Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2024 i BBC Sky at Night

VICTOR M BLANCO 4-METER TELESCOPE, 12 MARCH 2024 This stunning shot of the Vela supernova remnant, which is 11,000 years old and lies 900 lightyears from Earth, was captured by the US National Science Foundation’s Victor M Blanco 4-Meter Telescope using its Dark Energy Camera. It’s all that remains of an exploded star, and even though this supernova happened thousands of years ago, we can still see its shockwave colliding with the interstellar medium, producing the blue and yellow filaments shown here. What’s more, the star itself is still out there. Known as the Vela Pulsar, it’s a dense stellar core known as a neutron star, with the mass of a Sun-like star condensed into an object just a few kilometres across. Tower of darkness VLT SURVEY TELESCOPE (VST), 11…

The strong, organised magnetic fields spiralling into the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way have been newly revealed in a new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT is a network of radio telescopes across the world working together as an Earth-sized observatory. The first image of our Galaxy’s black hole, Sgr A*, was released in 2022, but this latest image shows the black hole in polarised light for the first time. “What we’re seeing now is that there are strong, twisted and organised magnetic fields near the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way,” says Sara Issaoun from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory who co-led the project. “Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarisation structure to that seen in the…

Neon lights are helping astronomers to map out the flow of gas from planet-forming discs in new images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. When the dusty discs where infant planets are created first start out, they contain around 100 times more gas than solids. And yet, when most planetary systems are finished, they’re predominantly filled with rocky objects, leading to the question: where does the gas go? To find out, exoplanet scientists turned to the young star T Cha, which is reaching the end of its planet-forming stage. Using JWST, the team looked for neon and argon, using them to track the winds blowing the gas out of the disc. This allowed them to measure the amount of gas being lost for the first time, finding the disc…

The formation of the Solar System was a little like making a cake. A set of ingredients – in this case, a vast cloud of interstellar gas and dust – were mixed together over 4.5 billion years to create the Sun, planets and moons that we see today. Planetary scientists like me aim to reconstruct that recipe, from the ingredients of the first solid materials in the protoplanetary disc, through to the evolution of habitable environments like the one we find on Earth. I investigate the origin of the Solar System using asteroids, the rocky and metallic leftover building blocks of planets. I’m particularly interested in asteroids that formed in the cold, outer disc, as they retain the primitive composition of the Solar System and accreted complex ices that reacted…

Public stargazing evening: On board the ISS Poltimore Inn Observatory, North Molton, Devon, 18 May, 6pm Located under enviably dark Exmoor skies, North Molton’s Poltimore Inn has a feature not many pubs can boast: its own purpose-built observatory! Space Detectives hosts a public stargazing evening there each month, with a chance to peer through the observatory’s highend telescopes or, in bad weather, take a guided virtual reality tour of the night sky. Each month’s session has a different theme, and this month it’s a chance to look at life on board the International Space Station. Tickets cost £35 for adults and £25 for children; food and accommodation (not included) are available at the Inn if required. www.thepoltimoreinnnorthmolton.co.uk www.spacedetectives.com…

In April 2018, the China National Space Administration put out a call for international partners to submit proposals for experiments Chang’e 6 could carry to the Moon. A total of 10kg (22lb) of payload mass was available and the following four were selected. DORN (Detection of Outgassing Radon) An alpha spectrometer that will study the transportation dynamics of radon and other elements between the lunar soil, known as regolith, and the exosphere, the Moon’s extremely thin atmosphere. The instrument is being provided by the French Research Institute of Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP). INRRI (INstrument for landing – Roving laser Retroreflector Investigations) INRRI is a passive laser retro-reflector that will be available for future lunar missions to use for optical rangefinding. It is being built at the SCF Lab in Rome,…

Subatomic particles don’t weigh much. The mass of a proton (basically the nucleus of a hydrogen atom) is a mere 1.672 x 10-24g – that’s a billionth of a billionth of a gram (1.672 yoctogram). An electron is another 1,836 times less massive. Instead of using yoctograms, particle physics uses units of energy to denote particle masses. After all, according to Einstein’s equation E = mc2, mass and energy are inter changeable. Particle physicists use the electron volt, the energy gained by one electron as it’s accelerated through one volt. In these units, the proton has a mass of 938,272,081 electron volts, or about 938 megaelectron volts (MeV). The electron weighs in at 511 kiloelectron volts (keV). Expressing mass in units of energy has a big advantage. Through E =…

1. Mizar and Alcor 10 x 50 In the days before Herman Snellen introduced his eponymous eye-test chart, mag. +2.2 Mizar (Zeta (ζ) Ursae Majoris) and mag. +4.0 Alcor (80 Ursae Majoris) were used as an eyesight test: if you couldn’t see two stars, you knew you needed spectacles. They are, of course, easy to split in binoculars and these also reveal a fainter (mag. +7.6) companion that makes the southeast apex of a triangle with Alcor and Mizar. ◻ SEEN IT 2. V Canum Venaticorum 15 x 70 Half-way between mag. +1.9 Alkaid (Eta (η) Ursae Majoris) and mag. +2.9 Cor Caroli (Alpha (α) Canum Venaticorum) lies a pair of sixth-magnitude stars about 0.25° apart. From there, pan 1.5° towards 21 Canum Venaticorum where you should find, shining somewhere…

Hold up a finger and look at it with just one eye, then switch to just the other and you'll see your finger appear to ‘jump’ from side to side. The further away the finger, the smaller the jump. This apparent shift of a nearby object against a distant background when observed from different positions is called parallax. Measuring the size of this 'jump' as an angle is the same technique astronomers traditionally used to find the distances to celestial objects such as stars. Our DIY project is an instrument to demonstrate the principle. Our parallax instrument includes a long base stick with an observation point at either end. When we look at a nearby object (we used a green tennis ball) from each point, we use the built-in protractors…

PHOTO OF THE MONTH Comet 12P/Pons—Brooks Tim Jackson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 5 March 2024 Tim says: “The comet 12P/Pons–Brooks visits us every 71 years, so this was the only opportunity I would have to image it in my lifetime. I only had a one-hour window after the Sun went down.” Equipment: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro camera, Askar FRA500 astrograph, ZWO AM5 mount Exposure: 20× 60” Software: PixInsight Tim’s top tips: “Comets are very challenging to capture and even more of a challenge to process. The key is to track/guide on the stars and not the comet. This enables you to keep round stars in the final image. Track the comet and you will end up with star trails. I processed the image using PixInsight’s excellent comet alignment tool. This involved removing the…

VITAL STATS • Price £849 • Optics S-FPL53 doublet • Aperture 101mm • Focal length 1,111mm, f/11 • Focuser Dual-speed geared • Extras Tube rings, dovetail bar • Weight 4.8kg • Supplier Altair Astro • Tel 01603 721946 • www.altairastro.com Long-focal-length refractors have always been a favourite among visual astronomers, not only for the exceptional lunar and planetary vistas, but also for the sharp, high-contrast deep-sky views that are possible. Featuring a 101mm (4-inch) objective lens for increased light capture, Altair Astro has once again stepped into this market with its new offering, the Altair Planeta 101mm apo refractor. The Planeta is a 1,111mm-focal-length doublet. With a two-glass optical system, its weight is well controlled and the telescope tube, with tube rings and mounting bar attached, comes in at a modest…

The latest astronomy and space news, written by Ezzy Pearson BULLETIN There’s something wrong with our understanding of the Universe and, as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just confirmed, it doesn’t seem to be an observational error. One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is the ‘Hubble tension’, the puzzle that the expansion of the Universe we see today doesn’t match what we think it should be from looking at the early cosmos. Using observations of the earliest Universe and applying our understanding of how space behaves, astronomers can calculate the value of expansion we expect to find in modern times. They can also directly measure the current expansion using ‘standard candles’, objects whose known intrinsic brightness allows us to calculate their distance. However, when the expansion values…

Our experts examine the hottest new research CUTTING EDGE If you’ve ever been lucky enough to witness a solar eclipse, you’ll certainly have been struck not only by the eery dimming of the light in the middle of the day, but also by the sudden chill in temperature. There have also been reports that just before totality, low-level clouds dissipate, raising the intriguing possibility that solar eclipses could also influence regional weather as the Moon’s shadow passes across Earth. Victor Trees at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, and his colleagues, set out to investigate this effect. They turned to data from Earth observation satellites in geostationary orbit, which can provide imagery over large geographical areas, and focused on three solar eclipses between 2005 and 2016. They analysed…

A great many lunar craters, asteroids and comets have been named after either their discoverer or, as an honorary gesture, those involved in a field of corresponding scientific work. Literally thousands of human names are scattered across the heavens, and a considerable proportion of the objects need an optical aid to view them. But when it comes to these astronomical instruments, only a handful bear a person’s name. Imagine, if you will, a curtain rising to reveal a theatre stage with a cast of players, all about to relate events in a remarkable one-off drama that concludes with the ‘first light’ of one such astronomical instrument, the Newtonian telescope. Just like stumbling across the faint image of a distant comet that was to become a spectacular daylight object, this particular…

One of the biggest problems with landing a mission on the lunar far side is that spacecraft can’t communicate directly with Earth from the surface, as the Moon itself blocks radio signals. To resolve this, China uses relay satellites to convey signals from the surface back to Earth. The first of these, Queqiao, launched on 20 May 2018. It is in a halo orbit around the Earth–Moon L2 Legrange point, which is directly behind the Moon with respect to Earth. Queqiao helped support the Chang’e 4 mission, the first ever to land on the lunar far side when it touched down within the Von Kármán crater in January 2019. The Queqiao-2 relay satellite, launched in March 2024, is a larger craft weighing 1,200kg (2,645lb). Queqiao-2 was placed in frozen elliptical…

Parties in the UK 1. Kielder Star Party Held twice a year at the remote Kielder Campsite in Northumberland, the hardy stargazers who attend this star party enjoy some of the darkest skies in the UK. www.facebook.com/Kielderstarcamp 2. Kelling Star Party The largest star party in the UK, this week-long gathering organised by the Loughton Astronomical Society is held at Kelling Heath on the north Norfolk coast. www.kellingheath.co.uk 3. Galloway Gathering Star Party Held at Dunroamin Farm Camping and Caravan Site in a beautiful dark-sky area of the Scottish Borders, this star party attracts amateur astronomers from all over the country. www.dunroamin.co.uk 4. Dalby Forest Starfest In the heart of Yorkshire’s beautiful Dalby Forest, this is a fun family event with stargazing at night, and talks and other activities during…

PICK OF THE MONTH Best time to see: 31 May, 04:00 BST (03:00 UT) Altitude: 12° Location: Aquarius Direction: Southeast Features: Rings, subtle atmospheric banding, brighter moons Recommended equipment: 75mm or larger telescope There’s no getting away from the fact that May 2024 isn’t a month for planets. None of the major planets are even moderately well placed this month, a rather unusual situation overall. The best is Saturn, but even this is a bit of a challenge! Although not ideal during May, things will improve soon and the second half of 2024 is planet heaven. Saturn is currently in the morning sky but not well positioned. It’s located in eastern Aquarius, rising around 04:20 BST (03:20 UT) on 1 May. On this date the planet has a magnitude of…

Minor planet 2 Pallas reaches opposition on 17 May when it can be found shining within the stars of Hercules at magnitude +8.9. At this brightness, it’s a tricky binocular find, but a small telescope should pick it up without any difficulty. Pallas was discovered by Heinrich Olbers on 28 March 1802. Interestingly, Charles Messier, the originator of the Messier Catalogue, recorded it 23 years earlier while tracking a comet. Messier noted the object, but thought it was a star – causing its anonymity to be preserved. Pallas’s discovery was given a helping hand by the discovery of the first minor planet, 1 Ceres (since promoted to dwarf planet). Ceres was discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, who initially believed he had recorded a comet. However, studies showed that the…

For casual observers, there’s a belief that globular clusters all look quite similar in appearance. However, more seasoned globular hunters know this is definitely not the case. The classic Northern Hemisphere globular known as M13, the Great Globular in Hercules, is a case in point. Core concentration, brightness, size, shape and the ability to be partly resolved all help to create distinctions between globulars. There are other features too, and this month’s challenge is to view M13 and try to find its most characteristic feature: the ‘propeller’. The propeller is a pattern offset to the southeast side of the core of M13 that appears as three dark dust lanes converging to a common point. The lanes are offset from one another by 120° and it’s this regularity that produces the…

Alunar occultation occurs when the Moon appears to move in front of something more distant, such as a star or a planet. Lunar occultations of brighter objects aren’t as common as you might think, but this month, on the night of 23/24 May, the bright full Moon will occult the globular cluster Messier 4 in the constellation of Scorpius. However, M4’s magnitude of +5.9 and low altitude from the UK mean this won’t be straightforward. If you try to follow the event using binoculars, the Moon’s glare will make the globular hard to see. Use a telescope with a low- to mid-power eyepiece and you stand a better chance, but M4 will still struggle against the bright Moon. Another way to observe the occultation is to photograph it. Here, the…

Tell us about Saturn and its moon, Mimas. Mimas is a small moon of Saturn; the smallest of the so-called mid-sized icy moons – 394km (246 miles) in diameter. It’s big enough to have a roughly spherical shape because of gravity, but it’s probably one of the smallest objects that can. If it were half the size, it would look more like an asteroid. The effect of gravity also means it has a rocky core and an ice shell. What is the relationship between Saturn and Mimas? Mimas significantly influences the rings of Saturn, contributing greatly in preventing their expansion. If you look at Saturn’s rings, there are large gaps between them. The biggest such gap, 4,000–5,000km (2,485–3,106 miles) wide, is called the Cassini division, and the existence and maintenance…

Find it at www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content MAY HIGHLIGHTS Interview: Water around a distant star Astronomer Stefano Facchini on how he found water vapour at a Sun-like star where planets are forming. Download and print observing forms Keep track of your observations of the Sun and the planets through the eyepiece with our printable forms. Build a parallax-measuring tool Extra materials to help with this month’s DIY project, demonstrating how cosmic distances are measured (see page 74). The Virtual Planetarium Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel guide us through the best sights to see in the night sky this month.…

Water has been found in the exact spot where a young planet appears to be forming. The water was discovered in the planetary disc circling the young Sun-like star HL Tauri, 450 lightyears away in the constellation of Taurus. New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile found water throughout the disc, including inside a well-known gap believed to be created by a planet sweeping up gas and dust as it orbits its star. “I had never imagined that we could capture an image of oceans of water vapour in the same region where a planet is likely forming,” says Stefano Facchini from the University of Milan, lead author of the study. Water can play a huge role in how dust grains in the disc clump together,…

BULLETIN A pair of supermassive black holes that have been trapped dancing around each other for billions of years have now been found to be the heaviest binary ever measured. Though theory predicts that such pairs of supermassive black holes should merge together, the act of merging has never actually been seen. The huge mass of this pair could help astronomers understand why such mergers are seemingly so rare. The pair are located in B2 0402+379, an enormous ‘fossil cluster’ galaxy created when an entire cluster’s worth of galaxies and stars merged into a single giant elliptical. Most galaxies host a central supermassive black hole. When galaxies merge, these begin orbiting around one another. As they circle, they transfer some of their energy to the surrounding stars and gas –…

The oldest-ever ‘dead’ galaxy, which stopped making stars a mere 700 million years after the Big Bang, has been spied by astronomers. JADES-GS-z7-01-QU was identified in recent images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. It appears the galaxy had previously been voraciously producing stars. Then, around 10 to 20 million years before the time at which it’s now being observed, star formation suddenly stopped, or quenched. Galaxies stop producing stars when they run out of gas, but there are many ways this gas can disappear. They also don’t usually occur until much later in the galaxy’s life. “We’re looking for other galaxies like this one in the early Universe, which will help us place some constraints on how and why galaxies stop forming new stars,” says Francesco D’Eugenio, from…

On 16 December 2020, the return capsule of the Chang’e 5 mission landed in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It had travelled hundreds of thousands of miles from the Moon, carrying 1,731g (61 oz) of precious lunar dust. Remarkably, this represented the first lunar sample return mission since the USSR’s Luna 24 brought back 170g (6 oz) in August 1976. There will be no 44-year wait this time though, as China is planning to launch its next lunar sample-return mission this year, with an expected May launch date. Chang’e 6 is bound for the far side of the Moon and will be humanity’s first sample from the region, representing an important symbolic, scientific and possibly strategic win for the rising space power. The mission was originally a back-up for Chang’e…

PARTICLE HYSICS 101 Astronomy is the science of very large objects: planets, stars, galaxies and the Universe as a whole. In contrast, particle physics deals with the smallest things we know: the elementary building blocks of matter, particles smaller than an atom. With such a difference in scale, the two disciplines may seem to have little in common. However, they turn out to be inextricably linked. In this new six-part beginners’ course, we’ll explore the basics of what has become known as astroparticle physics. To study the geology of the Moon, you don’t need to know about the behaviour of individual elementary particles. But astronomers wouldn’t understand the evolution of stars without knowledge of atomic processes like nuclear fusion. Supernova explosions would not happen were it not for the weird…

1 Wednesday The lunar clair-obscur effect known as the Cutlass is visible this morning, reaching its peak around 04:30 BST (03:30 UT) when the Moon will be low above the southeast horizon in twilight. 2 Thursday Our Deep-Sky Tour on page 56 looks at objects in Crater and Corvus. Due to creeping bright skies, this region is best viewed at the start of May. 3 Friday The spectacular globular cluster M13 in Hercules is close to its highest point in the sky around 02:00 BST (01:00 UT), the perfect position to get a view of this amazing object. 4 Saturday The 20%-lit waning crescent Moon sits 3.3° east of mag. +0.8 Saturn this morning. 5 Sunday Early risers will get to see the 12%-lit waning crescent Moon near mag. +1.1 Mars. Separation is around 1.3°…

Most people know what the Plough or Saucepan looks like, a distinctive seven-star pattern that is part of the Great Bear, Ursa Major. The Little Bear, Ursa Minor, similarly has seven stars, three being in a curve starting from Polaris (Alpha (α) Ursae Minoris) that joins to a box shape. As with the Plough, the pattern represents the little bear’s rump and tail, but unlike the Great Bear, the rest of the creature is not well represented. The box’s two corner stars located closest to Polaris are fairly dim and easily lost from a site with medium light pollution. These are mag. +4.3 Zeta (ζ) and mag. +4.9 Eta (η) Ursae Minoris. The other two are brighter: mag. +2.1 Kochab (Beta (β) Ursae Minoris) and mag. +3.0 Pherkad (Gamma (γ)…

To withstand the extreme heat and radiation found in our star’s immediate neighbourhood, Parker Solar Probe is protected by a 2.3-metre-diameter (7.5ft) hexagonal solar shield, weighing just 73kg (160lb) and mounted on its Sunfacing side. This shield is 11cm (4.4 inches) thick and comprises two panels of revolutionary reinforced carbon composite with a lightweight carbon foam core. A surface layer of white reflective alumina (aluminium oxide) minimises absorption. Consequently, it can withstand temperatures reaching nearly 1,370°C (2,500°F), keeping its scientific payload at a balmy 29°C (85°F). Parker’s systems and instruments hide behind the central portion of the shield’s shadow, where the Sun’s radiation is fully blocked. Without this shield, PSP would become inoperative within seconds. Even so, radio blackouts can last weeks and radio communication takes eight minutes. To protect…

CAUTION Never observe or image the Sun with the naked eye or any unfiltered optical instrument Astronomy Photographer of the Year Advice from the runner-up in the ‘Our Sun’ category, 2023 Imaging the Sun with a hydrogen-alpha filter unveils dynamic, astonishing structures within its chromosphere. Luckily, there are several digital imaging approaches that can mine these intricate details, enhance the contrasts and map changes in colour brightness. Sharpening and deconvolution filters will also tease out fine structures, with the latest editing software now adding AI-driven imageprocessing methods too. However, showcasing prominences on the edge of the chromosphere can still be challenging. For one, how do we accentuate these outermost structures and filaments? With this in mind, we can get creative to ensure prominences are highlighted. One way is to turn…