Comet Lovejoy Brightens

Who doesn't love a comet that exceeds expectations? That's exactly what's happening with Terry Lovejoy's latest discovery, C/2017 E4 Lovejoy. Discovered on March 10th at magnitude +12, early observations suggested a peak magnitude of +9 in mid-April, assuming it didn't crumble apart en route to an April 23rd perihelion. Terry Lovejoy's comet discovery back in 2014, designated C/2014 Q2, was a real treat for northern hemisphere observers.

A faint ion trail extends for more than 1° in this photo taken on March 30. Note the comet's flattened coma shape.
North is up and east left. C/2017 E4 passes closest to Earth on March 31 (0.6 a.u.) and closest to the Sun on
April 23 (0.5 a.u.) Image by Gerald Rhemann.

Forget that. This fuzzball's already magnitude is +7–7.5 and a snap to see in 50-mm binoculars. I know because I got up Wednesday morning (March 29th) shortly before the start of dawn, pointed my 10×50 glass just below the figure of Equuleus, the Little Horse, and saw a small, dense ball of glowing fuzz without even trying. Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak — now circumpolar in Ursa Major — shines at a similar brightness, but being larger and less condensed, it's not quite as easy to see as Lovejoy.

A little more than a week ago, Comet Lovejoy glowed at magnitude +10–11; a few days ago it was at +9. Given its meteoric rise in brightness, observers are anticipating the comet to crest to magnitude +6 around perihelion as it describes a roller coaster arc across Pegasus and Andromeda. Twice it passes bright deep-sky objects: the bright globular cluster M15 on April 1st and the Andromeda Galaxy on April 20–22. Another easy time to spot it will be on April 8–9 alongside β Pegasi in the northwest corner of the Great Square.

With the Moon out of the picture until around April 7th, comet watchers have lots of dark-sky time to pursue this new find. Just remember that you'll only have a relatively short time before the start of dawn when the comet is highest in the eastern sky. Because of increasingly early sunrises, Lovejoy maintains a fairly constant 15° elevation at the start of morning twilight from mid-northern latitudes through mid-April. My observation was made at 5 a.m. about 10 minutes before dawn's first light. Look for a small, fuzzy spot that appears at first glance like an out-of-focus star.

Read Full Source Article at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/comet-lovejoy-brightens-quickly-heads-north/

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Searching for Planets in the Alpha Centauri System

ESO has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the Very Large Telescope instrumentation in Chile to conduct a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative.

The image below shows the closest stellar system to the Sun, the bright double star Alpha Centauri AB and its distant and faint companion Proxima Centauri. In late 2016 ESO signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the VLT instrumentation to conduct a search for planets in the Alpha Centauri system. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative.

Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)/Digitized Sky Survey 2 
Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin/Mahdi Zamani.

ESO, represented by the Director-General, Tim de Zeeuw, has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives, represented by Pete Worden, Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives. The agreement provides funds for the VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) instrument, mounted at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to be modified in order to greatly enhance its ability to search for potentially habitable planets around Alpha Centauri, the closest stellar system to the Earth. The agreement also provides for telescope time to allow a careful search program to be conducted in 2019.

The discovery in 2016 of a planet, Proxima b, around Proxima Centauri, the third and faintest star of the Alpha Centauri system, adds even further impetus to this search.

Knowing where the nearest exoplanets are is of paramount interest for Breakthrough Starshot, the research, and engineering program launched in April 2016, which aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven "nano craft," laying the foundation for the first launch to Alpha Centauri within a generation.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Read the full article at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170112130736.htm

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The Big Bang!

Back around 1993, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) of Great Britain (the ONLY authority, on celestial nomenclature, naming of celestial objects, etc.)**, put out a sort of 'call for papers', in Sky & Telescope magazine (yup, we astronomers are so creative when it comes to magazine titles), to all astronomers, both amateur and professional, worldwide; it was a request (demand), to come up with a new name, for a long time, 'thorn-in-the-side' issue: "The Big Bang".

Artist Rendition of the "Big Bang".

Like all astronomers, the IAU wanted to crush it. It was childish, nondescript - and it had to go.

The specs for the new term: two words only - and, it had to be descriptive, in some way, of the current state of the universe...

So, after I read the call, I went outside to my telescope, threw my elbow, up onto the optical tube, looked up at the clear, dark night, and asked myself, "OK - what is the universe doing, right now?"

Well, it was doing, basically, one thing - expanding. That expansion was the largest, most powerful event that had ever taken place - anywhere!

Instantly, I thought, "The Great Expansion!" (Ooh! - how clever). And, that was the term I submitted to the IAU...

Three months later, in Sky & Telescope, the IAU published the results of the request. They had adopted a new term, to replace "The Big Bang". This term had been submitted by only six astronomers, worldwide - and I was one of them: the term was, 'The Great Expansion'. I was afraid, for a moment, that I was going to launch into a performance of, "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" - or something - right there in my living room - right in front of my wife! Thankfully, after a spell I regained my composure; then I told my wife... Well, the public didn't seem to care much about the IAU's decision; once it gets something so "cute" stuck, in its collective craw, it becomes difficult to dislodge and, so, 'The Big Bang', remains the term, favor, to this day...

International Astronomical Union

**(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The International Star Registry™, and similar organizations, charge a fee to "name a star" after you, or some loved one, and even present you with a certificate saying as much. However, that "certificate", is just an agreement between you and them - no one else. If that's OK with you then, go for it; you've bought yourself an agreement. In fact, competing companies market their own name catalogs, so, the 'name' of any given star, depends on which company you're doing business with! The IAU neither sells naming rights nor does it authorize any other company or organization to do so. The IAU cautions consumers that products and services marketed by other entities have no formal or official validity whatsoever. With a few exceptions of ancient, or Arabic names, all-stars, are in fact, designated by a Greek letter and catalog number only.)^

^(In 1998, the International Star Registry™ has issued a violation by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs for deceptive advertising, for claiming "official" naming rights, and have since discontinued this claim).

Outside of the IAU, no organization, individual, or other entity can, technically, legally, or in any other respect, 'name' a star, for or, after, anyone.

Dale Alan Bryant
Senior Contributing Science Writer

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Remote Robotic Telescope Lab Notes - Part 1

This will be an ongoing series of articles focusing on the testing of our telescope and all the components that make up the entire imaging system. The goal of these exercises is to thoroughly test every component and the entire system together prior to installation at SkyPi in 2017. We want to hit the ground running when the scope is installed; fixing problems after the final installation would not be impossible, but due to the remote location it would be time-consuming and potentially more expensive than if we identify all problems beforehand.

The Lab...

We recently acquired a second-hand Finger Lakes Instruments ProLine 16803 camera: this large 16-megapixel camera will image wide-field views through our fast 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph. The goal for this exercise is to simply test out the camera for basic functionality; as a second-hand camera, we need to be sure it still functions properly.

The first test was to install the FLI Software Installation Kit (with apps, drivers, etc) on a Windows machine (specifically Windows 10), connect the USB cable from the camera to the computer, and then attach the power supply to the camera. With the camera powered up the FLI software successfully connected to the camera. So far so good!

Our next test was to connect to the camera from TheSkyX Professional (again on Windows 10) and grab a test image...once again no problems.

Test on Windows 10, Success!

Now things got interesting: for our next test, we wanted to connect to the camera from TheSkyX on Linux (Ubuntu). We wanted to test this scenario because we plan to use a Raspberry Pi device to run TheSkyX and drive the mount/camera at the observatory, and since I did not have a Raspberry Pi device immediately available, trying on Linux was the next best thing. After a few false starts and failure to connect issues, I got this to work by installing the FLI SDK and compiling an FLI module that could be loaded into the Linux kernel. Once this was done, we connected successfully and grabbed a test image.

Finally, we wanted to try connecting from Linux using INDI (KStars & Ekos: http://www.indilib.org/about/ekos.html... We are not sure if we will use these tools or not in our final environment but it would be nice to know if it did work. The good news is we had no problems connecting to the camera with Ekos and capturing a test image. Hurrah!

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Cosmic-Watch

When I developed an interest in the stars and astronomy at a young age I recall being fascinated with maps and globes that represented the night sky and solar system objects like the moon. Of particular interest were those clear acrylic globes that had the stars on the outer clear globe (representing the celestial sphere) and a representation of the earth as a smaller globe in the center, with other solar system objects hanging from apertures inside the globe.

Now there is a new app for iOS and Android that successfully creates this Earth-centered view called "Cosmic-Watch" by Celestial Dynamics Ltd. At its core, this app is a watch that has a number of different views and perspectives of our universe with our Earth at the center. These items include:

The clock shows the current time at any location you choose along with the positions of the sun, moon, and planets.

A "celestial sphere" view that shows the location of the stars and planets on a transparent globe encompassing the Earth.

A long-distance view of our solar system shows the relationship of the planets and various overlays which show how the position of the sun relates to the current month/season/etc.

Other features of note:

• For those "astrologically" inclined there is a view showing where the planets are in relation to the constellations in the Zodiac 



• A time adjustment feature that allows users to speed forward or backward in time, useful to see where the sun, moon, or planets may be at some time other than the present

The functionality of the app is straightforward, I had no problem figuring out how to navigate the various options. Point and dragging changed the view as expected. On the Android phone, I tested on (a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact) the graphics were nice and sharp, and beautiful to look at. A small complaint would be on such a small phone the graphics can appear to get a bit cluttered for certain views (like the celestial sphere where there was a bit too much going on)... this is a minor quibble and most likely won't be an issue on larger phones or tablets (anyways this app is screaming out for a larger screen so you can enjoy the view!). I enjoyed exploring with Cosmic-Watch and I can see this being a very useful app in educational settings were explaining why we see what we do in the sky is immensely easier with visuals like what Cosmic-Watch provides. 

How to get Cosmic-Watch:

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cosmic_watch.cosmicwatch

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Time Troubles

I just calculated something out, and the result, well, is rather depressing... This is a photo of a portion of the Milky Way galaxy. Each dot in the photo is a star. More than 50% of all stars have planetary systems such as our Solar System. The nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. Proxima is 4.2 light-years away. There are 5.8 trillion miles in one light-year (or 5.8 thousand billion, or, if you prefer, 5,800,000,000,000), so we're dealing with about 25 trillion miles.

A view of the Milky Way toward the  constellation 
Sagittarius.  Source: Wikipedia.

OK, That's bad enough. But let's say we decide to send an astronaut to Proxima Centauri, in the fastest rocket, at the fastest manned flight speed we've been able to attain (that would be the Saturn V, a 3-stage booster used for the Apollo program - a top speed of 26,000mph). Now, even if we could send that astronaut at the speed of light (exactly 186,282.3976 miles per second, in vacuo), it would take her (or him), 4.2 years to complete the trip as measured by an observer on Earth (because of the relativistic effects of time dilation, only a few days will have passed, as judged by the astronaut - but we're not going there! - not here - that's another story, for another time). But, now for the sad part...

At 26,000 mph, 0.000037% the speed of light, the trip would take 116,000 years. That's one-way. Our astronaut would be, long ago, fossilized. Time dilation is negligible here, so we don't need to factor it in at such low velocities. One of the nearest stars with a known planetary system is around 15 light-years. So, if we have cosmic relatives somewhere out there within that range, the chances of meeting up with them are absolutely nil. These distances and times involved are the reason most astronomers don't believe in UFOs, or that we're being visited by extraterrestrials. YES, WE DO BELIEVE they exist, but not that we're being visited by them on any regular basis. The situation isn't much better with radio communications. Even though radio waves travel at the speed of light, transmission to any hypothetical beings in, say, the Fomalhaut planetary system will take 15 years. That's one-way. Telepathy, should it prove to be viable, would be much more economical, assuming it to be instantaneous. Another plausible answer might be to travel through wormholes, to beat the clock, but, for now, they're hypothetical. Other than that, due to the restrictions on speed, we may never meet anyone else; we might always be alone - surrounded, perhaps, by a myriad of Celestial Peoples - and yet alone, regardless.

Dale Alan Bryant
Senior Contributing Science Writer

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Type Ia Supernovae, Recurrent Novae and Classical Novae

A Possible Symbiotic Relationship Between Type Ia Supernovae, Recurrent Novae, and Classical Novae: Do These Events Occur in the Same or Different Stellar Masses?

Astronomers are trying to determine the answer to the question of whether there is a direct relationship between Type Ia Supernovae (SNeIa), Classical Novae (CNe) and Recurrent Novae (RNe). Some evidence has been found to support a distinct relationship between catastrophic SNe events and RNe outbursts. There is evidence that tipping of the scale into a full-fledged Type Ia SN may be related to RNe, and though some evidence seems to point to this, all the particulars are not out regarding the three types. Do the three events occur within the same stellar mass, or are they separate events occurring in separate stellar masses? 

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.

The results of a study, led by Ben Dilday, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at UC Santa Barbara and at Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), are surprising because previous indirect –– but strong –– evidence had pointed to the merger of two white dwarf stars as the originators of other Type Ia supernovae. One interesting subject is the planetary nebula NGC 5189. It has a unique, torqued-spiral shape, with peculiar patterns of knots around its periphery, possibly due to wobbling in the stars' rotation, or, possibly, to the presence of a binary white dwarf system at its center.

Symbiotic binaries are systems containing both a white dwarf (WD) and a red giant component. Symbiotic novae are those systems in which thermonuclear eruptions occur on the WD component. These are to be distinguished from events are driven by accretion disk instabilities analogous to dwarf novae eruptions in cataclysmic variable outbursts. Another class of symbiotic system is that in which the WD is extremely luminous and it seems likely that quiescent nuclear burning is ongoing on the accreting WD. A fundamental question is the secular evolution of the WD. Do the repeated outbursts or quiescent burning in these accreting systems cause the WD to gain or lose mass? If it is gaining mass, can it eventually reach the Chandrasekhar Limit and become a supernova (a Type Ia SN if it can hide the hydrogen and helium in the system)? In order to better understand these systems, a new study has begun on the evolution of Thermonuclear Runaways (TNRs) in the accreted envelopes of WDs using a variety of initial WD masses, luminosities, and mass accretion rates. Astrophysicists have put into use a 1-D hydrocode, NOVA, which includes the new convective algorithm of Arnett, Meakin, and Young, the Hix and Thielemann nuclear reaction solver, the Iliadis reaction rate library, the Timmes equation of state, and the OPAL opacities. It is reported that (1) the WD grows in mass for all simulations so that canonical 'steady burning' does not occur, and, (2) that only a small fraction of the accreted matter is ejected in some (but not all) simulations. They have also found that the accreting systems, before thermonuclear runaway, are too cool to be seen in X-ray searches for Type Ia SN progenitors.

SN PTF 11kx Imaged by BJ Fulton  
Las Cumbres Global Telescope Network.

The case of SN PTF 11kx, discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory, showed this relationship beyond further doubt. Astronomers could discern that the supernova was surrounded by shells of hydrogen gas that had likely been blown off in previous nova eruptions, decades before the supernova occurred. Novae are more frequent but weak explosions not catastrophic to the star. While similar shells of material had been seen before in a handful of Type Ia supernovae, their origin was debated and they had never before been firmly linked to novae - some doubted that the material was near the supernova at all. SN PTF 11kx proved differently. The surrounding gas was moving too slowly to be from the supernova event itself, but too fast to be from a typical stellar wind. Lars Bildsten, director of UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, hypothesized that it was material shot out from a previous nova eruption, which had been slowed as it collided with the wind from the red giant star. UCSB graduate student Kevin Moore showed this hypothesis to be plausible and would lead to gas moving at speeds seen in the observations. Adding credence to the theory was the fact that the material moved at two different speeds -- faster-moving interior material to slower-moving exterior -- exactly as expected. The outer material had been slowing for decades, while the inner material had less time to slow. But if this was the case, the fast-moving supernova ejecta should have eventually collided with the nova material. About two months after the explosion, this is exactly what happened. New observations showed that the supernova ejecta was colliding with the interior shell of the material. It was impossible to doubt that this gas was nearby the supernova. "This was the most exciting supernova I've ever studied," said Dilday, "For several months, almost every new observation showed something we'd never seen before."

This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; The Palomar Transient Factory at the California Institute of Technology; Baltic Astronomy, Vol 21, pages 76 - 87, 201arXiv:1211.6145v1 [astro-ph.SR]

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May 9th 2016 Transit of Mercury

On Monday, May 9th, 2016, a transit of the planet Mercury will take place. The tiny planet will travel across the face of the Sun. Mercury transits are rare events that can be observed from much of the world, however, since they involve viewing the Sun, extreme caution must be taken when attempting to observe them. NEVER look directly at the sun with the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes unless they are equipped with special solar filters and supervised by an educator or experienced amateur astronomer. One of the easiest and safest ways to observe this rare event is online via a live web feed. Insight Observatory will be broadcasting a live web of the transit courtesy of Sky and Telescope Magazine's Livestream channel. You can watch the progress of the planet Mercury crossing the Sun's disc on our website at http://www.insightobservatory.com/p/real-time-astronomical-event.html.

Sky and Telescope Magazine Diagram.

During this transit, the planet Mercury is seen as a tiny black dot moving slowly in an East-to-West direction across the Sun. The 2016 transit begins on May 9th at 11:12 UT (Universal Time, which is equivalent to Greenwich Mean Time) and ends later that same day at 18:42 UT, with mid-transit taking place at 14:57 UT. Here in the northeast, the event begins at 7:22 am with the transiting midpoint at 10:57 am and ending at 2:42 pm. If you’re in western North America, the rising Sun will already display Mercury’s black dot. Easterners and many Western Europeans will be able to watch the entire transit, weather permitting, from Mercury’s first sign of visibility onto the Sun’s face to its final disappearance 7½ hours later.

For the rest of Europe, Africa, and most of Asia, the transit also begins in the daytime but will still be underway when the Sunsets. Observers in Australia and eastern Asia will just have to watch online as it will not be visible to those parts of the globe. For more detailed information on of the Mercury transit, please visit Sky and Telescope's article covering the event.

Mercury is the smallest planet, therefore, you'll need a telescope to observe its transit. The black silhouette will appear only 12 arcseconds wide even though Mercury is at inferior conjunction. That’s about 1⁄160 of the Sun’s width and only a fifth the diameter (and 4% of the area) of Venus’s dramatic black disk during the rare transits of Venus. When first viewing, you might mistake Mercury for a small sunspot. It’s precisely round and lacks a gray penumbra. As Mercury travels across the Sun’s vast expanse, how readily can you see its motion? If it passes near a sunspot, can you see that it’s darker than even the sunspot’s umbra? When Mercury departs at egress, the sequence of phenomena at ingress unwinds in reverse order.

Image from In-The-Sky.org

After a May transit, a November transit always occurs 3.5 years later (for instance: May 9, 2016, and November 11, 2019). Transits recur on nearly the same date in cycles of 46 years (for instance: May 9, 2016, and May 10, 2062). November transits, which are more common than May transits, occasionally recur in periods of 7 years, and more frequently in periods of 13 and 33 years. If you simply can’t catch 2016’s Mercury madness, make sure to mark your calendar for the next mercury transit on November 11, 2019. After that, you’ll be waiting until 2032.

Sources: Sky and Telescope Magazine, NakedEyePlanets.com

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Astronomy And Neighbours In Space

So often during the night of the summer months in this beautiful part of Spain, the southeast's night sky is so clear and awesome that when you arrive home in the dark, you feel the need, or I certainly do, to observe the sky to try and understand the grandiose, limitless wonder of the universe, or simply to just enjoy the constellations and distant planets and stars.

An app on my phone can tell me all sorts of great, interesting information (not sure how the astronomers arrived at such detailed distances and composition) about the stars in the night sky. But I use it in those months when the temperatures at night, in our terraces, make it so comfortable to wonder in awe at the vastness of space. I need to invest in a powerful telescope to appreciate the night sky with more accuracy and clarity.

Solar Walk App - Saturn and its Moons.

It has been 3 years since I had that kind of thought after arriving here to retire, and I know that eventually, I will treat myself to such a device. But so many people also share this kind of fascination for our night sky, especially scientists who are constantly studying the Universe, searching for new planets, galaxies, or solar systems where there could be inhabited planets similar to our own.

My phone app says there are many moons orbiting our solar system's nine planets. Their names? I don't know; there could be over 150 of them! Some astronomers speak of 170 or more, maybe too many names to learn... Now they also talk in terms of Pluto's downgrading as a planet. Is it not out there now? I believe it is, but if it is no longer a planet, what has it become?

Winter Constellations - Image by AstronomyTrek.com.

So what do we have out there? Constellations, solar systems, galaxies, planets, asteroids, stars of all sizes and distances from our planet, dwarf planets, and all kinds of floating bodies in the sky: celestial bodies around our sun and many other stars. And astronomers say the Universe is growing constantly, towards where? How can there be so much space out there? They know there is, but how is it growing? They say they are discovering new solar systems all the time, and in them, more and more planets.

Can we say it is unimaginable that we are alone in outer space? Clearly, they think otherwise, or else they would not be searching all the time for other inhabited planets out there. As a matter of fact, only a few months ago, NASA issued the news of several planets that could possibly have a similar life as our own planet. In that vastness of space, one day, a few planets will be discovered with a life of some sort or another, and perhaps with beings possessing superior technology than our own.

Maybe they are visiting us right now or have done so in the past and found us so primitive that they did not bother to say hello, and left us behind in our survival. But now we are traveling to other planets or will be soon, and already touched our moon, so we are advancing all the time in our search for better space fuels to propel us through to other planets and eventually to other galaxies, perhaps.

Science fiction now has to look for much further horizons, and I am sure it is all the time because so many of the so-called science fiction technology gadgets are already in our hands, in everyday use by almost everyone.

If our planet were formed as a result of a giant explosion of gas and matter that made our star the sun and its other neighboring planets around it, how many other planets can exist out there formed from the continuous explosions of gas and clouds of matter that perhaps one day will be called our space neighbors? Even if they happen to be hundreds of light-years away from us?

You pay a visit to your neighbors frequently or from time to time, but how can we visit any of our neighbors in outer space? Well, scientists and astronomers are busy on that front every day, and they do not stop amazing us with their findings and wisdom.

These ideas and thoughts during the summer are present quite often in my mind because of the sheer beauty of the sky at night in this part of the world. Writing this article to publish it also like a post on my site http://www.SweetHolidayHomes.com may give you the desire to visit this part of the world next time you feel you need a vacation to enjoy this part of the world.

German Calvo

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Astronomy-And-Neighbours-In-Space&id=9239432

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Featured Deep-Sky Object - M104 Sombrero Galaxy

The spring evening sky presents a plethora of galaxies to observe through remote robotic and backyard telescopes. One galaxy in particular that has interesting and unique characteristics is known as the Sombrero Galaxy, also called M104 or NGC 4594.

The Sombrero Galaxy is about 28 million light-years (50,000 light-years in diameter) from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The galaxy is so named because the halo-like features surrounding its disc are unusually large, making it look like a sombrero. It's not exactly known who discovered the galaxy. The discoverer was either Pierre Mechain or Charles Messier. William Herschel independently discovered the object in 1784, even though it had already been discovered by others.

M104  - "Sombrero Galaxy" in Virgo, imaged by Sam P. and Tom M.

The Sombrero Galaxy is a favorite target for well-equipped amateur astronomers. If you have a good dark-sky site, the object can be spotted through binoculars (those with large telescopes can spot the dust lane). This spring and early summer object can be found halfway between the constellations Virgo and Corvus.

Location of M104 in the Constellation Virgo

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope have been used to study the Sombrero in visible and infrared light. The star-birth regions stand out in infrared wavelengths and are mostly located along the outer rim of the dust ring surrounding the galaxy’s core. The Sombrero Galaxy looks as it does partly because we are viewing it “edge-on” from our point of view here on Earth.

"Close observations of the central bulge display many points of light that are actually around 2000 globular clusters that hover around the core of the galaxy, and the number could be related to the size of the central bulge. M104's spectacular dust rings host many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand," stated the NASA website Astronomy Picture Of The Day in a July 2013 entry.

Examination of the galaxy in recent years revealed that it had a sort of "split personality," NASA said on another website, showing that is a large elliptical galaxy that has a disk galaxy embedded inside of it. The reason this happened is still poorly understood.

The image to the upper-left was acquired by 6th-grade students at the Plymouth Community Intermediate School located in Massachusetts as part of a class astronomy education project called "The Galaxy Project - What Lies Beyond the Stars?" The image was taken with a 17" telescope remotely in New Mexico with a 5-minute exposure.

Sources: Space.com, Space-Facts.com

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Exoplanet LkCa 15b

As I was researching astronomy education projects pertaining to exoplanets, (my interest has been growing on the subject lately) I stumbled upon an interesting article on the web about an alien planet announced back in November of 2015. The alien planet, called LkCa 15 b, orbits a star 450 light-years away and appears to be on its way to growing into a world similar to Jupiter.

LkCa 15 b is a candidate protoplanetary object in orbit around LkCa 15, a star in the Taurus-Auriga Star-Forming Region. The object was discovered by direct imaging techniques using the Keck II telescope in 2011 by Adam Kraus and Michael Ireland. A 2015 study of observations from the Magellan Telescope and the Large Binocular Telescope argued that the planet is forming through accretion. It is the first of its kind to be seen in the process of active accretion.

The artist's illustration shows how planets could form in

a transition disc around a star similar to LkCa 15 b.

Credit: NASA/JPL - Caltech.

"This is the first incontrovertible detection of a planet still in the process of forming--a so-called 'protoplanet'," commented Dr. Kate Follette in a November 18, 2015, Stanford University Press Release. Dr. Follette is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford in Palo Alto, California, and a co-lead author of the study published in the November 19, 2015, issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Follette's work produced a remarkable digital image of LkCa 15 b glowing in the glaring light of searing-hot hydrogen gas--which is a prediction of planet-formation theories that have now been verified directly by the important observations of Dr. Follette and her co-authors.

The observation was combined in the paper with data that had been provided by Steph Sallum, the co-lead author and doctoral student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who independently observed the same parent star with a complementary technique. Using the University of Arizona’s Magellan Telescope in Chile, Follette, her adviser at Stanford, Professor Bruce Macintosh, and their co-authors at the University of Arizona were able to hone in on this particular shade of red H-alpha light emanating from LkCa 15 b.

The planet is forming in a transition disk, a doughnut-like ring of dust and rocky debris orbiting its parent star, LkCa 15. The central clearings within transition disks are believed to be created by the formation of planets, which sweep up dust and gas from the disk as they orbit the star. Astronomers have long speculated that investigating these gaps could lead to the discovery of protoplanets, but getting a good look at these infant worlds has been challenging.

Adaptive optics observations from

the Large Binocular Telescope and the

Magellan Adaptive Optics System.

Credit by: Steph Sallum.

The team confirmed the existence of LkCA 15b, imaging it directly in hydrogen-alpha photons, a type of light that's emitted when superheated material accretes onto a newly forming world. (Like newborn stars, newborn planets are surrounded by disks of feeder material.)

In the November 2015 journal Nature, study team members reported that other LBT observations revealed the presence of another newborn planet, LkCA 15c, inside the gap and suggested that a third (LkCA 15d) exists there as well.

"We're seeing sources in the clearing," Sallum said. "This is the first time that we've been able to connect a forming planet to a gap in a protoplanetary disk."

"The researchers' discovery provides stringent constraints on planet formation theories," Zhaohuan Zhu of Princeton University, who was not affiliated with the new study, wrote in an accompanying "News & Views" piece in the same issue of Nature. "For example, such theories now have to explain how a giant planet can form 15-16 AU from its star within 2 million years, and still be growing after this time."

"The new technique demonstrated by Sallum and her team could lead to the discovery of many other newly forming exoplanets, allowing astronomers to learn much more about the distribution of young worlds",  Zhu added.

"Such an understanding of the young planet population will shed light on the decades-old problem of planet formation, and reveal how young planetary systems can evolve into older ones such as our solar system, billions of years after they were born," Zhu wrote.

Sources: Astronomy Now, Wikipedia, Space.com

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Cobb Astro Park

On Saturday afternoon, January 30, 2016, The Cotuit Library hosted a talk entitled "The Sky Show" for the general public presented by Barnstable High School astronomy teacher, Michael Gyra and one of his students, Albert Brox III. The presentation started with Mr. Gyra showing a PowerPoint presentation displaying impressive pictures of occasional stargazing and observing sessions he and his astronomy students put on at Sandy Neck beach located in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Mike also displayed a series of astronomical slides and shared interesting facts about them. A few that stuck out were the distance of astronomical objects and the gravitational lensing. One of Mike's former students, Kevin Harrington is graduating from Umass with a double major in Astronomy and Neuroscience. Kevin was part of a team who identified 8 new sources (early galaxies) through gravitational lensing.

Cobb Astro Park - Photo by Mike Gyra.

What I found to be the most impressive part of the talk was what Mike and a team of others accomplished on the campus of Barnstable High School. The center courtyard at the High School was a forgotten space for many years, overgrown with weeds and basically ignored. Over the span of 11 years, since 2004, Mike and his team (as well as help from students) transformed the courtyard into the Cobb Astro Park. The park features gardens, murals, mosaics, marble sculptures, a labyrinth, and an observatory. The park has an unmistakably Greek Esque decor, with Doric columns all around its perimeter, an amphitheater, statues of Poseidon and The Winged Victory, an interactive sundial, and murals depicting the Parthenon and astronomical constellations.

Albert Brox III Controlling  the 14" Telescope in the

David B. Cole Observatory - Photo by Mike Gyra.

Located at the center of the park is the David B. Cole Observatory, which features a retractable roof, a computer control room, and houses a Celestron 14" telescope equipped with a CCD camera system for imaging celestial objects. This brought us to the last part of the presentation. Mike's student, Albert, took over the lecture to display his collection of images of deep-sky objects he had taken through the observatory's telescope. Albert Brox III, a sophomore at the high school had imaged deep-sky objects M42 - The "Great Orion Nebula", M13 - The "Great Hercules Globular Cluster, and my personal favorite of his images, M1 - The "Crab Nebula" in the constellation of Taurus, a supernova remnant from a supernova first recorded by Chinese astronomers in AD 1054. Albert acquired and processed all of the images himself with astronomy imaging processing software such as MaximDL and Gimp. The amazing part of this story is that Albert has only been imaging for a little over half a year since the observatory became operational in July of 2015.

M1 - The "Crab Nebula" Imaged by Albert Brox III.

I was fortunate to meet and speak with Mr. Gyra and Mr. Brox after the talk about their accomplishments and how inspiring they were and how nice it was to hear of a high school participating in great depth with astronomy education. Mike and I also discussed a plan about Insight Observatory and Barnstable High School collaborating on astronomy projects with his astronomy classes for the next school year.

A sincere thank you to Mr. Gyra and Mr. Brox for sharing their interests and passion for astronomy with the public. Also, a special thank you to the Cotuit Library for their continuing series of talks on the subject of astronomy.

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Featured Deep-Sky Object - NGC 3115

Welcome to the first post of Insight Observatory's "Featured Deep-Sky Object" series. The purpose of these posts is to share some images of the finest deep-sky objects in the night sky and a few facts about them. All images of these objects posted have been acquired by either Insight Observatory staff members or students utilizing remote robotic telescopes.

Our "Featured Deep-Sky Object" for this post is NGC 3115. Also called the Spindle Galaxy or Caldwell 53, NGC 3115 is a spiral galaxy located in the southern hemisphere constellation Sextans. The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on February 22, 1787. At about 32 million light-years away from Earth, the galaxy is several times bigger than the Milky Way. It is a lenticular galaxy because it contains a disk and a central bulge of stars, but without a detectable spiral pattern. NGC 3115 is seen almost exactly edge-on but was originally misclassified as an elliptical galaxy. There is some speculation that NGC 3115, in its youth, was once a quasar.

NGC 3115 - "Spindle Galaxy" Imaged on T13
by Insight Observatory.

In 1992, Astronomers John Kormendy of the University of Hawaii and Douglas Richstone of the University of Michigan announced what was observed to be a supermassive black hole in the galaxy. Based on the orbital velocities of the stars in its core, the central black hole has a mass measured to be approximately one billion solar masses. The galaxy appears to have mostly old stars and little or no activity. The growth of its black hole appeared to have stopped.

In 2011, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory examined a black hole at the center of a large galaxy. A flow of hot gas toward the supermassive black hole has been imaged, making this the first time clear evidence for such a flow has been observed in any black hole. As gas flows toward the black hole, it becomes hotter and brighter. The researchers found the rise in gas temperature begins at about 700 light-years from the black hole. This suggests that the black hole in the center of NGC 3115 has a mass of about two billion solar masses, supporting previous results from optical observations. This would make NGC 3115 the nearest billion-solar-mass black hole to Earth.

Fact Source: Wikipedia

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Of a Different Color...

Where is the color? This a common question that gets asked among star party visitors and those first-time telescope buyers when they get a glimpse of galaxies and nebula through a telescope. We have been primed through the media - be it web, television, or print - to expect these nebulae and galaxies we observe through our telescopes to have the multicolored palette and hues that we see from images taken with photographic or modern CCD technology. Yet when we step up to the eyepiece to view the Orion Nebula or Whirlpool Galaxy, we see only a greyish-blue image through the telescope. So what happened?

Visual Observation of M42 - Orion Nebula
Sketch by Jeremy Perez, Flagstaff, AZ.

It boils down to biology, in particular how your eye works. Your eye has a light-sensitive area called the retina which is composed of two types of light-detecting cells called rods and cones. The difference..?

• Cones, located near the center of the eye, are capable of detecting color when there is plenty of light available.  They are not so good, however, at detecting low light levels such as through a typical amateur telescope.


• Rods, on the other hand, are much more sensitive to low light levels. They do not, however, detect color and are located mostly away from the center of the retina - this is why you can often detect more detail when viewing an object through a telescope by using "adverted vision", effectively looking not directly at the object but slightly off-center so that you bring your rods into play.

CCD Image of M42 - Orion Nebula

Mike Petrasko & Muir Evenden - Insight Observatory.

So there you have it: because of the low light levels present in most astronomical objects viewed through a telescope, the cones of your eye are unable to detect the object, whereas the rods are able to perform this task, but without any color information. When there is enough light available, such as when we view a planet like Jupiter or Mars through the telescope, then cones can come into play and we see the same color as comes from NASA space probes. Note that photographic or electronic (CCD) detectors don't have this cone/rod problem, but in order to improve their sensitivity to low light, a combination of low temperature and long exposures must be used to record the light from the object and present it to us in the form of an image.

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Observing the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy

As I may have mentioned in my previous posts, I have always enjoyed deep-sky observing with my telescopes. My favorite type of deep-sky object to observe is galaxies. I especially enjoy barred spiral galaxies due to their unique characteristics. Many of the observable galaxies with backyard telescopes are designated as "Faint Fuzzies" due to their low magnitudes and lack of characteristics through smaller telescopes. However, there are many galaxies that are observable with smaller backyard telescopes that have many distinct characteristics an observer is able to enjoy. For example... M51, "The Whirlpool Galaxy" in Canes Venatici, M31 - "The Andromeda Galaxy" in Andromeda, and M104 - "The Sombrero Galaxy" located in Virgo is to name a few that are visible in the northern hemisphere with smaller backyard telescopes.

NGC 1365 - The "Great Barred Spiral Galaxy" Imaged by Insight Observatory.

When I started flipping through the pages of the January 2016 issue of "Sky and Telescope" magazine, I almost immediately opened the publication to the article "The Definitive Barred Spiral - NGC 1365" in the "Observing: Going Deep" section by Howard Banich. Banich's article is well written and describes several of his observations of this island universe in great detail with quotes from his observing log as well as detailed sketches of NGC 1365 he recorded using different-sized telescopes and magnifications. Banich observed the galaxy utilizing a telescope with mirror sizes from 8" up to 28" over the span of a few years. The drawings and photographs of the barred spiral in the article gave me the inspiration to observe the galaxy myself. One problem... The galaxy can only be seen in the southern hemisphere.

NGC 1365, also known as the "Great Barred Spiral Galaxy", is located in the constellation Fornax. After reading Banich's article, I logged onto the remote robotic telescope network we use here at Insight Observatory and was able to acquire a 10-minute exposure of the galaxy using a one-shot color CCD camera (inserted in this article). I guess the point of this blog entry is to continue stressing the value of having access to remote robotic telescopes around the globe. I may not be able to visually observe this interesting deep-sky object due to my physical location here in the northeastern area of the United States, however, I was able to capture an image immediately from my desktop computer that I could process and study the fine characteristics this object has to offer.

Some Interesting Facts About NGC 1365:

NGC 1365, also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy about 56 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax.

A very bright supernova was discovered by Alain Klotz with the TAROT telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile on October 27, 2012, in NGC 136. The supernova was designated 2012fr.

NGC1365 is a giant Seyfert-type galaxy with a diameter of 200,000 light-years. It is arguably the most prominent barred spiral in the sky.

The bar rotates clockwise with velocities in the nucleus of 2000 km/sec resulting in one rotation in 350 million years.

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Observing Comet Catalina

The cold and clear mornings we have had recently provided a few opportunities to get some good observations of Comet Catalina C/2013 US10. After reading about the many comets that were visible through small telescopes and binoculars, on the morning of January 5, 2016, at 5:15 am, I thought I would take a shot at locating Comet Catalina with my 9x63 binoculars. 

Using the comet finder chart provided online by Sky and Telescope magazine, the comet was shown to be located a few degrees north of Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation of Boötes (Herdsman or Plowman). As I made my first attempt to locate the "dirty snowball" through my binoculars, I almost immediately spotted a condensed "fuzzy" object very close to the area the comet should be. I wasn't convinced this was the comet as it resembled a globular cluster. From my experiences of deep-sky observing, I was convinced it was M3, a bright globular cluster located in the constellation of Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, very close to the border of Boötes. I then slewed my binoculars a few degrees to the southeast and there it was! The comet appeared as a much fainter patch of condensed light. As twilight matured, the sky became brighter and the comet became harder to see. I leaned back against my SUV in the driveway and took in the amazing view of the planets lined up throughout the Zodiac. There was Jupiter to the west, Mars to the east, Venus, the waning crescent Moon, and last Saturn in the glow of the sunlight.

Comet Catalina - Imaged by Insight Observatory.

After spotting Comet Catalina on that frigid morning, I was inspired to get a closer look at it with a 10" Dobsonian reflector telescope. However, the weather didn't cooperate the next day, so I waited one more day. Fortunately, the weather did provide another opportunity to observe the comet on the morning of January 7, 2016. The comet moved throughout the constellation within the few days since the first time I spotted it. The object was pretty much the same magnitude (brightness) as the previous time I viewed it. However, this time, I could resolve the nucleus enveloped in a diffused nebulous "cloud" due to the higher magnification of the telescope.

After studying the comet with the telescope that morning, the weather on the Cape was non-cooperative for close to a week afterward. However, surprisingly this past Friday, morning, January 15, 2016, around 5:30 am, the sky was perfectly clear. I went out on the front porch with my binoculars to see if I could locate it without any finder charts. I knew it was supposed to be near the handle of the Big Dipper from seeing images taken by others the previous days. I started scanning the area of the handle and spotted the comet again immediately. It seemed to have brightened a bit from the last time I saw it. The comet was very close to the last star in the handle of the Big Dipper named Alkaid. The bright star and Catalina were in the same field of view through my binoculars. It was quite a sight!

Comet Catalina - Imaged by Raffaelle Esposito.

Inspired by this view of the comet, I then went to my computer and logged into the iTelescope remote robotic telescope network (utilized by Insight Observatory) and connected to their telescope with a one-shot color CCD camera connected to it. The telescopes were very busy that morning, however, T3 became available and I jumped on and imaged the comet for 5 minutes as pictured in this post. Later during the day on Friday, I came across a great image of the comet captured by Raffaele Esposito on January 14, 2016 (pictured left) with the bright star Alkaid and the spiral galaxy NGC 5448 behind the comet's tail.

Some Interesting Facts About Comet Catalina C/2013 US10:

C/2013 US10 is an Oort cloud comet discovered on 31 October 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey at an apparent magnitude of 19 using a 0.68-meter Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope. As of September 2015, the comet became apparent magnitude 6.

The comet reached its perihelion (its closest point to the sun) at a distance of 76 million miles (122 million kilometers) on November 15 and as it slingshotted past the sun, Catalina reached a velocity of 103,000 miles per hour (166,000 kilometers per hour), which is almost three times the speed of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. The velocity means that the comet is on an escape trajectory from the solar system and will never return.

The comet passes closest to Earth at 0.72 a.u. on January 12th, then buzzes Mizar in the Big Dipper's handle on January 14–15, hurrying along at the rate of 2° per day or 5′ an hour — fast enough to easily detect motion in 30 minutes or less. After mid-month, it's expected to fade quickly.

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