The Sky Show

Barnstable High School Senior Astronomy students, AKA, "Astro Junkies",  are recently focused on a unit called “The Sky Show” which challenges each student to learn the taxonomy of the heavens.

Barnstable High School astronomy students study the use of Insight Observatory's Astronomical Telescopes for Educational Outreach (ATEO).

Similar to Zoology, where each organism is assigned a Class, Phylum, Order, Family, Genus, and species classification, each object in the nighttime sky is given a classification designation as well. As students learn about open star clusters, globular star clusters, spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, irregular galaxies, double stars, planetary nebulae, emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, dark nebula, variable stars, planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, they will select a specific celestial object that they would like to research and image with a partner. Together, they will search the skies, using the website Telescopius.com, to find “that image” that speaks to them and their specific interests.

Barnstable High School astronomy students research and select their deep-sky object to image on the ATEO remote telescope network.

Insight Observatory provides a wonderful opportunity for students to learn about deep-space objects, telescopes (reflectors vs. refractors), and the nighttime sky (in both celestial hemispheres). Students truly enjoy being part of the imaging process. Ownership, which is key to learning, helps create crystallizing memories that will resonate with students for many years to come. If educators are thought of as being in the “memory-making business,” then Astronomy provides the magic for making this happen.

Michael Gyra - Astronomy Teacher, Barnstable High School, Barnstable, MA

 A few images of deep-sky objects acquired by Barnstable High School seniors (Astro Junkies) - M1 imaged on the 16" Dream Aerospace Systems f/3.75 astrograph reflector (ATEO-1), NGC 1499 imaged on the 5" f/5.8 refractor (ATEO-2A) and NGC 2024 imaged on the 12.5" f/9 Ritchey-Chretien (ATEO-3).

More images of deep-sky objects were taken by the Barnstable High School senior astronomy students. Sh2-279 was imaged on ATEO-3, M31 was imaged on ATEO-2A and IC 1848 was imaged on ATEO-1.

A special thank you to Mr. Gyra and his senior astronomy students, AKA, "Astro Junkies", for utilizing Insight Observatory's Astronomical Telescopes for Educational Outreach for the second consecutive school year with their class projects. If you are an educator interested in accessing Insight Observatory's ATEO remote telescope network for a classroom project using its intuitive Educational Image Request (EIR) form, please Contact Us.

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The Pleiades and Triangulum Galaxy

Fall is the time of year when a few deep-sky gems make their way into the night sky once again. The Pleiades, Messier 45, and the Triangulum Galaxy, Messier 33, are on the long list. The Pleiades are also well known to the unaided eye as the Seven Sisters. That is how many stars can only be seen in this open star cluster under dark skies. The image below taken on Insight Observatory's Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach (ATEO-1) displays many many more stars in the cluster.

M45 - The Pleiades imaged at LRGB 600 sec, 2x2 bin on ATEO-1 by Insight Observatory. 

The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. A faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be leftover from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternative name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now likely an unrelated foreground dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing.

Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.

M33 - The Triangulum Galaxy imaged on ATEO-1 at LRGB 600 sec, 2x2 bin by Insight Observatory.

The Triangulum Galaxy (also known as M33) is about 3 million light-years away from Earth. While its mass is not well understood, one estimate puts it between 10 billion and 40 billion times the sun's mass, what is known is it's the third-largest member of the Local Group or the galaxies that are near the Milky Way. Triangulum also has a small satellite galaxy of its own, called the Pisces Dwarf Galaxy.

Under dark sky conditions, M33 is just barely visible with the naked eye in the constellation Triangulum, just west of Andromeda and Pisces.

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Cool Nights and Clear Skies

Some of the clearest nights of the year arrive in late summer and early fall. In much of North America, September and October bring clearer weather than any other month. If that's not enough incentive for you to get out and do lots of stargazing, consider what comes next.

Last evening was one of those crisp nights with sparkling skies that urge me to take out the telescope and/or binoculars and do some observing. November tends to have increased cloud cover, which largely persists until mid to late spring. October is known to be the clearest of the 12 months throughout a wide span from New England through the South and lower Midwest to Texas and the Great Plains.

The Pegasus-Andromeda area spans a huge area of sky Screenshot from Stellarium.

Much of the country is more than 70 percent cloudy in various months. In September and October, only bits of Maine and the Northwest are so obscured. However, from November through April as much as a quarter to one-third of the country is on the unfavorable side of the 70 percent "isoneph" (line connecting points of equal cloudiness).

A mere absence of clouds is one thing, a beautifully clear and transparent sky is another. In much of North America strong cold fronts in September and October often clean the air to superb transparency. At such times we get deep blue skies by day and some of the best observing nights of the year.

What stellar sights can we behold on these nights? In the early evening, there are fewer bright stars than usual. Arcturus is setting in the west-northwest, and the Big Dipper is getting low in the southwest. The only high and bright stars are those of the Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb, and Altair.

Capella is peaking up in the northeast. Above it, the forked branch of Perseus is ascending. Much higher is the "W" of Cassiopeia, the queen.

Face east and look high and you will see the 2nd magnitude stars of Andromeda and Pegasus forming a very long, nearly horizontal line. It starts with Gamma Andromedae on the left, fastens to the Great Square of Pegasus, and ends with Epsilon Pegasi way over in the south.

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