars is about 60 high in the south an
hour after sunset as May opens, so this
time is the best to observe it through a
telescope. Unfortunately, the planet is only
10 wide at the start of May and shrinks to
Dusk, May 3 5
1 hour after sunset
Spica
Saturn
Moon
May 3
Moon
May 4
Moon
May 5
Looking Southeast
_Lib
10
Dawn, May 7 and 8
1 hour before sunrise
Antares
Moon
May 7
Moon
May 8
Looking South-Southwest
S C OR P I US
Dusk, May 21 24
30 minutes after sunset
Betelgeuse
Castor
Pollux
Venus
Moon
May 21
Moon
May 22
Moon
May 23
Moon
May 24
Looking West-Northwest
`Tau
These scenes are drawn for near the middle of North America (latitude 40 north, longitude 90
west); European observers should move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way toward the one for
the previous date. In the Far East, move the Moon halfway. The blue 10 scale bar is about the width
of your st at arms length. For clarity, the Moon is shown three times its actual apparent size.
Fred Schaaf Fred Schaaf welcomes your comments at [email protected].
Jupiter
Neptune
Uranus
Pluto
Saturn
Mars
Earth
Sun
Mercury
Venus
March
equinox
Sept.
equinox
December
solstice
June solstice
To see what the sky looks like at
any given time and date, go to
SkyandTelescope.com/skychart.
ORBI TS OF THE PLANETS
The curved arrows show each planets
movement during May. The outer planets dont
change position enough in a month to notice at
this scale.
8 by months end, making visual observa-
tions of Martian surface features di cult.
An interesting rule of thumb is that
whenever Mars is 10 wide it shines at
about magnitude 0.0. Thats the case as
May begins. But Mars fades to +0.5 by
months end. It also picks up speed in
direct (eastward) motion, increasing the
gap between itself and Regulus from less
than 6 to almost 15 during May.
Mars ends the month coming into view
about halfway up the southwest sky at
dusk and not setting until almost 2 a.m.
(daylight-saving time).
Saturn was at opposition on April
15th, when it rose around sunset. As
May opens, Saturn is about 25 high in
the southeast in the dusk and passes
highest in the south around midnight
daylight-saving time. By months end,
Saturn crosses the skys central meridian
around the end of twilight. It dims from
magnitude +0.3 to +0.5 in May (equaling
Mars at months end), as it recedes and its
rings tilt back a little closer to our line of
sight (see page 54). Saturn continues to
retrograde, passing a bit less than 5 above
Spica on May 20th. Saturn will come back
a little closer to Spica in early August.
Pluto is highest in the hours after
midnight. The June issue will include a
nder chart.
DAWN
Mercury nishes a poor apparition for
mid-northern latitudes. It may be vis-
ible through binoculars in early May, but
it exits the dawn sky by way of superior
conjunction on May 27th.
Jupiter is in conjunction behind the
Sun on May 13th and rises only about 45
minutes before the Sun at months end.
Uranus and Neptune are far from
their highest, but theyre observable at
dawn. See skypub.com/urnep for charts.
MOON P A S S A GE S
The Moon is an extremely thin sliver
far below Venus shortly after sunset on
May 21st. On May 22nd a more substan-
tial sliver makes a handsome line or arc
with Venus 5 or 6 to its upper right
and 1.7-magnitude Elnath just to Venuss
upper right. Binoculars and telescopes
also show that the Moon is extremely close
to 3rd-magnitude Zeta Tauri, even hiding
it from view for a time as seen from some
parts of the U.S. (see page 52).
The half-lit Moon is below Mars on
May 28th. And on May 31st the waxing
gibbous Moon is just below Spica, form-
ing a short line with that star and Saturn
above them.
Dusk, May 30 and 31
1 hour after sunset
Spica
Saturn
Moon
May 30
Moon
May 31
V I R GO
C OR V US
Looking South, Halfway Up in the Sky
a
OBSERVING
Celestial Calendar
The May 20th Annular Eclipse
Plan now what youll be doing on this very special Sunday afternoon.
People in all but the easternmost parts of the U.S.
and Canada have a red-letter day coming up Sunday,
May 20th. Late that afternoon the Sun, lowering in the
western sky, will undergo at least a partial eclipse. The
eclipse will become annular, with the Sun turning into a
brilliant ring around the Moons dark silhouette, for parts
of southern Oregon, northern California, Utah, Arizona,
New Mexico, and a bit of Texas, as shown below and at the
bottom of the facing page.
This is the rst central solar eclipse (meaning total
or annular) to cross the United States since 1994. Untold
numbers of people are planning to park themselves near
the centerline for this grand event.
A much larger number across the continent will enjoy
the weird spectacle of a partial solar eclipse low in the sky.
The eclipse will still be in progress at sunset in the region
between the red lines below, with the Moon intruding
onto the reddened, atmospherically distorted Sun.
North Americans will see the tail end of this eclipse.
Its annular part begins at sunrise along the southern
coast of China (where the local date is May 21st), then
crosses parts of Japan, including Tokyo on the centerline.
It then speeds across the empty North Pacic through
much of the day, before making landfall on the rugged
California-Oregon coast at 6:24 p.m. Pacic Daylight
Time. There the Sun will be a good 22 above the western
horizon, and annularity will last 4 minutes 47 seconds as
seen from the centerline.
The path of annularity continues southeast with the
Sun sinking lower. Residents of Albuquerque see the
annular eclipse just 5 above the horizon. Western Texas
near Lubbock is a particularly interesting location for pho-
tographers, because there the annular phase will occur
just before sunset.
What to Watch For
Annular means ringlike, and the ring of the Sun at
the middle of this eclipse will be unusually thick. The
Moon will be practically at the apogee of its orbit, appear-
ing almost as small as it gets, so it will span only 94% of
the Suns diameter. This means only 88% of the Suns
surface area will be blocked during annularity.
The result will be less change in the quality of the
daylight than you might expect. Thin clouds would dim
the day more. The exposed surface of the Sun itself will
remain blindingly bright literally so anyone viewing
any part of this eclipse, total or annular, must use the
The May 20th eclipse will appear very similar to previous
eclipses in saros cycle 128, such as this one in 1994, because
the geometric circumstances are almost the same. Author
Fred Espenak photographed this sequence one saros ago.
Eclipse
complete
before
sunset
No
eclipse
More than
half of eclipse
before sunset
Less than
half of eclipse
before sunset
A
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Partial/Annular Solar Eclipse
May 20
May 20
May 20
May 20
May 20
A
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May 20
Nearly all North
America gets at
least a partial
eclipse, with the
Moon taking a
big bite out of the
Sun. The eclipse
will still be in
progress at sunset
for much of the
U.S. and Canada.
That will make it
scenic indeed, but
youll need a clear
horizon to the
west-northwest.
Alan MacRobert
same precautions required to observe the Sun on any
other day. Read about Sun-viewing methods and precau-
tions at skypub.com/may2012eclipse.
Nevertheless, wherever the eclipse is deep or annular,
the clear sky will turn an abnormally dark blue, making
it possible to spot Venus shining at magnitude 4.3 about
23 east of the Sun. Block the Sun with your hand while
searching for the planet. Jupiter and Mercury will be
tougher, being just 5 and 8 to the Suns west, respec-
tively, and dimmer at magnitudes 2.0 and 1.5.
Other things to look for during this eclipse include a
silvery or metallic quality to the sunlight around the time
of annularity or when the Sun is a thin crescent. Look
for images of the crescent or ring Sun being cast on the
ground under leafy trees, or formed by small apertures
between your ngers.
Weather Prospects
Late May is a poor time to have an eclipse in southern
China its monsoon season but a great time for the
American West. Average cloud cover is less than 10% in
some places between California and Texas. See the map
of clear-sky prospects worldwide, and the chart of average
cloud cover along the centerline, in the February issue,
page 68, or at skypub.com/may2012eclipse. There youll also
nd other resources, including detailed local timetables.
In the West, clouds are likely to be more pronounced
along the coast and over the higher mountain peaks. The
best sites will be on the eastern side of a at, low-altitude
valley or plateau, with any mountains low on the western
horizon. Many such choices are available in the path of
annularity. With reliable weather forecasts available as
much as a week ahead, site selection should be straight-
forward for travelers as the day draws near.
On the day, eclipse chasers should stay close to a
highway and keep an eye on forecasts and satellite images
to outmaneuver clouds in the nal hours or minutes.
Western Texas tends to be a little cloudier than
Arizona, but the spectacle of a sunset annular phase will
attract some eclipse chasers ready to accept the risk.
A partial or annular eclipse is a rewarding experience
in itself, but no match for a total one. Consider this a
warmup for the next of those to cross the United States: on
August 21, 2017, the rst good one since 1979.
Material courtesy Fred Espenak and Jay Anderson
E
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40%
40%
20%
20%
60%
60%
80%
80%
M
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The annular eclipse begins at sunrise in south China, crosses parts of
Japan in early morning and the North Pacic through most of the day,
then nishes in late afternoon and at sunset for parts of the American
West. A much wider region of the globe sees a partial eclipse. The red
lines indicate the time of deepest eclipse. Interpolate between the hori-
zontal blue lines to nd the maximum percentage of the Suns diameter
that the moon will cover for your location.
Kingman
Eureka
Red
Blu
Redding
Carson
City
Elko
Reno
Medford
Cedar
City
St. George
Klamath
Sacramento
San Francisco
Las Vegas
NE V ADA
CAL I F OR NI A
UT AH
OR E GON
Flagsta
Winslow
Carlsbad
Clovis
Farmington
Four
Corners
Gallup
Las Cruces
Los Alamos
Roswell
Santa Fe
Abilene
Lubbock
Plainview
San
Angelo
Albuquerque
Socorro
AR I ZONA
NE W ME X I CO
T E X AS
COL OR ADO
Annular
eclipse
at sunset
(with
refraction)
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Northern limit of annular eclipse
Southern limit of annular eclipse
A
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Distance (miles)
0 100 200
The annular phase of the eclipse reaches the Pacic coast near the California-Oregon border at 6:24 p.m. PDT May 20th. It covers much
of northern California and central Nevada around 6:30 p.m. PDT, then southern Utah, northern Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and a
bit of Texas around 7:35 p.m. MDT (8:35 p.m. CDT). The yellow ellipse at the end shows where the center of the Sun would set during
annularity if Earth had no atmosphere. In reality, atmospheric refraction moves this appearance to the area of the white ellipse.
S
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G
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(
3
)
After the new Moon is done
occulting a big star (the Sun)
on May 20th, it moves eastward
along its orbit to become a thin
waxing crescent that will occult
a much more distant star, 3rd-
magnitude Zeta Tauri, on the
afternoon or evening of May
22nd. Zeta Tauri is the dimmer
of the two horn tips of Taurus.
This will be a tricky telescopic
observation near the eastern edge
of the visibility zone, where the
star and Moon will be very low,
and in the western part of the
zone, where the star and Moon
will be fairly high but the occulta-
tion will start either in bright
twilight or broad daylight. The
lunar crescent will be very thin,
just 4% sunlit, and only about 23
east (upper left) of the Sun.
If youre trying to locate the
Moon before sunset, set up your
telescope just inside the shadow
of a building, so theres no
chance of inadvertently viewing
the Sun. Then scan carefully with
your nderscope or binoculars
roughly 18 above and 12 to the
left of the Sun. (This will vary
with your location.)
The stars visibility in your
scope will depend on sky condi-
tions. It will disappear behind
the Moons dark limb, as almost
always happens for occultations
when the Moon is waxing, but
even with earthshine the dark
limb may be invisible in a bright
sky. So interpolate very carefully
between the yellow lines on the
map, or better, see the timetable
of local predictions available at
skypub.com/may2012lunaroccn.
When youre watching the star
in the eyepiece, dont blink at the
critical time or you might miss it!
The star reappears up to an
hour or more later from behind
the crescents bright limb. By
then your sky will be darker but
the Moon will be lower. Again,
there will be no warning, so
watch steadily as the critical time
counts down.
The two maps at right tell the
story for each event.
Moon Occults
Zeta Tauri
May 22, 2012
K
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C
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A
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A
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Reappearance Reappearance
2
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3
:1
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3
:2
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3
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2
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3
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3
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Reappears
in twilight
Reappears
in daytime
Reappears
in a dark sky
3
:3
0
U
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Reappears
in twilight No
occultation
Reappears
in daytime
Reappears
in a dark sky
N
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Disappearance Disappearance
2
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No
occultation
Disappears
in a dark sky
Disappears
in twilight
Disappears
in daytime
Disappears
in a dark sky
Disappears
in twilight
Disappears
in daytime
N
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Mark your location with a pencil dot, then interpolate between
the yellow curves to nd the Universal Time of Zeta Tauris
disappearance and reappearance. Remember that 0:00 Univer-
sal Time is 7:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time; 6:00 p.m. MDT;
5:00 p.m. PDT. Shading indicates whether the event occurs in
daylight, twilight, or (for a tiny sliver of land) in darkness. The
farther east you are in the occultation zone, the darker the sky
but the lower the Moon will be.
Horn Tip Occulted
OBSERVING
Celestial Calendar
S
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:

L
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A
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T
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C
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(
3
)
S&T: DENNIS DI CICCO
For key dates, yellow dots indicate what part of the Moons limb is tipped
the most toward Earth by libration while under favorable illumination.
The Moon May 2012
Librations
Pythagoras (crater) May 5
Byrd (crater) May 6
Plutarch (crater) May 7
Langrenus (crater) May 8
Distances
Perigee May 6, 4
h
UT
220,160 miles diameter 33 44
Apogee May 19, 16
h
UT
249,182 miles diameter 29 48
FULL MOON
May 6 3:35 UT
LAST-QUARTER MOON
May 12 21:47 UT
NEW MOON
May 20 23:47 UT
FIRST-QUARTER MOON
May 28 20:16 UT
Phases
Part of what I love about
observing with a good sky atlas
or charting program is poking
around to nd things I wasnt
expecting. Once youve mas-
tered how to star-hop to targets
with your nderscope (see the
crucial tips in last months
issue, page 52), youll nd your-
self browsing from eld to eld
for possible points of interest
along the way.
Few galaxies are hopped to
so often as 9th-magnitude M51
o the end of the Big Dippers
handle, high overhead these
evenings. Farther on by 6,
down a straight line of 6th-
magnitude stars, is M63, only
slightly dimmer. Its just north
of a nderscope asterism of
4th- and 5th-magnitude stars
that for regular visitors soon
becomes an old friend.
A little to the west of
this line lies the red semi-
regular variable star V Canum
Venaticorum. It cycles every 6
months, more or less, between
about magnitude 6.5 and 8.6.
Usually it fades faster than it
brightens, but sometimes it
does the opposite. Fast ups and
downs sometimes override this
cycle. Its next maximum is
predicted for early to mid-June.
Make a point of checking in on
it as you go by.
Springtime Variable
Between Galaxies
Starting from
the end of the
Big Dippers
handle (bright
star at top
left), countless
springtime
observers
star-hop to
the Whirlpool
and Sunower
galaxies. But
how many know
theres a tful
variable star in
between? Com-
parison stars
for V Canum
Venaticorum
are labeled with
their magni-
tudes with the
decimal point
omitted.
Sunower
Galaxy
Whirlpool
Galaxy
V
Alkaid
5195
70
89
85
87
65-86
65
77
47
59
M51
M63
UMA
C A NE S V E NA T I C I
13
h
10
m
13
h
20
m
13
h
30
m
13
h
40
m
+50
+48
+46
+44
+42
In mid- and late April, when almost all readers will have this issue, three noteworthy asteroid occultation paths cross heavily populated areas of the U.S.:
Arkansas to S. Carolina: April 12 Southern New England, New York: April 2324 NYC to Great Lakes: April 27. Details at skypub.com/may2012asteroids
May 5
6
8
7
The King of the Rings
Saturns tilt for 2012 treats us to the best view of its rings in ve years.
While many eyes are focused on brilliant Mars dwin-
dling into the distance in Leo, a bigger showpiece planet
beckons one constellation to the east, in Virgo. Thats
where youll nd Saturn shining with its otherworldly
rings. Its at opposition and closest to Earth in mid-April,
when most readers have this issue. It remains nearly as
large for months to come as it climbs conveniently higher
in the early-evening sky.
Saturn is just 5 from Spica this season, outshining
the blue-white star by just a bit. Look for this eye-catching
pair high in the southeast by 10 p.m. in late April, 9 p.m.
in early May, and shortly after nightfall thereafter.
If youve watched Saturn through a telescope in recent
years, its most obvious change for 2012 hits you right
away: the rings are open again. Theyve appeared nearly
edge-on for the last few years, exactly so in 2009. In April
2012 theyre tilted a good 14 from our line of sight, then
13 from May through August. The rings will continue to
open until reaching a maximum of 27 in 2017.
Like Jupiter, Saturn is a gaseous world showing us
its banded cloudtops. But Saturn is both smaller and
farther than Jupiter, and, being colder, its markings are
more deeply veiled under high-altitude haze. Even so, my
6-inch scope almost always shows some of Saturns band-
ing: the bright Equatorial Zone, the slightly darker North
Equatorial Belt (the South Equatorial Belt is behind the
rings now), and the dusky North Polar Region.
During the 201011 apparition, the big event for plan-
etary observers was the outbreak of Saturns now-famous
Great White Spot (GWS). The whitish band trailing from
this huge storm encircled the globe (see page 20). Now
the storm has subsided. NASAs Cassini probe orbiting
Saturn no longer detects radio emissions from intense
lightning in the storm, but the aftereect of the distur-
bance can still be seen as a weak whitish band encircling
the planet at about 45 north latitude. In the eyepiece, the
band appears detectably brighter than its surroundings.
High-resolution images reveal slight kinks and knots.
Large scopes sometimes show additional tiny white
spots: smaller round or oval storms, usually in Saturns
mid-latitudes. To predict when a spot will return to the
same location on the disk from night to night, remember
that Saturns mid-latitudes rotate once in about 10 hours
38 minutes. Near the equator the planets visible layer
rotates more rapidly, in about 10 hours 14 minutes.
Another noteworthy occurrence in 2011 was the
frequent appearance of radial spokes in Saturns bright,
wide B ring (S&T: July 2011, page 50). The spokes are
almost always beyond visual reach but can sometimes be
extracted from images. For months these dusky markings
appeared and faded with a regularity that might be con-
nected to magnetic eects involving the GWS. So far this
year, spokes have been absent.
Things to Look For
The smallest astronomical telescope should reveal the
rings easily and the dark Cassini Division between the A
and B rings with a little more eort.
The dusky C ring is more of a challenge to spot where
it appears against the dark-sky background, but its dark
shading is easier to see where it crosses Saturns bright
face just inside the B ring. The C ring in front of Sat-
urns face is often indistinguishable from the rings dark
shadow at the same latitude but not this year. The
rings cast no visible shadow on the globe for most of April
from Earths viewpoint, then cast their shadow increas-
ingly poleward above the rings for the next few months.
C ring on globe
Cassini Division
Encke Division
NORTH
Equatorial Zone
North Equatorial Belt
North Tropical Zone
North Temperate Belt
North Polar Region Direction
of rotation
SOUTH
RI NGS
A B CCC
Direc
of rot
Di
This rst-rate amateur image comes from Bob English in Kentucky. He took
it on February 7th, when Saturn was well up in the early-morning sky, using a
20-inch Newtonian reector and a Point Grey Research Flea3 video camera.
Note the faint remnant of the northern hemisphere Great White Spot.
Storm remnant
OBSERVING
Exploring the Solar System
Alan MacRobert
Seeing any further detail in the rings really takes mag-
nication upwards of 200 on a high-quality 8-inch or
larger scope. It also takes times and patience. Rare is the
night when the atmospheric seeing is steady and sharp
enough to let your scope do its best. Moreover, it takes
a lot of time gazing into the eyepiece to ferret out every-
thing at the limit of your vision.
Very subtle banding in the rings is occasionally detect-
able under near-perfect conditions. The fabled spokes
have even lower contrast, eluding all but the most expe-
rienced visual observers with large scopes. Fortunately,
stacked-video imaging has brought these elusive details
within reach of backyard observers. To capture spokes if
they are present, take short video clips no more than 90
seconds long to stack. Any longer and the rapid orbital
motion of the ring material will blur any spokes, resulting
in homogenous smoothness.
With the rings opening, we now have a chance to spot
Saturns disk through the Cassini Division. Under steady
seeing, detecting the planets light through the Cassini
Division helps to reinforce the three-dimensional aspect
of the view.
Opposition comes on April 15th. For a few days around
then, look for the Seeliger eect: a noticeable brighten-
ing of the rings with respect to the globe. This is caused
by the fact that the solid particles forming the rings
backscatter sunlight in the direction it came from more
eectively than the planets cloudtops do.
In the weeks and months after opposition, note the
increasingly visible shadow of the planets globe on the
rings. Its the narrow black gap right where the rings pass
behind the globes celestial east (following) side. After
opposition, we start seeing a little around the planets
eastern edge compared to the direction of the incoming
sunlight.
Many Moons
Of course, Saturn and its rings are surrounded by extra
bangles: more moons showing in amateur scopes than for
any other planet.
Even a 60-millimeter scope will usually reveal Titan,
an appropriately named world half again as big as our
Moon. A 6-inch will show Titans orange color: the photo-
chemical smog that makes its thick atmosphere opaque.
A 4- or 6-inch scope will also show Iapetus, Rhea,
Dione, and (with a little di culty) Tethys. An 8-inch may
also get you fainter Enceladus closer in. You can identify
the moons, or see exactly where to look for them, at any
time and date using the interactive observing tool at
SkyandTelescope.com/satmoons.
What luck that our solar system contains such a
wonder as Saturn! If it didnt exist, would anyone even
imagine such a thing?
The Cassini probe caught this breathtaking view of Saturns southern
hemisphere in 2007. Dont expect your views to be quite this good. N
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OBSERVING
Deep-Sky Wonders
The vast sun clusters gatherd blaze,
World-isles in lonely skies,
Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
Our brief humanities.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
The Charge Of The Heavy Brigade At Balaclava
Although Ive been writing monthly columns for Sky
& Telescope for a dozen years, there are two objects from
Charles Messiers famous catalog that Ive never touched
upon. This is the perfect time of year to correct that over-
sight by featuring these neglected galaxies, M88 and M99
in Coma Berenices.
M88 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the
Virgo Cluster, which is centered about 54 million light-
years away from us and contains at least 1,300 members.
M88 is a Seyfert galaxy, dened by a brilliant nucleus of
variable light intensity coupled with a spectrum indicat-
ing that its powered by a supermassive object (probably a
black hole) at the heart of the galaxy. Seyfert galaxies are
named for the American astronomer Carl Keenan Seyfert
Heavens Within Themselves
Five adjacent galaxies exhibit amazingly varied structures.
who, in the 1940s, found a number of galaxies presenting
these features.
M88 is located 2.9 south-southwest of 25 Comae, and
its yours for the taking through almost any telescope in
a moderately dark sky. Admiral William H. Smyth found
M88 quite charming through his 6-inch refractor. In his
1844 Bedford Catalogue, Smyth writes: A long elliptical
nebula, on the outer side of Virgos left wing. It is pale-
white in colour, and trends in a line bearing np [north
preceding, or northwest] and sf [south following, or south-
east]; and with its attendant stars, forms a pretty pageant.
M88 and 25 Comae share the eld of view through
1545 image-stabilized binoculars. From my semirural
home, the galaxy is a faint oval with a dim star dan-
gling from its southeastern end. M88 is easily visible
and elongated through my 105-mm refractor at 28. It
runs southeast-northwest, and the star that was visible
through binoculars now looks fuzzy. At 87 this unsharp
star becomes a wide, unequal pair that makes a skinny
triangle with a very dim star to the east. Closer to M88,
another faint sun perches north of the galaxys northwest-
M49
M58
M59
M60
M84
M85
M86
M87
M88
M89
M90
M91
M98
M99
M100
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25
27
36
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C OMA B E R E NI C E S
L E O V I R GO
12
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+15
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4468
4459
4474
M88
IC 3476
M91
4571
12
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+14
12
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35
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+15
4516
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Messier 88 is one the skys
brightest Seyfert galaxies.
Like all Seyferts, it has a tiny,
brilliant nucleus with exotic
emission lines.
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Sue French Sue French welcomes your comments at [email protected].
ern end. M88s halo covers about 4 2 and enfolds a
small, brighter core with a stellar nucleus. I can see, but
not quite hold constantly, an extremely dim star super-
posed on the galaxys southeastern tip.
In my 10-inch reector at 192, M88 spans 5 2
and grows gradually brighter toward a small, oval, inner
core. Brightness variations in the halo suggest spiral arms
that unwrap clockwise. The superposed star now accom-
panies a fainter companion to its south-southwest. Deep
images show that the companion is a snug (1.9) double
star. It might take a very large telescope to separate its
15th-magnitude components. If you give it a try, please let
me know how well you succeed.
The galaxy M91 is only 50 east of M88, with the two
visible in the same binocular eld of view. However, M91
is not an easy binocular object. The smallest binoculars
through which Ive spotted it are 1850s with image
stabilization. Even then it was simply a small, very faint
smudge that took a little while to spot.
Through a telescope, you can follow part of Smyths
starry pageant from M88 to M91. The star hovering above
M88s northwestern end is the rst in an arc of three that
curves northeast, each star brighter than the one before.
Farther east, three more stars curve back down to M91,
the nal one lying o the galaxys western side.
My 105-mm refractor at 28 shows M88 and M91 in the
same eld, with M91 as a faint spot. At 87 the galaxy grows
a small round core with a stellar nucleus. The core has bar-
like extensions that run east-northeast to west-southwest.
M91 covers about 2, and its core is less than half that.
Messier 91 is a classic example of a barred spiral galaxy.

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My 10-inch scope at 192 reveals a faint wisp reaching
north from the western extension of M91 and another
reaching south from the opposite extension. The wisps
quickly fade to a very faint halo thats somewhat oval and
aligned perpendicular to the bar. The oval is about 2
wide, but its length is di cult to judge because the halo is
rather dim. My 14.5-inch reector at 170 makes the halo
appreciably easier and pus it out to about 5 3.
Theres no object at the coordinates given for M91 by its
discoverer, Charles Messier, so M91 was long considered a
missing object. Various hypotheses were put forward in
a celestial version of a Wheres Waldo? hunt. Astronomers
and historians suggested that M91 might be NGC 4571, a
passing comet, or a duplicate observation of M58. But it
was an amateur astronomer from Texas who came up with
Angular sizes are from recent catalogs. Visually, an objects size is often smaller than the cataloged
value and varies according to the aperture and magnication of the viewing instrument. Right ascension
and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
Galaxies in Southern Coma Berenices
Object Mag(v) Size RA Dec.
Messier 88 9.6 6.9 3.7 12
h
32.0
m
+14 25
Messier 91 10.2 5.4 4.3 12
h
35.4
m
+14 30
NGC 4516 12.8 1.9 0.8 12
h
33.1
m
+14 35
IC 3476 12.7 2.1 1.8 12
h
32.7
m
+14 35
NGC 4571 11.3 3.6 3.2 12
h
36.9
m
+14 13
OBSERVING
Deep-Sky Wonders
DID YOU KNOW?
Every issue of Sky & Telescope since September
2006 has an online table of contents, and many
have supplemental information not available in
the magazine. Go to skypub.com/skytel, scroll to
the bottom, and select the month and year of the
issue that interests you.
More on the Web @ SkyandTelescope.com
Interactive Sky Chart skypub.com/skychart
Interactive Observing Tools skypub.com/tools
Weekly Observing Guide skypub.com/ataglance
Weekly TV Program skyweek.com
Monthly Sky Tour Podcast skypub.com/podcasts
Books and Back Issues shopatsky.com
the accepted solution to this puzzle, rst published in this
magazines Letters column for December 1969. William C.
Williams found that NGC 4548 ts Messiers description
and position for M91 if you assume that Messier mixed
up which object hed used as his reference point. Thus
Messiers osets should be applied to M88, not M58.
The little galaxy NGC 4516 sits one-third of the way
from M88 to M91 and 8 north of an imaginary line con-
necting them. With my 105mm scope at 87, I can see
NGC 4516 intermittently with averted vision as a very small
glow elongated north-south. (Averted vision is the practice
of looking a bit o to one side of a faint object to allow its
light to fall on a more sensitive area of your eyes retina.)
The view through my 10-inch reector at 192 is fasci-
nating. At rst glance, I was astonished when the galaxys
tilt seemed to change with averted vision. A more careful
look showed a bright region about 1 long and one-quarter
as wide, tipped west of north, that spans a slender, larger
oval running nearly north-south. Only the former stood out
with direct vision. The bright area is lovely, and consists of
a small core with a distinct nucleus at the center of a shal-
low S curve. Averted vision wraps it all in a delicate cocoon.
Lets drop 24 south-southeast from M88 to a north-
south pair of 12th-magnitude stars 2.7 apart. The
intriguing galaxy IC 3476 rests 4.4 east of the northern
star. Its readily visible in my 105-mm refractor at 87 as
a hazy blot about 40 across. In the 10-inch scope at 192,
three faint suns join the 12th-magnitude pair to outline
a candle snuer ready to put out the light of IC 3476.
The galaxy displays a lumpy brightness distribution and
peculiar shape. IC 3476 is about 40 wide at its northeast-
ern end and tapers down toward the southwest, giving it
a candle-ame prole 1 long. The wide end contains a
relatively large, blotchy, bright area, and some additional
clumpy enhancements line the galaxys southeastern side.
Strange little IC 3476 has been assigned a morphologi-
cal type of IB(s)m a barred, Magellanic-type irregular
galaxy with traces of spiral structure. IC 3476 surprised
astronomers with a supernova in 1970.
Our nal target is NGC 4571, found 28 southeast of
M91 with a 9th-magnitude star guarding its northeastern
edge. The galaxy appears roundish with a small brighter
core in the 105-mm scope at 87. Its low-surface-bright-
ness halo improves with averted vision and is roughly 2
to 2 across. Although NGC 4571 is more obvious in my
10-inch scope, it discloses no further secrets.
NGC 4571 is an unusual galaxy of type SA(r)c. Its
eecy spiral arms reach inward to a well-dened ring that
closely circles the galaxys core. Such ring structure is
rare in a late-type spiral galaxy, that is, one that exhibits
a small central bulge and loosely structured arms with
prominent condensations.
All these wonderful world-isles dwell in the core of
the vast Virgo Cluster, possessing whole heavens within
themselves that have long inspired the wondering sky-
gazers amazement.
Left: NGC 4516 is a spiral with a pronounced S-shaped bar. Center: IC 3476 is an irregular galaxy whose blue stars suggest ongoing
starburst activity. Right: NGC 4571 is an unusual ringed spiral galaxy.
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Alan Whitman
Going Deep
The Coma Galaxy Cluster
This ghostly swarm is fantastically rich and compact.
of about 350 million light-years, the
Coma Galaxy Cluster (Abell 1656) is the nearest of the
massive spherical galaxy clusters, with thousands of
member galaxies. These are mostly ellipticals and lenticu-
lars, so even the brightest ones show few details. Instead,
an observers satisfaction comes from the hunt and from
seeing many galaxies simultaneously.
The Coma Cluster isnt as popular as it should be,
perhaps because it had bad press early on. The classic late
1970s observing guide Burnhams Celestial Handbook says:
NGC 4889 and 4874 are the only two members of the
Coma Cluster of Galaxies which are likely to be detected
in most amateur telescopes. But one spring night in 1983
I spent two hours in the cluster with my 8-inch f/6 Newto-
nian, guided only by a photo from the Palomar Observa-
At a distance tory Sky Survey. In addition to the two giant ellipticals
promised by Burnham, I found NGC 4921 and 4860
so I was very pleased with the results of my hunt.
Now that I know the Coma Cluster well, my ancient
8-inch also reveals NGC 4911 and elongated NGC 4895
without too much di culty, as well as glimmers of NGC
4865, 4869, and 4881.
As Guy Mackies sketch on the facing page shows, an
increase in aperture to a 12.5-inch Dobsonian reveals a
horde of 14th- and 15th-magnitude galaxies. Mackie com-
ments: Whats most striking is my ability to nd much
more in the eld than I saw at rst blush.
In recent years I have spent many nights working
through the Coma Cluster with my observatorys 16-inch
f/4.5 Newtonian on an equatorial mount. This months
tour will concentrate on the richest clump of galaxies,
occupying an oval area outlined by NGC 4881 to the
north, NGC 4921 and 4911 to the southeast, and NGC
4860 to the northwest. The 16-inch found 37 galaxies
swarming within this small area only 38 24
with the long axis stretching northwest to southeast.
My planetarium program charts stars to magnitude
15.0 for starhopping, but its necessary to galaxy-hop in
many star-sparse areas. I used a 12-mm eyepiece yielding
152 and a 24 eld of view, supplemented on steadier
nights by an 8-mm eyepiece giving 229 and a 16 eld.
The Northeast Side of the Oval
NGC 4881 and NGC 4895 are two of the brightest galax-
ies on this tour. NGC 4881 sports a bright nucleus, and
NGC 4895, a lenticular, is elongated 5:2 and brightens
gradually in the middle, rising to a nucleus. The next
galaxy in line, NGC 4907, has a higher published surface
brightness than the preceeding two, but I nd it less obvi-
ous at the eyepiece. On two nights I caught glimmers of
the nearby 15th-magnitude galaxy PGC 44784. This tiny
mote is paired with a 14th-magnitude star only 27 to its
south-southeast.
4798
4807
4816
4819
4827
4848
4853
4860
4865
4881
4895
4907
4926
4931
4944
4957
4961
4789
4839
4874
4889
4911
4921
4789A
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55
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13
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13
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05
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+28
+27
7 6 5 8 9 10 11
Star magnitudes
4874
4889
M64
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The Coma Galaxy Cluster is easy to locate one-third of the way
from Beta to Gamma Comae Berenices. Only the brightest galax-
ies of the Coma Cluster are shown on this chart. See the photo-
graph on page 62 for details of the highlighted region.
The Ovals Southeastern End
NGC 4921 is the third-brightest galaxy in the central
Coma Cluster after NGC 4889 and 4874, the two huge
ellipticals at the clusters center. Large and amorphous,
NGC 4921 is immediately recognizable as a face-on spiral.
Slightly elongated NGC 4923 lies only 2.6 south-south-
east of NGC 4921 while another bright spiral, elongated
and relatively large NGC 4911 (shown above), is 9 south-
west of NGC 4921. Tougher NGC 4919 lurks almost mid-
way between NGCs 4923 and 4911, and slightly southeast
of the line connecting them.
I was able to detect a few photons from 15th-magni-
tude PGC 44864 because it lies 2 west-northwest of NGC
4919 directly along a line to a 12th-magnitude star 6 farther
west-northwest. The task was not made any easier by the
need to repeatedly rend my landmark, shy NGC 4919.
North of NGC 4911
An easy star-hop north-northwest from bright NGC 4911
leads to a band of seven galaxies. NGC 4906 is small and
faint, but not di cult. Small IC 4042 is obvious, but I
can only occasionally see IC 4041 in the sweet spot of my
averted vision.
While I was hunting IC 4041 at 229, a line of three
galaxies appeared along the eastern edge of the eld of
view. IC 4051 is relatively large and displays a nucleus.
NGC 4908 is fairly small, and
more concentrated than
the surrounding IC
The Coma Cluster includes a few ne spiral galaxies as well as a
huge number of ellipticals. North is to the upper left in this extraor-
dinary photograph of NGC 4911 from the Hubble Space Telescope.
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It was with great pleasure that I
accepted Alan Whitmans invitation
to contribute a sketch of the Coma
Cluster through my 12.5-inch Dob-
sonian reector. I soon realized that
capturing what turned out to be 33
objects in a single eld of view was
a challenge like none that I had ever
met before. Instead of sketching the
eyepiece view directly, I combined
observations over multiple nights at
magnications from 93 to 263.
Guy Mackie observes the deep sky
from southern British Columbia.
Coma Through 12.5 Inches
rated than
ng IC
PGC 44848
4894
4881
4898
4889
4886
4883
4860
4858
4865
IC 3955
4864
4873
4867
4874
4872 4871
4876 4869
IC 3937
4895
4907
4908
4906
4911
4919
4923
4927
4921
IC 4051
IC 4042
IC 4045
PGC 44784
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Going Deep
unveil tough IC 3998, which lies between the two giants.
NGC 4889 has two very obvious companions at 229,
NGC 4886 and NGC 4898, and two challenging ones,
15th-magnitude NGC 4894 and IC 4011. The latter
two were made easier to nd by their proximity to the
brighter galaxies.
In contrast, theres no nearby landmark pointing the
way to 14.4-magnitude NGC 4883, which hides 4 north-
west of NGC 4889 in the troublesome glare of the nearby
7th-magnitude star.
NGC 4876 is 3 southeast of NGC 4874s nucleus.
Once I found NGC 4876, I could intermittently see very
small, faint NGC 4875 between the two signicantly
easier 14th-magnitude galaxies that ank it, NGC 4876
and IC 3973. Its surprising that Guillaume Bigourdan,
who discovered NGC 4875, missed the much easier IC
galaxy only 2 southwest.
The Western End and Beyond
Slightly elongated NGC 4869 is easy, as is NGC 4864.
10
4881
4895
4907
PGC 44784
IC 4045
4908
IC 4051
IC 4042
4906
4921
4923
PGC 44864
4919
4911
4889
4883
4874
4865
4860
4858
PGC 44467
IC 3955
4864
4867
4869
This photograph from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey includes all the galaxies described by the author. Labels in the central region
are omitted for clarity; see the close-up on the facing page for full details.
galaxies, so its core has a higher surface brightness. It
also has a faint nucleus. Small
IC 4045 completes the line. I could nd ghostly IC 4040
only because it makes an equilateral triangle with NGC
4908 and IC 4045.
The Clusters Heart
The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 appears signi-
cantly brighter than its binary companion, NGC 4874.
At 229 NGC 4889 is slightly elongated east to west, and
strongly concentrated in the center, with a prominent
nucleus. Round NGC 4874 is very gradually concentrated
to a fairly faint nucleus.
What I nd particularly interesting are the tiny satel-
lite galaxies in tight orbits around the two giants pre-
sumbably on their way to becoming lunch! NGC 4874 has
three very close companions visible in the 16-inch, NGC
4871, NGC 4872, and NGC 4873. It also has a host of
PGC galaxies swarming around it that I look forward to
attempting with a bigger scope. It took me several tries to
IC 4040
IC 4041
This close-up of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey photo on the facing
page shows the host of small galaxies that swarm around the
ultramassive elliptical galaxies NGC 4889 and 4874.
5
IC 4011
IC 3998
IC 3973
4883
4894
4898
4886
4889
4876
4875 4869
4872
4874
4871
4873
NGC 4864 has a tiny near-stellar companion, 14.3-magni-
tude NGC 4867, only 0.6 southeast, and another compan-
ion of similar magnitude, IC 3955, 2 northwest.
NGC 4865 and NGC 4860 lie northwest of the 7th-
magnitude star that makes this end of our oval so hard
to observe. Both galaxies show nuclei. NGC 4860 has a
minuscule companion, 15th-magnitude NGC 4858, that I
could only detect intermittently perhaps due to the fact
that the seeing was only fair on that night because the jet
stream was overhead. (This is unfortunately all too com-
mon in temperate latitudes in springtime.)
There are many more Coma Cluster galaxies lurking
beyond the small area that we have explored. On one foray
into the cluster my 16-inch swept up a PGC galaxy that I
was not even hunting for, 14th-magnitude PGC 44467,
located 10 southwest of NGC 4860. How did such an easy
prize go unclaimed by the 19th-century observers who
discovered the much tougher NGC galaxies nearby?
Alan Whitman looks forward to diving into the Coma
Cluster with much bigger glass.
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S & T Test Report Johnny Horne
in astronomical
CCD cameras has been plummeting in recent years, but
nothing drove that point home to me more than test-
ing Celestrons new Nightscape CCD camera. In 1997 I
reviewed Celestrons Pixcel 255 CCD camera, which was
manufactured in collaboration with Santa Barbara Instru-
ment Group. It oered 77,000 pixels in an array measur-
ing 2.4 mm by 3.2 mm, and it cost $1,499. You could only
do color imaging by shooting through individual red,
green, and blue lters, and Celestrons optional lter
wheel cost another $395.
Fast forward 15 years. Im in my backyard observa-
tory mounting another Celestron CCD camera the
Nightscape on the same telescope I used in 1997. This
camera, however, has a one-shot color Kodak KAI-10100
CCD with 10.7 million pixels in an array measuring 13.5
mm by 17.9 mm. Thats 139 times more pixels packed into
an imaging area 31 times larger than what was available
with the Pixcel 255. The cost of Nightscape? Still $1,499.
Celestrons new camera has a distinctive appearance,
diering markedly from the box-like or hockey-puck look
of most other astronomical cameras. The 4-inch (100-
mm) diameter, 2-pound (0.9-kg) camera looks almost
mushroom-like with its 2-inch nosepiece attached. True
to Celestrons longtime color scheme, the camera is
black with handsome orange trim. Its circular head-on
prole is designed to work with minimal obstruction on
Celestrons Fastar-compatible telescopes.
A small, three-speed fan dissipates heat from the
cameras thermoelectric cooling (TEC) system. There is
Celestrons Nightscape
CCD Camera
This camera takes the work out of creating spectacular deep-sky images.
Celestron Nightscape
U.S. price: $1,499 including camera-control
and image-processing software,
USB cable, and 2-inch nosepiece
Celestron (and its worldwide dealers)
Phone: 310-328-9560: www.celestron.com
The price per pixel
The one-shot color Nightscape CCD camera produces high-quality deep-sky
images with a minimum of eort. It is also ideal for a wide range of telescopes,
including short-focus instruments. The camera is pictured here attached to the
f/4 Newtonian focus of the authors 12-inch classical Cassegrain with a Baader
coma corrector threaded to the front of the cameras 2-inch nosepiece.
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a cluster of three jacks on one side of the camera. One
accepts the included 10-foot (3-meter) USB 2.0 com-
puter cable, and another is for the 12-VDC power input
(a 10-foot power cord with a cigarette-lighter plug is
included). The third jack is a modular phone connector
that the manual says will be used for future features.
The Nightscape has a mechanical shutter, making it
easy to acquire dark frames for image processing without
having to cover the telescopes aperture. An infrared-
blocking lter is mounted ahead of the CCD chip but
behind the shutter. More details about the cameras
physical construction appear in the 16-page Nightscape
manual, which can be downloaded for free from the Sup-
port section of Celestrons website.
Because Nightscapes TEC system, which cools the
CCD chip to as much as 20C below ambient air tempera-
ture, is regulated, you can make a library of stored dark
frames for various temperatures. Doing this during twi-
light or cloudy nights will avoid wasting valuable observ-
ing time shooting dark frames when the sky is clear. The
TECs user-selectable temperature set point is visible on
the computer monitor throughout the imaging process,
and I found the temperature regulation very precise,
varying by no more than 0.03C on a typical night. The
software lets you know when the selected temperature
has stabilized so you can
begin to make expo-
sures. This took up to 20
minutes depending on the
ambient air temperature.
Nightscapes CCD
array is made up of square
4-micron pixels, and
a full-resolution image
measures 3,760 by 2,840
pixels. Binning the pixels 22 or 44 while shooting,
which increases the cameras sensitivity and speeds the
readout of images (at the expense of lower resolution),
produces images measuring 1,880 by 1,420 pixels and 940
by 710 pixels, respectively. Theres also a subframe setting
that allows imaging at full resolution, but using only the
central half or the central quarter of the array. The bin-
ning and subframe options allow optimal imaging over
a wide range of focal lengths. The small pixels work well
with fast, short-focus telescopes, while binning is great for
long-focus instruments with slower f/ratios.
I tested Nightscape at the f/4 Newtonian focus of my
vintage 12-inch classical Cassegrain reector, using
a Baader MPCC coma corrector to improve star images
at the edges of the eld covered by Nightscapes large
chip. I also tested the camera on my 11-inch Celestron
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a 300-mm f/2.8 Nikon
lens, using a Nikon lens adapter available from Orion
Telescopes and Binoculars. The lens performed very well
with the Nightscapes small pixels, and fortunately the
tripod socket on the lens permitted me to easily attach the
imaging setup to a tracking platform. A tripod socket or
optional tripod adapter for Nightscape would be wel-
comed by astrophotographers looking to use shorter-focal-
length lenses that lack tripod sockets.
Nightscapes CCD is located 55 mm back from the
T threads on the front of the 2-inch nosepiece, which is
very convenient if you use the camera with accessories
designed for conventional 35-mm camera bodies. With
the nosepiece removed, the setback distance to the CCD
is 26 mm from the front mounting surface of the camera
body, which also has female T threads.
The cameras small, 4-micron pixels work well with short
focal lengths, and the author had excellent results shooting
with a 300-mm f/2.8 Nikon telephoto lens. He used a stock lens
adapter sold by Orion Telescopes and Binoculars to couple the
Nightscape to the lens.
Nightscapes one-shot color CCD has 10.7 million pixels in an
array measuring 13.5 by 17.9 millimeters. The cameras mechani-
cal shutter and the optical window in front of the CCD are also
visible in this picture.
WHAT WE LIKE:
Large, one-shot color CCD
Regulated cooling
Easy-to-use software
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
Camera body lacks
tripod socket
S&T Test Report
AstroFX Software
One of the most attractive features of
Nightscape, especially for those relatively
new to processing astronomical images,
is the included AstroFX software. It
transforms the work of making expo-
sures and, more importantly, the tedious
aspects of processing images, to a few
mouse clicks.
I ran the software on a recent-model Dell desktop
machine with an AMD Athlon II 2X processor, 4 gigabytes
of RAM, and Windows 7. It installed with no problems
and the software acquired the Nightscape camera the rst
time I started the program. Launching AstroFX brings
up an unconventional-looking screen for those who are
familiar with many camera-control and image-processing
programs. The screen does, however, remind you that its
a Celestron product with an orange-on-black color scheme.
Most AstroFX functions are located in a small rectan-
gular window that you can move to any place on your com-
puter monitor. There are pull-down menus for making
focus, bias, at, and dark frames, as well as your normal
exposures. The whole sequence of shooting and process-
ing images is organized into seven steps. Exposing an
image is done with functions under the Snap tab, and the
subsequent processing steps of Stack, Stretch, Smooth,
Sharpen, Saturate, and Share are listed on tabs to its right.
Each step has user adjustable sliders in addition to an
Auto button (more about this in a minute).
Rather than a monochrome raw image that some
one-shot color cameras display after an exposure, AstroFX
shows a color image, but the initial colors are far from
accurate. Most showed a greenish sky background.
Applying the Stretch function turns the colors to a more
accurate hue.
Acquiring and composing a celestial target is best done
using the cameras quarter-resolution setting because
readout and display of the image happens in about 3
seconds. The binned pixels also have greater sensitivity,
showing the general shape and extent of brighter deep-
sky objects in exposures 1 to 10 seconds long.
Once youve composed an image, AstroFX helps you
quickly achieve sharp focus. You do this by drawing a
mouse-selectable subframe around a single star the
smaller the subframe, the faster the readout of the focus
images. Large digits display the stars diameter mea-
sured in pixels at the so-called full-width half-maximum
(FWHM) part of its intensity prole. Sharpest focus
occurs when this value is the smallest you can make it
As explained in the accompanying text, one of Nightscapes big-
gest strengths is the supplied AstroFX software for controlling the
camera and processing its images. All the softwares functions
are operated from a small dialog box that can be placed anywhere
on your computer screen. A Nightscape raw image before color
correction with the Stretch function is shown in this view.
This stack of 25 ve-minute exposures of NGC 1977, informally known as the
Running Man Nebula, north of the Orion Nebula, was made with the 12-inch
f/4 reector and the Nightscapes pixels binned 2x2.
while adjusting the focus of the telescope.
During an imaging session, a folder is created on your
computers hard drive that holds all the light, dark, bias,
and at frames made for a given object. You designate
each type of frame using a pull-down menu before the
exposure is started. This makes processing the images
extremely easy. The Stack command begins by automati-
cally creating master at and dark frames from the appro-
priate exposures in the folder. It then proceeds to calibrate
the light images with these masters.
The next step is to align and stack the individual cali-
brated images by either letting the program automatically
select stars for aligning or by manually selecting a single
star that you identify in each image. When working with
about two dozen calibrated images, the processing time
needed to display a stacked image took about 2 minutes
on my late-model computer.
You then proceed to the Stretch step followed by
Smooth, Sharpen, Saturate, and Share. Each step has
user-settable sliders that control the amount of processing
done to the image, but theres also the Auto mode for each
step, which produces really rst-class results with just a
single click of the mouse. I used this setting for process-
ing all the images accompanying this review. I can see
the Auto feature being a huge boon to people new to the
esoteric art of processing astronomical images.
The Share tab would be more aptly named Save,
because it simply lets you save the processed image in a
variety of le formats, including 16-bit FITS (a standard
for astronomical images). You can also save them as 16- or
8-bit TIFF les as well as JPEG format with three dier-
ent levels of le compression.
The camera is supplied with standard ASCOM drivers for people who want to control the image-capture process
with other brands of imaging software. I successfully
tested it with Nebulosity (available from www.stark-labs.
com) and Images Plus (www.mlunsold.com). Regard-
less of which astronomical program I used to capture
and process exposures in the past, I usually opened the
nished images in Adobe Photoshop for nal tweaking.
With AstroFX, however, this wasnt necessary the soft-
ware did an excellent job by itself. Im impressed.
If Celestron was trying to create a high-quality, one-
shot color CCD camera with regulated cooling and easy-
to-use software, theyve certainly done it with Nightscape.
Astrophotographers who have used DSLRs or small-chip
cameras for deep-sky imaging and are looking to upgrade
to a high-megapixel, dedicated astronomical camera
should strongly consider Nightscape. And if youre a
beginner when it comes to astronomical image process-
ing, AstroFX can be your step-by-step guide to rewarding,
high-resolution deep-sky images.
Fayetteville, N.C., newspaper photo editor Johnny Horne won-
ders how much camera $1,499 will buy 15 years from now.
This view of the California Nebula next to brilliant Menkib (Xi
Persei) is a stack of 21 ve-minute exposures with the Nightscape
attached to the authors Nikon 300-mm f/2.8 lens set to f/4.0.
The Stretch function renders deep-sky objects with more accurate
colors. All of AstroFXs image-processing steps have an Auto but-
ton that eliminates guesswork and produces excellent results.
New Product Showcase
SOLAR GRAB-N- GO iOptrons latest observing package takes advantage of
increasing solar activity. The new iOptron Solar 60 ($399) is a portable solar telescope
and Go To mount that ts in a convenient backpack. This 60-mm f/6 achromatic refrac-
tor includes a full-aperture, thread-on, white-light solar lter and a 1-inch rack-and-
pinion focuser. The included Cube Go To mount and SmartStar hand controller isnt
limited to solar observing; its internal database has more than 5,000 astronomical
objects, including the planets, Messier objects, and much more. Additionally, the outt
has an iE1300 electronic eyepiece with USB cable, allowing you to share the view on
your computer. The Solar 60 also comes with a lightweight aluminum tripod, a 25-mm
1-inch Plssl eyepiece, and AC power adapter.
EDGE-HD REDUCER
Celestron introduces a line of focal
reducers for its popular EdgeHD
telescopes. The EdgeHD 0.7x
Reducer ($599) incorporates a
5-element design to increase your
imaging eld while maintaining
the eld correction of the EdgeHD
telescope. The reducer screws
directly to the 3-inch threads on
the rear cell of the 11- and 14-inch
EdgeHD telescopes, and provides
generous back focus to accom-
modate a wide range of additional
accessories, such as o-axis guid-
ers, lter wheels, or other acces-
sories. Each EdgeHD telescope
requires its specic reducer; see
the manufacturers website to
choose the appropriate model for
your telescope.
BELOVED GUIDEBOOK UPDATE
One of the most popular astronomy guides
of all time, Turn Left at Orion by Guy Consol-
magno and Dan M. Davis, has undergone a
major update for the 4th edition. The new spi-
ral-bound book is easier to handle outdoors
at the telescope, and is specically updated
to accommodate todays Dobsonian owners.
Drawings depicting the views with small tele-
scopes are contrasted side by side with draw-
ings showing the same objects appearing in
larger Dobsonian telescopes. Many Southern
Hemisphere objects have expanded entries
with star-hopping directions and tables of
updated astronomical information. A night-
by-night Moon section is also included along
with many more new additions.
Cambridge University Press,
256 pages, ISBN 978-0-521-15397-3.
www.cambridge.org
Celestron
2835 Columbia St., Torrance, CA 90503
310-328-9560; www.celestron.com
iOptron
6F Gill St., Woburn, MA 01801
781-569-0200; www.ioptron.com
New Product Showcase is a reader service featuring innovative equipment and software of interest to amateur astrono-
mers. The descriptions are based largely on information supplied by the manufacturers or distributors. Sky & Telescope
assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of vendors statements. For further information, contact the manufacturer or
distributor. Announcements should be sent to [email protected]. Not all announcements can be listed.
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March 2001. 3-meter
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Presented
ALSO FEATURING
Robert Naeye - Sky & Telescope, Transits of Venus
Joseph Liske - European Southern Observatory
Stephen Ramsden - Bates Solar Astronomy Project
Marni Berendsen - NASA Night Sky Network
and a special presentation of the movie
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More than 120 vendors from around the world.
Astronomy workshops, daily solar observing,
and much, much more!
h d f d h ld
Featuring THE METEORITE MEN
From the Science Channels Hit TV Series
MARK CLAMPIN
NASA James Webb Space Telescope
STEELE HILL
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - SOHO Mission
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Tony Hallas Christopher Go Frank Summers and many more
Fabian Neyers Robert Reeves Stephen Ramsden
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
the biggest barrier to
optimum optical performance with a Newtonian reec-
tor is poor thermal management. And like collimation,
thermal management is a topic that invites debate and
confusion. Some even suspect the whole issue is merely
the product of hyper-obsessive perfectionism on the part
of some telescope junkies. In reality, however, neither the
problem nor its solutions are terrically complex. As long
as you focus on a few basics, the results of even minimal
eort can pay big dividends.
The rst thing to understand is that a Newtonians pri-
mary mirror is the root of all thermal evils. Forget about
tube currents, forget about the spider and the secondary
that big hunk of glass sitting at the back of your scope
is where you need to direct your attention. Thats because
the primary mirror has considerable heat-storage capac-
ity heat that it happily (and with agonizing slowness)
radiates whenever the air inside your scope is cooler than
the mirror itself.
Thermal Basics
Beating the heat will get you the sharpest views from your Newtonian.
Next to collimation, But why is this a problem? Simply because air masses
of dierent temperatures have dierent densities. On its
journey from a star or planet through zones where warm
and cool air mix (typically directly in front of the primary
mirror), light wiggles and bends, producing an eect that
looks a lot like bad atmospheric seeing. Some telescope
users who despair that they observe from locations where
the seeing is always bad may be ghting telescope ther-
mals more often than bad seeing. The big dierence is
that you can do something about a warm mirror!
Another basic consideration is that the amount of prob-
lem heat that your primary mirror stores is related mainly
to its thickness. In other words, the type of glass and the
mirrors diameter dont make as much dierence as its
thickness. Thick is bad, thin is good. As Bryan Greers
careful work (detailed in the May and June 2004 issues)
demonstrates, any mirror thicker than about inch is
unlikely to cool quickly enough on its own for satisfactory
high-resolution viewing.
Third on the list of basic issues is that its the tempera-
ture dierence that matters. In other words, if you bring
your scope out of a garage on a mild summers evening
and the primary is sitting at 75F (24C) while the ambi-
ent air is at 68, the thermal consequences are just as
severe as in the winter when your mirror is at 39 and the
air surrounding it is at 32. Some observers think they
dont have to worry about thermals when its warm out-
side, but mild climate or not, its a rare location where the
night temperature doesnt drop a few degrees per hour
when the sky is clear.
What if you leave your scope outside all the time? It
helps, but its not usually enough by itself. The trouble is
your mirror dumps its heat more slowly than the rate at
which the night air cools. Even if your primary is at the
same temperature as the ambient air at the beginning of
an observing session, its unlikely to remain so for long.
So what can you do? Simple. Install a small fan to blow
air at the rear surface of your telescopes primary mirror.
That is the easiest and most eective solution, and a small
DC-powered computer fan is ideal. The only gotcha
is that you have to mount the fan in such a way that its
vibrations (and all fans vibrate to some degree) arent
transferred to the telescope theres no point in making
By simply mounting a small computer fan with rubber bands behind a New-
tonian reectors primary mirror, high-power views through the telescope
will be noticeably improved. Many of these fans are designed for 12-volt DC
power but still work eectively when run with a 6-volt battery pack.
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the cure worse than the disease. Suspend-
ing the fan with elastic bands, as shown in
the picture here, is a great way to do this.
As Bryans tests convincingly dem-
onstrate, any fan is better than none at
all even a little airow makes a big
dierence. That being the case, wouldnt a
lot of airow be even better? Yes, but only
up to a point. All a fan can do is blow away
air warmed by the surface of the glass,
but heat within the glass has to get to the
surface rst. The limiting factor is the rate
at which heat is conducted from inside the
glass, and a more powerful fan does very
little to accelerate that process. A bigger
fan also has a potential of producing more
image-blurring vibrations.
One nal point. If you mostly observe
deep-sky objects and rarely push your tele-
scope to its magnication and resolution
limits, a warm mirror might not aect
your observing very much. But if you like
to take in views of the Moon and planets
regularly, a little thermal management
will go a long way toward improving what
you see in the eyepiece. There is much
more to this subject, but its the basics that
matter most. In summary, install a fan,
dont worry, observe happy.
Contributing editor Gary Seronik is a long-
time ATM who strives to keep his scopes
calm, cool, and collimated. Some of his
eorts are featured on his website, www.
garyseronik.com.
No cooling fan
8 Pyrex Mirror
Cool-down Test
With cooling fan
Elapsed time (minutes)
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0
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1
2
3
4
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20 40 60 80 100 120 140
A fan greatly helps minimize the dierence
between a primary mirrors surface
temperature and that of the surrounding air.
The data graphed here was gathered by Ohio
ATM Bryan Greer using his own telescope and
a sensitive thermometer on a night when the
ambient air temperature was falling 2C per
hour, a rate typical of many clear-sky locations.
springer.com
For the biggest and best list of practical astronomy books, visit www.springer.com/sky
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Prices subject to change without notice. All prices are net prices.
The Mythology of
the Night Sky
An Amateur Astronomers Guide to the
Ancient Greek and Roman Legends
Series: Patrick Moores Practical
Astronomy
Written by: David E. Falkner
2011, 238 pp., 71 illustrations,
Softcover, ISBN: 978-1-4614-0136-0
Price: $34.95
Striking a balance between backyard astronomy and ancient
mythology, this book describes Ptolemys 48 constellations
with location and description in detail, while also telling the
mythological tales in full.
Dark Nebulae, Dark
Lanes, and Dust Belts
Astronomy
Written by: Anthony Cooke
Softcover, ISBN: 978-1-4614-1185-7
Price: $39.95
This book is focused on everything
dark in space: those dark voids in the stellar fabric that mystied
astronomers of old. It is aimed at the observer who wants to
spend time with something less conventional than the usual fare.
Treasures of the
Southern Sky
Written by: Robert Gendler, Lars
Christensen, and David Malin
Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-4614-0627-3
Price: $44.95
This coffee table book focuses on
the dazzling beauty and wonder
of the night sky, with engaging and easy to understand
explanations of what the reader is seeing. The stunning
photos chosen for the book are from various published and
unpublished sources, including Hubble, the ESO collection, the
Danish 1.5-m Telescope collection, and the personal collection
of Robert Gendler
The Chemical Cosmos
A Guided Tour
Series: Astronomers Universe
Written by: Steven Miller
2012, 236 pp., 25 illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-4419-8443-2
Price: $29.95
This book makes the area of
astrochemistry accessible to amateur
astronomers and the general educated public and explores
how we got from the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang to a
chemical rich universe in which life can evolve.
Celestial Delights
The Best Astronomical Events
Through 2020
Astronomy Series
Written by: Francis Reddy
3rd Edition, 2011, 423 pp., 132
illustrations, Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-4614-0609-9
Price: $44.95
This essential TV Guide for the sky enables readers of the
Northern Hemisphere to quickly determine the next celestial
event they can see with the naked eye. It guides readers
through eight years of the skys rhythms via a month-by-month
almanac and annual overviews with each years best events.
The Andromeda
Galaxy and the Rise
of Modern Astronomy
Series: Astronomers Universe
Written by: David Schultz
Softcover, ISBN: 978-1-4614-3048-3
Price: $34.95
An absorbing account of the Milky
Ways galactic twin, this book describes how the study of
Andromeda Galaxy has led to our current understanding of the
nature of the universe.
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This essential TV Guide
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EASY ECLIPSE
AuSIkAlIA N0VN8k 7I ~ 21SI, 2012
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Solar System Photography
with Your DSLR Camera
Digital single-lens reex cameras (DSLRs) today are amaz-
ingly versatile. Using the latest models, you can shoot
long-exposure deep-sky images, create time-lapse movies
from a set of still images, or record high-denition video
with a quality that exceeds footage recorded by some dedi-
cated video cameras. And, of course, DSLRs can be used
to snap daytime photos of any kind. But few users realize
that the video modes available on DSLR cameras are great
for recording high-resolution planetary images.
To capture the best planetary images these days, the
JERRY LODRIGUSS
preferred technique is known as lucky imaging. This
method records thousands of frames in a high-speed
video stream, which you can later sort for the best frames
to stack into a nal high-resolution image. This is where
two video modes on your DSLR camera, Live View and
high-denition video, come into play.
Live View Versus HD Video
The trick to capturing the highest-resolution details on
the planets with a DSLR is to use a mode that allows you
to record the image o the cameras sensor at its native
pixel resolution. Cameras with Live View oer the easiest
route, using the zoom preview mode to get to a 1:1 crop
of the central portion of the cameras detector. Although
you can use normal high-denition 1080p or 720p video
modes for lunar and solar imaging with great results, you
generally dont want to use this mode for planetary work
because it resamples the image recorded by the cameras
detector, and you will lose ne detail.
For example, the sensor in the Canon EOS Rebel T3i
(also called the 600D) has an array of 5,184 by 3,456 pixels.
In 1080p high-denition video mode, the camera records
an image that is only 1,920 pixels wide by 1,080 pixels
Left: Jerry Lodriguss with his Celestron
C11 EdgeHD and Canon DSLR camera.
Planetary Imaging
Chances are you already own a great planetary camera, but didnt know it.
Right: Although this photo of the 2004 transit of
Venus was recorded before video was available in
consumer DSLR cameras, the upcoming transit on
June 56 will oer a perfect opportunity to hone
your planetary video imaging skills.
ALL IMAGES ARE COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
COLLI MATE YOUR OPTI CS
Newtonian reectors, Schmidt-Cassegrains, and other mirror-based tele-
scopes need to be precisely collimated to perform at their best. Use a star
near your target to collimate your scope just before you shoot to ensure
your best collimation.
Its surprising what DSLR cameras are capable of these days. Its not
uncommon to see deep photographs of nebulae and galaxies taken with
a stock DSLR, or the Milky Way captured over a picturesque landscape.
But you can also use your DSLR as a high-speed video camera to take
great high-resolution images of the Sun, Moon, and planets like the ne
examples above of Neptune, Uranus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. The
author captured each of these images using a Celestron C11 EdgeHD
operating at f/29 and a Canon EOS Rebel T2i in Live View mode.
high. This down-samples every frame, reducing the reso-
lution of the image.
There are two ways to record planetary videos with a
DSLR at a 1:1 pixel ratio. The rst is to capture the Live
View video feed with a computer using a USB connection.
The other is to record a cropped video with the camera
itself, if your camera model has this feature. Not all cam-
eras have the latter option, but most cameras that include
Live View can be used with the rst method. Live View
displays the video image from the sensor to either the
screen on the back of the camera or to a computer moni-
tor. You will, however, need additional software to record
the Live View video feed on your computer.
Although Canon cameras come with EOS Utility
software that allows remote control of the camera, the
program will only record video onto the memory card in
the camera using its standard video modes, not Live View.
The framing rate you get with video shot in the camera
is usually 24 or 30 frame per second, and it wont drop
frames because all of the processing is handled by the
cameras internal processor.
Software programs including EOS Movie Recorder,
Images Plus, Backyard EOS, and Astro Photography Tool
allow you to capture the Canon Live View video signal on
your computer, even if the camera doesnt shoot video.
When recording planetary videos with your DSLR, use
the cameras exposure-simulation mode if available.
Adjust the shutter speed and ISO to control the exposure.
If you underexpose, your stacked result will be noisy, and
might not be salvageable. Use the daylight white-balance
setting. Images Plus will also capture the Live View signal
from Nikon DSLRs. One word about Nikon its Live
View only allows limited manual adjustment of the expo-
sure, so it may require more experimentation to use it for
planetary imaging.
The frame rate you can capture will depend largely on
the write speed of your computer and operating system.
EOS Movie Recorder and Backyard EOS will record AVI les
that can be directly opened in the planetary image-stack-
ing program RegiStax. Images Plus records uncompressed
data from Canon and some Nikon cameras in a custom
SID format that can then be converted into individual bit-
map images to be stacked in your preferred program. Astro
Photography Tool records high-quality JPEG images from
Live View that can also be stacked in RegiStax.
To access 1:1 pixel data, depending on the camera,
use either the 5 or 10 zoom-in software while record-
ing Live View. Some software also gives you the ability to
zoom in 200%, but this is just the preview being magni-
ed, and it provides no real gain in resolution. The Live
I NCREASI NG YOUR FOCAL LENGTH
Due to a planets small apparent size, youll need to magnify the
image so that its sufciently sampled by the pixels in your cam-
era. The amount of magnication should be based on the cam-
eras pixel size. Use a high-quality Barlow or eyepiece projection
to increase your effective focal length. A simple rule of thumb for
high-resolution work is to shoot at about f/20. If you have a night
of superb seeing, you can push the magnication up to about f/30.
On nights of mediocre seeing, you can use less magnication and
get a wider eld, but expect to record less detail.
Although its easy to capture the entire Moon in a single exposure
through most amateur telescopes using a DSLR camera, sharp
close-ups of lunar craters, such as this detailed portrait of Clavius
(above), or a solar transit of the International Space Station (left),
require high-speed videos to record the best moments of steady
seeing conditions. The author used a Canon EOS Rebel T2i to
record both images.
Solar System Photography
View SID les recorded using Images Plus are uncom-
pressed, but the frames per second (fps) is subject to the
speed of your computer.
Movie Crop Mode
Some cameras, such as the Canon EOS Digital Rebel T2i
and 60D, for example, oer a special 640 480 Movie
Crop Mode under the video movie recording menu
option. This function records only the pixels in the center
of the sensor, giving us the 1:1 pixel data that we need.
Additionally, this mode will also record 60 fps. The Canon
EOS Digital Rebel T3i oers a slight variation on Movie
Crop Mode where you can select 1080p high-denition
video mode and use 3 digital zoom to get 1:1 pixel data at
30 fps, which is particularly useful on wider elds of view
such as the Moon and Sun.
BEATI NG THE SEEI NG
High-resolution planetary photography is all about the seeing.
Seeing describes how much the image of a celestial object is
blurred by turbulence in Earths atmosphere. With good seeing,
an image can be sharp and steady, revealing ne details. Although
nothing will compensate for very poor seeing, high-speed videos
combined with advanced stacking software will increase your
chances of a sharp image by throwing away the blurriest frames
and stacking only the sharpest ones.
Many DSLR cameras oer video modes, but most down sample
the recorded frames to t the popular high-denition television
formats. Additional software may be required to capture the
native resolution video stream from your camera. Images Plus
(www.mlunsold.com) allows your computer to record the Live
View video preview of Canon DSLR cameras to a PC at 24 to 30
frames per second while retaining important control functions
such as exposure, ISO, and white balance.
Using Movie Crop Mode, the video is recorded directly
to the cameras memory card and doesnt require an addi-
tional computer at the scope. The high 60-fps rate in Movie
Crop Mode allows you to take lots of frames in a short
period of time before your target planet rotates enough to
blur detail. This gives you more frames to pick from, and
thus more of a chance to get really sharp results.
Most DSLR cameras record high-denition video using
H.264 video compression in MOV format to maximize
the length of video that can be recorded to the media card.
Unfortunately, popular stacking programs such as RegiStax
and AutoStakkert! 2 cant open these MOV les directly. I
use a program called SUPER (www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.
html) to convert these les to an uncompressed AVI format
that my stacking program can then open. Be warned
though: uncompressed AVI les can be gigantic compared
to the compressed MOV les out of the camera.
The newest DSLRs utilize the latest technology to pro-
duce low-noise images with smaller pixels at higher ISOs,
such as the Canon T2i, T3i, 60D, and 7D. This allows
you to shoot at a shorter focal length while still achiev-
ing optimum pixel sampling. After youve succeeded in
recording hi-resolution planetary videos, processing them
is relatively easy. A selection of current planetary stacking
programs is listed in the May 2011 issue, page 50.
If you normally shoot long-exposure, deep-sky
images with your DSLR, it can be a lot of fun to try some
really short exposures on some relatively bright objects for
a change of pace. With Live View and the video capabili-
ties of todays DSLR cameras, you can take some great
planetary images!
Jerry Lodriguss is a DSLR acionado whose latest book, A
Guide to DSLR Planetary Photography, will be available
next fall. See more of his pictures at www.astropix.com.
Sean Walker
Gallery
GLOBULAR HOUSE CALL
Gerald Rhemann
Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) sports a faint
anti-tail as it passed by globular cluster M92
in Hercules on the evening of February 3rd.
Details: ASA 12-inch f/3.6 astrograph with FLI
ML8300 CCD camera. Total exposure was 35
minutes through color lters.
DUSTY SISTERS
Dean Salman
The Pleiades stars in Taurus are reward-
ing targets for observers and imagers alike.
Any telescopic view will reveal dozens of
members in this nearby cluster, while long
exposures highlight the bluish reection
nebulosity surrounding the stars.
Details: Intes-Micro MN84 Maksutov-Newto-
nian telescope with QSI 583wsg CCD camera.
Total exposure was 6 hours through Astro-
don color lters.
AURORAL ARC
Allen Hwang
With solar activity on the rise,
observers at far-northern latitudes
have reported brilliant auroral
displays on many nights last winter.
This impressive view was captured
in the dark skies over Abisko, Swe-
den, on January 24th.
Details: Nikon D700 digital SLR
camera with 14-mm lens at f/2.8. Total
exposure was 30 seconds at ISO 1600.
MARS APPROACHES
Robert English
As Mars neared Earth early this
year, observers were treated to views
of the rapidly shrinking North Polar
Cap (bottom) and the familiar blue
cloud often seen over Syrtis Major
at right in this detailed image.
Details: 20-inch Newtonian reector
with Point Grey Research Flea3 video
camera. Stack of multiple video frames
recorded through color lters.
Gallery showcases the nest astronomical
images submitted to us by our readers. Send
your very best shots to gallery@Skyand
Telescope.com. We pay $50 for each published
photo. See SkyandTelescope.com/aboutsky/
guidelines.
Gallery
Visit SkyandTelescope.com/
gallery for many more astro-
photos online.
V
gg
p
REFLECTIONS IN M78
Lynn Hilborn
Visible in small telescopes, Messier
78 is a large complex of dust and gas
concealing a cluster containing dozens
of embryonic stars.
Details: TEC APO 140 refractor with FLI
ML8300 CCD camera. Total exposure
was 16 hours through Astrodon lters.
AIRGLOW OVER TBITAK
Rasid Tugral
Greenish airglow is captured in
the exceedingly dark skies over the
TBITAK National Observatory in
Turkey. Orion appears to hover above
the mountains at center.
Details: Canon EOS 450D DSLR camera
with 8-mm sheye lens. Mosaic assem-
bled from multiple images, each exposed
for a total of 90 seconds.
Come See Dozens of Astronomical
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Adorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Ash Manufacturing Co., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Astro Haven Enterprises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Astro-Physics, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Astrodon Imaging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Astronomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Bobs Knobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Camera Bug, Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Celestron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9, 17, 19
CNC Parts Supply, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Diraction Limited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
DiscMounts, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Equatorial Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Explore Scientic - Bresser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Finger Lakes Instrumentation, LLC . . . . . . . 17
Fishcamp Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Focus Scientic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Foster Systems, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Glatter Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Goto USA, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Hands On Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Hotech Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Hubble Optics Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Hutech Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
International Dark-Sky Association . . . . . . . 79
Into the Wind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
InSight Cruises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35, 59, 71
iOptron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
JMI Telescopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Khan Scope Centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19, 82
Knightware. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Kson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
KW Telescope/Perceptor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Lunatico Astronomia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Meade Instruments Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . .5, 88
Northeast Astronomy Forum. . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Oberwerk Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Observa-Dome Laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Oceanside Photo & Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . 69
O cina Stellare s.r.l. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Optic-Craft Machining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Optic Wave Laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Peterson Engineering Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
PlaneWave Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
PreciseParts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Quantum Scientic Imaging, Inc. . . . . . . . . 59
RTMC Astronomy Expo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Santa Barbara Instrument Group . . . . . . . . . 3
ScopeStu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Sky & Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Society for Astronomical Studies. . . . . . . . . 42
Software Bisque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Southern Stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Springer US . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Starizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Starlight Xpress, Ltd.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
StarQuest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Stellarvue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Technical Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80, 82
Tele Vue Optics, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Teleskop-Service Ransburg GmbH . . . . . . . 81
Texas Nautical Repair, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The Observatory, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19, 83
The Teaching Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
University of Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Van Slyke Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Willmann-Bell, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80, 82
Woodland Hills Telescopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
With My Own Eyes
Visual observing is still worthwhile even if it doesnt contribute to science.
Im sometimes asked why I spend time
observing things that professional astron-
omers have studied for so many years. The
rst instance occurred not long after the
Apollo 11 landing. My father came outside
to see what I was up to, puzzled that I
would still be so interested in looking at
the Moon with my 60-mm refractor. After
all, hadnt I seen all the pictures sent back
to Earth? I have no recollection of how
I responded; I can only hope I had the
answer for him then that I give now.
Why bother? After all, these celestial
objects have long been cataloged, many
not long after the telescope was still a
new and paradigm-shattering invention.
Years of patient study have since revealed
the truth behind much of what the rst
telescope users saw. Why go to the trouble
in this day and age to peer into the night
with a relatively small telescope at these
thoroughly characterized (if not quite fully
understood) celestial objects? Surely the
days in which amateurs equipped with
such instruments could make a contribu-
tion to science must be long gone.
Of course, this is not true, and pro-am
astronomy projects are alive and well.
Dedicated and well-equipped amateurs
continually make contributions to science
(for example, see the March issue articles
about Epsilon Aurigae). Some writers refer
to this as making meaningful observa-
tions. But most of us will explore the night
sky and never add a single data point to
any scientic endeavor.
My observations dont lack mean-
ing simply because they dont advance
the cause of science; such was never my
intent. I bought a telescope because Ive
discovered that seeing these things for
myself is deeply satisfying. Its like taking
a trip to the Grand Canyon. Would anyone
seriously support the notion that such a
wonder isnt worth a visit simply because
its so well known?
The same thing holds true for viewing
the Orion Nebula (M42) in the eyepiece.
Countless people have observed, studied,
and recorded it using every technique
and in every wavelength available. But I
still study it myself each winter. It doesnt
matter that others have seen it before. The
best picture postcard of the Grand Canyon
will never replace standing on the rim
and gazing into it with your own eyes. Nor
does it matter that the nature of the Orion
Nebula has already been determined, any
more than the Grand Canyon can be said
to have lost its wonder because we know
what those layers of rock tell us about the
depths of time.
I need to see these things for myself.
That was true when I studied the Moon in
my youth, and that need has grown stron-
ger as Ive grown older. All the photos,
sketches, and images cannot replace the
feeling of seeing for myself shadows cast
by lunar mountains, or the diamond-dust
glitter of a globular cluster. The depth and
beauty of the universe gain a new level of
meaning when you take the time to see
things for yourself. For me, thats reason
enough to spend time at the eyepiece.
Thomas Watson is a freelance writer,
naturalist, and amateur astronomer living
in Tucson, Arizona, right next door to some
very dark and often clear skies.

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Focal Point Thomas Watson
The space race is over.
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Great Sights on Saturn p. 54 18

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