The Andromeda Galaxy

As the autumn nights are drawing quicker, I had the opportunity last week to have a longer stargazing session. I also got the chance to try out my new Revelation Astro Photo-Visual Eyepiece Kit which I recently bought. This has a good range of eyepieces and should be better than the ones that came with my telescope. The plan is that I can continue to use these whenever I upgrade my telescope for a bigger and better one. This kit also includes a moon filter, which I need and some of the eyepieces are specifically designed to use with cameras. Astrophotography is definitely something I would like to get into at some point.

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

As the autumn season moves on, the Pegasus constellation is rising earlier and goes higher at a reasonable time. Somewhat attached to the Great Square of Pegasus is the constellation of Andromeda. This is home to one of the largest celestial sights - M31, or the Great Andromeda Galaxy. I found this galaxy by identifying the Great Square, then star hopping two stars left to Mirach then aiming my telescope to the right of the second star up from there.

What I saw was a very big fuzzy light that seemed to have some shine to the edges of my view. The centre of the galaxy was very similar to M13 The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules but much brighter with the wider disc of faint light visible, although this was very hard to see given the amount of light pollution I was getting that night. I was also able to see M32, one of the two partner galaxies to M31 which I could see as a fuzzy star. I could not locate M110 which is the other partner.

M31 by NASA

M31 is very similar to our own Milky Way although it is much bigger. With its partner galaxies, it makes up the local group of galaxies with the Milky Way. It is approximately 3 million light years away with an estimated 300 billion stars. The thought of seeing an object that far away and that far back in time is quite mind boggling. Given I have trouble finding objects just a  few hundred light years away it shows how big a galaxy is!

61 Cygni, A Double Star

As I have mentioned before, I really enjoy looking at double stars so I tried one in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan). I found it by seeing it as the fourth corner of a square made by the stars Deneb, Sadr and Glenah, all part of the Swan's tail and right wing. I saw 61 Cygni as two distinctly orange stars nicely separated.

This double star is one of the closest to us at just 11.4 light years away.

M57 - The Ring Nebula

Although it is getting later in the year and the sights I could see just a month ago are often already behind the house to the east when it gets dark, I noticed Lyra was still just within sight so I thought I would give finding the Ring Nebula a go. Last time I just could not find this but now I have Starmap Pro I thought I would try. This time was much more successful. It is situated pretty much midway between the bottom two stars of the Lyra constellation but very easy to miss if you haven't seen it before.

M57 The Ring Nebula is very small in my telescope and I would not have known what it was if I hadn't been able to use my iPhone app to find it. Initially is looks like a blurry star. Only after a long time looking at it and using averted vision did I start to see the famous "smoke ring" feature coming out. It was still very small and very faint.

A nebula is the gas emissions coming from a dying star. This particular nebula is some 1,000-5,000 light years away. Scientists have estimated that the gas cloud was formed about 20,000 years ago and is expanding at 12 miles per second.

Image courtesy of NASA

Starmap Pro

After the problems I had last time with trying to find anything I sought some advice on the excellent Stargazers' Lounge forum. I received advice about using my red dot finder and to use a star atlas to star-hop. As I like gadgets I decided to use my iPhone apps to do this instead. So this week I have been using Starmap Pro and carefully matching what that says I should see in my eyepiece against what I am looking at, and although it's a slow process it has really worked well this week. Following the app as a star atlas has meant I have found my targets much easier than before and should reduce the frustration that I had last time I was out. I have been able to get out a couple of times this week and here are the results.

Eta Cassiopeiae - A Double Star

In the constellation of Cassiopeia, Eta Cassiopeiae is a Double Star. I am beginning to really enjoy looking at these, especially when there is a colour contrast between the stars in the system. This one was a little bit trickier because the primary star of the binary is much brighter than the other. Star A has a magnitude of 3.6 and Star B is 7.5. Using a relatively high magnification I found there was a distinct colour contrast between the two with the Primary Star looking slightly off-white and the smaller star much more orange. This particular double is just 20 light years away and take 500 years to orbit each other. The primary star is a slightly bigger and shinier version of our own sun.

On the back of this success I tried to resolve Polaris and Iota Cassiopeiae. Neither of these would split for me at any magnification. I will try again another day on these!

Cassiopeia

The rain and clouds finally lifted for a couple of hours last night so I got out for a spot of stargazing. My plan for the short time I had before it was due to rain again was to use the October edition of the Sky at Night Magazine and use its Deep-Sky observing challenge to see some interesting sights. Instead of going all over the sky I thought I would just stick around one constellation. I thought this would be the best idea as the theory was it would help me become more familiar with the stars around that part of the sky and would therefore help make finding objects easier. This didn't go according to plan. I should have known when I saw the stars twinkling when I set up that it was going to be a difficult time.

Cassiopeia itself is an easy constellation to find for my as it is one of those that are close to Polaris so will always be accessible from my garden.

There were a number of objects I was interested in seeing. I spent a long time trying to find M52, then tried NGC 457 (The Owl Cluster), then tried to find NGC 7789. I failed with all of these. A significant problem I have come up with is that all the books and charts show simple targets but once I have pointed my telescope in the general direction or if I try to star hop I just cannot locate the object in question unless I have been particularly lucky and it immediately appears in my eyepiece. All of these objects looked simple to find using steps from the main constellation stars, but I just couldn't see any of them. The vast number of stars I can see through my scope compared to what I can see with the naked eye makes star hopping very difficult for me. I also have yet to work out how much of the sky I can actually see through my eyepieces which makes it difficult to know how far to move to reach my targets.

I will try again next time the skies are clear!

Epsilon Lyrae - The Double-Double

The weather hasn't been great recently but I managed to get out last night. After my failure to resolve the double in Polaris I decided to try another double star - Epsilon Lyrae. This is actually a system which has two lots of double stars orbiting each other - what a thought! This why it is also known as the Double Double.

To find it is relatively easy. It makes up the third point of an imaginary equilateral triangle between it, Vega and the closest star to Vega in the Lyra constellation.

I could resolve Epsilon Lyrae into two relatively easily using the lowest magnification possible on my telescope. Going up the magnifications didn't help to resolve the individual elements until I used a 10mm eyepiece with my Barlow lens, giving me magnification of 180x. This showed both double stars as slightly elongated stars although it was so subtle I couldn't be sure I had separated them or it could easily have been me not focussing correctly. Using my 6.3mm lens with the Barlow provided an excellent view of all four stars at once. This is technically beyond the highest power of my scope, but it worked wonders. Both doubles in the system were clearly separated. The view I got was pretty much like this photo:

Epsilon Lyrae is approximately 162 light years away. Unsplit the two double star systems of Epsilon Lyrae have a magnitude of about 4.6.

Astronomy Information

Since last week the weather has been too cloudy to see anything and now it's raining so I will just have to wait until the next good stargazing evening. in the meantime I thought I would mention a really friendly and useful forum I have joined. Stargazers Lounge have numerous forums (fora?) on all aspects of astronomy. Some of the members there have given me a very warm welcome and I recommend anyone new to astronomy to take a look. Here is a link to the site: http://stargazerslounge.com/.

When I first started thinking about getting into astronomy I bought a couple of books which have been really useful and reading these before I got my telescope has helped me get going quicker than I might have done.

Turn Left at Orion - This has been the most useful of the books I have bought. It is written specially with the owner of a small telescope in mind. Its main purpose is to provide a guide to sights you can see during the year just by star-hopping from easily found stars. It has a huge number of things to see. I have been picking sights from this book to help me have a target or two to focus on for each of my stargazing sessions. I find that if I go back the next day to something I have discovered the previous day using this book, I can pretty much find it straight away with no help. I think Turn Left at Orion will really help me fully exploit my telescope and show me all the wonders there are to see with the equipment I have.

Simple Stargazing - This gives a bit more science and lore about what stars are and how the constellations came to be known. Whereas Turn Left at Orion is like a guide book to the stars, Simple Stargazing is like a phrase/language book.

Stargazing for Telescopes - This was a book I got free with my telescope along with a planetarium and star atlas. It has actually been really useful to explain how my telescope and mount work.

I have come to recognise the importance of the weather in my new hobby. I have found a very detailed forecast using Astroweather Panel which can be found here. It looks scary but the website explains what ecah row shows. This is basically telling me to forget any ideas of using my telescope for the next few days!

Albireo - A Double Star in Cygnus

I was feeling tired from work today but it was a clear evening, and seemed darker than last night, so I decided to spend a short while stargazing. My aim for this evening was to view Albireo; the southernmost star of the constellation Cynus (The Swan). Albireo is relatively easy to find due to its position in Cygnus, although I found it easier by using the bottom two stars of Lyra to point to what is the next bright object along that line.

Image courtesy of Stellarium

Just from using the lowest magnification lens I have I could immediately see that Albireo is actually made up of two stars. Now I have always just looked at the night sky and assumed all stars are white. Well this certainly disproves that theory - the contrast in colours between the two stars was stark. The slightly larger one looked a light orange to me whereas its smaller companion had a distinct blue hue. Seeing the two together was a beautiful sight. I find the idea of two stars entwined in orbit somewhat romantic so I might try and find other double stars over the coming weekend.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Albireo is approximately 380 light years away. The larger orange star (Albireo A) is itself a binary star, although splitting this is way beyond my telescope's abilities.

M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

I tried resolving the double star of Polaris last night and frankly it looked like the same single star no matter how many different ways I looked at it so I gave up for now and tried something altogether bigger - the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. This was rapidly sinking to the west behind the house but I aimed my telescope about a third of the way down from the top right corner of the square that makes up the centre of the Hercules constellation and spotted a small smudge of light. This square is also known as the Keystone. Unfortunately I lost line of sight behind the house at that point before I got a good look at it.

How to find M13

Image taken from Stellarium

I went out a bit earlier tonight to catch it higher in the sky and found it again pretty quickly. It had taken me a few minutes to get my telescope pointing the right way, which was not easy given that the target was right above me and I have an equatorial mount. What I saw was the small smudge of light I found last night. It was brighter in the middle and less so on the outside. The skies weren't very dark so I couldn't see much more than this, and I certainly couldn't see it with the naked eye, but it was good to view my first deep-sky object. Higher magnification eyepieces just made the smudge darker and despite spending some time looking at it I couldn't resolve any more detail.

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
Image courtesy of NASA

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, is home to approximately 1 million stars. It spans 450 light years which means it's pretty big! It lies about 25,000 light years away from Earth. It is said to be one of the older bodies in space, possibly over 12 billion years old.