July 2024
Featuring Saturn, the Moon and the Sun, the Dumbbell nebula, and another small nebula!
28th and 30th July - Solar system things.
Saturn is now rising to a decent height before twilight. higher than it has been for a good few years, so I thought I would get some images.
I was unhappy with my first attempt on the 19th of July, so here's the second, from images taken 2:57 and 3:45 on the 28th July.
This is a 200% version of the original images.
You can see that we are now looking at the ring system close to edge on. As Saturn moves around its nearly 30 year orbit. the plane of its ring system is always orientated in the same plane relative to the greater universe.
(I'll bet this is not true - it will precess in the same way as the Earths axis of rotation or the Moons orbital plane does).
It follows that the angle at which we view the rings will depend on what direction in the greater universe we are looking when we observe Saturn. i.e., what constellation it is in.
Here's a little combo picture of views of Saturn picked from my "Best of" pages from the last few years:
In June 2015, Saturn was near the border of Libra and Scorpio, 18 degrees below the celestial equator, so never getting particularly high in the sky. The rings were close to presenting their widest view, and getting wider.
There is a gap in the images as Saturn trundles its way through the southernmost zodiacal constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, the rings reaching the steepest angle of view sometime in 2016 or 2017. By August 2021, Saturn is back to being 18 degrees below the equator in the constellation of Capricorn. The ring system is now noticeably narrowed. In November 2023, Saturn has moved into Aquarius, now only 13 degrees below the equator, the rings continue to narrow, as they do up until July 2024, with Saturn still in Aquarius but now only 6.5 degrees below the equator.
At the end of June 2024, Saturn started it retrograde motion. This is where the Earth whizzes around its orbit, "overtaking" the ponderous Saturn, which appears to suspend its overall west to east movement through the constellations, and starts going backwards. So, the angle at which we view the ring system changes, and the rings will be getting wider for a time.
They will be edge on sometime in 2025, then begin widening again, and we get to see the other side. As Saturn progresses into the northern zodiacal constellations, the rings get wider, peaking around 2031/2032 when Saturn will be in Taurus/Gemini. Great views of the planet to be had then, as they were when it was in the same part of the sky two orbits earlier in 1972, when Saturn was the first object I looked at through my first telescope.
If the Moon is around, I like to finish off my planetary imaging by looking at the Moon with the same magnification. Here's July's effort, with Saturn just tucked into the corner:
(Click/Tap the image to go to abetter resolution version)
If you wish to find this area of the Moon on a map, the three most obvious craters in a line running top left to bottom right are Purbach, Regiomontanus and Walther, to the left Deslandres is the large rather ill defined (in this image) crater. Within this, to the bottom left corner, is the interestingly named crater Hell! (the one with the really bright rim). Hell is about 32kn across, I thought it may have been bigger, you could walk round it in a couple of days, wouldn't fancy being there for an eternity.
Here's an indication of where this image is in relation to the whole Moon (lunar image from Stellarium):
Later, on the 28th, I got this image of a rather spotty Sun:
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
30 July 2024
More planets will be on offer later in the year. Here's a preview, a picture of an enormously overexposed Moon, Jupiter and Mars in the 4:15am twilight. Jupiter is the bright thing bottom left, Mars is to the right and above this, below the Moon. The star finishing the triangle below Mars is Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus.
If you click/tap on the image to see a better res version you should be able to see some of the stars of the Hyades. above right of Aldebaran, and indeed a couple of stars of the Pleiades above and to the right of the Moon.
8th July - Cygnus Nebulae continued
My search for objects I have not imaged previously continues in the star fields of Cygnus. This one didn't even make it to the NGC catalogue. IC 5076 is a small reflection nebula about 2000 light years away, close to a 5.6 magnitude star.
Here's a heavily cropped image:
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
Due to concerns that the IC 5076 pictures might come to nothing, I also took some of M27, the Dumbbell nebula. This must be the biggest field of view planetary nebula in the northern hemisphere. (A planetary nebula arises out of an explosion of stuff from a central star.)
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
I've imaged this object a number of tines and it features in the "Best from 2014/2015" post (single frame image) and the "Best from 2021" post (bigger focal length).
Remember, check out the home page of this blog for other posts, including the best images from previous years.
28th and 30th July - Solar system things.
Saturn is now rising to a decent height before twilight. higher than it has been for a good few years, so I thought I would get some images.
I was unhappy with my first attempt on the 19th of July, so here's the second, from images taken 2:57 and 3:45 on the 28th July.
This is a 200% version of the original images.
You can see that we are now looking at the ring system close to edge on. As Saturn moves around its nearly 30 year orbit. the plane of its ring system is always orientated in the same plane relative to the greater universe.
(I'll bet this is not true - it will precess in the same way as the Earths axis of rotation or the Moons orbital plane does).
It follows that the angle at which we view the rings will depend on what direction in the greater universe we are looking when we observe Saturn. i.e., what constellation it is in.
Here's a little combo picture of views of Saturn picked from my "Best of" pages from the last few years:
In June 2015, Saturn was near the border of Libra and Scorpio, 18 degrees below the celestial equator, so never getting particularly high in the sky. The rings were close to presenting their widest view, and getting wider.
There is a gap in the images as Saturn trundles its way through the southernmost zodiacal constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, the rings reaching the steepest angle of view sometime in 2016 or 2017. By August 2021, Saturn is back to being 18 degrees below the equator in the constellation of Capricorn. The ring system is now noticeably narrowed. In November 2023, Saturn has moved into Aquarius, now only 13 degrees below the equator, the rings continue to narrow, as they do up until July 2024, with Saturn still in Aquarius but now only 6.5 degrees below the equator.
At the end of June 2024, Saturn started it retrograde motion. This is where the Earth whizzes around its orbit, "overtaking" the ponderous Saturn, which appears to suspend its overall west to east movement through the constellations, and starts going backwards. So, the angle at which we view the ring system changes, and the rings will be getting wider for a time.
They will be edge on sometime in 2025, then begin widening again, and we get to see the other side. As Saturn progresses into the northern zodiacal constellations, the rings get wider, peaking around 2031/2032 when Saturn will be in Taurus/Gemini. Great views of the planet to be had then, as they were when it was in the same part of the sky two orbits earlier in 1972, when Saturn was the first object I looked at through my first telescope.
If the Moon is around, I like to finish off my planetary imaging by looking at the Moon with the same magnification. Here's July's effort, with Saturn just tucked into the corner:
(Click/Tap the image to go to abetter resolution version)
If you wish to find this area of the Moon on a map, the three most obvious craters in a line running top left to bottom right are Purbach, Regiomontanus and Walther, to the left Deslandres is the large rather ill defined (in this image) crater. Within this, to the bottom left corner, is the interestingly named crater Hell! (the one with the really bright rim). Hell is about 32kn across, I thought it may have been bigger, you could walk round it in a couple of days, wouldn't fancy being there for an eternity.
Here's an indication of where this image is in relation to the whole Moon (lunar image from Stellarium):
Later, on the 28th, I got this image of a rather spotty Sun:
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
30 July 2024
More planets will be on offer later in the year. Here's a preview, a picture of an enormously overexposed Moon, Jupiter and Mars in the 4:15am twilight. Jupiter is the bright thing bottom left, Mars is to the right and above this, below the Moon. The star finishing the triangle below Mars is Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus.
If you click/tap on the image to see a better res version you should be able to see some of the stars of the Hyades. above right of Aldebaran, and indeed a couple of stars of the Pleiades above and to the right of the Moon.
8th July - Cygnus Nebulae continued
My search for objects I have not imaged previously continues in the star fields of Cygnus. This one didn't even make it to the NGC catalogue. IC 5076 is a small reflection nebula about 2000 light years away, close to a 5.6 magnitude star.
Here's a heavily cropped image:
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
Due to concerns that the IC 5076 pictures might come to nothing, I also took some of M27, the Dumbbell nebula. This must be the biggest field of view planetary nebula in the northern hemisphere. (A planetary nebula arises out of an explosion of stuff from a central star.)
(Click/Tap the image to go to a better resolution version)
I've imaged this object a number of tines and it features in the "Best from 2014/2015" post (single frame image) and the "Best from 2021" post (bigger focal length).
That's the end of the July astronomy post.
Remember, check out the home page of this blog for other posts, including the best images from previous years.
Comments
Post a Comment