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Ross Hockham's Mini August Sky Guide :
We start this month a little late but that’s due to one of the highlights of the year, the Perseid Meteor Shower.
The beauty of this event is you don’t need any equipment just grab a hot drink
get the kids, dogs or partner and go out into your garden or a nice dark field and look up.
The peak of the shower happens in the middle of August usually 12/13th but we entered the dust stream left over from a comet in July and won’t leave it until the end of August, so the shower of meteors slowly builds up each night to its peak then slowly dwindles back to normality.
These fixed events like the Perseids are named due to the location in the sky from where the meteors radiate.
The Perseids are named so because they seem to come from the constellation Perseus (The Hero)
in fact from around the ancient hero’s head.
Perseus rises pretty much from when the sunsets, I’d say around 10pm onwards to the North East.
As the night goes on Perseus rises higher so you will get a better chance to see the meteors later in the night.
Some say around 2am will be best due to it still being light till late so set an alarm.
Every year they predict around 100 an hour but you’re never going to see this amount I’m sorry to say cause of light pollution, the Moon is out of the way rising later as a thin crescent this year so great conditions.
Personally, I have counted 67 in around an hour and a half.
But it’s an unpredictable dust lane left by a comet with dense areas within it so you never know.
Just think your seeing pieces of a comet burning up in our atmosphere as our planet passes through its path and it only takes one slightly larger piece to create a stunning display that you’ll remember for ever.
If you're thinking of trying to get a picture of one Wil Cheung has written a Guide for using a camera
and this is what he has to say about capturing Perseids.
"The biggest challenge in capturing Perseids is that they appear very quickly and randomly over the course of the night.
From experience its not necessary just to focus on the constellation, try to get a wide field of view, this means if you do have a choice use a wide focal length lens. I.e 14mm, 18mm.
Once you have found a suitable location, yes, a dark site is ideal as low light pollution means it won’t wash some of the fainter meteors out so you’ll see or capture more. However, you can still capture a few of the brighter ones in the night sky even in a light polluted area so it’s always worth a go even from your garden.
What you will need:
A Camera where you can manipulate the settings, with the ability to control the settings manually.
A Tripod or something to rest your camera on.
An Intervalometer or a camera with one built in.
(which saves you sitting there like Ross has before, clicking 300 pics manually
from his phone's Bluetooth to the camera for two hours, his thumb ached after for two days)
Once the camera is set up on a tripod, you will then need to manually focus to infinity with your camera lens.
The best way to do this is to take the lens off autofocus, then using live view on your camera, zoom into a bright star
turn the focussing ring until the star is as small and sharp as possible, your camera lens is now focused properly.
Now adjust your exposure settings, usually, you would have your aperture as wide as possible to let in more light
and keeping your iso below 3200 to reduce noise.
You would then have a shutter speed up to 15 seconds per click.
A typical set up would be f2.8, iso 1600 for 10 seconds.
However, having a one size fits all isn’t possible as every location and lens and camera will be different.
The key things to consider with exposure in my experience is to keep the shutter open for at least 8 seconds.
For faster lenses – wide aperture means you can have the iso even lower – 800 for example.
Using your intervalometer, or the inbuilt one set up so that your camera just clicks away by itself
saving you from having to keep pressing the shutter every few seconds for as long as your batteries last.
One of the things to think about in astrophotography is consider your composition
having something from the ground helps frame your image, a building, tree for example
often makes the photo more appealing.
Meaning you can sit back snapping way watching the meteors then rush over to see if you captured one"
Now for Ross's part, Smartphone meteor capturing.
The best way to try and grab a snap of these burning bits of comet is to grab an app.
(NightCap is a good iphone variant & ProCam X Lite is pretty good on Android)
As they lets you to play around with the Focus, ISO, WB and Exposure of your phone
allowing you to grab some great pics of the night sky.
NightCap also has some special functions like long exposure mode, light trails mode, stars mode, ISS mode
and yes you guessed it METEOR MODE.
It's really simple like Wil said you can pop it on a tripod or stable surface like a table or the floor, just don’t tread on it
tap the shutter button on the screen and voila.
The phone will automatically start taking pics of the sky doing all the hard work for you
you can then go back check out all the pics deleting any without any meteors.
You can also stop it anytime and move it to face a different direction.
This way you can sit out looking up trying to see any
for yourself then if your like me, rushing to the phone to see if it captured it.
NightCap also works on iPad, so happy hunting or should I say snapping
So that’s the highlight out of the way, where are the planets at the moment?
With the Sun setting around 8.30pm with Venus which can't be seen
you may if you have a clear horizon the small Mercury and red Mars
but they are a pretty hard spot setting very soon after.
Mercury has pretty much reached its greatest elongation so will be moving back towards the Sun soon
making it not good to spot this month.
Saturn rises just after 9pm and is looking good as it rises through the night
with Jupiter rising later around 11.15pm.
Uranus is just after in between Jupiter and the star cluster Pleiades.
Neptune below one of the fish representing Pisces both are in no mans land, so will be harder to find.
Not a great month for planets I’m afraid.
The Milkyway, however is high and proud over our skies, creating a great arching band of stars and dust
best seen around midnight to 2am it’s a stunning sight in our summer skies.
See if you can spot Cygnus (The Swan) flying through it.
If you have a telescope check out the swans head star as it’s a famous double Albireo blue and yellow stars.
From the 18th onwards, the thin crescent Moon can be seen in the afternoon sky slowly getting brighter and higher
as the month goes on, until reaching the 2nd full Moon of the month on the 31st.
This full Moon is known as a blue Moon only because of this reason (not that it will be blue I’m afraid)
being at its closest to the ringed planet, Saturn as it rises.
This Moon is also near Perigee meaning its closest to Earth in its orbit
so will be dubbed by the media as a Super Blue Moon.
Saturn reaches opposition on the 27th, which means it is at it's best to view the planet
as it will seem to be at its biggest and brightest for us in the skies so is this month’s best planet to see.
And that’s the highlights for the month but you can find more guides on our website www.ukastronomy.org
covering deep space objects, constellations, and star clusters for you to find.
Clear skies guys!
And remember
"There’s A Billion Worlds In Your Back Gardens"
Wil Cheung's Infinite Skies Photography Exhibition:
Wil's Infinite Skies Exhibition can be found at the Queen's Hall, Beaumont Street, Hexham NE46 3LS
until the 16th of September
For more information click Here
until the 16th of September
For more information click Here
Click on the image above to find out about events at Twice Brewed Stargazing