Stargazer's Buzz

Stargazer's Buzz A guide to what you can see in the skies of the Northern Hemisphere

Taken tonight, with my new Skywatcher ED 120 refractor and Canon 750 D dlsr camera ISO 800 1/125 sec shutter speed un gu...
17/05/2024

Taken tonight, with my new Skywatcher ED 120 refractor and Canon 750 D dlsr camera ISO 800 1/125 sec shutter speed un guided

Enjoy.

Taken a few weeks ago Messier 16 ' Pillars of Creation' 7 x 10 minute exposures in Hydrogen Alpha filter stacked in Nebu...
21/07/2022

Taken a few weeks ago Messier 16 ' Pillars of Creation' 7 x 10 minute exposures in Hydrogen Alpha filter stacked in Nebulosity 4 capture software.

IC 5146 taken last night with Celestron 9.25 inch Cassergain telescope on NEQ6 goto mount, guided, ZWO asi 1600 cooled c...
21/07/2022

IC 5146 taken last night with Celestron 9.25 inch Cassergain telescope on NEQ6 goto mount, guided, ZWO asi 1600 cooled cmos camera and L,RGB colour filters.

07/06/2022

The Night sky for June

The springtime constellations are now making way for the summertime ones, very low in the southern night sky is the constellation of Scorpius, unfortunately at our latitude we can only see the top half, Antares is the main star and there are 3 more stars to the right and above, these are Acrab, Dschubba and Fang.
Antares is a pulsating variable double star, a massive red super giant which can be seen with the naked eye, if Antares replaced our sun, its surface would be somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, its size is around 12 times that of our sun, it is also a binary star with 2 other stars these are called Scorpii A & B, A is the brighter, it is a red supergiant, while B is a hot main sequence star at a magnitude 5.5.
Around Antares is IC 4606 ‘the Antares Nebula’ this is a Hydrogen gas and dust region and the stars light shines through the gas energizing the gas and dust giving of a red colour, but you can only see this if you take a photograph of the star.

There is 2 globular clusters near Antares these Messier 4 and 80, M4 was discovered by Phillippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745, it is a lovely star cluster and will fill the eyepiece of medium sized telescope.
Messier 80 is also a globular cluster but has a very dense core discovered by Charles Messier in 1781, it looks amazing through a telescope, it lies 32,600 light years from us, with probably 100,000 + stars in the cluster.

Acrab ( top star) is the second brightest star in the constellation, it is a double star at magnitude 2.60.
Dschubba (middle star) is an eruptive variable double star at magnitude 2.35.
Fang (bottom star) is an eclipsing binary double star at magnitude 2.85.

The Planets:
All the planets are in the morning sky this month, and if it is clear on the 25th just before sunrise you will be able to see Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn all in a line together, although Uranus is to the right of the moon and you will need a telescope to see it, and Neptune is to the right of Jupiter, similar distance as Mars.

Moon Phases: First half 7th June, Full moon 14th June, Last half 21st June, New moon 29th June.

Messier 13 in the constellation of Hercules.
22/05/2022

Messier 13 in the constellation of Hercules.

The night sky for May 2022The Spring constellations are now starting to give way to the Summer constellations. Looking ...
12/05/2022

The night sky for May 2022

The Spring constellations are now starting to give way to the Summer constellations. Looking east from the constellation of Virgo, Bootes with its main bright star Arcturus, which is a very bright star shining at a magnitude 0.15. It is a double star which lies 36 light years from us, is 25 times the size and 170 times more luminous.

Moving east we come to the constellation of Hercules, shaped like a human and looks as though its running. The alpha star, known as ‘Rasalgethi’, is a triple star system which can be seen through a telescope. ‘Rasalgethi’ lies 395 light years from Earth, is magnitude 3 and roughly 400 times bigger than our Sun.

The body of Hercules is made up of four stars which make up the ‘Keystone asterism’; these are Pi, Eta, Zeta and Epsilon Herculis. These stars are all 4th magnitude stars, so can be seen with the naked eye. Zeta represents the right hip, Eta the right shoulder with Messier 13 between them. Messier 13 is a very famous globular cluster, discovered by Sir Edmund Halley in 1714 and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764. It is a very dense star cluster composed of hundreds and thousands of stars which lie 25,000 light years away and can be seen easily in most telescopes and binoculars with its magnitude of 5.8.

Messier 92 is another globular cluster only smaller in size and a little dimmer at magnitude 6.4. If you make a triangle with stars Eta and Pi, you will find Messier 92 at the tip of the triangle, at approximately the same distance. Discovered in 1777 by Johann Bode, Messier 92 was noted by Charles Messier in 1781 and added as a part of his catalogue. The cluster lies around 26,700 light years from us and is easily seen with a telescope of any size.

The Planets:
Mercury is in the western evening sky but is very dim, as the light side of the planet is now facing the Sun.
Saturn rises first in the early morning sky at around 4am, followed by Mars Jupiter and Venus at around 4.45am, just before the Sun rises. Uranus is too close to the Sun to be seen and Neptune is situated between Jupiter and Mars in the daylight, so can’t be seen. However, all four planets can be seen now in the morning sky around 4.30 am, just before the Sun rises.

Moon phases for this month:
Full Moon 16th May; last half 22nd May; New Moon 30th May; and First Half 7th June.

John Parratt.

Warning: never look at the Sun directly, with any instrument, as the heat from the sun will permanently damage your eye(s).

Constellation map credit: International Astronomical Union (IAU)

This month's Stargazer's Buzz podcast is set to release on Friday 15th April at 7pm GMT. A perfect listen to set you up...
14/04/2022

This month's Stargazer's Buzz podcast is set to release on Friday 15th April at 7pm GMT. A perfect listen to set you up for a weekend of Easter stargazing!
Find us at Anchor FM, Spotify and Amazon Music - links below.
https://anchor.fm/x7mediauk/episodes/Stargazers-Buzz---At-The-End-Of-A-Bright-Cold-Day-In-April-April-2022-e1h6q9o
https://open.spotify.com/show/4UUuoMGxYEhwhs07bcjotU
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a4723d22-8199-41d7-943e-7cb8017967f8/x7-media-productions-presents

A new media enterprise producing mostly home-grown projects at present.

29/03/2022

The Night sky for April

We are now in spring as the clock’s have gone forward by an hour, which means that the days will be getting longer and the nights shorter, so for an amateur astronomer like my self isn’t so good it means less time at the telescope observing or imaging.

This month’s constellation is one of my favorite’s because there are so many galaxies of all sorts, at the moment the constellation is in the eastern night sky to the left of Gemini and Cancer, it has a very distinctive shape of a lion and you can see the shape with the naked eye, there are 3 main stars to this constellation and they are ‘Regulus’ the front paw, it lies 79 light years from us and is known as a ‘spectroscopic binary which is 4 stars in 2 pairs in orbit around each other, ‘Denebola’ the tail is 75% the mass of the Sun and 15 times as bright, it lies around 36 light years from us and ‘Algieba’ the neck, Regulus is the brightest star at a magnitude of 1.35 all the other stars are around 2 to 3 magnitude, I will explain about magnitude later.
The head and front raw of Leo looks like a back to front question mark, this is what’s called an asterism (an ancient name for picture), as I have written the are many galaxies in this constellation, under the belly Messier 95 and 96 face on spiral galaxies with M105 above them, and just below Chertan (the hip star) the famous Leo galaxy triplet Messier 65 , 66 and NGC 3628 ( the Hamburger Galaxy) these are all edge on galaxies, NGC means (New General Catalogue).

Magnitude: around the 2 century B.C ancient Greek astronomers wrote down the difference in brightness of various stars, from the brightest to the dimmest that they at the time could see with the naked eye, Hiparchus was one such astronomer, with the naked eye we can see down to magnitude 6 , the Sun is apparent magnitude -27, the Moon (full) is -13, Venus (at Max) -5 and Sirius in Canis Major -1, apparent magnitude means the object that you are looking at from the Earths surface and the amount of light lost caused by dust on its journey, this is an easy way to explain it

The Planets:
Mercury: rises in the early morning sky but is very close to the Sun to see
Venus: can be seen in the early morning sky just before the sun rises, very bright around half phase can be seen with binoculars or small telescope.
Mars: can also be seen in the early morning sky to the right of Venus.
Jupiter: can’t be seen
Saturn: is also I the morning sky a little to the right and slightly high, a yellowish colour.
Uranus: cannot be seen
Neptune: cannot be seen

Moon phases:
New Moon April 1st, First half moon 9th, full moon 16th, last half 23rd.

John Parratt.

Warning never look at the Sun directly with any instrument, as the heat from the sun will permanently damage your eye .

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