Innehållsförteckning för No. 122 från All About Space

WELCOME Is the James Webb Space Telescope finally going to launch in 2021? According to NASA, and after completion of its final tests, the space agency is looking to release its revolutionary space telescope into space on 18 December 2021. It’s going to be a momentous occasion, and I can’t wait to see what’s been dubbed our premier deep-space observatory for the next decade finally make it into Earth orbit on board an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. As I write this, James Webb is currently getting ready to roll at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach in California. Gregory L. Robinson, who serves as Webb’s program director at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC, reflects on the journey from concept…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE PERSEVERANCE HAS TAKEN THE FIRST STEPS IN MARS SAMPLE RETURN Words by Meghan Bartels IN COOPERATION WITH SPACE.com Perseverance has begun its rock collection. The rover, designed to search for signs of ancient life on Mars and to package up material for a future sample-return mission, made its first two successful sampling manoeuvres on 6 and 8 September. NASA scientists describing the collection said they’re thrilled with what they know so far about the two rock cores. “This is a truly historic achievement; the very first rock cores collected on another terrestrial planet – it’s amazing,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, Mars sample return principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We’ve talked about Mars sample return for decades, and now it’s actually…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE OUR MILKY WAY GALAXY ISN’T VERY WELL MIXED Words by Meghan Bartels © UNIGE Our galaxy isn’t as thoroughly mixed as scientists assumed, according to a new study. The new research focuses on the distribution of what astronomers regard as metals, which is really just every element besides hydrogen and helium, even when these elements are gases. Scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile to map the metal in dust across the Milky Way in hopes of improving models describing the galaxy’s history. “Initially, when the Milky Way was formed more than 10 billion years ago, it had no metals,” Annalisa De Cia, an astronomer at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, said. “The stars gradually…

Future tech Bloostar BLOOSTAR Spanish company Zero 2 Infinity hopes to float its rockets past the thick lower atmosphere on balloons The most demanding part of an orbital launch is not reaching 28,000 kilometres (17,400 miles) per hour in space, but powering through the thick lower atmosphere; this uses a significant part of a rocket’s propellant load and puts stress on the craft. Around 80 per cent of Earth’s atmosphere is in the first 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) of altitude – the height jet airliners fly at – and aerodynamic drag, the force pushing back on the rocket as it flies, depends on the density of the air and the speed of the rocket. As their speed rapidly increases just after launch, rockets plough through the relatively thick air, experiencing…

THE MAIN ASTEROID BELT The inner Solar System is defined as the four terrestrial – or rocky – planets closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. These inner planets are ringed by the Solar System’s main asteroid belt. This torus-shaped band of solid, irregularly shaped bodies separates Mars from Jupiter. The total mass of the main asteroid belt is about four per cent the mass of the Moon. This mass is mostly locked up in the bodies Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea. Another notable occupant of the main asteroid belt is Kleopatra, a ‘dog bone’ shaped asteroid that is around 270 kilometres (168 miles) long and possesses two of its own moons. Apophis probably originates from the main asteroid belt, and like all the bodies there is likely…

Black holes BLACK HOLES HOW DO WE KNOW THEY’RE REAL? ONCE PURELY THEORETICAL, NOW THERE’S HARD EVIDENCE THESE HIGH-GRAVITY OBJECTS EXIST Reported by Andrew May © Tobias Roetsch Of all the far-out concepts in astronomy, black holes may be the weirdest. A region of space where matter is so tightly packed that nothing – not even light itself – can escape, these dark behemoths present a pretty terrifying prospect. With all the normal rules of physics breaking down inside them, it’s tempting to dismiss black holes as the stuff of science fiction. Yet there’s plenty of evidence – both direct and indirect – that they really do exist in the universe. EINSTEIN’S ‘ROBUST PREDICTION’ As a theoretical possibility, black holes were predicted in 1916 by Karl Schwarzschild, who found them…

LUCY’S TARGETS Lucy will have an ‘opportunistic trajectory’ – one dictated by celestial mechanics so that a single spacecraft can reach a record number of asteroids for observation. Once Lucy has visited all eight targets, it will continue to cycle between the two Trojan asteroid groups every six years. Lucy’s orbit will eventually become unstable, and it’s likely Jupiter’s gravity will cause the spacecraft to either be catapulted into the Sun or flung out of the Solar System. 52246 DONALDJOHANSON Estimated diameter: 3.8 kilometres (2.4 miles) A main-belt C-type asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter, scientists will test Lucy’s instruments on this target before heading to the Trojans. 3548 EURYBATES Estimated diameter: 68 kilometres (42 miles) Eurybates will be Lucy’s first Trojan target. The C-type asteroid is a giant remnant…

Speed of light TRAVELLING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME Space travel via a wormhole relies on the fact that, according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the three dimensions of space can. be distorted by concentrations of mass, creating curves on large scales. 1 LOCAL WORMHOLE To allow tor truly convenient interstellar travel, a wormhole would have to be located (or created) quite close to Earth. 2 DOWN THE FUNNEL The mouth of a wormhole forms a steep-sided ‘gravity well’, but there’s a safe entrance that avoids crossing the event horizon. 3 THROUGH THE GAP The passage through the wormhole is ‘open’, forming a broad cylindrical tunnel so that the crushing gravity of the central singularity can. be avoided. 4 NOT-SO-SHORTCUT? The trip through a wormhole might be shorter, but it’s…

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE Jupiter WHAT IS CAUSING JUPITER’S ENERGY CRISIS? The gas giant is much warmer than expected, despite being so far from the Sun. But are scientists closer to discovering why? Reported by David Crookes © NASA/ESA; Tobias Roetsch If you were hoping for a warm and inviting holiday on a planet in the Solar System, you’d generally look to avoid Jupiter. After all, it’s a long-haul journey at five times the distance from the Sun as Earth, some 778 million kilometres (484 million miles). It also takes 43 minutes for sunlight to travel there; not ideal if you’re hoping to lay on a sunlounger and soak up the rays, you would assume. And that’s what astronomers thought too. “Jupiter’s upper atmosphere should be about -110 degrees Celsius…

STARGAZER WHAT’S IN THE SKY? “DURING GREATEST ELONGATION,THE INNER PLANETS CAN BE OBSERVED AS EVENING STARS AT GREATEST EASTERN ELONGATIONS” RED-LIGHT FRIENDLY In order to preserve your night vision, you should read our observing guide under red light JARGON BUSTER Conjunction A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Right Ascension (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as the Earth rotates on its axis, we see…

Astroshots STARGAZER ASTROSHOTS OF THE MONTH Get featured in All About Space by sending your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com Jeff Johnson Location: Las Cruces, New Mexico Telescope: Takahashi TOA-130 refractor “I have a long lo of astronomy, which began when I was ten years old, and I have observed the night sky for many years with binoculars and a telescope. I did my first ‘real’ astrophotography in 1996, when I used a 35mm SLR camera to take photographs of Comet Hyakutake. I took a tripod out into the desert here in Las Cruces and just experimented with different exposures. Later I bought a 10” Dobsonian telescope for observing the night sky, and within a week I was taking pictures through the eyepiece for fun. Within a few more weeks, I…

STRANGE RADIO SIGNAL NEAR THE CENTRE OF THE MILKY WAY HAS SCIENTISTS STUMPED Words by Brandon Specktor © NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA Astronomers have detected a strange, repeating radio signal near the centre of the Milky Way, and it’s unlike any other energy signature ever studied. The energy source is extremely finicky, appearing bright in the radio spectrum for weeks at a time and then completely vanishing within a day. This behaviour doesn’t quite fit the profile of any known type of celestial body, according to researchers, and thus may represent “a new class of objects being discovered through radio imaging”. The radio source, known as ASKAP J173608.2-321635, was detected with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, situated in the remote Australian outback. In an ASKAP survey taken between April…

SUPER-PRECISE CLOCK TECH WINS PHYSICS BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE Words by Mike Wall Two physicists just snagged $3 million (£2.16 million) for developing a super-precise clock that could allow scientists to study and explore the universe like never before. Hidetoshi Yatori and Jun Ye won the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics “for outstanding contributions to the invention and development of the optical lattice clock, which enables precision tests of the fundamental laws of nature”. Yatori is based at the University of Tokyo and Japan’s Riken research institute, and Ye calls the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standard and Technology home. The duo worked independently and will share the award. Yatori and Ye’s research was key to the creation of the optical lattice clock, which improves timekeeping precision…

WHAT WILL WEBB DC? SPOT THE FIRST GALAXIES The ongoing expansion of the universe has redshifted the visible light emitted by the first galaxies into the infrared. The JWST has the instruments and mirror diameter required to see them. It can also use spectroscopy to check that they only contain the nonmetal elements hydrogen and helium. © NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope STUDY STAR AND PLANET FORMATION The formation of stars and planets generates a lot of heat, which is infrared radiation. As dusty discs of gas swirl around new stars, friction and collisions heat up the material as it coalesces into new planets. The JWST can watch this process in action and decipher the mysteries of exactly how it happens. ©ESO CHARACTERISE EXOPLANETS We need to know what planets are…

THE DOUBLE ASTEROID REDIRECTION TEST A NASA mission seeking to deflect deadly asteroids © Nicholas Forder ©NASA/JPL-Caltech 1 WHAT IS DART? The aim of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is to slam into an asteroid and assess the effect on that object. 2 FIRST IMPACT Testing the potential for planetary defence, DART will be the first time humanity has slammed an object in space with a kinetic impactor. 3 TARGET: DIDYMOS DART’s primary target will be the double asteroid Didymos, comprised of a 780-metre (2,550-foot) primary object and a 160-metre (525-foot) ‘moonlet.’ 4 WHY DIDYMOS? Didymos has been selected for the DART mission because of its similarity to the asteroids that tend to threaten an impact with Earth. 5 DART MISSION LAUNCH DART is all set to launch…

Titan’s atmosphere Focus on ‘MOON IN A JAR’ RECREATES THE HAZY ATMOSPHERE OF SATURN’S MOON TITAN The experiment has revealed previously unknown features of the satellite’s mineral make-up Reported by Nicoletta Lanese “THE TEMPERATURES AT WHICH THE COMPOUNDS MELTED OR CRYSTALLISED SHIFTED DRASTICALLY,” Titan is the second-largest moon in the Solar System and sports a dense atmosphere of mostly nitrogen, with a dash of methane. This yellowish haze hovers around -180 degrees Celsius (-290 degrees Fahrenheit). Below the atmosphere, lakes, seas and rivers of liquid methane and ethane cover Titan’s icy crust, particularly near the poles. And similar to liquid water on Earth, these natural gases take part in a cycle in which they evaporate, form clouds and then rain down on the moon’s surface. Titan’s dense atmosphere, surface liquid…

Rogue black holes Focus on ROGUE BLACK HOLES COULD BE WANDERING AT THE EDGES OF THE MILKY WAY New simulations show these behemoths might dwell far from galactic centres Reported by Ben Turner © Getty An enormous number of rogue supermassive black holes may be wandering around the universe. In fact, wandering giant black holes may account for a whopping ten per cent of the nearby universe’s black hole mass ‘budget’. This means that galaxies like our own could have an average of 12 invisible behemoths prowling around their outskirts, gobbling up anything that gets in their way. Because the number of black holes increases the more mass there is in the outer ‘halo’ of material that surrounds galaxies, clusters of galaxies, which have heavy halos, could have even more…

HOW TO BUILD A WORMHOLE Could we build our own warp gate through space-time? © Adrian Mann CREATE NEGATIVE ENERGY The vital first step towards building a working wormhole would be to understand how to manufacture a source of ‘negative energy’ on a large scale. Although various forms of negative energy exist, there’s no guarantee that a form suitable for building wormholes exists. FIND A NATURAL WORMHOLE Wormhole types depend on cosmology and particle physics. Non-traversable ones may link black holes, while microscopic ones may connect entangled quantum particles. An advanced detector would be needed to identify and ‘collect’ one end of a wormhole to use. MAKE IT TRAVERSABLE Adding negative energy would create an anti-gravitational force. In the case of a non-traversable black hole wormhole, this would draw the…

HEATING JUPITER’S UPPER ATMOSPHERE How aurorae are thought to be a major source of the gas giant’s heat © NASA/ESA 1 JUPITER’S MAGNETIC FIELD LINES Jupiter has a strong magnetic field. Electrically charged material ejected from Io’s eruptions is accelerated to the north and south poles of Jupiter. 2 SCORCHING AURORAE When the particles strike atoms and molecules in Jupiter’s atmosphere, energy and light are released. This sets off aurorae and causes intense heating over the polar regions. 3 CARRYING THE HEAT Global winds carry the heat towards the equator, warming the upper atmosphere as they do so and leading to a widespread heating of the planet. 4 THE RED HOTSPOT The Great Red Spot is a massive Jovian storm, and temperatures there are about 1,330 degrees Celsius (2,420 degrees…

Taurids HOW TO OBSERVE THE TAURIDS Known to be challenging to catch, All About Space reveals how to make the most of spotting this meteor shower Written by Stuart Atkinson and Daisy Dobrijevic © Alamy © NASA COMET 2P/ENCKE Radiant constellation: Taurus Peak activity: Southern Taurids on 10 October and Northern Taurids on 12 November Peak meteor count: approximately five per hour The Taurid meteor shower is a longlasting annual meteor shower that occurs every year from late October and through November and is visible in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The shower gets its name from the constellation Taurus, from which the meteors appear to radiate. Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through a stream of space dust left behind by a comet. In the Taurids’ case that…

STARGAZER THIS MONTH’S PLANETS As the Red Planet dips below the horizon, observers can turn their attention to Saturn, a breeze to find through October and November PLANET OF THE MONTH SATURN Constellation: Capricornus Magnitude: +0.5 AM/PM: PM Even though it’s not the brightest planet in the sky, and never rises particularly high, Saturn will be well placed for observation and very easy to find. It will be a very easy naked-eye object this month, brighter than many of the stars in the sky. But its position in the zodiacal constellation of Capricornus means it will never reach a very high elevation, and might be hidden by tall buildings, trees or hills that are on your southern horizon. All through the month – and for some time to come –…

STARGAZER Deep sky challenge EXPLORE PERSEUS AND CASSIOPEIA A ghostly nebula and a rose-shaped star cluster are among your observing challenges this month Source: Wikipedia Commons ©Remidone We’ve got some real observing challenges for our readers this month, with faint gems hidden among the bright, familiar stars of the much-loved constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. However, with the sky staying bright until the late evening at this time of year, you’ll need to stay up late or get up early to see them. NGC 7789 is a loose cluster popularly known as ‘Caroline’s Rose’. Discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783, its many loops of stars and the dark gaps between them give it – some observers claim – a strong resemblance to a white rose. See what you think when you have…

Nikon Z6 camera STARGAZER REVIEW NIKON Z6 CAMERA The Nikon Z6 is part of Nikon’s mirrorless suite of cameras, and when you combine price with performance, it’s a real star in the night-sky photography world Reviewed by Andy Hartup If you’re looking for a highly capable mirrorless camera for astrophotography, few models are better than the Z6. But the Z6 – which only launched in 2018 – has already been superseded by the Z6ii, so why are we testing and recommending the original model? It comes down to price and usage. For us, the original represents better value than the Z6ii, unless you’re using it for video and high-intensity shoots, like weddings. We love the Z6 for a number of reasons: it has a superb backlit sensor, perfect for low-light image…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona 20 AUGUST 2021 Searching for Martian avalanches The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this striking image of layered deposits of dusty water-ice in the northern polar region of Mars, known as the north polar layered deposits (NPLD). The layering is mainly caused by differing dust-to-ice ratios at the time of formation, and can give an insight into the Martian climate over time. Avalanches have also been observed at the edges of NPLDs, so these sites are carefully monitored, particularly in the spring, to determine the potential frequency and timing of ‘avalanche season’ on Mars. © ESA/Hubble&NASA 30 AUGUST 2021 Flaming sword Here a striking blue ‘sword’ appears to pierce a cosmic ‘heart’ made of gas and dust. The ‘sword’…

ISS ASTRONAUTS WILL SOON RESURRECT AN AI ROBOT FRIEND CALLED CIMON Words by Tereza Pultarova An Al-powered robot with a digital face is ready for a new mission on the International Space Station (ISS). The robot, called CIMON-2, short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion, worked alongside two European astronauts on past missions to the station in recent years, and just got a software upgrade that will enable it to perform more complex tasks with a new human crewmate later this year. The floating sphere with a cartoon-like face has been stored at the space station since the departure of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano in February 2020. The robot will wake up again during the upcoming mission of German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will arrive at the…

SPACEX NAMES TWO NEW RECOVERY SHIPS AFTER NASA ASTRONAUTS Words by Amy Thompson IN COOPERATION WITH SPACE.com The two newest members of SpaceX’s recovery fleet sailed into Port Canaveral in September. The ships are named after Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the two NASA astronauts who were the first to fly inside a Crew Dragon. Their mission, known as Demo-2, was the final test flight of SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Program, which blasted off from Kennedy Space Center on 30 May 2020. Its success cleared the way for routine astronaut flights to and from the ISS. SpaceX has a fleet of recovery ships, each with its own purpose – from catching first-stage boosters to retrieving falling fairings. ‘Bob’ and ‘Doug’ will be a bit of both. The two multipurpose recovery ships…

Apophis WILL AN ASTEROID HIT EARTH IN 2029? THOUGH IT WON’T HIT OUR PLANET FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER CENTURY, APOPHIS’ SCIENTIFIC IMPACT IS TREMENDOUS Reported by Robert Lea © Getty On Friday 13 April 2029, Earth will experience a dramatic close encounter with 99942 Apophis, with the 335-metre (1,100-foot) asteroid passing within 31,000 kilometres (19,000 miles) of our home planet, bringing it closer than most geostationary satellites. Thanks to Apophis’ tremendous size, this close passage will be so bright that around 2 billion people will be able to witness it with the naked eye. First becoming visible in the Southern Hemisphere, the asteroid will resemble a speck of light as it streaks from east to west, initially passing over Australia, traversing the Indian Ocean and eventually crossing the equator over…

New stellar explosion Focus on NEW KIND OF STELLAR EXPLOSION SPOTTED? Astronomers have uncovered evidence of explosions triggered by dead stars ramming into live ones Reported by Charles Q. Choi “AS THE NEUTRON STAR OR BLACK HOLE SPIRALS IN, IT’S EXPECTED TO UNBIND A LOT OF THE STAR’S ATMOSPHERE AND EJECT IT OUT” DILLON DONG © Getty Supernovae are gigantic stellar explosions that can occur when stars die. These outbursts can briefly outshine all of the other suns in these dying stars’ galaxies, making them visible from halfway across the cosmos. For decades, researchers have known of two main supernova types. Large stars – more than ten times the Sun’s mass – collapse in their centres when their cores burn all their fuel, causing the outer layers to explode and…

MISSION PROFILE LUCY NASA’s Lucy mission will soon head to the Trojan asteroids in search of cosmic fossils Mission type Multiple flyby Operator NASA Launch date 16 October 2021 Target Trojan asteroids Arrival at target 2027 Primary objective To explore one mainbelt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids Status In progress © NASA Harold ‘Hal’ Levison Lucy principal investigator The Lucy mission is led by principal investigator Harold ‘Hal’ Levison from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He specialises in the formation and long-term behaviour of Solar System bodies, including comets, Kuiper belt objects and the Trojan asteroids. Lucy is a NASA probe scheduled to launch on 16 October 2021. It will be the first-ever mission to explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter known as the Trojan asteroids. These…

Speed of light THE SPEED OF LIGHT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS THE SPEED LIMIT OF THE UNIVERSE… OR IS IT? Reported by Vicky Stein and Daisy Dobrijevic EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT... © Alamy; Getty Light travelling through a vacuum moves at 299,792,458 metres (983,571,056 feet) per second – a universal constant known in equations as ‘c’, or the speed of light. According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, nothing in the universe can travel faster than light. The theory states that as matter approaches the speed of light, that matter’s mass becomes infinite. That means the speed of light functions as a speed limit on the whole universe. The speed of light is so immutable that it’s used to define international standard measurements like the metre. Through…

FOUR THINGS THAT BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT OF THE UNIVERSE Einstein predicted that nothing with mass could move faster than light, but there are objects disobeying the laws of physics © NRAO SUPERLUMINAL MOTION Black holes spit out high-speed jets of particles that appear to travel faster than light. This ‘superluminal’ motion is an optical illusion that occurs when jets moving close to light speed are pointing roughly in our direction. Because the radiation emitted at points along the jet’s path isn’t moving much faster than the jet itself, the light is compressed – light emitted at different points over the course of a century reaches Earth in just a few years, creating the impression of faster-than-light motion. © Youtube ENTANGLEMENT In quantum physics, particles with entangled properties remain connected…

Focus on Sun WHAT DID OUR SUN LOOK LIKE IN ITS INFANCY? New findings may shed light on what our star looked like in its youth Reported by Charles Q. Choi © Getty Newborn stars are surrounded by a disc of gas and dust from which planets, asteroids, comets and moons are born. The star’s magnetic field connects the star with this protoplanetary disc, “funnelling material from the disc onto the star,” said Catherine Espaillat, an astrophysicist at Boston University. In a recent study, Espaillat and her colleagues investigated the spot where a star’s magnetic field deposits protoplanetary disc material onto a star. “This footprint is called the ‘hotspot’ since the material is very hot when it slams onto the surface of the star,” she explained. They focused on GM Aurigae,…

THREE POTENTIAL EXPLANATIONS What’s making Jupiter hotter than expected? THE SUN’S RAYS ARE INCREDIBLY INTENSE This explanation can be immediately dismissed. The Sun’s rays alone should cause the upper atmosphere of Jupiter to be about -110 degrees Celsius (-166 degrees Fahrenheit), so the fact that it’s much hotter than that based on simulations points to another heat source – the whole point of the ongoing studies. © NASA ACTIVE STORMS CAUSE WARMING WAVES The temperature over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is about 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) and it’s entirely possible that active storms are heating the planet’s atmosphere. Turbulence above this area could be creating sound waves that heat the air. This warming effect is likely to be localised, however. © NASA/JPL AURORAE GIVE A THERMAL BOOST The…

UPCOMING METEOR SHOWERS LEONID METEOR SHOWER Active: 6 to 30 November Peak: 17 November Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): 15 ALPHA MONOCEROTID METEOR SHOWER Active: 15 to 25 November Peak: 21 November Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): Variable NOVEMBER ORIONID METEOR SHOWER Active: 13 November to 6 December Peak: 28 November Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): 3 PHEONICID METEOR SHOWER Active: 28 November to 9 December Peak: 2 December Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): Variable PHI CASSIOPEID METEOR SHOWER Active: 1 to 8 December Peak: 6 December Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): Variable PUPPID-VELID METEOR SHOWER Active: 1 to 15 December Peak: 7 December Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): 10 MONOCEROTID METEOR SHOWER Active: 5 to 20 December Peak: 8 December Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR): 2 SIGMA HYDRID METEOR SHOWER Active: 3 to 15 December Peak:…

The Northern Hemisphere STARGAZER THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE Autumn is here, and with the darkened skies some astronomical favourites are brought into view Circumpolar Cassiopeia (the Queen) and Cepheus (the King) lie in the dusty path of the Milky Way, offering not just a rich star field, but impressive deep-sky objects. The Owl Cluster (NGC 457) is easy to pick out with decent binoculars, its 75 to 100 bright stars forming the shape of an owl with spread wings, while bright double star Phi Cassiopeiae forms the eyes. Double star Alpha Cassiopeiae can easily be split into a stellar pair, resolving a bright, yellow primary and faint, blue secondary. Use the constellations of Pegasus, Aquarius and Pisces and you’ll be able to locate Cetus (the Sea Monster), which contains the remarkable…