The Night Sky Guy

Spy the Space Station

All this weekend and throughout next week try and grab the next clear night and head outside to watch the International Space Station zip across your skies above. If you are lucky you may even be able to catch it twice in one night! This is one skywatching event you don’t need binoculars or telescopes to enjoy and you can even see it from light polluted city centres.  If you have never seen a satellite before this will be a great opportunity because the orbiting labs trajectory will take it up very high in the sky making it easy to see above buildings and trees. Also making it a grand sight is that construction is so near completion that the station is about as big as a football field so that it is very reflective to sunlight, making it superbright in the sky. Just look for a bright white star glide across the starry sky in a out 2 to 4 minutes. Remember that this satellite – with a crew of 6 astronauts - is traveling about 27,000 km per hour at 400 km above our heads.  It takes it only 90 minutes to make once orbit around our planet. When and where to watch?

Click image to enlarge

Click on the Space Station icon on the right-hand sidebar or go to my Sky Tonight page and click on your city of choice or choose Elsewhere, and get your customized viewing table.  For an explanation of how to read your viewing timetable chart click on the image to the left. It is a sample chart for Toronto that gives you a brief rundown on what the main sections mean. Just click on the Space Station Icon on the right-sidebar and click on you city listed or click elsewhere. The ISS will be best placed for anyone living in North America so enjoy the show!

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Andromeda’s Inner Beauty

One of the most celebrated targets for backyard astronomers is seen in a whole new way, thanks to a recently launched NASA space telescope. The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full in this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky.

Andromeda neighbour; Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

WISE used all four of its infrared detectors to capture this picture (3.4- and 4.6-micron light is colored blue; 12-micron light is green; and 22-micron light is red). Blue highlights mature stars, while yellow and red show dust heated by newborn, massive stars.

Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, and is located 2.5 million light-years from our sun. It is close enough for telescopes to spy the details of its ringed arms of new stars and hazy blue backbone of older stars. Also seen in the mosaic are two satellite galaxies, known as M32, located just a bit above Andromeda to the left of center, and the fuzzy blue M110, located below the center of the great spiral arms. These satellites are the largest of several that are gravitationally bound to Andromeda.

The Andromeda galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains more stars, but the Milky Way is thought to perhaps have more mass due to its larger proportion of a mysterious substance called dark matter. Both galaxies belong to our so-called Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies, most of which are tiny dwarf systems. In its quest to map the whole sky, WISE will capture the entire Local Group.

-adapted from a NASA news announcement

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Space Station Flyby

The International Space Station passed over my house this evening and I managed to snap a couple of photos of it as it zipped along at 27,000 km per hour.

ISS flying over western evening sky of Montreal; Bright star underneath station trail is the summer star Vega; Canon 450D, F/5.6, 18mm, 20 second exposure; click image to enlarge

 The closeup photo below highlights the difference between what the flightpaths of the space station and a plane looks like to the unaided eye. It’s pretty easy to distinguish the two in the sky.

Compare the steady light of ISS with the multicolored, blinking lights of a plane; click image to enlarge

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Space Station Flyby Alert

All this weekend and throughout next week try and grab the next clear night and head outside to watch the International Space Station zip across your skies above. If you are lucky you may even be able to catch it twice in one night! This is one skywatching event you don’t need binoculars or telescopes to enjoy. If you have never seen it before this will be a great opportunity because the orbiting labs trajectory will take it up very high in the sky making it easy to see above buildings and trees. Also making it a grand sight is that construction is so near completion that the station is about as big as a football field so that it is very reflective to sunlight, making it superbright in the sky. Just look for abright white star glide across the starry sky in a out 2 to 4 minutes. Remeber that this satellite – with a crew of 6 astronauts - is traveling about 27,000 km per hour at 400 km above our heads.  It takes it only 90 minutes to make once orbit around our planet. When and where to watch?

Click on image to enlarge

Click on the Space Station icon on the right-hand sidebar or go to my Sky Tonight page and click on your city of choice or choose Elsewhere, and get your customized viewing table.  For an explanation of how to read your viewing timetable chart click on the image to the left. It is a sample chart for Toronto that gives you a brief rundown on what the main sections mean. Just click on the Space Station Icon on the right-sidebar and click on you city listed or click elsewhere. The ISS will be best place for anyone living in North America so enjoy the show!

What will it look like? Check out a photo I took late last fall of the station trailing above my suburban driveway.

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Deepest View of Universe Ever

The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified, having formed between only 600-900 million years after the Big Bang.

Hubble's Deepest View of Universe Unveils Never-Before-Seen Galaxies; Click Image to Enlarge

In 2004, Hubble created the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest visible-light image of the Universe, and now, with its brand-new camera, Hubble is seeing even farther. This image was taken in the same region as the visible HUDF, but is taken at longer wavelengths. Hubble’s newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) collects light from near-infrared wavelengths and therefore looks even farther back towards the Big Bang, because the light from hot young stars in these very distant galaxies is stretched out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum into near-infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe. This new deep view also provides insights into how galaxies grew in their formative years early in the Universe’s history.

 The photo was taken with the new WFC3/infrared camera on Hubble in late August 2009, during a total of four days of pointing for 173 000 seconds of total exposure time. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye and therefore does not have colors that can be perceived. The faintest objects are about one billion times fainter than the dimmest visible objects seen with the naked eye.

Wide-Angle Photo of where in the sky Hubble Spied these distant galaxies.

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See Shuttle and Station Part Ways

Got clear skies? Then step outside around suppertime and get your last chance to see the shuttle Atlantis and International Space Station docked together above your backyard. The pair together make for an exceptionally bright star-like object gliding across the early evening skies. Because of the large metallic surface area reflecting the sunlight, skywatchers even from brightly lit downtown neighbourhoods can get to spot this famous target.

The orbiter with its 7 crewmembers is scheduled to undock from the station tomorrow, Wednesday morning at 4:53 am EST after which there will be an opportunity to see the two fly in tandem across the overhead evening sky.Atlantis is scheuled to land on Friday morning.

Find your viewing times on my Sky Tonight page.

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Station-Shuttle Flybys

Tonight and over the next few nights are great opportunities to see the International Space Station with the space shuttle docked fly over your backyard. The pair together look like a superbright star zipping across the heavens. In fact it should look like the brightest object in the night sky after only the moon!  Generally the passes will last a couple of minutes and it will appear like an unblinking, bright, white star gliding across the sky  Exact viewing times and directions of where you will see the station in the sky depends on your location – they are different for each city or town.

So best thing to do is click on the Space Station icon on the right-hand sidebar or go to my Sky Tonight page and click on your city of choice or choose Elsewhere, and get your customized viewing table.

For an explanation of how to read your viewing timetable chart click on the image to the left. It is a sample chart for Toronto that gives you a brief rundown on what the main sections mean. If you have never seen the station now is a good time to find it because it will be so bright in the sky. The shuttle undocks and lands on November 25th.

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Space Station Superbright

Wednesday evening  at 5:48 pm I got lucky with clear skies and photographed the International Space Station as it flew nearly straight over my Montreal suburb driveway, travelling at 27,000 km per hour. It was as bright as planet Venus sometimes gets and took about 2 minutes to cross the sky from west to east. There are plentyof more sighting opportunities all week long. Check out the orbiting lab yourself. Click on the ‘Space Station’ banner on the right-side column to get your viewing times.

ISS tracks across western sky; Click image to enlarge

ISS travels thru Cygnus constellation; click to enlarge

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Space Station Flybys

Canon 450D, f/4.5, ISO 800, 45 sec.; click image to enlarge

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Bright Space Station Flyovers

Here is a great reason to get up early the next few days! Great opportunities to spot the space station. Every few weeks the football field sized satelliie becomes visible over North America either in evening or morning skies. Sometimes it is brighter than other times. The flyovers this upcoming week should be super bright – brighter even than planet Venus which is now blazing away in the eastern morning sky. You will have plenty of opportunity to catch the the orbiting laboratory. In fact there are two passes the International Space Station (ISS) is making each day, so there is plenty of chances to see it, even if you get clouded out for a morning or two.

click image to enlarge

Generally the passes will last a couple of minutes and it will appear like an unblinking, bright, white star gliding across the sky  Exact viewing times and directions of where you will see the station in the sky depends on your location – they are different for each city or town. So best thing to do is click on the Space Station icon on the right-hand sidebar or go to my Sky Tonight page and click on your city of choice or choose Elsewhere, and get your customized viewing table. For an explanation of how to read your viewing timetable chart click on the image to the left. It is a sample chart for Toronto that gives you a brief rundown on what the main sections mean. If you have never seen the station now is a good time to find it because it will be so bright in the sky.

Meteor Shower Alert: Orionids will start to kick in this weekend and peak on late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. Stay tuned for a viewer’s guide in the next few days.

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