Podcaster: Ralph & Paul
Title : Awesome Astronomy’s June Sky Guide
Organization: Awesome Astronomy
Link : www.awesomeastronomy.com
Description: What to look out, and up, for in June.
This month we take a look at the constellation of Lyra the harp for the beginners guide – we have one of amateur astronomy’s favourite nebulas, M57 the Ring Nebula, hanging between the stars Sheliak & Sulafat like a suspended smoke ring and the Double Double stars – Epsilon Lyrae.
Next we round up the planets that are visible in May: Mercury (early in the month), Venus, Jupiter & Saturn later on. We take a look at Comet Lovejoy as it’s still visible in small telescopes, and the Lyrids in the low eastern morning sky. For our deep sky challenge we take you on a tour of Hercules’ magnificent globular clusters and a couple of overlooked galaxies.
For those in the Southern Hemisphere, 365 Days of Astronomy also play Alice Enevoldsen’s What’s Up Tonight, Southern Skies Edition each month.
Bio: Awesome Astronomy is the show for anyone and everyone who has even the slightest interest in astronomy and science.
Join Ralph & Paul twice each month, for informative and fun astronomy programs telling you what to look out (and up) for every month. You can be guaranteed a passion for astronomy, simple explanations of complex and fundamental topics, space and science news, absorbing interviews with astronomers who make the news and listeners’ astronomy questions answered
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Transcript:
Paul: June and for the more northerly this is usually a time to have a break from the night sky, cover the telescope with a dust sheet and leaf longingly through your astronomy books in order to dream of darker skies in the months ahead. But for those who don’t mind a late night there is still plenty to see and the southern sky from midnight is one full of exciting and for those at high latitudes rarely seen deep sky treats, added to this we have good views of saturn and an approaching planetary conjunction. All of which means you should keep that dust sheet in the draw and plan a few nights observing, and in any case won’t it be nice to observe without a woolly hat and thermals for a change? To get us started though let’s see what Ralph has in store with his beginner’s guide, Ralph?
Ralph: Yes, it’s that time of the year when even those of you who enjoy dark skies get to see what it’s like for us city dwellers who have brighter skies to contend with, but it does get plenty dark enough to see the object in Lyra that feature in our beginners’ guide this month.
Lyra’s a small constellation over in the east at dusk but gets nice and high by midnight , letting you explore some very nice objects that’ll hang around until early Autumn.
So, to find Lyra, look for a bright star not far above the horizon in the south east – this should be Altair in the constellation Aquilla the Eagle. A bit more than an outstretched hand’s width to the left and slightly higher in the sky is Deneb in Cygnus the Swan. And about halfway between the two, and higher yet, is the brightest of the three: Vega
Vega is the brightest star in Lyra and acts as our signpost to two unique sights for amatuer telescopes in the form of a beautiful nebula resembling a smoke-ring and a double star that, if you crank up the magnification, splits into two more almost identical stars.
So, starting with the floating smoke-ring: hanging down in a line from Vega is two much fainter stars, zeta and delta Lyrae – which you may struggle to see in big city skies – but they’ll be obvious enough in towns and the countryside. And then the two stars Sheliak and Sulafat make up the the familiar parallelogram shape of the harp sitting just below and to the right of zeta and delta.
Apart from being huge distant stars, both more that twice the temperature of our sun, halfway between Sheliak and Sulafat sits M57, the Ring Nebula. This is one of the most beautiful planetary nebulas in the whole sky. With binoculars it will look like a fuzzy star but a small scope with increased magnification will show that delicate smoke ring. Larger scopes will show it as two overlapping rings with a very faint magnitude 15 star in the middle. This is the white dwarf remnant of the star that died more than a thousand years ago, coughing away its atmosphere to create this nebula for us all now.
Then when you’re ready to move on, hold your hand out and look about one finger’s width to the left of Vega – in a kind of 8 o’clock position. If you put a small scope there with very low magnification to start with, you’ll see a magnitude 6 star, which sits 162 light years away. If you use too much magnification to start with, you’ll already see it as a binary star.
But if you start with say, a 40mm eyepiece, and increase the magnification you’ll acheive your first split, turning this this star into two similar looking stars. Increase the magnification further and both stars will split again – hence the Double Double. If you do this with a zoom eyepiece it really does give it an animated feel. One of the few occasions where a zoom eyepiece is always preferable to good quality fixed focal length eyepieces.
Anyway, that’s my beginner’s guide for June, so back to you Paul
Paul: Thank you Ralph. Now let’s have a look at what our Solar system has on offer this month.
First of all let’s mention the Sun as June is the month of the Summer solstice. That occurs on the 21st June at 16.38 UTC when the Sun will be directly above the tropic of Cancer and sits at the highest point in the sky for Sun starved northerners. This is a great time to get out and do some solar viewing, but remember to use proper filters or specialist telescopes and take advice if you are unsure. In white light filters take in the detail of sun spots, the black umbra and the lighter surrounding penumbra with their streaks of magnetic field lines, or in scopes such as hydrogen alpha watch the development of prominences around the limb and filaments across the face. Approach the sun with healthy caution and if unsure don’t.
We have some good planetary views this month and following opposition at the end of May Saturn is worth staying up for. As we have said many times the ringworld is staying low in the sky for many years and the sorts of spectacular views we have had with Jupiter recently are a long way off. But the presentation angle of the rings this apparition is stunning, with the outer ring visible all the way around the planet. Look out for the brighter moons such as titan, Iapetus, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. Larger scopes might be able to see Enceladus.
The evening sky continues to be dominated by two planets, Venus and Jupiter. These will be moving ever closer to each other in the sky and by the end of the month will be in an ever closer conjunction. They will be due west after sunset and on the nights of the 18th-19th and 20th look out for the young crescent moon joining them for what will be one of the summer’s spectacular views. At their closest Venus and Jupiter will be 21 arc minutes apart on the 30th so well within a single view of your eyepiece.
As well as gate crashing Jupiter and Venus, the Moon this month will also have two nice encounters with Saturn, on the 1st and 28th. The moon starts the month full, and is at it’s brightest on the 2nd, last quarter is on the 9th with new moon on the 16th and first quarter on the 24th.
The ever fading Comet Lovejoy is still in the sky and passing through Ursa Minor this month, If you have a larger telescope it is certainly worth a last look at this highlight of the past astronomy season as Lovejoy will not be back this way for over 13,000 years.
In Virgo we have Comet 22p Kopff. This is a regular short period comet with an orbit just over 6 years but is pretty distant and presently about magnitude 12. It’s unlikely to improve as Earth has the inside track and is slowly pulling away.
For our deep sky tour this month we are looking at an overlooked constellation Scutum, the shield. Not a bright or large constellation with it’s brightest star being only 3.85 in magnitude, but this is a grouping that sits on the milky way and contains some real deep sky treasure. The best way to locate Scutum is to locate the Star Altair at the base of the summer triangle in Aquila, below that find the bright asterism of the teapot in Sagittarius and then look for a dim mercedea badge of stars between them a slightly to the west of that line.
The easiest of the DSOs to locate are the two messier objects M11 and M26, both of which sit very close to the brightest stars in the constellation M26 near Alpha Scuti which is in the centre of the constellation and M11 close to Beta scuti, which is towards Aquilla and the bright star Altair.
M11 is famous as the wild duck cluster and is an amatuer favourite. An open cluster of almost 3000 stars, many can see it as a formation of migrating ducks. Many can’t. Take a look and you decide for yourself, it is a good binocular target and looks fantastic in a low power eyepiece. M26 is another open cluster that is around 22 light years across. It has a dimmer than expected nucleus and this is thought to be because of interstellar dust between us and the stars of the cluster.
NGC 6712 is our next target and this is a globular cluster just over 2 degrees south of M11 and 2 degrees east of M26. Magnitude 8.69 and discovered by both Le Gentill and William Herschel it was finally classified as a globular by John Herschel the following century. The last object is one for the larger scopes and imagers but is well worth the hunt. Lying just 24 arcminutes from 6712 is planetary nebula IC 1295 and the pairing can be seen together in an 8-10” scope in a dark sky, two of the skies most beautiful objects in the same view – well worth tracking down.
So all that remains is for me to wish you dark skies and happy hunting.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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