ABC Science 1st January 2020
By: Genelle Weule

~ Stars, galaxies, dust clouds and Uranus: take a tour of the January night sky ~
​
Genelle Weule (Science writer for ABC) has written another excellent article on the wonderful objects you can see in the January sky, but don’t worry if you don’t catch them in January as they will still be on show for the next couple of months as they head down into the western sky.
 
I was very happy to have been asked to contribute my images again for this article; you will also see some beautiful images in the article from my fellow SAS astro friend Dylan O’Donnell.
 
Dylan’s YouTube Channel is at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgOf4wBnoGg8WHHHr_h4otQ
 
So hop off your comfortable lounge, grab a star chart, binoculars or telescope and have a lot of fun exploring the night sky in your own garden with family and friends :-)
 
Other helpful tools to help find your way around the night are a FREE app called ‘Star Chart’ at: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/star-chart/id345542655

Or download or print a FREE sky chart at Skymaps.com at:
 http://www.skymaps.com
*If you’re in Australia make sure you download the star chart for the Southern Hemisphere*

On the Sunday night after the InOMN I wanted to spend some time with Mars and do a series of images to show the rotation of the planet. I was at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn and the sky was very clear.
 
I waited until Mars was quite up in the sky so the air was not so turbulent and proceeded to take my AVI movies, over a period of three hours.
 
I just loved the way so much detail was on display with this little ZWO planetary camera…is just so amazing!
 
Clearly on show right across the planet, in the dark area that is shaped like a large caterpillar, were Sinus Gomer, Mare Cimmerium and Mare Sirenum, it’s just so exciting to see so much detail on the surface of the planet. (I have marked more features on the image for you to see)
 
Opposition of Mars will be on the 14th October 2020 and I cannot wait to see what will be on show on the surface, the planet will also be at its largest so it will be very bright…he’s hoping the dust storms stay away until then :-)
 
Images taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies were captured with between 2500 & 3000 frames then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4

After taking pictures of the Moon for InOMN I then turned my attention to the planets, which were all on show in the night sky.
 
At the moment there are Jupiter and Saturn high up in the northern sky that are getting closer together and heading for a conjunction in two months time on the 14th December 2020.
 
Then the brilliant planet Mars getting higher up now in the north-eastern sky and putting on such a wonderful display with many features on show on the surface of the planet, opposition of Mars will be on the 14th October 2020.
 
Hopefully the sky will be clear enough for me to take some incredible images of our two planets coming close tighter and there seems to be no sign yet of any dust storms…yippee :-)

Images taken with a Meade LX200 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies were captured with between 2500 & 3000 frames then stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4

This was the lovely wide angle view of the planets Jupiter and Saturn with the nine day old waxing gibbous Moon low in the south western sky just before midnight on the on the 26th September 2020.
 
Jupiter & Saturn are fully in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer) and the Gibbous Moon has just entered into the neighbouring constellation of Capricornus (The Ram).
 
The sky was very bright because of the Moonlight but you could still see the patterns of the constellation with the brighter stars on display. I’ve also named some of the other constellations in the area that are now setting in the western sky.
 
Jupiter and Saturn will now been seen coming closer and closer together for there rare 20 year conjunction that will happen on the 21st December 2020…so keep an eye on this wonderful astronomical event over the next couple of months :-)
 
Image taken at on the field at Leyburn at my Stardust Observatory with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a camera tripod. The setting were set at ISO400 and exposure 15 seconds the focal length was 18mm and image was cropped slightly.

~ InOMN at My Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in Qld Australia ~
(Saturday the 26th September 2020)
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/
 
Because of Covid-19, I decided to drive out to my Stardust Observatory in country Queensland and just have an up close and personal experience with our Moon :-)
 
It was a beautiful clear night with no clouds at all in the sky and the most notable lunar features on display on the terminator line were the magnificent Crater Copernicus and the huge Crater Clavius in the southern highlands, which looked just stunning.
 
I did manage to show a couple of people the Moon through my telescope as they were visiting the owners of the property where my observatory is located, there were many exclamations of Wow…is that for real!
 
So I feel very happy to have shown some people the beauty of our Moon :-)
 
If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
 
The close up images that I took with the little ZWO camera are just amazing, so much detail on show…I’m very pleased with the result and will do a lot more lunar imaging with this camera in the coming months….
 
Images were taken with 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope using a Canon 700D camera for the full disc image, and then adding a 2x barlow lens to take closer pictures of the lunar features on the terminator line. I then replaced the DSLR camera with my ZWO ASI120MC-S camera and a 3x Barlow lens to capture the high-resolution images of the lunar surface.

If you participated in InOMN please download you certificate at:
https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/participation-certificate/
​

~ Venus & Pleiades Star Cluster (M45) ~
 
Venus is now closing in on the Pleiades star cluster, I’ve also taken a wider view image with the Hyades star cluster above, both these star clusters are in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull).
Because both Venus and the Pleiades are very low in the western sky at sunset the sky’s very light, so I’m not able to capture any nebulosity around any of these pretty young stars in the Pleiades.
 
I’ve also included an image of the beautiful Pleiades that I took at my Stardust Observatory last September with one of my telescopes in a very dark sky, as you can see this star cluster is one of the most beautiful objects in the night sky :-)
 
The Pleiades star cluster is a group of hundreds of stars that were born from the same stellar nebula about 100 million years ago and is over 400 light years away from us.
 
The wide field images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod just outside my house with lots of street lights. 

The dark sky image below was taken with a Meade 80mm ED Triplet refractor telescope
and a Canon 70D camera at my Stardust Observatory.
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There were 25x3 minute subs and 15x3 minute darks captured which were stacked in DSS
and ​processed in PS CS4.

For more information about the Pleiades please go to my blog below:
 http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-the-beautiful-pleiades-open-star-cluster-m45-in-taurus

Keep looking up, because you never know what you’ll discover, day or night....
~ My Stardust Observatory at Leyburn ~

The beautiful Pleiades open star cluster (M45) is now at prime viewing in the evening sky in the constellation of Taurus. The nebulosity still surrounding these very hot blue young stars is just stunning!
 
The Pleiades star cluster is a group of hundreds of stars that were born from the same stellar nebula about 100 million years ago and is over 400 light years away from us.
 
The Pleiades get there name from Greek legend and are known as the ‘Seven Sisters’ stories of them are also found in many other cultures including the indigenous peoples here in Australia.
https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/star-dreaming-seven-sisters/
 
Have a look up in the sky and see if you can spot seven or more stars in the cluster with just your eyes, make sure it's a clear dark night and I’m sure you will see them all :-)
 
To find out more about this amazing star cluster please go to a couple of these website below:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades
https://www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiades/​

​The images were taken at my stardust observatory at Leyburn in QLD Australia with a Meade 80mm ED Triplet refractor telescope and a Canon 70D camera. There were 25x3 minute subs and 15x3 minute darks captured which were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.

This very pretty planetary nebula is quite large and bright and can easily be found among the stars in the northern sky in Vulpecula.  
 
About 4,000 years ago an elderly, bloated giant red star, gave its last gasp and shed off its outer skin exposing its still pulsating heart. What’s left now is an extremely hot white dwarf star that’s exciting the bubble of ionized gas that still surrounds it.
 
This was the first planetary nebula ever discovered by Charles Messier in 1764 while he was comet hunting in the night sky. Please see more details on (M27) on the SEDS website at:
http://www.messier.seds.org/m/m027.html
 
The image above was taken at my Stardust Observatory on the 1st September 2019, with a Meade 80mm refractor and a Canon 70D camera, which was tracking on the larger 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. There were 15x3 minute images with 10x3 minute darks stacked in DSS and processed in CS4, ISO 2000 and image is cropped.

To find more star charts on the constellations please go to:
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations

At this time of year here in the southern hemisphere, the Milky Way straddles each side of the zenith and over the night arc’s down into the western sky, so there is plenty of time to capture lots of deep sky objects in this area around the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
 
So over the next couple of months on the dark new Moon weekend I’ll try and image as many of these beautiful deep sky objects as I can and share them with you from my Stardust observatory at Leyburn in Australia.
 
~ The Eagle Nebula M16 in Serpens ~
 
The Eagle nebula is a diffuse emission nebula and star cluster in the constellation of Serpens (Cauda), it’s a region of star formation with glowing hydrogen gas due to the excitation from ultraviolet radiation emitted by hot young stars embedded in the nebula. The star cluster associated with the nebula is called (NGC 6611).
 
There are two shapes you can see in this nebula, one is the overall shape that does look like an eagle with its spreading wings but the other shape is in the heart of the nebula where the Star Queen gets it’s name and where the Hubble Space telescope imaged the astounding ‘Pillars of Creation’ area in 1995.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation
 
It’s estimated that the distance to M16 is about 6000 light years and its diameter is 35 light years, the estimated age is 2-6 million years old.
 
The other two open star clusters close to M16 (in the top right) is called Trumpler 32 and the denser star cluster (in the bottom right corner) is called NGC 6605.
 
I took this image with a Meade 80mm refractor telescope and a Canon 70D camera that was being tracked on top of a larger Meade LX200 10inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope in my observatory.
I managed to capture only 7x3 minute images before the clouds came rolling in, I’ll try and capture this object again next month to obtain a lot more data and a smoother in-depth picture.
 
For more information about this wonderful area of sky please go to the links below:
NASA’s Hubble Messier Catalog at:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
 
Wikipedia Messier Objects:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object
Eagle Nebula (M16)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula
 
SEDS  (The Messier Catalog)
http://www.messier.seds.org
http://www.messier.seds.org/m/m016.html
http://www.messier.seds.org/CONindex2.html
 
Constellation Maps to help you at IAU (International Astronomical Society)
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations