Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i BBC Sky at Night

Visit www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content/D3LRQGM/ to access this month’s selection of exclusive Bonus Content JANUARY HIGHLIGHTS 200 issues of observing Listen to Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel discuss their favourite astronomical events since issue 1 was launched. Watch The Sky at Night: Telecopes Through Time The team explore the history of the telescope, revealing the landmark instruments that have opened up the cosmos. Book preview: The Space Business Download and read an extract from a new book that takes a behind-the- scenes look at the private spacelight industry. The Virtual Planetarium Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel guide us through the best sights to see in the night sky this month.…

The winds of Jupiter Juno is helping to reveal how the gas giant’s atmosphere circulates The pattern of circulation in Earth’s atmosphere is pretty straightforward. The Sun warms air around the equator that rises, then rolls over through high altitudes before sinking down to the ground at latitudes near 30° north and south (around a third of the way to the poles). From there the moving air blows across Earth’s surface back to the equator. This is a giant convection current – just like the one that churns over the radiator in your living room – and the pair straddling Earth’s equator are called the Hadley cells. There are three great atmospheric circulation cells in each of Earth’s hemispheres. The middle cell of each trio (called the Ferrel cell) is…

Dark Skies Light pollution can make life very difficult for astronomers. In this episode the team speak to ecology experts, radio astronomers and dark-sky rangers to find out why light pollution is such an issue, whether it’s getting worse and what we can do about it. Plus, the London-based Baker Street Irregular Astronomers reveal how they observe the night sky from a light-polluted area. BBC Four, 9 January, 10pm (first repeat BBC Four, 13 January, 7:30pm) Check www.bbc.co.uk/skyatnight for more up-to-date information…

The amateur astronomer’s forum There was a time not so long ago when astronomy was regarded as a subject divorced from everyday activities. The picture of a typical astronomer conjured up an old man with a long white beard, spending his time in a lonely observatory. That picture was never accurate and today it could not be further from the truth – professional astronomers spend relatively little time inside observatories and almost never look directly through a telescope. It is only amateurs who carry out old-fashioned observations. Yet the contributions made by amateurs are as important now as they ever were and are widely welcomed. This is a state of affairs probably not found in any other branch of science. Amateurs hunt for comets and exploding stars, monitor variable stars,…

Saiph (Kappa (κ) Orionis) is one of the main pattern stars in Orion, marking its southeast corner. Saiph is typically shown marking one of Orion’s knees, although the formal translation of the name means ‘sword’, from the Arabic saif al jabbar; ‘sword of the giant’. Interestingly, the name was originally attributed to Eta (η) Orionis, which sits west of the three Belt stars in Orion. It is said that Saiph’s name was originally attributed to what we call Orion’s Belt today, but got mistakenly transferred to Kappa, where it remained. Saiph is the sixth brightest star in Orion, appearing fainter than two of the Belt stars, but marginally brighter than Mintaka (Delta (δ) Orionis) at the Belt’s western end. It’s a bright, B-class supergiant that appears to shine blue-white to…

1 NGC 2232 Our first stop is open cluster NGC 2232, which is located 2.4˚ to the north and a bit west of the telescopic triple star Beta (β) Monocerotis. It’s a large cluster with an overall diameter of 36 arcminutes, its core region appearing 7 arcminutes across. NGC 2232 is centred on the mag. +5.0 star 10 Monocerotis, which tends to dominate the proceedings. Two spindly ‘legs’ of stars appear to hang south from 10 Monocerotis, extending for 0.4˚. To the north lies a gap, before a small grouping of sixth magnitude stars is seen. The group is attractive at low powers. □ SEEN IT 2 M50 M50 lies nearly 10˚ east-southeast of NGC 2232, or 4.2˚ northeast of mag. +4.1 Theta (θ) Canis Majoris, the star marking the…

How using layers can enhance a Milky Way image Use the image-processing function to stack and adjust an image of our home Galaxy An essential part of an astrophotographer’s processing toolbox, the ‘Layers’ function exists in most processing software, including Adobe Photoshop and GIMP. ‘Layers’ can be used to stack multiple image files; a technique that reduces noise (unwanted artefacts) in the final image. It also allows us to make gradual enhancements to our image files along the way. As the ‘Layers’ function provides the ability to delete small processing errors at any stage of our edit, it means we don’t have to start again if we make a mistake. In this article we will show you how to use the ‘Layers’ function in Photoshop to stack and process an…

Our experts review the latest kit Tabletop telescopes, such as the Sky-Watcher Skymax-127 Virtuoso GTi, have come to the fore because of their lightweight versatility. As a compact telescope combined with a single-arm, Wi-Fi-controllable Go-To mount it offers to make the night sky available at the touch of an on-screen button. The Skymax-127’s optical tube has a Maksutov-Cassegrain design that folds a 1,500mm-long light path into a tube that’s just 370mm long (excluding the star diagonal). It has a 127mm-diameter primary mirror, and its long focal length (with a focal ratio of f/11.8) makes it ideal for lunar, planetary and doublestar viewing, although you can also observe brighter deep-sky targets with it as well. A red-dot finder allows for initial alignment and along with a star diagonal, there are 25mm…

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 2 NOVEMBER 2021 Why does this beautiful emission nebula have a gigantic hole in it? With a width of more than 250 lightyears, the dark ‘superbubble’ in N44, located 160,000 lightyears from Earth in the constellation of Dorado, is still puzzling astronomers. The hole, glowing with the intense ultraviolet light from a region littered with hot young stars, seems likely to have been carved out by the outflow of superfast, broiling stellar winds from the massive blue-white stars at its centre. Measurements of wind velocities in the region, however, don’t seem to bear this out. Another trigger may be a succession of central stars exploding in the last few million years, the resulting shockwaves blowing out the surrounding gas. Remnants of one supernova have been detected and…

A planet, but not as we know it Rocky exoplanets could be far more diverse than the worlds in our planetary system The rocky worlds of our Solar System could be the odd ones out, as a recent study into the remains of long dead planetary systems has found they were very different to our own. The discovery was made by astronomer Siyi Xu from NOIRLab and geologist Keith Putirka from California State University, who combined their expertise to investigate the geology of planets around other stars. The duo looked at polluted white dwarfs – the remains of once Sun-like stars that have reached the end of their lives, only to have the planets that once orbited them fall into their atmospheres. The remains of these planets then contaminate the…

Live New Dark Sky Discovery trail Larkbarrow, Exmoor National Park A night-walking trail has been unveiled at the heart of Exmoor National Park. The flat there-and-back-again route across fields is 3.2km-long, starting from Larkbarrow near Exford, and it offers 360° panoramas of some truly dark skies. exmoorwalks.org/darksky Live Astronomy and Islam Royal Observatory Greenwich, 2 January, 10:30am Hear about the characters depicted in the stars in Arabic astronomy lore and the importance of Moon phases in Islam in this one-hour show. Ages 7 and up. Adults are £10, children £5, including entry to the Observatory. www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on Online Astrophysics talk 14 January, 7:45pm In his talk ‘The Standard Model and Possible New Physics’, author Harry Cliff looks at the quest for a single ‘theory of everything’ to explain how the Universe…

Graham Southern launched the magazine and was editor until issue 76, in September 2011 How did the idea for the magazine come about? It began in 2002, when I was deputy editor of Focus (now BBC Science Focus), the popular science magazine. At that time it was covering a lot of interesting space and astronomy stories like Beagle 2 on its way to Mars, WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) finding clues to the Big Bang and the International Space Station (ISS) being built. So in 2003 I submitted a proposal for a space and astronomy magazine called ‘Cosmos’ and then, in 2004, when we came under the wing of BBC Magazines, my proposal was developed into BBC Sky at Night Magazine. What were the key elements in your vision for…

1. The Cheshire Cat 10 x 50 How nice to be welcomed to the sky with a smile! Yellow Phi (ϕ) Aurigae is the brightest star in the ‘grin’ of mostly 6th and 7th magnitude stars that extends for about 1.5°, with another widely spaced pair of stars – the yellowish eyes – 0.5° to the west. Other than a small group of 8th magnitude stars that gives the merest hint of the disappearing nose, that’s all that remains of the Cheshire Cat. □ SEEN IT 2. The Auriga Trio of Clusters 10 x 50 At the northern end of the Cheshire Cat’s smile, you will see a fuzzy patch. That is the Starfish Cluster, M38, and a couple of degrees southeast you’ll find another one, M36. Now put M36…

There’s a vivid memory I have, of sitting around Patrick Moore’s dining room table and discussing the idea for what later became BBC Sky at Night Magazine. One of the people present – who shall remain nameless – wondered if there would be enough material to fill its pages month after month. Looking back at how much the team has crammed into the first 200 issues, it’s fair to say that finding enough content hasn’t been a problem. The anniversary has provided a wonderful excuse to look back, whether it’s to cover missions to Pluto, to revisit a rather special comet, or to return to exoplanet discoveries that have transformed the search for life in the cosmos and much more. Read on for my highlights! Gaia maps the Milky Way…

Build a roll-off roof garden observatory Install a low-voltage electrical system and make your setup solar powered This final part of our series covers how to take a roll-off roof (ROR) observatory ‘off grid’ with solar power, and make a power distribution box for the equipment inside. By using solar power we can keep everything to a nominal 12V, so there is no electric shock hazard, but there is still the potential for an electrical short circuit to cause overheating and a possible fire. Always have your circuitry checked by a qualified electrician. To begin, check the power or current requirements of your mount, cameras, dew heaters, and any other accessories, and make a realistic estimation of how long they will be used; our estimation was for up to three…

The Seahorse Nebula Emil Andronic, Bushey, Hertfordshire, 7 September-2 October 2021 Emil says: “This is the dark nebula Barnard 150 in LRGB (Luminance, Red, Green and Blue). Living in London suburbs under Bortle 7 skies has put me off trying to image dark nebulae, but I’ve been wanting to capture this target for ages and I had to try and see if it was possible.” Equipment: ZWO ASI294MM Pro camera, Astro-Tech AT 106LE triplet apo refractor, Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 mount Exposure: L 100x 180”, R 50x 180”, G 50x 180”, B 50x 180” Software: SG Pro, Astro Pixel Processor, PixInsight, Photoshop Emil’s top tips: “Light pollution is a major issue for me. To combat it, a mono camera has some great advantages. Combined with a light pollution filter instead of a…

Our experts review the latest kit Altair Astro has recently introduced large format astro cameras to its comprehensive range, and this month we are putting one of these to the test – the Hypercam AA24CFX 14-bit colour camera. The AA24CFX’s large sensor requires a telescope that can provide a suitable wide and flat imaging circle with good colour correction. We matched the camera to our 150mm triplet refractor, which gives a flat image circle of 44mm, and illuminates the sensor with minimal vignetting issues. Conveniently, the front thread on the camera is M54 x 0.75mm, which allows for an unobstructed light passage. Optional reducing flanges could reduce this down to M48, but we were able to take advantage of the larger fittings on our equipment. As a colour camera with…

Juno reveals the depths of Jupiter’s storms The Great Red Spot extends far deeper than planetary scientists anticipated A 3D map of Jupiter’s atmosphere has given researchers their first view of the inner workings of the planet’s belts, zones and cyclones. The map, produced from five years of observations by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, reveals that Jupiter’s storms extend deeper than expected, including the Great Red Spot (GRS). Juno arrived at Jupiter in July 2016 and since then it has swooped in close to the planet 37 times. During these manoeuvres, its microwave radiometer looked beneath the upper clouds, examining the structure of the planet’s storms, including the Great Red Spot (GRS). The readings found that cyclones are warmer at the top, making them less dense, while their bases are much…

Stellar propeller The fastest spinning white dwarf ever seen has just been clocked in at one rotation every 25 seconds. The star is the second known example of a magnetic propeller, meaning its spin is powered by pulling material from a nearby companion star and then flinging it into space at 3,000 km/s. DART launches NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully launched on 24 November and is now on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos. In September 2022, the spacecraft will collide with the smaller of the pair, altering its orbit to test if the same technique could one day be used to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Distant water Water has been detected in a galaxy whose light left it when the Universe…

Online Institute of Astronomy open evenings From cosmic rays to gravity, catch a new talk on the latest astronomy research each week Every Wednesday throughout the winter season (until 23 March 2022), the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge opens its virtual doors to the public for an evening lecture and stargazing session (weather-permitting). It’s online only for now, but hybrid live and virtual events are planned. Fast radio bursts will be the lecture topic on 19 January at 7:15pm. Watch live and join in the Q&A or catch up with all the recent Institute of Astronomy videos on Youtube, including talks on cosmic rays, exoplanets, star dust, planet and galaxy building, and much more at https://bit.ly/InstituteofAstronomy…

PICK OF THE MONTH Venus Best time to see: 31 January, 07:00 UT Altitude: 9˚ (low) Location: Sagittarius Direction: Southeast Features: Phase, faint shaded markings. Recommended equipment: 75mm, or larger Venus is in its crescent phase this month. You might be fortunate enough to catch the planet in the evening sky right at the month’s start, but it’s heading for inferior conjunction on 9 January so you don’t have long. On the 1st, a telescope will show Venus as a slender 2%-lit crescent, a remarkable sight if you have clear skies. Being thin and low in altitude, this crescent is susceptible to the unstable atmosphere we have to look through for objects close to the horizon, so plan to catch it as early as you can after sunset. As ever,…

Comet 19P/Borrelly is potentially visible using binoculars and should be a great target for small telescopes. It joins comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS in January’s night sky to produce a great cometary feast. The comet is currently moving northeast and brightening as it goes. Starting the month in Cetus, not far from mag. +2.0 Deneb Kaitos (Beta (β) Ceti), the comet remains inside the Cetus boundary for much of the month, managing to slip into Pisces at the end of January. On the evening of 1 January, 19P sits 5˚ west of Deneb Kaitos, visible after evening twilight has subsided and true darkness has descended, just after 18:00 UT. This places the comet slightly to the west of south, around 19˚ up as seen from the centre of the UK. By…

Venus wasn’t the easiest planet to spot in 2021. Loitering in the evening sky after sunset, its altitude has been low. It is visible in the evening sky before inferior conjunction on 9 January 2022, after which it re-emerges in the morning sky. Venus is the brightest of the planets, regularly appearing brighter than mag. -4. It also has the largest potential apparent size, something which is only achieved close to inferior conjunction. The challenge is to see whether you can spot the planet’s phase with your eyes only. When Venus is close to inferior conjunction, it appears through the eyepiece as an ultra-thin crescent. It also approaches the theoretical limit of nakedeye resolution, at 1 arcminute; it will appear larger than 1 arcminute between 1-17 January and it’s not…

Imaging the crescent of Venus How to safely capture the planet’s slender crescent around inferior conjunction Venus reaches inferior conjunction on 9 January, a time when it lines up with the Sun in the sky on the part of its orbit nearest to Earth. This is an exciting time for Venus watchers as, during the evening approach to inferior conjunction and morning exit from it, Venus appears as a slender crescent. There are safety considerations here: viewing Venus as a crescent means it’s going to appear close to the Sun. So follow all the solar safety measures and never view the Sun with the naked eye or unfiltered optical equipment. On 1 January, Venus appears separated from the Sun by 12˚, setting 75 minutes after the Sun below the southwest…

Strange radio signals beaming out from the centre of the Milky Way are unlike anything that astronomers have detected before How did you first uncover the signal? We discovered this source in early 2020, by using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, located in Western Australia. Our survey – Variables and Slow Transits (VAST) – is designed to discover radio sources that turn on and off or vary in brightness. We performed a search towards the Galactic centre and this signal was one of the most variable sources in the search. What makes it so unusual? The strangest aspect of this source is that it is highly polarised. Our eyes cannot distinguish between circularly polarised light and unpolarised, but ASKAP has the equivalent of polaroid sunglasses to filter…