Skytalk

Thinking about buying a telescope as a gift this holiday season? Consider these three easy guidelines:

1) Start simple; a telescope that is easy to use will get used more often.

For more details, check out Derrick Pitts’s tips for purchasing a telescope. And if you already have a telescope, check the evening sky this week between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., where Saturn and Venus cavort low in the West. In the Eastern morning sky, Mercury and Mars are visible between 6:30 and 6:45 a.m.

There are lots of hints regarding the possibility of the existence of liquid water around the solar, system, the galaxy, and the universe, but confirmation at only a very few places: Mars and the moon for example. Astronomers using Keck telescopes at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii now confirm the existence of liquid water at Jupiter’s moon Europa.

The galaxy NGC 6240 is shown to contain three supermassive black holes at its core. This indicates a triple collision of galaxies back in the dark past of the universe. Each black hole appears to measure 90 million solar masses, in a space 3,000 light years wide. Wolfram Kolatschny at the University of Göttingen says this observation indicates the possibility that the largest galaxies with supermassive black holes could evolve much faster than originally proposed. Data was collected from the triple-collision galaxy (some 300 million light years away), and indicates the galaxies are still merging, possibly 14 billion years later. This is the first time a triple galactic collision has been identified.

Japanese astronomers Wada and Kokoba suggest that planets might also form in vast dense dust rings around supermassive black holes at galactic cores. Their calculations show that thousands of planets might form at a distance of 10 light years from the black holes where forces are stable enough for the typical planet formation processes to function. Think about it: in a proto-planetary circumstellar disk, planets form from dense clouds of material rotating around the disk’s central mass component. There’s no way to detect such planets yet, if they exist, but it does suggest new regions to target in the search for extra-terrestrial planets.

The sun sets at 4:35pm through December 10th. We have to wait until early January for the latest sunrise.

Our Milky Way’s SgrA Black Hole in the center of our galaxy has ejected a star from the galaxy at a brisk 3.7 million miles per hour. The star originally was part of a binary system, but when the pair got too close to SgrA, the companion was swallowed, and this one was thrown out some five million years ago. This star (S5-HVS1) is unique because of its high velocity and close passage to us; a mere 29,000 light years. The star is currently seen in the southern constellation Grus and is moving 10 times faster than most Milky Way stars.

Remember the excitement when increased methane levels in the Martian atmosphere triggered speculation about burping cows on Mars? Now researchers are seeing increased levels of oxygen. Curiosity Rover’s atmospheric analysis device has been collecting data on the composition of the Martian atmosphere since it arrived three years ago. One thing it found is that the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere varies seasonally, with swings in the overall amount (measured at Gale Crater) by 60%! Oxygen comprises less than 2/10ths of 1% of the overall composition of Mars’ atmosphere. By contrast, Earth’s atmosphere is a whopping 21% oxygen. The minimum needed for human survival is 19.5%. Levels under 10% are fatal in ten minutes; at under 6%, less than a minute.

Turning to night sky highlights: On Saturday and Sunday, Venus and Jupiter are together in the west 30 minutes after sunset.

Following its Pluto encounter in 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was pushing on into the Kuiper Belt, aiming toward an object known originally as 2014 MU69, when space scientists and the public decided it needed a new name. Shortly before the New Horizons encounter on January 1, 2019, they chose the name Ultima Thule. Then a reporter at Newsweek pointed out that the Nazi party had used the phrase Ultima Thule to refer to the mythical homeland of the Aryan people. The term apparently remains in use by modern so-called alt-right groups. Now the object has a new name yet again. The name is now Arrokoth, which means sky in the Powhatan and Algonquian languages. The name was chosen based on the local Native American culture in Maryland, where the New Horizons mission control center is based.

Tuesday this week is the 50th anniversary of the second crewed lunar landing, Apollo 12. There were a number of unplanned events that occurred during the mission – like lightning strikes during launch – but one of the least spoken of is the tiny art gallery left on the moon called Moon Museum.

Fresh off its recent transit of the sun, Mercury is now visible in the Eastern pre-dawn sky from 5 – 6 a.m. along with the brighter Mars; Mercury is below, to the left. The moon drops through passing them Friday and Saturday. Venus now joins Jupiter and Saturn in the west 30 minutes after sunset. Watch Venus and Jupiter Sidle up to each other this week a little closer every day.

November 9th marks the anniversary of legendary astronomer Carl Sagan’s birth. Sagan was known for his wonderfully poetic way of explaining and transporting listeners into the history and complexities of the universe. He explored the mysteries of outer space in his landmark PBS program, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.”

Monday is Mercury Transit Day: The planet Mercury will cross between Earth and the Sun. The transit starts at 7:36 am EST and ends at 1:04 pm. Those hoping to witness the transit must ensure they have proper eye protection. Alternatively, head to the Franklin Institute to watch through their telescopes.

Sizing Up Dwarf Planets:

An International Space Station Resupply Mission is scheduled to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS). It will transport 8,200 lbs of research, crew supplies, and hardware to the six-person crew on the ISS. The craft arrives at ISS at 4:30 am on Monday.

We bid adieu to Daylight Saving Time when we shift our clocks back one hour at 2:00 am on Sunday, November 3rd. Next – we mark the earliest sunset in early December.

Take advantage of the earlier nightfall: Jupiter and Saturn are still available to be seen in the southwest after sunset, Venus rising out of the west as well. Mars has the pre-dawn sky now.

This Thursday is Halloween…and Dark Matter Day! Dark matter-themed events are being organized by labs and institutions around the world doing this research. They range from live webcasts with researchers to dark matter scavenger hunts to a Reddit AMA. Find a sortable list at www.darkmatterday.com/events-list

Scientists believe that dark matter, which we have so far only detected through its gravity-based effects in space, makes up about a quarter (26.8 percent) of the total mass and energy of the universe, and something that is driving the universe’s accelerating expansion, which scientists call dark energy, accounts for another 68.3 percent.

So there’s a BIG part of the universe that we don’t know much about. We’re not sure if dark matter is made up of undiscovered particles, or if it can be explained by tweaking the known laws of physics. Its makeup could teach us much about the history and structure of our universe.

Could dark matter play a role in the composition of newly detected spiral galaxies that dwarf our Milky Way? Recently discovered Super Spiral Galaxies are 180,000 to 440,000 light years across! Our Milky Way is a pretty big galaxy as galaxies go, but it’s a mere 100,000 light years across. These super spirals have so much mass that they spin up to three times faster than galaxies the size of our Milky Way. The spin seems to be much faster than the visible mass should allow. No worries, researchers have pinned the blame on, you guessed it, Dark Matter!

A group of researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have successfully grown edible food crops in soils that simulate the soil composition of the Moon and Mars. Garden cress, radish, spinach, quinoa, tomato, rye, chives, leek and peas were all harvested in this most recent study. Crops did better in the Martian soil than the lunar soil and spinach didn’t like either soil simulant. An earth soil ‘control’ was used.

October 21st is the 96th anniversary of the first-ever planetarium show at the Deutches Museum in Munich, Germany.

October 22nd is the 4,155th anniversary of the first record of a solar eclipse. In China where prediction of eclipses for the legitimacy of the Emperor, according to legend, two court astronomers were beheaded because they failed to predict an eclipse in 2136 BCE. Today mathematicians have calculated every eclipse from 1990 BCE to 3000! The next solar eclipse in the US is April 8, 2024. However, there won’t be another solar eclipse visible in Philadelphia until 2079. The last total eclipse in Philadelphia took place in 1478.

The Orionid meteor shower peak arrives Tuesday morning. They’re very fast not so bright but leave persistent trails for several seconds. 10-20/hour and there are occasional bight ones that break up into fragments. Jupiter and Saturn are still holding court in the evening, with Venus just poking up from the west after sunset. In the pre-dawn sky, Mars weakly shows in the East around 6:30am.

Saturn pulls ahead of Jupiter in the number of moons detected – current score: 82 to 79

Researchers recently announced the discovery of 20 new moons orbiting Saturn by using big telescopes at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea observatory equipped with very sensitive detectors. 17 of them orbit backwards, opposite the planet’s direction of rotation, and most of the new ones are about three miles in size.

The current idea about their origin is that they are the detritus left over from the breakup of a moon not long after Saturn’s formation billions of years ago.

When we think about all the energetic activity happening out there in the universe – supermassive black holes, millisecond pulsars, colliding neutron stars, exploding supernovae – it’s nice to know that in our little corner of the universe not much is happening, right?

Hold your horses, because maybe we’re just in between happenings.

Astronomers announced earlier this week that evidence has been detected that an enormous flare of ionizing radiation suddenly and explosively erupted from a source near the center of our galaxy. It was so powerful and extensive that evidence was found in gas stream 200,000 light years out in space!

Just as surprising as this discovery is, the researchers determined that it took place just 3.5 million years ago! The Chixulub impact that triggered the great dinosaur die-off occurred 62 million years earlier! Our ancestors were just going walk-about on the African continent when this explosion occurred.

So perhaps we’ve evolved in a relatively quiet period in the life of our galaxy. Remember, the evolution of the planet, solar system, galaxy and universe occurs over millions and billions of years and our studies only allow us to look at snapshots – instants in time which we try to assemble into a rational process that will allow us to reasonably predict what will happen in the future. BUT, we have a small number of ‘snapshots’ we’re trying to work with.

There are merely three days left to enter your idea for an exoplanet name

We’re running out of time to see Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky.

Saturday, October 5th is the 132nd birth anniversary of rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard. His was the first liquid-fueled rocket to prove the concept that allowed for the exploration of space as we know it today. He launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in March 1926. The maximum altitude he achieved was 1.7 miles. His technology eventually was adopted in America soon after his death in 1945.

October 5th is also the 61st anniversary of the founding of NASA. It was originally established as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and had 8000 employees and three laboratories. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act in August 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on October 1st, 1958.

Along with our seasonal weather change comes the now obvious changes in sun time. We’re down to 11 hours 36 minutes of sun above the horizon vs 15 hours on June 21. We’ll still lose another 2 hours and 15 minutes between now and December 21 with Halloween as the halfway point to Winter Solstice. This is a great time for stargazers because they can start early enough and be warm enough to see three seasons of constellations from sunset to sunrise. Jupiter and Saturn are still the showpiece items of the evening sky.