May 2022 Stargazing Photos

After waiting over two months because of bad weather, I finally went stargazing again on Friday, May 20. The night was mostly clear. I did have to deal with some clouds but they moved fast and didn’t obstruct my view for long. Although, you will see signs of clouds in a few of my pictures.

The night was cold and I was out late but I dressed for the weather. This included wearing all of the heated gear I have purchased over the past few months so the cold did not bother me much. Some of you might think I have been obsessing about the weather. Well, yes I have to some degree but I am also trying to let you know how I dealt with it. Maybe you will want to do the same thing if you find yourself staring at the sky for a couple of hours on a cold night.

I went back to my favorite eastside park for stargazing; Marymoor Park. I went to the overflow parking lot I usually use. It worked out well except for one thing. It seems that local teenagers have decided that parking lot is a fun place to hang out in too. Most of the kids were fine but a few of them decided to race their cars and kick up a lot of dust. Fortunately, they got bored with that after a while and left. Eventually, I had the lot to myself.

The Changing Night Sky

In past blog entries, I have alluded to how the stars appear and disappear on a regular, annual schedule. I want to go into this in more detail. I have said that the constellation Orion dominates the winter sky. Knowing which constellations are in the sky at a given time of year will help you find most celestial objects and will also tell you if the object is visible at all.

The location of celestial objects is usually given in one of two ways. First, there are celestial coordinates (right ascension and declination) that are difficult to use without a computer or some other piece of equipment. (Maybe, I will discuss celestial coordinates in more detail in a later posting.) Or second, by describing the object’s position in relation to a constellation or bright star. And all of the bright stars are part of one constellation or another.

So, you see, knowing if a constellation is visible tonight, can also tell you if a celestial object is visible or not. For example, let’s say it is the middle of the summer and you want to see the Horsehead Nebula. The Horsehead Nebula is in the constellation Orion and Orion is a winter constellation. This means you are out of luck.

Here is a list of some major constellations, when they are visible and some of the brightest stars in those constellations. (Note: The seasons listed are when the constellations are bested viewed. The constellations can often be seen before and/or after the listed seasons.)

Season Constellation Bright Star(s)

Spring Ursa Major Dubhe, Merak

Spring Leo Regulus, Denebola

Spring Virgo Spica

Spring Libra Zubenelgenubi

Spring Bootes (The Herdsman) Arcturus

Summer Scorpius Antares

Summer Hercules Rasalgethi

Summer Sagitarius Nunki

Summer Lyra (The Harp) Vega

Summer Aquila (The Eagle) Altair

Summer Capricornus Algedi, Dabila

Autumn Pegasus Markab

Autumn Andromeda Alpheratz

Autumn Ares Hamal, Sheratan

Winter Taurus Aldebaran

Winter Orion Betelgeuse, Rigel

Winter Canis Major Sirius

Winter Gemini Castor, Pollux

There is one more thing I want to discuss concerning the changing night sky. The seasons are not the only thing that determines what you can see. Your location is just as important. In particular, are you in the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere? The constellations listed above can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere; not necessarily the Southern Hemisphere. There are also plenty of things our southern brethren can see in their sky that we can’t see up here. The Magellanic Clouds – two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way – can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Cross, Corvus The Crow, Phoenix, and Scutum The Shield are a few Southern Hemisphere constellations.

Fun Fact: The ability to see some celestial objects from one hemisphere but not the other is one of the ways to prove that the Earth is not flat.

Stars

Castor and Pollux are the stars that make up the heads of the twins in the constellation Gemini. They are two of the brightest stars in the sky. The easiest way for me to find them is to look northeast of Betelgeuse in Orion but that isn’t always possible because Gemini is visible later in the Spring than Orion is.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux (known as Polydeuces to the Greeks) were twin brothers who appeared in several prominent myths. The twins were worshipped as gods who helped shipwrecked sailors and who brought favorable winds for those who made sacrifices to them. The Romans considered Castor and Pollux the gods who watched over horses and the Roman horsemen known as equites (pronounced EK-wi-teez).

Castor is the second-brightest object in Gemini. It is a blue white star. Castor appears singular to the naked eye, but it is actually a sextuple star system organized into three binary pairs. Each pair is visible in my photo. The first pair – Castor A – is what appears to be the bright star in the center of the image. The second pair – Castor B – is the orangish (?) star just below and to the left of the center blue white star. The third pair – Castor C – is straight down from Castor A +/- one inch. I believe Castor is the first multiple star system I have included in my blog

Pollux is the brightest star in Gemini. It is an orange-hued, evolved giant star located at a distance of 34 light-years, making it the closest giant to the Sun.

Nebulae

I went stargazing on May 20. As far as I could tell, this mid-Spring night did not contain any impressive nebulas and I looked at a lot of them. My telescope’s optical magnification is 50x and the digital magnification is up to 225x. At these magnifications, most of the nebulas I viewed looked like unimpressive little blue and white balls. The best-looking ones I found are below. Just know that you will usually need to really zoom in on them to see much.

The best of the bunch this month is the Bubble Nebula. I first viewed this nebula last August. The May 2022 picture is better because the exposure is over three times longer. Continuing with my Changing Sky theme, you should also note that the orientation of the nebula has changed over the last nine months. Compare the August and May pictures to see what I mean.

The Bubble Nebula is over 7,100 light years away and is close to 10 light years wide. The star you see inside the nebula is several hundred thousand times as bright as our sun.

The Candy Wrapper Nebula is in the constellation Gemini. It is considered to be one of the top 100 brightest planetary nebulas but it is fairly far down the list. I guess that is why it is so small and dim in this picture. The nebula is in the center of the photo and appears blue green in color.

The Fetus Nebula is a magnitude 12 nebula. (Nothing above 6 is visible to the naked eye.) The nebula is in the constellation Cygnus. The Fetus Nebula is a planetary nebula with a diameter of approximately 1 light-year located at a distance of 2,800 light years in northern Cygnus.

Think of the blue green area in the picture as the womb or amniotic sac. The dark area in the center of the nebula is the fetus. When viewed through the right filter, that dark area does look sort of like a fetus. My telescope did not come with any filters. They can be added but I prefer to view objects as nature meant them to be seen… At least for now…

The Iris Nebula is a bright reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus that is 1,300 light years away and has a 3 light year radius. The most prominent part of this picture is the star in center of the nebula. The star illuminates the rest of the nebula. The actual nebula is hard to see unless you zoom in and can notice the haze around the star. The nebula is difficult to see in my picture because I was shooting through light cloud cover. The cloud is visible in the picture.

The Kissing Lips Nebula looks nothing like kissing lips to me no matter how the picture is enhanced. I guess you could say that the lips are the whitish areas near the top and bottom of the nebula and the dark area in the center is an open mouth but that is a real stretch if you ask me. Anyway, here is the picture. You decide for yourself.

Planets

The planets are either morning stars or not visible at this time. I think I am going to have to convince myself to get up at the crack of dawn to see them before this fall…

Comets

None this month.

Star Clusters

I get a kick out of the process of viewing and photographing star clusters. I begin by pointing the telescope at a seemingly empty part of the sky. Then I tell the telescope to start gathering light. The brightest stars in the cluster pop into the image right away. The rest appear over time, one by one as more light is gathered and layered (stacked) onto the image. It’s almost like I am watching creation.

Messier 52 or M52, also known as NGC 7654, is an open cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. It was discovered by Charles Messier on September 7, 1774. This excellent grouping of stars is one of the best clusters in the northern Milky Way, with some 200 members spread across 13 arc minutes of apparent sky. M52 is 4,600 light years away and has a radius of 9.5 light years.

Messier 53 (also known as M53 or NGC 5024) is a globular cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation. It was discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1775. M53 is one of the more outlying globular clusters, being about 60,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center, and almost the same distance (about 58,000 light-years) from our Solar System. The cluster has a core radius of 7 light years and a total radius of 19 light years.

M53 is considered a metal-poor cluster and at one time was thought to be the most metal-poor cluster in the Milky Way. Most of the stars in it are first-generation stars. That is, they did not form from gas recycled from previous generations of stars. This differs from the majority of globular clusters that are more dominated by second generation stars. The second generation stars in NGC 5024 tend to be more concentrated in the core region.

NGC 6939 is an open cluster in the constellation Cepheus. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1798. The cluster lies approximately 4.000 light years away and it is over a billion years old.

Galaxies

The Black Eye Galaxy (also called Sleeping Beauty Galaxy or Evil Eye Galaxy and designated Messier 64, M64, or NGC 4826) is a relatively isolated spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and is best observed in May. With an apparent magnitude of 9.8, the Black Eye galaxy can be spotted with a moderately sized telescope.

If you rotate the image 180 degrees. The dark dust clouds will appear below the galactic core and will make this galaxy look more like a black eye.

Messier 87 (also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, generally abbreviated to M87) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with several trillion stars in the constellation Virgo. One of the most massive galaxies in the local universe, it has a large population of globular clusters — about 15,000 compared with the 150–200 orbiting the Milky Way — and a jet of energetic plasma that originates at the core and extends at least 1,500 parsecs (4,900 light-years), traveling at a relativistic speed. It is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky and a popular target for both amateur and professional astronomers. M87 is about 53.5 million light years away and is 980,000 light years wide.

The Pinwheel Galaxy is the best example of a spiral galaxy that I know of and I finally got a good picture of it. This galaxy was one of the first galaxies I photographed but I was never able to keep my telescope locked onto the galaxy long enough to get a good picture of it. That has changed now. This picture took over 22 minutes to compile and the result was well worth the effort.

The Pinwheel Galaxy is in the constellation of Ursa Major (also known as the Big Dipper). It is about 70 percent larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy, with a diameter of about 170,000 light years, and sits at a distance of 21 million light years from Earth. This means that the light we're seeing in this image left the Pinwheel Galaxy about 21 million years ago - many millions of years before humans ever walked the Earth.

[UPDATE: Last August, my blog entry contained a picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy apparently eating a dwarf galaxy. It turns out I was wrong about that. What I thought was a dwarf galaxy is really a full sized galaxy that is much farther away than the Whirlpool Galaxy. That’s why it looks so much smaller. The two galaxies passed by each other millions of years ago. That fly by pulled some of the stars in each galaxy towards the other. That explains why it looks like one galaxy is eating the other one.]