Easy Astronomy Blog

What exactly is the definition of astronomy?

Astronomy can be defined like this :

The scientific study of the universe and the objects in it, including stars, planets, nebulae, and galaxies. Astronomy deals with the position, size, motion, composition, energy, and evolution of celestial objects. Astronomers analyze not only visible light but also radio waves, x-rays, and other ranges of radiation that come from sources outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

So basically, astronomy is the study of everything that is in outer space including stars, planets, constellations, comets, the solar system, etc. It is a fascinating science that more and more people are constantly interested in. These people are called astronomers. They observe outer space with tools like cameras, binoculars and telescopes.

If astronomy interests you and you don’t have much equipment to observe the night sky, you might be interested in taking a look at my Orion Skyquest XT8 telescope review.

Orion Skyquest XT8

Here is a great telescope, the Orion Skyquest XT8.

For those of you with a modest budget, it is an excellent choice. At a price tag of around $330 for the regular XT8 you get a formidable tool. If you didn’t already know, the Skyquest series of  Orion telescope is already legendary. The XT8 uses the same Dobsonian design as the original Intelliscope. The XT8i adds an optional computerized object location system that lets you easily point the scope to any of the more than 14,000 objects in the included celestial database. Nebulas, galaxies, star clusters and planets are easy targets for the XT8i.

The XT8 consists of a 44.5-inch enameled steel tube that contains a 203mm (8-inch) primary mirror. Two eyepieces are included; the XT8 also accepts 2-inch eyepieces. A 2-inch Crayford-style focuser with rack-and-pinion system provides focusing. A 9×50 power finder scope is included for manual object location.

Moving the scope to the observing location is relatively easy, given that a large handle is mounted on the back of the rocker box. However, the placement of the handle is below the center of gravity. The tube wants to swing upwards when you try to pick it up. You can solve this problem by positioning a web belt around the base and tube while it is ‘in transit’. You can also install a retrofit for smoother azimuth movements. This modification consists of the addition of six ‘milk jug washers’ on the central bolt between the upper and lower baseplates.

The tube is constructed of rolled metal with a black enamel finish. It is painted flat black on the inside. The end caps are cast aluminum, making for a very nice looking product. The tube has what Orion calls a navigation knob at the top. It is quite convenient for positioning the scope, especially when tracking a planet. The dust cap (included) fits snugly atop the tube and a shower cap keeps dust out.

The XT8i includes a computerized system that uses a set of guide arrows that show you which direction to move the scope to quickly center an object. Once the object is centered, you must move the scope by hand to keep the object centered.

The Orion SkyQuest XT8 Intelliscope is a good first telescope for individuals who are new to astronomy, and an ideal choice for experienced users who want a scope that is sizable yet easily portable.

This telescope is available for purchase at Telescope.com.

I discovered an awesome website and wanted to share it with all of you. It is an online store focused exclusively on astronomy!

www.starrynightstore.com
There are all kinds of products from softwares to scopes to books and DVDs. Do not think this is a little creepy online store. These guys have a serious reputation and an excellent customer service. Shipping is very fast, your products are shipped the same day if your order is received by noon Pacific Time. And the best part is they have a 100% satisfaction guarentee. If you are not satisfied in anyway by your product within 30 days, just return it and you will receive a full refund.

Definitely visit and add to your bookmarks! www.starrynightstore.com

A small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light-years. At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star that is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand.

In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are colored blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1,700 years old and is located about 17,000 light-years away.

Taken from Astronomy.com

The dominant gas in Saturn’s atmosphere is hydrogen, but small quantities of helium and methane have also been identified. If life support on Saturn came into discussion, we’d have to agree that the conditions are very different from those on Earth. Saturn has a lower density than water; thus, were there a lake or ocean, Saturn would be vanished in it. Chances for life support remain standing in what Saturn’s moons are concerned, though, but research is in progress, and until more scientific evidence is obtained, everything is pure theory.

Saturn is a very windy place, which is definitely a feature to stand out; just think of wind blowing at about 1,100 miles per hour in in low and central latitudes. But at first glance, nothing seems as spectacular on Saturn as the ring system that surrounds the planet. There are three main ring sectors scientists have classified so far: we can actually speak of three rings in fact, with two brighter and one fainter. The spacecrafts that have studied Saturn and its orbiting celestial bodies indicate that there are thinner rings in the structures we perceive as large, and they are not continuous at all.

The very source of the rings of Saturn remains a mystery for the moment; what renders them so special is that many of them are smaller or larger icebergs, having a significant water quantity trapped in their structure. Other ring areas consist of dust mainly that present characteristics of electrostatic charging, thus enabling the appearance of spokes. Very fine dust particles connect to make these spokes, but they don’t last for long and disappear as quietly as they formed. Then, there is a close relationship between some of the rings and smaller Saturn moons that appear to have an impact on the dust presence in certain areas. Moreover, the revelations science had with the discovery of Saturn’s moons are neither the first nor the last, who knows what will show up next?

Researchers have seen the best evidence yet for a pair of black holes orbiting each other within the same galaxy.

While such “binary systems” have been postulated before, none has ever been conclusively shown to exist.

The new black hole pair is dancing significantly closer than the prior best binary system candidate.

The work, published in the journal Nature, is in line with the theory of the growth of galaxies, each with a black hole at their centre.

The theory has it that as galaxies near one another, their central black holes should orbit each other until merging together.

But evidence for black holes nearing and orbiting has so far been scant.

Dancing cheek-to-cheek

As matter falls into black holes, it emits light of a characteristic colour that in turn gives information about the direction in which the black hole is moving.

Read the rest on BBC News

Who discovered Saturn? Was this planet known to the ancients or is it modern science that brought it to our attention? To be honest, in the old times people were better informed on the movement of the stars than we are today, and the presence of Saturn must have been noticed even with primitive telescopes. In fact, Galileo is widely known as the scientist who discovered Saturn in 1610, since in his descriptions he even wrote a theory about the rings. According to his words, there were some little ears on each side of the planet, and he thought they were globes. Yet, later on, the white rings were identified and have remained the most spectacular solar system formation ever since.

The globe explanation given by Galileo started from a confusion he didn’t know how to explain. He was the astronomer who discovered Saturn, but at the same time he thought there were three planets, not one. The clarification of the rings’ presence was provided in 1655 when Christiaan Huygens realized that what Galileo referred to as globes were actually rings, but their structure became apparent twenty years later with the discovery made by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. He was the one to initiate the theory that Saturn’s rings were broken or discontinuous, consisting of fragments of different sizes.

Presently we know that the rings consist of ice, rocks and other interplanetary debris, which only contributes to underlying the truth of the early theories. Who discovered Saturn then? In conclusion, we have to admit that the discovery of the solar system has been in progress since we’ve started looking at the stars, and we are far from getting to the bottom. Every year seems to get something new for us to discover: and even if more than forty satellites have been discovered around Saturn, more remain hidden to our eyes for now. Thus the question is not about who discovered Saturn, but what surprises are there in stock for us?

Galileo as the person who discovered Saturn deserves all our respect and consideration, but he is not the only one. The spacecraft which captured the the close image of Saturn for the first time was called Cassini after the astronomer who understood and theorized the pattern of the rings around this planet. Yet, thousands of people unknown to the public are presently involved in space programs; maybe their names are not known to history, but their contribution is just as great and important. With every step we take towards knowing our universe, we claim one more Victory in the exploration of the unknown.

I had a request for more content on Picture of the day so I’m sharing some amazing shots with you here. Click the pictures to see them full size.

Orion’s belt

Explanation : Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the bright bluish stars from east to west (left to right) along the diagonal in this gorgeous cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie about 1,500 light-years away, born of Orion’s well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have intriguing and some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the lower left. The famous Orion Nebula itself lies off the bottom of this star field that covers about 4.5×3.5 degrees on the sky. This image was taken last month with a digital camera attached to a small telescope in Switzerland, and better matches human color perception than a more detailed composite taken over 15 years ago.

The next one is truely incredible

Saturn’s Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters

Explanation : What lies at the bottom of Hyperion’s strange craters? Nobody knows. To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in late 2005 and took an image of unprecedented detail. That image, shown above in false color, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and a generally odd surface. The slight differences in color likely show differences in surface composition. At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark material. Inspection of the image shows bright features indicating that the dark material might be only tens of meters thick in some places. Hyperion is about 250 kilometers across, rotates chaotically, and has a density so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside.

Largest Full Moon of 2008

Explanation : As viewed from a well chosen location at sunset, October’s gorgeous Full Moon rose behind Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California. Captured in this lovely telescopic view, historic Lick Observatory is perched on the mountain’s 4,200 foot summit, observatory and rising Moon momentarily sharing the warm color of filtered sunlight.

Milky Way Road Trip

Explanation : In search of planets and the summer Milky Way, astronomer Tunç Tezel took an evening road trip. Last Saturday, after driving the winding road up Uludag, a mountain near Bursa, Turkey, he was rewarded by this beautiful skyview to the south. Near the center, bright planet Jupiter outshines the city lights below and the stars of the constellation Sagittarius. Above the mountain peaks, an arcing cloud bank seems to lead to the Milky Way’s own cloudy apparition plunging into the distant horizon. In Turkish, Uludag means Great Mountain. Uludag was known in ancient times as the Mysian Olympus.

I already had an article about different astronomy softwares here but I just found a very special one.

LunarPhase Pro is a utility for Windows which provides a range of information on the Moon and, to a lesser degree, the Sun, graphically displaying the current phase of the moon and lunar data, in real time. Lunarphase Pro (LPP) needs about 35Mb hard disk space for its installation. The recommended minimum amount of RAM on a PC is 128Mb (this will display the Moon in medium resolution graphics) but 256Mb is required for high-resolution displays. A 500Mhz or faster PC is recommended but some screen load times on calculation-intensive screens will be slow on less-specified PCs.

The initial window is clean and uncluttered. The ’skin’ is chrome-like, it is impossible for the user to change this to give a more conventional Windows ‘feel’. The number of buttons on the toolbar is small; however one of the buttons is entitled Display Menu of Other Functions. This gives an extensive list of other functions, all which really deserve their own icons. While this would increase the ‘busyness’ of the Window, I feel it would be preferable to the current situation. In general, I think that while some users might be unhappy with the non-standard appearance of the User Interface, this departure from the standard Windows ‘look’ looks very high-tech.

Lunar Phase Pro is primarily a planning tool for lunar observers and offers an enormous amount of information to assist the observer in this regard. Obviously, it graphically displays the current phase of the moon in real time and displays the times and dates of the major lunar phases for the month. However, it also provides much more information for planning your next night of moongazing, including the real-time position of the moon in both RA/Dec and Alt/Az coordinates, a calendar of lunar phases for each day in the selected month and monthly lunar libration diagrams. It is also possible to display a Lunar visibility diagram for the month showing when the moon is above the horizon and the brightness of the Moon. In addition, the software calculates and displays Moon’s Rise, Set and Transit times. If you see an interesting feature under a particular illumination condition, it is possible to find times and dates when this feature will be under similar illumination, taking into account libration effects. Far-side and North/South Polar features can also be viewed and identified.

Lunar Explorer

Clicking the Lunar Explorer button is the gateway to the mapping functions of this software tool. If you want to take full advantage of the features here, you should activate Use OpenGL and High Resolution Graphics in the configuration screen.

The appearance of the Moon is very realistic once your PC has sufficient graphics capability (which shoudn’t be a problem for modern PCs) to take advantage of the maps. Maps can also be oriented to match the view through your telescope or binoculars. Zooming and panning is smooth, although when you zoom in to the maximum, the image quality suffers a little. A new feature added to Version 3 of the software is diplaying very high resolution Moon charts. These have to be downloaded from the internet (LPP handles all of that for you) but you can save them for later viewing through the software. All maps in LPP can be printed out if you need to take something out to to the ’scope.

One very nice feature is that the software allows you to produce a high resolution animation of lunar libration showing how the moon wobbles over the course of a month. If you don’t know what libration is, click this button once and all will be revealed!! It’s a pity that the feature only runs for 1 month, it would be nice if it ran until the user decided to stop it. The Lunar Explorer also lists which lunar features are currently on the moon’s terminator. The utility includes Rukl Chart outlines and a list of features on the chart, a feature which will become of more importance with the imminent re-issue of these charts by Sky and Telescope. Once you have entered the details of your telescope/ eyepiece combination it can emulate the view through your instrument. It is possible to link images to specific lunar features and record your observations in the software in order to keep a permanent record of your observations (there are over 800 observing notes provided with LPP to get you going). Not only is a visible view of the Moon provided, you can choose to view 3 mineral maps, a gravity map and a Clementine image, a nice touch for educational purposes.

So Lunar Phase Pro is a great observation planning tool for lunar observers or imagers. The utility can teach you a lot about how the Moon orbits the Earth. In addition, it provides near photo-realistic views of the Lunar surface via the Lunar Explorer utility and these can be printed as custom built maps. Support for the software is excellent and the author, Gary Nugent, is very responsive to requests for enhancements.

So get your copy of this excellent software now :
Lunar Phase Pro