The Night Sky Guy

Tonight: Moon Meets Mars’ Rival

Check out a real pretty celestial get together in the evening sky tonight, Tuesday, about a half hour after sunset. By that time the sky will start to become dark enough to reveal the orange-hued star Antares next to the crescent Moon . Lying more than 600 light years from Earth, Antares is the lead star in the constellation Scorpius and it’s name literally means – Anti-Mars – given to it by ancient Greek astronomers because it reminded them of the Red Planet in the sky. Check out this spectacular pairing for yourself int he southern sky tonight.

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Planet Star Sky Show

Venus Pairs up with Bright Star; Click to enlarge

Friday through Sunday evening check out a close encounter between planet Venus and one of the brightest stars in the heavens.

Face towards the western horizon after sunset and look for the brightest star-like object about a third way up the sky. That is Venus – also known as the evening star. Once dusk sets in and it gets dark enough look just underneath Venus and you should see a fainter star pop out- Regulus. As an added bonus check out the planets Mars and Saturn too. The three planets are lined up like a row of ducks – quite a sight too!

By Saturday evening Venus-Regulus will be their closest to each other – only 1 degree apart – that is equal to the width of your finger held out at arms length.  If you keep watch into Sunday and Monday you will notice Venus moving off towards the southwest – that is the actual motion of Venus in its orbit you can watch happening right before your eyes.

The lead member in the constellation Leo- the lion, Regulus marks the heart of the lion and lies 78 light years away. A hot blue-white star, it is about 3.5 times larger than our Sun and is a young teenager when it comes to star lifetimes at 300 million years old.

It is about 150 times fainter in the sky right now than Venus, yet it is still the 19th brightest star in the entire sky.

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Double Star Show Tonight

If you have clear skies tonight then check out a really beautiful pairing of the planet Mars with Regulus, the lead star in the constellation Leo. What will make this event particularly neat to see is the contrasting colour between the orange-hued planet and the white star. The pair will be separated by less than a degree – 2 full moon disks apart.

Mars and Regulus are in close conjunction Sunday night

Don’t  forget you can always get late-breaking stargazing news anytime by following me on Twitter and Facebook, or get  email alerts sent directly to your inbox

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Star Gobbles Planet

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga. The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its Sun-like star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter’s radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.  “We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system,” says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

Check out this short video interview with astronomer discussing discovery of a star which is devouring one of its orbiting planets.

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Moon Near Lion’s Heart

Face the southern horizon tonight and look for the Moon pairing up with the lead star in the constellation Leo, the lion. Also if you look carefully you may notice that the Moon is also sandwiched between two  bright star-like objects – planets Mars and Saturn – both a bit of  a distance away from Luna but still a pretty show.

Friday night: Moon sits under 78 light year distant Regulus

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Happy 20th Hubble!

As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit, NASA is celebrating Hubble’s journey of exploration with a stunning new picture.

Huuble image of small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Click image to enlarge

NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo (see above) of a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking.

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory was launched April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. Over the years, Hubble has suffered broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and the cancellation of a planned shuttle servicing mission. But the ingenuity and dedication of Hubble scientists, engineers and NASA astronauts allowed the observatory to rebound and thrive. The telescope’s crisp vision continues to challenge scientists and the public with new discoveries and evocative images.

“Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Last year’s space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society.”

Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to take an interactive journey with Hubble by visiting http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Hubble20/ .  They can also visit http://www.hubblesite.org to share the ways the telescope has affected them.  Follow the “Messages to Hubble” link to send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, or send a cell phone text message.  Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s science data. For those who use Twitter, you can follow @HubbleTelescope or post tweets using the Twitter hashtag #hst20.

Here is a video zoom in on the photo’s location in the night sky. Very cool, check it out !

- adapted from NASA News announcement

Check out more detailed close-ups of this milestone image and more in-depth info on how it was taken on NASA’s webpage.

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Mars Buzzes Beehive

Mars and Beehive cluster in Cancer tonight; click image to enlarge

Over the next week or so check out the planet Mars as it positinos itself next to the beautiful Beehive cluster (M44). The pair will easily fit inside the view of an average pair of binoculars. Both call the constellation Cancer – the crab – their home and are easy to track down in the southwest these nights. While Mars looks like a bright orange coloured star to the naked eye -thanks to the planets  iron oxide rich deserts – surface details can only be seen under high magnification in medium sized telescopes. The Beehive cluster however can be glimpsed easily from a dark sky location without optical aid, but really looks like a swarm of bees when you magnify the 500 light year distant cluster even a little. The cosmic odd couple are now only separated by about 1.5 degrees – equal to 3 full Moon disks. By Wednesday and Thursday nights the Moon will join in on the fun and pass just underneath them;  making for a pretty show.

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Moon with Cluster Tonight

Moon and star cluster tonight; click image to enlarge

Check out the Moon late tonight paired up with the bright cluster M35. Both will be in the constellation Gemini-located at the twin’s feet. While the cluster is visible to the naked-eye from a dark sky, a pair of binoculars will really bring out the details in the 2,800 light year distant cluster nicely, especially from a light polluted suburban backyard. This open star cluster consists of several hundred stars and measures about 24 light years across. In our Earthly skies it takes up about the same chunk of sky as the full Moon does. M35 is one of the eternal favourite targets of beginner stargazers looking for deep sky treasures.

Best time to look for the cluster would be after local 9  pm, before which the sky will be to bright to make out details . Remember that low magnification is all you need when using a telescope to get the whole cluster in  your field of view.

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Stunning New Orion Photo

Astronomers have their eyes on a hot group of young stars, watching their every move like the paparazzi. A new infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the bustling star-making colony of the Orion nebula, situated in the hunter’s sword of the famous constellation. Like Hollywood starlets, the cosmic orbs don’t always shine their brightest, but vary over time. Spitzer is watching the stellar show, helping scientists learn more about why the stars change, and to what degree planet formation might play a role.

Orion's Stellar Nursery; Click image to enlarge; Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“This is an exploratory project. Nobody has done this before at a wavelength sensitive to the heat from dust circling around so many stars,” said John Stauffer, the principal investigator of the research at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “We are seeing a lot of variation, which may be a result of clumps or warped structures in the planet-forming disks.”

The new image was taken after Spitzer ran out of its coolant in May 2009, beginning its extended “warm” mission. The coolant was needed to chill the instruments, but the two shortest-wavelength infrared channels still work normally at the new, warmer temperature of 30 Kelvin (minus 406 Fahrenheit). In this new phase of the mission, Spitzer is able to spend more time on projects that cover a lot of sky and require longer observation times.

One such project is the “Young Stellar Object ariability” program, in which Spitzer looks repeatedly at the same patch of the Orion nebula, monitoring the same set of about 1,500 variable stars over time. It has already taken about 80 pictures of the region over 40 days. A second set of observations will be made in fall 2010. The region’s twinkling stars are about one million years old – this might invoke thoughts of wrinkle cream to a movie star, but in the cosmos, it is quite young. Our middle-aged sun is 4.6 billion years old.

Young stars are fickle, with brightness levels that change more than those of adult, sun-like stars. They also spin around faster. One reason for the ups and downs in brightness is the existence of cold spots on their surfaces. Cold spots are the opposite of “age spots” – the younger the star, the more it has. The cold spots come and go as a star whips around, changing the amount of light that reaches our telescopes.

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Moon meets Scorpion’s Heart

Moon and Mars' Rival Meet Sunday morning; click image to enlarge

Late night owls or early birds there is a pretty pairing of the last quarter Moon and the brilliant orange-coloured star Antares in the early Sunday (Mar.7) morning  sky. The pair will rise in the east after 2 am and will travel across the high southern sky together until they reach their closest point to each other just before dawn -around 6 am when the pair will only be separated by 1.3 degrees – about 3 full moon disks apart. Both objects will be in the constellation Scorpius which is one of the favourite summertime targets for stargazers when it dominates the southern evening skies.

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