The Night Sky Guy

Best Night Sky Photos of the Year

Photograph courtesy Zachary Grether, TWAN

The Fourth International Earth and Sky Photo Contest announced it’s winner this past week.  Founded by TWAN and the Dark Skies Awareness project, the annual contest invites photographers to submit their best shots of landscape astrophotography—pictures that showcase both the Earth and the sky—as well as images that capture the battle against light pollution.  Photographers from 45 countries submitted 685 entries to the contest this year and were judged in two categories: “Beauty of the Night Sky” and “Against the Lights.”

Check out all the stunning winners and runner-ups on my gallery at National Geographic News.

Bookmark

Hubble Spies a Cosmic Bauble

Hubble sees the ashes of a star gone supernova. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Claude Cornen)

The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an amazing image of a supernova remnant-  dubbed SNR 0519-  located in one of the Milky Way’s small satellite galaxies  150,000 light years from Earth.

Wispy shells of blood-red colored gas filaments appears to float peacefully in space however it marks the site of a cataclysmic event that occurred 600 years ago.

The shell of material we see in this image was once part of a white dwarf- an Earth-sized elderly star that may have looked a lot like our own sun in its younger days.  This stellar progenitor was in a close binary star system where gas from its neighboring star was gravitationally pulled onto the surface of the white dwarf.  Over time this gas accumulated and eventually detonated in a thermonuclear explosion that resulted in the beautiful deep-sky object that we see today .

As the years go by this gaseous envelope will continue to expand and ultimately, after many millennia, dissipate into the surrounding interstellar medium.

SNR 0519 is found within the southern constellation Dorado (the dolphin fish) within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – the fourth largest galaxy in our local collection of islands of stars known as the Local Group.

Bookmark

New Closeup Pic of Comet ISON

Hubble has taken its first close-up views of the much anticipated and potential ‘comet of the century’. On the night of April 10th, the space telescope snapped an image in visible light of Comet ISON while it was still at a whopping distance of 394 million miles from Earth (386 million miles from the Sun)- a bit closer than the orbit of Jupiter.

Check out the new image and read what Hubble has learned about this exciting, new comet at National Geographic News

Bookmark

Ancient Star Factory Breaks Records

A newfound primordial galaxy nearly 13 billion light-years away is breaking distance records and may unlock the secrets of how and when some of the most massive star factories were born in the early universe, according to a new study.

Using the infrared mapping capabilities of the European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope, a team of astronomers have spied the faraway light of a starburst galaxy—one that exhibits a high rate of star formation—from when the 14-billion-year-old universe was just 880 million years old.

Why is this cosmic discovery exciting the scientific community and how will it change our understanding of what the Universe was like when it was young? Read all the details at National Geographic News.

Bookmark

Night Sky Hits for April 2013

For skywatchers springtime traditionally brings quiet skies, but not this year. Two of the largest planets in the solar system, along with a meteor shower a couple of comets too highlight April nights.

While the Moon is definitely the brightest celestial object that will catch your eye, you can’t miss Jupiter- the next brightest sky object in the early evening.  The gas giant is so large that a 1000 Earth’s could easily fit inside and is covered eternally with highly reflective clouds, so despite it being more than 700 million km away, it shines like a super-bright star in our skies.

Look for Jupiter high in the west after sunset sitting in the winter constellation Taurus – the bull constellation. They will be setting by midnight at the beginning of April but will do so a bit earlier every night as the days go by. By May the giant planet will quickly become hidden by the glow of the sunset.

As a convenient guidepost a striking crescent Moon will pose next to Jupiter on April 14 – a beautiful photo op.

THe Moon and Jupiter get close on the night of April 14th. Credit: Starry Night Software

Don’t’ forget to train your binoculars or small telescope on Jupiter and you can also spy its four largest moons – looking like tiny stars – lined up on either side of the planet. Can’t see all four? That because each moon can go in front or behind Jupiter’s disk as they orbit. You can actually notice their movement over the course of just a few hours of observation.

As Jupiter begins to make its final cosmic bows, it’s time for Saturn to take centre stage. The ringed planet rises in the east in the early evening and will rise earlier and get brighter as it nears opposition on April 28- when Earth lines up with Saturn,  as both circle the Sun. Even a small telescope will reveal its magnificent rings. On April 25 the Full Moon will park itself below Saturn.

If skies are clear the night of the 21st and the moonless predawn hours of 22nd,  look up for the Lyrid meteor shower. Meteors will appear to radiate out from the east in the evening, and the south in the predawn sky. This small annual shower is expected to produce modest number of  shooting stars -  falling at rates of 15 to 20 per hour.

Finally, skywatchers can get their final views of comet Pan-STARRS after nightfall the first two weeks of April, as it slowly fades. Over the course of March the icy visitor has continued to get fainter but as compensation it is easier to spot with binoculars as it glides northward away from the sunset glow. It is plowing through the constellation Andromeda and heeding toward Cassiopeia and will become visible all night long as we near the end of April.

Bookmark

Look Up! Super Close Jupiter Moon Pairing

Skywatcher everywhere be on the look out for two of the brightest objects in the night sky heading towards a close encounter on Monday night.

The sky show begins after local nightfall on Monday the 21st when the waxing gibbous moon snuggles up to brilliant white Jupiter in the southeast. The sky show should be easily seen even in light polluted cities!

Get an observer’s guide to the best Jupiter – Moon conjunction visible until 2026 at National Geographic

Bookmark

Video: January Stargazing

Check out some of main events to watch for in January…awesome sights!

Bookmark

Video: Weekly Space News Interview

Check out some of the cool space news coming out this week I highlight on my weekly CTV News channel interview.

Bookmark

Diamond Planet Discovery

The universe just got a bit richer with the discovery of an apparent diamond-rich planet orbiting a nearby star.

Dubbed 55 Cancri e, the rocky world is only twice the size of Earth but has eight times its mass—classifying it as a “super Earth,” a new study says. First detected crossing in front of its parent star in 2011, the close-in planet orbits its star in only 18 hours. As a result, surface temperatures reach an uninhabitable 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit (2,150 degrees Celsius)—which, along with carbon, make perfect conditions for creating diamonds.

Read the rest of my Diamond world story and how researchers think this may change our understanding of how planets can form at National Geographic news.

Bookmark

Night Sky Hits for October 2012

As weather gets colder and nights longer October starry skies are ruled by the mythical winged-horse we know as Pegasus – considered the landmark of autumn stargazing.

Beginning its ascent in the northeastern sky as twilight fades, Pegasus ends up dominating the high southern sky late nights this month.  The winged steed is the seventh largest constellation in the entire sky and the easiest way to track it down even under West Island’s light polluted skies is to look for the distinctive “Great Square” on its side, made up of four brilliant stars. You’ll find however that the rest of the constellation is a little more of a challenge to pick out, needing either binoculars or an escape to dark skies away from city lights to really see all of its stars.

A large piece of celestial real estate, the Great Square has enough size to contain more than 30 full Moons side by side. Though each corner star is only moderately bright, they’re relatively easy to locate because there are no stars in this area of the sky that are as luminous.

If you are feeling a little more adventurous then try tracking down the cosmic ‘fly’ perched on the end of Pegasus’ nose.  What looks like a tiny, fuzzy patch of light through binoculars is in fact a globular cluster – a collection of tens of thousands of stars called M15 sitting 34,000 light years from us!

Great Square of Pegasus points the way to a distant globular cluster

Start your ‘fly’ hunt with the right corner star Markarb and hop from there along the dimmer set of stars marking the neck and head of the upside down horse.  Reaching the moderately bright Enif at the end of this chain of stars, use your binoculars to scan to its upper right until you spot the faint fuzzy ball of light of M15.  A telescope will really show it off a tight ball of stars lying just outside of our galaxy.

Meanwhile planet watchers get to see a slowly dimming Mars fight against the glow of the setting sun in the west.  Hunting down the Red Planet may be difficult these days but the waxing crescent moon will be joining it just after sunset on Oct.17 and Oct.18 in the low western horizon.

A much more dazzling sight for skywatchers will be Jupiter -rising in the east around 10 pm as the month opens and earlier every evening thereafter.  The largest planet in our solar system – 300 Earths could fit inside comfortably – sits within the constellation Taurus , between the horns of the Bull. Watch for the gas giant forming a pretty pair with the Moon on Oct.5 and then again on Halloween night.

Bookmark