07/21/2017 – Ephemeris – There’s an astronomy event tomorrow night

Ephemeris for Friday, July 21st. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 2 minutes, setting at 9:19, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:18. The Moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 5:28 tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow, Saturday, the 22nd, there, will be viewing of the summer starry skies at the Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory starting at 9 p.m. While starting before sunset, if it’s clear Jupiter should be spotted before 10 p.m. The planet Saturn and its rings will also be featured. By 10:30 the sky should be dark enough to spot some of the wonders among the stars, like star clusters, and nebulae that are the either the birth places of stars or the expelled remnants of dying stars. The Milky Way takes over the dark sky, it is its wonders that we see. The Observatory is located south of Traverse City on Birmley road. Take Garfield Road two traffic lights south of South Airport Road to turn right at Birmley Road.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Ephemeris Extra – Some easy summertime deep sky objects

The finder charts were created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).  This post is based on my article in the July 2017 Stellar Sentinel, the newsletter of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society.  It’s part of the Extras section for those receiving the emailed version.

What are Deep Sky Objects?  These are objects, other than individual stars, beyond the solar system generally visible in binoculars or telescopes rather than the naked eye such as galaxies, nebulae and star clusters.

The Great Hercules Globular Star Cluster, M13 is the finest globular star cluster in the northern hemisphere of the sky. It is visible from late spring to early autumn. Globular star clusters have populations of hundreds of thousands of stars. They date back to the origin of the Milky Way of ten or a bit more billion of years old. There are only about 150 of these that belong to the Milky Way Galaxy. M13 is visible in binoculars on the western side of the Keystone pattern of stars, about one-third the distance from the north star on that side to the south side. It takes a much larger telescope to see individual stars. The star cluster will be a large circular glow. M92 is another star cluster which is dimmer and will be quite a challenge to find.

The Ring Nebula, M57 is small and cannot be seen with the naked eye or with binoculars, but it is still reasonably easy to find. A nebula is a cloud of gas and/or dust. M57 is in the constellation of Lyra the harp, a constellation visible in summer and early autumn. Point the telescope’s finder about half way between the two southern stars of the parallelogram of stars that’s the harp’s body, Sulafat and Sheliak. Move the telescope in a small spiral enlarging the search pattern by half the field of view at a time. The Ring Nebula will appear a ghostly small circular glow. Once centered, more magnification may be used. The center will be darker than the edge. Inside is a very faint invisible star that blew out its outer layers of gas into a smoke ring near the end of its life.

The Southern Milky Way contains lots of star clusters and nebulae. The chart below can be used to find the many Messier objects. Or just sweep through this gold mine of objects with binoculars or a low power telescope, most of which are in the next spiral arm in toward the center of the Milky Way. As far as the symbols go, open dotted circles are open or galactic star clusters. Crossed circles are globular star clusters. Squares are nebulae. M8, the Lagoon nebula, and M16 the Eagle nebula also contain star clusters. M8 and its associated star cluster appear as a horizontal spash of light in binoculars. As far as popular names go: M11 is the Wild Duck Cluster, M17 is the Omega or Swan Nebula, and M20 is the Trifid Nebula.  An easy binocular star cluster is M7.

The Milky Way Overhead contains some notable deep sky objects. Note that the Milky Band splits here, though closer to the star Sadr in Cygnus than it shows here. The Dark expanse that runs through Aquila is called the Great Rift, and is caused by a cloud of dust and gas. Its edges can be probed with binoculars, especially in Aquila by watching star density drop off as one pans through the area. Don’t forget the blue and gold binary star Alberio. There’s another fainter blue and gold binary about a degree directly north of the Ring Nebula, M57. It’s 8^th magnitude. The unmarked planetary nebula just above the second ‘l’ in Vulpecula is M27, the Dumbbell nebula. The other Messier (M) numbers are relatively easy to find. The large nebula below Deneb is the North American Nebula which can actually be seen with the naked eye or with binoculars on a moonless night away from city lights. The three-part nebula below  Cygni is the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant and very hard to spot but doable. The cluster Cr 399 (Collinder 399 or Brocchi’s Cluster) is better known as the Coathanger and is best seen in binoculars or a telescope finder, which inverts it, making it a properly oriented hanger.