Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i BBC Sky at Night

FREE BONUS CONTENT Find it at www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content Interview: See the Northern Lights Experienced aurora-chaser Tom Kerss reveals his top tips for catching one of nature's greatest spectacles. Download and print observing forms Keep track of your observations of the Sun and the planets through the eyepiece with our printable forms. Get sharper stars with your DSLR camera Download a template and extra images to help you build a microfocuser. See this month's DIY project on page 74. The Virtual Planetarium…

BULLETIN The first-ever private spacewalk took place on 12 September, and it did so in style as the crew of the Polaris Dawn mission tested out the new extravehicular activity (EVA) suits made by SpaceX. Polaris Dawn launched on 10 September onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The spacecraft initially entered a 1,400km-altitude (870 miles) orbit, breaking the record for the highest orbiting crewed spacecraft and the furthest a woman has ever been from Earth. It then settled into a lower orbit at 730km (450 miles) to get ready for the spacewalk on 12 September. As Dragon isn't designed primarily for spacewalks, it has no airlock; instead, the entire capsule had to be depressurised before opening to the vacuum of space. Unlike the bulkier Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs) NASA uses,…

The debris created during the DART mission, which tested humanity's ability to deflect dangerous asteroids, may unexpectedly create the first-ever artificial meteor shower. On 26 September 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) collided with the 160-metre-wide (525ft) asteroid Dimorphos. The impact changed the asteroid's orbit around its larger companion, Didymos, by over 30 minutes, proving humanity had the ability to deflect an asteroid if it was found to be on a collision course with Earth. As astronomers know the precise time and location of the impact, and this offered a rare opportunity to study how the large volume of debris it created spreads through the Solar System. By simulating over three million particles of different sizes and speeds, a team of researchers have predicted how they think the debris…

Our experts examine the hottest new research CUTTING EDGE Meteor showers are a delight to behold – nature's own fireworks displays. But their beauty hides a more dangerous side. Before they enter Earth's atmosphere, the fast-moving grains and pebbles of interplanetary rock – meteoroids – pose a risk to spacecraft. Larger meteoroids can penetrate the cabin of crewed space vehicles, and even small impacts can damage satellite components and short-circuit electronics. For example, ESA's Olympus 1 communications satellite started tumbling out of control and had to be subsequently deactivated during the 1993 Perseids shower. There is an ever-present background threat of meteoroids, so spacecraft are built with shielding and redundant systems. But during a meteor shower, the risk can jump for a short period, forcing spacewalks to be postponed or…

One of the most visited attractions in London right now is The Moonwalkers at Lightroom, King's Cross, a 360° immersive experience on the NASA Apollo missions, narrated by actor Tom Hanks. The show takes the public part-way along the historic journey to landing on the Moon. The Space Vault Exhibition, however, on display at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, goes deeper, bringing visitors to within inches of rare and historic artefacts that have put astronauts into space, flown in Earth orbit and landed on a celestial body other than Earth. My interest in space began at age six. At school assembly, we joined millions across the world watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon. The event lodged in my memory, largely I think because the…

In most cases, astronomers are only able to watch their subjects from afar, learning from what they can see in the night sky. That's not so with high-energy events, thanks to particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Particle accelerators can recreate the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang, albeit on a much smaller scale, to reveal how things worked in the initial moments of the Universe – from the Big Bang itself to the formation of the first atoms. They can also create miniature supernovae, replicating the moments after core collapse and mimicking the reactions taking place. They can study neutrinos – ubiquitous, almost massless ‘ghost' particles, generated at the core of a supernova. All this opens the door to new ways of testing our…

Most of the experiments that have tried to find dark matter assume it's made of some kind of as-yet-undiscovered particle. For decades, the leading contender was so-called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (or WIMPs). One of the biggest WIMP searches took place at the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, a tank of liquid xenon buried deep underground in an abandoned gold mine, where it would be hidden from background noise. If WIMPs are passing through Earth, they should whack into one of the xenon atoms every now and then, causing it to recoil. LUX ran for three years without picking up a single WIMP. The IceCube detector in Antarctica takes a slightly different approach. As the Sun orbits around the Galaxy, it should pass through and absorb dark matter. Dark matter…

PICK OF THE MONTH Uranus Best time to see: 17 November, 00:00 UT Altitude: 56° Location: Taurus Direction: South Features: Colour, subtle banding through larger instruments, main moons Recommended equipment: 150mm scope or larger The planet Uranus reaches opposition on 17 November, when it appears to shine at mag. +5.6 among the stars of Taurus. At present, the planet is extremely well placed from the UK. Listed as being theoretically visible to the naked eye, now – while it's at its opposition brightness – is the time to put that theory to the test, if you have access to a dark-sky location. In practice, although it can be seen unaided, any stars of a similar brightness nearby tend to confuse the sighting. Approaching midnight on 15 November, the full Moon…

Minor planet 11 Parthenope will reach opposition on 13 November when it can be found shining at mag. +9.8 on the border between Taurus, Aries and Cetus. At this brightness, it'll be most comfortably seen using a small telescope, but binoculars of at least 50mm aperture from a dark-sky site should be able to see it too. Although opposition delivers us the brightest version of Parthenope, the variation through November isn't great, the minor planet starting the month at mag. +10.0 and ending it at the same value. The best way to locate Parthenope is to first locate the pair of stars at the extreme western side of Taurus: Xi (ξ) and Omicron (ο) Tauri. Start from the V-shaped Hyades and follow the direction pointed at by the ‘V' to…

The Pleiades open cluster is an iconic showpiece of the autumn night sky. Located in Taurus, it's easily visible to the naked eye and looks resplendent through binoculars. Sparkling like diamonds scattered on velvet, the stars of the Pleiades contain this month's deep-sky challenge, the faint Merope Nebula. This reflection nebula results from the cluster stars passing through dust clouds as they move within our Galaxy. The nebula is relatively straightforward to record using long-exposure photography, but is challenging to see visually. The brightest part is that just to the south of the star Merope (23 Tauri). Known as the Merope Nebula, NGC 1435, it occupies the area west of a bent line of stars known informally as Ally's braid, Ally being a reference to the brightest Pleiad, Alcyone (Eta…

Since the first discoveries in the 1990s, astronomers have faced limits to the information they can gather about most exoplanets. Many are known only through Doppler shifts in the light of their parent stars (caused as the planet's gravity tugs the star in different directions) or from dips in brightness when a planet transits the face of its parent star, blocking part of its light. These techniques are biased towards finding certain types of planets – such as those with higher masses and those in shorter orbits – so the range of known exoplanets is unlikely to be representative of the entire population. Measurements of Doppler shifts and transits can reveal exoplanet properties such as orbital period, mass and diameter, allowing astronomers to deduce characteristics like probable surface temperature, density…

Saturn's apparent tilt from Earth reduces in November to such an extent that its largest moon, Titan, can start interacting with the planet's disc. This month, the interactions will involve the moon's shadow passing across Saturn's atmosphere in what's known as a shadow transit. Saturn is approaching an equinox, when it is effectively sideways-on to the Sun relative to its axis of rotation. In this orientation, from Earth it also looks sideways-on, but the relative geometries of both planets' orbits make Saturn wobble a bit over time. In March of 2025, we'll see Saturn's rings edge-on, an event known as a ring plane crossing. The Earth–Saturn-induced wobbles can give us either a single ring plane crossing event as we'll have next year, or a triple event where Saturn's rings appear…

EYE ON THE SKY HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 9 SEPTEMBER 2024 cated 90 million lightyears from Earth in the constellation of Virgo, NGC 5668 is a barred spiral galaxy that's very similar to our own Milky Way in terms of its size, mass and shape. But there's one key difference: NGC 5668 forms new stars at a rate 60 per cent higher than the Milky Way. This new Hubble image reveals one feature that astronomers think may be responsible for this remarkable fecundity: the galaxy's central bar, which is more oval and less bar-like than in most similar spirals. Fast-moving clouds of hot hydrogen speeding out from the galaxy itself to its outer halo – which isn't pictured here – may also play a part. FREE BONUS CONTENT Explore a gallery…

For the last two years, the James Webb Space Telescope has imaged galaxies that are further away than any seen before, revealing the Universe as it was when it was only a billion years old. But it has also revealed a problem: the black holes at the centre of these galaxies are already far larger than they should be, given the time they've had to grow. A new study suggests that the key could lie with dark matter. A team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) looked into the theory that supermassive black holes form directly from the collapse of giant gas clouds, rather than going through the intermediate step of forming stars first. For this to happen, the gas needs to stay together as one giant cloud.…

Around 13.8 billion years ago, a single, infinitely dense point suddenly expanded faster than the speed of light, producing a superheated fog of radiation and particles. This was the birth of the Universe in the Big Bang – the ultimate cataclysmic event. The Big Bang is our best model to explain the Universe and the laws of physics as we understand them, including how space, time and matter came to exist. The more we study the Big Bang, the more we can learn about how the cosmos began and evolved into the Universe we see today. By studying it, we've learned the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Meanwhile, fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (the remnant light after the Big Bang) showed us dark matter and dark energy together…

Our Solar System is filled with water. Most of it is solid ice, locked away in the frozen bodies of comets, planets, moons and asteroids. But there are several places you can find water in its liquid form. Most obviously, it covers the surface of our own Blue Planet, but it's estimated there is enough liquid water in the Solar System to fill Earth's oceans 25 to 50 times over. But these oceans lie beneath kilometres of ice on the frozen moons of the outer planets. Liquid water is one of the most important factors in how worlds grow. It transports minerals and erodes rock formations, but perhaps its most important role is in allowing life to flourish. Could the liquid water oceans on other worlds provide havens where alien…

Sounding more like the protagonist from a sci-fi movie, Zaurak is the name attributed to mag. +2.9 Gamma (γ) Eridani. The literal translation is ‘boat', which makes sense as Eridanus is a long, winding constellation representing a river. A rough but practical way to locate Zaurak is to imagine the line between Rigel (Beta (β) Orionis) and Betelgeuse (Alpha (α) Orionis), then rotate it 120° clockwise around Rigel. The end roughly points to Zaurak. Located 203 lightyears from the Sun, Zaurak is a red giant star of spectral classification M0III-IIIb. In this dying phase of stellar evolution, its interior has separate shells fusing hydrogen and helium outside of its main core. Although it exhibits slight variation between mag. +2.88 and +2.96, Zaurak is used as a base reference for comparing…

Perfect lens focus is vital if you want to achieve pin-sharp stars in astrophotos. While there are plenty of factors to consider – accurate polar alignment, tracking and processing skills – mastering these won't overcome an out-of-focus image. This DIY microfocuser can be attached to a DSLR lens to help your focusing efforts. The design fits a range of Canon lenses with outside diameters of 67–95mm, but should also be suitable for other makes and models. DSLRs are a popular option for deep-sky imaging for beginners. Not only are there many low-budget models, but they're also versatile for other types of photography, and we can swap lenses around for different focal lengths. DSLRs commonly have an autofocus system, which works great in daylight but is not reliable for astrophotography, when…

STEP 1 Not all captures need high-end cameras. If you have a telescope that shows Saturn's disc, get the planet in view, focus (if you wear glasses, keep them on), then try pointing a smartphone camera down the eyepiece during a shadow transit. The shadow will be very subtle and may need a little coaxing via an image editor. STEP 2 Holding a smartphone in place by hand, known as afocal photography, can be tricky, especially when the time comes to press the shutter button. An adaptor can remove any alignment issues and a Bluetooth shutter control can trigger the shutter without wobbling the camera/telescope. STEP 3 A DSLR (or equivalent) coupled to a telescope will also work, but upping magnification – via a Barlow or Powermate, for example –…

FREE BONUS CONTENT Find our extended Gallery at www.skyatnightmagazine.com/ bonus-content NGC 5101 and NGC 5078 Daniel Stern, Rio Hurtado, Chile, March–July 2024 PHOTO OF THE MONTH Daniel says: “The two most prominent galaxies in this picture – NGC 5101 in the upper left and NGC 5078 in the lower right – are similar in size to our own Milky Way and are about 90 million lightyears away. To put that into perspective, the light captured in this image left its source 25 million years before dinosaurs went extinct.” Equipment: Moravian C4-16000 camera, PlaneWave CDK-17 astrograph, PlaneWave L-500 mount Exposure: L 96× 300”, R 109× 300”, B 117× 300” Software: PixInsight Daniel's top tips: “The more experience I get, the less processing I do. I've found that less is more. Even…

VITAL STATS ∙ Price £549 ∙ Optics Multi-coated, built-in glass white-light solar filter ∙ Aperture 80mm ∙ Focal length 400mm, f/5 ∙ Mount Go-To solar tracking, 16x and 1,200x slewing speeds, 0.625 arcsecond resolution ∙ Extras Solar finder, filter wheel, filters, 90º diagonal, accessory tray, Vixen-style dovetail, smartphone holder ∙ Weight 1.75kg; 4.05kg with mount and tripod ∙ Supplier Optical Vision Ltd ∙ Email info@opticalvision.co.uk ∙ www.opticalvision.co.uk. Solar astronomers require specialist equipment to safely view the Sun. In a market of solar telescopes, high-end filters and Herschel wedges, it's fairly unusual to see budget equipment. However, Acuter has come up trumps with its Solarus 80 refractor. This solar telescope comes complete with built-in white-light filter, solar finder, diagonal, zoom eyepiece, smartphone adaptor and a filter wheel pre-loaded with colour filters.…

After almost half a century of wondering, astronomers may have found the cause of the mysterious Wow! Signal. And no, it's not aliens. The signal was first spotted as part of a 22-year search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the longest ever carried out. Between 1973 and 1995, Ohio State University's ‘Big Ear' radio telescope monitored the sky for signs of communications from distant civilisations. The Wow! Signal was picked up on 15 August 1977, when the observatory recorded an extremely strong pulse of radio waves lasting around 72 seconds, at the frequency of neutral hydrogen. The strength of the signal inspired astronomer Jerry R Ehman to write ‘Wow!' next to it on the printout. Its origin – alien civilisation or natural event – has been debated ever since. “The Wow! Signal…

A colossal asteroid impact four billion years ago could have knocked Ganymede's axis askew, according to a new set of computer simulations. Ganymede is the largest moon both in Jupiter's system and the entire Solar System. It has a subsurface ocean (see page 40) and is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its giant parent planet. One of its more intriguing features, however, is a series of concentric furrows which radiate from a point on the moon's far side. “We know this feature was created by an asteroid impact about four billion years ago, but we were unsure how big this impact was and what effect it had on the moon,” says Hirata Naoyuki from Kobe University in Japan. Hirata noticed the apparent impact site lay…

How do massive stars form? Massive stars have between eight to over 100 times the mass of our Sun when they form. But astronomers aren't sure how these behemoths become so huge. All stars are forged within vast, dense clouds of dust and gas located in interstellar space. The force of gravity causes the clouds to collapse in on themselves, making central clumps that get denser and hotter. The clumps are surrounded by plate-like, spinning discs of material, from which more matter is pulled in to grow the star. The problem is that after the star reaches around 20 solar masses, very strong radiation from the forming massive star can create an outward force that prevents more matter being sucked up from the swirling disc. One possible solution could arise…

As its name suggests, dark matter doesn't seem to absorb or emit light, so it cannot be seen directly. However, it does exert a gravitational pull. After all, that's why we needed it in the first place – to provide the gravitational glue that keeps galaxies and clusters of galaxies stuck together. So dark matter can be mapped using its gravitational influence instead. This is usually achieved using a technique called gravitational lensing. Imagine that there's a cluster of galaxies that we want to put on the celestial scales (such as the well-studied cluster collision called the Bullet Cluster). As light from a more distant object approaches the cluster, it is bent around the cluster by its gravity, just as a lens bends light in a pair of glasses or…

DON'T MISS Titan shadow transits begin BEST TIME TO SEE: 4 and 20 November, 6 and 22 December at the times stated After spending several years very low in the UK's sky, Saturn is now gaining altitude and becoming a more viable target. Always a favourite to observe through a telescope because of its beautiful ring system, Saturn currently has other attractions in store. The planet has an axial tilt of 26.7° and takes 29.4 years to orbit the Sun. Twice during this orbit, at roughly 13- to 15-year intervals, Saturn experiences an equinox and presents itself sideways-on to Earth. As this happens, the rings appear edge-on to us and effectively disappear from view. Actually, this doesn't only occur just once – the relative positions of Saturn and Earth make…

Montes Teneriffe Type: Mountain range Size: 120km × 40km Longitude/latitude: 13.2° W, 47.9° N Age: 3.2-3.9 billion years Best time to see: One day after first quarter (9 and 10 November) or last quarter (23 and 24 November) Minimum equipment: 100mm telescope Montes Teneriffe is an easy-to-identify mountain range located in the northern part of 1,250kmdiameter Mare Imbrium, immediately southwest of the distinctive 101km dark lava-filled crater Plato. The range stands out because it's located on the flat, dark lava of the mare. Named after the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the range consists of a few isolated mountains and one three-armed branch. The linear mountain range further to the west isn't part of Montes Teneriffe, but rather 90km × 20km Montes Recti. From Montes Recti, head east…

1. The Pleiades 10 × 50 You can easily see the blue-white stars of the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters, M45) with your naked eye, but you need binoculars to really experience their true splendour. These diamonds scattered on black velvet are one of the sights that evoke lots of “Wow!”s at star parties. It's hardly surprising that they inspired the poet Tennyson to declare that they “Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid”. SEEN IT 2. Leaping Minnow 10 × 50 Slightly more than 4° east of mag. +2.7 Hassaleh (Iota (ι) Aurigae), there is a little group of fifth-magnitude stars that includes 16, 17 and 19 Aurigae. Your 10x50 binoculars reveal that this group's arrangement is reminiscent of the bright stars in the constellation Delphinus…

As another bright aurora display appears, the internet becomes awash with vibrant images capturing the scene. Nowadays, we take for granted our ability to instantly record and share pictures of low-light phenomena. But if you're over a certain age, you'll remember a time when film photography was king. Photographing the night sky using film, or analogue photography as it was also called, took considerable skill and was fraught with pitfalls. Compared to digital astrophotography, it was expensive and cumbersome, but for those who put the work in, the results were pioneering and stunning. The first permanent photographic image was made by Joseph Niépce in 1826, an eighthour exposure of his window view, recorded on pewter coated with bitumen. Naming the process ‘heliography', Niépce set about improving the technique in collaboration…

Step 1 Using the template found in the Bonus Content on our website, mark out the design on the plywood. Drill the holes for each metal tube. Cut the inside of each ring with a coping saw or by ‘chain drilling' (to produce a continuous row of holes) and filing. Step 2 Use a coping saw to cut the outside of each ring. Take care cutting around the two lugs for the metal tubes. Before removing the template, make sure to mark the three insert positions on each outer circumference for the nylon bolts. Sand everything smooth. Step 3 Before using a hacksaw to cut two lengths of metal tube – one short (15mm) and one long (35mm) – drill 6mm holes about 7.5mm from one end of each tube…

This month, I continue with part two of creating a composite image featuring comet C/2017 K2 Pan-STARRS and the globular cluster M10. In part one, we stacked our subframes, creating two files – one aligned on the stars (the Stars file), the other aligned on C/2017 (the Comet file) – then began processing them in PixInsight. Now we'll finish processing and then combine our files. First, we'll perform a histogram stretch on both, before extracting the stars from our Stars file to create a ‘Stars Only' file minus the blurry comet. We'll then combine the two files. Let's start by stretching the Stars file – which currently includes a blurred comet (see Before, above). We previously performed a temporary automatic stretch with the Screen Transfer Function in PixInsight, but now…