Astronomers working at NASA’s Infrared Observatory at Mauna Kea in Hawaii have announced an exciting new ability to identify molecules in the atmosphere of planets around distant stars using small, ground-based observatories. The new method used a spectrograph to isolate the unique light signatures generated by carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere around planet HD189733b located around the star HD 98505 in the Constellation Vulpecula. Spectrographs have been used to detect molecules in the atmospheres of dozens of exoplanets, but a new calibration method developed by the research team has allowed for extremely sensitive atmospheric characterization research to be conducted using Earth-based facilities. The research is extremely promising since the Mauna Kea Observatory ranks as #40 among ground based telescopes which mean that larger and more precise scopes should be able to detect compounds and characterize the atmosphere of exoplanets with greater efficiency and accuracy. Right now, a majority of planets orbiting other stars are Jupiter-like and orbit very close to their host stars. Using this new research method, astronomers hope to use larger telescopes to detect rocky, Earth-like planets.

HIP 98505 is a magnitude 7.65 orange-dwarf star located in the Constellation Vulpecula about two degrees from 13 Vulpeculae. If you would like to see the star for yourself, it rises at 0425 EST in the east-northeast sky and travels about ninety degrees before sunrise at 0615 EST. I recommend a medium to large telescope and would begin looking for this star without a filter.

Image Credit: Starry Night Professional

You may remember my entry last week about Mars and how good it would look in a telescope as it approached its opposition with Earth on January 29. Well, opposition has come and gone, but things are about to get a little more interesting. Tonight and tomorrow night (Feb 1) offer a special treat for those astronomers that are willing to carry their equipment back out into the frigid winter temperatures. Mars and The Beehive Cluster (M44) will be within 4 degrees of each other as they rise together in eastern sky after 1830 EST. The Beehive is a magnitude 4.00 open cluster of stars in the Constellation Cancer and should be relatively easy to see with a small to moderate sized telescope.

Imagine that you live on a distant planet in the Alpha Centauri star system and you have decided to spend the evening watching the suns set. Yes, I said suns. It is late in the evening and the twin suns that dominate your sky are slowly making their way toward the horizon. Your face catches a gentle rush of wind as Centauri A and Centauri B begin to disappear behind the curve of your home world. The enchanting spectacle is short lived, but extremely common among worlds orbiting G-class stars. The two suns disappear beneath the horizon and ultimately give way to a sea of glistening stars. One of those stars…is our home…

That star, our Sun, is an unbound G-class star—a lonely outcast. Fortunately it did not take years of psychotherapy and a library of self-help books for astronomers to realize it. Observations of distant star systems such as Alpha Centauri have helped us understand that most G-class stars are binary—meaning that they are part of an orbiting pair—each star orbits the other just as the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun. Centauri A and Centauri B are gravitationally linked to each other just as are a majority of the G-class stars in our galaxy. Why are we so special? Where is our companion star? Unfortunately, we do not have one. Our Sun is alone and this is a very valuable thing for us to understand.

Astronomers used to believe that a majority of stars were gravitationally linked. That line of thinking has changed in the last few years as we have learned that over half of the stars in our own galaxy are not gravitationally bound to other stars. That is because a majority of those are stars M-class which tend to be less massive than our own. The stars with higher masses such as our Sun often form in darker clouds of matter where it is theorized that their cores are more susceptible to fragmentation. A prime example of a star formation region where this may take place is the Eagle Nebula. Imagine a new, high-mass star has formed inside the nebula but its core is unstable and fragments during formation. The two fragments then gather enough matter between the two of them to form separate, but gravitationally bound stars.

Another theory is that all stars are born as binary systems and are torn apart after their formation. This could be from passing too close to a black hole or being caught in the gravitational pull of other stars. Whatever the answer is, the fact remains that our star is unique among its G-class brothers and the fact that it is a single system adds another item to the list of reasons that our place in the universe is precious.

Some interesting facts…

- 70% of stars are single star systems/30% are multiple star systems
- G-class stars (i.e. our Sun) only make up 7% of our galactic star catalogue

There are many fascinating regions of space that are forming new stars. These can be seen with a small to moderate sized telescope. Two of the most visible are The Great Nebula in Orion (Messier 42) and The Eagle Nebula (Messier 16).

There are just a couple of days left until the Christmas holiday and my vacation, so far, has been plagued by overcast skies and relentless snowfall. If the weather continues to be as nasty as it has been for the last few days then there is a good chance that I will not be able to take a scope out at all this week. Fortunately, there are still many parts of the country that will celebrate the holidays with clear skies and I want to take this opportunity to talk about a wonderful astronomy target that can help get you into the holiday spirit: the Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264).

The Christmas Tree Cluster is a faint open cluster in the Constellation Monoceros (Greek for Unicorn) near the celestial equator. It is part of a larger celestial region known as NGC 2264 that includes the cluster itself and the magnificent Hubble Space Telescope target called the Cone Nebula. The region gets its named from the arrangement of the 30+ stars that form an almost perfect outline of a Douglas Fir tree. NGC 2264 rises around 1930hrs EST in the eastern sky and is located 11 degrees southwest of the bright star Betelgeuse in Orion. You do not need a large telescope to see this beautiful group of stars as it travels across the heavens. A small (at least 3” reflector/refractor recommended) to medium sized scope will be enough to give a breathtaking view. It was discovered by the famous astronomer William Herschel in 1785.

The nightShifted Astronomy Facebook Group will debut after the new year along with more regular posts. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The old saying goes: there’s no place like home. Thanks to Alex Mellinger of Central Michigan University, we now have one of the most detailed photos ever taken of our own galaxy. The photo is a compilation of 3,000 individual frames taken over 22 months from a number of locations around the world. The result is a truly breathtaking work of photographic genius. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…our home.

Image Credit: Alex Mellinger

Before I get started on this post, there are new updates from the Mount Wilson Observatory: the fires have passed and the observatory is safe. Fire crews pulled off an amazing feat by control-burning the nearby shrubbery and saving both the observatory and a communications hub used by emergency services throughout the area. Big kudos to the emergency crews that are working through the night to fight the fires. An important part of astronomical history was saved due to their diligence. With that in mind, I promise that tonight’s post is less of an angry, incoherent rant than last night’s.

For anyone who has ever been to a dark sky site and taken a look at a so-called “faint fuzzy”, you’ve probably seen a member of the New General Catalog (NGC) or Index Catalog (IC) list of astronomical objects. The NGC and IC are just a fancy way of cataloging deep space objects much like books are catalogued in a library or DVDs in a video store. Some of the more common star-party NGC objects are the Cat’s Eye Nebula and the Blue Snowball Nebula. There are also a [very] large number of galaxies with NGC and IC designations that you may have been privileged to see. These objects are usually the deep space targets that professional astronomers probe with their telescopes and cameras for years in search of answers to some of the universe’s oldest questions. They also make fantastic challenge targets for advancing amateur astronomers.

Now, thanks to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and its Wide Field Camera, astrophotographers have taken a new image of the distant galaxy NGC 4945 in the Constellation Centaurus. It is a barred spiral galaxy which many astronomers believe looks very similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy. The picture is very cool although NGC 4945 has been imaged several times before by professional and amateur astronomers. From our perspective, the spiral galaxy appears as a cigar-shaped structure similar to the Cigar Galaxy in Canis Major. Spectrographic analysis of the galaxy’s light emissions have shown that it contains a supermassive black hole at its core just like our own galaxy, but with one exception…it has an active core as opposed to the Milky Way’s inactive core. What does that mean? It means that when many of these black holes reach a size similar to the one at the center of our galaxy, it no longer actively feeds on the surrounding cosmic matter. The core of NGC 4945 is emitting enough energy to indicate that its central black hole is actively feeding and that the galaxy is filled with intense clusters of forming stars.

Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are out of luck for seeing NGC 4945 with our own telescopes. It rises midday and sets well before the Sun is out of the sky. Southern Hemisphere astronomers can easily find the 9.5 magnitude galaxy in the Constellation Centaurus.

Image Credit: ESO/NASA

I’m a few days late getting to this story, but you’ll have to bear with me as I’m still getting caught up on all the space and astronomy news since my move to Ohio. NASA’s amazing Spitzer Space Telescope recently detected the remnants of a collision of two planetary bodies around a small star called HD 172555 in the Constellation Pavo. Astronomers estimate that the collision occurred a few thousand years ago between an object the size of Mercury and another roughly the size of the Moon. Spitzer was able to detect the remnants of the two worlds and pockets of refrozen lava scattered across the star system. The force of such an impact would be so strong that it would literally melt the surface of these two colliding bodies. The resulting destruction would be beyond anything that our race has ever experienced.

Detection of the particles was conducted using a spectrograph to detect the different chemical light fingerprints left behind by the collision. This wave chart shows what scientists used to detect the remnants of the collision. It may be difficult for a layman (including myself) to fully comprehend the data at hand, but it is relatively easy to get a general idea of how the scientists researching this star system were able to detect the collision. Each chemical compound leaves a different fingerprint which the telescope can separate from other compounds. Melted glass, lava, and other chemicals left floating in space after the collision effect the light transmission from HD 172555 to our own solar system and were ultimately detected by Spitzer.

An exoplanet collision such as the one around HD 172555 is extremely interesting because it gives us a window into the history of our own planet. In the accretion disc theory, our solar system’s history is littered with massive collisions such as the one around HD 172555. These collisions played an important role in the formation of the planets in our solar system. In fact, it is widely believed that a Mars-sized object collided with and was vaporized by a primordial version of our own planet. The resulting collision created a cloud of dust that eventually condensed and became our Moon. Unfortunately, the Constellation Pavo is only visible to people in the Southern Hemisphere, so don’t expect to get out your telescope in Ohio or Texas and see this curious star. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, HD 172555 is located very close to Delta Pavonis.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Discovering some new, distant object hidden in the vast expanse of outer space has been a dream of mine for a long time. I can only imagine what it would be like to be the first human being to lay eyes on a new planetary nebulae or a new comet. Some amateur astronomers have the discovery of dozens of objects credited to their names while most are like me: not one discovery to my name. We can now add a new object to the list of those discovered by amateur astronomers: the Soap Bubble Nebula in Cygnus. This is a fantastic discovery and I was disappointed to see that Fox News appears to be the only major news source that has covered the nebula’s discovery. New Scientist, which always does a wonderful job of covering space-related discoveries, ran this piece in July. It is not every day that a new nebula is discovered, and this is something I feel should have gotten a little more attention.

Officially designated PN G75.5+1.7, the Soap Bubble Nebula or “Cygnus Bubble” (pictured above) was discovered by professional astronomer Dave Jurasevich at Mount Wilson Observatory and two amateur astronomers: Mel Helm and Keith Quattrocchi. You can see from the photo that it is almost a perfectly symmetrical sphere and really does look like a soap bubble. It is nestled in the heart of a beautiful diffuse nebula in the Constellation Cygnus not far from the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888 … pictured right). The nebula’s location and its apparent magnitude are what scientists believe contributed to it going unseen for so long. The Crescent Nebula is a beautiful cloud formation and often steals the show in this region of the sky. I tried to browse through several photos of the nebula and surrounding diffuse nebula regions for the new bubble, but ultimately came up empty.

The Constellation Cygnus, or “The Swan” is famous for being home to the bright star Deneb as well as the North American Nebula (NGC 7000), the Pelican Nebula (IC 5067), and the Crescent Nebula. It is high in the eastern sky just after sunset. You won’t be able to view the Soap Bubble Nebula with a backyard telescope, but dark skies and a narrow band filter can help you spot the Crescent Nebula.

Image Credit: T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF, NASA

Planetary nebulae such as the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), Ring Nebula (M57), and the Blue Snowball (NGC 7662) are popular targets for amateur astronomers at public star parties. This is often because bringing out small details in deep space objects like distant galaxies and dark nebulae can be very difficult unless you’re using a large aperture telescope or doing astrophotography. Planetary nebulae are great targets for amateurs, but they’re not immune to challenges as they can be difficult to find because they look comparable to bright stars at lower magnifications. When I show a target such as NGC 7662 to a star party visitor I try to explain as much of the science behind the object as I can. I believed that it’s one thing to see an object and be wowed by its size, beauty, distance, or other attributes, but I think that it helps to invoke a deeper emotional response and helps people to connect more with the universe if they understand the natural processes that led to the object’s creation. In the case of planetary nebulae, the process is relatively simple. These amazing formations are clouds of gas that are the remains of dead stars. In essence, they are the ghosts of solar systems that have come and gone.

Until now, only planetary nebulae that have formed from the remains of stars with masses comparable to our Sun or smaller have been discovered by astronomers. The lack of similar nebulae around stars with heavier masses created a conundrum for researchers. If these nebulae are the remains of expelled gas from dying stars then where are the planetary nebulae around the larger mass stars? Scientists working on the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) in Australia have discovered 15 “super” planetary nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds that may answer that question. Typical planetary nebulae form around stars that are 0.3-1.0 times the mass of our Sun, but some of these new discoveries are estimated to contain 2.3 times our Sun’s mass! The MCELS researchers were so shocked by the discovery that they actually held back their findings for three years to ensure that the objects were in fact, planetary nebulae.

You won’t be seeing these super planetary nebulae on display at your local star party, but that’s not a reason to worry! There are a variety of planetary nebulae that amateurs can find with small telescopes. I’ve seen the Cats Eye Nebula and the Blue Snowball repeatedly in my Orion 3″ refractor. If you are just starting off and want to see some impressive planetary nebulae, then I recommend starting with easy targets such as the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and the Helix Nebula in Aquarius. The Ring Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 9.6 and is almost straight up in the southeastern sky after sundown. The Helix Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 6.5 and is above the horizon in the Southeast after 11:00 p.m. eastern standard time.

Image Credit: NASA/The Hubble Space Telescope

Galactic Cluster PKS 0745-191 in X-Ray
Image Credit: NASA/ISAS/Suzaku/M. George, et al.

Wow! Check out this x-ray image of galaxy cluster PKS 0745-191 taken by the Suzaku Observatory. It’s the first x-ray image of a galactic cluster ever taken and it gives us an amazing new view of the some of the universe’s largest structures.

From Space.com…

By looking at a cluster in X-rays, astronomers can measure the temperature and density of the gas, which provides clues about the gas pressure and total mass of the cluster. Astronomers expect that the gas in the inner part of a galaxy cluster has settled into a “relaxed” state in equilibrium with the cluster’s gravity. This means that the hottest, densest gas lies near the cluster’s center, and temperatures and densities steadily decline at greater distances.

The peak (measured) temperature in this galactic cluster is about 164 million degrees Fahrenheit! With that in mind, I would recommend that anyone planning an extended stay in this region of space bring an additional bottle of sunscreen. X-Rays are important because they expose an invisible spectrum of light that lets astronomers see how these massive collection of galaxies evolve and help to bring us closer to fully understanding the mechanics of our universe.