Summer Observing Season is Starting

Summertime and the viewing is easy!

I'm very excited about the coming summer observing season as there are a great many sights to look forward to and I'll relish being able to show them to people at the three weekly stargazes I do for the Marriott Vacation Club organization.

Why so excited? Lots of reasons actually. First and foremost is the new 16" telescope I put in service back in January. This will be the first season of looking at the summer Milky Way and all of the great things you can see as you look towards the center of our galaxy. I haven't been though one complete year's worth of observing with it yet so it will be a real treat to see what it can do to enhance all of the favorites I've been looking at with the 8" scope I've been using for the past thirty years. I've been amazed to discover that I can actually see the edges of the spiral arms in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) or dust lanes in galaxies that are 12 million light-years away like M82 and the Sombrero Galaxy. The 10" scopes that two of the three Marriotts have did a real good job with some of the cloudy nebulae near the center of the Milky Way last year, I can't wait to see what the 16" with a Lumicon Ultra High Contrast filter is going to see.

Then, there is the even more exciting prospect of what totally new things will I be able to see that simply weren't within reach of the old equipment. Comet Johnson has been a surprise fun thing to see lately but I'm wondering what kind of look I'll get at the North American Nebula or the Eagle Nebula where the Hubble took that famous "Pillars of Creation" photo.

The asterism we call 'The Summer Triangle' is already starting to be in the sky as we wrap up the stargazes around 10:30 or 11PM, so in another month we'll have it in the sky all night. This is one of the most fertile places in the sky for finding great things to look at in a contained area. You can find truly stellar (ar ar) examples every kind of deep-sky object (except perhaps galaxies) in there: open and globular star clusters of various sizes, expansive nebulae, double and quadruple star systems, planetary nebulae (dying stars), supernova remnants (truly dead stars), and the most fertile hunting ground for exoplanets (planets around stars other than our Sun, which sadly are still beyond the reach of even this scope).

Omega Centauri

Recently, one of the daily astronomy newsletters I subscribe to mentioned something that caught my interest: the globular star cluster Omega Centauri which is by far the finest globular cluster in the sky! Well that's what they say except I've never seen it. Most of my astronomy 'career' was done in Cincinnati which is at 39 degrees north latitude. But down here in Hilton Head SC, I'm now at 32 degrees which allows me to se farther down into the southern sky and after checking in with my astronomy software it turns out that Omega Centauri cluster will be at it's highest point in the sky about 10:30PM this week and we have the ocean as our southern horizon so there's a pretty decent chance to see it!

So what's so special about Omega Centauri? Well it is far and away the biggest, brightest globular cluster in the sky, more than twice as many stars as the number two globular and it's as large in the sky as the full moon! After reading the article I learned that this just isn't an ordinary "bigger than usual" cluster, it is probably the remaining nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that orbited the Milky Way (one of the 48 dwarf galaxies known to do so) and got so close the the Milky Way's gravity stripped away and absorbed all of the outlying galaxy members leaving only the tight nucleus intact.

Why do they think this? Because Omega Centauri has a large-ish black hole in the center of it which is a feature that is common to galaxies but not at all with your 'garden variety' globular cluster. Also the population of the cluster is a bit more varied that globulars which tend to be very much all old stars of similar size and brightness. I'm going to see if I can get a pic of this somehow in the next couple weeks.

Jupiter

Jupiter is now high in the sky for good viewing at stargaze time and it will be a great sight all summer. I never really could make out the great Red Spot in my 8" but in the 16" it's really quite obvious if you know what you're looking for.

Jupiter's four main moons put on quite a display every night with eclipses, occultations and shadow crossings to keep track of, all very easily displayed by my new astronomy software, Sky Safari 5 Pro which is incredible. It even points the telescope for me if I want!

It really is impressive to see the amount of detail you can find in the could bands at 250x and above

Saturn

Saturn isn't quite ready for early evening viewing just yet but in about another month it's should be available. It'll be interesting to see how many of the moons I can see with the big scope-I should keep a tally. I'm told I'll be able to see detail in the rings, more than just the Cassini division. I've tried a couple times already to see it at the end of the night but it's usually so low that the atmosphere blurs it out.

However it's going to be a great Summer with Jupiter and Saturn, the Moon and the splendors of the Milky Way revealed in new detail.

I can't wait to show them all to you!

Bill the Sky Guy
Memorial Day, 2017