Summer astronomy from home

Yesterday I did an interview with a writer who is working on an article for a regional travel magazine. Its editors have concluded that most folks aren’t so anxious to go anywhere right now given our situation with coronavirus and stay-at-home orders. They correctly note that astronomy is something that one can enjoy without venturing too far afield.

It’s true! The sky is everywhere. All you have to do is look up! There are lots of interesting things to see that don’t even require a telescope or binoculars. Here’s a quick look at just a few of the things headed our way this spring and summer.

Venus 

Venus is the queen of the evening hours these days and is high in the west at dusk. She’s flirting with the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, and will be closest to this gorgeous star cluster tomorrow, April 3. The Sun will set around 7:40 p.m. Pacific time. Give it until a little after eight for the Pleiades to appear, then they and Venus will hang out together until they all set a bit after 11 o’clock. If you have binoculars or a telescope take a closer look to spot the phase of Venus. It’s a pretty thin crescent right now. The Pleiades look great through binoculars, too!

Comet ATLAS 

Discovered in December, the comet ATLAS, so-named because it was first spotted by astronomers using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Hawaii, has some folks thinking it may become a highly visible naked-eye object, perhaps the best in 20 years. Comets can be pretty fickle, and such predictions are often the kiss of death. But it doesn’t cost anything to keep an eye out.

This article from EarthSky explains how to find ATLAS. If it’s going to be spectacular, that will happen later this month through most of May. Maybe.

Parade of planets 

Your view of Jupiter from your back yard won’t be
quite as great as the 2016 Hubble Space
Telescope photo. Credits: NASA, ESA, and
J. Nichols (University of Leicester)

Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are keeping pretty close company in the pre-dawn sky these days. You can spot all three low in the southeast after about 4:15 a.m. when Mars rises, the last of the trio to peek above the horizon. Mars will appear to move east of the others in the coming weeks and months, but Jupiter and Saturn will stay pretty close together all summer. They reach opposition on July 14 and July 20, respectively. Mars reaches opposition on October 13, and this year’s apparition of the Red Planet will be a good one. They aren’t great naked-eye targets, but Neptune will be at opposition on September 11 and Uranus will be opposite the Sun on Halloween.

Meteor showers 

The Perseid is probably the most well-known of the annual meteor showers. Maybe that’s because it’s pretty consistent and happens in the summer when folks don’t mind being outside in the evening. This year’s peak will occur around August 11-12. The last quarter Moon will brighten the sky somewhat at that time, making some of the dimmer meteors difficult or impossible to spot. While you can catch many of the brighter meteors even from light-polluted cities, the darker the sky you have, the better the show. The Lyrid meteor shower peaks around April 22 and the Eta Aquarids May 5. EarthSky has a full rundown of the year’s meteor showers.

Keep looking up!

Checking out JupiterMoons

Yesterday was a beautiful day in the Seattle area and the evening began mild and clear, so I decided to take a break from some work tasks, drag the telescope out to the deck, and have a few quick looks at Jupiter. It was also my first time to give a test drive to the new “JupiterMoons” iPhone app that I purchased from Sky & Telescope a couple of weeks ago.

The “Jupiter’s Moon” app for iPhone from Sky & Telescope
magazine shows you at a glance which of the planet’s Galilean
satellites is which, and also includes times for the day’s events
involving the moons and the Great Red Spot.

JupiterMoons doesn’t give away any secrets. You can get the same information from your favorite astronomy magazine or software package. In fact, S&T has Javascript utilities on its website that do the same things. But there are three advantages to the app that I can think of.

First, my iPhone is almost always in my pocket, so whenever I wonder what’s up with Jupiter the answer is handy. Second, on the app what you see is what you get. I always find those squiggly charts of Jupiter’s Galilean moons difficult to interpret, and usually have to take off my shoes to translate Universal Time into Pacific Standard. When you fire up JupiterMoons you get a snapshot of which moons are where right now and where you are. You can also look up times past and future. The view can be flipped or inverted to match the view in the gear with which you’re observing. Finally, the app is easy to read at night. There’s even a night mode that runs it in red light—not that we’re getting much in the way of night vision in our city backyards, but the feature may be important if you have a good, dark observing site.

A couple of other features are useful. Tap on the “events” button and you get a listing of the current day’s transits, eclipses, and occultations of the moons and their shadows, and transit times for the Great Red Spot as well. The “learn more” tab leads the user to some quick facts about Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Alas, there were no events going on during the short time I had for observing yesterday, save for the GRS being in view. But I was able to identify the moons, and JupiterMoons would have let me know if there was a double shadow transit or some other notable event coming up later in the night.

JupiterMoons is a great little app to enhance your impromptu viewing sessions. At $3 it’s a steal. It’s available for iPhone and iPad from the iTunes store.

Enjoying Jupiter through new eyes

After a couple of weeks of wild weather, including snow, ice storms, high wind, and heavy rain, the greater Seattle area is enjoying something most unusual: a clear, calm winter night.

Jupiter doesn't look quite like this through my backyard telescope,
but a Tele Vue Radian eyepiece is giving better views than
I've ever had before. Cassini snapped this one on its way to
Saturn in 2000. Photo: NASA.

The timing is both right on and a bit off for astronomy buffs in the area. At nightfall the Moon was pleasantly centered between Venus and Jupiter, making for a picture postcard view. However several area astronomy clubs have their monthly public star parties scheduled for Saturday evening, and the forecast is for the clouds to move back in after our brief respite from precipitation.

I took advantage of the clear night to haul my telescope out of the basement and take a look. I had a peek at the gibbous Venus, and looked at the crescent Moon for a bit. But I have been watching Jupiter for most of the evening. I find the clockwork of old Jove’s moons endlessly fascinating. Io was in transit across the giant planet’s disk between about 7 p.m. and 9:15. Io’s shadow is following about an hour and 15 minutes behind, and will complete its transit of Jupiter at around 10:30.

I’ve got to throw in a plug for a relatively new eyepiece in my case. Last year right after Christmas I used some gift cash (thanks, Mom!) to buy a 10mm Tele Vue Radian. Using it to look at Jupiter this evening made me feel as though the scales had fallen from my eyes and I was seeing the planet for the first time!

I have an 8-inch “Intelliscope” from Orion, and it’s pretty much as it came out of the box (though my aching neck convinced me to replace the straight-through finderscope with a right-angle model, and I added a Telrad finder, which is pretty useless from my West Seattle backyard observing location, given the few bright objects that can be seen through the thing.) My high-power eyepiece had always been the 10mm Sirius Plossl that came with the scope. It’s OK, but has minimal eye relief. I typically found that I got much better views from a 17mm Plossl and a 2x Barlow.

Then I sprung for the Radian. Wow. I got some eye-popping views of Saturn through it earlier this year, but looking at Jupiter with its detailed bands, zones, and clouds, the difference a top-quality eyepiece can make is readily apparent. Even in transit, Io was easy to spot. The Red Spot stood out clearly, and though seeing has not been all that transparent this evening, in moments of clarity I’ve seen detail on Jupiter tonight that I’ve never seen under the best of conditions before. The Radian set me back about $235.

By the way, Tele Vue has discontinued the 10mm Radian and some are speculating they’ll drop the line entirely in favor of the new Delos line that came out in the middle of last year. They have the same eye relief but a wider field of view. I’m really impressed with the Radian. I have one other Tele Vue eyepiece, a 24mm Panoptic, and it, too, is marvelous, offering tremendous, wide-field views. They’re on the pricey side, but well worth it for the quality views they deliver.

What are your favorite eyepieces?

Alas, as I’m wrapping up this post at about 11 p.m. Friday the clouds have indeed rolled in. I had planned to get back out there. I’m working on the Astronomical League Urban Observing program, and one of the last items I need to spot is NGC 3242—The Ghost of Jupiter. It’s a planetary nebula that’s only visible around here from about now until early spring. We don’t get enough clear nights this, or any, time of year. NGC 3242 transits a little after 2 a.m. Saturday. It looks like it will do so behind the clouds and the quest will have to wait for yet another night.

Let’s hope for some clearing for a peek at the Ghost of Jupiter, and for all of those clubs planning star parties for Saturday evening. Check our calendar for details about one near you.