I am kind of pressed for time this month so I am going to keep my write up short and sweet. Enjoy!
I went out stargazing on Monday, August 15th. This was just a mediocre night of stargazing. As always, I had issues to deal with. There was a super moon rising in the east and clouds coming from the west so the part of the sky I could see kept shrinking. The only good thing about this was that I was forced to leave “early” – around midnight – so I got a decent night’s sleep. Even with the issues, I got a few good pictures.
Nebulae
This is a much better picture of the Iris Nebula than the one I included in my posting last May. There were no clouds in the way this time.
The Iris Nebula (also known as NGC 7023 and Caldwell 4) is a bright reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus, the King. The nebula, which shines at magnitude +6.8, is illuminated by a magnitude +7.4 star designated SAO 19158.
The Eastern Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and was visible in daytime. While previous distance estimates have ranged from 1200 to 5800 light-years, a recent determination of 2400 light-years is based on direct astrometric measurements.
The Crescent Nebula (also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105) is an emission nebula that is also in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. It is formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163) colliding with and energizing the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant around 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The result of the collision is a shell and two shock waves, one moving outward and one moving inward. The inward moving shock wave heats the stellar wind to X-ray-emitting temperatures.
The Cat's Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, the Dragon that was discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN). It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths.
My picture really only includes the bright nucleus at the center of the nebula. There are a few hints of the gas clouds around the nucleus but they are vey faint. Maybe I will take a much longer exposure of this nebula the next time I look at it to see if I can pick up the gas clouds.
Note that there appears to be a small galaxy in the upper right corner of the picture.
Planets
A planet is best viewed from Earth when the planet is in opposition with the Earth. This means that the sun, Earth, and the planet are in a straight line and in that order. (I’m not sure how this definition changes when the planet is closer to the Sun than the Earth is.) When in opposition, a planet appears to be bigger, brighter, and sharper than it does at other times.
Saturn was in opposition during the middle of August when I took this picture. It doesn’t look much bigger to me but it is definitely the brightest, sharpest picture I have taken of Saturn.
Jupiter will reach opposition next month and, in this picture, I can tell it is approaching that point. This picture of Jupiter is larger and brighter than the one I published last month.
[Please ignore the bogus labeling in the picture that says this is the Pelican Nebula. That is caused by a bug in the new and improved [sic] version of the my telescope's software. I have reported the bug. Let's hope they fix it soon.]
Galaxies
This picture of M102 is a lot bigger than the one I took last fall. I don’t know why it appears to be so much bigger.
Messier 102’s (M102 or The Spindle Galaxy) dust lane is slightly warped compared to the disk of starlight. This warp indicates that the galaxy might have experienced gravitational tidal disturbances in the distant past. These disturbances were likely caused by an interaction with a nearby galaxy, as M102 is the largest member of a small cluster of galaxies. M102 is located 44 million light-years from Earth.
M106 or Messier 106 (also known as NGC 4258) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M106 is at a distance of about 22 to 25 million light-years away from Earth. M106 contains an active nucleus classified as a Type 2 Seyfert, and the presence of a central supermassive black hole has been demonstrated from radio-wavelength observations of the rotation of a disk of molecular gas orbiting within the inner light-year around the black hole. NGC 4217 is a possible companion galaxy of Messier 106. A Type II supernova was observed in M106 in May 2014.
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