Innehållsförteckning för August 2022 från BBC Sky at Night

Visit www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content/RNFNUS4/ to access this month’s selection of exclusive Bonus Content AUGUST HIGHLIGHTS The Astronomer Royal at 80 In this special episode of The Sky at Night, Lord Martin Rees looks back on his illustrious career in astronomy. Online interview: Solar System in X-ray Astrophysicist William Dunn reveals how X-ray observations can uncover the secrets of the outer planets and their moons. Download astronomy observing forms Access and print out our report forms to help you keep track of your planetary and solar observing sessions. The Virtual Planetarium Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel guide us through the best sights to see in the night sky this month.…

On the July episode of The Sky at Night, Marina Hui takes the reigns as director for the first time, transforming the show into ‘The Sky at Day’ Within the world of television, The Sky at Night’s audience is particularly special. When I joined the team as the assistant producer this year, I had never worked on a series where the viewers were so passionate, engaged and grateful for the programme that was created. I quickly discovered that the show was an old friend to many and I wanted to treat the audience in kind. As such, I aimed to fill the programme with what our audience wants – the night sky. However, therein lay a problem. Aligning the celestial calendar, our production schedule and the weather created an ‘all of…

Email us at inbox@skyatnightmagazine.com Helpful hints Thank you very much for hosting the interesting webinar with Steve Richards last evening (Telescopes Masterclass: ‘Increase Your Observing Productivity with a Home Observatory’, Thursday 26 May). I learned a lot and there are many ideas I want to follow up on. I appreciate Steve kindly pointing me towards the chapter in his book, Making Every Photon Count, about drift alignment. I own the book and I intend to try this technique out. I also want to get my head around plate solving. I feel I might get better value from my William Optics 71 and EQM35 mount if I can master them. Polar alignment has never been good enough with the lights of Dudley and Wolverhampton just up the road. I am also…

Live Watch the Perseids Lighthouse Road, Swanage, Dorset, 12 and 13 August, 9pm Join Wessex Astronomical Society at its observatory in Durlston Country Park for an evening meteor-spotting as the Perseids peak, as well as spying Saturn and the summer constellations. wessex-astro.org.uk Live Shadows in Space and the Stories they Tell Methodist Church Hall, Earlsdon, Coventry, 12 August, 7:15pm Coventry and Warwickshire Astronomical Society hosts a speaker on the second Friday of every month. This month, outreach astronomer and astrophotography expert Mary McIntyre discusses shadows: what can we learn about other worlds and their moons just by studying the shadows there? www.covastro.org.uk Live The Asteroid Belt Summercourt New Memorial Hall, Cornwall, 18 August, 7:30pm All visitors and potential new members are welcome to Kernow Astronomers’ talks on the third Thursday…

One thing’s for sure: the number of known exoplanets is about to dramatically increase. Not only is TESS continuing to scan the skies for a third year – and potentially more beyond that – there are several other missions gearing up to add to the roster as well. The European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope has been monitoring the positions of over a billion stars for several years. Though not its primary goal, these observations could detect upwards of 20,000 planets from the slight wobble caused by their gravitational pull on their star. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is currently being developed by NASA for a launch in 2027. This will use a technique known as microlensing, whereby the telescope looks for starlight being bent by the gravity of unseen…

PICK OF THE MONTH Saturn Best time to see: 14 August, 00:00 UT Altitude: 22° (low) Location: Capricornus Direction: South Features: Rings, banded atmosphere, weather systems Recommended equipment: 75mm or larger Saturn reaches opposition on 14 August, a time so-named because the planet is in the opposite part of the sky to the Sun. A view of Saturn in the week running up to opposition will show the rings getting brighter. In the week after opposition, the rings slowly appear to revert back to their normal brightness. This is due to what’s known as the opposition effect, a phenomenon caused by the shadows of the ring particles being reduced to a minimum as seen from Earth at opposition. As has been the case for several years now, it’s Saturn’s north…

Asteroid 4 Vesta has the potential to appear the brightest of the minor planets, reaching a respectable mag. +5.1 when it’s at a favourable opposition, easily visible to the naked eye from a dark-sky location. Vesta reaches opposition on 23 August and although not quite as bright as it can get, it will be on the threshold of naked-eye visibility from a dark sky site at mag. +6.0. Vesta is currently located in southwest Aquarius, east of Saturn and triangular-shaped Capricornus, tracking in a southwest arc above NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula. One of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth, the Helix appears large with a very low surface brightness. Its inner ring is 8x19 arcminutes in size, extending out to appear almost 25 arcminutes across. Vesta begins the month…

The Moon appears to move by an average of 13.2° against the background stars every day, a consequence of its orbital movement around the Earth-Moon centre of gravity or barycentre. This movement changes the Sun-Moon-Earth angle and consequently the position of the terminator on the lunar globe. Over the course of a synodic month (29.53 days) the morning or evening terminator will have moved completely around the globe. This month’s challenge is to see and record a hint of that movement. This would be hard to witness in a widefield view of the Moon which shows you the whole disc, but it’s much easier to see using a magnified view. The Moon presents the best shadows near the terminator, the line dividing lunar day from night. Here the shadows are…

There’s genuinely not a lot I’d change if I could do my mission to Antarctica again. The science I went there to do went as well as I hoped it would and I made it back without losing any body parts to frostbite. The only real regret I have is that I didn’t pack a pair of jeans; somehow this most inane of oversights managed to cause me a not-insignificant amount of frustration that only grew as the weeks ticked on by. I began my jeans-less journey in Great Malvern, Worcestershire on 17 November 2021. Four trains, five planes, two quarantines and 31 days later I arrived at Concordia Station on Dome C in Antarctica, where I would be working for the next seven weeks as part of the Antarctic…

The fundamentals of astronomy for beginners This August marks 10 years since Curiosity, one of the most advanced planetary rovers ever launched, landed on Mars. For a decade the car-sized wheeled robot has been studying the climate and geology of Mars in preparation for human exploration and helping to answer questions about Mars’s past suitability for life. But its launch was repeatedly pushed back as NASA faced many delays. Finally, on 26 November 2011, the mission clock began as an Atlas V launched the rover from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The selection of Curiosity’s destination on Mars had begun in June 2006, when an international group started to whittle down 100 potential landing sites to just one. By June 2011 the 154km-diameter Gale Crater had finally been chosen for…

Melissa Brobby interviews Professor Geoffrey Brooks You are looking at the recycling of man-made materials left behind on the lunar surface. What led you to focus your research on this area? The idea of having a habitat on the Moon was for a long time one for the distant future, but a few years ago it became apparent that the idea had become more of a serious one. At the same time, space companies such as SpaceX are trying to bring down the cost of launching things into space. However, once you’ve got the costs down, and once you can think about putting a habitat on the Moon, you then have the same issues that we have on Earth: how do you make stuff? How do you use it? How…

MULTIPLE SOURCES, 16 JUNE 2022 This composite image contains data from ESA’s Herschel and Planck telescopes, plus NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) and Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). From Earth, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands and the 30-metre IRAM (Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range) telescope in Spain also contributed. The need to blend the data comes from the fact that Herschel was only sensitive to far-infrared light and microwave radiation, meaning it missed around 30 per cent of the light given off by Andromeda’s dust. Combining Herschel’s data with that from other observatories gives a more complete picture of the light emitted by the galaxy. Red in the image indicates hydrogen gas, green is cold dust, while blue…

Baby neutron star Astronomers may have found the youngest known example of a neutron star. Located in a dwarf galaxy 395 million lightyears away, it does not appear in images taken in 1998, but is in observations taken from 2018 onward, suggesting it appeared in the interim. Dying stars forge complex carbon Dying stars could forge tiny cylinders made of carbon atoms, known as nanotubes, which were discovered in the interstellar medium decades ago. Researchers in a lab subjected silicon carbide (which is commonly found around dead stars) to conditions found around stars in their final stages of life and found that it formed the rod-like structures. Fire at Kitt Peak A wildfire passed by the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona in late June, destroying four support buildings, though…

I thought you may be interested in this image I took of the Strawberry full Moon on 14 June at 11.20pm, when it was at 99.6% illumination and just 4.33° in altitude. It was created from a 30-second 4K video clip and processed in PIPP, AutoStakkert!, Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen, plus a final edit in Photoshop. Since Covid I have moved away from my usual hobby of field mycology (the study of fungi) and wildlife photography and taken up astronomy, a subject that has always fascinated me. I have been helped considerably by members of the Mexborough and Swinton Astronomy Society who have taken me under their wing and taught me so much. I can certainly recommend people new to astronomy to search out their local society. Now I photograph…

LIVE Horizons: A 21st-Century Space Odyssey Professor Brian Cox tours the UK with his epic big-visuals show, 1 August -2 October An awe-inspiring cinematic exploration of the Universe, combined with physicist Brian Cox’s trademark impassioned style and in-depth knowledge promises to make this an unmissable show. Horizons visits alien worlds, supermassive black holes and travels back to the time before the Big Bang, tackling all the big questions along the way. This home leg of his global arena tour sees events at the Royal Opera House and a one-off at the O2, followed by stops all across the UK. Cox is joined by his co-host on The Infinite Monkey Cage, award-winning comedian Robin Ince. Tickets from £10. briancoxlive.co.uk…

The China National Space Agency (CNSA) has become a major space player over the last decade. This year, the nation hopes to take its next leap towards the heavens and complete its first long-term space station, Tiangong, which translates as ‘heavenly place’. A crew of three ‘taikonauts’ are already on board the Tianhe core module, which launched last year. They will oversee the installation of the final two science modules, the first of which, Wentian, is due to launch on 23 July. The goal of the station is to give CNSA the know-how to send crews to live in space, and Tiangong is a key component of China’s ambitions to send humans to the Moon and on to Mars. China has constructed its own station as US law prohibits NASA…

Sadr (Gamma (γ) Cygni) is really easy to identify as it sits at the heart of the large summer asterism known as the Northern Cross, the core portion of Cygnus, the Swan. The name is pronounced ‘sadder’ and means ‘chest’, a reference to where it sits within the Swan. Despite the gamma label, at mag. +2.2, Sadr is the second-brightest star in Cygnus after mag. +1.3 Deneb (Alpha (α) Cygni). Sadr is a popular target for summer observing as it sits within a bright portion of the Milky Way, on the edge of a dark region known as the Cygnus Rift, where the Milky Way appears to split in two. The apparent split is caused by a dark dust cloud between us and the myriad stars in the disc of…

1 M71 Sagitta, the Arrow does look like an arrow with an isosceles triangle forming the flight and the shaft represented by the line from Delta (δ) to Gamma (γ). Globular cluster Messier 71 sits south of the mid-point. M71 is an eighth-magnitude object. At powers of 200x, a 150mm instrument resolves some of M71’s stars, a trend which increases with aperture. Curiously it looks more like an open cluster and was originally considered to be one. It lacks the core concentration of a globular and its stars have more elements heavier than helium than a typical globular. It also lacks the RR Lyrae-class variable stars normally found in ancient globulars. □ SEEN IT 2 NGC 6886 Our next target is the tiny and relatively dim planetary nebula NGC 6886.…

ASTEP was originally conceived as a survey in its own right, intended as a ground-based successor to the French satellite CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits), but nowadays our time is mostly dedicated to TESS follow-up. TESS is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a space telescope searching the sky for exoplanet candidates. Unlike Kepler, which stared continuously at the same patch of sky, TESS covers the whole sky in 26 sections. Its observations are sent to the ground where they’re made into light curves to identify potential candidates. So where does ASTEP come into this? Well, TESS can’t distinguish between true planets and false positives, so a global network of observatories on the ground reobserves TESS’s candidates and either validates them or rules them out. ASTEP’s unique location close to…

Expert processing tips to enhance your astrophotos Ever since I first became interested in astronomy, I have been fascinated by the iconic images of Earth rising above the lunar horizon from the Apollo missions. When I realised that the Moon’s occultation of Venus, visible on 19 June 2020, would give me the opportunity to capture a similar image for myself, it immediately became one of my astrophotography aims of that year. I decided to capture the event with a very narrow field of view in order to enhance the ‘crescent over lunar horizon’ feeling and I also wanted to capture the event in colour to record the daylight blue sky. To achieve this, I used my Celestron C11 equipped with a colour planetary camera at prime focus. In order to…

Our experts review the latest kit The Altair Wave Series 130EDT-F has been updated for 2022, with upgrades that will be popular with both observers and astrophotographers. Large refractors like this 130mm triplet always have a special air about them, they look like a proper telescope, as it were, and the 130EDT-F is certainly impressive, while the quality and build are exceptional. The tube rings, for example, come complete with carrying handle and are finished in red anodising. They are meticulously machined with bevelled edges and give an indication of the attention to detail that has been lavished on the fit and finish of this telescope. Another upgrade is to the dovetail bar, which now has a Losmandy-style profile. We found this helped with balancing the 130EDT-F, something which can…

Countdown to Webb’s first images After numerous hitches, the 6.5m telescope is finally ready to observe After six months of travelling, unfolding, calibrating and double checking, the James Webb Space Telescope is now fully operational and ready to begin exploring the infrared Universe. By the time you’re reading this, the first science images should have already been released to the public, a first glimpse at what promises to be a deluge of discovery. If all goes to plan, the telescope will release its first ‘teaser suite’ of images on 12 July to demonstrate its capabilities before entering its full science phase. “As we near the end of preparing the observatory for science, we are on the precipice of an incredibly exciting period of discovery about our Universe, ” says Eric…

How to hide from radiation on Mars Could Martian ‘hobbit holes’ protect future colonists from deadly radiation? Crewed missions into deep space will face a variety of different hazards. During the interplanetary transit on a mission to Mars, for example, the astronauts will spend around nine months in weightlessness. Without the constant loading of gravity, the body’s muscles waste away and the heart weakens as it no longer has to pump blood ‘uphill’. The skeleton also becomes more fragile and long-duration astronauts can face osteoporosis, and the calcium leaching out of their bones can cause kidney stones. There’s also the ever-present risk of equipment failure – problems with life support systems could spell doom for a mission. On top of all this is the danger presented by cosmic rays. Outer…

The James Webb Roadtrip It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the James Webb Space Telescope finally unveiling its first observations. Chris and Maggie meet the team getting their hands on JWST data and explore the tantalising subjects it will focus on in its first year, from dying stars to exoplanets. Take a front row seat as scientists race to untangle the mysteries of our Universe. BBC Four, 15 August, 10pm (first repeat BBC Four, 18 August, time tbc) Check www.bbc.co.uk/skyatnight for more up-to-date information…

Drive me to the Moon Artist Oliver Jeffers on creating the Our Place In Space sculpture trail Oliver Jeffers is an Australian-born, Northern Irish visual artist who lives in New York. A sculptor, illustrator and writer acclaimed for his children’s books, he has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and received an MBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List for services to art Assuming the average speed that people drive is 60km/h, how long would it take to get to the Moon? The answer is about a year, if you took breaks. To get to Mars it would be 400 years, to Saturn 2,500 years; to get to Pluto it would take nearly 10,000 years. Scale and perspective are things I’ve been interested in with my work and many…

Gas giant: Planets similar to Jupiter or Saturn, though some are many times larger. Their size means they are some of the easiest to detect. Super-Earth: Ranging in size from Earth to Neptune, these planets could be rocky like Earth, or shrouded in puffy atmospheres. Despite being numerous elsewhere, they are absent from our own Solar System. Neptune-like: These worlds are similar to the ice giants Neptune and Uranus. Though there have been some examples of ‘warm Neptunes’ found in orbits closer to their star than the ice giants are to the Sun, they are rarer. Terrestrial: Rocky planets similar to our own home planet. Among the smallest planets known, current methods struggle to detect these worlds. METHOD USED • Radial velocity 913 • Transit 3,846 • Imaging 58 •…

DON’T MISS Mercury and Regulus – a daytime target BEST TIME TO SEE: 3 and 4 August around 14:30 BST (13:30 UT) Although nights are slowly getting longer, there’s an awful lot of day to contend with too. An interesting opportunity occurs at the start of August, when Mercury appears close to the brightest star in Leo the Lion, Regulus. This will be nigh on impossible to see after sunset due to low altitude, so other arrangements need to be made. Mercury will shine at mag. -0.4 on 3 August and -0.3 on 4 August, bright enough for the planet to be seen in daylight, as long as you know where to look. Regulus shines at mag. +1.3 but, being a point source of light, can also be seen during…

Reiner Gamma is an enigmatic albedo feature visible in the Oceanus Procellarum. It’s classed as a lunar swirl: a high albedo, youthful feature which typically has a curving or sinuous shape. Lunar features divide into two categories, relief and albedo. Relief features have height, and examples include mountains, hills and crater rims, but the height doesn’t need to be upward: deep crater floors, valleys and rilles also count as relief features. The chief characteristic of a relief feature is that it will cast shadows when lighting is oblique. At times when the lighting is directly from above, such features may virtually disappear from view. Albedo features are visible due to the reflective characteristics of the material which forms them. The most obvious albedo features visible from Earth are the lunar…

1. Kemble’s Kite 15x70 Take a line from mag. +3.4 Segin (Epsilon (ε) Cassiopeiae) through mag. +4.6 Iota (i) Cassiopeiae and extend it another 7° to mag. +6.4 V805 Cassiopeiae, which will look a deep yellow in your binoculars. It is the brightest of a 1.5°-long asterism of 10 stars of mag. +8.5 and brighter in the form of a diamond kite. The Kite has an easily splittable double star at its northern tip and a tail flowing southwards towards Perseus. □ SEEN IT 2. The Queen’s Kite 10x50 Our next target is even easier. Locate mag. +4.7 Chi (χ) Cassiopeiae which is the brightest of a pentagon of stars that surrounds a mag. +7.3 star 0.75° to the southeast. The tail extends southward for more than 2° from the…

We all know the joke about how you know someone’s vegan because they tell you, but the vegan food on base was genuinely comical. I did worry how a French-Italian station would handle feeding me, and while there were a few rather delicious hits, the misses were considerably more spectacular, the most astounding being my Christmas dinner: sliced orange, mountains of eggless mayonnaise, capers, green beans, diced tomatoes and… chips. But I did Britain proud (I think) by introducing the base to chip butties. I’m sorry to report they were met mostly with disgust. Not one to be put off by widespread disapproval, I made ‘some form of potato sandwich’ my default meal after a while. I was often saddened by the lack of vegan desserts, so I took matters…

NGC 6188, The Dragons of Ara Shaun Robertson, Melbourne, Australia, 10, 25, 26 and 29 April 2022 Shaun says: “This has been my favourite target since I started this hobby two years ago. The strong emission across each filter and the great separation of channels makes it the perfect image to work and experiment with. This was my second attempt at it, with much cleaner data and some more experience in processing than I had last year.” Equipment: ZWO ASI1600GT camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor, Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount Exposure: Ha, Sil and Olli 180x 300” each, 15h total Software: Pixlnsight, Photoshop Shaun’s top tips: “Take your time. First, in framing your target: some nebulae have beautiful star clusters nearby, for example, so moving your target off-centre to include those…

Our experts review the latest kit With the growing interest in CMOS imaging cameras, we take a look at Explore Scientific’s latest entry-level offering. The 4K Planetary & Deep Sky Astro Camera is a passively cooled CMOS camera that comes fitted with the new Sony IMX485 Exmor CMOS colour sensor. Once out of the box, we were pleased to find that the camera has an entirely aluminium body with no plastic in sight. Included in the package is a 1.25-inch nosepiece, a 1.5m USB3 cable, a 1.5m ST4 cable, a snug-fitting rubber dust cap and a software CD. For those that don’t have a PC with a built-in CD drive, all the latest software, drivers and instruction manuals are also available to download from Telescope House’s website. This software, called…