July Meteor Watch

July highlights a few meteor showers, however, none ascents to significant status. The Piscis Austrinids and Alpha Capricornids delivering a maximum of 5 meteors for each hour at their late July peak, however, Southern Hemisphere observers will have better perspectives. The Alpha Capricornids are active for over a month lasting from July 6 through August 10. Unlike most showers, the Alpha Caps have a plateau-like maximum with maximum activity lasting from July 25-30. Since maximum activity is still 2 weeks away, hourly rates will be less than 1 no matter where you are located. The radiant is currently located in the area of the sky that is located in northeastern Sagittarius, roughly 3 degrees north of the 4th magnitude star known as Rho 1 Sagittarii. The radiant is best placed near 0100 hours local daylight time (LDT) when it lies on the meridian and is highest in the sky. With an entry velocity of 22 km/sec., the average Alpha Capricornids meteor would be of slow velocity.

Radiant of the Southern Delta Aqaurid meteor shower.

The month's best performer is the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower, which ordinarily delivers 15 to 20 meteors for every hour. Sadly, the shower peaks the morning of July 30th, one day preceding the month's second full moon. The event does keep up its crest level for a few days so meteor watchers will get a better show on the off chance that they observe within the hour or two in the middle of moonset and the beginning of morning dusk of July 27th and the 28th. The Delta Aquariids get their name because their radiant appears to lie in the constellation Aquarius, near one of the constellation's brightest stars, Delta Aquarii. There are two branches of the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, Southern and Northern. The Southern Delta Aquariids are considered a strong shower. The shower originated from the breakup of what are now the Marsden and Kracht Sungrazing comets. Meteor showers can provide fun for astronomy education projects such as visual meteor observing as described in last April's post, "Methods for Observing the Lyrid Meteor Shower".

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Field of Planetary Dreams

On the evening of May 29, 2015, the Insight Observatory and Cotuit Library staff had the pleasure of hosting a planet observing session opened to the public in Cotuit, MA, a village of the town of Barnstable located on Cape Cod. The event was attended by around 20 people of all different ages and as young as 3 years old. These folks were eager to get their first telescopic view of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn as well as the gibbous Moon. 

The youngest attendee got her first

look at the Moon through a telescope.

Several telescopes that were provided by the Cotuit Library and Insight Observatory were set up just behind the pitcher's mound at Lowell Park, the baseball field that is the home of the Cotuit Kettleers. The Kettleers baseball organization was very generous to allow this observing session to take place on their home field. Due to the phase of the moon almost being full, the observing session was focused on observing the planets that were visible and the moon itself.

The first target of the evening was the planet Venus which was starting to dip down towards the west just after twilight. Insight staff member, Harry Hammond was manning the library's 8" Dobsonian telescope (which is available for checkout for those who have a Cotuit Library card) and I had the control of Insight Observatory's 10" Dobsonian telescope. When our guests were viewing the planet, they would shout out with tones of astonishment "It looks like it has a phase like "the moon". We only see a little over half of it".

We then moved on to Jupiter, about 20 degrees east of Venus. I figured that the excitement of seeing 4 of the giant planet's moons was going to be the highlight of viewing this planet, however, it was the equatorial cloud belts that the observers could see on the planet's disk that amazed them most.

Then there was the bright gibbous moon farther east from Jupiter that was waiting to be viewed by everyone. The "Wow Factor" here was wonderful! The observers could not believe the detail they were seeing on the lunar surface. Two of the Moon's most prominent craters, Copernicus and Clavius stood out very prominently.

Now for the grand finale, Saturn had just risen above the trees toward the east, so we guided both telescopes toward the ringed planet and because Saturn had recently reached opposition, the view was spectacular with Cassini's division obviously visible separating the rings. One observer said, "I thought I would never see the rings of Saturn in my lifetime, thank you!"

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Students Observe Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

The rewards of witnessing students acquire their first visual views and photographic images of Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon are absolutely priceless. On the evening of Tuesday, April 28th, 2105, at 7:30pm EDT, 10 students from the Astronomy Club at the Sacred Heart School in Kingston, MA, gathered at the Kohout-Dingley Observatory located on the school's campus grounds. The goal for the evening was to observe and learn a little about Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon through the observatory's 11" telescope with direction from staff members from Insight Observatory.

Students Prepare to Observe at the Observatory.

Shortly after the sunset and the observatory dome was opened up with the telescope ready to go, a few students started to trickle in along with the school's longtime science teacher and astronomy club advisor, Joe Masi. As twilight began, we pointed out Venus, the "Evening Star" as it began to shine bright in the western sky. The 11" telescope was then trained on the inner planet to allow students to get a peek. Most of the observers reacted by stating, "I can see a phase... It looks like a gibbous moon like tonight’s moon phase."

Sacred Heart Senior, Cam K. Photographs the Moon.

After all the attending students got their first look at Venus through a telescope, we then slewed to the bright-gaseous planet, Jupiter. The seeing was fantastic as usual during and just after twilight. The North and South Equatorial Belts were very apparent. There were also four of Jupiter's moons visible in the field of view. I had every student sit comfortably in the observing chair to allow them to take their time viewing the solar system's largest planet. After they focused the telescope to best suit their view, just about every one of them responded "Wow! That is so amazing! I can see the moons and belts... The belts are a reddish color".

The Moon Featuring the Crater Copernicus Imaged by
 Sacred Heart Student, Cam. K. w/ his DSLR Camera.

Last but not least in any way for sure, was our last target and Grande finally for the evening... The Moon is Earth's nearest neighbor. The phase was a waxing gibbous that provided an excellent view of the popular crater, Copernicus. The shadows observed within the craters and mountain ranges of the moon made the viewing that much more spectacular. One student attending, Cam K., brought his DSLR camera with him as he was there to photograph the observatory and its equipment for a school newspaper article. After viewing Jupiter and the Moon, he asked if he could try photographing the objects through the eyepiece. Cam used the method of holding the camera and zooming into the eyepiece with a telephoto lens as well as steadying the camera on a tripod. This method of astrophotography is known as "eyepiece projection".

In most cases, one would get a camera adapter to fasten the camera body to the focuser of the telescope for this method. However, just as an experiment, his very first results were surprisingly good. Cam is now interested in learning more about astrophotography. While cam is an avid photographer, he made a comment while he was photographing Jupiter through the telescope..."This is the farthest object I have ever focused on and photographed."

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