TGP NOMINAL XTRA - September Skies 2019
Ross Hockham's September Sky Guide:
At the beginning of the month, the Moon will again be slipping back across the sky each night, first passing Jupiter which has been getting lower and lower soon to disappear below our horizons.
Then being very close to Saturn on the 8th, I would imagine this would make a good picture,
as you should be able to get both objects in one shot with a bit of camera wizardry.
Then being very close to Saturn on the 8th, I would imagine this would make a good picture,
as you should be able to get both objects in one shot with a bit of camera wizardry.
The Moon will continue slipping towards the East,
where on the 9th you can get another peak at Cassini's Moon Maiden (If you have a telescope).
This is a phenomenon caused by highlands jutting out into a Mares in the Montes Jura,
or Jura Mountains region.
It looks like a woman sitting on a rock with flowing hair.
While looking for the Moon Maiden, why not head further south and see if you can spot a huge black line in the Mares Nubium, known as the Straight Wall.
It is a Lunar fault line and can be seen easily even with a small telescope.
It is 70 miles long and 1,300 feet high and looks really cool!
On the 10th, Neptune (The windy gas giant) reaches opposition.
You will need a telescope to see our farthest planet but tonight it will be slightly brighter and easier to find, well that is if the Moon wasn’t in the way.
On the 13th, The Moon is just below the planet, making it hard to spot but giving you a good indication of its whereabouts, for when it moves out of the way.
The planet itself is in the Constellation 'Aquarius' (The Water Carrier),
and is very close to a yellow star called 'Phi Aquarii'.
Making a great contrast between the blue planet and the star, possibly a good picture opportunity.
It’s the later part of the month, where it will be probably best to find it, as the Moon dips below the horizon etc.
You will need a telescope to see our farthest planet but tonight it will be slightly brighter and easier to find, well that is if the Moon wasn’t in the way.
On the 13th, The Moon is just below the planet, making it hard to spot but giving you a good indication of its whereabouts, for when it moves out of the way.
The planet itself is in the Constellation 'Aquarius' (The Water Carrier),
and is very close to a yellow star called 'Phi Aquarii'.
Making a great contrast between the blue planet and the star, possibly a good picture opportunity.
It’s the later part of the month, where it will be probably best to find it, as the Moon dips below the horizon etc.
The 14th It’s a full Moon and this one is the closest to the September Equinox, making it dubbed the Harvest Moon. Which has real significance in Native American culture.
On the 25th, the Moon is moving out the way, so a great time to spot Neptune and it's moon Triton.
It's also a good time to get out and look for those dimmer objects like Galaxies and Nebula.
The Constellation 'Andromeda' is high enough to be able to view it.
If you find the constellation's middle star 'Mirach' and follow the stars up from this,
reaching towards the constellation 'Cassiopeia' (The Vain Queen).
Don’t forget both Jupiter and Saturn are up at the moment just after sunset!
there are some lovely double stars out there, a famous one is called 'Albireo',
at the head of the constellation 'Cygnus' (The Swan).
The Ring Nebula in the Constellation 'Lyra' (The Harp),
Which is not far from the bright star Vega and the Great Hercules Globular Cluster.
Mark McCaughrean's Object of The Month:
This months "Object Of The Month was chosen by 'Mark McCaughrean, who is not only the Senior Advisor for Science and Exploration at the European Space Agency but is also a TGP NOMINAL Honorary Crew Member
For his object of the month he decided to go way Off The Beaten Track and pick an object,
which many people won't have heard of but it's called HH212.
HH stands for Herbig-Haro, and these are two astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, who back in the 1960's started finding fuzzy patches in the Sky near to places where they thought young stars were being born,
and these objects became known as Herbig-Haro objects.
In the early 90's, Mark was working with a bunch of astronomers,
using some of the very first infrared cameras attached to telescopes
and they focused on a place in the sky near the constellation Orion but a long way from the Orion Nebula
and they discovered some dots of material in the sky in a straight line which was only in the infrared,
so they couldn't see anything visually and needed this infrared camera to see anything.
More and more pictures showed symmetric pairs of knots on either side of a dark spot in the sky,
and then huge waves moving through space, and we discovered this object which is now known as HH212
HH212 is a catalogue number but it's not a coincidence.
They actually asked for that number in the catalogue.
Because it's the wavelength they discovered it at, 2.12 microns.
Which is a wavelength where hydrogen molecules,
when they get hit by energy flowing away from a young star,
it heats up the gas and it glows at that particular wavelength.
So HH212 is glowing in molecular hydrogen and they have been studying it now for all the intervening years,
since the early 90s and it can actually be seen a moving across space, actually getting bigger and bigger,
It's expanding at 100 km per second.
The reason Mark has chosen HH212?
Partly because they have been looking at it for a long time,
with all the biggest telescopes in the world.
But it's one of the objects that Mark is going to be looking at,
when the James Webb Space Telescope gets launched in 2021.
So he's put that in his guaranteed program to take super high resolution pictures.
The sharpest pictures ever taken of this object.
"We'll see fantastic new detail and that will help us effectively trace the history of how material has been falling in to this young star. Which is only maybe 50,000 years 100,000 years old, which is incredibly young".
For his object of the month he decided to go way Off The Beaten Track and pick an object,
which many people won't have heard of but it's called HH212.
HH stands for Herbig-Haro, and these are two astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, who back in the 1960's started finding fuzzy patches in the Sky near to places where they thought young stars were being born,
and these objects became known as Herbig-Haro objects.
In the early 90's, Mark was working with a bunch of astronomers,
using some of the very first infrared cameras attached to telescopes
and they focused on a place in the sky near the constellation Orion but a long way from the Orion Nebula
and they discovered some dots of material in the sky in a straight line which was only in the infrared,
so they couldn't see anything visually and needed this infrared camera to see anything.
More and more pictures showed symmetric pairs of knots on either side of a dark spot in the sky,
and then huge waves moving through space, and we discovered this object which is now known as HH212
HH212 is a catalogue number but it's not a coincidence.
They actually asked for that number in the catalogue.
Because it's the wavelength they discovered it at, 2.12 microns.
Which is a wavelength where hydrogen molecules,
when they get hit by energy flowing away from a young star,
it heats up the gas and it glows at that particular wavelength.
So HH212 is glowing in molecular hydrogen and they have been studying it now for all the intervening years,
since the early 90s and it can actually be seen a moving across space, actually getting bigger and bigger,
It's expanding at 100 km per second.
The reason Mark has chosen HH212?
Partly because they have been looking at it for a long time,
with all the biggest telescopes in the world.
But it's one of the objects that Mark is going to be looking at,
when the James Webb Space Telescope gets launched in 2021.
So he's put that in his guaranteed program to take super high resolution pictures.
The sharpest pictures ever taken of this object.
"We'll see fantastic new detail and that will help us effectively trace the history of how material has been falling in to this young star. Which is only maybe 50,000 years 100,000 years old, which is incredibly young".
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