January 2013 Observation Plans

I’ve spent a bit of time adding events and some things I want to see in Jan and through 2013 to the Google Calendar and the observation plans page tonight.
I do this for my own purposes but if anybody else is interested, feel free.

Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night

Last night I was working on my astronomy course as I’d got a coursework deadline today. I got it finished just before midnight which was good timing as it meant I could watch Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night before bed.
It was an enjoyable and fitting tribute. It appeared that part of the show was a planned feature recorded before his death, on setting up a new telescope, where some lucky members of the public were at Patrick’s Selsey home in Selsey, Sussex. This was followed by clips that reminded me what an inspiration and an entertainer he was. Usually Sky at a night isn’t on iPlayer until all the repeats have shown. This month it is up after the first broadcast. His death, combined with this week’s BBC Stargazing Live is likely to mean this episode will pick up a lot more views than usual.
It won’t be the same without Patrick but I do hope the series continues.

Voyager: To The Final Frontier

I watched Voyager: To The Final Frontier on iPlayer this morning. It’s not available online anymore, just clips of it at the link above. I’d got it stacked up in my backlog of things I hadn’t watched yet. It was another great programme from the BBC. Voyager 2 is in the news again as it’s about to leave the Solar System. It is incredible to think this piece of 70s technology is still going and still sending back valid data. It was interesting to see how Voyager’s technology has remained the same while back here on Earth the equipment that it talks to has changed massively.
It’s caused me to read Murmurs of Earth by Carl Sagan (and others) that I picked up in a second hand bookshop recently. It’s all about the Voyager Golden Record that was mounted on the Voyager space probes. It’s purpose was partly a message in a bottle in the incredibly unlikely ever another civilisation found it, and partly to celebrate the achievements of our civilisation and cultures.

Seven Ages of Starlight

Just watched a brilliant BBC programme called Seven Ages of Starlight on BBC Four. All about the life of stars. I made notes for my own purposes as I watched it. These are below. Purely for my own purposes. So if it don’t make sense then tough. I didn’t write it as a blog post for anybody else. (this is the problem with putting a blog somewhere public perhaps.)

1 Birth of a star
Pleiades as a star forming region. apparently mentioned by Homer in Odessey

Plasma – soup of unattached particles. Proton and electron of Hydrogen particles in atom become separated. Fusion is where the proton that are repelling occasionally collide. 4 protons make Helium atom.E=mc^2 comes into play. Mass becomes energy. C is big so small mass gives lot of energy.

Copernicus – heliocentric model.

Planets forming – blank out star in Pegasus and you see the white spots of planets forming.

2 Adulthood
Sunspot sketching by projection. Galileo showed that over days they moved and showed rotation of sun.
Solar wind – causes aurora where planets have magnetic field. Runs out of momentum at the outer limit of the solar system – the Heliosphere. Provides protection against galactic radiation and cosmic rays.

Talked of the sun running out of fuel. We didn’t know when it would come. I remember being at infant school and being told that. Only young but genuinely scared. Remember going home at lunchtime being very worried about it. It’s ok. We’re about 1/2 way through. 5 billion years left.

Sun is balanced – fusion balances gravity.

Lifecycle of stars – colour and luminosity. – the Hertzsprung Russell diagram
Main sequence. Central diagonal line.
2 outcrops. Fate of sun is to head off main sequence to red giant.

3 Red Giant
Eg Betelgeuse, Arcturus
Stars fuse H to He. When hydrogen runs out, core collapses, heats up and starts hydrogen fusion to helium in a shell around core. This overcomes gravity. Expands further. Expansion leads to cooling.
Next stage is helium fusion – carbon and oxygen created.

4 White Dwarf
come next.
Sirius in Canis Major has a faint companion, Sirius B, a white dwarf.
Very dense.
Burnt out remains of star where fusion has stopped-fuel run out. Why does it even shine?
Gravity wins over fusion – collapses under it’s own weight. Very small.
Quantum mechanics comes into play – don’t collapse completely – pressure of electrons trying not to be in same place is what keeps it from collapsing. Still shines because of this – cools and fades over time.
Slow and quiet death.

5 Supernova
This is the alternative to Red Giant-White Dwarf for larger stars. Is what happens to large star when it dies. Huge explosion. Leave behind remnants.
Alex Filipenko – supernovae hunter.
Different elements give off different colours. We can tell what a star is by the colour.
Colours of elements in the supernova remnants.
Look at supernova with spectrograph.
Where did elements come from? Fred Hoyle had answer.
Red giants not hot enough to create all elements. Supernovas were.
All about final stage in fight against gravity. Fusion occurs time and time again with heavier and heavier elements forming each time in similar way to the Hydrogen to Helium to Oxygen and Carbon cycles until we get to iron. When ball of iron reaches critical mass size of earth, collapses to size of city, rebounds and goes supernova explosion. That creates even heavier elements and throws them out. This would be where the famous Sagan quote from Cosmos arises “We are made of star stuff” – we are stardust.
And so it starts again. This dust collides under gravity, clouds collapse, stars are born. Next generation.

6. Neutron Stars
Calculations of Zwicky predicted neutron stars. Solidity is an illusion. Lot of empty space in atom.
Zwicky predicted that implosion of iron core squeezes protons and electrons together so closely to form neutrons. Intense Magnetic field generated.
Supernova leaves behind dense kernel.
Dismissed as until radio astronomy when in 1967 picked up strange signal – exact and predictable. – Pulsar.
Then found Crab Pulsar within Crab Nebula in Taurus.

Pulses come from the intense magnetic field. As it spins these are thrown out from n and s poles.

7 Black Holes
Also predicted by taking relativity to it’s logical conclusion.
Event horizon – literally that.
Happens when super massive star goes nova.
Infinite density, zero volume.
Language and imagery of big bang is always misleading – fireball – well not really.
Get’s into the whole , where did the first H atoms come from?

Epilogue – Nebulae
NASA have made one in the Ames lab. Have seen organic molecules in nebulae. This is where life comes from? Ties into podcast I listened to on abiogenesis the other day?
And how did the amino acids get here? They’ve found meteorites containing them.
One of those what if? epilogues you get in documentaries.

Observations from the Back Garden – Friday 12 October 2012

Location: Garden, Home, Top of drive – had started down in middle of the so-called lawn.
Conditions: cloud gathering through evening.
Equipment: Skywatcher 130 scope, assorted eyepieces, new streetlight baffle.
Highlights: Andromeda Galaxy, M31

22:00 Andromeda Galaxy – Messier 31
First time out in the garden in a while. Was a clear night when heading home so I was hopeful to get some decent observing in. It’s also dark a lot earlier now. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been out here. Not as dark or warm as Oman though.
I recognised constellation of Andromeda high to The East. I starhopped from Mirach through u and v to find M31, the Andromeda Galaxy which was distinct in the RACI view finder. Switching to the 25mm eyepiece on the scope Andromeda was very obvious. No detail but an expansive smudge of light from 2.5 light years away. I moved up to the 17mm plossl and it was OK-ish, a bit disappointing. I was starting to battle against gathering and drifting clouds though and the 6mm superwide was just useless. At this point I gave up. Cloud stops play.
It’s a start on the Sky At Night Magazine Oct 2012 Deep Sky Tour anyway. That’s Just as well as my November subscription arrived today. Also got the Moore Winter Marathon to try. I saw it on this month’s TV show. I never did get anywhere with the September Deep Sky Tour around Cygnus. It’s dark earlier though so maybe I’ll get a last chance early one evening in the next week.
I think I’ll set up a page to keep track of my observing objectives or plans. At the moment I feel like I’ve a lot of catching up to do.

I also pressed a new bit of kit into service tonight and it seems to have been a success. I mounted a large sheet of plywood on uprights that I can move around the garden to shield me from the street lights. It was very helpful in keeping the light out my eyes and stop it reducing my dark adaptation.
Only cost about £4 to make too.

Observing programs
Messier: 8/110
Lunar 100 observed: 8/100
Lunar 100 imaged: 8/100

BBC Horizon – Mission to Mars, Curiosity Rover

Watched a great BBC Horizon programme about the Mars Mission to land the Curiosity Rover on 6 August. It’s available on the iPlayer.

Martian sunset as seen from the previous Spirit Rover mission.

Curiosity lands at 06:31 on Monday 6 Aug (BST). What’s amazing is, that at that distance it takes 14 minutes to communicate with it, but the landing sequence, which includes a real sci-fi sky crane takes only 7 minutes. It has to be done autonomously.

I’m following @MarsCuriosity on Twitter.