As part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, Autumn Moonwatch (and Meteorwatch) will take place from 24th October to the 1st November.

There will also be a Twitter Moonwatch on the evenings of the 26th & 27th October), where the idea is to communicate with people all over the UK while you observe the Moon.  To take part in this, you will need to sign up to Twitter (for free) and the follow @astronomy2009uk.

During Twitter Moonwatch various people around the country will be live-tweeting images of the Moon, planets and other astronomical objects. At the same time astronomers from Newbury AS (and many others) will be online to answer any questions you might have about the images being tweeted, and about astronomy in general.

This Moonwatch will be a special one, as Faulkes Telescope Network of professional telescopes will also be taking part and taking images with their 2-metre telescope situated in New South Wales, Australia.

To find out more, visit www.astronomy2009.co.uk

For our October public meeting, we will welcome Jerry Workman for the second of two talk this year. This time he will be covering “The Solar Eclipses of 2008 & 2009″.

The public meeting takes place at the Henry Dixon Hall, Rivenhall End on Wednesday 16th September. Doors open at 7:30pm for an 8pm start. For further details on how to get there, click on the Events link above.

Head over to our gallery as some new images have been posted – including stunning shots of Saturn, Jupiter and the Lunar surface.

The images, taken by Rachel Eaton using a Celestron C8 telescope and an Imaging Source DFK colour camera, can be found by clicking on the Flickr gallery to the right.

For our first public meeting after the summer break, we will welcome our Honorary Vice‐President,  and popular science writer & astronomy journalist, Dr Stuart Clark.

“The Places That Gravity Forgot” will discuss those vast regions of space, millions of miles across, in which celestial forces conspire to cancel out gravity and so trap anything that falls into them. They sit in the Earth’s orbit, one marching ahead of our planet, the other trailing along behind. Astronomers call them Lagrangian points, or L4 and L5 for short. The best way to think of them, though, is as celestial flypaper.

Lagrange points are locations in space where gravitational forces and the orbital motion of a body balance each other. In the 4.5 billion years since the formation of the solar system, everything from dust clouds to asteroids and hidden planets may have accumulated there.

They were discovered by French mathematician Louis Lagrange in 1772 in his gravitational studies of the ‘Three body problem’: how a third, small body would orbit around two orbiting large ones. There are five Lagrangian points in the Sun-Earth system and such points also exist in the Earth-Moon system.

The public meeting takes place at the Henry Dixon Hall, Rivenhall End on Wednesday 16th September. Doors open at 7:30pm for a 7:45pm start. For further details on how to get there, click on the Events link above.

]]> http://northessexastro.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/september-public-meeting-2/feed/ 0 NEAS Blogger http://northessexastro.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/image-of-comet-christensen/ http://northessexastro.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/image-of-comet-christensen/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:19:29 +0000 NEAS Blogger http://northessexastro.wordpress.com/?p=518 ]]>

Here is an image of Comet Christensen (C/2006 W3), taken by society member James Abbott on the 18th August this year.

Image details: 2009 August 18th - Start of imaging 22.13 UT - 7x30s images stacked - 300mm f4 reflector at prime focus with ATIK 16IC camera - Coma details enhanced using DDP filter in Astroart

This comet was discovered in November 2006 by Eric Christensen of the Catalina Sky Survey, Tuscon. At the time the comet was located ~8.7 AU from the Sun (approximately the Sun-Saturn distance). The comet reached perihelion at a still quite distant 3.12 AU from the Sun in July this year and, at that time, the comet brightened to around 9th magnitude – visible in many smaller backyard telescopes and even binoculars from dark sites.  It is currently magnitude 11 and so one needs very dark skies and a more capable telescope to see it.

This is a feed of NASA TV. Along with scheduled programmes, they also feature day-to-day coverage of activities onboard the International Space Station and other NASA projects. Click the play button to start the video stream.

Something strange is happening around a star in the constellation Auriga. Something is likely circling the star, known as an “eclipsing binary”, and over the next many months, you can see observe the effects of this happening.

The star in question is called Epsilon Aurigae, also known as Almaaz, located in the constellation Auriga.  The system lies approximately 2,000 light years from Earth and Almaaz can be quite easily found as it’s close in the sky to the bright Capella. (Some tips on how to find Auriga and Capella can be found here.)

Almaaz is easily visible to the naked eye. Over the course of 2009 an 2010, one should be able to follow the eclipse as it begins this month to dim the star by a factor of two – from magnitude 3.0 to 3.8.

In most eclipsing binary systems, two stars revolve around each other. If the orbital plane of the two stars lies along our line of sight, as the stars orbit each star blocks the other, causing dips in the overall brightness of the pair.  Astronomers can measure these dips in brightness and try to find out the period of the orbit, the brightness, and also the mass of the pair of stars.

A famous eclipsing binary is Algol, in the constellation of Perseus. Algol blinks out, almost like clockwork, every 2.87 days. (In fact, you can also see Algol for yourself from August through to April next year).

However, Epsilon Aurigae is quite different. The eclipse seems to happen every 27 years and takes around two years to complete.

Based on observations from previous eclipses (serious observations started in 1842), whatever it is that’s passing in front of the main star likely is just a star. Instead it could be an massive dark disc of opaque material. To hold the disk together, which would be 10AU long and 1AU tall, there could also likely be another star at it’s centre which has yet to be observed.

To make things more peculiar, the system appears to suddently increase in brightness for a short time during the mid-point of the eclipse.

It’s not entirely clear what sort of dark disc might explain the observations of epsilon Aurigae, or what might keep the whole system together.  As this eclipse begins, astronomers will turn dozens telescopes on to the star for detailed measurements.  Skilled amateurs have a calling here too, by making their own observations using telescopes and cameras. It is a key project for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and Citizen Sky.

We at the NEAS like to think we’re keen, and so will be making observations of the star over the next year.

If you’re interested in learning more, both the British Astronomical Association (BAA), with which the NEAS is now affiliated, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) will have updated details over the coming weeks.

And for more detailed information about this star I would recommended this article from Sky & Telescope by Robert Stencel.

Keep updated on this event either or on our Twitter (@northessexastro). The information below was originally posted on the NewburyAS blog.

Tuesday 11th & Wednesday 12th of August 2009

Newbury Astronomical Society along with the International Year of Astronomy 2009 UK and various amateur astronomers and societies, will be holding a Twitter Meteorwatch on Tuesday 11th and Wednesday 12th of August 2009.

Credit: Science.Nasa.gov

Everyone is welcome to join in, whether they are an astronomer or just have an interest in the night sky.

This event follows on from the popular Twitter Moonwatch held in May 2009.

Use the Twitter hash tag: #Meteorwatch and get involved, ask questions, follow the event and enjoy the night sky with us. Images and other information will be tweeted as it happens. Live!

The highlight of the summer meteor showers : The Perseids, reach maximum around the 11th and 12th of August and may put on a display of approximately 80 to 100 meteors per hour under ideal conditions. Conditions this year aren’t ideal but meteors every few minutes are still quite possible. Perseid meteors are often bright with persistent trails which can linger for a while after the meteor has burned up. Further information on the Perseid meteor shower and how to view it, will be posted closer to the time and during the Meteorwatch.

Other main objects of interest on both evenings will be the planet Jupiter and the Moon.  The planets Mars and Venus will also be visible if you stay up to the small hours.

The Twitter Meteorwatch will start at 21.30 BST on the 11th of August and will continue through to the evening  of the 12th of August. Amateur and professional astronomers from the US and other countries are invited to join in and take over from the UK, when the sun comes up here, helping make the event run for over 24 hours and be truly international. The event will close in the UK, in the early hours of the 13th of August 2009