Alan Willison, chairman of Hertford Astronomy Group, continues his series of 'getting started in astronomy' columns.
One of the strange things about news reports is that they are most frequently talking about things that have happened which, for astronomy is OK some of the time but more often people want to know what is going to happen.
Just recently the Hertford Astronomy Group held a public demonstration in Welwyn Garden City to show the partial solar eclipse and it was lovely to meet so many of you, especially those of you who said they had learned about it from reading the Welwyn Hatfield Times.
We were also fortunate to get an interview on 3 Counties Radio in the afternoon, which was after the event had finished. The interviewer declared that he hadn’t known anything about it until he heard it on the news.
Part of writing these articles for the WHT is to inform you of things that are going to happen and will hopefully be visible from our part of Hertfordshire so that you can go out and have a look and take part in real astronomy often from you own home – very little effort required.
Now that the nights are getting darker earlier it becomes much easier to see some startling phenomena in the early evening.
We have covered the Moon in several of these articles and naturally, it is a great observational target for people of all ages.
It is easy to find and a lovely object to observe through any sized telescope or binoculars – those craters and maria (seas) will take your breath away.
Looking towards the south in the early evening, i.e. any time before 10pm, you will see a very bright object which is the planet Jupiter.
Any telescope will show its four Galilean moons. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one, indeed, the ones sold by the discount supermarkets for about £70 to £80 will do remarkably well.
Look to east (left) of Jupiter and you come across a bright star called Aldebaran. This represents the eye of the Taurus the Bull, famous for his appearance in astrology listings.
As well as these objects which will definitely be visible as long as the clouds aren’t making things difficult, we can look forward to the next launch date of the Artemis 1 mission to the Moon.
This is scheduled for November 14 at 05:07 GMT. NASA has postponed the launch twice before – once because of a technical problem and the other because of the hurricane Ian that hit Florida. This time there is a 69-minute launch window so let’s hope everything goes well.
If you want to feel the excitement of this, then log into the NASA YouTube site and watch it live. Should there be any problems, then the 16th and 19th November are reserved back up dates.
So much for things that can be fairly easily seen, how about something more challenging? Stars have a finite life. They are born, live and die.
They do not all last the same amount of time and they were not all born at the same time.
New stars are being born now and others are dying now. Stars also die in different ways – some slip away quietly while others go with a bang!
Often, a star grows larger in its death throes as it no longer has the gravity to hold it together. Eventually, it all becomes a bit much for the forces acting upon each other and the star explodes leaving behind it a large cloud of gas and a tiny white star.
The cloud of gas can be illuminated by this small star and observed by us on Earth. Such objects are called Planetary Nebula which is a very inaccurate name as they have nothing to do with planets and they aren’t anywhere near the scale of star-forming nebulae.
However, they make for very interesting study and are challenging objects to find as they become quite dim (although at the time of explosion they can be very bright but it doesn’t last). If you manage to find one in your telescope it will appear as a dim fuzzy blob.
However, if you can manage to hook a camera with a long exposure facility to your telescope and train your telescope to follow the object against the Earth’s rotation, then you can capture images of these fantastic objects.
To tell us how this can be achieved the Hertford Astronomy Group have Peter Goodhew coming along to our next meeting on November 9 at 8.30pm.
You are welcome to join us either at the face to face meeting at the University of Hertfordshire, College Road site, or just as live on our simultaneous Zoom broadcast. Details can be found at hertsastro.org.uk
Photo of the month - The Dumbell Nebula
This is one of the planetary nebulae described above and was taken by one of our club members, Martin Weston, from his garden in Wheathampstead.
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as the Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, and NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula (nebulosity surrounding a white dwarf) in the constellation Vulpecula (the Fox), at a distance of about 1,360 light-years from us.
It was the first such nebula to be discovered, by Charles Messier in 1764, who was a comet hunter but noticed whereas comets change their position in the sky over time these similar (to the eye) looking objects didn’t.
He then made a list of other misty objects that didn’t change their positions so that he didn’t waste his time thinking was this a comet or not?
In doing so, Messier compiled a comprehensive catalogue of objects which is still very much used today.
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