The (Not so) Rural Pennsylvanian

  • April Starry Nights

    Welcome to this month’s post for the Hubble 35th Anniversary Challenge. More information about the challenge can be found on the Pennsylvania Night Sky page (link in the upper right).

    I successfully submitted for a Silver Certificate for this challenge for February and March. Spring is known as “Galaxy Season,” and here are several examples for April. (The galaxies are the bigger fuzzy blobs, in case you can’t tell.)

    Messier 65 and 66 are galaxies which are part of a group known as the Leo Triplet. M66 is on left in this photo, and M65 is on the right. They are both spiral galaxies. This small group is about 35 million light-years away from our solar system in the constellation Leo. The group also contains NGC 3628, which is not pictured here..

    M66 and M65

    NGC 3115 (also called the Spindle Galaxy or Caldwell 53) is a field lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sextans. The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on February 22, 1787. At about 32 million light-years away from Earth, it is several times bigger than the Milky Way. It is a lenticular galaxy because it contains a disk and a central bulge of stars, but without a detectable spiral pattern. NGC 3115 is seen almost exactly edge-on, and it is believed to contain a supermassive black hole in its center.

    C53

    Messier 95 and 96 are a pairing of spiral galaxies lying under a degree apart at the center of Leo. They are remarkably similar in size and brightness, with Messier 96 (NGC 3368), about 31 million light-years away, being marginally the brighter than Messier 95 (NGC 3351). M95 is slightly larger and about 33 million light-years away. M96 is a spiral galaxy, while M95 sports a central bar.

    M96 , upper left, and M95, lower right

    NGC 3632 (also known as Caldwell 40 and NGC 3626) is an unbarred lenticular galaxy also in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by William Herschel, on 14 March 1784. The galaxy belongs to the NGC 3607 group and is some 70 million light-years away.

    C40

    Finally, for something different, we have NGC 3242 (also known as Caldwell 59), a planetary nebula located in the constellation Hydra. William Herschel discovered the nebula on February 7, 1785. John Herschel also observed it from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, in the 1830s. This planetary nebula is most frequently called the Ghost of Jupiter, or Jupiter’s Ghost due to its similar shape to the planet, but it is also sometimes referred to as the Eye Nebula. The nebula measures around two light-years long from end to end, and contains a central white dwarf. The nebula is the round spot in the center with the purplish ring around it.

    C59

  • It’s Time for More Astrophotography

    Although the weather has continued to be worse than normal, I was able to get out in March and image the night sky objects for the Hubble Anniversary Challenge for the month. More about the challenge can be found here.

    This month’s objects contained a few star clusters. The first of which is Messier 67, a lovely open cluster in Cancer. It is also known as M67 or NGC 2682 and is sometimes called the King Cobra Cluster or the Golden Eye Cluster. It was discovered by Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779. Estimates of its age range between 3.2 and 5 billion years. Distance estimates are likewise varied, but typically are 800–900 parsecs . It is well populated, almost appearing like a globular cluster, and is a paradigm study object in stellar evolution. I find it to be the most interesting looking object of this group.

    M67

    Next up is the well-known Beehive Cluster, also an open cluster in Cancer. It is known as Praesepe (Latin for “manger”, “cot” or “crib”), M44, NGC 2632, or Cr 189. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth, it contains a larger population of stars than other nearby bright open clusters, holding around 1,000 stars. Under dark skies, the Beehive Cluster looks like a small nebulous object to the naked eye, and has been known since ancient times. Classical astronomer Ptolemy described it as a “nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer”. It was among the first objects that Galileo studied with his telescope. The distance to M44 is often cited to be between 160 and 187 parsecs (520–610 light years).

    Age and proper motion coincide with those of the Hyades, suggesting they may share similar origins. Both clusters also contain red giants and white dwarfs, which represent later stages of stellar evolution, along with many main sequence stars.

    M44

    Continuing the theme of open clusters, we continue to Messier 48, also known as NGC 2548. It is in the equatorial constellation of Hydra. It sits near Hydra’s westernmost limit with Monoceros, to the east and slightly south of Hydra’s brightest star, Alphard. This grouping was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771, but there is no cluster precisely where Messier indicated; he made an error, as he did with M47. Credit for discovery is sometimes given instead to Caroline Herschel in 1783.

    M48 is visible to the naked eye under good atmospheric conditions. The cluster is located some 2,500 light-years from the Sun. The age estimated from isochrones is 400±100 million years, while gyrochronology age estimate is 450±50 million yearsr – in good agreement.

    M48

    Finally, we come to Caldwell 48, also known as NGC 2775,. It is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cancer. It is 67 million light-years away from the Milky Way. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1783. C48 belongs to the Antlia-Hydra Cluster of galaxies and is the most prominent member of the NGC 2775 Group, a small galaxy group in the Virgo Super-cluster, along with the Local Group. Other members of the NGC 2775 Group include NGC 2777 and UGC 4781. This object reminds us that Spring is known as “galaxy season” due to the prevalence of these distant objects in the night sky.

    Due to the distance, this objects appears small in Seestar S50. It is the fuzzy object in the center of the photo.

    C48

  • The February Hubble Challenge Objects

    My attempts at imaging the February objects for the Hubble Anniversary Challenge were more timely. You can read more about this challenge the Pennsylvania Night Sky page. These images are taken for documentation and learning purposes and are not meant to be great examples of astrophotography. The items below are mostly star clusters, which I find easier to photograph. Three also all contain a connection to the Herschel family.

    The first object is the star cluster Messier 46. It is also known as NGC 2437, and it is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Puppis. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771. It is about 5,000 light-years away from Earth. There are an estimated 500 stars in the cluster, and it is thought to have an estimated age of 251.2 million years old.

    M46 is in the center and skewed about to the right in this photo.

    M46

    Caldwell 58 (aka NGC 2360 or Caroline’s Cluster) is an open cluster in the constellation Canis Major. It was discovered on 26 February 1783 by Caroline Herschel, who described it as a “beautiful cluster of pretty compressed stars near 1/2 degree in diameter”. Her notes were overlooked until her brother William included the cluster in his 1786 catalogue of 1000 clusters and nebulae and acknowledged her as the discoverer.

    C58 or Caroline’s Cluster

    Caldwell 39 is known as the Clown Face Nebula, Lion Nebula or the Eskimo Nebula (aka NGC 2392). It is a bipolar double-shell planetary nebula. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1787. The formation resembles a person’s head surrounded by a parka hood and is surrounded by gas that composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star. A planetary nebula is an area of cosmic gas and dust formed from the cast-off outer layers of a dying star. Despite their name, planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets.

    C39 lies about 6500 light-years away, and is visible with a small telescope in the constellation of Gemini. The object is the round spot in the center of the image below that is ringed by a faint blue glow.

    C39

    Caldwell 25 (aka NGC 2419 ) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lynx. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788. NGC 2419 is at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the Solar System and about the same distance from the Galactic Center.

    C25 bears the nickname “the Intergalactic Wanderer,” which was bestowed when it was once thought not to be in orbit around the Milky Way. Its orbit takes it farther away from the galactic center than the Magellanic Clouds, but it can be considered as part of the Milky Way. It takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy.

    The globular cluster is the fuzzy spot in the center of the image.

    I was able to attend the first star party of the season on March 8 and got to view multiple objects (such as the Orion Nebula, Uranus and a crescent phase of Venus) through a variety of telescopes. It was still quite cold in early March but still worth it to get out before daylight savings time set in.

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