Items Featured In TGP NOMINAL 7.1 - World Space Week 2020
UK Astronomy's 'Space Crafter' Mobile Observatory:
Ross Hockham's October Sky Guide:
On the 6th, Mars is at its closet point to Earth tonight and will look pretty awesome.
From the 7th, There's a couple of Meteor Showers this month with suggested sub peaks, so keep your eyes up!
From the 7th, There's a couple of Meteor Showers this month with suggested sub peaks, so keep your eyes up!
On the 8th the Draconid Meteor Shower reaches its peak around 10 per hour, although they are known to be slow moving
due to the angle they enter the atmosphere making some cool streaks across the sky.
On the 10th The southern Taurid meteor shower peaks around 5 per hour,
but combined with others in the month it could be an interesting time to look for shooting stars.
On the 13th, Mars reaches opposition and is actually in a good place to observe it in our skies,
it has been prominent growing brighter.
In fact you may need a Moon filter to dim it to see the dark plains and if you are lucky its northern and southern ice caps.
On the 14th A slender Moon and Venus can be seen in the morning sky,
as the goddess of beauty moves back towards the Sun.
On the 15th, Below left of the Moon will be a thin 3% crescent Moon.
On the 16th, Just before sunrise there will be a very thin 1% Moon.
Just at the point of being able to be seen with the naked eye it’s a challenge for you early risers.
Over to the evening on the 17th, just after sunset you’ll again see a thin crescent Moon,
maybe glowing yellow through the evening horizon.
On the 20th there will be another Meteor Shower this month, The Orionids, these peak at around 20-25 per hour.
There has been quite a few people on the UK Astronomy Facebook Group reporting, seeing good shooting stars lately.
In fact Ross saw one fly past Mars recently.
On the 22nd, The Moon and the king of the planets Jupiter, are not far apart tonight in the sky, easy way to find it.
On the 25th, British Summer time officially ends and the clocks go back.
Don’t Forget… and who says time doesn’t change?
On the 29th, Mars again lies close to a bright Moon making a nice sight in our night skies.
On the 31st, The 2nd full moon of the month known as a "Blue Moon",
which actually isn’t blue but has more to do with human culture and meanings.
So with Mars being the highlight of this month go out see the red planet.
Wil Cheung's Object Of the Month:
There's a stunning stunning object call the great Globular Cluster in Hercules, otherwise known as Messier 13.
I love the visual stuff of astronomy of course.
We use the telescopes and and our naked eye but also I love stories.
I love learning about things and kind of understanding them.
Messier 13 is a stunning Globular Cluster, which for the folks who have never looked at a Globular Cluster before,
is basically a collection of loads of loads of loads of stars.
It is naked eye visible but only at Super dark site, but what you need is a decent telescope minimum of 4 inches in aperture. The larger the scope the better, and what you see is this cluster (if you like) a ball of stars.
Loads and loads and in fact we believe there are 700,000 stars.
This cluster is located about 20000 light-years away.
The reason why I love it is because, when you get into astronomy, you kind of understand maybe the basics.
You can see planets, you can see maybe galaxies.
Globular Clusters don't seem to be talked about that often and it's not something that many people kind of understand.
So the very first time I looked at M13, I was absolutely shocked! it's just so beautiful and I always get really excited when I know I've got an opportunity to show guests at the observatory Messier 13.
What we found is that these hundreds of thousands of stars are very very old.
We think they were pretty much formed as the universe forming at the very beginnings of our Milky Way.
So, about 11 or so billion years old huddled up together.
What I love imagining is if you were on a planet within this cluster,
the night sky will just be filled with all these stars in a very very tight space.
So I'll urge anyone if you have the opportunity to look at M13 within Hercules, it's really beautiful!
Various Photos:
Click here for more information about The Garbage POD Episode 63