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F E B R U A R Y 2015

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VOL 43, NO. 2

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ON THE COVER
The New Horizons spacecraft will
skim above Pluto's surface during
a historic encounter this July.

COLUMNS
Strange Universe
BOB BERMAN

FEATURES

Secret Sky 14

22 COVER STORY

38

58

NASA sets its sights

on Pluto

StarDomeand
Path of the Planets

A colorful take on
northern skies

Twenty-five years in the making,

New Horizons is now closing in
on Pluto. S. ALAN STERN

RICHARD TALCOTT;

Although this British amateur

was a bit late to astroimaging, his
dedication and superb equipment
have moved him into the hobbys

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROEN KELLY

44
28

The telescope at the end

of the w o rld s
To understand the events that
followed the Big Bang, cosmologists are chasing its light from
Antarctica. YVETTE CENDES

How astronomers hear

stellar heartbeats
Like doctors scanning a patients
body, astronomers are peering
inside distant stars to investigate
their state. JAYMIE MATTHEWS

50
34

Ask Astro

Discover Orion's
deep-sky gems

STEPHEN JAM ES O'MEARA

Observing Basics 18

upper echelon. GORDON HAYNES

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Astro Sketching 66
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THE

G
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Understanding the Universe:

An Introduction to Astronomy, 2"dEdition

r ea t

Taught by Professor Alex Filippenko

o u r ses

U N IV E R S IT Y OF C A LIFO R N IA , B E R K E L E Y

L E C T U R E T IT L E S

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Understanding the Universe:

An Introduction to
Astronomy, 2ndEdition
Volume 1 of 2
Professor Alex Filippenko
University of California, Berkeley

fw u \

'A

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.

Uncover the Cosmic Clues

to Our Amazing Universe

48.
49.
50.

A Grand Tour of the Cosmos

The Rainbow Connection
Sunrise, Sunset
Bright Objects in the Night Sky
Fainter Phenomena in the Night Sky
Our Sky through Binoculars
and Telescopes
The Celestial Sphere
The Reason for the Seasons
Lunar Phases and Eerie Lunar Eclipses
Glorious Total Solar Eclipses
More Eclipse Tales
Early Studies of the Solar System
The Geocentric Universe
Galileo and the Copernican Revolution
Refinements to the Heliocentric Model
On the Shoulders of Giants
Surveying Space and Time
Scale Models of the Universe
LightThe Supreme Informant
The Wave-Particle Duality of Light
The Color of Stars
The Fingerprints of Atoms
Modern Telescopes
A Better Set of Eyes
Our Sun, the Nearest Star
The Earth, Third Rock from the Sun
Our Moon, Earths Nearest Neighbor
Mercury and Venus
Of Mars and Martians
Jupiter and Its Amazing Moons
Magnificent Saturn
Uranus and Neptune, the Small Giants
Pluto and Its Cousins
Asteroids and Dwarf Planets
CometsGorgeous
Primordial Snowballs
Catastrophic Collisions
The Formation of Planetary Systems
The Quest for Other Planetary Systems
Extra-Solar Planets Galore!
Life Beyond the Earth
The Search for Extraterrestrials
Special Relativity and
Interstellar Travel
StarsDistant Suns
The Intrinsic Brightnesses of Stars
The Diverse Sizes of Stars
Binary Stars and Stellar Masses
Star Clusters, Ages, and
Remote Distances
How Stars ShineNatures
Nuclear Reactors
Solar NeutrinosProbes
of the Suns Core
Brown Dwarfs and
Free-Floating Planets

51.
52.
53.
54.

Our Suns Brilliant Future

White Dwarfs and Nova Eruptions
Exploding StarsCelestial Fireworks!
White Dwarf Supernovae
Stealing to Explode
55. Core-Collapse Supernovae
Gravity Wins
56. The Brightest Supernova
in Nearly 400 Years
57. The Corpses of Massive Stars
58. Einsteins General Theory of Relativity
59. Warping of Space and Time
60. Black HolesAbandon
Hope, Ye Who Enter
61. The Quest for Black Holes
62. Imagining the Journey to a Black Hole
63. WormholesGateways
to Other Universes?
64. Quantum Physics and
Black-Hole Evaporation
65. Enigmatic Gamma-Ray Bursts
66. Birth Cries of Black Holes
67. Our HomeThe Milky Way Galaxy
68. Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy
69. Other Galaxies Island Universes
70. The Dark Side of Matter
71. CosmologyThe Really Big Picture
72. Expansion of the Universe
and the Big Bang
73. Searching for Distant Galaxies
74. The Evolution of Galaxies
75. Active Galaxies and Quasars
76. Cosmic Powerhouses of
the Distant Past
77. Supermassive Black Holes
78. Feeding the Monster
79. The Paradox of the Dark Night Sky
80. The Age of the Universe
81. When Geometry Is Destiny
82. The Mass Density of the Universe
83. Einsteins Biggest Blunder?
84. The Afterglow of the Big Bang
85. Ripples in the Cosmic
Background Radiation
86. The Stuff of the Cosmos
87. Dark EnergyQuantum Fluctuations?
88. Dark EnergyQuintessence?
89. Grand Unification &
Theories of Everything
90. Searching for Hidden Dimensions
91. The Shape, Size, and Fate
of the Universe
92. In the Beginning
93. The Inflationary Universe
94. The Ultimate Free Lunch?
95. A Universe of Universes
96. Reflections on Life and the Cosmos

O ur world is part o f a vastly larger cosmos. But how large is it? Where
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Astronomy

FROMTHE EDITOR
BY D A V I D J . E I C H E R

Editor David J. Eicher

Art Director LuAnn Williams Belter

bundance
of life in
universe
othing drives astron
omy like that oldest
of all philosophical
questions: Are we
alone? The discovery
of life elsewhere in the cos
mos would certainly mark
one of the most incredible
moments in human history, a
milestone at which we under
stand we are not unique in
the universe.
Of course, we know of
only one example of life,
right here on Earth. In the
minds of some, that means
the odds of life being an
extremely rare thing in the
cosmos are high at least
intelligent life, civilizations
that could communicate.
They point back to an idea
that Italian physicist Enrico
Fermi raised long ago, in
1950: If the universe con
tains life, then where is it?
Why hasnt life showed up
on our doorstep?
But the odds of life in the
universe are large, over
whelmingly so, in the minds
of the majority of astrono
mers and cosmologists.
The universe contains at
least 125 billion galaxies,
and probably considerably
more because inflation the
ory means we are not seeing
the whole universe that
exists. And lets consider the
number of stars in an aver
age galaxy like the Milky

Way, about 400 billion. Lets

set inflation aside. Con
servatively, then, the uni
verse contains something
like 50,000 billion billion
stars. Do we really believe
that of the probable many
billions of planetary systems
in the universe, we are the
only planet on which life
exists? Or the only planet on
which a civilization exists
with so-called intelligent
life? Even simple logic and
probability suggests that the
odds are against that.
If we saw life elsewhere in
the universe, would we rec
ognize it? Living things dis
play order, for example the
arrangements of atoms in
their molecules. Lots of non
living things also display
order, as with the ordered
crystal lattices of minerals,
but living things must have
order, while nonliving things
dont necessarily need to be
ordered. Second, living
things reproduce or are
products of reproduction.
Reproduction is a necessity
of life because without it, life
would not go on. Third, life
exhibits growth and devel
opment. Living things grow
and develop over time in
part governed by their
heredity, which is in turn
controlled by DNA.
Fourth, living organ
isms use energy from their

environment, according to
the second law of thermody
namics. Without energy, we
would quickly die. Fifth,
living beings show evolu
tionary adaption based on
Darwinian ideals. Over time,
life on planet Earth has
altered dramatically due to
interactions between indi
vidual organisms and the
environment. Traits that
allow individuals to survive
over time mean the survi
vors pass on their genes to
subsequent generations. This
is how living beings achieve
immortality by passing
themselves on to subsequent
generations. Gradually, over
the billions of years of life on
Earth, Darwinian evolution
shapes the character of liv
ing beings so that certain
species live on more success
fully than others.
And abundant life even
civilizations in the uni
verse does not mean shaking
hands with aliens. The uni
verse is indescribably large.
So get over the UFO stuff.
What do you think about
the abundance of life in the
universe?
Yours truly,

EDITORIAL STAFF
Senior Editors Michael E. Bakich, Richard Talcott
Production Editor Karri Ferron
Associate Editor Eric Betz
Editorial Associate Valerie Penton
ART STAFF

Senior Graphic Designer Chuck Braasch

Illustrator Roen Kelly
Production Coordinator Jodi Jeranek
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Bob Berman, Adam Block, Glenn F. Chaple, Jr., Martin George,
Tony Hallas, Phil Harrington, Ray Jayawardhana, Liz Kruesi,
Alister Ling, Steve Nadis, Stephen James O'Meara, Tom Polakis,
Martin Ratcliffe, Mike D. Reynolds, Sheldon Reynolds, Erika Rix,
John Shibley, Raymond Shubinski
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Buzz Aldrin, Marcia Bartusiak, Timothy Ferris, Alex Filippenko,
Adam Frank, John S. Gallagher III, Daniel W. E. Green, William K.
Hartmann, Paul Hodge, Anne L. Kinney, Edward Kolb,
Stephen P. Maran, Brian May, S. Alan Stern, JamesTrefil

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EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNIVERSE THIS MONTH ..

HOT BYTES

LU C K Y STAR
Astronomers watched a
black hole flare as it bit
into a star in a galaxy
near the Big Dipper.
The star lost mass but
escaped the encounter.

TREN DIN G
TO T H E T O P

PO O F, IT 'S G O N E
Mass measurements
made using star speeds
and detailed maps of the
Milky Way's edge show
dark matter is half what
scientists had expected.

ICE ON M ER C U R Y
NASA's MESSENGER craft
imaged ice in the dark
shadows of Mercury's cra
ters. The deposits were
known, but it was their
first optical confirmation.

SNAPSHOT

Fate ofthe
universe

>.

ft.

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A. *
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Jf

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0' r

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(STAR FORMATION); NASA/JPL-CALTECH (LUCKY STAR); ESO/L. CANADA

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NASA/ESA/R. ELLIS (CALTECH)/THE UDF 2012TEAM

No one knows what the uni

verse will be like at the end.
But much of the evidence we
know about points toward
a Big Freeze scenario for
the future, a forever expand
ing cosmos that will become
larger, darker, and devoid of
activity until it achieves heat
death with zero activity.
Some 100 billion to 1 trillion
years from now, the Local
Group will merge into a giant
single galaxy, and 150 billion
years from now the Virgo
Cluster will pass beyond our
horizon, no longer visible to us.
Communication between gal
axies will then no longer be
possible.
In 2 trillion years, galaxies
beyond the Local Supercluster
(also known as the Virgo
Supercluster), the galaxies we
see within some 110 million
light-years of home, will appear
redshifted to the degree that
their light will consist of infra
red and longer wavelengths,
and thus they will become
invisible to our eyes.
Some 100 trillion years from
now, the so-called Degenerate

*
%

#
%

Some 100 trillion years from now, star formation will cease in the cosmos, and things will get darker and colder, cosmologists believe.

Era will begin when all star

formation will have ceased.
The cosmos then will be
bathed in darkness, with only
an occasional glimmer of light
produced when a rare super
nova erupts, caused by the
merger of two white dwarfs.

For a few weeks, a little dia

mond of light will flash on, a
pinpoint in an otherwise uni
versal sea of inky blackness.
Planetary systems that may
still exist around their degener
ate stars also will decay over
time as orbits fall inward or

events occur that fling plan

etary bodies away from their
stars. Ultimately, objects still
within the burned-out galaxies
will fall into their central
supermassive black holes.
Sounds like fun, huh?
David J. Eicher

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED

PHYSICS LABORATORY/CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON (ICE ON MERCURY)

P
(POOR IT'S GONE);

The universe likely faces a

cold, dark, and lonely finale.

A monster
in Hercules
As galaxies go, the Milky
Way is big. It measures
120,000 light-years across
and holds 200 to 400 bil
lion stars. But Hercules A
is huge. This giant ellipti
cal galaxy spans 500,000
light-years, contains
roughly 1,000 times more
mass than the Milky Way,
and sports a central black
hole that weighs 2.5 bil
lion Suns. And each of its
bullet-shaped radio lobes
extends 1 million lightyears. This image com
bines a visible-light photo
taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope (red, green,
and blue), X-ray data
from the Chandra X-ray
Observatory showing
multimillion-degree gas
(purple), and radio obser
vations from the Jansky
Very Large Array (blue).
X-RAY: NASA/CXC/SAO; OPTICAL: NASA/STSd;
RADIO: NSF/NRAO/VLA

QG

STRANGEUNIVERSE

FROM OUR INBOX

BY B O B B E R M A N

California illusion

Shadow secrets
What we learn when light is blocked.

nee a decade
or so, around
Groundhog
Day, we explore
shadows. The
ones cast by woodchucks can
be instructive, but lets think
big and focus on those cast by
celestial bodies.
The Moons shadow can
actually elicit tears of joy. But
next month seeing such an
inspirational total solar eclipse
may be problematical because
the lunar shadow only hits the
cloudy North Atlantic. The
March 20 event unfolds on the
vernal equinox, so the shadow
encounters Earths edge when
it reaches the North Pole and
will proceed no farther, but
instead sweep invisibly out
into space.
Fully dark umbral shadows
are what mostly interest us.
Earths umbral shadow extends
for a million miles and strikes
the Moon twice this year, on
April 4 and again September
27, with that second total
lunar eclipse visible through
out North America. Add the
equinoctial solar event, and
weve got three 2015 totalities.
A shadow carnival. And next
year, Mercury throws its own
shadow on Earth.
Every object not in total
darkness casts both an umbral
and a penumbral shadow.
These fancy words have a
simple distinction. Hold out
a grape at arms length, and
close one eye. If you position
the fruit so that it completely
blocks the Moon, youve placed
your eye within the grapes
umbral shadow. Now slightly
shift it so you can see part of
the Moon. Your eye now lies
within the grapes penumbral

shadow. So the umbra is sim

ply where the light source is
completely blocked. This zone
tapers like a chopstick and gets
narrower as you go farther
from the grape. If the grape
were 20 feet (6 meters) away,
it would appear too small to
totally block the Moon or Sun.
An umbral shadow ends at a
certain distance.
But a penumbral shadow,
the region where the fore
ground object blocks only part
of the Moon or Sun, keeps
going forever. The Moons
umbra extends just enough
to barely reach Earth, and
sometimes falls short. But our
satellites penumbral shadow
hits us at every syzygy SunMoon-Earth alignment at
least twice a year.
Penumbral shadows have
enormous darkness variations.
The next eclipse you observe,

A while back, I read Stephen James OMearas July column on

the Fata Morgana in Astronomy. I know it might be a bit after
the fact, but I just wanted to let you know of a reoccurring
instance of the Fata Morgana that I have witnessed.
I often visit Venice Beach in the sunset hours. During the
right time and the right season with the Sun setting over the
ocean the outline of Catalina Island can be seen when look
ing west on the horizon. However, there are certain times when
the edge of the island looks as if it is breaking off and forming
its own piece, like a giant pinnacle sticking out of the water.
However, we know for a fact that there is no such large piece ...
its a Fata Morgana! Verro Derkarabetian, Los Angeles
We welcome your com ments at Astronom y Letters, P. 0. Box 1612,
Waukesha, Wl 53187; or em ail to letters@astronomy.com. Please
include your name, city, state, and country. Letters m ay be edited for
space and clarity.

penumbral portion is the fuzzy

region on its outer edge. Now
observe more closely. Your
ankles cast a much sharperedged shadow onto the side
walk than your head does. This
is unrelated to what you did
last night. Your heads shadow
always has a blurry edge. Thats
because theres a longer dis
tance from your head to the
ground, which creates a much
wider penumbral zone. Your
ankles are quite close to the

WE'VE GOT THREE 2015 TOTALITIES.

A SHADOW CARNIVAL.
probably this Septembers,
notice the Moons uneven
lighting soon after the par
tial phase begins, say around
8:15 p .m . EST. A colonist liv
ing on the left, or eastern,
side of the Moon would see
Earth blocking the entire Sun.
Meanwhile on the Moons
pricey western region, lunar
citizens would observe just a
little of the Sun blocked, with
virtually no darkening of their
lunar terrain. This fascinat
ing and dramatic gradation
is obvious at a glance, though
often overlooked by lunar
eclipse observers.
Step into sunlight, and
look at your own shadow. The

shadow they cast, and when the

shadows throw distance is
small, the penumbra is skimpy.
An ant could quickly cross the
narrow region of sidewalk in
which the Sun appears par
tially blocked by your ankle.
A transit happens when the
observers zip code lies beyond
the umbral shadows limit.
Its really a type of penumbral
eclipse, a partial blockage. For
example, Mercurys umbral
shadow never reaches Earth.
But on May 9 next year, well
telescopically see it partially
obscure the Sun if we use a safe
solar filter.
Cool shadow events are not
limited to the solar system.

High overhead at nightfall

hovers the variable star Algol,
whose name famously means
the ghoul. The ancient des
ert dwellers disconcertedly
watched it lose half its light
every 2 days, 20 hours, and 49
minutes. The entire outline of
Perseus then gets an odd make
over. Science has figured it all
out. A dimmer companion
eclipses the brightest member
of this double star system. That
stars shadow visibly changes
the winter sky.
Just before our ancestors
started walking upright, Algol
was 10 times closer to us than it
is today and appeared as bright
as Jupiter. Passing within 10
light-years of us, this massive
system may have perturbed
the Oort Cloud of comets and
probably sent a few crashing
into Earth. So the ghoul with
its shadow play may have actu
ally affected us physically.
That guy who holds
Punxsutawney Phil up in the
air this month probably doesnt
think about whether hes cre
ating umbral or penumbral
groundhog shadows. Or a mar
mot transit across the Sun. You
can write and tell him. **
Contact me about
my strange universe by visiting

http://skymanbob.com.

BROWSE THE "STRANGE UNIVERSE" ARCHIVE AT www.Astronom y.com /Berm an.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

11

C O SM IC C O N T R A C E P T IV E . Aging galaxies eventually stop forming stars, and Johns Hopkins astronomers now think they
know why: Radio-emitting particles stream from black holes at near light-speed and stop hot gas from cooling and collapsing.
REM NANT
RECORD.
Astronomers have
discovered that the
ultraluminous X-ray
source M82 X-2
(shown in magenta)
in the Cigar Galaxy
is not a black hole
as expected but
instead the most
powerful pulsar
ever observed, nasa/
JPL-CALTECH/SAO/NOAO

PULSAR CHALLENGES THEORIES

PLANET SIZE IS RELATIVE

Jupiter

these ultraluminous X-ray sources had to

be black holes. But black holes dont have
a way to create this pulsing. A different
remnant of stellar explosions can produce
pulses, though: a rapidly spinning neutron
star called a pulsar. In this case, NuSTAR
data revealed that the pulsar behind
M82 X-2, which is likely about 1.4 solar
masses, the same as any other neutron
star, is pulsing every 1.37 seconds with the
energy of some 10 million Suns, 100 times
brighter than theory dictates such a small
object should be able to beam.
Weve never seen a pulsar even close
to being this bright, says co-author Dom
Walton, also of Caltech. Honestly, we
dont know how this happens, and theo
rists will be chewing on it for a long time.

Earth

Neptune

Saturn

Uranus

PARAM ETER PATTERNS. The planets of our solar system come in a variety of colors, sizes, and even densi
ties. And while Jupiter is nearly 30 times as big as Mercury in diameter, the king of the gas giant planets is only 24
percent as dense as the innermost rocky world. In this illustration, the sizes of the planets are to scale, and their
relative densities are shown based on how transparent they appear, with Earth being the densest and therefore
brightest and Saturn the least dense and therefore most transparent, astronomy-, karri fe rro n and roen kelly

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

METEOR HUNTERS RETRACE

OLD FIREBALL'S PATH
Many hunted to no avail for remnants of a fireball seen
over the Czech Republic two decades ago. An October
paper in Astronomy &Astrophysics details how scientists
reanalyzed the path and found its debris scattered
along a line not far from past searches. Strangely, the
rock types vary, implying a heterogeneous asteroid.

POLARBEAR DETECTS B-MODES IN CMB

Light from the earliest era of the universe the cosmic
microwave background (CMB) is twisted by intervening
structures before it reaches detectors on Earth. Scientists
used POLARBEAR, a new high-elevation telescope in Chile
designed to examine the CMB, to create the most accurate
map ever of this so-called B-mode polarization and pub
lished it in The Astrophysical Journal on October 20 follow
ing POLARBEAR's first season in operation. Eric Betz

By diameter, Mercury is smaller

than Jupiter's moon Ganymede
and Saturn's moon Titan.

Venus

12

Two studies published in October looked at toxic clouds

of ice forming over the ends of Saturn's moon Titan. A
team of scientists using NASA's Cassini spacecraft saw
methane in a north polar cloud floating unexpectedly
high in the moon's stratosphere. Another team used the
craft to spot a polar vortex of cyanide at the south pole
as Titan shifts into its seven-year-long southern winter.

Karri Ferron

Mars

Mercury

TOXIC CLOUDS AT TITAN POLES

NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

ince the 1970s, astrophysicists have

been trying to better understand
mysterious objects that appear
unusually bright in X-rays; for lack of
a better term, they labeled them ultralumi
nous X-ray sources (ULXs). Observations
indicated the objects were likely black
holes feeding off companion stars, as
such objects could be massive enough to
release such energy. But while studying the
Cigar Galaxy (M82) with NASAs Nuclear
Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR),
scientists uncovered an unexpected signal
from the ULX M82 X-2: pulsing.
That was a big surprise, says
Fiona Harrison, California Institute of
Technology scientist and co-author of the
ULX study published October 9 in Nature.
For decades, everybody has thought

BRIEFCASE

Mimas might have

subsurface ocean
INTERIOR INVESTIGATION. A recent study of saturnian moon Mimas' to-and-fro movement in its orbit
around the ringed planet has revealed quite a surprise.
"The data suggest that something is not right, so to
speak, inside Mimas," says Radwan Tajeddine of Cornell
University in New York. "The amount of wobble we mea
sured is double what was predicted." After assessing five
possible internal models, Tajeddine and his colleagues
narrowed the options down to two possible scenarios
that would match their data: Either Mimas has a football
shaped rocky core or a subsurface ocean. Although liquid
water would be a surprise because Saturn's closest major
moon doesn't show any signs of geologic activity, the
oblong core alternative doesn't mesh as well with Mimas'
overall shape. In their paper, published October 17 in
Science, the astronomers suggest other models of the
moon's interior could be developed but that a subsurface
ocean is currently the best explanation. K. F.

OS
A C T D H M C 1 A IC

l\3 I KUIMtW^

H ID D E N U N IV E R S E . Astronomers from Germany's Max Planck Institute created the first 3-D map of the early
universe, seen as it existed 3 billion years after the Big Bang and during an era of rampant galaxy growth.

QUICK TAKES
Data gathered 20 years ago
uncovered new secrets for
Canadian researchers, who
used Magellan NASA's last
craft at Venus to look at
high-elevation dark spots on
the planet. The team suspects
a heavy metal frost is precipi
tating from the air.

Im

COMPARING NASA'S
SPACE TELESCOPES

MAVEN'S DEBUT
Not to scale

AXION SEARCH. Axions stream from the Sun in this artist's

illustration. A team of scientists believes the particles are con
verted into X-rays in Earth's magnetic field, allowing detection.

Dark matter particles in

physicist's final paper
Dark matter defies detection despite speculation that
it could make up some 85 percent of the material in the
universe. Physicists announced progress in the hunt in
October when a team said they'd picked up potential
signals from a class of particles called axions, which
could be dark matter carriers. Theorists first proposed
the particles' existence in the 1970s as a way to explain
other problems in quantum theories. However, physi
cists eventually realized that axions also could be crucia
to dark matter if they had the proper mass.
Now, scientists from the University of Leicester in the
United Kingdom think they may have found the axions'
signature across 15 years of data collected from the
European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite. The
study shows an unchanging X-ray background in the
XMM-Newton data after physicists subtracted bright
X-ray sources from observations of the sky.
"W e have discovered a seasonal signal in this X-ray
background, which has no conventional explanation
but is consistent with the discovery of axions," says
Leicester's Andy Read, who is now leading the paper.
George Fraser, 58, a highly accomplished physicist,
was the first author on the paper. He died in March the
day after submitting the research to the journal Monthly

Notices o f the Royal Astronomical Society.

"It appears plausible that axions dark matter parti
cle candidates are indeed produced in the core of the
Sun and do indeed convert to X-rays in the magnetic
field of the Earth," Fraser wrote in the paper. That con
version would allow axion detection, appearing prefer
entially in the sunward direction where the signal is
greatest. If confirmed, the result could end decades of
searching for the missing dark matter thought to pre
vent galaxies from flying apart. Still, some physicists
have argued that the discovery could have more mun
dane explanations having to do with the Sun interacting
with our atmosphere. E. B.

NASA's newest Mars orbiter

got a dramatic start to its
atmospheric observations in
October. MAVEN arrived just as
Comet Siding Spring (C/2013
A1) whizzed past and the Sun
belched out high-energy par
ticles. Officials say the craft's
calibrations are on schedule.

MAGNETAR QUAKES
NASA's Fermi spacecraft
watched a storm of highenergy gamma-ray blasts
erupt off a magnetized neu
tron star several years ago.
Now, hints of rarely detected
seismic waves have been seen
in the same data from the
magnetar, which astronomers
described as setting the star
ringing like a bell.

GALACTIC GLASSES
Hubble used the magnifying
lens of a galaxy cluster's hulk
ing gravity to make the most
accurate measurement to a
distant galaxy. NASA says the
blob is 13 billion light-years
away and formed 500 million
years after the universe began.

EXOPLANET MAPPED
By tracking the rotation, water
makeup, and atmospheric
temperature of WASP-43b, an
exoplanet just as big but twice
as dense as Jupiter, a team of
astronomers used Hubble to
make the most detailed map
yet of the glow from a world
outside our solar system.

SECRET SHUTTLE
The U.S. Air Force's X-37B
robotic space shuttle landed
safely in October after a recordsetting 674-day flight. Its mis
sion remains classified, but
another will launch this year.

MOON BEAMS

MILLION

The number of stars in

the most detailed catalog
of the visible universe,
released September 16.

KEPLER

A new analysis from Cassini's

2005 flyby of Saturn's moon
Flyperion shows that the sur
face bathed NASA's spacecraft
in a beam of electrons. Our
Moon is the only other body
known to have an electrostati
cally charged surface. E. B.

SH APELY SPACECRAFT. The space telescopes that

make new discoveries and produce valuable data for
NASA come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from com
pact and octagonal (IBEX) to massive and T-shaped
(Chandra). Flere are some currently in use that have
helped scientists make significant advancements in our
understanding of the universe.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

ASTRONOMY: KARRI FERRON AND ROEN KELLY; NGST (CHANDRA); NASA (FERMI, HUBBLE, SPITZER); WALT FEIMER (NASA GSFC) (IBEX); NASA/LMSAL (IRIS); BALL AEROSPACE (KEPLER); NASA/JPL-CALTECH (WISE); NASA E/PO, SONOMA STATE UNIV., AURORE SIMONNET (SWIFT)

ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY, AFTER UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

HARDCORE DEW

NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory,

which operated from 1991 to 2000, had a
total solar panel length of 70 feet (21.3m).

13

SECRETSKY

BY S T E P H E N J A M E S O ' M E A R A

STEPHEN JAMES O'MEARA

The Reiner swirl

Scientists are just starting to figure out

this enigmatic feature.

hen the Moon

is a waning
crescent about
three days
before its New
phase, one of its most enigmatic
features nears the terminator
and lights up. Usually when
shadow is about to swallow
a lunar feature, it stands out
boldly in relief. But not the
Reiner Gamma swirl. It turns
on like a light bulb while its
neighbor, Reiner Crater, drinks
shadow up to its rim. Seeing
the two together at this magi
cal time of the lunar cycle is a
visual paradox that has a fasci
nating history.

Twisted identity
Reiner Gamma first appears as
a shallow crater on the Dutch
astronomer Michael Florent

Van Langrens 1645 map of the

Moon. Van Langren labeled it
Bullialdi in honor of French
astronomer and mathematician
Ismael Bullialdus. Italian Jesuit
astronomer Giovanni Riccioli
renamed it Galilaeus on his
1651 Moon map, which he
based on observations made by
his pupil Francesco Grimaldi,
who rendered it as a welldefined crater. When German
astronomer Johann Heinrich
von Madler observed the fea
ture in the 1820s, he was not
convinced it was a crater.
Madler believed that only
prominent craters were worthy
of names, so he invented a new
system for labeling lunar fea
tures: Craters got names; small
satellite craters received Roman
letters (for instance, Reiner
A); and other formations, such

FROM OUR INBOX

Quantum questioning
I read with great interest Andrew Friedmans article Can the
cosmos test quantum entanglement? (October, p. 28). The
entanglement problem has always troubled me both as a layman
and physicist. If two particles are created or made to be entan
gled, then I presume that they will always be entangled even if
they fly off to great distances over time. We do not know their
nature until we observe one or both of them.
If, for example, we observe that one has positive spin, then we
know that the other must have an opposite or negative spin. I do
not see this as action at a distance but rather nature following
natural law. Where is the problem?
A classical example (simple as it may be) is my having two
marbles, one white and one black, in my pocket. If I take one
out and find that it is white, then I immediately know that the
remaining marble in my pocket is black without having to
observe it. No action at a distance.
Now, if one is able to change the positive spin particle into a
negative spin and observe its entangled partner to simultane
ously change its spin to positive, then you would have a case for
true action at a distance. Vincent L. Ravaschieri, Safety Harbor, Florida

it
14

While the Reiner Gamma swirl has

no topography that we can appreci
ate through our telescopes, Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter data reveal that
it does have slight undulations, as well
as a probable scarp and a buried rille, all
close to a volcanic fault. Intrusive vol
canic activity may be the origin for the
region's high magnetic anomaly.

as rilles and mountains, got

Greek letters (Reiner Gamma).
Because he vetoed Galilaeus as
a crater, he moved that label to
the nearest one and changed
the name to Galilei (its still
that way today). Madler then
classified the original Galilaeus
feature as a ridge and relabeled
it Reiner Gamma.
The confusion over the clas
sification of Reiner Gamma is
that, through a telescope, the
highly reflective feature never
shows any noticeable shadow
ing. Yet it has a fragmented
ring-like structure a lunar
Stonehenge if you will with
two twisted tails of bright ray
like material.
One stretches northeast into
Marius Hills (a volcanic com
plex), while another less notice
able one fans gently to the
southwest in a series of bright
eddies. Seen together, Reiner
Gamma and its attendants look
like an albino tadpole heading
upstream; formally, its known
as a lunar swirl.

A magnetic
wonderland
The Reiner Gamma swirl is the
most prominent of its kind on
the Moon and the only one on
the nearside. Spacecraft obser
vations from the mid-1960s and
later have revealed that such
swirls are magnetized. While
the Moon doesnt sport a large,
single magnetosphere like
Earth, it does have a crazy quilt

BROWSE THE "SECRET SKY" ARCHIVE AT www.Astronom y.com /OM eara.

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

Locate the Reiner Gamma swirl when

the waning Moon is about three days
before New. Look for a close yin-yang
pair of dark and bright spots near the
center of Oceanus Procellarum near the
terminator. Even a 3-inch scope at low
power will make them stand out.

network of magnetic patches

sprouting up from the lunar
surface and Reiner Gamma
is one of the strongest.
During its mission in 1998
and 1999, NASAs Lunar
Prospector orbiter identified
the Reiner Gamma swirl as one
of these mini-magnetospheres.
Armed with this information,
scientists at the Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in
England created a scale experi
ment in 2014 that may have
shed light on this brilliant fea
ture. The results showed how a
small-scale magnetic bubble
can efficiently deflect solar
wind particles from bombard
ing the Moon, therefore shield
ing the soil and preserving its
youthful appearance. Its like
magnetic sunscreen!
Actually, according to
Ruth Bamford of RAL and
the Center for Fundamental
Physics, the force thats deflect
ing the solar wind particles
is electric, not magnetic. The
electric field, she says, is cre
ated naturally by the edges of
the Moons magnetic bubbles.
What we see, then, when we
look at Reiner Gamma is lunar
soil untainted by the effects of
the solar wind, which other
wise would darken the lunar
soil over time.
O f course, without darkness,
it would be hard to appreciate
the light. As always, let me
know what you see and think
at sjomeara31@gmail.com. '*

OS
A C T D n M E lli/C
l \ .J I H U I l t V V

m)

G R A B B IN G G A S . Dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way get robbed of star-forming gasses by their oversized neighbor, astronomers found using radio observations from the Green Bank Telescope and others.

Young star harbors

two comet families

Astronomers designate Hydrogen-alpha,

Oxygen-Ill, and Sulfur-ll filters as
"narrowband" because they transmit
relatively few wavelengths of light.

WHAT LIGHT DO FILTERS

TRANSMIT?

400

500

600

Wavelength (nanometers)
KEY
Blue
Green
Red

Oxygen-1
Hydrogen-alpha
Sulfur-ll
Luminance

EY EPIEC E ADDITIO NS. The transmission curves

shown represent the seven most popular filters used
by astroimagers. astronom y .michael e. bakich and roen kelly

700

At only 23 million years old and surrounded

by a large disk of gas and dust from the
breakup of small bodies, Beta Pictoris pro
vides an exciting laboratory for scientists to
study the chaotic early stages of planetary
system formation. In 2008, astronomers
directly imaged a hot Jupiter exoplanet orbit
ing the young star, which lies 63 light-years
away in the constellation Pictor, and success
fully watched it move to the other side of Beta
Pictoris by 2010. And in early 2014, scientists
found data indicating splattered remains of
comets colliding around the system. Now,
astronomers have made the most complete
census of these "exocomets" yet and divided
these objects into two distinct families.
A team of scientists, led by Flavien Kiefer
of the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, ana
lyzed more than 1,000 observations taken of
the Beta Pictoris system between 2003 and
2011 with the HARPS instrument on the 3.6meter telescope at the European Southern
Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.
They confirmed 493 individual comets and
measured their radial velocities to reveal
tw o groups. One family of exocomets shows
a variety of orbits and velocities but less
activity, suggesting that these small bodies

\
ALL IN THE FAMILY. By studying archived data
from nearby Beta Pictoris, astronomers have discov
ered that the young star harbors two distinct fami
lies of comets, as illustrated here, eso /l.calcad a
are older and have exhausted most of their
volatiles with multiple close passages to Beta
Pictoris. The other family consists of much
more active comets with nearly identical
orbits; the scientists propose that they could
be the result of a recent breakup of one or
more larger bodies.
"For the first time, a statistical study has
determined the physics and orbits for a large
number of exocomets," Kiefer says. "This work
provides a remarkable look at the mecha
nisms that were at work in the solar system
just after its formation 4.5 billion years ago."
The study appeared in the October 23 issue of
Nature. K. F.

A n o th e r

OPTtelescopes.com

800.483.6287
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

15

R O C K Y FLIG H T . The Rosetta spacecraft saw new debris jets streaking off Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as
it crossed within 0.5 billion miles (0.8 billion kilometers) on approach to the Sun, the European Space Agency said.

SPACE SCIENCE UPDATE

CLOUDS CLEAR
OVER THE OCEAN
OF STORMS

BIN A RY C O U SIN S. This artist's illustration shows

what a planet might look like in a multiple star system.

Planetary cousins
found around
twin stars
European astronomers working on the W ide
Angle Search for Planets (WASP) spotted a
massive exoplanet around a bright star in a
binary system, according to a paper accepted
for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. But
that's not what surprised them. After captur
ing the star's twin by accident, they discov
ered a large planet around that star as well.
The researchers say the peculiar system of
W ASP 94A and B could help explain the long
standing mystery of how hot Jupiters large
planets in rapid orbits end up so close to
their parent stars. E. B.

A stronomy
The Hottest Stars In the Universe

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First close-ups
o f S a t u r n 's

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moon Titan^

M ST

As long as humans have walked Earth,

they have stared up at the bright face that
lights the heavens. But it wasnt until
Galileo first turned his optic tube on the
Moon that we got a closer look. Since that
time, scientists have explored it endlessly
via telescopes, satellites, and, for an alltoo-brief moment, human boots. So, it
was with due incredulity in October that
NASA announced that part of the Moon
we see most nights did not form the way
scientists have long thought.
Scientists held that Oceanus Procellarum
(Ocean of Storms) described by some
cultures as part of the larger shape of a rab
bit or a man was the result of a massive
asteroid run-in. Its sprawling size would
have made it the Moons largest impact cra
ter. Now, using data from NASAs Gravity
Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL),
astronomers have uncovered an ancient
formation of rift valleys in a 1,600-mile
(2,600 kilometers) rectangle. It suggests the
Moon was reshaped by flowing lava instead.
The nearside of the Moon has been
studied for centuries and yet continues to
offer up surprises for scientists with the
right tools, says GRAIL Principal Invest
igator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. We interpret the
gravity anomalies discovered by GRAIL as
part of the lunar magma plumbing system
the conduits that fed lava to the surface
during ancient volcanic eruptions.
GRAILs pair of probes, named Ebb
and Flow, orbited the Moons poles for

V : r<4:
S ' rf i
.

*V, V
iS- V'N
t %

MOON M AGM A. New NASA finds have given a

fresh face to the man in the Moon. In October, gravi
tational data showed that our satellite's largest
impact crater was actually formed by relatively
recent volcanic activity and not an asteroid.

more than a year. Their distance from each

other would change slightly as they passed
over areas with greater gravity, such as
mountains, craters, or formations buried
beneath the surface. The last is how the
team unraveled the Ocean of Storms. Ebb
and Flow picked up the now-covered
boundaries of ancient lava rifts under the
dark lunar plains. The team published their
findings October 2 in Nature. The feature
resembles others seen in the solar system, so
their find has implications for the forma
tion of rocky planets as well as the Moon.
NASA spacecraft also made another
surprising Moon find announced in
October: The lunar surface has seen active
volcanism in the last 100 million years.
Previously, planetary geologists believed
that volcanism died out more than a billion
years earlier. The Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter (LRO) instead has discovered rock
deposits that likely formed as dinosaurs
walked Earth, according to an October 12
paper in Nature Geoscience. The team stud
ied strange smooth mounds in much
rougher terrain, which scientists had as
sumed unique since Apollo 15s first photos.
But NASA scientists used LRO to find
about 70 others, called irregular mare
patches, many of which are too small to be
seen from Earth. The authors say it should
rewrite textbooks. E. B.

We test-drive
Celestrons

FxplornSsopo
x p lo r a S c o p o E

Prinetimeobscryj

pljnoljry u1

X rsys Rtrtdl the VM$ti Sum

16

valfeysof-

25 years ago
in Astronomy

10 years ago
in Astronomy

In the February 1990

issue of Astronomy,
physicist Leon Golub
wrote about new tech
niques in X-ray spacebased telescopes that
could show the Sun
in unprecedented
detail, including this
cover image.

In February 2005,
renowned science
writer Richard Panek
celebrated relativity's
centennial with a cover
story about 26-yearold Albert Einstein's
miracle year of discov
eries and its revolution
in cosmology. E. B.

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

HIDDEN SH A PES. The familiar face of the Moon appears in visible light (left), topography (center, where
red is high and blue is low), and GRAIL's gravity gradients revealing a giant rectangular pattern of volcanic
structures (right). Asteroid impacts would create circular patterns, nasa/gsfc/jpl/colorado s c h o o l o f mines/mit

NASA/COLORADO SCHOOL 0 F MIN ES/MIT/JPL/GSFC

A C T p n M C IA / C
IA 3 I r \ U l l E V V 3

os
K
The Edge o f the Sky

All Y o u N e e d to K n o v
A b o u t t h e A I I - T I u t c - 1*

M IS S IN G G A L A X IE S . Dark matter particles scattering clumps of trapped gas might be to blame for the shortage of
expected Milky Way satellite galaxies, a new theory proposes in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Construction begins on TMT

SIM PLIFY IN G
SCIENCE. Roberto
Trotta's new book tells
the story of our uni
verse using only the
1,000 most commonly
used words in the
English language.
ASTRONOMY-. JAMES FORBES

R o b e r to T r o t t a

Explaining the
"AII-There-ls"
Try to explain the universe to someone with
no background in astronomy or physics. It
takes a primer on dozens of complex and jar
gonized topics.
But imagine if you could strip away all the
intimidating terms in astronomy, like cosmic
microwave background or supersymmetric
particles, and describe only the ideas without
ever using language more complicated than a
children's book.
That's the tactic Roberto Trotta takes in his
new book, The Edge of the Sky (Basic Books,
2014). The author and astrophysicist attempts
to explain "all you need to know about the AIIThere-ls" with only the 1,000 most commonly
used words in the English language. The result
is a refreshingly short (68 pages) outline of the
current knowledge of the cosmos that is both
physically small and fun to read. The book
makes use of large font and chapters of only a
few pages. In his complete stripping of jargon,
a telescope becomes "far-seer" and cosmologi
cal inflation becomes "early push."
Once acclimated to the unusual style, the
book presents a pain-free entry into a science
that frightens off many otherwise inquiring
minds. And the task attempted is interesting
enough that even veterans will enjoy following
Trotta through his exercise. E. B.

On October 7, construction crews

broke ceremonial ground atop
Hawaii's Mauna Kea on a $1.4
billion member of the next gen
eration of "extremely large tele
scopes." When complete some
time in the 2020s, the Thirty Meter
Telescope (TMT) and its nearly
100-foot mirror will give astrono
mers unprecedented views of
faint objects like planets orbiting
nearby stars and galaxies seen in
the early universe. Officials expect
the instrument will be complete
in a decade or so, about the same
time as the European Extremely
Large Telescope and the Giant
Magellan Telescope, both being
built in Chile. E. B.

<

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Outside cluster
lacks lithium too

. >v. '
t
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COLOSSAL EYE. The nearly decadelong construction process in

Hawaii has started for the Thirty Meter Telescope, which packs a
mirror some 100 feet across, tm t observatory co rp o ratio n

.*

* ' '

**
.

..
.

** .

-..v

'

AWOL ELEMENT. The Milky Way has an element

problem: It contains three times less lithium in its older
stars than models suggest it should. But is the situation
universal? To find out, astronomers used the Very Large
Telescope at the European Southern Observatory's
Paranal Observatory in Chile to study globular star clus
ter M54, once thought to orbit the Milky Way but now
known to be connected to the satellite Sagittarius Dwarf
Galaxy. Such stellar conglomerations contain members
as old as the galaxies they orbit. According to results
published in the October 21 issue of Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers discov
ered that the levels of lithium in M54 are similar to those
in the Milky Way's globulars, meaning the missing lith
ium problem isn't only relevant to our galaxy. K. F.

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MARYLAND)/M. MUTCHLER AND Z. LEVAY (STScI) (CERES); NASA/ESA/M. BUIE (SwRI) (PLUTO); NASA/JPL<ALTECH
(2012 VP ); ESO/L. CAL^ADA AND N. RISINGER (SKYSURVEY.ORG) (ERIS); NASA/JPL-CALTECH/R. HURT (SSC) (SEDNA)

ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY AND ERIC BETZ; NASA/ESA/J. PARKER (SwRI)/R THOMAS (CORN ELL)/L. Me FAD DEN (UNIV. OF

HOW NEW DWARF PLANETS ARE RESHAPING THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Ceres

Diameter
Farthest orbit

Pluto

2012 VP113

Sedna

1,470 miles

1,450 miles

280 miles

600 miles

49 AU

97 AU

452 AU

937 AU

The Sun

Alpha Centauri

mm
Asteroid belt

Heliopause
Inner Oort Cloud
- Heliosphere
Interstellar medium
Kuiper Belt
,
,
1 0 0

1,000

Astronomical units (AU)

The team behind 2012 VP113is

already tracking six similar
worlds and suspects hun
dreds might lurk at the solar
system's edge.

Oort Cloud

10,000

100,000

1, 000,000
Logarithmic scale

DWARF K IN G D O M . The outer solar system between Pluto and the Oort Cloud was long thought of as a barren wasteland of mostly empty space, but new dwarf planet
finds are reshaping the planetary frontier. Sedna, discovered a decade ago beyond the Kuiper Belt, is no longer thought of as a freak. Astronomers found another dwarf,
2012 VPm, with a puzzlingly similar high-angle orbit. Planetary scientists now think there could be hundreds or even thousands of dwarf planets in strange orbits far from
the Sun in a region dubbed the "Inner Oort Cloud." Some of these worlds might even be the size of Earth.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

17

OBSERVINGBASICS

f ?

BY G L E N N C H A P L E

What's in
name?

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The Golden Age

of Islam brought
us many stellar
monikers.

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Book of the Fixed Stars featured many

hats in a
stars name?
Plenty, if its
Zubenelgenubi
(Alpha [a]
Librae), Rasalgethi (Alpha
Herculis), or Kaffaljidhma
(Gamma [y] Ceti). Where did
this trio, plus two-thirds of all
bright stars, get their strangesounding names? The answer
takes us back to the 10th century
a . d . and Persian astronomer Abd
al-Rahman Al-Sufi, likely one of
the most important astronomers
youve never heard of.
Al-Sufi was pre-eminent
among a host of astronomers
who flourished during the
Golden Age of Islam, which
spanned the seventh to 13th
centuries. It was a time when an
Islamic empire extended from
Spain, across North Africa,
through the Arabian Peninsula,
and on into western Asia. For

largely religious reasons, Muslim

scholars engaged in active astro
nomical and mathematical pur
suits because their holy book,
the Quran, required prayer five
times a day in the direction of
Mecca. This imperative neces
sitated high accuracy in time
keeping and determination of
longitude and latitude, both
obtainable through carefully
made astronomical observa
tions and mathematical calcula
tions. Rather than reinvent the
wheel, Al-Sufi and his fellow
astronomers/mathematicians
borrowed (and later fine-tuned)
knowledge from classical GrecoRoman and Indian cultures.
More than eight centuries
before Al-Sufi, the Alexandrian
astronomer Claudius Ptolemy
wrote a treatise summarizing
Greek astronomical and math
ematical knowledge of the time.
Al-Sufi and his contemporaries

COSMIC WORLD
NASA/JPL-CALTECH (NEWS THEOREM); U.S. CONGRESS (SHAKY SCIENCE); ISRO (MAR$ OR BU$T);
DAVID A. AGUILAR/HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS (DWARF DESPOT)

Cold as
space

A look at the best and the worst that astronom y and

space science have to offer, by Eric Betz

Supernova
hot

<
>
News theorem

Shaky science

I
Mar$ or bu$t

Dwarf despot

)
Black holes and
the Big Bang
are proven
impossible,
news outlets
say in response
to two nonpeer-reviewed
physicists in a
press release.
Also impossible:
media restraint.

A Texas con
gressman tells a
physicist to
include "global
wobbling" in
climate change
models during
a science com
mittee meeting.
Anyone have
435 copies of
Astronomy 101?

India reaches
Mars orbit for
$74 million,
much less than
the cost of
Hollywood
blockbuster
Gravity. Imag
ine what they
could do on a

John Carter
budget.

A Harvard audi
ence votes to
restore Pluto's
planethood
after a muchhyped debate.
The IAU pushes
back against the
pro-democracy
crowd, demot
ing Mercury
too.

constellation drawings, including Orion.

translated Ptolemys work into

Arabic, the default language of
the Muslim world. To this day,
we refer to Ptolemys work by its
Arabic name, Almagest.
Part of Ptolemys treatise was
a catalog of more than 1,000
stars, based on the work of
Greek astronomer Hipparchus
300 years earlier. Al-Sufi
updated the catalog, combin
ing observations made at his
observatory in the Persian city
of Shiraz (now in Iran) with
those of Ptolemy. Translating
Ptolemys Greek notes and
descriptions into Arabic was
a daunting task because tradi
tional Greek and Arabic con
stellations and star names bore
little relation to each other.
Around 964, Al-Sufi
published his Kitab suwar
al-kaw akib (more commonly
referred to by its English trans
lation, B ook o f the Fixed Stars).
The stars were identified either
with Arabic translations of
Ptolemys Greek or with tradi
tional Arabic names. What set
Al-Sufis work apart from its
predecessor, besides its Arabic
text, was an improvement over
the magnitude estimates of
Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Book
o f the Fixed Stars also included
Al-Sufis highly artistic render
ings of the constellations. He
overlaid the star map of each
constellation with a depiction
of its mythological counterpart
as seen from two perspectives
one from inside a celestial
globe and the other from the
outside. There is also a histori
cal sidelight to B ook o f the Fixed
Stars: It includes, in the notes

BROWSE THE "OBSERVING BASICS" ARCHIVE AT www.Astronom y.com /Chaple.

18

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

>-

oc
<
ac
CO

Q
O
co

and drawings of Andromeda,

reference to a little cloud, the
first recorded mention of the
Andromeda Galaxy.
B ook o f the Fixed Stars was
a standard reference for several
centuries, bridging the gap
between Greco-Roman times
and the Renaissance of Western
Europe. In the latter instance,
Al-Sufis star names received a
final tweak when Renaissance
scholars Latinized them dur
ing a translation of Almagest.
Book o f the Fixed Stars was
a significant resource for
15th- and 16th-century
astronomers and remains so
even today as evidence for the
proper motion and brightness
variations of bright stars over
the past millennium.
When astronomers began
naming the lunar craters
being discovered via the newly
invented telescope, they dubbed
many with the names of cel
ebrated astronomers of the
past; Al-Sufi and his contem
poraries were no exception. In
the south central part of the
Moon, youll find the crater
Azophi (the Latinized form of
Al-Sufi). Nearby are the cra
ters Albategnius, Alfraganus,
Alpetragius, Arzachel, and
Thebit all Latinized names
of astronomers who applied
their skills during the Golden
Age of Islam.
Modern-day astronomers
owe a debt of gratitude to
Al-Sufi and others who worked
during the age of Arabian
astronomy. They kept alive the
torch of scientific knowledge at
a time when Western Europe
was mired in the Dark Ages. In
the process, they gave names to
dozens of naked-eye stars. On
a February evening, when we
gaze skyward to mighty Orion
with his lst-magnitude stars
Betelgeuse and Rigel and Belt
stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and
Mintaka, we truly are standing
under an Arabian sky.
Questions, comments,
or suggestions? Email me at
gchaple@hotmail.com. Next
month: a league of our own.
Clear skies!

A C

P\U

VV 3

G H O ST LY G LO W . In October, Hubble spotted faint stars ejected from

galaxies in Pandora's Cluster during smash-ups billions of years ago.

SH AD O W Y SITE. Philae captured this

two-image mosaic at its current location
on Comet 67P. One of the lander's three
feet is visible in the foreground.

ED80mm
by Explore Scientific

FIRST CONTACT. This image, taken

just before Philae's touchdown at its
planned landing site, shows dust and
debris covering Comet 67P's surface.

3 days

ONOCHROME CM

5 days

S B IG

EARLY EXPLO SIO N . Thanks to a

Japanese amateur astronomer, scientists
were able to image the earliest stages of
a nova, c h a ra array/georgia state university

W H EEL IN THE SKY. Gas and dust circles the double star GG
Tauri-A, including a newly seen wheel between the two disks
that could make planets possible, eso/l.cal^ada, alm a ieso/naoj/nrao)

Dual disks feed planet

formation in binary
Two planet-forming disks are better than one. That's
the lesson astronomers have learned studying strange
exoplanets in multiple star systems, according to a study
published in the October 30 issue of Nature. Researchers
used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
in Chile to discover the "wheel in a wheel" system of GG
Tauri-A, where an outer disk encircling binary stars feeds
planet-forming material to the inner debris disk surround
ing the main star. Scientists suspect planets might not
be able to form around the star without the dual disks. It
could teach astronomers about the many peculiar plan
etary systems that have now been found. E. B.

Amateur catches
earliest nova yet
On August 14,2013, Japanese
astroimager Koichi Itagaki spotted
a new star. Within 24 hours of the
find, astronomers across the globe
had their telescopes trained on
Delphinus the Dolphin. It turned out
to be a nova an explosion off the
surface of a white dwarf star as it
sheds a pent-up layer of hydrogen
stolen from a binary companion.
And Itagaki's find had come just
hours after the initial explosion.
Scientists publishing online in the
journal Nature on October 26 say the
discovery allowed the earliest nova
observations ever. Scientists were
able to watch as the erupted material
expanded into space, shining new
light on how this long known but lit
tle understood process works. E. B.

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The world watched November 12 as scientists at the

European Space Agency and DLR German Aerospace Center
waited to see if their mission had made history. A 220-pound
(100 kilograms) lander named Philae was moments away from
touching down on the surface of Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, a first for any space mission.
At 11:03 a .m . EST, Philae relayed to Earth that it had success
fully touched down on Comet 67P's surface, but to mission
scientists' surprise, it didn't stay there long; its anchoring har
poons never deployed. Instead, data from the probe revealed
that Philae actually bounced on the surface twice, at one point
airborne for almost two hours and reaching a height of nearly
0.6 mile (1 kilometer) above the comet's surface. It finally came
to rest far from its intended location in the shadow of a cliff.
Because Philae's batteries only would last up to 65 hours
before the probe needed to rely solely on solar power now
a problem in the shadowy environment mission scientists
raced to complete primary science investigations with the
lander's 10 instruments. Philae drilled, hammered, imaged,
and sniffed the comet's surface to return the first data from
such a location before going into hibernation at 7:36 p.m . EST
November 14. Initial data analysis reveals that a layer of dust
on Comet 67P hides a surface that's as hard as ice.
And there's surely more to come from the data, plus a
possible future connection with Philae. By turning the lander
35 before it went into hibernation, scientists hope that
enough sunlight eventually will reach Philae's solar panels
and revive the probe later this year. "I'm very confident that
Philae will resume contact with us and that we will be able to
operate the instruments again," says Stephan Ulamec, DLR
lander project manager. Even if that doesn't happen, Philae
still holds a place in history. "It has been a huge success,"
Ulamec says. "The whole team is delighted." K. F.

Introducing MallinCam
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ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY (SUN; BLACK HOLE); NASA/GSFC/ASU (MOON)

Get to know the night sky

Perplexed by planets? Confused by

#
cosmology? Baffled by black
w. >
1*iZ*'
^
. t/V
- *a j
holes? The editors of Astronomy
understand. That's why we've
v/- .
f \ **
been answering your cosmic
questions with the help of fellow
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send any new questions to askastro@astronomy.com.

Where does
the iron in
* the Sun
come from

Can black
holes die?

OBSERVING TOOLS

Interested in getting into observing? Visit "Get to know the night sky" on
Astronomy.com for tons of information geared toward beginners. There,
Senior Editor Richard Talcott familiarizes you with the constellations and
teaches you how to use star charts. Senior Editor Michael E. Bakich also guides
you through the proper pronunciations of all the constellations and offers 10
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the language of astronomy, and more to further your learning experience.
Start your astronomy adventure now at www.Astronomy.com/intro,

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gV ernonscope

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BRANDON EYEPIECES

beautiful photos
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21

Dawn of a new day

Twenty-five years in the making,

New Horizons is now closing in
On Pluto. by S. Alan Stern

on

asten your seat belts the long-anticipated

flyby of the Pluto system by NASA's New
Horizons spacecraft is just around the cor
ner. By the time you read these words, New
Horizons will be on the cusp of its initial ,
encounter operations.
Scheduled to begin in January and culminate in
July, this landmark flyby represents both the first
close-up examination of Pluto and its retinue of
satellites and the capstone of the first era of recon
naissance of the planets.
The last time a spacecraft explored a new planet
was in 1989 when Voyager 2 made its historic flyby
of Neptune and its large moon Triton. Nearly half of
all Americans alive today are too young to remem
ber the experience and raw thrill of frontier explora
tion like this, when in just a matter of weeks, small
points.of light in a telescope grow into real worlds
seen up close. Well, that is about to change.

New Horizons will skim within 7,770 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's
icy surface Ju ly 14. The distant world's large moon Charon appears in the
background of this illustration, r o n m ille r f o r a s t r o n o m y

22

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

dwarfs the most prevalent class of planets in our current census

of the solar system.
Our Pluto flybys three top-level goals are to map the planet and
its largest moon, Charon, map these two worlds surface composi
tions, and determine the composition, pressure-temperature struc
ture, and escape rate of Plutos atmosphere. Other goals include
making temperature and topographic maps of terrains on Pluto
and Charon, searching for an atmosphere around Charon, study
ing all of Plutos small moons (four at last count), hunting for new
moons and possible rings, and searching for an ionosphere at Pluto.
Achieving these objectives with the unprecedented capabilities
of our instrument suite will provide a better understanding of
Pluto and its satellites than any other first reconnaissance in the
history of planetary exploration.

The nuts and bolts

In the beginning
New Horizons traces it roots back to the early 1990s. Thats when
NASA began to study Pluto missions such as Pluto Fast Flyby, Pluto
Express, and Pluto Kuiper Express. Some members of our project
team, including me, were a part of those efforts and have worked
ever since to see Pluto reconnoitered. NASA studied no fewer than
four Pluto mission concepts over a decade and shelved or canceled
every one before we even proposed New Horizons in early 2001 .
After that proposal came a grueling competition among several
experienced teams to win NASAs Pluto Kuiper Belt mission
which we did in late 2 0 0 1 . That was followed by a four-year race to
get New Horizons built in time for the last Jupiter gravity assist in
the 21st centurys first decade and then a 9.5-year flight across our
planetary system. Needless to say, a lot of people showed remark
able persistence and dedication to make this mission happen.
An Atlas V rocket topped with a Boeing STAR 48B solid rocket
motor launched New Horizons on January 19, 2006. This ferocious
combination of rocketry and New Horizons lightweight design
produced the fastest spacecraft launch ever: 35,800 mph (57,600
km/h). We crossed the M oons orbit in just nine hours almost 10
times as quickly as Apollo missions did. We reached Jupiter in 13
months five times faster than the Galileo spacecraft and three
times faster than the Saturn-bound Cassini probe. With the boost
from a Jupiter gravity assist, this speed allows us to reach more
distant Pluto several years faster than Voyager reached Neptune.

The task at hand

As called for in the 2003 Planetary Science Decadal Survey of the
National Academy of Sciences, New Horizons is charged with
exploring both the Pluto system and one or more small, prim i
tive Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) beyond. Accomplishing this will
constitute the first exploration o f a new class o f planet the ice
S. A la n S te rn o f the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado,

is a planetary scientist and the principal investigator o f New Horizons.

24

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

LIGHT, CAMERAS, ACTION

New Horizons carries seven sci
ence instruments designed to
study Pluto and its moons in
exquisite detail. The LOng Range
Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI)
takes photographs through an

PEPSSI
SWAP

8.2-inch (20.8 centimeters)

telescope. It will deliver highresolution images of Pluto and
its moons at visible wavelengths.
Alice is an imaging spectrom

LORRI

eter a device that separates

incoming light into its constitu
ent wavelengths and produces

Investigation (PEPSSI) instru

an image at each of those w ave

lengths. It will be used to analyze

ments both will explore the

charged-particle environment

the structure and composition of

Pluto's atmosphere at ultraviolet
wavelengths. Ralph is a com bina

around Pluto. They will probe

ions escaping from the planet's
atmosphere. The Radio science

tion camera and imaging spec

trometer that operates at visible

Experiment (REX) will measure

the temperature and composi

and infrared wavelengths,

respectively. It will map the

tion of Pluto's atmosphere.

The final instrument is the
Venetia Burney Student Dust

surface compositions and

temperatures of Pluto and its
moons, obtain color maps, and

Counter (SDC). The first student-

do visible-light imaging.
The Solar Wind Around Pluto
(SWAP) and Pluto Energetic

mission, it will continue to moni

tor the number and sizes of dust
particles New Horizons encoun

Particle Spectrom eter Science

ters. Richard Talcott

built device to fly on a U.S. space

ASTRONOMY : ROEN KELLY, AFTER NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Egrets and herons stand watch as an Atlas V rocket launches New Horizons
on its way to Pluto on January 19,2006. n a s a /k e n t h o r n s l e y

New Horizons accomplishes all this with a small spacecraft that

weighed just 943 pounds (428 kilograms) at launch, including
fuel. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in
Maryland built and operates the probe. (The lab previously built
trailblazing explorers including NEAR-Shoemaker, which orbited
and landed on the asteroid Eros, and the MESSENGER orbiter of
Mercury.) My institution, the Southwest Research Institute, based
in San Antonio, Texas, has been responsible for mission manage
ment, payload development and operations, mission science plan
ning, as well as science data reductions and analysis.
New Horizons carries on board propulsion, power generation,
guidance, pointing, command and data handling, and thermal
control systems. All of these are redundant except for power gen
eration. A single Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator a

Pluto's mottled surface resolves into white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black regions in these processed Hubble Space Telescope images. It took 20 com
puters operating continuously for four years to produce these three hemispheric views, n a s a /e s a /m . b u i e (sw rd

refurbished spare from NASAs Galileo and Cassini programs

far less expensive. The mission not only is going to new horizons at
produces just over 2 0 0 watts to power the entire spacecraft and
the solar systems frontier, but it also is opening new horizons for
scientific payload during the Pluto encounter.
how to do outer planet exploration less expensively.
We designed New Horizons to take maximum advantage of its
time at Pluto and, later, any KBOs. The team accomplished this by
equipping it with a sophisticated and comprehensive sensor suite
We designed New Horizons to study the Pluto system for many
to study its targets, fast bus speeds that allow several instruments
months as it approaches and then recedes from our target. This
to operate simultaneously, large solid-state memories to store
gives us the capability to detect changes over time, digest data long
before closest approach, and study the variability of the dust and
much more data than earlier Pluto mission concepts could, and
fast turn rates that allow the spacecraft to point back and forth
charged-particle environments in which Pluto orbits.
at various objects in the Pluto system with agility
Among the first decisions we had to make when designing
Thanks in part to the march of technology, the seven-instrument
the encounter was exactly when and where to target our closest
payload aboard New Horizons is more capable than any other sent
approach to Pluto. We considered many factors: the best distances
on a first reconnaissance mission. Yet the entire instrument suite
to create our main maps, the best distances we consequently would
achieve on each of Plutos satellites, and the optimal flyby distance
weighs less than just the camera system on Cassini, and it draws
less power while operating than a single 30-watt light bulb.
to observe the planets escaping atmosphere. We also considered
which hemispheres of Pluto and Charon held the most promise to
Our payload includes color and panchromatic imagers, a pair of
spectrometers detectors that break light into its component col
fly by at closest range. Both bodies rotate in 6.4 Earth days, and
the probe moves so fast that it prevents us from seeing the entire
ors, one operating at infrared and the other at ultraviolet wave
surface of each object up close.
lengths and two radio science instruments to probe Plutos
atmosphere and measure its surface temperature. Additionally, two
In addition, to best study both Plutos and possibly Charons
onboard plasma spectrometers will measure charged particles to
atmospheres, we targeted New Horizons to fly on a path that will
determine the density and composition of material escaping from
place both worlds directly between the spacecraft and the Sun and
Plutos atmosphere. And rounding out the suite is a dust impact
Earth. We then can analyze the atmosphere by the effects it has on
counter to trace the density of debris in the outer solar system. (For
sunlight passing through on its way to the spacecraft and on the
more on these instruments, see Lights, cameras, action on p. 24.)
probes radio signal as it heads toward Earth. In another touch of
To get a feel for the greater capabilities of New Horizons com
polish, we arranged for Charon to be above Plutos night side dur
pared with the legendary Voyager spacecraft,
ing the encounter so we can attempt to map the
consider this: Its composition mapping spec
planets night hemisphere and current winter
trometer, called Ralph, has more than 65,000
pole in Charon-light using our highly sensitive
LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).
pixels; Voyagers had one. New Horizons ultra
Pluto
violet spectrometer, called Alice, has 32,000 pix
Nix
To optimize the scientific return of the entire
els; Voyagers had two. And its solar wind plasma
encounter, we had to trade among all these fac
instrument, SWAP, detects charged particles at
Hydra
tors as well as others. The result: an optimal
about 1,000 times the rate of Voyagers most
closest approach distance to Pluto of 7,770 miles
Charon
equivalent instrument.
(12,500 kilometers) at 7:50 a . m . EDT on July 14.
Although New Horizons is much smaller and
But the flyby begins and the spacecraft
lighter than Voyager, in most respects it is more
returns important data long before then. In
powerful and the project cost almost five times
fact, encounter operations begin January 15.
less than Voyager. W hen comparing 1970s-era
From mid-January to early April, what we call
Pluto and its three largest moons
don't look like much from Earth, even
Voyagers with 2 0 0 0 s-era New Horizons, I like to
Approach Phase 1 (AP 1), the spacecraft will con
with the Hubble Space Telescope. Two
make the analogy of 1970s mainframes to todays
duct intensive campaigns of optical navigation
smaller moons Kerberos and Styx
tablet computers: Tablets like New Horizons
taking images of Pluto and its satellites against
glow too dimly to show up in this
image,
/
/ .
(
/ .
(
star fields so we can refine the probes trajectory.
are far smaller but also far more powerful and

Get ready for Pluto

n asa esa h w ea ver

jh u a p u a

stern

sw ro

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

25

INTO THE GREAT(ER) UNKNOWN

After New Horizons completes its
exploration of the Pluto system,

from beyond the farthest reaches

of the Kuiper Belt. Likewise, we

our team's goal set by the

designed the payload to operate

National Academy of Sciences

well on objects almost twice as

far from the Sun as Pluto. W hen

is to fly past at least one primitive

Kuiper Belt object (KBO) about
the size of the large near-Earth
asteroid Eros. Hubble and the

color maps as well as search for

largest ground-based telescopes

evidence of an atmosphere,
moons, and rings.

searched for candidate objects

within our fuel reach. As we
recently announced, Hubble

eral factors, including a healthy

can reach in December 2018 and

New Horizons after the Pluto

encounter and NASA funding

Our team designed the space

NASA/JH UAPL/SwRI/GSFC

craft so it could communicate

From these data, we expect to fly past Pluto with an uncertainty of

less than 3 percent in distance and 450 seconds in time.
We also will make nearly round-the-clock measurements of
the charged-particle and dust environments throughout AP 1.
Meanwhile, on the ground, we will use the navigation images to
refine the orbits and mass estimates of Plutos moons, study the
system at solar illumination angles that cant be achieved from
Earth, and search for evidence of surface and atmospheric vari
ability. The last of these may be tough to do from this far out,
though by the end of AP 1, our resolution on Pluto still will not
quite equal the Hubble Space Telescopes best. Our advantage over
Hubble is that our imaging will be much more frequent, so we may
catch variability that Hubble has missed.
Next, from early April through the third week of June, comes
Approach Phase 2 (AP 2 ). Here we will continue all of the AP 1
activities but also study the surface colors o f Pluto and Charon and
search for new satellites and rings. By the end of AP 2 , our images
will have about 10 times as many pixels on Pluto and Charon as
the best Hubble images. All the data we collect during AP 2 will
be sent to Earth on a frequent basis.

Moving in closer
Approach Phase 3 (AP 3) begins 21 days out and continues until
just two days before closest approach. All AP 2 science will con
tinue here and be supplemented by searches for clouds and hazes
in Plutos atmosphere, ionized atoms and molecules escaping
from the planet, and a possible distant bow shock, the region
where charged particles in the solar wind first interact with Plutos

W hether this extended mis

sion happens will depend on sev

found tw o such KBOs, one we

the other in March or April 2019.
The one w e select will depend
on future observations.

New Horizons delivered stunning views of Jupiter and its moons when it
flew past in 2007. In this montage, the spacecraft captured the jovian cloud
tops at infrared wavelengths and the volcanic moon lo in visible light.

we reach the target KBO, we will

make geologic, composition, and

for the extended mission. The

space agency expects to make
a decision on funding in 2016
or early 2017. S. A. S.

escaping atmosphere. If that werent enough, well also search for

ultraviolet emissions from nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and other
species in Plutos atmosphere, make surface composition maps, and
do more detailed mapping of Pluto and Charon in both color and
broadband visible-wavelength channels. Routine downlinks of all
these data will continue to pour back to Earth during AP 3.
Throughout AP 2 and AP 3, well also be on the lookout for
unexpected debris that could pose a hazard along our trajectory
when we are close to Pluto. LORRI will return more than 1,000
images to Earth for this purpose. We currently predict the odds
of finding such a danger at well below 1 percent. But if we are sur
prised, we are ready to take measures to protect our lone space
craft. In fact, weve already prepared and tested backup plans to
change course or swap in a different science sequence that uses
our big disk antenna as a shield to mitigate any discovered risks.
New Horizons will reach its encounter crescendo during the
two days surrounding closest approach, the Near Encounter Phase.
We have planned hundreds of tightly choreographed observation
sequences during this period.
The end result will be a collection of maps of the closest
approach hemisphere of Pluto at resolutions of 0.4 mile (650 meters)
per pixel with high-resolution imagery as sharp as 230 feet (70m)
per pixel. For comparison, 230-feet-per-pixel photos of New York
City are good enough to count the ponds in Central Park, see major
avenues and the shapes of large buildings, and count wharfs on the
Hudson River. Well also gather composition information blanket
ing the closest approach hemispheres with infrared spectra of Pluto
at over 60,000 locations and Charon with 21,000 locations.
In addition, well analyze the composition of Plutos atmo
sphere as a function of altitude, trace atmospheric temperature
and pressure changes with a vertical resolution of just a couple of
miles, gather temperature maps of Pluto and Charon with resolu
tions as good as 6 miles (10km) per pixel, and determine the
masses of these two worlds 10 times more accurately than ever
before. W ell also conduct high-resolution searches for hazes, auro
rae, satellites, dust sheets, rings, and a lot more.
Then, as New Horizons recedes from Pluto, it will study
the backlit atmosphere to search even more sensitively for

TO SEE AN ANIMATION OF NEW HORIZONS AS IT FLIES THROUGH THE PLUTO SYSTEM, VISIT www.Astronom y.com /toc.

26

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

New Horizons
journey to Pluto

Hydra

11 A.M.

Charon's shadow
/

10 a.m.

Charon

8 a.m.
/ ^

Sun

Charon occults the Sun

(148 minutes later)

0.24
7 A.M,

Pluto's shadow

9 a.m .

Styx
Pluto

Pluto occults the Sun

(61 minutes later)

iter

Charon closest approach

(14 minutes later)

6 a.m.
, ec ^

Nix
Kerberos

Pluto closest approach

(7:50 a.m.)

At its closest approach Ju ly 14, New

Horizons will pass just 7,770 miles
(12,500 kilometers) from Pluto's
surface and about twice as far from
Charon. Times along the craft's
trajectory are in Eastern Daylight
Time, a s t r o n o m y -, r o e n k e lly

sending data to Earth when we should be collecting more of it

while we are close.
So, while there will be daily downlinks during the final 10 days
of approach, most of the data we collect will be stored aboard New
Horizons for transmission after the flyby ends.
Owing to the great distance back to Earth almost 3 billion
miles (5 billion km) and our low-powered, 12-watt transmitter
aboard New Horizons, communication typically occurs at about
2 ,0 0 0 bits per second. This means it will take more than a year to
complete the entire downlink, which will end in the late fall or
early winter of 2016.
This, in turn, means that New Horizons will yield surprises
long after it leaves Pluto in the distance. To those o f us on Earth
receiving and analyzing the data, the mission will feel more like
an orbiter than a fast flyby.

Discoveries for all mankind

NASA's New Horizons probe will make its way from Earth to distant Pluto
in just 9.5 years. This illustration shows the planets' positions in mid-July
2015, when the spacecraft encounters Pluto, a s t r o n o m y -, r o e n k e lly

atmospheric hazes and rings, conduct an important stellar occul

tation o f Plutos atmosphere, and look for charged-particle evi
dence of a magnetospheric tail.

The long downlink

Although almost all the data New Horizons will take on
approach up through about 10 days before closest encounter will
be sent to Earth before the flyby, the rate of observations after
that will exceed our ability to transmit it. Additionally, we dont
want to waste large amounts of time near Pluto and its moons

The first exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is almost upon us.
The study of the most distant worlds ever explored up close the
metaphorical Everest of planetary exploration is about to begin,
and the New Horizons team intends to give you a front-row seat.
What will we find? We do not know. This is raw exploration of
worlds we can barely discern today. Our first reconnaissance of
Mars showed craters and river valleys. Our first look at Mercury
revealed an unexpected tenuous atmosphere and global magnetic
field, along with evidence that a titanic collision stripped away the
worlds mantle. At Jupiter, our initial explorations uncovered gos
samer rings, the amazing volcanoes of Io, and a surface on Europa
so geologically young that it baffled researchers for years. At
Neptune, we found unexpected geysers on the moon Triton and a
great dark spot in the atmosphere second only to Jupiters Great
Red Spot. The lesson of first planetary reconnaissance missions is
clear: Expect the unexpected. As I said, fasten your seat belts
the Pluto system soon will take us on a spectacular ride.
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

27

South Pole Telescope

understand the events that followed the

Big Bang, cosmologists are chasing its light
from Antarctica, by Yvette Cendes

telescope at the
Robert Citron activates a pair
of hand warmers, pulls on two
sets of gloves, and steps out
into the unearthly cold.
The telescope technician wears a red
headlamp over his many layers to avoid
disrupting the dark as he treks in tempera
tures averaging around -8 0 F (-62 C).
Citron has been left behind in Antarc
ticas Dark Sector, cut off from the world
with 43 others for six months. His mission
is to tend to the South Pole Telescope (SPT)
as it gathers clues of our cosmic past during
the long winter at the bottom of the world.

The conditions here are among the

harshest on Earth, but this remote location
is necessary to study the early universe in
the wavelengths where it shines brightest.
W hen it comes to cosmology, the nuts
and bolts that hold up the universe are
groups of hundreds or even thousands of
galaxies. By studying these faraway clusters,
the SPT team hopes to learn about the for
mation and expansion of the cosmos.
W ith a prim ary reflector dish 33 feet
(10 meters) in diameter, the telescope is
designed to detect radiation in submilli
meter wavelengths, which are those shorter
than radio waves but longer than infrared.

*'

>

The Sun stands high behind the Dark Sector

Laboratory, which houses the South Pole Tele
scope and rival instrument BICEP2. s t e f f e n r i c h t e r

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

29

itlV

1111
w

Workers from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station deliver cryogenic supplies to the Dark Sector Laboratory just before the onset of polar winter.
Despite the frigid conditions, sensitive electronic instruments still must be cooled to near absolute zero, s t e f f e n r ic h t e r

At these wavelengths, water in our

atmosphere absorbs the light astronomers
are after, blocking it from reaching the sur
face. To minimize water vapor effects, sub
millimeter astronomers must build their
telescopes in high, dry locations. The South
Pole fits both these criteria. Despite the ice,
it has a low-humidity desert climate and
almost never receives precipitation. The
atmosphere is dry enough that SPT work
ers must wear grounding straps and anti
static jackets when working on sensitive
electronic instruments. The elevation is
also 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) on top o f the
ice sheet. (The glacier is over a mile of this
thickness, and it carries the SPT, along
with every other man-made structure at
the South Pole, approximately 30 feet [9
meters] per year.)
Another important feature is the geo
graphy of the South Pole itself. Because
E arths axis tilts with respect to its orbit
around the Sun, our planets poles experi
ence dramatic swings in the amount of
sunlight they receive over the course of the
year. Here, the Sun rises and sets only once

Yvette Cendes is a doctoral student in

astronomy at the University of Amsterdam.
Follow her on Twitter: @whereisyvette.
30

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

during the entire year, making the atmo

sphere much more stable than other places
on Earth. And the long polar night pre
vents interference from the Sun. The stars
above the pole also remain visible for the
six-month night, allowing astronomers an
uninterrupted view.
But its not easy to build a telescope in
Antarctica, let alone one as big and com
plex as the SPT. The telescope sits on a
foundation of ice. Instruments need to be
supercooled to near absolute zero, but
rotating parts must be kept warm.
We have a three-month window where
we could get in there and build things, says
John Carlstrom, SPT head and University
of Chicago cosmologist. Usually a tele
scope like this would take a long time to
build, and you have to keep testing while
you build it. For us, this was not an option.
The SPT relied on a diverse collabora
tion of dozens of investigators from several
major research institutes for its design and
construction, and the team first completely
built the telescope in Kilgore, Texas. There,
it was also put through a practice run to
test it thoroughly. After this, all the parts
had to fit into several dozen LC-130 trans
porters a special ski-equipped military
aircraft and be rebuilt by the same

team of people in the three-month 2006

Antarctic summer where the wind chill
still can reach -70 F (-57 C). Planes can
fly only during the brief Antarctic summer.
The build crew had to cover every inch of
skin or risk getting frostbit and sunburned
at the same time. We had a terrific team,
Carlstrom says, and we pulled it off.

The earliest light

The SPT is specially designed to study the
cosmic microwave background (CMB),
which is the oldest light in our universe.
Modern astrophysics tells us that at its
earliest moment, the cosmos had all its
matter contained at a single point and
then began expanding. This moment is
called the Big Bang, and its the point
from which we measure the age of the
universe. The cosmos was very different
then, and for the first few hundred thou
sand years, it was aglow everywhere from
a hot plasma soup of subatomic particles.
As the universe expanded over time,
however, it also began to cool. Eventually, it
cooled enough that the electrons and pro
tons combined to form the first atoms, and
the photons could travel freely through
space without constantly being scattered by
the soup of particles.

These photons have been traveling

through space ever since, forming the CMB.
The sky is aglow with CMB photons, and
they only display the tiniest temperature
variations in any direction the signal you
would expect with the Big Bang model.
The Big Bang happened around 13.8
billion years ago, and the CMB dates from
when the universe was just 380,000 years
old. If you think of all the time that has
passed since the Big Bang on the scale of
one year, where the Big Bang happened at
midnight on January 1 and we are currently
in the last second of December 31, our CMB
snapshot dates to just 14 minutes after the
start of the new year. Cosmologists probe
the CMB in order to learn about the early
universe, studying its minute fluctuations to
find its structure and composition.
Two scientists at Bell Labs first detected
the CM B in 1965 after stumbling upon the
signal by accident, and NASAs Cosmic
Background Explorer satellite studied the
first fluctuations of the signal itself in the
early 1990s. (Both finds were also signifi
cant enough to merit Nobel Prizes to their
discoverers.)

Clusters of galaxies
The SPT has a special focus, however, in
that it studies not just the CMB itself, but
also how its photons interact with the hot
gas within galaxy clusters as this light
travels to Earth. Galaxy clusters are made
up o f hundreds or even thousands of galax
ies and a lot of gas in between that
are gravitationally bound together. As the
CM B radiation passes through these galaxy
clusters, some of its photons interact with

Science at the South Pole

Antarctica's Dark Sector houses astronomy instru
ments at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
The region has 44 wintertime residents, who
protect the blackness of a six-month polar night
by using red lights to go outside, n a t io n a l s c ie n c e
FOUNDATION/ANDREW W ILLIAM S (PHOTO); ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY (MAP)

Pad
O cei

1_

&

South Pole

ANTARCTICA

IceCube drilling
equipment
IceCube
laboratory

South Pole
Telescope

\
Dark Sector
Laboratory

BICEP2
DASI/SPUD
100 meters
200 feet

Martin A. Pomerantz
Observatory building

T
*

ionized gas. This can boost the energy of

some CMB photons to a slightly shorter
wavelength than a CM B photon that did
not interact with the cluster.
W ere using the CMB as the backlight,
and were looking for these perturbations
from the ionized gas in these galaxy clus
ters, explains John Ruhl, a physicist at
Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, Ohio, who was involved in the
design of the SP T s receivers. By filtering
out this shorter-wavelength light and look
ing only at the longer wavelengths, scien
tists can observe little holes in the CMB
where the galaxy clusters are located.

Cosmologist and South Pole Telescope winter-overer Jason Gallicchio sits on the instrument's base as
moonlight illuminates the distant Antarctic horizon, j a s o n g a l l ic c h io

By using this method, the SPT has pro

vided astronomers with catalogs of new
galaxy clusters on an impressive scale,
which SPT collaborators can then follow
up on at different wavelengths.
In their first survey, the team observed
over 2,500 square degrees of the sky, corre
sponding to an eighth of the entire sky vis
ible from the South Pole. This survey was
the deepest map ever created in terms of
sensitivity in this region of the sky and
yielded hundreds of new galaxy clusters.
Many of these clusters are among the
farthest observed. This is because the SPT
observations are insensitive to how far the
galaxy clusters are, and how they show up
on the CMB relies only on the amount and
temperature of the glowing ionized gas.
This really opens a window to what the
universe was like when these galaxies were
forming, Carlstrom says.
For example, by working with collabo
rators in other frequencies, the SPT has
uncovered a large, unexpected population
of dusty star-forming galaxies that are seen
back to less than 1 billion years after the
Big Bang, during the era when early stars
and galaxies were still being born. (In our
universes calendar year where the Big
Bang happened on January 1, this would
correspond to January 21 or so.)
They are the most intense stellar nurs
eries that we know of in the universe,
explains Caitlin Casey, an astronomer at
the University of Texas at Austin who spe
cializes in studying these young so-called
starburst galaxies.
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

31

South Pole Telescope Principal Investigator John Carlstrom bundles up

during Antarctic summer, s p t c o l l a b o r a t i o n

While our Milky Way produces just a

handful of stars each year, Casey says, a
dusty star-forming galaxy will churn out
thousands of solar-mass stars in the same
time period. Further, these galaxies were a
thousand times more common in the early
universe than they are today, so under
standing them is crucial when it comes to
galaxy formation.
SPT scientists are working with re
searchers using telescopes in other wave
lengths to determine distances to all the
newly discovered clusters. They hope that
their findings will yield a better under
standing of the universes expansion over
time, and in particular how this expansion
has been affected by the mysterious force
o f dark energy.
Scientists were stunned in the late 1990s
when studies of distant supernovae showed
the expansion of the universe that began
during the Big Bang is, in fact, accelerating
(another Nobel Prize-worthy discovery).
No one expected it, and no one knew how
to explain it, but they did know something
was causing this acceleration that had to
make up roughly 70 percent o f the energy
density in the universe in order to match
the observations. Physicists cant say much
else about dark energy even today, but its
presence would have inhibited the growth
o f galaxies over time.
As a result, cosmologists hope the SPT
galaxy survey will help them understand
more about the role dark energy has played
in our universe by studying how massive
galaxy clusters have formed over time.

Searching for
the CMB twist
As scientists study the C M Bs fluctuations
in greater detail over the years, they also
32

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

The construction team reassembles the South Pole Telescope after members
shipped it from Texas, k i w o n y o o n

have begun to build receivers sensitive to

twists within the CM B waves, known as
polarization. Polarization is at its simplest
a property of waves where instead of
vibrating in all directions, the waves oscil
late in one particular direction perpendic
ular to the line in which the wave is travel
ing. Polarization can occur in many ways
in nature; the sky is polarized, for exam
ple, as anyone who has played with a fancy
pair of sunglasses knows.
The skys polarization happens because
sunlight scatters when it encounters the
molecules in Earths atmosphere, which is
also the reason the sky is blue.

The CMB radiation holds several polar

izations, and cosmologists observed the
first pattern, called E-mode, in 2002. In
late 2011, SPT workers outfitted their in
strument with a new receiver specifically
sensitive to a different polarization, known
as B-mode. This B-mode polarization in
the CMB can happen in two ways. The first
is when photons carrying E-mode polariza
tions pass close to a cosmic structure, such
as a galaxy cluster, and their paths are
deflected by its gravity. This gravitational
interaction will modify the C M Bs polar
ization, changing some of the E-mode pat
tern into B-mode.

THE CENTER OF GALACTIC FERTILITY

The South Pole Telescope has spotted a far-off formation that turns out to be the brightest galaxy
cluster ever seen in X-ray wavelengths. Named the Phoenix Cluster, it's also one of the largest
ever observed and has the highest rate of star formation known in the middle of a galaxy cluster.
W hile our Milky Way churns out just a handful of stars each year, the central galaxy in the Phoenix
Cluster births more than 700 new stars in the same time frame. This is surprising to astronomers
because such central galaxies are generally older and no longer produce new stars because they
have run out of gas to do so. No one is certain yet just how the Phoenix Cluster fits into models of
galaxy formation, or if there are other similar clusters out there. Y. C.

The South Pole Telescope has discovered more than 400 new galaxy dusters, including this one. The
Phoenix Cluster is home to the highest birth rate of stars ever found in a cluster's central galaxy.
X-RAY: NASA/CXC/MIT/M. MCDONALD; OPTICAL: AURA/NOAO/CTIO/MIT/M. MCDONALD (IMAGE); NASA/CXC/M. W EISS (ILLUSTRATION)

By studying temperature fluctuations in the

cosmic microwave background, the South Pole
Telescope has shown that the earliest stars and
galaxies formed more rapidly than expected.

CM B B-mode polarization signal, the pos

sible detection o f which was announced in
March 2014 by another telescope at the
South Pole known as BICEP 2 . But contra
dictory data collected in this same area of
the sky was released six months later from
the European Space Agencys Planck
spacecraft. It indicated the BICEP 2 signal
is possibly due to a more mundane source
dust within our galaxy.
The BICEP 2 saga shows how difficult
this measurement is for scientists to make.
So far, definitive proof of polarization from
inflation has eluded all instruments search
ing for it. The SPT certainly has a chance
of being the first to uncover it.
Interestingly, the two rival telescopes
are located right next to each other at the
pole. And John Kovac, the leader of the
BICEP 2 project, is Carlstroms former stu
dent. BICEP 2 is a much smaller telescope
designed specifically to search for the infla
tionary B-mode polarization signal.
BICEP 2 did a beautiful experiment
where they dug until they hit something,
Carlstrom says. Its very exciting, but of
course once you hit something, you want
to find out what it is.

APS/ALAN

In 2013, the SPT became the first exp

eriment to detect this important B-mode
polarization. Astronomers now hope to use
this find to learn more about the formation
o f large-scale structures in the early uni
verse. The SPT detection also was signifi
cant because it was the first confirmation
that detecting a second form of B-mode
polarization was possible, one caused not
by scattering from galaxies, but possibly
due to a phenomenon in the early universe
known as cosmic inflation.
Theoretical physicist Alan Guth pro
posed inflation in the early 1980s to explain
issues with the Big Bang model of the largescale structure observed in the universe,
like why its the same no matter which way
we look and why some exotic particles
called monopoles do not appear to exist.
The inflation model suggests that when
the universe was a tiny fraction of a second
old less than one trillionth of a second to
be exact the cosmos suddenly underwent
a rapid expansion that lasted a fraction of
a second but was faster than the speed of
light. Inflation would have smoothed out the
early universe to be homogenous, and the
monopoles would be diluted until they were
undetectable. Afterward, the universe would
continue expanding at the current rate.
Inflation explains issues with the Big
Bang model well, but the extraordinary
claim of a universe suddenly expanding
faster than the speed of light requires
extraordinary evidence. (We have touched
on three Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries so
far, and observational proof of inflation
would certainly merit a fourth.)
Luckily, if inflation happened, scien
tists suspect it would leave its trace in a

STONEBRAKER

A six-month night and extreme cold await those who winter over at the South Pole, but the job is not
without perks. Here, the photographer enjoys aurorae from many vantages atop the lab. j a s o n g a l l ic c h io

The cosmic microwave background radiation was

polarized with specific patterns when it formed
13.8 billion years ago. Gravitational lensing from
intervening matter, shown in purple, causes a
slight twist in this original pattern, first detected
by the South Pole Telescope.

He says this is where the SPT will shine.

Whereas BICEP 2 looks at one frequency
band in the CMB, the SPT targets three.
The larger instrument can target smaller
structures and provide crucial details such
as how much of the B-mode signal is due to
galactic dust and the spectrum of the emis
sion, which are key confirmations to sup
port the science behind inflation.
In fact, the SPT soon will be peering
deeper than ever. During the Antarctic
summer in 2015, the team will install a new
higher-resolution camera that will start
observations over the long polar night of
2016. This new camera still will be sensi
tive to discovering new galaxy clusters, but
it also will focus on an area just one-fifth
of the size of the original survey to obtain
more detailed information than ever before.
Scientists hope to learn more about the
inflationary B-mode CMB signature. It will
be difficult, and happening in one of the
harshest climates imaginable, but for the
telescope at the bottom of the planet, its all
part of a (long) nights work.

SEE AN ANIMATION OF ONE OF THE LARGEST GALAXY CLUSTERS EVER OBSERVED BY VISITING www.Astronom y.com /toc.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

33

6 KASTR0

Astronomy's experts from around the globe answer your cosmic questions.

Star birth
begins

Q: I READ THAT ONCE EVERY SECOND,

SOMEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE A MASSIVE
STAR ENDS ITS LIFE AS A SUPERNOVA.
HOW DOES THAT COMPARE TO THE RATE
OF NEW STAR FORMATION?
Peter Hoffman, Bellmore, New York

A: Lets look at the rate of new

star formation nearest to us
in our galaxy. Technology
allows astronomers to see the
Milky Ways individual stars,
so they can count all the suns,
measure their ages, and mea
sure their brightnesses (which
are related to their masses). A
few years ago, scientists used
the Spitzer Space Telescope to
study the Milky Ways plane
where nearly all new stars
form and found a birth rate
of 0.68 to 1.45 solar masses per
year. As an average, researchers
typically say our galaxy is con
verting about one Suns worth
of material into stars each year.
If we assume an overall
supernova rate of one per sec
ond, that means nearly 32 mil
lion of these massive-star
explosions occur per year.
These supernovae originate
from stars between roughly 10
and 50 times the Suns mass.

Send us your
questions
Send your astronomy
questions via email to

askastro@astronomy.com,
or write to Ask Astro,
P. O. Box 1612, Waukesha,
Wl 53187. Be sure to tell us
your full name and where
you live. Unfortunately, we
cannot answer all questions
submitted.

34

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

This rate suggests about 320

million to 1.6 billion solar
masses of material is involved in
these supernovae every year. But
that value is for the observable
universe, which is enormous.
From the Hubble Space
Telescopes deep observations
in addition to computer simu
lations of cosmic structure,
astronomers think the universe
has held anywhere between 100
and 500 billion galaxies over
its history. (For simplicity, lets
use 100 billion in our calcula
tion.) If each of those galaxies
have or had star formation
rates of about one Sun per
year, that means they convert
tens to hundreds of times as
much material into stars as that
which explodes.
O f course, the universe is a
bit more complicated than basic
math implies. Some galaxies,
like interacting and starburst
galaxies, form 10 to 1,000 solar
masses of stars each year, while
others, like old ellipticals, can
no longer make stars. Plus, when
the cosmos was about 3 billion
years old, galaxies made stars
much faster than they do today.
When averaging out the
previous high rates of star for
mation with todays values, we
still get a star formation rate
higher than the supernova
rate, which makes sense: Not
all the stars created are the
types that explode. Instead,
they follow a wide distribution,

Our evolving universe

Old model of
star birth rate

tC
o

<z

(Z

+-*
CO

Dark Ages
Big
Bang

Billions of years
Milky Way
forms

ILife appears
Jo r Earth
Our solar system-^on
forms

Humankind
evolves

Stars formed at a much higher rate in the early universe than they do today,
but population growth hasn't stopped. On average, galaxies birth more
stars than supernovae destroy each year, a s t r o n o m y -, ro e n k e lly , a f t e r a. f ie ld (s t s c d

and lower-mass stars are much

more common than the highmass ones.
Liz Kruesi
Contributing Editor

Q : IF A SU PERN O VA'S
O R IG IN A L STAR IS M ASSIVE
ENOUGH TO FO R M A
B LA C K H O LE, W HY IS
TH ER E ANY EXPLO SIO N ?
W HY D O ESN 'T TH E EN TIRE
M ASS O F TH E O R IG IN A L
STAR SIM PLY FA LL ONTO
TH E NEW LY FORM ED
B LA C K HO LE AND
IN STA N TLY VANISH?
Rick Kelley
Hilo, Hawaii

A: For some massive stars, it

may be possible that collapse
leads directly to the formation
of a black hole with no explo
sion. Astronomers have pro
posed that such stars might
just wink out of existence, and
there is a recent report that
such an event might have been
detected. It seems a star that
appeared in a Hubble Space
Telescope image years ago has
vanished.
For moderately sized stars,
from about 10 to upward of

perhaps 100 times the mass

of the Sun, the situation is
more complicated. The prob
lem is that such stars form
cores of iron that absorb
energy and trigger the collapse.
In this case, the collapsing
material first forms a neutron
star. In most circumstances,
the energy released in that pro
cess turns the implosion into
an explosion.
The nature of that reversal
is hotly debated and may
involve the precise mass of the
star, the degree of its rotation,
the strength of magnetic fields,
and other aspects. In this con
text, a black hole might form if
some matter initially blown
away from the neutron star in
the explosion does not achieve
escape velocity.
If sufficient material falls
back to accumulate on the
newly formed neutron star,
it may be crushed to form a
black hole despite the fact that
the outer parts of the star
exploded as a supernova. In
this case, the result would be
a supernova leaving behind
a black hole rather than a neu
tron star.
J. Craig Wheeler
University of Texas at Austin

Q : W HY W O N T TH E NEW
H O R IZO N S SP A C EC R A FT
STO P OR SLOW DOWN
W HEN IT G ETS TO PLUTO?
Logan Johnson
Green River, Wyoming

A: The lighter the spacecraft,

the faster the rocket can move
it, and the faster it goes, the
sooner it can get to Pluto.
Currently, the New Hori
zons spacecraft is traveling
away from the Sun quite fast,
about 9 miles (3 kilometers)
per second. If it burned all the
hydrazine in its tank, it would
accelerate by only about Vs mile
per second (Vs km/s). So it
could speed up or slow down
(depending on the direction of
its thrusters) by only a tiny
fraction of its velocity.
Adding much bigger fuel
tanks to give New Horizons the
ability to slow down would
make it a lot heavier, which
in turn would mean either a
much bigger launch rocket
(and a correspondingly much
higher price tag) or a much
longer trip time.
NASAs Galileo and Cassini
orbital spacecraft both went
with the longer trip time option.
But their slower speeds
were less painful because they
didnt have to go as far. Jupiter,
Galileos target, orbits about 5
astronomical units from the
Sun (1 AU is the average EarthSun distance), and Cassinis
Saturn orbits some 10 AU away.

Meanwhile, New Horizons has

its Pluto encounter out beyond
30 AU.
Because changing the budget
wasnt an option, the New Hori
zons team went with the light/
fast option so as not to rely on
the spacecraft (and team) sur
viving multiple decades before
getting to its destination.
Also, NASAs approach to
exploration is step by step: start
with flybys for initial recon
naissance, then do orbiters, and
finally do landers, rovers, etc.

Miniature moons
Thebe
gossamer
ring

Main
ring

I
gossamer
'in n
ring

Chris Querin
Lower Lake, California

A: The International Space

Station is a one-of-a-kind lab
oratory for a specific reason:
microgravity. There is no other
facility in existence that allows
humans to conduct research in
a sustained and stable micro
gravity environment where
many disciplines, from mate
rial science to microbiology,
encounter exciting new results.
Creating artificial gravity,
which comes with a number of
technical constraints, would
eliminate this unique asset.

Science-fiction space stations simulate gravity by rotating. The International

Space Station doesn't spin because it's used for low-gravity research, n a s a

Halo
rjnci
. y

Metis

Thebe

Amalthea

Almathea isn't impossibly faint, but the moon's

proximity to Jupiter makes observing a chal
lenge. ASTONOMY:ROEN KELLY;NASA/JPL/CORNELL (ALMATHEA)

Will Grundy
Lowell Observatory
Flagstaff, Arizona

Q : W HY DO ESN 'T THE

INTERNATIONAL SPACE
STATION ROTATE TO CREATE
A RTIFICIA L G RA VITY LIKE
STATIONS IN THE MOVIES?

Jupiter

Even the adverse effects astro

nauts experience while living in
microgravity, like bone loss and
muscle atrophy, help teach us
about the fundamental mecha
nisms inside our bodies, which
leads to benefits for those of us
still down on Earth.
Daniel Huot
NASA press officer
Houston

Q : IS JU PITER'S MOON
AM ALTHEA EVER V ISIBLE IN
AMATEUR INSTRUM ENTS?
IF SO, WHAT APERTURE AND
M AGN IFICATIO N ARE
N EED ED , AND WHEN IS A
GOOD TIME TO TRY?
David Allen Hines
Kingston, Pennsylvania

A: American astronomer
Edward Emerson Barnard
discovered Amalthea on
September 8 , 1892, using
the 36-inch refractor at Lick
Observatory in California.
It was the last planetary satel
lite discovered by eye. From
personal experience, I know
that seeing it takes a combina
tion of a large telescope (at
least 24 inches in aperture),
high magnification (above
250x), great sky conditions,
and the tiny moon lying at
its farthest point from Jupiter
from our point of view.

Amalthea isnt really that

faint, as celestial objects go.
It glows around 13th magni
tude. But it never gets farther
from Jupiter than about PA
the planets diameter. So the
planets glow can overwhelm
it. You can solve this dilemma
by moving Jupiter just outside
your eyepieces field of view.
As to when to look, first head
to http://tiny.cc/Ephemeris.
Enter a Start time and Stop
time in the format YYYY-MMDD. Then set the Interval. I
generally use one hour. Under
Column Selection, click the
second and 12th boxes. Under
Moon Columns, click the sec
ond box, and Amalthea (J5).
Then click Generate table, and
click the link to download the
table, which will display it.
Once you have the table, look
under the column Amalth
and find numbers close to 39 or
-39. Those are the maximum
distances in arcseconds that
the moon lies either east (posi
tive number) or west (nega
tive number) of Jupiter. After
you locate the 39s, check the
dates and times (the table lists
Universal Time). If its dark
then and if Jupiter is above
your horizon, you might have
a chance to spot elusive Amal
thea. Good luck!
Michael E. Bakich
Senior Editor

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

35

SKYTHIS
MONTH

MARTIN RATCLIFFE and ALISTER LING describe the

solar system's changing landscape as it appears in Earth's sky.

Visible to the naked eye

Visible with binoculars
Visible with a telescope

February 2014: Jupiter shines brilliantly

36

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

Jupiter at its best <B> J/k>

GEMINI
Castor .
#
Pollux

UR S A M A J O R

Procyon

CANCER

Jupiter

Regulus
* EEO

HYDRA

Alphard

February 6,8 P.M.

Looking east

i', *** *

'

>J

Martin Ratcliffe provides plane

tarium development for Sky-Skan,
Inc., from his home in Wichita,
Kansas. Meteorologist Alister
Ling works for Environment
Canada in Edmonton, Alberta.

dawn. Closing out the long

February nights, Saturn
makes a nice addition to the
stars of northern Scorpius.
W inter evenings arrive
suddenly in February tem
peratures plummet, and the
snow that melts from rooftops
during daylight turns into
icicles. Shining like a huge ice
crystal catching the last rays
of the Sun, Venus hangs in
the western twilight sky all
month. It gleams at magni
tude -3.9, making it the skys
brightest point of light. Swing
a telescope toward the eve
ning star early in the month,
and youll see its nearly round
ll"-diam eter disk.
On February 1, observers
with clear skies might be able
to spot Neptune just 1
northwest (to the right) of
Venus. Its a challenge to see
the 8th-magnitude eighth

f enus dazzles in the

1
I western sky after sun1 I set, a beacon you wont
I f mistake for any other
V celestial object. It makes
a pretty pair with Mars all
month, though the Red Planet
pales in comparison to its
brilliant neighbor. A crescent
Moon adds luster to the scene
February 2 0 .
As Venus dips low in the
west, Jupiter climbs farther
above the opposite horizon.
The giant planet reaches its
peak this month and will be a
telescopic delight, displaying
intricate cloud features and
dancing moons from dusk to

satellites west (off its sunlit

limb), and youll see the 6 thmagnitude glow of Uranus. A
telescope quickly confirms its
planetary nature by showing a
blue-green disk that spans 3.4".
Venus, Mars, and Uranus
all lie among the background
stars of Pisces the Fish during
Februarys final 10 days. On
the 28th, the three stretch
along a 7.5 arc of the ecliptic
the Suns apparent path
across the sky that the planets
follow closely. Venus stands
approximately midway
between the fainter pair.
To find the next planet,
you have to scan along the
ecliptic all the way through
Aries, Taurus, and Gemini
before finally settling in
Cancer. Jupiter dominates
this constellations faint stellar
backdrop and, indeed, the
rest of the night sky after
Venus sets around 8 p .m . local
time. The giant planet reaches
opposition February 6 , when
it shines at magnitude - 2 .6 .
Three days prior to opposition

Jupiter reaches opposition and best visibility in early February, when it

looms largest through a telescope. Expect to see an alternating series of
bright zones and darker belts in the planet's atmosphere, n a s a /e s a /a . s i m o n (g s f o

planet through a telescope

during twilight. And, unfor
tunately, Neptune sinks
quickly into the horizon haze
as the sky grows darker.
A much better conjunction
adorns the western sky Febru
ary 2 0 . Venus and Mars then
appear 0.7 apart, and a twoday-old crescent Moon stands
some 2 away. Binoculars and
rich-field telescopes at low
power will deliver spectacular
views of the trio.
The Moon appears 6 per
cent lit and contrasts nicely
with Venus slimmed-down,
8 8 -percent-lit gibbous phase.
The Sun fully illuminates
Mars, which lies on the far
side of our star beyond Venus,
and its 4"-diameter disk
shines at magnitude 1.3.
The following evening,
February 21 , Venus and Mars
pass within 26' of each other.
The Moon then stands 14
above the planets and still
shows a slender crescent
phase. Look through binocu
lars or a telescope 1 to our

Jupiter lies among the relatively faint background stars of Cancer the Crab
at its February peak, a l l i l l u s t r a t i o n s : a s t r o n o m y -, r o e n k e lly

RISINGMOON

Although many observers pack

their scopes away at Full Moon,
the completely lit orb offers an

ejecta blankets surround each.

They stand out until February 4
and again after the 25th. Once

appeal of its own. The most con

spicuous features are the bright
rays that emanate from some of
the youngest lunar craters.
While nothing compares to
Tycho's sweeping rays, a hand
ful of other sprays will grab your
attention if you let your eye
roam. Look for a chaotic blotch
of white material near the
Moon's southeastern limb. You'll
see lots of rays that trace back
to their birth craters: Stevinus,
Stevinus A, and Furnerius A.
The two smaller craters here
(those with the "A") are the
youngest. Spiky rays and bright

the Sun dips lower in the lunar

sky after Full phase, albedo fea
tures become lost among the
countless shadows cast by cra
ter rims and peaks.
Now focus your attention on
Mare Nectaris, which lies north
west of our highlighted region.
One of Tycho's brightest rays

(on the night of February 3/4),

a Full Moon passes 5 south
of the planet.
The gaseous world also
appears largest through a tele
scope at opposition, with its
equatorial girth spanning
45.4". February offers observ
ers their best views of jovian
atmospheric features during
2015. And the long winter
nights mean you can track or
image the planet through one
complete rotation, which takes
slightly less than 10 hours,
during complete darkness.
Sharp views o f Jupiters
distant atmosphere ironically
depend on the stability of
E arths atmosphere. Steady
seeing develops when turbu
lence in the air above your
head dies down. These pre
cious moments might last a
few seconds or, on exquisite
nights, much longer.
A quick check of Jupiters
two dark equatorial belts will
tell you what your local seeing
conditions are like. If you see
mottled detail and occasional
Continued on page 42

crosses this sea from southwest

to northeast. Look more care
fully, however, and you'll see a
less conspicuous white line that
cuts at right angles to this one
and points back to Stevinus.
Lunar rays appear bright for
two reasons. First, they form

CONSOLIDATED LUNAR ATLAS/ UA/LPL; INSET: NASA/GSFC

Splashy rays deliver a Full Moon treat

Stevinus and its surrounding rays ^

Although Tycho boasts the most famous lunar ray system, Stevinus and
its neighbors also put on a splashy show at Full Moon.

from excavated highland mate

rial, which is naturally lighter
than volcanic mare deposits.
Second, constant bombardment

by atoms in the solar wind

slowly darkens the lunar surface
overtime, making older regions
less reflective.

METEORWATCH
Sporadics beat back
the meteor doldrums

Spectacular fireballs and bolides

a>

If the names "Beta Herculids" and

"Delta Serpentids" don't ring a
bell, don't fret they are about
as inconsequential as meteor
showers can get. Each delivers
at most one meteor per hour, on
average, yet they rank as the best
of February's annual events for
Northern Hemisphere observers.
In this quiet meteor month,
your best bet is to keep an eye out
for sporadics. Astronomers think
these random "shooting stars"
derive from ancient periodic com
ets whose dust streams thinned
out long ago. Under the dark morn
ing skies that prevail after mid
month, you should see about six
sporadics per hour. If you're lucky,
you'll spot a fireball (one brighter
than Venus) or a bolide (one that
explodes at the end of its path).

Brilliant fireballs and exploding bolides can put a charge into

February's otherwise lackluster meteor calendar, j o h n c h u m a c k

OBSERVING A crescent Moon passes within 2 of Venus and Mars after sunset

H IG H L IG H T

February 20.The next day, the two planets appear 0.5 apart.

A T

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

37

PATH OF THE
PLANETS

T L
1

planets in iGUmary ZU J

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1 ---- J

--- ---- ---- ^ A i T

This map unfolds the entire night sky from

sunset (at right) iintil sunrise (at left).

Arrowsandcoloreddotsshowmotionsam i locations of sola r system objects during the month.

DRA

/ Objects visible before dawn

UMa

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Jupiter appears at
its best for the year
during February

Asteroid Flora reaches

opposition February 15 ,

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Venus passes 0.5 south

of Mars on February 21

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Dots display positions

of Galilean satellites at
11 p. m . EST on the date
shown. South is at the
top to match
s
the view
through a
w
telescope.

V IR

* ^

CrA

Moon phases

Path of the Sun (ecliptic)

Juno

/
Saturn .

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magazine

Jupiter's moons

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Objects visible in the evening /

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Early evening

( ( i i I I

To locate the Moon in the sky, draw a line from the phase shown for the day straight up to the curved blue line.
Note: Moons vary in size due to the distance from Earth and are shown at Oh Universal Time.

10
11
12

These illustrations show the size, phase, and orientation of each planet and the two brightest dwarf planets
for the dates in the data table at bottom. South is at the top to match the view through a telescope.

13
14

Mercury

Uranus

Mars

Earth
Saturn

Ceres

Venus

Neptune

O
Pluto

V ]

Date

40

Feb. 15

VENUS

Feb. 15

MARS

Feb. 15

CERES

Feb. 15

JUPITER

Feb. 15

SATURN

Feb. 15

18
19

Ceres

Jupiter

MERCURY

17

20

"

Planets

16

21

URANUS

Feb. 15

NEPTUNE

Feb. 15

PLUTO

Feb. 15

22

Mercury
Greatest western elongation
is February 24

23

Magnitude

0.3

-3.9

1.2

9.2

-2.6

0.5

5.9

8.0

14.2

24

Angular size

8.3"

11.5"

4.3"

0.4"

45.2"

16.5"

3.4"

2.2"

0.1"

25

Illumination

39%

89%

97%

99%

100%

100%

100%

100%

100%

Distance (AU) from Earth

0.807

1.451

2.173

3.519

4.358

10.057

20.652

30.937

33.552

Distance (AU) from Sun

0.414

0.724

1.410

2.855

5.335

9.962

20.003

29.968

32.817

Right ascension (2000.0)

20h14.2m

23h34.7m

23h46.1m

19h02.9m

9h16.4m

16h09.9m

22h34.6m

19h01.7m

Declination (2000.0)

-180r

-404'

-213'

-24 17'

1652'

-1859'

0h51.1m
447-

-945'

-2034'

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

Uranus

Jupiter
Opposition is February 6

ASTRONOMY : ROEN KELLY

Mars

Arrows show the inner planets'

monthly motions and dots depict
the outer planets' positions at mid
month from high above their orbits.

15

26
27

Neptune
Solar conjunction
is February 25/26

Saturn

28

BY

10

Venus

Hr
W

The planets
in their orbits

Jupiter

ILLUSTRATIONS

The planets
in the sky

Pluto

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

41

Continued from page 37

WHEN TO VIEW THE PLANETS

EVENING SKY

MIDNIGHT

Venus (west)

Jupiter (south)

MORNING SKY
Mercury (southeast)

Mars (west)

Jupiter (west)

Jupiter (east)

Saturn (south)

Uranus (southwest)
Neptune (west)
30"

Ganymede
Callisto

dark spots with fine detail

along the belts edges, this
tells you its a perfect night. If
not, dont head inside. Wait a
while and watch for fleeting
moments of steadiness.
Once youve had your fill
of the worlds delightful atmo
sphere, turn your attention to
the four bright Galilean satel
lites. Io, Europa, Ganymede,
and Callisto (in order of
increasing distance from
Jupiter) slide back and forth as
they follow their paths around
the planet. Although all four
rarely line up by distance,

they manage this feat on the

night of opposition. From
sundown until around 2 a . m .
EST, you can identify the
moons simply by noting how
far east of Jupiter they lie.
Each satellite and its
shadow cross the jovian disk
every circuit and then, half an
orbit later, disappear behind
the giant planet. Such inci
dents go on like clockwork
every month of every year.
But this year something even
more spectacular occurs. The
orbits of the Galilean satellites
now appear nearly edge-on to

February 26, 9:00

. M

EST

Three jovian moons lie near one another the night of February 26/27.
Between 9
and 3
four mutual events take place among them.
p

. ,

both the Sun and Earth, ini

tiating a series of so-called
mutual events. You can watch
as one moon passes in front
of another (an occultation) or
one moon passes through
anothers shadow (an eclipse).
A few dozen such events
occur during February for
observers in the United States
and Canada.
Most mutual eclipses and
occupations occur alone and

last for only a few minutes.

On the North American night
of February 26/27, however,
four events involving Io,
Ganymede, and Callisto hap
pen over a six-hour period.
The series begins with Io
occulting Ganymede. The
event starts at 9:17 p . m . EST
and runs until 9:24 p . m . The
same two moons reclaim cen
ter stage when Ios shadow
envelops Ganymedes disk for

COMETSEARCH
\rcing between the Princess and the Hero
I

Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2)

makes a welcome addition to
the stars and other deep-sky
objects nestled along the winter
Milky Way in Andromeda the
Princess and Perseus the Hero.
Even better, the region is per
fectly placed in the northwest
on February evenings.
Lovejoy has some notable
encounters with background
objects this month. On February
4, it passes less than 1 east of
the lovely 2nd-magnitude dou
ble star Gamma (y) Andromedae
and 3 west of the spectacular
edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891.
Lovejoy should glow at 8th
or 9th magnitude, making it
brighter than NGC 891. Unfor
tunately, the nearly Full Moon
will hinder views of both comet
and galaxy.
But the Moon will be out
of the way for Lovejoy's next
series of close encounters. On
February 18, the comet passes

42

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

less than 0.5 west of 4thmagnitude Phi ((j>) Persei.Two

days later, it skims a similar
distance west of the Little
Dumbbell Nebula (M76). Both
Lovejoy and M76 benefit from
views at medium to high power.
Neither appears round, and
each has some well-defined
edges. Lovejoy's sharp bound
ary is on its southwestern edge,
where the solar wind blows the
comet's ionized gas straight out
from the coma.
Australian amateur astrono
mer Terry Lovejoy discovered
this dirty snowball August 17,
2014. It currently lies between
the orbits of Earth and Mars,
close enough to the Sun's warm
ing influence to put on a decent
show. C/2014 Q2 hails from the
distant Oort Cloud, a vast reser
voir at the solar system's edge
filled with a trillion or so frozen
comet nuclei. With the notable
exception of Comet 1P/Halley,

This first-time visitor to the inner solar system slides past the edge-on
galaxy NGC 891 and the planetary nebula M76 during February.

short-period comets (those that

orbit the Sun in less than 200
years) don't provide observers
with months of exciting viewing.
Luckily, the Oort Cloud delivers

dozens of fresh comets to the

inner solar system each year,
and two orthree typically grow
bright enough to make good
targets for small scopes.

The Moon sweeps past Earth's planetary neighbors <s>

PEGASUS

PISCES
CETUS

Mars
Venus

February 20,1 hour after sunset

LooKing w e s t ^
; vV* ;'vi

Moon *

' l . <5

The evening of February 20 provides observers with a stunning view of a

waxing crescent Moon next to Venus and Mars.

nearly 10 minutes com menc

ing at 10:31 p .m . Observers
will see the solar systems
largest moon dim noticeably
around mideclipse.
Nearly an hour later, at
11:28 p .m ., Callisto eclipses
Ganymede for 11 minutes.
The nights final mutual
event starts at 2:49 a .m .
when Callistos shadow
sweeps across Io to initiate a
12-minute eclipse. All three
moons lie well west of Jupiter
during these encounters,
while lonely Europa appears
east of the planet as soon as
it exits Jupiters shadow at
10:23 p . m . Such alignments of
the Galilean moons beauti
fully illustrate their motions
and allow observers to appre
ciate the three-dimensional
nature of their orbits.
Although February nights
can be cold, a hint of summer
lurks in the early morning
sky. The bright stars of
Scorpius remind us that
warmer days lie just a few
months ahead. The Scorpion
looks different this year, how
ever, with bright Saturn
crossing its northern flank.
The solar system interloper
lies 9 northwest of the con
stellations brightest star,
Antares, on February 1. Both
appear prominent in the
southeast by 4 a .m . local time.

The planet glows at

magnitude 0.5 and sports a
yellowish hue that contrasts
nicely with the slightly fainter
stars distinctive orange-red
color. By m onths end, the
pair stands well clear o f the
horizon by 2 a . m . Saturn then
lies 0.4 due north of magni
tude 4.1 Nu (v) Scorpii.
The Last Quarter Moon on
February 12 points the way to
Saturn, which lies 7 to our
satellites lower left. On the
following morning, the wan
ing crescent Moon has moved
to a position 6 to the ringed
planets lower left. Swing a
telescope toward Saturn on
the 13th, and youll find its
own moon, Titan, due north
of the planet. Although Titan
is 50 percent bigger than our
Moon, at its great distance
it appears as a mere 8thmagnitude point of light.
The best time to observe
Saturn through a telescope
is when it climbs higher in
the sky around the break of
dawn. This lessens the effects
of atmospheric turbulence
and affords steady views of
the planet and rings. In midFebruary, the globe appears
17" across while the ring sys
tem spans 38" and tilts 25 to
our line of sight. You should

LOCATINGASTEROIDS

Crawling through the Crab

Our minor planet target this
month is a potato-shaped
rock spanning some 170 miles.
Asteroid 3 Juno lies approxi
mately halfway between the
beacons of nearby Jupiter and
distant Procyon, a region that
climbs high in the southeast
by 9 p . m . local time. The 8thmagnitude asteroid crosses
from Hydra the Water Snake
into Cancer the Crab in midFebruary. Wait until February 5
for the bright Moon to take its
leave from this part of the sky.
While you're in the area,
make brief detours to two of
the Crab's deep-sky gems. The
Beehive star cluster (M44)
stands in central Cancer and
ranks high on most observers'
lists. Binoculars and rich-field
telescopes best show this treat.

Another great open star cluster,

M67, is a pretty sight through
any telescope. It lies 8 southsoutheast of M44.
If you're new to asteroid
hunting and want the easiest
path to success, wait until the
end of February, when Juno
appears 1 southwest of magni
tude 3.5 Beta ((3) Cancri. None of
the other background stars in
this vicinity outshines Juno.
Or you can join those who
discover by motion. Jump about
1.5 south of Beta to a quadrilat
eral of four stars, and sketch
their positions. On February 22,
Juno sits inside this stellar group.
To see the main-belt object shift
position during one observing
session, pick it up in early eve
ning and then return to the area
three or four hours later.

Asteroid Juno dims from 8th to 9th magnitude as it makes its way north
westward across the faint backdrop of Hydra and Cancer.

have no trouble seeing the

dark Cassini Division that
separates the outer A ring
from the brighter B ring.
Saturn will grow increasingly
impressive as it approaches
opposition this spring.
Our final planet seems
like an afterthought in com
parison with the delights of
Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Mercury reaches greatest

elongation February 24, when
it lies 27 west of the Sun.
From mid-northern latitudes,
however, it climbs just 4
above the southeastern
horizon 45 minutes before
sunrise. Youll likely need
binoculars to pick the mag
nitude 0.0 object out of the
twilight glow. !i

GET DAILY UPDATES ON YOUR NIGHT SKY AT www.Astronom y.com /skythisweek.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

43

w
mMJf v-* ^ #/i *W^ V- jt- a
# / rf > . ^

I ./> r*7
>

Good vibrations
^1

Like doctors scanning a patients body, astronomers

are peering inside distant stars to investigate their state.
by Jaymie Matthews

t s not easy being an astronomer. The stars we study are

ring. Many more hum. Its not melodic, but it is music to the ears
light-years away, but no human has been farther than
of astronomers hoping to understand the structures and evolution
250,000
miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth. The lives of of stars in better detail.
stars span billions of years, while ours span only decades.
W hat causes the ringing? A star is a sphere of gas held together
Clues about stars arrive as photons o f light that escape from
by gravity and heated by fusion reactions in its core. The heat
the suns thin outer layers, with their interiors hidden from view.
is responsible for the gas pressure that keeps it from collapsing.
Throughout most of its life, a star is in a delicate balance between
Beauty isnt skin deep. Neither is the full story of a star, its his
tory and future. To understand the processes going on, scientists
gravity and gas pressure. If something upsets that equilibrium
must adopt strategies like doctors checking up on the health of
slightly, the gas in the star will oscillate around its stable state. In
their distant patients. My generation o f astronomers is the first to
other words, if you could hit a star with a big enough hammer, it
see inside stars thanks to new tools and one of the most pow
would ring. Stars like the Sun hit themselves repeatedly through
erful wasnt even intended to study such objects.
the turbulent motions of the gas in their outer layers.
NASAs Kepler space telescope, like most telescopes, sees stars
Any wave triggered by that turbulence descends deeper into the
as nothing more than pinpoints of light. But from its vantage point,
star. Its path bends as it encounters gas of increasing temperature
it carefully and continuously monitored thousands of stars
(and in the thermonuclear core of the star, gas of changing compo
for years. Astronomers can use Kepler data to reveal a stars
sition). The wave eventually returns to the surface, where it reflects
optical oscillations and translate them into an X-ray view
and begins another inward dive. Repeated descents and ascents
that shows whats beneath the surface. Those vibrations indi
of waves around the rim o f a star can generate a standing wave at
cate how much hydrogen is left in a stars core how much
the surface at one of the suns many resonant frequencies. Its like
fuel is left to drive the fusion engine which tells us how
a giant finger circling the rim of an enormous wine glass at just
long that sun has been shining. In other words, astronomers
the right rate to make the glass ring. Except in this case, instead of
can derive a stars age based only on the light it emits today.
glass, its gas thats ringing.
Why should the Kepler team care, since their spacecraft was
Velocities play an important role in this cosmic harmony, too.
designed to find Earth-sized exoplanets? Whether a planet can
The speed of sound depends on the temperature and composition
support life depends on properties of the star it orbits. If we know
of the gas its traveling through. Astronomers can translate the
the stars age, we know the planets age. Armed with ages of a large
stars surface vibrations into how the temperature changes with
sample of planetary systems, astronomers gain new insights into
depth and how the composition changes close to the stars center,
how planets form and evolve, including those in our solar system.
where hydrogen is being fused into helium. Thats how this tech
If astronomers find an Earth-sized planet, everybody gets
nique can reveal how much fusion fuel is left in the stars tank and,
excited. We estimate an exoplanets size from the dip in light when
hence, the age of the star. It also can provide values for the stars
it passes in front of its parent star. The depth of the dip depends on
other fundamental parameters.
the relative diameters of the planet and its star. If we dont know
The technique is called asteroseismology because astronomers
the size of the star, we dont know the size of the planet. To avoid
borrowed a page from the seismologists guidebook on prob
exo-Earth false alarms, astronomers need the best possible infor
ing Earths interior. Our planets center lies about 4,000 miles
mation about the star.
(6,400km) beneath our feet, but it might as well be 4,000 lightyears for all our ability to visit it. We know what its like deep
inside our planet only through seismology. Geophysicists measure
One of the best ways to know the size of a single star, and one of
where and when vibrations from an earthquake emerge at the
the only ways to know its age, is to listen to a star. Some stars
surface to trace their paths and speeds, and as a result, they can
decipher the properties of the rock and metal through which the
waves traveled.
A technique called asteroseismology allows astronomers to "hear" the
But astronomers need to be even more clever. They cant put
internal structure of pulsating stars. By studying vibrations from these suns,
seismographs on a star, but they can look for the vibrations to
astronomers can decipher what's happening below the surface, leading to an
understanding of the star's evolutionary and chemical state, a s t r o n o m y -, roen kelly
learn how waves travel through that sun. Comparing observed

The music of the stars

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

45

A cutaway of a red giant shows the wave patterns of

vibration inside it. Seismology of the vibrations
of such stars reveals that the thermonuclear
core spins fast, completing one full rota
tion in only a few weeks, compared to
the surface spin of a red giant, which
can take a year to rotate.

frequencies with predicted values (based on

how waves travel in computer-modeled
stars) enables asteroseismologists to
see deep below the few hundred
miles of gas from which light
escapes from a star like the
Sun. Our version of a seis
mograph is a sensitive light
meter at the focus of a tele
scope called a photometer.
The photometers output,
the stellar seismogram, is
a light curve, or a record
o f the apparent brightness
o f the star as a function
of time. Astronomers
search that light curve for
signal strength across a
wide range o f frequencies to
produce a power density spec
trum, the equivalent of con
verting an analog audio recording
into an MP3 file.

Unfortunately, a stars
oscillation sound system
also has a volume control
thats locked on ultralow. To properly hear the
music, asteroseismologists
need to greatly reduce any
background noise. W hen
were trying to pick up the
hum o f a Sun-like star with
a telescope on Earth, the
main source of noise is the
turbulent atmosphere above us.
Its that same churning air that
makes stars twinkle.

Hearing a star's whispers

___

Some stars, like the Cepheid variable stars that

help calibrate the intergalactic distance scale, play
only one note. Some ring at dozens of frequencies, with periods
o f hours, staying in tune for millions of years. Others, like our
Sun, vibrate in millions of frequencies, with periods of minutes,
but each individual note comes and goes in a few days. Its not so
much ringing as humming. That humming is quiet the stellar
equivalent of a whisper and the many frequencies in that hum
make it possible to explore a stars hidden interior in detail. But
only if we can hear, and decipher, the stars subtle whispers.
Stellar vibrations are not measured as sounds because they can
not travel across the vacuum of space; instead, astronomers detect
them as changes in a stars brightness, modulated by the waves at
its surface. Scientists can measure the actual wave patterns on our
Sun because were close enough to see it as a disk. W hat if we put
our star far from home, at the distance of another star, so it was
visible only as a pinpoint of light? Then the amplitude of its oscil
lations the net change in its brightness would be a few ten
thousandths of a percent, a few parts per million. Thats the level
o f signal an asteroseismologist must detect.
A stars vibrations also can be detected as surface motions
through the shifts in wavelength of the starlight as the surface
undulates. In a Sun-like star, the net motions due to pulsations
are less than a meter per second. This can be apparent to certain
spectrographs, the same instruments that detect periodic stellar
wobbles due to unseen planetary companions. But these earthbound instruments must interrupt their observations with each
sunrise and can usually follow a star for only a few weeks each
year. The gaps in the data and the truncated time coverage make it
a challenge to record the full complexity of a stars vibrations and
use them for asteroseismology.

I f E arth s atmosphere is a constant source of

noise that swamps a stars subtle signal, whats an
asteroseismologist to do? Place a telescope above E arth s atm o
sphere, in an orbit where it can be decoupled from the cycles of
day and night and seasons.
The pioneering effort was Canadas first space telescope,
Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST), launched
in 2003. From 510 miles (820km) above Earth, M OST stared at
stars across a wide swatch of the sky without interruption for
up to two months at a time. Joining M OST in orbit in 2006 was
the French satellite Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits
(CoRoT). CoRoT alternated between two small patches of sky 180
apart (dubbed with true French flair The Eyes of CoRoT). The
telescope made eye contact with each field for five months at a
time. M OST and CoRoT may have been the pioneers in the space
photometry revolution, but the biggest salvo in the war against

Photometry revolution

By using asteroseismology, Kepler scientists were able to accurately

measure the size of a star smaller than the Sun for the first time. In turn,
they could accurately determine the sizes of the three planets around
the star, designated Kepler-37; the astronomers found that one is simi
lar in size to our Moon, nasa/ames/jpl caltech

Jaymie Matthews is a professor of astronomy at the University of British

Columbia, where he studies stars and exoplanets applying asteroseismol
ogy. He is mission scientist for the Canadian Space Agency's MOST project
and on the executive council of NASA's Kepler mission.
46

ASTRONOMY

FEBRUARY 2015

Moon

Kepler-37b

Mercury

Mars

Teasing data from a distant star

Consistent frequency separations

3,800

4,000

4,200

4,400

4,600

Time

Frequency (microhertz)

The so-called power density spectrum of the star Kepler-37 (left) shows oscillations in the star that resemble those of the Sun. Astronomers
analyze the seismic data in this graph to estimate Kepler-37's diameter as about 77 percent as large as our star's. An observed dip in Kepler-37's
brightness (right) betrays the presence of one of three planets orbiting the star. From it, scientists can estimate the planet's diameter relative to
the host sun. Together, these data show that one of the planets in the Kepler-37 system is smaller than Mercury.

photometric noise and insufficient data coverage was the launch in

2009 of NASAs Kepler spacecraft.
Kepler doesnt orbit Earth but rather circles the Sun in an
orbit like E arth s but positioned millions of miles behind the
planet. From that vantage point, the spacecraft stared out from its
orbital plane not for months, but for four years. Kepler sampled
a patch o f the sky with 42 CCDs (and a total of 94.6 megapixels,
more pixels than on any previous NASA mission). The telescopes
clear aperture of 37 inches (95 centimeters) compared to
M O ST s 6 inches (15cm) and CoRoTs 11 inches (27cm) was
large enough to bring faint stars into asteroseismic reach. And
with the Sun and Earth far from the field o f view, noise due to
sunlight (direct or reflected by Earth or the Moon) was reduced
to a level where photometry o f part-per-million precision became
a reality for tens o f thousands o f stars.
Kepler was designed to search for planets among a sample of
about 160,000 stars in the direction of the sky between the constel
lations Cygnus and Lyra. The search strategy: Detect the periodic
dips in star brightness when a planet passes directly between its
parent star and us in an event known as a transit. To find a planet
the size of Earth around a star like the Sun in an orbit in that stars
habitable zone, where liquid surface water could exist, requires

monitoring for at least 3V2 years. That allows astronomers to see at

least four consecutive equally spaced transits with a period o f one
year at part-per-million precision.
Astronomers soon realized that Keplers planet-finding powers
also were ideally suited for asteroseismology. The photometric pre
cision and time coverage needed to detect transits of an exo-Earth
around a distant star are capable of detecting many low-amplitude
oscillations in that sun. One of the first to see this potential in
Kepler was Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard of Aarhus University in
Denmark. The pivotal moment for me came during a workshop
in 2010, says Christensen-Dalsgaard, after the early release of
Kepler data, when I was struck by an epiphany that I was finally
witnessing analyses of the kind of stellar oscillation data that I had
dreamed of for 30 years.

Don't judge a star by

its cover
One o f Keplers seismic
discoveries is the
Sun-like star
Kepler-37, which
lies about 220

Heartfelt stars
t<U

o>
<u
o
>
Time

I</i

KIC 3749404

t/>
<U
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00
Time
Some stars studied by the Kepler spacecraft bear a haunting resemblance in their pulsations to the beating of a human heart. A simple electrocar
diogram of a heart (top) stands in comparison here to the rhythmic pulsations of a so-called "heartbeat star," KIC 3749404 (bottom), a sun in the
catalog of eclipsing binaries studied with Kepler. The star's light curve spans about two months, and the largest variations in brightness represent
0.3 percent of the total brightness of the star, a s t r o n o m y -, roen kelly, after s. e. Thompson, et al. 2012, t h e a s t r o p h y s ic a l j o u r n a l

light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. In 2012, by

combining seismic and spectroscopic data, a team led by astrono
mer Thomas Barclay of NASAs Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field, California, announced that the stars diameter is 77 percent
that o f the Sun, with an accuracy of about 4 percent.
Why announce the diameter of a fairly anonymous star with
any fanfare? Because this sun harbors three transiting planets,
also detected by Kepler. The depth of the transits gives the size
o f a planet, but only relative to the size of the star it orbits. The
accurate determination of the size of Kepler-37 means accurate
determinations of the sizes of its planets. One of those planets,
Kepler-37b, is only one-third the size of Earth smaller than
Mercury while the other two are three-quarters and twice the
size of our planet.
Could Kepler-37b have an atmosphere? Its highly unlikely.
Seismic analysis puts the age of the star and its planets
at about 6 billion years, 1.5 billion years older
than our Sun. In that time, any oceans or volatile
atmosphere would have evaporated from the
surface of Kepler-37b. But a trio of rocky plan
ets with sizes comparable to Earth is another
piece of evidence suggesting that small rocky
planets may be common in our galaxy.
These three may not be in the habitable
zone of their star, but many others almost
certainly are.
Kepler-37 is just one of many
Sun-like stars in which Kepler has
detected oscillations. Earlier this
year, Bill Chaplin of the University
of Birmingham in Alabama and

The Kepler spacecraft enables studies

of a large number of stars represent
ing a broad range of types. This
asteroseismic research will sub
stantially improve astronomers'
understanding of stellar evolu
tion and will help determine
the properties of stars that have
planetary systems.

48

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

his collaborators used data from the first 10 months of the Kepler
mission to estimate the properties of more than 500 oscillating
solar-type and subgiant stars. Seismology of the stars for which
there are spectroscopic data yields masses accurate to 6 percent and
diameters accurate to 2 percent.
More than half of the stars in this subsample have seismic ages
with uncertainties of less than a billion years, about one-quarter
of the lifetime in many cases. For a 36-year-old human, thats an
uncertainty of 9 years, the accuracy of an age estimate by a blood
test. So plus or minus a billion years is not bad, considering these
stellar patients are hundreds of light-years from the nearest doctors
office. Plus, these age estimates are preliminary, based on the over
all patterns of the oscillation frequencies, not the individual fre
quencies themselves. The best results are yet to come.
While Kepler has seen oscillations in hundreds
of middle-aged suns, it also has seen them in
thousands of stellar senior citizens: red giants.
Paul Beck of the Catholic University of Leuven,
Belgium, led the team that measured for the first
time the rotation rates deep inside three red giant
stars using Kepler oscillation data. The cores of all
three stars spin 10 times faster than their surfaces.
Astronomers have long been wary of judging a stel
lar book by its cover, but this is one of the first times
weve been able to open one of these books to read the
story of their dynamics.
The results show that the cores of red giants rotate
much more slowly than our models predicted, although
still faster than their surfaces, says ChristensenDalsgaard. As is common in science, new data have
raised questions about our understanding of stellar evo
lution. But the Kepler data also provide essential input to
improve our understanding. This repeating cycle of new
data, new questions, and new answers to be tested by new
data will, according to the theorist, surely keep us busy for
a very long time.

Taking the pulses of heartbeat stars

A star can ring if gas near its surface is pushed out of
equilibrium, as in the striking of a bell. A star also can

ring if gas is pulled out of equilibrium. Thats not easy to do with

a solid bell, but nature finds a way to do it with gaseous stars, and
Kepler has caught nature in the act.
W hen a human couple edges very close, their hearts
may start to race. Kepler found that the same can happen
for stars in a binary system. Picture two stars locked in
the embrace of gravity, in an eccentric orbit that carries
them apart and then intimately close during each cycle.
During the close encounters, the stars tides briefly stretch
them into the shapes of eggs. As the stars move apart, the tidal
force drops and each stars gravity works to restore its shape to a
sphere. W ith each orbit, the stars stretch and then rebound. By
repeatedly pumping gravitational energy into a star, this process
can excite resonances and make the sun ring, with a volume con
trol synchronized with the binary orbital period.
This new class of pulsators discovered by Kepler have been
nicknamed heartbeat stars, as their light curves resemble elec
trocardiograms. Theres a fast swing in brightness, followed by
fading oscillations, which are brought back to life each orbit.
Stellar tides act like a cardiac defibrillator for the pulsations.
W hats clear to astronomers is that they can use heartbeat
stars as remote laboratories to study dynamics inside stars. Since
2011, more than a hundred heartbeat stars have been found in the
Kepler data. By monitoring their pulses, in both brightness and
motion, we expect to see behavior that requires more detailed
physics in the models of stellar structure and evolution. The com
bination of pulsation and binarity presents the enticing prospect of
one-stop shopping for astrophysical information a place to find
a gift for the astronomer who has everything.

Looking to the future

Kepler has completely revolutionized stellar astrophysics, says
Christensen-Dalsgaard, who promises that Keplers revolution is
far from over. W ere only beginning to learn how to analyze the
data and extract the full information they contain. Just skimming
the surface of the Kepler data has already given us completely new
ways to think about stars.
The space photometry revolution in asteroseismology and exoplanetary science is more than a decade old. Astronomers have
seen both triumphs and casualties. After six years of exemplary
service, CoRoT went silent in late 2012. MOST, planned as a oneyear scout mission to observe 10 stars, has completed a reconnais
sance of 5,000 stars during more than 11 years in space. However,
the Canadian Space Agency retired the trooper in late 2014. Kepler
stood careful watch over the stars it was assigned until mid-2013,
when the second of four reaction wheels failed. Kepler needed three
wheels to point steadily in one direction for four years. While it has
stopped collecting data for its first mission, Kepler has taken on new
life in a mission called K2. Staring at star fields for 83 days at a time,
Kepler continues to push forward the frontiers of astrophysics.
The pioneers are making room for the next wave of explorers.
Already in orbit is the BRITE Constellation of five working satel
lites. BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer because a goal of
this Canadian-Austrian-Polish project is seismology of the most
luminous stars in our galaxy.
Due for launch in 2017 is NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite (TESS). Like Kepler, TESSs primary mission is to find
exoplanets. Also like Kepler, astronomers have seen the asteroseismic potential of TESS and made it part of the mission. And the

The Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) satellite probed

stellar interiors by studying the acoustic waves that ripple across the sur
face of stars from 2006 to 2012. cnes2006/d. ducros

European Space Agency plans to send PLAnetary Transits and

Oscillations of stars (PLATO) into space in 2024. PLATOs phi
losophy combines searching for Earth-sized planets with studying
the stars around which those planets revolve.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. W hen the beholder was the
Kepler satellite, maintaining eye contact with tens of thousands of
stars for four years straight, it became very clear that the beauty
of stars is not just skin deep. CT scans on the catwalks probably
wouldnt make fashion models any sexier, but scanning stellar inte
riors has made stars much more understandable. And to astrono
mers, the intimate understanding of stars is very sexy science. '*i

The Microvariability
and Oscillations of
STars (MOST) mission
involved a microsatel
lite designed to detect
precise acoustic oscil
lations in solar-type
and smaller stars.
CANADIANSPACEAGENCY

FIND OUT H O W STARS TICK BY VISITIN G www.Astronom y.com /toc.

* T

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

Reflection nebula NGC
2023 surrounds a hot star
and scatters its light from
a distance of 1,600 lightyears. R.JAYGaBANY

Discover

The beauty and variety o f objects in this constellation will keep you warm even on the coldest nights.
by Stephen James O'Meara
rion the Hunter is one of the
skys most identifiable starry
figures. Its also one o f the
wealthiest constellations in
terms of deep-sky riches. It
contains examples of every major class
o f object but one (a globular star cluster).
All are within reach o f small- to medium
sized telescopes, and some are best seen
through binoculars under a dark sky.
For this story, Ive chosen a sampling of
these treats including some uncom
mon targets as well as a few fun visual
challenges for small-telescope users.

Hopefully, youll get enough clear nights

that these treats will keep you busy on
cold winter nights.

Orion's largest...
and then some
Orions Belt is one o f the easiest star pat
terns to find. These three 2nd-magnitude
stars, equally spaced across 3 o f sky, out
line the Hunters waist. The trio has long
fueled the imagination. Australian aborig
ines envisioned them as young men danc
ing to attract the attention of maidens (the
Pleiades). Early Mayans fancied them as
the crack in the shell of the cosmic turtle
through which the world ascended.
Today we know that at least two of the
Belt stars Mintaka (Delta [5] Orionis)
and Alnitak (Zeta [Q Ori) belong
to open star cluster Collinder 70, an
attractive gathering of 100 hot
young stars moving through
space as a pack. Simple hand
held binoculars will show about
70 cluster members snaking

Sigma (o) Orionis is a wonderful

example of a multiple star system.
This sketch, made with a 6-inch
Newtonian and an eyepiece that gave
a magnification of 240x, shows three
of its stars along with Struve 761, the
thin triangle to the upper right that the
author describes, jeremy perez

around the Belt like a giant serpent around

a stick. By the way, the third star in the
Belt, Alnilam (Epsilon [e] Orionis), is
roughly three times as distant as the other
two, according to measurements using
Hipparcos satellite data.
After making an observation of
Collinder 70, you might find it easier to
imagine, as in Hindu mythology, the Sun
god Vishnu standing on the back of a turtle
and churning out the Milky Way using ...
a serpent-wrapped stick!
The Belt also harbors NGC 2024, a riproaring burst of reflection nebulosity
known as the Flame Nebula, 15' northeast
of Alnitak, the Belts easternmost star. I
regard it as one of Orions great wonders.
Under a dark sky, Ive spied this 30'-wide
nebula through hand-held binoculars.
Youll find this much easier if you
mount the binoculars on a tripod and
occult Alnitaks light with the sharp edge
of a distant roof. Look for a sepulchral veil
of dark nebulosity that slices clean through
NGC 2024s midsection, partially hiding
from view a cluster of newborn suns. In
images, NGC 2024 bears a remarkable
resemblance to lipstick marks on a mirror,
and from that comes one of its more popu
lar nicknames: the Lips Nebula.
Almost equidistant southeast of
Alnitak, youll find another highly
neglected reflection nebula: NGC 2023.

4 'J

The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) is part of the Orion

Molecular Cloud Complex, which also includes the
much tougher to see Horsehead Nebula (Barnard
33). ADAMBLOCK/MOUNTLEMMONSKYCENTER/UNiyERSITYOFARIZONA

This 10-wide circular glow surrounds an

8th-magnitude star and looks like what
youd see after breathing on your eyepiece
during a cold night. NGC 2023s true
nature, however, reveals itself if you com
pare it to similarly bright stars nearby.
Theres more! Look just 50' south of
Alnitak to find one of the most remarkable
multiple star systems in the sky. Sigma (a)
Orionis (also known as Struve 762) is a
quintuplet with four components available
to small-telescope users. The stars are
strung out in a crooked line oriented
roughly northeast to southwest. Their
magnitudes range from 4 to 9, with the
closest companions lying 11" southwest and

13" east of the primary; the farthest one is

41" northeast. Struve 761, a needle-thin
scalene triangle of 8th-magnitude stars 3'
northwest, adds beauty to the field.
Once again, return to Alnitak. This
time, stay there and push the power to
220x or more. Alnitak is one of the night
skys unadorned multiple star systems: a
magnitude 1.9 primary with a magnitude
3.7 secondary 2.4" to the southeast.
Observers have described the second
arys color as rose, lavender, and reddisholive. What do you see? A third star,
glowing at magnitude 9.5, lies 60" north
east of the primary.

S te p h e n Ja m e s O 'M e a ra is a contributing edi

One o f Orions best-known objects, reflec

tion nebula M78, shines about 2 x/i north
east of Alnitak. Three well-known dwarf

tor of Astronomy who authors the "Secret Sky"

column each month.

Shadow play

nebulae lie nearby: NGC 2071 to the

north-northeast, NGC 2067 to the north
west, and NGC 2064 to the southwest.
M78 is the principal marvel, appearing
as a soft, wispy 8'-wide fog around two
close-knit lOth-magnitude stars. W hen
viewed through eyepieces that give moder
ate to high magnifications, observers see
the fog splinter in all manner of comet-like
manifestations riveted with dark nodules
and irregular streaks. Its a playground for
whispers of light and shadow.
Astroimagers should also try for
McNeil's Nebula, a reflection nebula
named after amateur astronomer Jay
McNeil, who discovered it in 2004 from his
backyard in Padukah, Kentucky using a
CCD camera mounted on a 3 -inch tele
scope! The nebula can be easy to see
through medium-sized scopes, but be
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

51

M78 (above center), the sky's brightest reflection

nebula, is the most prominent part of this image.
The large reflection nebula below it is NGC 2071.
NGC 2064 is the small bright knot to the left of
M78, just across the dark rift. Finally, NGC 2067
stretches to the lower right of NGC 2064 and is to
the lower left of M78. don goldmai/

warned, it is a variable phenomenon that

comes into view only when its illuminating
star (a variable) flares to significance.
YouTl find it 7' southwest of M78.

Face it
Early skywatchers saw Orions face as a
misty patch with three stars at the core in
the shape of a capital Greek letter Lambda
(A). Coincidentally, Meissa (Lambda [X]
Orionis) is the brightest with Phi1 ((f)1) and
Phi2 (({)2) Orionis as its fainter attendants.
O f the three, Lambda and Phi1 belong
to the sparse 70'-wide open star cluster
Collinder 69. These 20 stars include at
least a half-dozen other suns hovering
near the limit o f naked-eye visibility.
W hile these stars alone are enough to
cause an illusion of mistiness in the region,
photographs reveal the 4-wide nebula
52

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

Sharpless 2-264 surrounding Collinder

69, whose collective radiation energizes the
nebula. Is the mist we see with our unaided
eyes the nebula or an illusion created by
the closeness and dimness of the clusters
stars? The latter reason is why the Beehive
Cluster (M44) in Cancer appears fuzzy to
unaided eyes. You be the judge.
By the way, the distance between
Lambda and Phi1 Orionis, 27', is about the
same as the apparent size of the Full Moon.
Try to visualize that the next time you see
these stars. It may seem hard to believe.
The region of Orions face also contains
the challenging 12th-magnitude planetary
nebula NGC 2022. It sports a clean annulus a little more than 1 east, and a tad
south, of Phi2 Orionis. Youll need powers
of at least lOOx for its 22"-wide disk to
stand out well from the background sky.

Pump up the power to 300x or more, and

you should see the planetarys well-defined
ring that looks like two crescents facing off.
I find this feature one of the most obvi
ous of its kind in small- to moderate-sized
telescopes. If youre using a small telescope,
be sure to employ averted vision (look
slightly to the side of the object rather than
straight at it).

Sword of wonder
The words Orions Sword usually con
jure up a vision of three faint stars in a
row dangling from Orions Belt and sport
ing the spectacular Orion Nebula (M42)
in the middle. But Orions Sword actually
has four naked-eye stars, each of which
is a deep-sky splendor unto itself. Lets
start from the southernmost star and work
our way northward.

Alnitak (Zeta [Q Orionis) is a relatively easy dou

ble star to split through any telescope because
both components are so bright, jeremyperez

Iota (i) Orionis is a white-sapphire star

with two visual companions: a magnitude
7.7 aquamarine sun 11.6" southeast and a
lOth-magnitude pale mango star about 50"
east. Astronomers refer to them collectively
as Struve 752. They lie in a little nest of
nebulosity known as NGC 1980 the
bright southern segment of the enormous
emission nebula bubble emanating from
the core of the Orion Nebula.
Now shift your gaze just 8' southwest of
Iota, and youll find the bright double star
Struve 747, a pair of 5th-magnitude dia
monds separated by 36". To the unaided
eye, Iota Orionis and Struve 747 are them
selves a beautiful naked-eye double, though
I wonder how many have noticed. These
stars and some 30 more belong to a 15'wide open cluster known as Collinder 72.

c o

t i n

e d

o n

a g

5 6

McNeil's Nebula (inset) is a variable reflection

nebula near M78. An astroimager discovered
it in 2004. TONYHALLAS; INSET: GEMINI OBSERVATORY

Sharpless 2-264 is a huge emission nebula that lies in the region of Orion's head. It surrounds open
star cluster Collinder 69, the slightly brighter stars in the center of the image, dean salman
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

53

The constellation Orion the Hunter is one of the

most stunning sights in the sky. This somewhat
deeper look reveals many more stars than you'll
see with your naked eyes, plus lots of gas.
R O G E tlO B ER N A L A N D R E O

Collinder 69

NGC 2022

Collinder 70
NGC 2024
Struve 761

NGC 2Q23
NGC 1081
NGC 1973/5/7

NGC 1924
Struve 747

NGC 1980
Struve 752

Collinder 72

NGC 1999

'

%
*

The Orion Nebula (M42) is one of the sky's true

celestial wonders. It contains so many details
that you could spend the whole night observing
it. If you do, don't forget to spend some time
with M43, the bright patch to the upper right
of the large cloud, adam block/mount lemmon skycenter/
UNIVERSITYOFARIZONA

Planetary nebula NGC 2022 isn't a bright object,

but its small size concentrates what light it has,
making it an easy catch through a small tele
scope. ADAMBLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF

56

A S T R O N O M Y . FEBRUARY 2015

Struve 747 is a double star you'll have no trouble

splitting. Even a 2-inch scope will reveal the dual
nature of these evenly matched white suns. The
pair's separation is 36". jeremyperez

c o

t i n

e d

f r o

a g

5 3

Moving north, we come to the Theta1

(01) Orionis region. Theta1 Ori, more com
monly known as the Trapezium, appears
to be drowning in a whirlpool of vapors at
the core of M42. For mid-northern observ
ers, the sight is unrivaled in its clarity and
beauty, even through small instruments.
Enhancing the view is M 42s sidecar
nebula, M43, just to the north-northeast.
There is no need to extoll the beauty and
grandeur of the joint M42/43 spectacle.
These ethereal boils of hot gas will speak
volumes when you look at them through
your binoculars or telescopes.
M42 and M43 are part of the same neb
ula complex. We see them as two objects,
but this is an illusion due to a superim
posed stream of dark nebulosity. A finger
of this mysterious unlabeled dark nebula
protrudes into M 42 like an obsidian flow,
creating an inky bay that all but rubs
against the magnificent Trapezium Cluster.
I find it to be the Orion Nebulas most
striking feature; in my youth, I thought the
region devoid of nebulosity, not one con
taining dark nebulosity. The bays name is
Sinus Magnus, and the 19th-century
English astronomer W illiam Henry Smyth
nicknamed it the Fishs Mouth.
For a surprise, center the Trapezium,
and sweep about IV20 west to the magni
tude 12.5 barred spiral NGC 1924. The
galaxy is concentrated (21by 1') with a
small fuzzy core. Small-scope users should
scan the area with moderately high powers
ranging between lOOx and 200x. Look for a
round puff of dim light a few arcminutes
east-southeast of an 8th-magnitude star
that lies at the northwest end of a 30'-long
row of three roughly 8th-magnitude stars.
Next, return to Theta1, and hop 35'
north to a 5th-magnitude pair of stars, 42
and 45 Orionis. Separated by 4.2", they are
the brightest members of the star cluster
involved with reflection nebula NGC 1977.
In fact, the duo acts like two headlights
illuminating the gas. A narrow lane of dust
separates elliptical NGC 1977 from its
5'-wide circular companion glow, NGC
1973, which lies to the northwest.
That cloud is itself separated by a
5'-wide dust lane from the dimmer cometary glow of NGC 1975 to the northeast. If
you stitch together all the dark nebulosity
in the NGC 1973/5/7 region, its shape
looks like a runner, so a couple decades ago
astroimager Jason Ware of Texas dubbed it
the Running Man Nebula.
In my opinion, the fourth and north
ernmost star in Orions Sword is the most

The Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973/5/7) is a wonderful complex of emission

and reflection nebulosity surrounding two luminous stars. The bright sun
below center is 42 Orionis, and the equally bright one to its left is 45 Orionis.

overlooked deep-sky object in the region.

Its the 4th-magnitude open star cluster I
have christened the Coal Car Cluster
(NGC 1981). Through binoculars, I see this
loose gathering of attractive suns forming
the figure of an old coal cart.
The brightest two stars in the cluster
form an attractive binocular pair. Each of
these is a telescopic double: Struve 750 is
the brighter of the two, with a magnitude
6.4 primary and a magnitude 8.4 compan
ion 4.2" away; I see them as glacial blue and
pleasantly pink, respectively. Struve 743,
on the other hand, is a tight pair of magni
tudes 7.7 and 8.2 separated by only 1.8".
Before we leave this region, return to
Iota Orionis, move 50' south, and let your
eye roam the field. Nestled among the rich
field of stars is the tiny (2 -wide) reflection
nebula NGC 1999. The nebula surrounds a
magnitude 10.4 star, making it appear
fuzzy. NGC 1999 takes magnification well.

The Monkey Head Nebula (NGC 2174-5) com

bines an open star cluster with an emission
nebula. This object is roughly circular with an
indentation on its western side, bernhardhubl

NGC 1999 is a bluish reflection nebula with a dark obscuration near its
center. Crank the power past 150x, and you'll see the dark inner nebula's
triangular form, adam block/mount lemmon skycenter/universityof arizona

I was able to investigate it using powers

beyond 300x with a 4-inch scope.

Club favorites
In the northern part of the constellation,
nearly P/20 northeast of Chi2 (%2) Orionis
in the Hunters club, is perhaps the most
overlooked bright nebula in the heavens:
NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey
Head Nebula because of its photographic
appearance. And, just so you know, NGC
2175 (also often called the Monkey Head)
is the star cluster within the nebula.
This vast star-forming region 7,200
light-years distant shines at a respectable
7th magnitude. But its round and diapha
nous form covers a 40'-wide circle o f sky.
Youll need a dark sky to see it. W hats
most amazing is that this nebula is better
seen through binoculars than a telescope.
If we could position NGC 2174 at the dis
tance o f the Orion Nebula, it would span 3
of sky and shine at 5th magnitude.
I f you return to Chi2 in Orions club,
then move 1% southeast, youll spot yet
another of Orions marvels: NGC 2163,
more familiarly known as Cederblad 62.
This magnitude 11.5 bipolar reflection neb
ula lies only 3' east-southeast of a magni
tude 9 star and measures a mere 3' by 2' in
extent. But its light is so condensed that its
unmistakable at 72x through a 4-inch
scope under dark skies. Look for a dim
com et with a starlike head and a bushy
tail pointing to the northwest. Increase the
power to more than 220x, and the objects
bipolar nature should become apparent.
Well leave the Hunters club and end this
tour on a bright note, with Rigel (Beta [p]
Orionis). Not only is Rigel Orions brightest
star, but its also a superb double star that

Rigel is Orion the Hunter's brightest star. Point a

telescope at it and crank up the power, and you'll
spot Rigel B, a magnitude 6.8 starthat most
observers agree has a violet hue. jeremyperez

makes a fun challenge for small-telescope

users. The magnificence of this spectacle is
the contrast between the two companions: a
magnitude 0.3 supergiant with a magnitude
6.8 azure spark only 9" away.
Resolving the pair is difficult owing to
the fact that the brighter component out
shines its partner by 400 times. But heres
a tip: Start your search in early twilight
as soon as Rigel becomes visible to the
unaided eye. Use a magnification of lOOx,
and follow the star into the night. I find it
one of the most pleasing of all doubles, a
stellar reward.
If youre a beginning observer, this
inventory of celestial treats may at first
seem daunting. Believe me, weve only
scratched the surface. I hope youll con
tinue to seek out the many deep-sky objects
within the Hunters boundaries that dont
appear on this list. Good luck!
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

57

due to time and space. I decided on a

Paramount M E mount and a Pier Tech
Tri-Pier tripod with custom wheelie
bars. They allowed me to move the sys
tem in and out of a shed I had built.
I also bought a 14-inch Celestron C14
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, a 2.4-inch
William Optics Zenithstar 60 refractor,
and a Starlight Xpress M8C CCD camera.
I mostly imaged through the small scope
because I was becoming more interested
in large deep-sky objects. I used the C14
to observe the planets.
Because I dont drive, I would do all of
my imaging from my back garden, which
is about 20 yards from a busy road in
Hereford. The location suffers from a
mixture of artificial light from street
lights, house lights, and neighbor security
lights coming on periodically during the
night, not to mention the outdoor lights at
a tennis club 200 yards down the road. I
quickly came to the conclusion that I
couldnt do anything about the light pol
lution, so Ive had to work around it.

Upgrading again

The Heart Nebula (1C 1805,'right) team$ up

with
coiw
the Baby Nebula,(1C
' 1848) in
, the ***
stellation Cassiopeia the Queen in this twopanel mosaic. (All images: Tele Vue N PI / *
FLI astrograph system using an FU PL16803
CCD camera; this image: Hoc/OIII/SII image
with exposures of 200, *220, and 240 minutes,
respectively, per panel)

27

ou could say that I had an early

start to astronomy. The night
sky began to intrigue me when
I was 5 years old. Luckily, at the
time my family lived in a non
light-polluted area, so the sky was beauti
ful to look at with the naked eye.
Still, the one thing that really amazed
me was a black-and-white picture of the
Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in an old edi
tion of The Guinness Book o f World
Records. The reference listed it at the time

Gordon Haynes continues to image celestial

objects from his home in Hereford, England.

58

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

as the most distant object visible with the

naked eye. At that age, I didnt know why
I couldnt see it like that. Obviously, back
then I had no understanding about longexposure photography.

First steps
When I was 13, my parents bought me a
2-inch refractor, which had a push-pull
focuser and a ball-pivot table tripod. It
was fine for observing the Moon, but
everything else was disappointing. Still, it
increased my interest.
In 1979, when I got my first job as
a psychiatric nurse, I bought a proper

telescope: a 4.5-inch f/10 reflector on a

wooden tripod with a manual equatorial
mount. This scope was a huge improve
ment, and at the time I had plans to take
images because I also dabbled in photog
raphy. But I didnt pursue it as astronomy
took a back seat for a few years while I
competed in running and cycling races,
which took up a lot of time. In hindsight,
this was a blessing in disguise because
the scope had vibration problems and no
motor, so it wasnt good for imaging.
In 2 0 0 4 ,1 was done competing in
sports and had reached my mid-40s. I had
gone into town, seen some space-related

magazines, and picked up a selection

(including Astronomy). As I read them,
seeing some of the images produced by
amateurs and professionals rekindled my
interest. So, after doing a bit of research, I
decided to take the plunge and get a full
system suitable for observing and imag
ing. At the time, the digital era had begun,
making imaging a lot easier than in the
days of film. I bought a 10-inch Meade
LX200GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
and a DSI camera.
My first attempts at imaging were hit
and miss (more miss than hit) because I
wasnt using guiding and there were some

software conflicts between the DSI and

my laptop that caused the computer to
lock up if I tried exposures longer than 15
seconds. I was bitten by the bug, however,
and felt pleased that I managed to record
anything at all. (You can view all of these
early attempts on my website at www.
imagingtheheavens.co.uk.)

Imaging fever
I wanted to delve deeper into imaging,
but I needed to buy better equipment. To
fund the purchase, I sold my well-used
Meade as well as a high-end hi-fi system
and record collection that I wasnt using

After a couple of years, I sold the C14

and bought an APM Telescopes 4.5-inch
TM B 115 f/7 refractor, a Starlight Xpress
H36 CCD camera, and a Finger Lakes
Instrumentation filter wheel with LRGB
and narrowband filters. Light pollution
made it hard to image in LRGB, so I
did some research and discovered nar
rowband imaging, which was a godsend
because I could image on any clear night.
Simply put, narrowband imaging hap
pens when you shoot through filters that
transmit only a small (narrow) part of the
light striking them. The three most popu
lar filters are Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen-III,
and Sulfur-II. When you process the data
you collected through the filters, you
assign each to a normal color channel
red, green, and blue and then com
bine them to create your final image.
When I changed to primarily narrow
band work, I again changed equipment. I
bought a 10-inch Takahashi BRC-250
Baker-Ritchey-Chretien reflector, and the
TM B made way for a 4-inch Takahashi
FSQ-106ED. At this time, my partner,
Joanna, bought me a Starlight Xpress
Lodestar guiding camera for Christmas,
and this made a huge improvement to the
quality of my images. Prior to using this
camera, all my images were combinations
o f 10-minute unguided exposures.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

59

1. The Crescent Nebula (NGC

6888, center) form ed when fastmoving winds from an energetic
star collided w ith slower-moving
m aterial ejected previously.
This region of the constellation
Cygnus contains vast swaths
of em ission nebulosity, as this
image shows. (Ha/OIII/SII image
w ith exposures of 200, 240, and
260 minutes, respectively)
2. The Je llyfish Nebula (1C 443,
lower left) is a supernova rem
nant in the constellation Gem ini
the Twins. It covers as much
sky as three Full Moons. (Ha/
OIII/SII im age w ith exposures
of 240, 260, and 220 minutes,
respectively)
3. This region of Sharpless 2-157
is a com bination of emission
nebulae and star clusters set
against a dense stellar backdrop.
(Ha/OIII/SII image w ith exposures
of 240, 300, and 300 minutes,
respectively)
4. Cederblad 214 is the emission
nebula surrounding the young
star-forming region NGC 7822 in
the constellation Cepheus. (Ha/
OIII/SII im age w ith exposures
of 180,160, and 240 minutes,
respectively)

60

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

The Pleiades (M45) is the sky's brightest star

cluster. Once a separate constellation, M45
is now part of Taurus the Bull. (LRGB image
w ith exposures of 200,120, 120, and 120
minutes, respectively)

I sold the BRC-250 because of its size

and changed from the Starlight Xpress
cameras to FLI PL16803 and M L8300
models. By then, 90 percent of my imag
ing was narrowband and still is.

Chance encounter
Last year, while I was helping out at
Astrofest in London, David Nagler from
Tele Vue Optics asked if I would be will
ing to test a prototype imaging system.
It consisted of Tele Vues 5-inch NP127
refractor teamed with a Finger Lakes
Instrumentation ProLine PL16803 CCD

The author also collects data through RGB filters, as these images of the Androm eda Galaxy
(M31, above) and the Pleiades (M45, left) dem onstrate. (M31 is an H aLRG B im age w ith expo
sures of 240, 260,120,80, and 110 minutes, respectively)

camera, Atlas focuser, CenterLine filter

wheel, and the Zero Tilt Adapter system.
Because I already owned the camera
and the focuser, it seemed like a good
idea, so I agreed. I have been using this
system for the past year, giving feedback
to Tele Vue. The good news is that it now
has a permanent place on my Paramount.
The only item I added was an Officina
Stellare Falco guide scope. I control every
thing via USB and a laptop in my shed.
The software that I use has remained
unchanged, apart from upgrades. I use
Maxim DL, RegiStar, and Photoshop, with

THE AUTHOR'S IMAGING SYSTEM

The Tele Vue NP127/FLI astrograph I now use is a joint venture between Tele Vue Optics and
Finger Lakes Instrumentation. Both companies' philosophy was to produce an all-in-one
imaging system that is easy to set up, requires no adjustments, and is stable in operation. It
consists of a 5-inch Tele Vue NP127 refractor whose mechanical focuser has been replaced by
a custom extension tube with a custom-made field flattener, which also has tilt adjustments.
This connects to FLI's Atlas focuser, CenterLine filter wheel, and ProLine PL16803 CCD cam
era. The system will work with any ProLine camera as long as the chip is no bigger than the
one in the 16803. FLI's Zero Tilt Adapter, which provides a solid connection between all the
components, holds the system together.
I simply put the system together and put
it on my mount. Focus occurs when the
Atlas focuser is approximately halfway
through its travel.
I have been using the system for more
than a year with no alterations necessary.
I have needed no focusing adjustments
due to temperature changes even when
I transported the system to London and
back for display at a show. It is truly "plug
and play." G. H.

Gradient Xterminator, Hasta La Vista

Green, and Noel Carbonis Astronomy
Tools as plugins.

Final thoughts
I would describe my progress up the lad
der o f astroimaging as slow and steady,
getting tips and advice from forums,
friends that Ive made along the way,
magazine articles, and social networking.
Im still learning and dont think I will
ever stop, although I am happy with my
workflow and results for now!
My imaging philosophy is to get as
much quality data as possible and keep
the processing simple. Earlier this year, I
presented a talk at the NorthEast
Astronomy Imaging Conference in New
York. I described a simple-to-follow pro
cessing workflow for narrowband imag
ing that had only seven stages (of which
two are optional). This was the highlight
of my year, and I had a great time.
Some people ask me why I dont oper
ate my system remotely from my house.
The thing is, I like to sit out in the fresh
air watching a movie on my tablet or
doing a crossword. Ive always preferred
the hands-on approach. In the winter
months, I have a down suit to protect me
from the cold so I can image in comfort.
My plans for the future include getting
a smaller chip camera to complement the
PL16803 but using the same imaging plat
form. As to how well Ive done, now you
can judge the results for yourself.

SEE M ORE OF GORDON HAYNES' IM AGES ATwww.Astronom y.com /toc.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

61

1. THE ORION NEBULA(M42)

i

Damian Peach,
Selsey, England

I t is b y f a r th e m o st ic o n ic
. a s t r o n o m ic a l o b je c t a s id e
f r o m th e M o o n a n d

#

p la n e t s a s t u n n in g

s ig h t in a n y te le sc o p e .

Jeremy Perez,
Flagstaff, Arizona

It s e n o r m it y a n d d is t in c t ,
c o m p le x s t r u c tu r e o f
e m is s io n , r e fle c t io n ,
{

a n d d a r k n e b u la e w ith
a b e a u t ifu l e m b e d d e d .
s t a r sy ste m c a n engage, '
c h a lle n g e , a n d in s p ir e a
v is u 'a l o b s e rv e r e n d le s s ly .

Mark Socha, *
Saginaw, Minnesota
I t lo o k s f a n t a s t ic in
a n y sco p e a n d is a w o rk
in p ro g re s s .

WONDERS
People have cataloged many great
sites on Earth into "Seven Wonders":
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,
Seven Wonders of the Natural World, New
7 Wonders of the World, etc. Astronomy
magazine even chose seven wonders o f the
solar system in 1999. But what about the
seven wonders of the M ilky Way, those
62

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

We have settled the debate. Here chosen

by you are the most popular deep-sky
treats in our galaxy, by Michael E. Bakich

must-see objects in the night sky that lie

within the confines o f our galaxy?
In early September, Astronomy created a
poll for the magazines social media pages
asking readers to choose their seven favor
ite M ilky Way deep-sky objects out of a list
of 20. The number of responses and the
associated comments was heartening.

Rather than writing standard captions

in our words, we decided to feature some of
your comments about each of the objects.
After all, these were your choices!

Michael E. Bakich is a senior editor o f

Astronomy who has re-ranked his favorite
deep-sky objects many times.

* *

2. THE PLEIADES (M45)

Zachary Squires, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

This ones No. 1 because of the stars rela

tive youthfulness, their distance from Earth,
and their history with the human ra c e

.i

.1

*
*

* ;>

. v

* . :

L. Rowan McKnight, Portland, Oregon

Its just lovely. Plus, I fin d it interesting that
were having such a difficult time accurately
determining how fa r away it i s

s.

Keith Johnson, Maidstone, England

OK by naked eye, but boy what a sight

when viewed through binoculars!

'V

<
nz
Q-

(
V

Q
2
<

3. THE RING NEBULA (M57)

z
O
on

+ .

z:

<

The Pleiades (M45)

Zharo Haashia, Bayamon, Puerto Rico

Its the classic. Its beauty defines the

immense rarities of the universe.

. *

Stefanos Tsiopelas, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The colors and shape of this object look

Earth-like to me.

m k:

\ <
cc

#
.

O
M

v
/

<

CC

LL.

O
9

>-

LTi
CC

4. THE CRAB NEBULA (Ml)

Eric Jones, London, Ontario

I think of the pulsar in the center so close

to home. The stunning supernova remnant
surrounding it gets me every time.

CC

LO

Joanna Wallington, Aylesbury, England

I love the way nature seems to defy the

laws of physics to create beautiful shapes.

The Ring Nebula (M57)

Kristof Kutschera, Papa, Hungary

Its fantastic and easy to observe. It is
unique and I dont know beautiful.

5. THE HORSEHEAD NEBULA (B33)

Tyler Driscoll, Port Deposit, Maryland

This is one of the most iconic features

o f the Milky Way.

~ZL
>-

O
j

co

The Crab Nebula (Ml)

<
<

O
M

<
CC

LL.

o
>-

<
s\

This is one o f
the most iconic
features o f the
Milky Way.

cc

cc

Brenda Culbertson, Mayetta, Kansas

O f the objects listed, I fin d the Horsehead

Nebula the most intriguing.

<
<

> on

John Bozeman, Mena, Arkansas

Itphotographs extremely well.

o
__l

co

6. OMEGA CENTAURI (NGC 5139)

<
<

The Horsehead Nebula (B33)

Alan Goldstein, Louisville, Kentucky

It is a spectacular ball o f stars, is bright

enough to be resolved in small scopes, and
can impress the first-time telescope user.

<

CC

Yvonne James, Jacksonville, Florida

u .

o
>-

This object includes stars of a variety

o f ages, whereas other globular clusters
contain stars from only one generation.

on

cc

cc

>Ln

7. THE EAGLE NEBULA (M16)

Richard Shortridge, Anaheim, California

It reminds me of the United States

TejaTeppala, Hyderabad, India

The beauty o f the fam ous Pillars of

The Eagle Nebula (M16)

Creation mesmerizes m e. ^
WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

63

EQUIPMENT REVIEW

Accurate tracking, lack o f

backlash, and the ability to
handle large loads make the
CEM60 mount a serious
contender to carry your scope.
iOptron's CEM60 equatorial
mount can carry a 60-pound
(27 kilograms) load with high
precision accuracy for visual
observing or astroimaging.
ALLPHOTOS: ASTRONOMY: JAMESFORBES

ost of todays amateurs

are familiar with fork and
German equatorial mounts.
Both have their pros and
cons, but a com mon problem
with each is that the mounted telescopes
position is offset from the center of the
tripod or pier it sits on. As a result, torque
can cause stability issues that adversely
affect both visual and photographic use.
iOptron, an innovative company in
Woburn, Massachusetts, has devised a new
64

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

approach to this old problem by introduc

ing what they call the center-balanced
equatorial mount (CEM). A hybrid design
mating the German equatorial with the
old-style cross-axis mount, the Z-shaped
CEM puts the mounts balance point
directly over the tripod. The result is a
mount that features greater stability.

Initial impressions
The first mount to use the CEM design
was the companys ZEQ25, designed for

by Phil Harrington

relatively small instruments. Building on

the success of that mount, iOptron now
offers the CEM60.
The CEM60 is intended for medium
sized instruments, with a stated weight
limit of 60 pounds (27 kilograms). Online
reports testify that the CEM60 supports
instruments as large as 11-inch catadioptrics without a problem.
The test mount came shipped in three
boxes, one for the mount itself, one for the
21-pound (9.5kg) counterweight, and a
third for the optional tripod. The mount
and all its accessories, save for the counter
weight, come in a custom-fit aluminum
carrying case.
Lets look at the optional tripod first.
Like many others sold on the astronomy
market today, iOptrons tripod (#8021ACC)
features 2-inch stainless steel tubular legs.
You can adjust the tripods height from 30
to 52 inches (76 to 132 centimeters), allow
ing seated or standing viewing. A central
shelf presses outward against the legs for
better stability while also offering a conve
nient place for eyepieces.
Moving onto the mount, the CEM 60s
design takes a little getting used to. For
starters, the axis locks are quite different
from what most observers would expect to
find. Each is engaged and disengaged,
to use iOptrons words, by turning a small
knob secreted away on the mount.
They took some hunting to find at first
because the Quick Start Guide doesnt label
them as such. But it is critical that both
locks be engaged (locked) before putting
the mount on the tripod, or it could swing

is an Astronomy contribut
ing editor and author of Cosmic Challenge
(Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Ph il H a rrin g to n

and possibly jam fingers. Ill say more

about the Quick Start Guide later.

Getting ready
Once set up, the CEM 60 impresses by its
design, stability, and finish. The powdercoated, cream-colored matte finish is uni
form and gives it a sophisticated look.
Knowing that users conceivably could
attach many different telescopes to the
CEM60, iOptron cleverly designed the
mounting cradle to accept both Vixen and
Losmandy dovetail mounting plates, the
two most common in use today. My scopes
Vixen plate fit perfectly.
I also like the CEM 60s approach to
internal cabling. Rather than having cables
running externally to each axis drive
motor, as is common practice for most
manufacturers, iOptron routes all cables
inside the mount itself. Thats a big plus
because its easy to snag dangling cables
accidentally in the dark. The only two
cables exposed during operation are for the
Go2Nova 8407 hand controller and the
polar scopes illuminating LED.
The built-in 32-channel GPS position
ing algorithm quickly achieves satellite
lock. It took me less than a minute, but the
documentation states it could take several
depending on your location.
Built into the CEM 60s polar axis is a
well-designed alignment scope that makes
setting the mount parallel to Earths rota
tional axis easy. You can use two methods
to polar align: Quick Polar Alignment or
BrightStar Polar Alignment. The latter is
especially useful if a tree or other obstruc
tion blocks your view of the celestial pole.
By selecting the Quick option on the
hand controller, its screen graphically

iOptron includes an easy-to-read latitude scale

that lets you get pretty close to your northern
location. The polar alignment scope then will
help you fine-tune this setting.

shows where Polaris is with respect to the

celestial axis. Move the mount up/down
and back/forth using the fine-adjustment
knobs until the view through the align
ment scopes eyepiece matches the diagram
on the hand controller. At that point, you
have aligned the mount.
As with other go-to equatorial mounts,
you can enhance calibration by using one
or more additional alignment stars as well
as solar system objects. Choose the object
from the hand controllers menu, and tell
the mount to slew in its direction. After
using the controllers arrows to center the
target, scroll to the menus Sync to Target
command and press Enter.
Calibrating the mounts computer was
not as intuitive as I had hoped, especially
given my long experience with go-to
German equatorial mounts. The problem
actually lies not with the mount itself, but
rather with the documentation.
Being a typical man, I loathe instruc
tions, especially lengthy treatises. So, rather
than peruse the 55-page instruction man
ual, which I had earlier downloaded and
printed from the companys website, I went
with the six-page Quick Start Guide that
came with the mount.
A word of caution to new owners
whether or not this is your first telescope:
Read the full manual! The Quick Start
Guide may be fine as a refresher, but it
leaves out a few key steps in the initializa
tion process without which the mount will
not function correctly. Even the full manu
als organization leaves something to be
desired, but the information is in there if
you look hard enough.

Results
Once I had successfully calibrated the
mount, it worked exceptionally well.
Tracking accuracy was excellent. And
that brings up one o f the m ounts true
strengths. The drive uses a non-contact
magnetically loaded system to hold the
worm and worm gear together.
The net result is that, unlike many tra
ditional spring-loaded systems, no gear
backlash exists. Astroimagers especially
will appreciate this.
During my test, go-to accuracy was
nearly spot-on even after I purposely
instructed the mount to go fully across the
sky from one target to the next. Each time,
the target was within the field of view of
my 85x eyepiece.
Another nice feature is that the mount
automatically will flip when tracking an
object across the meridian to prevent it

When the view through the included polar

alignment scope matches the one "Quick Polar
Alignment" shows you, the drive is aligned to
our planet's rotational axis.

from colliding with itself. You can lock this

feature out, in which case the mount will
stop prior to collision.
For serious astrophotographers, the
CEM 60s power panel includes four USB
2.0 sockets, two 12-volt power sockets, an
ST-4 compatible autoguider port, and a
6P6C port that can be used to bridge the
guiding port or for accessories having a
6P6C/6P4C plug.
I
came away from testing iOptrons
CEM60 equatorial mount impressed with
its engineering. The whisper-quiet drive
system aimed and tracked accurately and
effortlessly once I set it up correctly. All in
all, especially considering the price, this is
one mount thats tough to beat.

PRODUCT INFORMATION
iOptron CEM60
Type: Equatorial mount
Mounting plate: Spring-loaded Vixen or
Losmandy types

Payload: 60 pounds (27 kilograms)

Slew speeds: 1x, 2x, 8x, 16x, 64x, 128x,
256x, 512x; max is 3.75 per second

Power requirement: 12-volt DC, 2 amps

Weight: 27 pounds (12kg); counterweight
weighs 21 pounds (9.5kg)

Included: Polar scope, aluminum hard

carrying case

Price: $2,499
Contact: iOptron
6F Gill Street
Woburn, MA 01801
[t] 866.399.4587
[w] www.ioptron.com

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

65

Two perspectives
Ask two observers to point
their telescopes toward the
same large celestial object and
then to sketch the views. You
might be surprised at how
different the results turn out.
The focus of the observation,
and indeed the technique
used to record it, is personal
to each individual. Ill use IC
1805, also known as the Heart
Nebula, to explain.
This beautiful heart-shaped
emission nebula covers more
than three and a half times the
area of the Full Moon in the

constellation Cassiopeia.
Observers and imagers often
pair it with the Baby Nebula
(IC 1848), which lies nearby.
Another pair of emission neb
ulae, IC 1795 and NGC 896,
lies at the western point of the
heart, making the complex a
prominent active stellar nurs
ery within the Perseus Arm of
our galaxy.
At the core of IC 1805 lies
the newborn open cluster
Melotte 15, a scant 1.5 million
years old. Its composed of
more than 40 loose stars across

To sketch the northern lobe of IC 1805, Rony De Laet used a 4-inch refractor, a 26mm
eyepiece for a magnification of 20x, and a UHC filter. He then created the image with
Corel Photo-Paint based on the pencil sketch he did at the eyepiece. He mirrored and
rotated the image so that north is up and west is to the right, r o n y de laet

66

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

a diameter of
22'. Stellar
winds and
ultraviolet radi
ation from the
clusters massive
stars contour the
nebulas glowing
hydrogen clouds to
form its heart shape.
Youll be able to spot
Melotte 15 as a handful of
8th- to 9th-magnitude stars
through a 4-inch telescope.
You also can see faint nebulous
patches of IC 1805 with averted
vision by incorporating an
Oxygen-III (OIII) or Ultra
High Contrast (UHC) filter.
Through a 12-inch instrument,
upwards of 30 cluster stars
reveal themselves embedded in
a faint, hazy glow.
During my observation, the
focus of the sketch was
Melotte 15. I created the
star field with pen and
graphite before I began
observing through an
OIII filter. I then used
a blending stump to
draw the hazy glow.
This simple tech
nique provides a fin
ished sketch directly
at the eyepiece. You
then can scan the
sketch, remove stray
markings with photo
editing software, and
invert the image to repre
sent the eyepiece view.
Rony De Laet of
Bekkevoort, Belgium, pro
vided a different perspective.
Using an UHC filter, he chose
the northern half of IC 1805
for a low-magnification view
that included both Melotte 15
and open cluster NGC 1027.
Rather than producing a
finished sketch at the eyepiece,
De Laet created only a rough

The author created this eyepiece sketch

of Melotte 15 by observing through a
16-inch f/4.5 reflector with a 13mm eye
piece (138x) and an OIII filter. She used
white printer paper, a super-fine black
felt-tipped artist pen, a No. 2 pencil, a
0.5mm mechanical pencil, and a blend
ing stump. She scanned her sketch and
inverted the colors, also adjusting the
contrast to match eyepiece view. She
rotated the image so that north is up
and west is to the right, erika rix

pencil drawing during his

observation. Afterward, he
used digital drawing software
to recreate the view based on
his observing notes and eye
piece sketch.
His technique has advan
tages. Once you become accus
tomed to using the programs
tools, you can create glows
around stars, emphasize stars
with different magnitudes, and
add colors with ease. If you
make a mistake, simply press
Undo or revert to a previ
ously saved version. Perhaps
the handiest element is the
ability to draw in layers one
for the background, another for
the star field, and yet another
for the nebulosity. You can
make adjustments to any layer
without affecting the others.
Now and again, try ventur
ing out of your comfort zone
by dabbling with a new tech
nique or type of object. Youll
expand your skill set and
might just find the new
method more rewarding.

NEW

PRODUCTS

Attention, manufacturers: To submit a product

for this page, email mbakich@astronomy.com.
O
VO
-RO
M

R
ed
sh
ift
Q
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67

COSMICIMAGING
BY A D A M B L O C K

Global space programs deserve attention too

Color space
During workshops I deliver at
the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter,
few processing techniques elicit
verbal Wows! from partici
pants. No matter how impor
tant standard deviation sigma
rejection techniques may be,
they just do not inspire quite
like the technique of enhancing
color youll see in this article.
We will work in the Lab color
space to bring out the blues,
yellows, and magentas that are
common in celestial images.
In this color model, L repre
sents the luminance (bright
ness) of a value. The A and B
channels model the way our
visual system works.
Although we see red, green,
and blue light with our eyes
cone cells, our brains also pro
cess differences in the amounts
of color we see because there is
some overlap in the colors
detected by each cone channel.
This is called the opponent
process color theory, and it
explains a number of perplex
ing things related to vision.
Certain colors cannot be
mixed. Greenish-reds and
yellow-blues dont exist. These
are color opposites in this the
ory. You can put this to practice
by staring at something red (on
your computer screen) for a few
moments and then looking at

Mode
Adjustments
Auto Tone
Auto Contrast
Auto Color
Image Size...
Canvas Size...
Image Rotation
Crop
Trim...
Reveal All

the objects afterimage against

a white background it will
appear green!
The A channel, then, is a
color space that includes red
and green information, and the
B channel includes blue and
yellow. In Photoshop, changing
the contrast of the A or B chan
nel allows us to operate on two
colors simultaneously. This can
lead to some pleasing effects.
For most astroimages, the B
channel is the most important,
which is easy to remember
since the B channel contains
blue information.
To begin, change the color
mode of an RGB image by look
ing in the Image menu and
changing the Mode to Lab
Color (see Image #1). Next,
select the Channels tab, and
make the B channel and the
Lab channel visible (see
Image #2). Now open Curves,
and change the Contrast of
the B channel without changing
the overall color balance.
To do this, create an inflec
tion point by clicking on the
center of the diagonal line (the
input and output values will be
equal), and then create your
curve (see Image #3). If your
curve has the same shape as
mine, you will see a transfor
mation (see upper right image).

Bitmap
Grayscale

Ductcne
Shift*Ctrl*L
Indexed Color
Alt* Shift* Ctrl* L RGB Color
Shift*Ctrl*B
CMYK Color

Alt* Ctrl* C

BLOCK
ALL IMAGES: ADAM

This frame of NGC 6286 shows the difference between before (left) and after applying a
contrast adjustment to the B channel. The author pushed the effect a bit more than
normal in order to make sure it showed well in print. You'll find a high-resolution ver
sion of NGC 6286 at http://skycenter.arizona.edu/gallery/galaxies/ngc6286.

What was once dull blue will

become vibrant azure, and
muddy reds will become more
luminous yellows.
Adjusting the B channel is
especially effective for spiral
galaxies and certain types of
reflection nebulae. You can
adjust the A channel in a simi
lar way to enhance reds and
magentas of an image. This is
good to know for enhancing
emission nebulae.
But be careful! The opposing
color in this channel is green,

Paths

v"

Lab

C trl*2

Curves
Custom

Channel: I b

Show Amount of:

Light
O Pigment/Ink %

OK
Cancel

Grid size:

Lightness

Ctrl-*-3

Auto
Options...

IT

32 Bits/Channel
Color Table...

<2>

Show:

Ctrl+4

0 Channel Overlays

0 Preview

0 Histogram
0 Baseline

0 Intersection Line

Ctrl+S

Trap...

1____________________________________________________ 1

#2. First click on the B channel, and then click the eyeball of
the "Lab" channel to display the image.

#1. The T ab Color" mode is in the "Image"

menu. Note that the current mode is RGB.

#3. Using "Curves," click on the center of the line. Then with a
second point, pull up or down on a part of the curve, and it will
flex through the first point.

BROWSE THE "COSMIC IMAGING" ARCHIVE AND FIND VIDEO TUTORIALS AT www.Astronom y.com /Block.
68

and introducing green into an

image can make it look awful
(with the exception of some
planetary nebulae).
After making your adjust
ments, convert the image back
to RGB color space. If you for
get to convert to RGB, you will
notice that many Photoshop
tools will be unavailable
because they do not work in
Lab mode. In my next col
umn, we will investigate rejec
tion techniques and see if there
is any fun in them.

Smooth

8 Bits/Channel
16 Bits/Channel

Calculations...

Analysis

Channels

Thank you for Liz Kruesis article Has NASA lost its edge?
(September, p. 32). It draws much-deserved attention to the
active space programs by the European Space Agency, China,
Russia, India, and Japan. These programs are too often neglect
ed in the U.S. The article also draws attention to the need for
citizens and politicians in the U S. to decide what kind of space
program we wish to pursue and how much it is worth to us.
Donald Dichmann, Crofton, Maryland

Preset:

Lab Color
Multichannel

Alt*Ctrl*I

Duplicate...
Apply Image...

Variables
Apply Data Set...

Layers

__________________ 1

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A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

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71

ARKETPLACE

READER
GALLERY

1. L U N A R T O T A L IT Y
How do you make the October 8 total
lunar eclipse look even better? Frame
it against the silhouette of palm
trees, include a reflecting pool, and
be sure the sky has enough dust and
moisture in it to give it a slight tinge of
color. (Canon 5D Mark III DSLR, Canon
lens set at 27mm and f/2.8, ISO 640,
1.6-second exposure, taken October
8, 2014, at 6:13 a.m. CDT from McAllen,
Texas) Darren Trizzino

2. O D D P L A N E T A R Y
Abell 65 is a rarely imaged planetary
nebula that lies 3,800 light-years away
in Sagittarius. The photographer
captured all the data for the planetary
with Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-Ill
filters. He added in color data to record
star hues. (20-inch PlaneWave correct
ed Dall-Kirkham reflector at f/6.8, SBIG
STX-16803 CCD camera, Ha/OIII/RGB
image with exposures of 5,6, 2, 2, and
2 hours, respectively) Don Goldman

3. A N C IE N T L A N D S C A P E
The textural contrast between the
wrinkle ridges and linear rilles of west
ern Mare Tranquillitatis (right) with
the ancient scoured Mare Imbrium
sculpture of Montes Haemus intrigued
this photographer. The circular pattern
of ridges is Lamont, a possible crater
buried by lava. (11-inch Celestron CPC
1100 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at
f/10, ZW Optical ASI120MM-S CCD cam
era, stack of the best 500 frames out of
5,000 taken) Ross Sackett

4. A B IT E O U T O F T H E SU N
The other October eclipse was a partial
solar one. This photographer endured
rain and an overcast sky for most of
the day. Then, just as the Sun was set
ting, the clouds parted enough for him
to capture this image. (Nikon D5000
DSLR, 90mm lens at f/5.0, ISO 400,
V4oo-second exposure, taken October
23, 2014, at 6:08 p.m. CDT from Marion,
Iowa) Gregg Allis

72

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

5. A N E B U L O U S P E L IC A N
The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) lies near
its brighter cousin, the North America
Nebula (NGC 7000), in Cygnus with
only a dark lane separating them.
(10-inch Deep Sky Instruments RC10C
Ritchey-Chretien reflector at f/7.3, FLI
MicroLine ML-11002 CCD camera, Hoc/
OIII/SII/RGB image with exposures of
10, 22, 20, 2, 2, and 2 hours, respec
tively) Jim Collins

6. E C L IP S E S E Q U E N C E
One way to sum up the lunar eclipse
October 8 is to present a montage of
images, as this photographer has done.
Look at this picture as a whole, and
notice that he also has captured the
Moon entering and leaving the outline
of Earth's shadow. (8-inch Celestron
Super C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain tele
scope at f/6.3, Canon 20D DSLR, ISO
800, partial phases were Vho-second
exposures, totality was a 3-second
exposure, taken October 8, 2014, from
Portland, Oregon) Rodney Pommier

7. G L O W IN G S P L E N D O R
Comet Jacques (C/2014 E2) was drift
ing through Auriga when this imager
captured it. It glowed at magnitude
6.9 with a blue-green coma and an
electric-blue ion tail. (3.2-inch Zeiss
refractor at f/4.8, SBIG ST-1 OXME CCD
camera, 16 minutes of exposures,
stacked, taken August 6, 2014, from
Payson, Arizona) Chris Schur

Send your images to:

Astronomy Reader Gallery, P. 0. Box
1612, Waukesha, Wl 53187. Please
include the date and location of the
image and complete photo data:
telescope, camera, filters, and expo
sures. Submit images by email to
readergallery@astronomy.com.

WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM

73

DAMIAN PEACH

To the ends of the cosmos

Z o d ia c a l lig h t
fr o m M t .T e id e

74

A S T R O N O M Y FEBRUARY 2015

Sometimes an astronomical
image perfectly captures the
spirit of being under the stars.
Such is the case with English
amateur astronomer Damian
Peachs photograph of the
zodiacal light from the Teide

Observatory on Mt. Teide,

Tenerife, Canary Islands.
Taken October 1, 2014, dur
ing the Starmus Astrophoto
School being held at the obser
vatory, the image beautifully
shows the Milky Way along

with Orion and Canis Major.

Also visible is the wedgeshaped glow of the zodiacal
light, sunlight scattering off
dust particles in the plane of
the solar system, on the left
side of the image. *;>

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M A R T I N G E O R G E describes the solar system's changing landscape

as it appears in Earth's southern sky.

April 2015: Dipping into Earth's shadow

The two brightest planets

diameter exceeds its polar

diameter by 9 percent. The

a spiral galaxys disk crashing

put on spectacular shows on

conjunction. If you point a

telescope at the inner planet

April evenings. From south

o f the equator, Jupiter has

in mid-April, youll see a

15"-diameter disk that looks

surrounding rings span 41"

and tilt 25 to our line of sight.

This month, lets gaze

toward this object and its sur

the better display. The solar

systems largest planet stands

three-quarters lit.

Also look for the planets

brightest moon, 8th-magnitude

roundings. In April, this region

passes nearly overhead around

at its highest in the north just

after the sky grows dark. It lies

official denizen of the evening

sky for a full year, its long reign

Titan, which orbits once every

15.9 days.

midnight local time. Look for it

among the background stars

o f eastern Cancer though, at

wraps up in early April. Only

the sharpest eyes will pick out

A total lunar eclipse occurs

April 4. The partial phases

the Cross. NGC 5128s strange

look a fuzzy sphere of light

magnitude -2 .2 , it shines more

its 1st-magnitude glow in the

than 100 times brighter than

bright twilight. Thirty minutes

begin at 10hl6m and end at

13h45m UT, with a brief period

sliced in two appears clear

in relatively small telescopes;

any o f the Crabs stars. Jupiter

of totality lasting from llh 5 8 m

appears nearly stationary

after sunset on the 1st, it stands

3 high in the west-northwest

to 12h03m UT. That makes this

through a 20-centimeter instru

ment, it is one of the more

against the starry backdrop

during Aprils first half, then

well to Venus lower left. The

Red Planet gets swallowed by

the 21st centurys shortest total

striking objects in the sky.

lunar eclipse and the quickest

starts a slow eastward trek

later in the month.

the Suns glare during Aprils

second week.

one since October 17, 1529,

when totality lasted 1 minute

Youll find 7th-magnitude

NGC 5128 some 17 northeast

Although Mars has been an

into an elliptical galaxy.

north and a little east of Crux

of Gamma (y) Crucis. Another

Although the giant planet

Mercury offers a similar

reached opposition and peak

challenge at months end. It

ing sites are in Australia, New

spectacular object lies 4 south

of the galaxy. The famous glob

visibility two months ago, it

passes on the far side of the Sun

Zealand, and the South Pacific.

ular cluster Omega Centauri

remains a stunning sight

through any telescope. One of

from Earth on April 10 and

During the precious five m in

utes of totality, the ruddy

(NGC 5139) shows up clearly

the first things youll notice is

Jupiters noncircular shape.

stands 3 high in the westnorthwest a half-hour after

and 41 seconds. The best view

Moon appears in the northeast

against the backdrop of Virgo.

to the naked eye as a fuzzy star,

making an equilateral triangle

This so-called polar flattening

sundown by the 30th. Shining

at magnitude -0 .5 , however,

arises from a combination of

it will be easier to spot than

The starry sky

the planets rapid rotation and

gaseous nature. In mid-April,

Mars was at the beginning of

the month.

On a visit to Tuorla Obser

vatory in Turku, Finland, in

resolve some of its stars with

an 11.4-cm reflector; a 20-cm
instrument provides an exqui
reminds many people of fine
salt sprinkled on a dark cloth.

Once darkness settles in,

with Gamma Cru and Beta

Centauri. In my early observ
ing days, I could just begin to

the world measures 40" across

its equator and 37" through the

look for Saturn low in the east

2 0 0 4 ,1 was lucky to be able

to see workers preparing

poles. Also watch for the alter

nating series of light zones and

ern sky. It remains within 2 of

the magnitude 2.5 double star

the mirror for the European

Space Agencys Herschel Space

darker belts in Jupiters atmo

sphere and the dance of its four

Beta ((3) Scorpii all month.

Saturn shines at magnitude 0.2,

Observatory. The spacecraft

would become the largest

and Omega Centauri often

bright moons, which change

position from night to night.

eight times more dazzling than

Beta and twice as bright as

space-based infrared telescope

after its 2009 launch. In 2012,

overshadows another gem in

this area: the edge-on spiral

astronomers used observations

from Herschel and from the

galaxy NGC 4945. It tucks in

appears even brighter than

the Scorpions luminary, lstmagnitude Antares.

Jupiter. Brilliant Venus shines

at magnitude -4 .2 and hangs

Saturn will reach opposition

in late May, which makes it a

XM M -N ew ton X-ray mission

to improve our understand

X i2 (^2) Centauri, which are a

bit closer to Crux than Omega

low in the northwest as dark

great target this month for

ing of one o f the skys most

Cen is. Its a delight to see the

ness falls. It passes 3 due south

those with telescopes. For the

unusual objects: the galaxy

galaxys faint fuzzy streak in

of the Pleiades (M45) on April

11 and remains quite close to

best views, wait until the planet

climbs high in the east around

NGC 5128, which is also a

strong radio source known

7.5-cm and larger scopes. NGC

4945 and NGC 5128 are part of

this beautiful star cluster

throughout the months second

midnight local time. Like

as Centaurus A. The results

a relatively nearby group of

Jupiter, Saturn displays a

bolstered ideas that this object

galaxies, and each is an active

week. Binoculars will provide

the best views of this pretty

noticeable polar flattening

at midmonth, its 18" equatorial

is actually two colliding galax

ies Herschel clearly showed

galaxy harboring a supermassive black hole at its center.

Our second evening planet

site view. Its appearance

The presence of NGC 5128

next to the stars X i1 (/) and

DOME
THE ALL-SKY MAP
SHOWS HOW THE
SKY LOOKS AT:

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Planets are shown

at midmonth

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5.0

Globular cluster

JR*

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Mercury is in superior
conjunction, 4h UT
Last Quarter Moon occurs at
3h44m UT

7\

Asteroid Pallas is stationary,

23h UT

20

Asteroid Massalia is at
opposition, 10h UT

21

Venus passes 7 north of

Aldebaran, 4h UT
The Moon passes 0.9 north of
Aldebaran, 17h UT
The Moon passes 7 south of
Venus, 18h UT

25

First Quarter Moon occurs at

23h55m UT

26

The Moon passes 0.1 south of

asteroid Juno, 7h UT

The Moon is at perigee

(361,023 kilometers from Earth),
3h48m UT

The Moon passes 5 south of

Jupiter, 18h UT

29

The Moon is at apogee (405,083

kilometers from Earth), 3h55m UT

Pluto is stationary, 7h UT

CO

19

The Moon passes 4 north of

Neptune, 13h UT

om

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a?

&

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Regu'us .

Jupiter

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STAR COLORS:

7V

.
* Po/v

QEft

&

ot
A
l NX

I I Diffuse nebula

Stars'true colors
depend on surface
temperature. Hot
stars glow blue; slight
ly cooler ones, white;
intermediate stars (like
the Sun), yellow; followed
by orange and, ultimately, red.
Fainter stars can't excite our eyes'
color receptors, and so appear white
without optical aid.

Planetary nebula
o

15
17

>

10
12

"

^ v

v .;

New Moon occurs at 18h57m UT

Jupiter is stationary, 20h UT

HYDRA
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MAGNITUDES

A
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c/ a

Full Moon occurs at 12h06m UT;

total lunar eclipse

18

Saturn, 13h UT

O .

% u
4/p /i

1 The Moon is at apogee

(406,012 kilometers from Earth),
13h01m UT

8 The Moon passes 2 north of

r*

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o

Calendar of events

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APRIL 2015

6 Uranus is in conjunction with the

Sun, 14h UT

<

the sky as seen near 30 south latitude.

Located inside the border are the four
directions: north, south, east, and
west. To find stars, hold the map
overhead and orient it so a
direction label matches the
direction you're facing.
#
The stars above the
map's horizon now

match what's
*
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in the sky.

N 0313V W V H 3

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9 p.m. April 1
8 p.m. April 15
7 p.m. April 30

HOW TO USE THIS MAP: This map portrays

Illustrations by Astronomy: Roen Kelly

Galaxy

Astronomy

BEGINNERS: WATCH A VIDEO ABO UT HOW TO READ A STAR CHART AT www.Astronom y.com /starchart.

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