Podcaster: Shane and Chris
Title: Objects to Observe in the March 2022 Night Sky
Organization: Actual Astronomy
Link : https://actualastronomy.podbean.com/
Description: The Actual Astronomy Podcast presents Objects to Observe in the March 2022 Night Sky and places a focus on events to help you find the planets as the Moon pairs with Uranus before dancing with Venus, Mercury, Mars and Saturn in the morning twilight. We also talk about when and how to observe the Lunar Straight Wall as well as what comets and deep sky objects we’re on the look out for this month.
Bio: Shane and Chris are amateur astronomers who enjoy teaching astronomy classes and performing outreach where they help the eyes of the public to telescope eyepieces.
Today’s sponsor: Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month: Rob Leeson, David Bowes, Ron Diehl, Brett Duane, Benett Bolek, Mary Ann, Frank Frankovic, Michael Freedman, Kim Hay, Steven Emert, Frank Tippin, Rani Bush, Jako Danar, Joseph J. Biernat, Nik Whitehead, Semyon Torfason, Michael W, Cherry Wood, Steve Nerlich, Steven Kluth, James K Wood, Katrina Ince, Phyllis Foster, Don Swartwout, Barbara Geier, Steven Jansen
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Transcript:
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Yeah. Her sound was really good too, so good. Yeah.
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That was good. All right. Ah, ok um yeah let me know when you’re ready to go.
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Okay, 321.
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Welcome to Episode 201 of the actual astronomy podcast, this is the objects to observe in the march 2022 night sky edition, I am Chris and joining me a shame we are amateur astronomers love looking at the night sky, and this podcast is for anyone else
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who likes going out. Under the Stars So were you able to get under the stars this week Shane.
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No, I was not, you know, our weather remains the same, although Friday night, there was an opportunity to go out like it was relatively clear. I don’t think conditions were outstanding by any stretch but the issue for me was the work week caught up to
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me and I was exhausted Friday night so I did not go well how about you. Yeah, no, I end up having a phone conversation with or observing friend Mike, and just chatting about setting up are observing for the next several months.
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up and I could see a few stars but but there was like broken high cumulus cloud overhead so I was, I wasn’t going out so anyway so yeah let’s, let’s maybe review you know I started putting some bullet notes in here about, you know, just some general introductory
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stuff to astronomy think we did this last month too but yeah what are what are some good ways for people to get started in astronomy and some really quick tools and techniques we can just give people for general advice before we hop into what people can
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see the night sky this month. Oh, yeah. So, maybe, maybe the first thing I’ll mention is a bit of a carryover from Episode 200, when we spoke with Mary McIntyre, probably one of the best things to state is that to do astronomy you really don’t need any
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equipment, you can just use your eyes.
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If you happen to have a pair of binoculars in your home. Those can be used as well at night to show you a lot of interesting things. So, the key takeaway to that point really is just don’t think, like, you certainly don’t need hundreds or thousands of
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dollars worth of astronomy gear to enjoy the night sky, some of the some of the stuff that will talk about, you know, we’ll probably mentioned degrees.
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And this is a measurement superimposed on to the night sky that help us determine how far certain things are from each other.
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And one, kind of, you know, guide that applies to pretty much all of us, is if you hold your fist out at arm’s length, your fist. The width of your fist is about 10 degrees, against the night sky and, and because we’re all built proportionately It doesn’t
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matter if you’re, you know if you have long arms or short arms or anything like that, chances are, when you hold that fist out it’s going to be about 10 degrees.
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Yeah, exactly the end. Yeah actually echo your, your remarks there and what Mary McIntyre was saying, and I know this this episode’s going out on the 365 days of astronomy, as well I know we get a lot more people tuning in for the objects to observe,
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but if if you’re one of those people that are just grabbing these episodes. I strongly recommend that you go and take a listen to our episode 200 with Mary McIntyre because she talks about observing just looking at the star she talks but Astro photography,
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she talks about public outreach she talks about being involved in the UK Meteor network.
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A lot of different really interesting topics I gotta think there’s pretty much something there for everybody in that last episode that we just recorded.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Mary has a, you know, as in general astronomy is definitely you know one of her big passions and within astronomy she does an awful lot of things that are really cool and, and, you know, very accessible to any amateur.
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Yeah, and, and as well like what you said about you know for mention of not eating anything super fancy to do any of those aspects and she kind of goes into a surprising amount of detail considering we covered all of those topics.
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But she did mention like you know just taking the binoculars out getting into a nice warm blanket getting in the recliner and just kind of getting lost in the night sky, thought was a really great introduction for people that are looking just just to
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get going, um, you can just do that and not not really get too caught up in, in, in the pressure of trying to trying to learn too much you’re trying to do too much on the night sky that can just be really relaxing way to spend an evening.
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Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
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Some other resources include things like Night Watch, which is a book by Terrence Dickinson, really good for Northern Hemisphere people who are just looking to get started.
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And as well like make yourself a little red light to preserve your night vision because your cell phone is is probably too bright. If you’re going on in the dark skies and.
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And then as well like even the lights on the cell phones are we too bright for what you’re going to need when you’re doing astronomy, and then you can use a bird of vision.
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So what’s what’s a bird of vision chain.
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When you don’t look directly at an object so when, when we say to us inverted vision what we’re really saying is, get, get your desired object in the field of view, but then look out, try to observe it with your peripheral vision.
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Our the way our eyes are our peripherals are a little more sensitive to light and movement. So, using your peripheral sometimes you can tease out a little more detail or sometimes fainter objects can become somewhat visible using that technique.
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Yeah. Cool. All right, well let’s jump in.
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Let’s jump into March, what is what’s the, what is March open with what’s, what’s a good thing to start the month of March with for us this month chain.
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Um, well, March, for, for folks.
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I don’t know if this is also a southern hemisphere thing or not but for sure in the Northern Hemisphere, the messy a marathon is something that captivates a lot of amateur astronomers early in March are kind of around New Moon is when you’re able to observe
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nearly all of the Messier objects in one night, if you’re if you’re well organized and you start pretty much right at sunset and observed till sunrise, you’re able to get, I think most of them and now it is quite challenging to get all hundred and 10.
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I know Chris you’ve attempted this before and I can’t remember what your, your maximum was. Yeah, I think, yeah, there’s 110 objects and I think myself, my observing partner Graham, we were able to get like about 103 like working together, like we kind
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of worked as a team, and I think he end up hunting down about 60 or 70 odd I handed down about whatever it was around 35 or so.
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So yeah, but then in a few weeks we’re going to dive into this in more detail and.
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Yeah, exactly.
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We’re going to have done the Colts on he’s going to talk about the messy marathon he’s one of the originators of of this concept and yeah really looking forward to his conversation we’re also going to put that one out I believe on the 365 days of astronomy
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so looking forward to that. Yeah, that’ll be awesome. Yeah. We also the zodiacal light is well visible starting right now actually in fact the end of February and into March and the dark sky March and early part of April, we’re going to have this band
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of luminous light that’s sort of in between kind of sort of like the inner part of the solar system in between that, I guess it’s like Mars and Jupiter in a lot of that dust, apparently comes from Mars, but they don’t quite understand how how it is originating
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from Mars, but melody who’s on the observing committee, and I sit on the observing committee, here in Canada and she has, has sent out recently a great photo of her husband took it.
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But he sent out this or she sent it this photo that he took showing this, this beautiful band of light there Shane and she said we could tweet it out.
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So, I think we just need to make sure we credit her husband and her husband’s name is Bruce, so dokey definitely on Twitter I’ve seen a lot of that article late photos.
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The last few days. In fact, again, Mary McIntyre who was just on our last episode, she captured a really nice photo of it as well from the UK.
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Cool. Yeah, sounds good. I was looking at the different look at Allen diaries, but it’s an island diaries is one of the co authors of the backyard astronomers guide to ever go on his website and, and check that out.
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And not that often.
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I usually like again I follow Alan on Twitter and he tweets out a lot of his activity but no I normally don’t end up at his website. I, well that’s probably where a lot of this stuff originates from he is some like good synopsis of, of what you can see
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each, you know, each month, and on his website he talks about how marriage represents really at the beginning of our season, so he’s looking for and to do something, some rough piracy so you know I guess we might might be looking forward to some, we’re
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in the coming months here.
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Yeah, the the activity on the sun is definitely ramping up and the direct result of that is more Aurora for us to observe.
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You know it’s a blessing and a curse for us dark sky observers it’s quite pretty but it can sometimes ruin the dark sky observing session because it can be so bright that it really washes out the sky, and you know you and I have been in really dark locations
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when the Aurora comes in, and when when it’s really bright it’s like the sky, almost resembles like an urban setting, you know, the stars disappear almost like they do under a light polluted sky.
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Yeah, yeah I mean it can, you can go from being like seeing, you know maybe six and a half stars to down to fourth magnitude I’ve seen that on a number of occasions, it just kind of obliterates any of the famous stars you can barely see the Milky Way
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that was in earlier maybe in the evening standing out.
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Yeah, yeah, it’s sort of one of those things. And I guess you know it makes sense. The other thing he put in there was that we get into the flashing geostationary satellite season as well because you know the angle of the Earth is changing and the angles
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that the sun is going to be hitting those geostationary satellites in turn changes. So sometimes you get these brief and very bright flashes from that geostationary satellites and look little weird like kind of like you’re being linked out from from space
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on if you ever noticed those much before. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one before.
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No, that’s a lie I have seen a couple where there’s just a brightening in the sky, and it’s like a star appears and then disappears almost it’s, it’s quite unique.
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Yeah.
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I had a email here this morning deep, deep champion he’s been on the show before and frequent friend and correspondent.
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The show he he’d send in a sketch of.
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I think it was, Venus, Mars, and the moon this morning, you know, sort of, hanging around a tree.
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You know that was in front of a hill by his house but yeah really cool and then all month we’re going to have Venus, Mars mercury and Saturn playing around in the morning Twilight should be kind of pretty in these mornings I’ve been, I’ve been watching
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Venus a little bit just with my I needed I and, you know, can see some of the other planets from time to time. If I get into the right spot.
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Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen. I’ve seen Venus a number of times in the morning. This week, you know on the way to work as well as the moon. It’s been quite pretty.
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It’s been weird to like when when I’ve been going to bed, it’s been cloudy in the mornings like around sunrise, that’s been not too bad you know guys have been okay.
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Yeah, cool.
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March 2 sort of getting getting into the, the days of the month now March 2 we’re going to have the new moon but that morning of March 2 if you get up early and I think I have 16 am ish between six and seven and depending on where you are, as is probably
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best time to see this that’s when Mercury is going to be just to a point seven degrees so with of Saturn in the morning sky so that could be kind of neat to see if you can get your telescope there, they’re going to be really close to the horizon though. What’s really nice about that
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is Saturn will be easy to locate naked eye ish, it’ll be easy ish.
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Mercury is a little tougher, and the fact that mercury mercury will be so close to Saturn, makes it a you know a good attempt like if you’ve never seen mercury or you’d like to try to observe it.
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Having Saturn is that anchor point will will certainly assist you that morning.
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Yeah. Cool.
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And then on the sixth and seventh of March, we’re going to have the crescent moon coming up in the, in the West.
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Because be after the new moon we get into the, you know, sort of first early phases of the next lunar cycle and that’s when the moon starts appearing in the western Skype first, just makes a brief appearance in, in the desk, and then eventually it starts
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moving into the dark skies which is which is when it’s going to be pairing up with Uranus around the six and seven so that’s one of those things I was like the highlight for people because makes it very easy to track down.
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Some of the more difficult celestial bodies in this case Uranus is going to be very close to the moon on the sixth and seventh because Uranus is only about magnitude 5.7, which is visible from, from a really like polluted sky through binoculars.
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But it’s difficult to track down which star up there is Uranus when you’re just kind of sort of pan around the sky or even if you have a chart, but on the sixth and seventh of March, Uranus is going to be quite close to the moon there so sort of one of
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the brighter stars so you’re going to see near the moon, that’s going to be Uranus on those things ever do that ever try to hunt down, Uranus when it’s paired up with moving.
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Yeah, well I like those close arrangements when, whether it’s the moon and the planets or multiple planets together.
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Those are always really neat things to observe, I like them because not only are you know does it help you find the object but it is just quite pretty through binoculars or telescopes usually.
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Yeah, and that’ll make a good segue to march 8. The following day, is when the moon is going to be sitting between the ladies, and the high 80s. And so that’s that was happening last month as well, I believe.
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And so what you’re seeing here is, is the moon kind of sweeping across the night sky sort of from night tonight Tonight, and on March, 8 it’s going to sit between these two.
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Two of the most famous or most prominent easy to see open clusters in the night sky, which are the Pleiades or the messy 45 and 45 open cluster, and the Heidi’s, which is a large open cluster, which basically forms the head of Taurus the Bull in the moon
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is going to be sitting between them so if you’re somebody that’s maybe just learning the sky.
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You can use the moon on certain nights to kind of point out stars or or planets or different star patterns from this case couple open clusters. Yeah, and that’ll be close to Zenith which means like right overhead, which is not fun with a telescope it’s
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sometimes hard with the movement of telescopes to to observe right overhead.
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But both of those clusters are phenomenal through binoculars and the fact that the moon is there.
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You know, it makes it a pretty cool opportunity if you have binoculars because binoculars to us when to look at objects right overhead is just I find it a lot easier than a telescope, huh.
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Yeah, can be yep you sit in the reclining chair and, yeah, give them that blanket yeah makes a perfect combination.
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On March, 12, we have the lunar straight while that he thing it’s going to be visible on the, on the lunar surface. So, you’ve observed the lunar st while a few times for I think maybe you showed it to me once I think that’s when I’ve seen it I’m not
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as much of lunar observers you are but any any hints for people trying to take a look for the lunar straight while they’re saying, I’m, I’ve only looked at it through a telescope I’m not sure if binoculars would be enough power to see this.
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But if you do have a telescope, put it on the moon on March, the 12th and earth sorry. Yeah, March 12.
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It’s a pretty hard object to miss it’s very like it’s quite large, in relation to, you know, a lot of the smaller craters and and other features to see.
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And, and the moon is you know a very chaotic, place, or very chaotic surface like there’s just the, you know, there’s craters there’s ridges there’s planes there’s all sorts of stuff going on there.
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And all of a sudden there’s this you know what appears to be pretty much a perfectly straight black line.
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So it really stands out from all of the unevenness and strangeness of the moon, and that night it’s, it’s going to be a pretty hard object Miss.
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I’m just trying to look it up here and yeah you probably need some powerful binoculars like I know there’s some 20 and 25 power binoculars out there they would probably begin to show up but just the regular handhelds I think you’re right that would be
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pretty difficult to do. Yeah, Yeah, telescope would probably be the better choice there are like you said Chris unless, or if you have some higher powered binoculars that would probably do it but most likely you’ll need a telescope.
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Yeah, I’d much rather also, you know, if you get up early that morning, I guess I should have put this first but early on the morning of March 12 Venus is going to be just above Mars and they’re going to be in conjunction there so they’re going to be
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very very close together, I forget the exact distances but it’s it’s super close to the nighttime in the morning sky.
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And again, this is another one of those anchor moments Venus will be quite bright Mars not as much, and this is one of the years of Mars. This is the opposition years so in December Mars will be at its closest point to earth, and this is a two year event.
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So from this point forward Mars will just continue to get closer, which means a little bit brighter and a little bit bigger. But at this point in time it’s still not any, you know it’s going to be, you know, fairly small I wouldn’t expect a lot of detail
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if any on Mars, but it’s still a neat observation to see two planets that close. Yeah, I think, December, 8 or around that day is when Mars is going to be an opposition so just starting to come into the darker sky, and I don’t know that you’d be able
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to see much detail on it now through telescope, but in the coming. You know summer months and especially in the fall.
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That, that’s when you get your best views of it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. On the March 18 we’re going to have the full moon. So that’s something people can mark their calendars and maybe go and take a look at I don’t know if it’s one of the super moons
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or any any sort of special moon in any way but that’s been that’s been the full moon is is going to happen so I’m looking at taking a couple days off I’m not going to take them off around that time going to wait for dark sky at the end the month.
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Yeah, yeah for for dark sky chasers a full moon is a bad thing.
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Again, similar to my comment about the Aurora, a full moon will make a dark sky, very similar to an urban sky. And, in fact, not even like a quarter to two like a half illuminated moon, almost washes out the entire sky as well so you know it’s it’s a
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bright bright object, and when it’s full.
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The there’s still a lot to observe and I’ve been rightfully accused of, you know, saying the moon’s boring when it’s full and that’s not true. There’s an awful lot there, I think, I think Mark radici or somebody like that called Yoda.
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Yeah, yeah, that was a good call out because there’s there’s a lot to see there. Yeah, no, it’s good stuff. Yeah, one of the things you can see, on, on the full moon when it’s, you know, nice and clear out is called the to be white spot which is sort
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of like the bottom just kind of left of center there’s, there’s a brighter spot there and sometimes people think it’s a crater but it’s it’s done, it’s sort of like a bit of an optical illusion or something like that it’s what’s called a nail Beto feature
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it’s just a bunch of different areas that are a little bit brighter than the rest of the surface but it really sticks out is, it’s sort of a bright spot on the moon.
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Yeah, well and you know I’ve talked about this before Chris but sometimes it’s like you can see some color in the moon sometimes, you know shades of brown ish maybe even purple tones at times.
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So that’s another thing to kind of pay attention to, like, there’s a ton of craters and surface features to to observe but, you know, always, always pay attention to the color and just how that may change from night tonight tonight or month to month to
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month.
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Then on March 20 we have a couple things taking place.
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March 20th is also going to be the data the spring equinox. So what is what is the spring equinox equinox.
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Um, I believe that’s when the daylight and nighttime or, or equal is that not right like 12 hours each I believe, yeah that’s that’s equal, day and night.
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That’s what Equinox means so yeah that’s just when we reach that point in the Earth’s orbit around the sun when when our tilt is such that we’re getting equal day and night, no matter where you are on the surface of the earth and then of course set.
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That’s the day that we lament because we start losing the dark skies.
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Yeah, it’s a, it’s, it’s a double edged sword, you know, our cold winters are leaving us but so are the long hours of darkness.
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Yeah, and by the time we get to about, June 1 around our parts here.
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We actually really don’t even get much the way of darkness at all for Botha a five or six week period from from about the first of of June ish until the both the end of the first week of July, we get we get not a whole lot a lot of darkness during.
00:22:42.000 –> 00:22:55.000
Yeah, we’re just far enough north, that the sun just kind of dips below the horizon, and you know it, it just never gets fully dark throughout the night yeah yeah it’s too bad.
00:22:55.000 –> 00:23:05.000
But on March 20 as well if you get up early that morning you can see Venus at greatest Western elongation so that Western elongation means it’s in the morning.
00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:22.000
Now, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be highest in the sky that because I think it was highest in in the morning sky The other day here at the end of February, but, but that just means that it’s, it’s at its greatest point away from the sun, so it’s
00:23:22.000 –> 00:23:32.000
still going to be visible well above the horizon in the morning sky but certainly after that date I think gets gets a little, little bit lower progressively as, as the days go by.
00:23:32.000 –> 00:23:33.000
Hmm.
00:23:33.000 –> 00:23:44.000
Then on the 26th of March, we have the lunar Curtis x visible I still haven’t tracked this one down, have you seen the lunar criticize before.
00:23:44.000 –> 00:23:52.000
Oh boy, I have to be honest the lunar Curtis x is new to me.
00:23:52.000 –> 00:24:11.000
Yeah, just going to type it in here I think I it’s sort of one of those features, that’s visible in around the same time as the as the Lunar X but it comes, like I said, just a few days later xB think the Lunar X is visible in some parts of the world,
00:24:11.000 –> 00:24:19.000
but it’s not as visible in North America this month but we have to the lunar Curtis x visible but I think the lunar Curtis x is greater visibility. But anyway, March 2016 if you want to go take a look.
00:24:19.000 –> 00:24:29.000
But anyway, March 2016 if you want to go take a look. That’s the night to take a look at it. Yeah, yeah, I’m just looking online I think it was also referenced as the Curtis cross on the moon.
00:24:29.000 –> 00:24:49.000
And if anybody is interested in. In, searching for some details Curtis is CURTISSO to us. Yeah, two s’s I’m seeing a lot of references to So, yeah, I’ve never seen that one before, I will add that to my list.
00:24:49.000 –> 00:25:01.000
Now I have to take have to take a look for that kind of an interesting thing that often noted, I think it’s I think it’s a little bit larger than the lunar acts that we’ve often Oh, okay.
00:25:01.000 –> 00:25:03.000
So, yeah.
00:25:03.000 –> 00:25:13.000
Moving ahead. On March, 27 and 28th. There’s a really neat, moon and Planetary triangle I, I also saw this on.
00:25:13.000 –> 00:25:24.000
Ellen dyers website where we have Venus Saturn and Mars together and then just sort of off the right we have this crescent moon.
00:25:24.000 –> 00:25:36.000
That’s, I think going to make a really interesting image, if people are looking for a really nice portrait of three planets, I guess, plus the Earth’s horizon.
00:25:36.000 –> 00:25:42.000
And then, then the moon in the morning sky I think that’s going to be a pretty cool pretty picture to see. Yeah, that would be really neat.
00:25:42.000 –> 00:25:43.000
Yeah.
00:25:43.000 –> 00:26:05.000
And let’s see then on March, 29 Venus is going to be about two degrees away from Saturn so Venus is going to just be two degrees north of Saturn. And so that makes them pretty close in the night sky so that should be a very pretty picture to see as well.
00:26:05.000 –> 00:26:15.000
Yeah, and two degrees so that’s well within pretty much any binocular field of view. Right. Most telescopes will achieve that as well.
00:26:15.000 –> 00:26:29.000
Now if you have a, maybe a larger Newtonian or a slower focal length telescope, two degrees might be a bit of a push, but for the most part I think a lot of amateur telescopes will get that in one field of view.
00:26:29.000 –> 00:26:30.000
Yep.
00:26:30.000 –> 00:26:42.000
Yeah should be should be pretty neat to see in binoculars I would had it with binoculars for this one just because yeah they’re going to be pretty low down she wants too much detail but yeah if you do have a telescope anything smaller than than about
00:26:42.000 –> 00:26:52.000
a six inch should should give you a two degree field so yeah that should be. That should be a pretty nice field to see those those two planets close together and then I in the morning sky.
00:26:52.000 –> 00:27:00.000
Let’s see comments we have a couple of comments I was, I was reading about these, These two comments we have parliament.
00:27:00.000 –> 00:27:04.000
l three Atlas which is around nine magnitude, I was seeing.
00:27:04.000 –> 00:27:18.000
I was looking last night at some sketches just have to be looking at sketches and even though I made these notes up long before that people were submitting sketches of L three Atlas saying it looked really good in like you know telescopes that are about
00:27:18.000 –> 00:27:28.000
eight inches or larger in its rate in around the bottom foot of a Gemini.
00:27:28.000 –> 00:27:44.000
The easy to locate those are, you know that’s a fairly prominent constellation, certainly would need a telescope and like you said, probably a bit of a larger telescope around eight inches or more, and yeah but hopefully, hopefully some people are able
00:27:44.000 –> 00:27:51.000
to observe that comets are always interesting. One of the things about comets is they’re usually never the same thing twice.
00:27:51.000 –> 00:28:02.000
Excuse me. Yeah, go ahead. Chris, okay yeah I was just gonna say yeah no you’re, you’re exactly right there and I thought you might need it to grab a drink of water, and then yeah we have.
00:28:02.000 –> 00:28:15.000
We have lots of sketches starting to come in, of Atlas, and even though like oftentimes like a ninth mandatory comment isn’t something to write home about, people have been sketching like a bit of a coma and a tail like, although it’s think there’s there’s
00:28:15.000 –> 00:28:22.000
a lot of detail there so if people are going out and they have, you know, like I said, a Bota eight inch or larger telescope.
00:28:22.000 –> 00:28:42.000
A lot of people are really saying, boy, it’s well worth hunting down because there’s more detail there then typically you would have in 1992 comments.
00:28:42.000 –> 00:28:55.000
Comment 19 people rally is going to be passing by the California nebula. And then I noticed that in the software it actually forecasted to be much brighter than it is right now it’s coming in at 992 now as well.
00:28:55.000 –> 00:29:11.000
But it’s going to pass read by the California Nebula there on on on or near the 26th of March, so if you have astronomy sock for most people that have eight inch and larger telescopes that are going to be interested in this, probably are going to have
00:29:11.000 –> 00:29:23.000
astronomy planetarium software and just kind of run it around that date for your location and then see what works best for you but it’d be really cool if somebody took a photo of karma rally and the California named Bill and that’d be really neat up and
00:29:23.000 –> 00:29:24.000
Perseus. Yeah, that would be phenomenal.
00:29:24.000 –> 00:29:37.000
Yeah, that would be phenomenal. I wonder what the moon rise and set times are that night because that would be that would be fun to observe that under a dark sky as well like visually, just to see what it looks like I think a moon would, would probably ruin it.
00:29:37.000 –> 00:29:50.000
it. If the moon’s in the sky, the whole night but if we can get out when the moon is not there I think that would be a lot of fun. Yeah, well that’s about a week past actually just over a week it’s eight days past full moon.
00:29:50.000 –> 00:30:01.000
So the moon will be in the morning sky, but that point in time and because this is up in Perseus and Perseus is is pretty high all night here anyway.
00:30:01.000 –> 00:30:11.000
Yeah, in the evening. Yeah, you should be able to should be able to get that in the evening so don’t have to get up in the morning, like we were for for the, the last comment so yeah pretty good.
00:30:11.000 –> 00:30:13.000
Yeah. Awesome.
00:30:13.000 –> 00:30:18.000
All right. How about. Did you Did you find any minor planets with.
00:30:18.000 –> 00:30:33.000
No, I did not, did you know I was, I was kind of looking to see if any were at opposition that were worth looking at and they’re just going to anything we’re coming up and I didn’t know if he had any double stars you might be looking to take observation
00:30:33.000 –> 00:30:42.000
of this machine. Yeah, I will talk about a constellation that doesn’t get a lot of fanfare, which is links.
00:30:42.000 –> 00:30:59.000
In fact, you and I haven’t even really talked too much about this constellation, but there’s some interesting multiple star systems to take a look at one of them is known as 19 links or the strove catalog number is 1062.
00:30:59.000 –> 00:31:12.000
It’s actually a quad system there’s there’s four stars there that, that are all connected gravitationally and, you know, we call them double stars but sometimes there’s more than just two stars there to observe.
00:31:12.000 –> 00:31:19.000
They’re all within reach of most amateur backyard telescopes there.
00:31:19.000 –> 00:31:27.000
The separation is pretty. My head’s not very tight so splitting them shouldn’t be a real challenge.
00:31:27.000 –> 00:31:34.000
The thing that I will say though there’s four stars their chances are most people will will will only see three.
00:31:34.000 –> 00:31:50.000
The sea companion is, is quite faint its magnitude 12.8, so that one likely isn’t reachable but if you have a little bit larger of a telescope probably in that, you know, probably 10 to 12 inch range that that’s quite doable.
00:31:50.000 –> 00:31:59.000
The other one is alpha links or the stt catalog number is 571.
00:31:59.000 –> 00:32:11.000
There’s three stars here again. The third star the see companion is kind of dim its magnitude 11.1, but again it’s, it’s visible and most amateur telescopes.
00:32:11.000 –> 00:32:28.000
What, what is really cool about this system is that you have two contrasting star colors here so the AB stars, which would be fairly easy and in most back in probably all backyard telescopes, actually, one is orange and one is blue.
00:32:28.000 –> 00:32:41.000
So at low power, because the separation is fairly large on these low power you’ll have them in the same field of view. And whenever you get two stars that are somewhat close together that have different colors.
00:32:41.000 –> 00:33:01.000
They really seem to stand out. The the ability to compare and contrast the two colors seems stronger than if it was just say one orange star by itself so to be able to see these two stars us fairly close together is pretty cool.
00:33:01.000 –> 00:33:09.000
And that’s it for doubles. Yeah, cool you know if you’re up in links. One of the neat things take a look at our if you ever looked at this before I have a few times is.
00:33:09.000 –> 00:33:25.000
It’s a globular cluster called NGC 2419, also known as the called bold 25 object that was discovered by William Herschel in 1788 just just sort of looking at that up but I knew it was up there except looked at it, it was once thought to be sort of wandering
00:33:25.000 –> 00:33:41.000
in amongst the galaxies thought to be the intergalactic wanderer was what it was called it was so far out of the plane of the Milky Way, since discovered that that that wasn’t the case but it’s a 1992 globular so it’s a little bit on the side again, probably
00:33:41.000 –> 00:33:55.000
again, probably best in telescopes larger than eight inches but it can really get a look at a globular cluster that’s really far away from the plane of the Milky Way and like typically globular you’re going to be sort of hovering around in close to the
00:33:55.000 –> 00:34:09.000
Way but this one is is pretty far off side and sort of in the realm of the galaxy so anyway just kind of makes it interesting object to look at. Yeah, you know, and what’s kind of neat about that is, is, again, links, doesn’t get talked about a lot in
00:34:09.000 –> 00:34:26.000
in astronomical or at least an amateur conversations. But there’s still a lot to see there, you know, the, the sky is full of a lot of cool objects and, you know, pull out any, any of the lists and you’re probably going to find some, some interesting
00:34:26.000 –> 00:34:47.000
stuff to take a look at.
End of podcast:
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