hi all,

I hope you’ve been taking advantage of the wonderful run of clear skies to even just glance up at the star-strewn heavens these evenings. Mars continues to burn brightly near the Gemini-Cancer border while Saturn is nicely placed in the eastern sky later in the evening.

Three of us were down near Ashford on Tuesday night where conditions were superb for viewing both Mars and Saturn through telescopes and almost 50 deep-sky objects that covered the spectrum of star birth to star death.

The Orion Nebula is a well-known stellar nursery in the Hunter’s Sword where new suns are condensing from the gas clouds that wreath the constellation. It appears as a misty patch of light to the unaided eye while even binoculars will reveal some some of the brighter stars embedded in the nebula’s soft glow. Shift your gaze to Orion’s upper-right and you’ll see the Pleiades, a young star cluster of blue-white suns that formed in the same region of space. Over time, like any family, some will break the gravitational bonds that hold the group together and forge a different path around the Galaxy.

Pick yellowish Capella and you are seeing a middle-aged star (albeit larger than our Sun) whereas deeper-hued Betelgeuse in Orion’s left shoulder has moved into old age and become distended as it exhausts it’s nuclear fuel. Betelgeuse is huge and would extend as far as the orbit of Mars if dropped into the middle of our Solar System. A star this big will end it’s life in a cataclysmic supernova explosion; a prior example is the unique Crab Nebula (M1 in Messier’s catalog) which is the remnant of a supernova which was noted by Far Eastern observers in 1054 AD. M1 appear as a dim patch of light and easier to spot in even a small telescope. Our own Sun will not end it’s life as a supernova but will possibly form a planetary nebula, one example of which is the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini that we saw on Tuesday night.

All in all, the Winter and Spring skies offer a wonderful array of examples of all stages of stellar evolution.

John

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Messier Marathon
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The IAS and SDAS will be holding a Messier Marathon on Friday 12th March and/or Saturday 13th.

There are two options where you can meet us.

Michael Murphy will meet people in Kilmacanoge at 8.30pm for a 9pm start. The plan is to go to the car park at the Sugarloaf but if this is not suitable we will go to our observing site in Ballyraemon. If you are interested please ring between 7pm and 8pm on the 12th to confirm the observing session is going ahead.

Ring John Flannery on if you plan to go direct to the Sugarloaf car park for 7pm to get set up by 7:30pm. Two difficult objects, M74 (in Pisces) and M77 (in Cetus) are getting quite low while there is lingering twilight — it means you only have a short window of opportunity to sweep up both galaxies.

Directions to the meeting point and Ballyraemon observing site are at http://www.irishastronomy.org/cms/about/ifas-maps?task=viewmap&mapId=2

(click on SDAS meeting point and SDAS Ballyraemon)

Some “shallow sky” targets during the night include Venus, Mars and Saturn, Comet Wild 2, and the dwarf planets Ceres and Vesta.

Binoculars will let you snare many other non-Messier objects such as Cr 399 (the Coathanger), the Hyades, Cr 70 (the Belt of Orion), the Alpha Persei OB Association, Mel 111 (the Coma Berenices star cluster), NGC 6633 (a gem of a non-Messier open cluster in Ophiuchus) and the Double Cluster in Perseus and Stock 2 in the same low-power field.

The Sugarloaf car park is on the other side of the main Roundwood road.

More details on the Messier Marathon can be found at the following links …

Michael O’Connell’s Messier Observing Handbook is at www.irishastronomy.org (under the “Challenges” section)

http://seds.org/MESSIER/ and seds.org/MESSIER/xtra/marathon/mm2010.html

www.atmob.org/library/member/skymaps_jsmall.html (charts for 1-power
finders such as Telrads)

www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000790.html (Jeremy Perez
observing all 110 objects in 15×70 binoculars)

www.coaa.co.uk/messmara.zip (software to determine the number of
M-objects visible from your location)

Toshimi Taki’s FREE magnitude 6 and magnitude 8.5 star atlases are at http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zs3t-tk/index.htm (listed under “Astronomy” in the left-hand side navigation pane on the page)

hi all,

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the nice start to the Spring.

Our next meeting is this Thursday, March 4th at 8pm in Gonzaga College, Ranelagh and is a joint lecture with the Irish Astronomical Society ( www.irishastrosoc.org ) Terry Moseley, our featured speaker, is well known to many of us as one of the top amateur astronomers in Ireland and will travel from Belfast to talk about ancient astronomy. We hope to see you along on the evening and admission is free.

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While browsing the notes for March in the 2003 edition of Guy Ottwell’s indispensable “Astronomical Calendar” some time ago I came across a suggestion that the saying “March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb” may relate to Aries (the Ram) setting during the late evening at this time of year while Leo, the Lion, approaches the meridian.

It’s an interesting observation but the true quote, author unknown, runs;

As amateur astronomers we should be privileged to be so in tune with the world around us. Our hobby makes us wonderfully aware of not just all things astronomical but aware of nature in general. There is a wonderful and rich seam of lore about the sky that many of us should mine, if only to enhance our adventures in astronomy.

The classic book on the subject is Richard Inwards “Weather Lore”, first published in 1893, though the edition I have was reprinted in 1994 by Senate.

Another lovely little tome worth adding to your bookshelf is “Weather Wisdom” by Albert Lee and published by Congdon & Weed, Inc. while “It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes” (Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff) is a book packed with information for naturalists and sky watchers. Reader’s Digest recently published “The Essential Book of Weather Lore” by Leslie Horvitz which is another nice introduction to the subject of reading weather signs.

Finally, “Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind” by Lyall Watson and “An Ocean of Air” by Gabrielle Walker are both rewarding insights into the blanket of air that wraps our planet.

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The International Space Station is currently making a series of evening passes and predictions can be generated for your location through the www.heavens-above.com web site (the following link is set to Terenure village … http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=53.300&lng=-6.283&loc=Terenure&alt=65&tz=GMT )

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The Irish Astronomical Society has organised a series of public observing nights during March. The first is in the Wicklow Mountains National Park on March 6th, while the rest are at Sandymount Martello Tower on March 19th and Bray sea front on March 20th. All will be held between 8pm and 10pm. More details are at www.irishastrosoc.org

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Tune in to Dublin City FM between 8pm and 8:30pm (on 103.2FM) when Ben Emmett, John Dickson and Christy Creely present a half-hour programme on astronomy. The show contains interviews, news and notes on what’s up in the skies. More details at http://dublincityfm.ie/programmes/special-interest/astronomy-show/

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I recently came across www.nightsky.ie which is run by DIT Kevin Street lecturer Paul Doyle. The site features the latest astronomy news and lots of useful information on the hobby. Do drop by and sign up to Paul’s Facebook page for the site too.

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I’ve finally got around to organising the mailing list properly and setting up a phone group to text people about meetings, etc. If you don’t get a text from me by Thursday evening then drop me a line if you would like to be added to the phone group.

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