The night sky this month

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during August 2016.

Highlights of the month

August - Find the globular cluster in Hercules and spot the "Double-double" in Lyra

There are two very nice objects to spot with binoculars high in the sky after dark this month. Two thirds of the way up the right hand side of the 4 stars that make up the "keystone" in the constellation Hercules is M13, the best globular cluster visible in the northern sky.

Just to the left of the bright star Vega in Lyra is the multiple star system Epsilon Lyrae often called the double-double. With binoculars a binary star is seen but, when observed with a telescope, each of these two stars is revealed to be a double star - hence the name.

August - A good month to observe Neptune with a small telescope.

Neptune comes into opposition - when it is nearest the Earth - on the 2nd of September, so will be well placed both this month and next. Its magnitude is +7.9, so Neptune, with a disk just 3.7 arcseconds across, is easily spotted in binoculars lying in the constellation Aquarius, as shown on the chart. It rises to an elevation of ~27 degrees when due south. Given a telescope of 8 inches or greater aperture and a dark tranparent night it should even be possible to spot its moon Triton.

August 1st after sunset: Jupiter, Mercury, Regulus and Venus form a line in the Western Sky.

Given a clear sky and a very low western horizon you may be able to spot a line of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus along with Regulus in Leo. Binoculars may well be needed, but please do not use them until the Sun has set.

August 5th after sunset: Jupiter and a thin waxing crescent Moon

As Jupiter slowly sinks into the Sun's glare, given clear skies and a low western horizon it should be possible to spot Jupiter up and to the left of a thin waxing crescent Moon.

August 23rd - after sunset: Saturn and Mars lie above Antares in Scorpius

Looking South-Southwest after sunset and given a low horizon in this direction you should be able to spot Saturn (+0.4) lying above Mars (-0.3) (both in Ophiuchus) close to Antares in Scorpius.

August 27th - after sunset: Venus and Jupiter less than half a degree apart.

Looking west after sunset and given a very low horizon in this direction, binoculars may help you spot Jupiter and Venus less than half a degree apart. But please do not use binocluars until after the Sun has set.

August 11th and 25th: The Straight Wall

The Straight Wall is best observed either 1 or 2 days after First Quarter (evening of the 11th August best) or a day or so before Third Quarter (evening of the 25th August best). To honest, it is not really a wall but a gentle scarp - as Sir Patrick Moore has said, "Neither is it a wall nor is it straight."

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK and across the world.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from the location index. See where the space station is now using the tracking page.

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter can be seen low above the western horizon after sunset but throughout the month is sinking slowly into the Sun's glare. However as it does so, it makes some groupings with the crescent Moon, Mercury and Venus as highlighted above. It remains at magnitude -1.7 throughout August whilst its angular diameter reduces slightly from 32.1 to 30.9 arcseconds. Its low elevation will hinder our view of the giant planet but a small telescope should still show its equatorial bands and the Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn
  Saturn has its rings as nearly open as they can be and so still makes a great sight through a small telescope even though its elevation never gets above ~20 degrees. It dims slightly from magnitude +0.3 to +0.5 during August as its angular size falls slightly from 17.5 to 16.7 arcseconds. Saturn transits at sunset and so can be seen low in the south-western sky during the evening. With a small telescope one should also be able to spot its largest moon, Titan. As described in the highlights, towards the end of the month Saturn, Mars and Antares make a close grouping.
• Mercury
  Mercury reaches greatest elongation from the Sun on August 16th but, sadly, never gets that high above the horizon in the western sky. It magnitude falls throughout August from -0.2 to +1.1 whilst its angular size increases from 6 to 9.5 arcseconds.
• Mars
  As August begins, Mars, shining at magnitude -0.8, transits around sunset and so will be seen in the south-western sky during the evening as it moves first from Libra into Scorpius and then towards the end of the month into Ophiuchus. Its magnitude drops from -0.8 to -0.3 during the month as its angular size falls from 13 to 10.5 arcseconds. Sadly, its low elevation will hinder our view but it may still be possible to see some features on the surface with a small telescope if the atmospheric 'seeing' is good.
• Venus
  Venus can be seen very low in the western sky after sunset so, despite its brilliant magnitude of -3.8, will still be hard to spot. Its angular diameter increases from 10.1 to 10.9 arcseconds during the month. On August 1st, it sets about 45 minutes after the Sun lying very close to the star Regulus in Leo. An interesting, but difficult observation due to its very low elevation on the 27th will find it less than half a degree away from Jupiter as both fall into the Sun's glare.

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand speaks about the southern hemisphere night sky during August 2016.

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand speaks about the southern hemisphere night sky during August 2016.

In the Southern Hemisphere, winter is the time when the galactic center goes right all the up at Zenith. All you have to do from here in Wellington, New Zealand is to lift up your gaze and it will be right there. From there, if there is a really dark night, you can see the Milky Way Kiwi, which I spoke about in last month's jodcast. It is a dark patch at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, that looks just like a Kiwi bird, one of the native birds of New Zealand, and a national icon for us. It is truly remarkable how the kiwibird in the sky resembles to the one on the earth. But since you need a really dark sky, I would suggest that the best thing you can do to try spot the Milky Way Kiwi is to start looking for it in long exposed pictures of the night sky. The only place in New Zealand where I could see it with the naked eye was at Lake Tekapo's Earth and Sky. Whereas the Milky Way Kiwi is in the Scorpius Sagittarius region, holding the center of the galaxy on its head like a crown, the other famous dark patch is the Coalsack, near the Southern Cross. The coalsack is also known as the flounder, which is the Maori name for it. In deed, again if you find a truly dark sky, you will see the resemblance. However, talking about naming objects in the sky, the coalsack is also very appropriate as the dark patch, made of interstellar dust matter holds inside it a jewelbox, or the Kappa Crucis Cluster, NGC 4755. This is an open cluster in the constellation Crux, originally discovered byNicolas Louis de Lacaille during 1751-1752 and named the Jewell box by Sir John Herschel. He described its telescopic appearance as "...a superb piece of fancy jewellery". Jewel box is easily visible to the naked eye as a hazy star about 1.0 degrees southeast of the first-magnitude star Beta Crucis.

In August, after sunset, the Southern Cross, Crux, and the two pointers, Alpha and Beta Centauri, are slowly starting their descent on the south celestial carousel, our special part of the sky that is not visible from Northern latitudes above 30 degrees. They are midway down the southwest sky. The pointers point down and rightward to Crux the Southern Cross. Alpha Centauri is the third brightest star and the closest naked eye star-neighbour, 4.3 light years* away. Beta Centauri, like most of the stars in Crux, is a blue-giant star hundreds of light years away and thousands of times brighter than the sun.

There is a part of the sky here in Wellington that seems to rotate around the South Celestial Pole, the extension of the South Pole in the sky, located here at 41 degrees above the horizon. This coincides with Wellington's latitude, 41 degrees South. You can almost make the South Celestial Circle from the two pointers, Alpha and Beta Centauri, the Southern Cross, the Diamond Cross, the False Cross, then lower down on the south-western horizon Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky, and Achernar, which is easily found if you exend a line from the southern cross all the way to the southeastern horizon. The South Celestial Circle makes an entire rotation in 23 hours, 56 minutes and just about 4 seconds, which is a sidereal day. This is a "time scale that is based on Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars" rather than the Sun. The south celestial circle is home to the Large and Small Clouds of Magellan LMC and SMC that look like two misty patches of light low in the south, easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are galaxies like our Milky Way but much smaller. The LMC is about 160000 light years away; the SMC about 200000 light years away. My two favourite objects inside the south celestial circle are the globular cluster 47 Tucanae (rival of Omega Centauri) and the Tarantula Nebula, a spectacular cloud which is one of the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of galaxies. To give you an comparison, the Tarantula Nebula is about 160 000 light years away from us. Its luminosity is so great that if it were as close to Earth as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would cast shadows. The South Celestial Circle never ceases to amaze me and I watch it as it rotates with the seasons and througout the night when I can. For me, the southern part of the sky, is the best and I am extremely happy that i had the chance to see it, let alone now teach about it.

Back to the ecliptic, which is visible from everywhere where people can see the Sun and the Moon, as it is defined as the path of Sun but also as the plane of our Solar System, all five naked-eye planets are visible in the early evening sky. Mercury, Venus and Jupiter are low in the west and shuffle around through the month. Mars and Saturn are north of overhead near Antares.

Venus, the brilliant silver 'evening star', sets in the west an hour after the sun at the beginning of the month, extending to nearly two hours by the end. Jupiter, higher in the west and golden-coloured, sets steadily earlier through the month: at 9 pm at the start of August and before 8 pm at the end. Mercury makes its best evening sky appearance of the year. It is roughly midway between Jupiter and Venus at the beginning of the month. Around the 20th Mercury will be left of Jupiter but much fainter. It begins to sink back into the twilight at the end of the month. On August 27-28, Jupiter and Venus will be close together, easily included in the same view in a telescope. At the beginning of August, Mars, Saturn and Antares make an isosceles triangle north of the zenith. Mars is the brightest of the three and the same colour as Antares. Saturn is cream-coloured. Saturn stays put against the background stars. Mars moves steadily eastward. On the 25th Mars will be two degrees, four full-moon diameters, from Antares making a striking pairing of orange stars.

Bright stars are widely scattered. Vega on the north skyline is balanced by Canopus low in the south. Orange Arcturus is in the northwest. The Southern Cross, Crux, and the Pointers are midway down the southwest sky. The Milky Way spans the sky from northeast to southwest. Canopus, the second brightest star, is near the south skyline at dusk. It swings upward into the southeast sky through the morning hours. On the opposite horizon is Vega, one of the brightest northern stars. It is due north in mid-evening and sets around midnight. Arcturus, Hokulea, the Zenith star of Hawaii is in the northwest at dusk. The fourth brightest star, Arcturus is currently the brightest in the northern hemisphere. It is 120 times the sun's brightness and 37 light years away. When low in the sky Arcturus twinkles red and green as the air splits up its orange light. It sets in the northwest around 10 pm. Antares marks the heart of the Scorpion. The Scorpion's tail hooks around the zenith like a back-to-front question mark. Antares and the tail make the 'fish-hook of Maui' in Maori star lore. The fishing hook drags at this time of hte year the Milky Way down from the heavens. Antares is a red giant star 600 light years away and 19000 times brighter than the sun. Below or right of the Scorpion's tail is 'the teapot' made by the brightest stars of Sagittarius. It is upside down in our southern hemisphere view.

The Milky Way is brightest and broadest overhead in Scorpius and Sagittarius. In a dark sky, it can be traced down past the Pointers and Crux into the southwest. To the northeast it passes Altair, meeting the skyline right of Vega. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy. The thick hub of the galaxy is in Sagittarius 30000 light years away. The actual centre is hidden by dust clouds in space. The nearer dust clouds appear as gaps and slots in the Milky Way. Binoculars show many clusters of stars and some glowing gas clouds in the Milky Way.

According to Karen W. Pierce who made an excellent list of binocular objects that you can find on the site astrogeek.com, in Ophiuchus, you can find M9, M10, M12, M14, M19, and M6, which provide examples of different concentrations of stars. Also visible is IC 4665, a big but often overlooked open cluster located near Beta Ophiuchi. On a dark night, it is visible to the naked eye as a hazy splotch nearly I degree across.

Sagittarius contains more Messier objects than any other constellation. The best way to identify them is to take them one by one. The main stars of Sagittarius form the famous "Teapot" asterism, which here in Wellington looks upside down. It is said that for the Norhtenlings, the brightest part of the Milky Way seems to emerge from the Teapot's spout like a puff of steam. In Sagittarius, M22, the Great Sagittarius star cluster is a very large globular — the best of the constellation's many globulars. At magnitude 5.1 it is an easy binocular object. M23 is another one of the many clusters in Sagittarius. M23 presents over 100 stars in an area about the size of the Moon. The Lagoon Nebula, M8, is visible with the naked eye in dark nights just north of the richest part of the Sagittarius Milky Way. The Trifid Nebula, M20, is found only 1 1/2 degrees northwest of the Lagoon Nebula. Ideal conditions and sharp eyes might detect M21, which is located just 1/2 degree northeast of M20, although it is rather faint by binocular standards. Omega Nebula, also called M17 or the Swan, the Horseshoe or the Checkmark, can be seen clearly in binoculars. In Scorpius, Antares, or Rehua in Maori, is the Heart of the Scorpion. A red giant star about 10000 times more luminous than the Sun is a good binocular object. M4 is a globular cluster that in binculars looks like a fuzzy patch. M6, the Butterfly Cluster, is a large open cluster of about 50 stars resembles a butterfly. M7 is a large, bright open cluster that lies southeast of M6 but needs to be seen through binoculars to be fully appreciated. NGC 6231 is a bright open cluster that lies in a rich region of the Milky Way. It is best surveyed in binoculars or at very low power in a telescope. In this same area of the scorpion's tail are several other binocular-visible objects but I will let you discover these, as that region of the sky comes about and remember that you don't need fancy telescopes to enjoy the night sky but a pair of good bionculars a good sky atlas and lots of hot chocolate. It's winter time here in the Souther Hemisphere and the nights are crisp but cold. Keep warm and look up.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during July 2016.

Highlights of the month

July - Still worth observing Saturn
Saturn reached opposition on the 3rd of June, so is now low (at an elevation of ~ 20 degrees) in the west-southwest as darkness falls lying just over 6 degrees above the orange-red star Antares in Scorpius.   Held steady, binoculars should enable you to see Saturn's brightest moon, Titan, at magnitude 8.2. A small telescope will show the rings with magnifications of x25 or more and one of 6-8 inches aperture with a magnification of ~x200 coupled with a night of good "seeing" (when the atmosphere is calm) will show Saturn and its beautiful ring system in its full glory.

As Saturn rotates quickly with a day of just 10 and a half hours, its equator bulges slightly and so it appears a little "squashed". Like Jupiter, it does show belts but their colours are muted in comparison.

July - Find the globular cluster in Hercules and spot the "Double-double" in Lyra
There are two very nice objects to spot with binoculars high in the south-western sky well after dark this month. Two thirds of the way up the right hand side of the 4 stars that make up the "keystone" in the constellation Hercules is M13, the best globular cluster visible in the northern sky.

Just to the left of the bright star Vega in Lyra is the multiple star system Epsilon Lyrae often called the double-double. With binoculars a binary star is seen but, when observed with a telescope, each of these two stars is revealed to be a double star - hence the name!

Early July around midnight: look north to spot Noctilucent clouds.
Noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds, are most commonly seen in the deep twilight towards the north from our latitude. They are the highest clouds in the atmosphere at heights of around 80 km or 50 miles. Normally too faint to be seen, they are visible when illuminated by sunlight from below the northern horizon whilst the lower parts of the atmosphere are in shadow. They are not fully understood and are increasing in frequency, brightness and extent; some think that this might be due to climate change! So on a clear dark night as light is draining from the north western sky long after sunset take a look towards the north and you might just spot them!

July 1st, 1 hour after sunset: Saturn and Mars make a triangle with Antares
Around one hour after sunset on July 1st, given a clear sky and low southern horizon, you should be able to spot Saturn, above, and Mars, over to the right, or Antares in Scorpius.

July 8th, 1 hour after sunset: A Waning Crescent Moon near Jupiter
Around one hour after sunset on July 8th, given a clear sky and low western horizon, you should be able to spot Jupiter, above and to the left of a thin crescent Moon.

July 16th after sunset: Venus and Mercury half a degree apart

July 29th before dawn: A thin waning crescent Moon close to Aldebaran and the Hyades Cluster.

July 30th after sunset: Mercury very close to Regulus in Leo.

July 13th and 26th: Two Great Lunar Craters
Two great Lunar Craters: Tycho and Copernicus
These are great nights to observe two of the greatest craters on the Moon, Tycho and Copernicus, as the terminator is nearby. Tycho is towards the bottom of Moon in a densely cratered area called the Southern Lunar Highlands. It is a relatively young crater which is about 108 million years old. It is interesting in that it is thought to have been formed by the impact of one of the remnents of an asteroid that gave rise to the asteroid Baptistina. Another asteroid originating from the same breakup may well have caused the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago. It has a diameter of 85 km and is nearly 5 km deep. At full Moon - seen in the image to the right - the rays of material that were ejected when it was formed can be see arcing across the surface. Copernicus is about 800 million years old and lies in the eastern Oceanus Procellarum beyond the end of the Apennine Mountains. It is 93 km wide and nearly 4 km deep and is a clasic "terraced" crater. Both can be seen with binoculars.

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Seen low in the western sky after sunset, Jupiter is shining at magnitude -1.9 at the start of the month and has an angular diameter of 34.3 arc seconds. By month's end, these have reduced slightly to -1.7 magnitudes and 32.1 arc seconds. One hour after sunset it will be about 30 degrees above the horizon. Jupiter passes half a degree below the 4th magnitude star, Sigma Leonis on July 12th and continues to move eastwards, moving towards the Leo-Virgo boarder. Due to the low elevation, the atmosphere will limit our view somewhat but up to four of the Gallilean moons will be visible as well as the dark equatorial bands. The Great Red Spot will be harder to spot unless the seeing and transparency of the atmosphere are good.
  
  
• Saturn
  Saturn, having been in opposition on June 3rd, lies some 6 degrees north of Antares (in Scorpius) in southern Ophiuchus. It continues its retrograde motion westwards across the sky throughout July, narrowing its gap between Mars (now moving eastwards) from 19 degrees to 11 degrees as the month progresses. At the same time the brightness drops a little, from magnitude +0.1 to magnitude +0.3 whilst its apparent diameter falls from 18.2 to 17.6 arc seconds. Though only at an elevation of 20 degrees when due south at around 11 pm as July begins (and 9pm at month's end) the beautiful ring system, now at an inclination of 26 degrees is still worth observing as is Saturn's brightest Moon, Titan.
  
  
• Mercury
  Mercury passes behind the Sun (Superior Conjunction) on July 6th, but may become visible in binoculars about mid month when it sets about 45 minutes after sunset as it lies just half a degree above Venus. During July's final week it will be seen to the upper left of Venus and moves closer to Regulus, in Leo, until the two close to just 22 arc minutes on the evening of July 30th.
  
  
• Mars
  
  
  
• Venus
  Venus, having passed behind the Sun on June 6th becomes visible in mid month low in the west-northwest shining at magnitude -3.9 in Gemini. It passes to the lower left of Pollux on the 13th andpasse through the Beehive Cluster, M44,in Cancer on the 20th, ending the month 5 degrees to the west of Regulus in Leo.
  
  

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during July 2016.

My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I am your starryteller from the Southern Hemisphere. In this jodcast episode I will talk about flying, since it is something I have always loved the most, besides the stars. This podcast is for Stephen who also likes flying.

I always look up for planes and stars altogether, and I've always been happiest in the air. And many times I forget that whilst I am thinking that I am sitting still here on Earth yearning to be there in the skies, our planet is moving at an incredible speed.

Moving but in relation to what? This is a good question. Well, to start with a point of reference, Earth is hurtling at 30 km per second around the Sun. We could measure these orbits in birthdays. One rotation, one birthday. So it takes Earth a year to go around the Sun once. The Sun also revolves around the Milky Way at 250 km per second. So that means that by the time we blink twice we already covered the distance from Wellington to Rotorua. Since our galaxy is larger than that, it takes roughly 230,000,000 Earth years to go around the Milky Way once... So one galactic year ago the trilobites were swimming in Earth's oceans...

But that's not the fastest speed out there... According to Scientific American, the galaxies in our neighborhood are also rushing at about 1,000 kilometers per second towards a structure called the Great Attractor, a region of space roughly 150 million light-years (one light year is about nine and a half trillion kilometers) away from us.

In terms of starry wings, there are many creatures out there among the asterisms imagined by humans. I will start with my absolute favourite object, which was discovered only a quarter of a century ago, the Milky Way Kiwi.

July is the time when the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is climbing all the way to the Zenith and from there, if there is a truly dark night, you can see the Milky Way Kiwi. Now you do need a very dark sky for that, and you need to know what you are looking for. Best you can see the Milky Way Kiwi in long exposed pictures of the night sky but I have seen it with the naked eye from Lake Tekapo Earth and Sky. Before I came to New Zealand, I had not known it existed, I've always thought that the dark patch I was looking at, if I was lucky enough to see it, was a dark horse. Suspended in the fabric of space, the center of our galaxy only rose about 30 degrees above the horizon, where I am from, near the 45 degrees North parallel. Besides, I did not even know what a kiwi bird was truly, let alone a celestial kiwi bird.

Another favourite of mine is Cygnus the Swan. It's my home zenith constellation back in the Northern Hemisphere where it is also known as the Northern Cross. Cygnus is juxtaposed on the Milky Way. Very low on the Northern horizon here, it's main star Deneb is barely grazing the earth looking as if it's a slow moving flame that brazes the land with the galaxy. It rises one hour after midnight, as seen from Wellington New Zealand. A tad higher than Deneb, my favourite star, double star, - well actually triple, Albireo, is resolved in telescopes as one aqua blue and one orange star. That's a sight worth seeing at least every night when Albireo is in the sky. Cygnus rises around midnight.

Aquila, the Eagle is another beautiful bird that flies in the Northern part of the sky, is low on the horizon rising, just after 8pm. Right at its tail, there is NGC 6751, a planetary nebula that looks just like an iris. Altair is the brightest star in Aquila and it's on the Milky Way.

Opposite Deneb and Altair, on the south western part of the evening sky, Sirius is setting whilst Canopus is descending from heavens. In between Sirius, and Canopus, is the constellation Columba. The cat and the dog are chasing the Dove, which is what Columba means. For deep sky observing, near Phaet, the alpha star, brightest star from Columba, there is a beautiful spiral galaxy, NGC1808.

Delicate and rich in optical double stars that we can seen with the naked eye, Grus the Crane is another bird-constellation laying now on the South Eastern Horizon. From Capricornus, that looks like a golf flag from here, hop two more blocks, passing another favourite star of mine, Fomalhaut, the loneliest star, in Piscis Austrinus and next stop south is Grus. I remember seeing Grus in a picture for the first time whilst Comet McNaught was here in New Zealand in 2006 and getting very excited about being able to recognise it by the multiple double stars in it.

Since we are at the southern side of the sky, to be fair, as much as I don't like them, Musca, the Fly also qualifies for a flying creature. Near the southern cross, Musca looks like a patrulater. A small one, peering inside the coalsack. At the end of its abdomen, NGC4833 is a rather nice globular cluster. Near Musca, Apus, the bird of paradise's name literally means "no feet" in Greek, as it was once wrongly believed that the birds of paradise lack feet. Apus is pointing straight at Pavo the peacock, that is flaunting with feathers all over the south celestial circle. Next to Pavo, is Toucana, near the Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 292). Some spectacular deep sky objects near it are the famous NGC104 also known as 47 Tucanae, but also NGC362, another globular cluster, NGC346 Open Cluster, NGC 290, open cluster and NGC265 Open Cluster. Toucana is neighbouring Grus on one side and the Phoenix, on the other side. Since Herodotus, the Greek historian, the bird of Phoenix was associated with the Sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor and it can live for 1400 years at the time. Inside the constellation, NGC55 is an irregular galaxy and NGC 300 is a spiral galaxy. The main star in Phoenix, Ankaa is almost halfway through Achernar and Fomalhaut.

But a dark patch that looks just like a kiwibird, that is something that perhaps not too many people saw coming. Not too many people from New Zealand, I mean, because as i have discovered, being shown a kiwi bird, very few foreigners (I'm not counting the tourists here tho) can guess what that is.

So the Milky Way Kiwi does carry all the weight of our stars. Not surprising, given what its equivalent on Earth, the kiwibird did. There is a beautiful Maori legend telling how the kiwibird lost its wings.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during June 2016.

Highlights of the month

June 1st - 8th: Mars at its best for 11 years.
Mars reaches opposition - that is when the Earth lies between the Sun and Mars and when it was be approximately due south at midnight (UT) or 1am (BST) - on the 22nd of May, so it will be visible for most of the hours of darkness. However, it was actually be closest to the Earth and so having its greatest angular size of 18.6 arc seconds some 8 days later on the 30th of May. The angular size at closest approach varies due to the ellipticity of the orbit of Mars (and to a far lesser extent to that of the Earth) and will reach 26 arc seconds during 25,695 AD. At closest approach in 2003, Mars reached an angular size of 25.1 arc seconds, its largest angular diameter for 60,000 years. In July 2018 it will reach 24.2 arcseconds across but for both this opposition and that in 2018, Mars will be very low in the ecliptic and hence at low elevation so that the atmosphere will limit our views of the red (actually salmon pink) planet. Happily, it will be higher in the sky at the opposition of 2020.

To find what should be visible at any time, one can use the Sky &Telescope application.

June - The best month to observe Saturn.
Saturn reaches opposition on the 3rd of June, so is now due south and highest in the sky around midnight (UT) or 1am (BST).

It lies in the southern part of Ophiuchus 7 degrees up and to the left of the orange star Antares in Scorpius.

Held steady, binoculars should enable you to see Saturn's brightest moon, Titan, at magnitude 8.2. A small telescope will show the rings with magnifications of x25 or more and one of 6-8 inches aperture with a magnification of ~x200 coupled with a night of good 'seeing' (when the atmosphere is calm) will show Saturn and its beautiful ring system in its full glory.

As Saturn rotates quickly with a day of just 10 and a half hours, its equator bulges slightly and so it appears a little 'squashed'. Like Jupiter, it does show belts but their colours are muted in comparison.

The thing that makes Saturn stand out is, of course, its ring system. The two outermost rings, A and B, are separated by a gap called Cassini's Division which should be visible in a telescope of 4 or more inches aperture if seeing conditions are good. Lying within the B ring, but far less bright and difficult to spot, is the C or Crepe Ring.

Due to the orientation of Saturn's rotation axis of 27 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system, the orientation of the rings as seen by us changes as it orbits the Sun and twice each orbit they lie edge on to us and so can hardly be seen. This last happened in 2009 and they are now opening out, currently at an angle of 26 degrees to the line of sight. The rings will continue to open out until May 2017 and then narrow until March 2025 when they will appear edge-on again.

June - Find the globular cluster in Hercules and spot the "Double-double" in Lyra
There are two very nice objects to spot with binoculars in the eastern sky well after dark this month. Two thirds of the way up the right hand side of the 4 stars that make up the "keystone" in the constellation Hercules is M13, the best globular cluster visible in the northern sky. Just to the left of the bright star Vega in Lyra is the multiple star system Epsilon Lyrae often called the double-double. With binoculars a binary star is seen but, when observed with a telescope, each of these two stars is revealed to be a double star - hence the name!

June 3rd just before dawn: Mercury close to a very thin crescent Moon.
Some 30 or so minutes before dawn on the 3rd of June and given a low eastern horizon and clear skies it would be possible to spot Mercury, shining at magnitude +0.7 just 3 degrees to the left of a very thin crescent Moon.

Late June: A very good time to spot Noctilucent Clouds!
Noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds, are most commonly seen in the deep twilight towards the north from our latitude. They are the highest clouds in the atmosphere at heights of around 80 km or 50 miles. Normally too faint to be seen, they are visible when illuminated by sunlight from below the northern horizon whilst the lower parts of the atmosphere are in shadow. They are not fully understood and are increasing in frequency, brightness and extent; some think that this might be due to climate change! So on a clear dark night as light is draining from the north western sky long after sunset take a look towards the north and you might just spot them!

Night of June 15 to 16th when fully dark: The Lyrid Meteor Shower
The June Lyrid meteor shower reaches its peak on the night of the the 15th/16th with a rate at the zenith of ~8 meteors per hour. This is not many and, as full Moon on the 20th is approaching, it may be hard to spot one. The radiant is very close to the star Vega. Many more meteors were seen from the shower in the late 1960's but the peak hourly rate has dropped off markedly since then. If clear, it may still be worth aiming to see if you can spot one.

June 14th and 15th: The Alpine Valley
These are two good nights to observe an interesting feature on the Moon if you have a small telescope. Close to the limb (on the 14th) is the Apennine mountain chain that marks the edge of Mare Imbrium. Towards the upper end you should see the cleft across them called the Alpine valley. It is about 7 miles wide and 79 miles long. As shown in the image a thin rill runs along its length which is quite a challenge to observe. Over the next two nights the dark crater Plato and the young crater Copernicus will come into view. This is a very interesting region of the Moon!

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter is now past its best, but still stands out in the southwest and west at nightfall. Its brightness falls slightly from magnitude -2.1 to -1.9 whilst its angular size drops from 37 to 34 arc seconds. Jupiter is now in the lower part of Leo, slowly moving eastwards towards Virgo which it will enter in August. Our best views of the planet are now past for this apparition but, with a small telescope one may well be able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere and up to four of the Galilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn
  Saturn reaches opposition - that is when it be approximately due south at midnight (UT) or 1 am (BST) - on June 3rd, and so will be visible in the southeast at nightfall and will not set until dawn the following morning. It is moving slowly in retrograde motion in the lower part of Ophiuchus but close to the the fan of three stars that makes up the head of Scorpius and about 7 degrees up and to the left of Antares. This is a good time to observe Saturn whose globe is ~18 arcseconds across and whose rings span some 41 arcseconds across. They make a beautiful sight as are tilted 26 degrees from the line of sight - almost as open as they can be. It is sad that Saturn is now in a low part of the ecliptic and will only reach an elevation of 20 degrees when due south. I was able recently able to view it through a 16" telescope from a latitude of +29 in the Sahara Desert and it was stunning - perhaps a trip to the southern hemisphere is called for!
  
  See highlight above.
• Mercury
  Mercury is a pre-dawn object for the first week or so of the month best seen about 30-45 minutes before sunrise. It starts the month at magnitude +0.8 with an angular size of 9 arcseconds. This increases to magnitude zero by the 11th - perhaps the best time to view - with the angular size having dropped to 7.3 arc seconds. It will then be only ~7 degrees above the horizon so still be difficult to spot and a good low horizon in the east will be needed..
  
  See highlight above.
• Mars
  Mars reaches opposition on May 22nd and came closest to the Earth for 11 years on the 30th. So June is a second excellent month to observe the salmon-pink planet. Mars starts the month at magnitude -2, drops to to -1.7 by the 16th and -1.4 by month's end. At the same time the angular size drops from 18.6 to 16.4 arc seconds. Mars moves in retrograde motion in Libra until the 30th when it resumes its eastwards path through the stars moving back towards Saturn.
  
  See highlight above.
• Venus
  Venus reaches superior conjunction (that is directly behind the Sun) on June 6th and so cannot be observed this month.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during June 2016.

Clear skies from from the top of Mount Victoria, in Wellington and greetings from Space at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand.

My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I am your starryteller from the Southern Hemisphere.

Top of Mount Victoria here in Wellington New Zealand is where I always felt on top of the world. To the South, I can sense Antarctica's frozen breath. To the North, I see glimpses of my faraway home-beacons: Andromeda, Arcturus and Vega. They are like a safety net. Something familiar. East and West are obviously looking weird – the Sun moves from right to left in the sky in the Southern Hemisphere, leaning towards North. In the Northern Hemisphere the Sun still goes from east to west but moving from left to right leaning towards South. So as I said before in previous episodes of the Jodcast, the shadow in the afternoon here looks just like the shadow of the morning in the Northern Hemisphere.

Being in the city of Wellington makes me feel grateful for the courage to leave my safe shore back home to seek my diamonds in the sky. Wellington at night glows like a net of diamonds itself. And it's the best sky that probably any capital of the world has ever seen. As for the star lore that people brought here… well… it's the most spectacular by far!

Which brings me to the month of June when here in New Zealand we celebrate the Maori New Year, Matariki.

Matariki is a lunar celebration. As you do with the Polynesian cultures, not everyone does everything in the same way but some tribes celebrate the new year, te Tau Hou, by observing the heliacal rising of the Pleiades, M 45, or as the cluster is called at this time of the year by Maori, Matariki. Some tribes use the star called Puanga (or Rigel). But no matter what marker they use, they observe its heliacal rising (that is before the Sun) just after the first new Moon that occurs after the longest night. I feel compelled to mention the fact that they only call the cluster Matariki at this time of the year, in the morning. The same stars appear in the asterism of Te Waka O Tama Rereti, present on the November's night sky and also three months later when they make Te Tawhiti, the shining one. I spoke about these asterism in Jodcast episodes from previous months. But nobody calls them Matariki then. The small group of stars are just part of something bigger. This was quite a discovery for me because in the western skylore, asterisms have only one name no matter what time of the year it is. As I was going to discover later, not only Matariki - The Pleiades are part of shapeshifting stories in the sky but also most of Maori legends include constellations that are only seasonal.

Back to the new year, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the beautiful cluster of MataAriki, the eye of the God, rises before the Sun to mark the new year just after the new Moon's occurrence. The cluster will start being visible towards the middle of the month, that is if you wake up very early in the morning, just before sunrise, and look east. However, the first new Moon of June is on the 5th, but the cluster will be too low on the horizon to see. Counting the fact that Wellington's landscape is quite hilly, and the fact that the Maori tohunga tatai arorangi (astronomers) had to see the cluster visually before they could declare the new year, that positions, realistically, the period of Matariki, just after the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, which is also occurring in June. The next new Moon after the 5th of June is on 4th of July. Technically, the period of the new year lasts for about a month from one new Moon to the other and for some tribes was the time in between the years, when everything would reset and people would visit the year that has passed and think ahead to the year that would follow. You can hear more about Matariki and Maori astronomy in this month's interview that I took with Toa Waaka, vice chair of the Society for Maori Astronomy, Research and Traditions.

In Wellington this year Space Place at Carter Observatory has organised two dawn ceremonies. The first is on Saturday the 18th of June and the second is on the 22nd of June. That is of course providing the weather stays clear. You can always check our website for more details. And also of course, this month we will be incorporating Maori astronomy in our talks. The dawn ceremony will be held on top of Mount Victoria, where we go every year and it will start from 5:30 AM. Feel free to come along - there will be hot chocolate!

Back to our evening sky, bright planets light up the sky along with the brightest stars once again. Golden Jupiter appears midway up the north sky soon after sunset. Orange Mars is due east. Jupiter and Mars are similar in brightness but you can tell them apart by colour and position. Cream-coloured Saturn is below and to the right of Mars and fainter, directly below orange Antares, the brightest star in Scorpio. Saturn is at opposition on the 3rd of June, rising close to the time of sunset and setting near the time the Sun rises. The Moon will be near Jupiter on the 11th and 12th and passing by the Mars-Saturn region on the 17th to 19th.

Low in the west at dusk Sirius, Takurua, the brightest true star, twinkles blue, sets around 9 pm mid-month. It will appear again in the morning sky to help point at Matariki. Canopus Atutahi, the chief of the Maori stars and the second brightest star, is in the southwest. Atutahi is a chief because it can always be seen in the sky, it is a 'circumpolar' star: one that never sets but goes around in circles.

Sirius/ Takurua is the Zenith star of Tahiti and it was used so by the Polynesians. Sirius appears bright both because it is 20 times brighter than the sun, and because it is relatively close at nine light years. Canopus, the second brightest star, is higher in the southwest sky, circling lower into the south later on. Canopus is around three hundred light years away and 13,000 times brighter than the sun but almost of the same spectral type as the Sun. I fell in love with Canopus when I found out that is on board the Voyagers, as a positioning aid. In fact many starcraft carry a special camera called Canopus Star Tracker. Before the magnetic compasses, Canopus was also considered the south star and navigation was made based on its position. And of course Canopus was the navigator of Argo Navis, and is part of the modern constellation of Carina, which used to be part of Argo Navis.

Opposite Canopus, Arcturus is a lone bright star in the northeast, in the constellation of Bootes. Polynesians call it Hokuleʻa, the "Star of Joy". Arcturus is the Zenith star of the Hawaiian islands. Its orange light often twinkles red and green when it is low in the sky. It sets in the northwest in the morning hours.

Crux, the Southern Cross, is south of the zenith. Beside it and brighter are Beta and Alpha

Centauri, often called 'The Pointers' because they point at Crux. Alpha Centauri is the closest naked-eye star, 4.3 light years away. Beta Centauri and many of the stars in Crux are hot, extremely bright blue-giant stars hundreds of light years away. They are members of a group of stars that formed together then scattered. The group is called the Scorpio-Centaurus Association.

Antares or Rehua is marking the scorpion's heart. In Maori this is the asterism of Manaia Ki Te Rangi, the guardian of the heavens, which one of the three names that Scorpius has here. More so, the entire asterism of Scorpius is the the zenith asterism of Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. This land is so big compared to the other Pacific islands that it needs an entire asterism to mark its position in the sky.

Rehua is a red giant star: 600 light years away and 19 000 times brighter than the sun. Red giants are much bigger than the sun but much cooler, hence the orange-red colour. Though hundreds of times bigger than the Sun, Antares is only about 20 times the Sun's mass or weight. Most of the star's mass is in its hot dense core. The rest of the star is thin gas.

Red giants are dying stars, wringing the last of the thermo-nuclear energy from their cores. Antares will end in a spectacular supernova explosion in a few million years.

Below Scorpius is Sagittarius, it's brighter stars making 'the British teapot'.

The Milky Way is brightest and broadest in the southeast toward Scorpius and Sagittarius. It remains bright but narrower through Crux and Carina then fades in the western sky. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy. The thick hub of the galaxy, 30,000 light years away, is in Sagittarius. Behold the Milky Way Kiwi, a dark patch in the sky resembling a kiwi bird, holding on its head just like a crown, the galactic center. A scan along the Milky Way with binoculars will find many clusters of stars and some glowing gas clouds. Relatively nearby dark clouds of dust and gas dim the light of distant stars in the Milky Way. They look like holes and slots in the Milky Way. There is a well-known dark cloud called The Coalsack by the Southern Cross. Maori call it te Patiki, the flounder. It is around 600 light years away. The dust, more like smoke particles in size, comes off old red stars. These clouds eventually coalesce into new stars.

Then, there are the Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, in the lower southern sky, are luminous patches easily seen by eye in a dark sky. They are two small galaxies about 160,000 and 200,000 light years away. The Large Cloud is about 5 percent the mass of the Milky Way; the Small Cloud is about 3 percent.

Mercury is in the northeast dawn sky. At the beginning of the month it rises two hours before the sun. It sinks lower through the month. Around the 17th it will be left of orange Aldebaran. Further left of Mercury will be the Pleiades/Matariki star cluster just appearing in the dawn twilight. To see it you will have to learn how to count in Maori: First locate Atutahi - in the dawn sky it will floating low in the southeastern sky. Tahi in Maori means One. Then follow along the Milky Way, you will see blue Takurua, Sirius. Rua means two in Maori. Then on the same line, when they will get parallel with the horizon, the three stars from Orion's belt, Tautoru. In Maori, toru means three. Tahi, Rua, Toru. One, two, three. If you join Takurua with Tautoru and extend the line toward north, just passing Taumata Kuku (the Hyades and red Aldebaran) that look like a triangle, following just a little bit more towards north you will find Matariki. At 444 light years away from Earth, Matariki stars are hot, young and blue and with the naked eye you can see six of them, with a pair of binoculars you can see many more. The best view is with a smaller magnification binoculars as they can fit more stars in the field of view. The Pleiades, or Messier 45 are about 100 million years old, being born just after the dinosaurs went extinct on Earth. The light from the Pleiades - Matariki left the cluster almost in the same time as Galileo was pointing his telescope to the heavens.

This concludes our Jodcast for June 2016 at Space Place at Carter Observatory. May you enjoy clear and dark skies so that you can see the stars and always remember that we are made of the same star dust as they are! Kia Kaha and clear skies from the Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand and since the new year will start soon, Nga Mihi o Te Tau Hou.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during May 2016.

Highlights of the month

May 9th - the Transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun
On May the 9th, we will, if clear in the UK, be able to witness the complete passage of Mercury's disc across the face of the Sun. The transit begins soon after 11 hours UT, the midpoint of the transit is at 14:58 UT and Mercury leaves the Sun's disk at 18:42 UT - a total time of 7 and a half hours. This is Mercury's first transit since 2006 and the next will occur on November 11th 2019 but will not be so easily visible from the UK. These are three of the 13 or 14 Mercury transits that occur each century.

Mercury's black disk will appear only 10 arcseonds across so binoculars or a telescope will be needed to observe the transit. If direct viewing is to be made a suitable solar filter must be placed in front of the objective(s). Filters made using Baader Solar Film are probably best. Alternatively, an image of the Sun can be projected onto white card using a small telescope or half binocular. An all metal eyepiece is needed to prevent heat damage and it's probably best to limit the aperture to ~1 inch across using a cardboard mask. Always take very great care when viewing the Sun - it is the only astronomical object that can harm us!

At first glance Mercury's disk might, at just 1/200th of the Suns width, appear as a sunspot, but it will be precisely round, be even darker, will lack a grey penumbra and - of course - it will be moving across the Sun' disk. It will be interesting to watch the ingress and exit of Mercury's disk taking 3 minutes and 12 seconds to do so. Let's hope for clear skies!

May 22nd to June 8th: Mars at its best for 11 years
Mars reaches opposition - that is when the Earth lies between the Sun and Mars and when it will be approximatly due south at midnight (UT) or 1 am (BST) - on the 22nd of May, so it will be visible for most of the hours of darkness. However, it will actually be closest to the Earth and so have its greatest angular size of 18.6 arc seconds some 8 days later on the 30th of May. The angular size at closet approach varies due to the ellipticity of the orbit of Mars (and to a far lesser extent to that of the Earth)and will reach 26 arc seconds during 25,695 AD. At closest approach in 2003, Mars reached an angular size of 25.1 arc seconds, its largest angular diameter for 60,000 years. In July 2018 it will reach 24.2 arc seconds across but for both this opposition and that in 2018, Mars will be very low in the ecliptic and hence at low elevation so that the atmosphere will limit our views of the red (actually salmon pink) planet. Happily, it will be higher in the sky at the opposition of 2020.

To find what should be visible at any time, one can use the Sky &Telescope application.

May: Look for the Great Red Spot on Jupiter

• 3rd - 00:22
• 5th - 21:52
• 10th - 21:01
• 12th - 22:39
• 17th - 21:48
• 19th - 23:27
• 24th - 22:36
• 29th - 21:45
• 31st - 23:24

May 5th and 6th before dawn: The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower
The Eta Aquarids are one of the finest meteor showers that can be seen from the southern hemisphere, but, in the northern hemisphere, may be glimpsed in the pre-dawn sky in the south-east around 90 minutes before dawn. Pleasingly, this year the peak corresponds to new Moon so there will be no moonlight to hinder our view.

May 7th - one hour before sunrise: Saturn, Mars and Antares
Looking to the South-Southwest in the hours before sunrise, Saturn, above, and Mars, to the upper right, can be seen close to Antares in Scorpius.

May 7th - after sunset: a very thin waxing crescent Moon
If clear at sunset, and given a low horizon in the West-Northwest, you may be able to spot a very thin waxing crescent Moon just 1 percent illuminated. Binoculars may be needed, but please do not use them until after the Sun has set. You may be able to observe the major part of the Moon's surface illuminated by light reflected from Earth - called Earthshine - as seen in the accompanying image taken by the author at the Isle of White Star Party.

May 14th and 27th, evening: The Hyginus Rille
These evenings, should it be clear, are a superb time to view the Hyginus Rill as it will lie close to the terminator. For some time a debate raged as to whether the craters on the Moon were caused by impacts or volcanic activity. We now know that virtually all were caused by impact, but it is thought that the Hyginus crater that lies at the centre of the Hyginus Rille may well be volcanic in origin. It is an 11 km wide rimless pit - in contast to impact craters which have raised rims - and its close association with the rille of the same name associates it with internal lunar events. It can quite easily be seen to be surrounded by dark material. It is thought that an explosive release of dust and gas created a vacant space below so that the overlying surface collapsed into it so forming the crater.

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter is now a little past its best, but still stands out high in the South at nightfall. Its brightness falls slightly from magnitude -2.3 to -2.1 whilst its angular size drops from 41 to 37 arc seconds during the month. Jupiter spends the month below the hindquarters of Leo, halting its retrograde motion westwards across the sky on May 9th. Jupiter sets around 4 am as May begins but by 2 am by month's end. With a small telescope one should be easily able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere, sometimes the Great Red Spot and up to four of the Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
  
  See highlight above.
• Saturn
  Saturn rises in the late evening about 30 minutes after Mars as May begins. Its brightness increases slightly from +0.2 to 0.0 magnitudes during the month whilst its angular size grows to 18.4 arc seconds. Saturn's rings are tilted by 26 degrees from the line of sight - almost as open as they ever get - and span 42 arc seconds. It is moving towards opposition on the night of June 2nd. Saturn forms a triangle with Mars and Antares throughout the month, separated from Mars by 8 degrees as May begins and by 15 degrees at month's end. As Saturn moves slowly across the heavens, it stays at a near constant distance from Antares.
  
  See the highlight above.
• Mercury
  Mercury. The top highlight this month is Mercury's transit across the face of the Sun on May the 9th, but otherwise it will be too dim and low above the horizon to be seen.
  
  See highlight above.
• Mars
  
  
  See highlight above.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during May 2016.

1. (Atu) Tahi
2. (Taku) Rua
3. (Tau) Toru

My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I am your starryteller from the Southern Hemisphere.

In Maori, tahi, rua, toru means one, two, three.

Three bright planets and the brightest stars share the evening sky this May, and you can see them in three ways when you look at the sky: with the naked eye, with a pair of binoculars and with a telescope. I love each of these methods - they are, each in their own way, very special and each adds a layer of depth to the previous one, which is why I always recommend to people to never buy a telescope unless they have got naked eye stargazing or binocular observing sorted, otherwise it would be too frustrating to look for all these deep sky objects.

So, what can we see with the naked eye in May?

Soon after sunset, circumpolar Atutahi/Canopus, the second brightest star, is southwest of the point directly overhead. Tahi means One in Maori, suggesting that Atutahi is the chief of the stars and visible all night long. Takurua/Sirius, the brightest star, appears northwest of the zenith. Rua means two in Maori and Takurua is one of the two wives of Ra, the Sun. Below Takurua are bluish Puanga/Rigel and reddish Putara/Betelgeuse, the brightest stars in Orion. Between them is a vertical line made of the three stars, Tautoru. Toru means three in Maori and it is the name given to Orion's belt.

The three planets are, in order of appearance, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.

Midway up the southeast sky are 'The Pointers', Beta and Alpha Centauri. Soon after dusk Arcturus appears in the northeast, often twinkling red and green as the air breaks up its orange light. Golden Jupiter appears in the north. It is the brightest starlike object in May and lights up the night until the early hours of the morning.

Orange Mars comes up in the east just after sunset. It will be at opposition on 22 May, which also means that Mars will be very bright. The term opposition can be a little confusing, but what opposition actually relates to is the way we see Mars from Earth as it sits directly opposite to the Sun with the Earth between them. In May 2016, Mars rises in the east just as the Sun sets in the west. Then, after staying up in the sky the entire night, Mars sets in the west just as the Sun rises in the east. Since Mars and the Sun appear on opposite sides of the sky, we say that Mars is in "opposition". Also, if Earth and Mars followed perfectly circular orbits, opposition would be as close as the two planets could get, but their orbits are neither circular nor coplanar, coplanar meaning in the same plane, so the closest approach between Mars and Earth in almost 60,000 years occurred during 2003.

During opposition, Earth passes between the Mars and the Sun. This only occurs once every 26 months because Earth makes two trips around the Sun in about the same amount of time that Mars takes to make one trip. Sometimes (like now) we will be on the same side of the Sun as Mars (at opposition). Some other time will be on the opposite side. Go figure! And when Mars is on the opposite of opposition it will actually be hidden behind the Sun as it comes between us and Mars, which is the time when communications with Mars are avoided as there is a lot of interference from the Sun.

As the sky darkens, Saturn appears below Mars.

Mercury is very close to the Sun in May so not visible from anywhere in the world with one exception. This is why I will only just mention a spectacular event, which enchants the clear skies viewers from everywhere else but East Asia, Japan, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. On Monday, 9 May 2016 starting at 11:15:00 p.m. NZST, most of the world will be able to see the planet Mercury transiting across the disc of the Sun. From Earth, we can only see Mercury and Venus transiting the Sun as these two planets are in between Earth and the Sun. There are about 13 to 14 transits of Mercury in a century and they all occur within a few days from 8 May and 10 November. We will not be able to see this one for the simple reason that it happens during our night time. We can, however still watch it online from New Zealand, as several different webcasts will cover the transit. The event will last for seven hours.

Crux, the Southern Cross, is visible southeast of the zenith, to the right of 'The Pointers', Alpha and Beta Centauri. Zenith refers to an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the imaginary celestial sphere.

Orange Antares, right of Mars, marks the body of Scorpius, the Scorpion. Antares means 'rival to Mars' in Greek for the planet and star are often similar in colour and brightness, but not at this time of year.

The Milky Way, our edgewise view of the galaxy, is brightest in the southeast toward Scorpius and Sagittarius where its centre lies, and it can be traced up the sky past the Pointers and Crux, fading toward Sirius. Its nearby outer edge is by Orion, where the Milky Way is faintest.

The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, are two small galaxies midway down the southern sky, easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. If you use your peripheral vision, which means using the edge of your vision out of the corner of your eye instead of looking directly at them, it will reveal more detail. It’s a trick we use in stargazing, and has to do with how our eyes are constructed. Night vision is mostly based on our rod cells (the ones responsible with detecting movement, which is also something we see very well with on the edge of our vision).

Once you've mastered the naked eye observing, it's time to try the next level, binoculars.

What can we see with a pair of binoculars?

Binoculars come in many shapes and forms - a great size for stargazing is 7 x 50 or 10 x 50. The first number is a measure of power, it means how much these binoculars magnify, in this case the 7 and the 10. The second number is the diameter of the objective (the big lenses at the front) in millimeters, in this case the 50. I love binoculars, they are my favourite aids to observing the night sky because they are light, you can take them easily with you on trips and they don't really require assembly or polar alignment. With a tripod attached they are truly magnificent. We have two eyes, so binocular views are more spectacular in many regards than telescopic, because binoculars give depth of view as they engage both eyes in the process.

There are a few great objects that you could admire with binoculars. For instance Jupiter and its four moons. Also on the ecliptic, M44 - the Praesepe in Cancer. Known as the beehive, the open cluster swarms with stars. It is as far as 577 light years away and estimated to be 730 million years old with an average magnitude of 3.5. Also in Cancer, M37 is another open cluster, one of the oldest known, almost 3.2 billion years.

Another good target for binoculars is Leo, marked by the bright Jupiter. Jupiter is 750 million km away, so it is always worth a look. Its four big "Galilean" moons look like faint stars near the planet. One or two can be seen through binoculars. All four are easily seen in any telescope magnifying 20x or more. Sometimes one or more of the moons will be invisible as they pass in front of, or behind, Jupiter. The Moon will be near Jupiter on 15 May. Close to the area south of the triangle that marks Leo's hips, M65, M66 and NGC 3628 will be visible depending on the size of your binoculars. They are also known as the "Leo Trio". Also in Leo, M105 is an elliptical galaxy. Last but not least M96, another galaxy in Leo, lies about 35 million light years away. At the beginning of May Jupiter sets around 2am, reducing to around midnight by the month's end so you might want to look for these objects in the first part of the night.

If all else fails, simply take your binoculars and swipe the milky way from one edge to the other. You might not figure out exactly which objects you are looking at but you will definitely find amazing sights, especially in the region close to Carina. You will find there IC2602, NGC3114, NGC353, NGC2516, that are all open clusters, then in Crux NGC4755 which is another open cluster, NGC2451 in Puppiz, and IC2391 in Vela.

Lower down, Omega Centauri is a globular cluster in Centaurus and in Scorpius, there are the Butterfly Cluster, M7 open cluster and NGC6231 open cluster.

Saturn is a great sight even with a pair of binoculars and this time its rings are near maximum tilt. It is 1,360 million km away. Titan, its biggest moon, orbits four ring diameters from the planet. You might also be able to see Titan with binoculars.

One of my bibles in terms of what to see in the night sky is Philips's Night Sky Atlas, by Robin Scagell and with maps by Will Tirion. Every time someone asks me what telescope to buy, I ask them if they do have a pair of binoculars. If the answer is no, then I always say don't buy a telescope if you have not looked at the sky with binoculars. Even if you only used them to locate objects that are too faint for the naked eye or hidden by light pollution. Some of the best views of the larger star clusters, bright nebulae and comets are best seen with binoculars.

This concludes our Jodcast for May 2016 at Space Place at Carter Observatory. As the Maori say, E whiti ana nga whetu o te Rangi (the stars are shining in the sky) Ko takoto ake nei ko Papatuanuku (whilst Mother Earth lays beneath)

May you enjoy clear and dark skies so that you can see the stars and remember that we are made of the same star dust as they are! Kia Kaha and clear skies from the Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during April 2016.

Highlights of the month

April - still a great month to view Jupiter.
This is still a great month to observe Jupiter. It lies in the southern part of Leo, but still reaches an elevations of ~48 degrees when crossing the meridian during the evening. An interesting observation is that the Great Red Spot appears to be diminishing in size. At the beginning of the last century it spanned 40,000 km across but now appears to be only ~16,500 km across - less than half the size. It used to be said that 3 Earths could fit within it, but now it is only one. The shrinking rate appears to be accelerating and observations indicate that it is now reducing in size by ~580 miles per year. Will it eventually disappear?

The features seen in the Jovian atmosphere have been changing quite significantly over the last few years - for a while the South Equatorial Belt vanished completely but has now returned to its normal wide state.

April: Look for the Great Red Spot on Jupiter
The list below gives some of the best evening times during April to observe the Great Red Spot which should then lie on the central meridian of the planet.

• 1st - 23:47
• 4th - 21:16
• 6th - 22:54
• 9th - 20:24
• 11th - 22:02
• 13th - 23:41
• 16th - 21:10
• 18th - 22:49
• 20th - 21:03
• 21st - 20:18
• 23rd - 21:57
• 25th - 23:25
• 30th - 22:44

April 3rd - 22:00 BST: Ganymede emerges from Jupiter's shadow
During the early evening, Jupiter will apear to have just 3 Gallilean satellites: Io and Callisto to its right and Europa to its left. Ganymede is hiding in Jupiter's shadow but will emerge just after 22:00 BST later in the evening.

April 6th: just before dawn - the Moon occults Venus
On the 6th of the month, the Moon and Venus will lie close together low in the eastern sky before dawn. At 08:28 BST, as observed from the centre of the UK, Venus will disappear behind the disk of the very thin crescent Moon whose phase will be just 2%. This will be quite an observing challenge and will need binoculars or a small telesocpe to observe along with a good low eastern horizon. BUT BEWARE NOT TO OBSERVE CLOSE TO THE SUN! If possible stand in the shadow of a wall to the left of your position. Ideally, using an equatorial mount, locate the Moon when it rises at 06:20 BST and continue tracking as it approaches and then occults Venus. As seen from the centre of the UK, it will emerge around 20 minutes later as it briefly passes behind the Moon's northern dark limb. The occultation will not be visible from Scotland and, in the northern part of the UK, Venus will be seen to graze along the Moon's rough northern edge. Venus will take ~60 seconds to disappear and ~70 seconds to emerge. NOTE: to show the occultation graphically, I have had to remove the Sun's glare - this will be a very difficult observation.

April 8th: 45 minutes after sunset - Mercury and a thin crescent Moon
Looking west after sunset and as darkness falls, Mercury will be seen just 6 degrees to the right and slightly up from the a very thin waxing crescent Moon.

April 16th - mid evening: A waxing Moon nears Jupiter
During the evening the Moon will be seen gradually nearing Jupiter, closing in to a separation of just over 4 degrees at 22:00 UT.

April 21st all night: The Moon at apogee
On the 21st the Moon, one day from full, reaches apogee, that is at its furthest distance from the Earth. So, on the following day, it will not appear as big - or as bright - as when the full Moon is at perigee, its closest approach to the Earth. Perhaps surprisingly, its angular diameter at apogee is 12% smaller that at perigee and, should a solar eclipse occur near apogee, the Moon's full shadow may not reach the Earth giving rise to what is called an annular eclipse.

April 16th and 29th: Two Great Lunar Craters
These are two good nights to observe two of the greatest craters on the Moon, Tycho and Copernicus, as the terminator is nearby. Tycho is towards the bottom of Moon in a densely cratered area called the Southern Lunar Highlands. It is a relatively young crater which is about 108 million years old. It is interesting in that it is thought to have been formed by the impact of one of the remnents of an asteroid that gave rise to the asteroid Baptistina. Another asteroid originating from the same breakup may well have caused the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago. It has a diameter of 85 km and is nearly 5 km deep. At full Moon - seen in the image below - the rays of material that were ejected when it was formed can be see arcing across the surface. Copernicus is about 800 million years old and lies in the eastern Oceanus Procellarum beyond the end of the Apennine Mountains. It is 93 km wide and nearly 4 km deep and is a clasic "terraced" crater. Both can be seen with binoculars.

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter reached opposition on March 8th but this is still an excellent month to observe it - high in the southern sky during the evening. It crosses the meridian at around 23:00 (UT) at the beginning of the month and around 21:00 by month's end. Its brightness falls slightly from magnitude -2.4 to -2.3 whilst its angular size drops from 44 to 41 arc seconds. Jupiter spends the month in south-eastern Leo, moving slowly westwards in retrograde motion. With a small telescope one should be easily able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere, sometimes the Great Red Spot (see the highlight above) and up to four of the Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn
  Saturn rises at ~02:00 (UT) as April begins and a little earlier each night so that by month's end it rises at about 23:00 (UT). Shining at magnitude +0.3 and brightening to +0.2 during the month it lies in the southern part of Ophiuchus some 5.5 degrees up and to the left of Antares in Scorpius. Its diameter increases from 17.4 to 18.1 arc seconds as April progresses. It will be due south in the early hours of the morning at an elevation of ~19 degrees. The beautiful ring system has now opened out to ~26 degrees - virtually as open as they ever become - and measures 40 arc seconds across. It will be best observed near the meridian during the hour before dawn. If only it were higher in the ecliptic; its elevation never gets above ~19 degrees and so the atmosphere will hinder our view of this most beautiful planet. Sadly, as seen from our northern climes, on each successive apparition it will get lower in the sky, so now is the time to emigrate to the southern hemisphere!
• Mercury
  Mercury. This month, Mercury has its best apparition of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere, shining in the west-northwest during the evening twilight. As April begins, it is low above the horizon, but shining brightly at magnitude -1.5. It reaches greatest elongation (east) on the 18th of April, so is higher in the sky, but its brightness will have dropped to a still bright magnitude 0. Then, its highest altitude at sunset will be ~19 degrees, but Mercury will still be at an elevation of ~10 degrees 45 minutes after sunset. At greatest elongation, its disk will be 7.5 arc seconds across with 38% of the disk illuminated. During the latter part of the month, it fades rapidly down to magnitude +1.5 and disappears into the Sun's glare around the 28th of the month as it moves towards inferior conjunction on the 9th of May - when we will observe a transit of Mercury - one of two major highlights for next month!
• Mars
  Mars. At the beginning of April, Mars rises around midnight (UT). As the month progresses it rises earlier each night so at about 10pm (UT) by month's end. It starts the month in Scorpius, moves into Ophiuchus on the 4th and, as it begins its retrograde motion westwards on April 18th, moves back towards Scorpius which it re-enters on the first of May. Its brightness increases dramatically this month, increasing from magnitude -0.6 to -1.4. At the same time its angular size increases from 12 to 16 arc seconds - the largest it has appeared for some ten years! But as it reaches opposition on the 22nd of May it will subtend over 18 arc seconds. So now is the time to start seriously observing Mars when details such as the polar caps and dark regions such as Syrtis Major should be easily visible in a small telescope on nights of good seeing.
• Venus
  Venus,rises less than half an hour before sunrise at the start of April and could be seen given a low eastern horizon, but it will be unobservable after the 9th or so. However, it will be worth attempring to observe it on the morning of the 6th when it is occulted by a thin crescent Moon as detailed in the highlight above.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand speaks about the southern hemisphere night sky during April 2016.

This campfire story is dedicated to Stuart @astronomyblog

Welcome to the month of April. My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I'm your starryteller from Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I love the Milky Way. The Milky Way is the most spectacular feature of the Southern Hemisphere but to say that is such an understatement. The Milky Way is so striking here and I believe that in the absence of a polar star (which I found hard to find in the Northern Hemisphere anyway), people could even orient themselves by the Milky Way. And why not? We can easily see the Milky Way from Wellington, which according to Lonely Planet is the the coolest little capital in the world. But is still a city, which means that it does come with light pollution and from most of the cities of the world we are lucky to see just the brightest stars. Yet I have noticed when walking home at night from the Observatory, from my street I can still see the Galaxy. I call it My City of Stars. There are times when I look up and gaze straight at the center of it. This time of the year just after sunset I can see from the centre to the edge from Scorpius to Taurus, in one glorious panorama.

So in April, my beautiful City of Stars is stretching through the night sky from northwest to southeast. Allow your gaze to wander along this celestial tapestry and you will see the brightest stars. Let's start from West. Lining up onto the celestial river are:

• Very low on the horizon, Aldebaran - in Taurus, with a magnitude of 0.86. Magnitude is the logarithmic measurement of the brightness of the stars. Logarithmic means that each step of one magnitude changes the brightness by a factor of about 2.512. A magnitude 1 star is exactly a hundred times brighter than a magnitude 6 star, as the difference of five magnitude steps corresponds to 2.512 multiplied by 5, which is 100.
• Castor and Pollux - in Gemini with magnitudes of 1.93 and 1.14
• Betelgeuse - in Orion with a magnitude of 0.42
• Procyon - in the Small Dog, with a magnitude of 0.34
• And Sirius - in the Big Dog. With a mgnitude of -1.46, Sirius is among the brightest stars in the sky. By convention, the brighter the star, the smaller the number and so some stars and objects have negative magnitudes, like Sirius, or like the International Space Station which can reach up to -6 magnitude, or the full Moon, which has a magnitude of -13. The big dog constellation finally looks the right way up heading also to the western horizon too. From it, turn your gaze left.

Nearby comes Canopus -0.72, the second brightest star in the sky. Canopus is not in the white band of the Milky Way. Standing tall, Canopus is high in the sky. Canopus is a circumpolar star from Wellington, which means that it goes around in circles in 23 hours and 56 minutes, riding the celestial Ferris wheel of the Southern Skies, a giant wheel that never stops, day after day, in a sidereal time cycle, as long as the Earth is turning.

Besides Canopus, there are other stars lighting the gondolas of the big wheel but not each and every gondola has a bright star inside. If Canopus is on the top of the big wheel then just imagine that the diameter of the wheel is from Canopus to the horizon. Looking clockwise from Canopus in the 4 o'clock position on the wheel is the Lone Star, Achernar. Achernar marks the end of the grand river Eridanus, the river-asterism that flows all the way from Orion to the southern world. At 0.4 magnitude it shines bright in a region that seems devoid of other stars. Lower down, a peacock (Pavo) takes a ride on the wheel. It's main star, which carries the mundane name of Alpha Pavonis (which literally means the brightest star in Pavo), is in the 7 o'clock position on the giant turning wheel, almost as if is just hanging on the side.

Following the imaginary curve of the wheel, two very bright stars show up closer to the 10 o'clock position. Firstly, the third brightest star in the sky and our closest neighbour, Alpha Centauri, and then Beta Centauri. They point up at the Southern Cross which is even higher than them in the sky at this time of the year. And one of my favourites, the hypergiant Eta Carinae is somewhere in between Canopus and the Southern Cross. All these stars make the imaginary big wheel.

The sky looks almost devoid of stars anywhere inside my celestial Ferris wheel, with two exceptions. Let's split it in two with a diametral line that links the Alpha and Gamma Crucis, stars of the Southern Cross to lonely Achernar. On the same side as the pointers of the Southern Cross, you will find the Small Magellanic Cloud, a beautiful bright galaxy, that looks to the untrained eye (like mine) like a cirrus cloud hanging in space, 200,000 light years away. On the other side of the semicircle, another galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud compensates its loneliness by its size, from 150,000 light years away. These so called clouds that neighbour our galactic presence are visually two thirds away from the Southern cross and one third from Achernar. There is nothing else too bright within the big wheel, maybe because the wheel is inhabited by this giant spider, the Tarantula Nebula that has its nest inside the Large Magellanic Cloud. You can see its beautiful wisps through a telescope, although it is very faint. The tarantula nebula is a star-forming region, also known as 30 Doradus, and according to NASA is one of the largest star forming regions, located close to the Milky Way. About 2,400 massive stars in the center of 30 Doradus produce intense radiation and powerful winds as they blow off material into space.

While the Large Magellanic Cloud is enormous on a human scale, it is in fact less than one tenth the mass of our home galaxy. It spans just 14,000 light-years compared to about 100,000 light-years for the Milky Way and it is classified as an irregular dwarf galaxy. The ESO astronomers believe that its irregularity, combined with its prominent central bar of stars suggests to astronomers that tidal interactions with the Milky Way and fellow Local Group galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, could have distorted its shape from a classic barred spiral into its modern, more chaotic form.

Crux, the Southern Cross, is no stranger to the northern hemisphere and it was entirely visible as far north as Britain in the fourth millennium BC. The Greeks could see it too but since then, the precession of the equinoxes, the wobble of Earth, its gyroscopic dance on the orbit has changed the skies a lot so that now Crux is only visible in the Northern Hemisphere from as far south as 25 degrees latitude north. Florida Keys, Puerto Rico, the islands of the Caribbean, as well as Hawaii are its northern limit of visibility. Near the Southern Cross, there is a dark patch of dust that masks the light that comes from the stars behind it and that is known as the coalsack. Inside the coalsack, the Jewel Box is one of my favourite sights that I visit over and over with the telescope.

Lower down on the path of the Milky Way the two pointers look now as if they are hanging from the Southern Cross. First comes Beta Centauri then the famous Alpha Centauri. For Maori they are also known in a different time of the year as the rope of an anchor. Here in Aotearoa, the Maori have three names for the same asterisms (groupings of stars) at different times of the year. What we know as Scorpius is now called Manaia Ki Te Rangi, the guardian of the skies. The messenger between the earthly world of mortals and the domain of the spirits, Mania also resembles to a seahorse and its symbol is used as a guardian against evil. Often you will see Maori people wearing a greenstone in Maori named pounamu Manaia as a taonga, a necklace.

Lower on the Horizon, at a magnitude of +0.95, red giant Antares shines as the brightest star in Scorpius. Right next to it, its rival, Ares by its Greek name, or Mars as we all know it better, is challenging the giant's red hue with its own red glimmer. This is how Antares got its name, as being the rival of Ares, Ant-Ares, the rival of Mars.

As the Milky Way splits the sky into two sectors, through the northeastern horizon runs the ecliptic, a lower arch, the plane of our solar system bearing the zodiacal constellations. They intersect the Milky Way right on the horizon. First to set on the western horizon, is Taurus and of it, just Aldebaran is left gleaming faintly as it passes beyond the edge of the world. The arch of the ecliptic climbs through Gemini, holder of the two bright stars Castor and Pollux, then higher up, Cancer is almost invisible to the untrained eye, a good peripheral vision training object. Leo, with the Royal Star Regulus is now host to the bright planet Jupiter, then comes Virgo with its bright star Spica, then Libra with Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali the severed claws of Scorpius repurposed into a balance for Justice by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. Finally the arch curves down onto the western horizon where Scorpius with red Antares is carrying Red Mars. They appear around 10 PM followed by Saturn about forty minutes later. Mars will brighten steadily through the month as we catch up on it. Its distance shrinks from 118 million km away at the beginning of April to 88 million km away at the end of the month. It remains a small object in a telescope. According to our very own Alan Gilmore who received a lot fan mail about the subject, as probably did all of us, in the mid-month a telescope needs to magnify 130 times to make Mars look as big as the Moon does to the naked eye.

Saturn rises after 10:20 pm NZDT at the beginning of April; around 7:20 NZST by month's end. This also means that daylight saving starts soon and with it we will get an extra hour of sleep. Saturn is straight below Antares. If you have never seen Saturn through a telescope, the hunting season is about to open. A small telescope shows Saturn as an oval, the rings and planet blended. Larger telescopes separate the planet and rings and may show Saturn's moons looking like faint stars close to the planet. The best comment that I hear over and over from people looking through the telescope at Saturn for the first time after the ubiquitous wow is how much Saturn looks like... Saturn. Titan, one of the biggest moons in the solar system, orbits about four ring diameters from the planet. Saturn is 1400 million km away mid-month. Mercury might be seen setting in the bright twilight mid-month. It looks like a lone bright star on the northwest skyline.

This almost concludes our Night Sky South report for April 2016 but before I leave you with the peace of the night sky, I just want to quickly show you only two deep sky objects visually close to Jupiter, currently the luminary of the night sky. Jupiter is in Leo. Neighbouring Leo are Sextans and Hydra. Sextans is a "minor" equatorial constellation, a designation that made me smile. This constellation was actually invented by the famous stellar cartographer Johannes Hevelius to celebrate his sextant, a beloved instrument he used to map the sky. A copy of his famous maps adorns the ceiling of our beautiful library inside Space Place at Carter Observatory. Unknown to Hevelius, inside the celestial Sextant there is a bright galaxy NGC 3115, also known as the Spindle Galaxy. According to NASA, this field lenticular galaxy, several times bigger than the Milky Way, holds the nearest billion-solar-mass black hole to Earth whereas our supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A, has a mass only equal to about 4 million suns.

The other object that I want to show you is inside the largest of the 88 constellations in the sky, Hydra, and close to the current position of Jupiter. The remains of a dying star form a planetary nebula called NGC 3242 and nicknamed "The Ghost Of Jupiter". A planetary nebula is a slowly dying star, a star that is not too big not too small, anything say in the range of 0.8 - 8 solar masses. Planetary nebulae are beautifully coloured and it is believed that they may play a crucial role in the chemical evolution of the Milky Way, blowing out their chemical elements to the interstellar medium. Now these are the same chemical elements that make our bones, construct our skin, and basically are both the building bricks of who we are and what keeps us alive. And all these chemical elements we have on Earth have all been through the hearts of stars. I get many comments a lot of times from people telling me how small and daunted, dwarfed and insignificant they feel when they look at the stars. And that they deliberately avoid looking up. It took me many years to get my head around this but when I look up to the sky, I know for sure that I am made of stardust, and that makes me glow every day.

From Space Place at Carter Observatory here in the southern hemisphere I wish a you clear and dark skies so that we can always see the stars and remember that we are made of the same stars dust as they are.

Special Thanks go to the amazing Rhian Sheehan, Peter Detterline, Chief Astronomer of the Mars Society, Alan Gilmore from University of Canterbury and to Toa Nutone Wii Te Arei Waaka from the Society for Maori Astronomy and Traditions.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during March 2016.

Highlights

• March - A superb month to view Jupiter
  This is a superb month to observe Jupiter. It now lies in Leo and so is still reasonably high in the ecliptic and hence, when due south at an elevation of ~48 degrees. Sadly, this peak elevations is reducing at each apparition. The features seen in the Jovian atmosphere have been changing quite significantly over the last few years - for a while the South Equatorial Belt vanished completely (as seen in Damian's image) but has now returned to its normal wide state.
• March: Look for the Great Red Spot on Jupiter
  This list gives some of the best evening times during March to observe the Great Red Spot which should then lie on the central meridian of the planet.
  1st23:104th20:396th22:1711th21:2413th23:0216th20:3118th22:0920th23:4723rd21:1725th22:5528th20:2430th22:02
• March 5th, before dawn: Saturn, Mars and Antares.
  Before dawn this morning, Saturn and Mars will be seen above the star Antares, in Scorpius.
• March 16th before dawn: Mars very close to Beta Scorpii.
  Before dawn on the 16th, Mars will be seen in very close proximity to the star Beta Scorpii - the topmost star in the scorpion's tail fan.
• March 16th - evening: the Moon occults the star 26 Geminorum.
  Shortly after 7 pm - the exact time depending on your location in the UK - the fifth magnitude star, 26 Geminorum, will be occulted by the dark side of the Moon appearing again around an hour or so later. It is quite interesting to see the star suddenly disappear from view!
• March 16th ~10 pm: Ganymede and Io transit Jupiter.
  Around 9 - 11 pm on the 16th, first Ganymede and then Io will be seen to transit Jupiter - with their shadows (which are more obvious) - trailing behind.
• March 20th: Jupiter and the Moon.
  On the night of the 20th March, the Moon will be nearing Jupiter - as seen in the image around 10 pm in the evening.
• March 16th and 29th: The Alpine Valley
  These are two good nights to observe an interesting feature on the Moon if you have a small telescope. Close to the limb is the Appenine mountain chain that marks the edge of Mare Imbrium. Towards the upper end you should see the cleft across them called the Alpine valley. It is about 7 miles wide and 79 miles long. As shown in the image is a thin rill runs along its length which is quite a challenge to observe. The dark crater Plato will also be visible nearby. You may also see the shadow cast by the mountain Mons Piton lying not far away in Mare Imbrium. This is a very interesting region of the Moon!
• M16, the Eagle nebula, imaged with the Faulkes Telescope
  This image was taken using the Faulkes Telescope North by Daniel Duggan - for some time a member of the Faulkes telescope team. It is a region of dust and gas where stars are now forming. The ultraviolet light from young blue stars is stripping the electrons from hydrogen atoms so this region contains ionized hydrogen and is called an HII region. As the electrons drop back down through the hydrogen energy levels as the atoms re-form, red light at the H alpha wavelength is emitted. This "true colour" image is composed of red, green and blue images along with a narrow band H alpha image. A Hubble image of the central region, called the "Pillars of Creation", has become quite famous but looks green/blue in colour. This is a false colour image where the H alpha image has been encoded as green!
• Observe the International Space Station
  Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)
  
  
  
  Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index
  
  See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Stars

The Early Evening March SkyThis map shows the constellations seen in the south during the early evening. The brilliant constellation of Orion is seen in the south. Moving up and to the right - following the line of the three stars of Orion's belt - brings one to Taurus; the head of the bull being outlined by the V-shaped cluster called the Hyades with its eye delineated by the orange red star Aldebaran. Further up to the right lies the Pleaides Cluster. Towards the zenith from Taurus lies the constellation Auriga, whose brightest star Capella will be nearly overhead. To the upper left of Orion lie the heavenly twins, or Gemini, their heads indicated by the two bright stars Castor and Pollux. Down to the lower left of Orion lies the brightest star in the northern sky, Sirius, in the consteallation Canis Major. Up and to the left of Sirius is Procyon in Canis Minor. Rising in the East is the constellation of Leo, the Lion, with the planet Saturn up and to the right of Regulus its brightest star. Continuing in this direction towards Gemini is the faint constellation of Cancer with its open cluster Praesepe (also called the Beehive Cluster),the 44th object in Messier's catalogue. On a dark night it is a nice object to observe with binoculars.

The Late Evening March SkyThis map shows the constellations seen in the south around midnight.

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter reaches opposition on the 8th of March, so this is a superb month to observe it - visible through the whole of the night. It starts March shining at at magnitude -2.5, dropping slightly to -2.4 as the month progresses. Jupiter is still moving slowly westwards across the lower part of Leo towards Regulus. The size of Jupiter's disk falls slightly from 44.4 to 43.7 arc seconds as March progresses. With a small telescope one should be easily able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere, sometimes the Great Red Spot and up to four of the Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
  
  See highlights above.
• Saturn
  Saturn is lying in the southern part of Ophiuchus 7 degrees up and to the left of Antares in Scorpius and will begin its retrograde motion westwards across the heavens on March 25th. It rises around midnight and will be high enough in the south-south-east before dawn to make out the beautiful ring system which has now opened out to ~26 degrees - virtually as open as they ever become. Its diameter increases from 16.5 to 17.4 arc seconds during the month as its magnitude increases from +0.5 to +0.3. During the month Mars gradually moves closer to Saturn; initially some 17 degrees down to its lower right, but ending the month just 9 degrees distant. If only it were higher in the ecliptic; its elevation never gets above ~19 degrees and so the atmosphere will hinder our view of this most beautiful planet.
  See highlight above.
• Mercury
  Mercury passes behind the Sun (superior conjunction) on the 23rd so this is not a good month to observe it.
• Mars
  Mars, moving eastwards relative to the stars, starts the month in Libra and moves into Scorpius on the 14th of the month when it will lie very close to the star Acrab which forms the uppermost star of the fan of stars up to the right of Antares. It is best seen due south before dawn but, sadly, like Saturn will then be only ~19 degrees above the horizon. It increases in magnitude from +0.3 to -0.1 during the month as the angular size of its disk increases from 8.7 up to 11.7 arc seconds. Given good 'seeing' some features on the disk should now be visible such as the North Polar Cap and Syrtis Major. At opposition at the end of May the disk will be over 15 arc seconds across.
  
  
• Venus
  Venus rises in the east-southeast about an hour before sunrise as March begins but only about 25 minutes by month's end. It magnitude stays steady at -3.8 as it slips into the sun' glare. A low horizon will be needed to spot it before it becomes hidden behind the Sun in April.

The Moon

New moonFirst quarterFull moonLast quarter9 March14 March23 March1 and 31 March

Southern Hemisphere

Welcome to the month of March. My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I'm your starryteller from Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

As autumn starts in the southern hemisphere, at nightfall, half of our galaxy, the Milky Way, arches across the night sky from NNE to SSW like a river flowing through the heights of the heavens. Its edge is towards the western horizon and its centre rises in the east. At the fringe of our milky city of stars, on the north-western horizon, the Pleiades, the Shining Ones (Te Tawhiti) are preparing for the journey to the underworld. They are to disappear shortly behind the Sun and will stay there for a while.

And the explanation goes that since people of old did not really have an explanation about space, in trying to figure out where exactly the Pleiades went, they invented an underworld. This is probably one of the reasons why this group of stars is so linked to stories of death, rebirth and ancestors, and used to mark the beginning of the year in some cultures. The Pleiades are a very special group of stars. They are located in the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, one degree from the ecliptic, which is the width of your pinky if you hold it at arm’s length. That is if you can find the ecliptic, of course!

The ecliptic is an imaginary line. It marks the path of the Sun in the sky. Therefore you can see the Pleiades practically from any place on Earth, any place where you can see the Sun. They are very famous. People of old measured the quality of their eyesight by counting how many stars they could see there. Probably still six, even if they are called the seven stars, as the seventh married a mortal about two thousand years ago and was demoted from the heavens (according to an ancient Greek legend). Being so bright, packed, and visible most of the time, makes them unique among the objects that we can see in the night sky.

But what do we see when we look at the sky? I always have been fascinated observing children looking at the sky. First they see the Moon, then as they get used to that, they start to see the planets as the brighter dots of light. The Pleiades are among the first stars in children's stories and they are indeed cyphered in many cultures of the world, almost all of them referencing the cluster.

However, one culture above all has given it different names at different times of the year. This is the Maori culture. The following saying can be found in Taumata O Te Ra Marae: "Ko Ranginui te atua matua, ka tuku taku ihi he atua, ka tuku taku ihi he tangata." - The many stars adorn me. Puanga, Rehua, Takurua. They are here. - But Matariki only comes once a year and at the same time each year. It is the sign of the Maori New Year. We shall await the return of Matariki - Pleiades and watch them rising before the Sun, after the longest night of the year, here in Aotearoa. Until then, we should bid farewell to Te Tawhiti - Pleiades as they slowly drop from the western horizon into the world of light.

Above the Pleiades, orange Aldebaran is also descending from the heavens. Climbing up on the Milky Way, Betelgeuse and the big Egyptian dog Sirius lie on one side of the celestial river whilst Procyon, the small Egyptian dog, lies on the other side. The three make a beautiful triangle. Its tip, marked by Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, points at Canopus - Atutahi, the cat star, as I call it, the second brightest in the sky, which, like a good cat, is watching over the Earth from above. High in the sky, Canopus marks the midpoint between the centre of our galaxy and its edge. The Milky Way then flows down from the sky through the False Cross, the Diamond Cross and the Southern Cross. The pointer stars hang from it: Beta Centauri, and the third brightest star in the sky and our closest neighbour, Alpha Centauri. Low on the eastern horizon the Milky Way ends in Sargas the first brightest star to rise from Scorpius. Theta Scorpii has the traditional name Sargas, which it is believed to be of Sumerian origin. Sargas appears on the flag of Brazil, symbolising the state of Alagoas.

The Milky Way splits the sky in two: through the northeastern horizon runs the ecliptic, a lower arch, the plane of our solar system bearing the zodiacal constellations. They intersect the Milky Way right on the horizon. Taurus (just setting), Gemini, Cancer, Leo, carrying the bright planet Jupiter, then Virgo, Libra and the first stars of Scorpius rising. The ecliptic is, as I said before, the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere. It also refers to the plane of this path, which is coplanar with the orbit of Earth around the Sun (and hence the apparent orbit of the Sun around Earth). The orbits of the planets are also coplanar because during the Solar System's formation, the planets formed out of a disk of dust which surrounded the Sun. Because that disk of dust was a disk, all in a plane, all of the planets formed in a plane as well. Rings and disks are common in astronomy. And since our eight planets orbit roughly in the same plane, if you ever wonder where to see them in our sky, turn your gaze towards the ecliptic. Chances are that bright stars that shine on roughly the same path where you would normally see the Sun in the daytime, are in fact planets. Planets are wanderers through the ecliptic, which is exactly what the name planithos meant in Greek: wanderer. They are following their own avenues in the celestial silence, and their positions are given by coordinates called ephemerides. And since we put astro into biology, or the other way around, you might wish to know that there are insects in the Amazon jungle also called ephemerides, which only live one day.

Mars and Saturn appear in the late night sky. Mars rises after 11pm, a little south of due east. It looks like an orange-red star. Well to its right is the star Antares, also orange but a bit fainter than Mars. 'Antares' is Greek for 'rival to Mars'. Now Mars is brighter than its rival and will continue to brighten as we catch up on it. Over the month Mars will move down and right as it passes Antares.

Saturn is directly below Antares, looking like an off-white star a little brighter than Antares. Saturn stays put through March, rising a little earlier each night. A telescope with a 20x magnification can show Saturn's rings. By the end of the month, Mars, Antares and Saturn make a large triangle in the east at 11pm.

Venus, the brightest planet, rises due east around dawn. At the beginning of the month Mercury is below and right of Venus. Mercury slips lower as it moves to the other side of the Sun. It disappears mid-month.

A total solar eclipse occurs on 9 March but is not visible from New Zealand. The moon's shadow crosses Indonesia and the western Pacific. On 23-24 March the full moon grazes the edge of the Earth's shadow. Around midnight the top edge of the Moon will look a little darker than the lower edge.

Back to the evening sky, lower on the eastern horizon and close to the ecliptic, the third brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius is just barely visible. It was the Euphratean Sargas, lying in the Milky Way just south of lambda (Shaula) and upsilon (Lesath), with which it formed one of the seven pairs of Twin Stars; as such it was Ma-a-su. And it may have been, with iota, kappa, lambda (Shaula) and upsilon (Lesath), the Girtab of the lunar zodiac of that valley, the Vanant of Persia and Vanand of Sogdiana (an Iranian people), all meaning the "Seizer," "Smiter," or "Stinger"; but the Persian and Sogdian words generally are used for our Regulus. In Khorasmia these stars were Khachman, the Curved.

Sargas is the most southerly bright star in the Scorpion, closely anchoring the southern curve of the scorpion's tail, and is invisible north of latitude of 50° N. The star's southerly position has allowed northern observers to use its visibility as a test of the night-sky brightness near the horizon.

I said earlier that at this time of the year, the Milky Way is splitting the sky into two almost equal sides. We just looked at the part that holds the ecliptic, which in the Southern hemisphere, here in Wellington New Zealand, is located on the North part of the sky. Let’s do some star hopping to get to the other side, in the South. One of my favourite sports, star hopping is jumping from bright star to bright star, to reach fainter stars. Ready, set, go! We’ll start just above Virgo’s brightest star, Spica, and try to locate Corvus, the raven, one of my favourite constellations. Corvus is now flying on the eastern horizon at 20 degrees of south declination but 2000 years ago it lay equally on each side of the celestial equator. Spica and the two stars of Corvus, Algorab and Gienah are in a line. The other side of the quadrilateral that is Corvus, Algorab and Kratz (Beta corvii) make another line that extends all the way to the grand Omega Centauri globular cluster, which is still on the Northern side of the Milky Way. Further down, following the same line, you find Alpha Centauri, the third brightest star in the sky and our closest neighbour. Alpha Centauri and its pointer companion, Beta Centauri, point at the Southern Cross. Don’t be fooled… there are many crosses in the Milky Way, only one is the Southern Cross. Higher up than the Southern Cross, the Diamond Cross carries a mirror image of the Pleiades. As they prepare for their journey to the underworld at the fringe of our milky city of stars, on the north-western horizon, the Pleiades, the Shining Ones (Te Tawhiti) leave behind, here in the southern hemisphere a doppelgänger, the look alike, fake twin that never leaves the sky. Circumpolar to Wellington, the Diamond Cross can also be found by climbing up the milky river, two thirds from the side and one third from the center this is where you will find the optical asterism (pattern of stars) of the diamond cross. At the eastern end of it, a pair of binoculars will reveal ‘the Southern Pleiades’, which is a group of stars that at first sight look like the letter M to me. Theta Carinae cluster, also called the “Southern Pleiades” has an astronomical resemblance to the famed northern star cluster M45 in Taurus. Even though the cluster is not dipper-shaped like the Pleiades, it is also easily visible with the naked eye (but best with binoculars), quite young (about 30 million years old) and at almost the same distance from Earth (500 light years away). And just like M45, the Southern Pleiades is 15 light years across.

And finally, on the other side of the Milky Way, in the south western sky, the Magellanic clouds are our neighbouring galaxies, circumpolar here in Wellington and always a little elusive to direct sight. The Magellanic clouds are the best training objects for averted vision, always look for them a little off to the side, while continuing to concentrate on them.

On the first of March, Autumn officially started in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a time of plenty, of harvest and the beginning of the spectacular season of stars.

Clear and dark skies from Space Place at Carter Observatory here in the southern hemisphere.

Special Thanks go to the amazing Rhian Sheehan, Peter Detterline, Chief Astronomer of the Mars Society, Alan Gilmore from University of Canterbury and to Toa Nutone Wii Te Arei Waaka from the Society for Maori Astronomy and Traditions.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during February 2016.

Highlights of the month

February - a great month to view Jupiter
This is a great month to observe Jupiter. It now lies low down in Leo and so is still reasonably high in the ecliptic and hence, when due south, at an elevation of ~45 degrees.
The features seen in the Jovian atmosphere have been changing quite significantly over the last few years - for a while the South Equatorial Belt vanished completely, but has now returned to its normal wide state. This diagram shows the main Jovian features as imaged by the author at the beginning of December 2012.
The image by Damian Peach was taken with a 14 inch telescope in Barbados where the seeing can be particularly good. This image won the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition in 2011.

February: Look for the Great Red Spot on Jupiter
This list gives some of the best evening times during February to observe the Great Red Spot which should then lie on the central meridian of the planet.

2nd 20:11 4th 21:48 6th 23:36 7th 19:18 9th 20:56 11th 22:33 14th 20:02 16th 21:40 18th 23:18 21st 20:47 23rd 22:25 28th 21:32

1st February: before dawn: Mars and the third quarter Moon
Before dawn on the first of the month, Mars and the third quarter Moon will be seen, if clear, due south. As it nears the Earth, some details on the surface may now be seen if the seeing is good. Antares, in Scorpius, may also be spotted low above the horizon.

February 6th: just before dawn: A very thin crescent Moon above Venus and Mercury
Just before dawn and, given clear skies and a very low horizon towards the south-east, you may be able to spot a very thin crescent Moon hanging above both Venus, below, and Mercury down to its lower left. Binoculars may well be needed to spot Mercury, but please do not use them after the Sun has risen.

February 13th: Observe the Moon occult a star
If clear, around 19:20 on the evening of the 13th, the Moon will be seen to occult the 4.4th magnitude star xi 1 Ceti. The chart show the position of the star as seen from Manchester just before it is occulted by the un-illuminated disk of the Moon. It will reappear below the Moon's illuminated disk at around 20:19. The timings will vary somewhat across the UK.

February 14th: The Moon passes close to the Hyades Cluster
A very nice visual or photo opportunity when the first quarter Moon passes close to the V-shaped Hyades Cluster. The red giant star, Aldebaran, shining at magnitude +0.8 is not part of the cluster but lies part way towards it.

February 23rd: The Moon close to Jupiter
On the night of the 23rd/24th of February, the near full Moon, will pass below Jupiter. The diagram shows the relative positions at ~21:30 in the evening and also the positions of the Gallilean satellites.

February 26th evening: The Hyginus Rille
For some time a debate raged as to whether the craters on the Moon were caused by impacts or volcanic activity. We now know that virtually all were caused by impact, but it is thought that the Hyginus crater that lies at the centre of the Hyginus Rille may well be volcanic in origin. It is an 11 km wide rimless pit - in contast to impact craters which have raised rims - and its close association with the rille of the same name associates it with internal lunar events. It can quite easily be seen to be surrounded by dark material. It is thought that an explosive release of dust and gas created a vacant space below so that the overlying surface collapsed into it so forming the crater.

M109 imaged with the Faulkes Telescope
The Galaxy M109, imaged by Daniel Duggan.This image was taken using the Faulkes Telescope North by Daniel Duggan - for some time a member of the Faulkes telescope team. It shows the barred spiral galaxy M109 that lies at a distance of 83 million light years in the constellation of Ursa Major. It is the brightest galaxy in the Ursa Major group of some 50 galaxies. Our own Milky Way galaxy is now thought to be a barred spiral like M109.Learn more about the Faulkes Telescopes and how schools can use them: Faulkes Telescope

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter will reach opposition on the 8th of next month and so this is one of three superb months during which to observe it - visible from late evening to dawn. Jupiter starts the month in the extreme south of Leo close to the boarder of Virgo and, during the month moves slowly northwards and westwards in retrograde motion across the heavens. The size of Jupiter's disk increases slightly from 42 to 44 arc seconds as February progresses with its magnitude increasing very slightly from -2.4 to -2.5. With a small telescope one should be easily able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere, sometimes the Great Red Spot and up to four of the Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
  
  See highlight above.
• Saturn
  Saturn is now a morning object, rising at ~04:30 UT as the month begins but by about 03:00 UT at its end. It lies in Ophiuchus near the 'fan' of Scorpius and 7.5 degrees above Antares. Its diameter increases from 15.8 to 16.5 arc seconds during the month as it shines at magnitude +0.5. It will be high enough in the south-east before dawn to make out the beautiful ring system which has now opened out to ~26 degrees - virtually as open as they ever become. It will best observed just before dawn but if only it were higher in the ecliptic; its elevation never gets above ~20 degrees and so the atmosphere will hinder our view of this most beautiful planet.
  Image from Cassini - Nasa
• Mercury
  Mercury, shining at magnitude zero, lies fairly near Venus during February and reaches greatest elongation from the Sun on the 7th. It should be visible low in the East for the first half of the month. It lies closest to Venus on the 13th when it is 4 degrees down to its lower left. A low eastern horizon will be needed to spot them as the pair will be less than 10 degrees high some 30 minutes before sunrise.
  See highlight above.
• Mars
  
  See highlight above.
• Venus
  Venus, is nearing the end of a long morning apparition when it has dominated the eastern sky before dawn. It rises at the start of the month as twilight begins but only an hour before sunrise by month's end. As the angle of the ecliptic to the horizon is small at this time of the year, Venus is especially low above the horizon, but even so, shining at a magnitude of -3.9 it is still easily visible given a good eastern horizon. During the month, its angular size drops from 12 to 11 arc seconds but, at the same time, the percentage of the illuminated disk increases from 85 to 90% which explains why the magnitude stays constant. It stays close to Mercury and lies 4 degrees to its upper right on the 10th of the month.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during February 2016.

Clear skies from from Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand. My name is Haritina Mogosanu and tonight I am your starryteller from the Southern Hemisphere.

Getting to know the southern sky is a wonderfully strange experience. In any new place that I visit I always I feel grateful for landmarks. On Earth, I am looking for trees and buildings and mountains, in the sky I always look for the brightest stars. Here in New Zealand, there are places and times when the light of the individual stars is lost in the haze of the Milky Way as if a blanket of tiny lights is covering the Earth at night.

Not this time!

This time of the year we are very lucky to see the brightest stars in the evening sky and a bonus for this year, something that hasn't happened since 2005, is that the planets are aligned in the morning sky. And even if you are not a morning person, is worth waking up for that!

Let's start with the evening sky, as you do. The Sun's winter wife, Hine Takurua/Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, reaching the sky's peak at nightfall, to the north of the sky's highest point, the Zenith.

Left of Takurua are the stars of Tautoru or as we know them from the Northern Hemisphere, Orion's Belt: Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka. Mintaka is located precisely on the celestial equator, which is the projection of Earth's equator in the sky. This means that it rises perfectly due East and sets perfectly due West, a great companion for celestial navigation.

To Kiwi's, Tautoru makes the bottom of 'The Pot'. There are a few pots and pans in the New Zealand's sky ... and the cuisine here is delicious, so pots and pans figure strongly in New Zealand's astronomy. One important pot contains Orion's belt and its sword is the handle of the pot.

Above the pot, or Tautoru in Maaori, at a distance somewhere between 700 and 1700 light years from Earth, is the glistening blue giant Puanga or Rigel, another very bright star. Actually Rigel is the seventh brightest star in the sky. About 10 million years old, it is still burning hot at 12,000 degrees in the constellation of Orion.

Remember that the modern constellations are only patches in the sky, similar to countries on Earth, although they have kept the names given long ago to the asterisms that inspired their creation. There are 88 such patches covering the entire sky. One of them is Orion. The dot to dot shapes that we make from stars, are called asterisms. Asterisms can be inside of a constellation, like The Pot is inside Orion, or they can stretch over many constellations like the Maaori Waka o Tama Rereti stretches across 270 degrees over the Milky Way in November. Another example is the ancient asterism of Argo Navis, which today is made of Carina, Puppis and Vela.

Back to constellations --- by convention, the brightness of the stars in a constellation is noted with the letters of the Greek alphabet. Apha for the brightest, beta for the second brightest and so on. And just like for countries on Earth, if the people of New Zealand are called New Zealanders, according to this convention, the name of the specific star identified by a Greek letter is followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. For instance Alpha Orionis, means the brightest star in Orion. This is something that astronomer Johann Bayer invented long ago to help him map the stars. But as there are always exceptions, here is one: although Rigel is the brightest star in Orion, its Bayer designation is Beta Orionis (Beta Ori, Beta Orionis), which means that when Bayer was compiling his famous atlas Uranometria in 1603, Rigel was not the brightest star in Orion, but the second brightest.

Many years have passed since then but Rigel has kept the name of Beta, even though is now officially the brightest star in Orion and sometimes historical conventions or events are more important in the grand scheme of things. However, for me is important to understand why we stick to them even when they don't make too much sense.

In stellar navigation, Rigel is also a very important star. Old records name it marinus aster, Latin for maritime star. No surprises why that was, since Rigel is bright, easily located and equatorial, which means it near the celestial equator, the projection of our own Equator in the sky and this means it is visible all around the world's oceans. It's declination (the celestial equivalent of latitude) is minus 8 degrees (that would be like saying 8 degrees latitude south) so it cannot be seen from latitudes North of 82 degrees, that is about 8 degrees from the North Pole. Splendor and honours were attributed to the lot of those born under Rigel according to the ancients.

Opposite Rigel on the other side of Orion's belt, more precisely below it, as seen from Wellington New Zealand, Pūtārā/ Betelgeuse, a shining red giant, or more precisely a supergiant, is the ninth brightest star in the sky. Betelgeuse is the second brightest star in Orion, and its located at about 600 light years away from us. Betelgeuse is a mistranslation of the arabic name which I will not even try to pronounce but it means the armpit of the Central One or, according to some other people Orion's hand. It is part of the famous winter triangle of the Northern Hemisphere and for the ancients Betelgeuse brought fortune, martial honours, wealth and other kingly attributes.

Betelgeuse is visible to virtually every inhabited region of the globe, except for a few research stations in Antarctica at latitudes south of 82 degrees, that is within around 8 degrees from the South Pole. That is because the declination of Betelgeuse in the sky is almost 8 degrees. If Betelgeuse would be a city on Earth it would be located at 8 degrees latitude North. Both “cities” of Betelgeuse and Rigel would share the same meridian, which in the sky is called Right Ascension.

Even though it is just a tad younger than Rigel, at about 8.5 million years old, Betelgeuse is a dying star approaching supernova, which is estimated to happen within the next 100,000 years. It's end is near. Betelgeuse is also known as Alpha Orionis (although it is now the second brightest in the constellation, after Rigel), and it was indeed noted as a much brighter star than what is now observable.

Betelgeuse together with the two dogs, Sirius the big dog and, on the other side of the Milky Way, Procyon, the small dog, make a beautiful triangle, which obviously from New Zealand is upside down but still pointing at Taumata Kūkū, the Hyades, which are forming a mathematical 'less-than' shape in the north western sky as seen from Wellington.

Lower down, Te Tāwhiti – the Shining Ones (or the Pleiades star cluster) – prepare for their trip to the underworld, soon to disappear behind the Sun. We will not be seeing them from March until the end of June when they will reappear just before the Sunrise, but they will be called a different name then: Matariki. Unlike us, Europeans, who once we name a pattern of stars we keep it at all times of the year, the Southern Hemisphere is very fluid in this respect and I have learned that the Maori have different names for the same stars at different times of the year. Mostly these combinations come in threes. I have wondered why, and then realised that as the Earth goes around the Sun, the sky visibly appears to change from season to season. That is, if you compare it at the same time of the night throughout the year. So for the Maori, making different combinations in the sky according to the season was a great way to lock this knowledge into a different form of a calendar.

In fact if you watch the stars in the sky all night long, you will see that they behave just like the Sun: they will drift westwards throughout the night. Of course they do, it's not them, it's the Earth spinning around. But unlike the Sun, if you watch carefully, you will notice that every night, the same stars, if you look at them at the exact same hour and minute as the previous night -- and taking a visible signpost like a tree or a pole as a visual anchor -- they would seem to have shifted their position also westwards, just a tiny little bit.

For us on Earth, this change is very visible from month to month and especially from season to season. This is why I believe that the Maaori had seasonal names for their different groupings of stars, because the same shapes are repeating every year. Stars make a great seasonal marker, especially for their particular culture, which was created whilst navigating the seas and oceans. Compare that to landlubbers like myself who always had nature and plants and landmarks to guide ourselves by, and who often experienced four very distinct seasons. Once we had named a constellation or an asterism it's name would stay the same throughout the year. Not so for the Maaori. No wonder our views of the skies are so very different.

People of Old did not have such detailed information about all these celestial movements and imagined that those stars, just like the plants in the wintertime (for those who had wintertime) would go to the underworld for a while. Perhaps that's the reason why the reappearance of the Pleiades in the sky after a long absence is associated in many cultures with dead ancestors.

So how about the next time you look at the sky you chose a star and a signpost, like a street lamp, and watch that star at exactly the same hour of the night through the year from exactly the same observation spot. I have one such spot too and I call it the center of the Universe.

From my center of the Universe, south of the Zenith, radiant Atutahi/ Canopus is the second brightest star in the entire sky. A circumpolar star, Atutahi is an Ariki; a Chief of the Stars. Another constellation that is circumpolar to Wellington is the Southern Cross, visible from 9pm. Coincidentally the Southern Cross will be easily located roughly at the same hour, nine o'clock on what I call the grand clock of heavens. This is the area of the sky starting from around (minus) - 60 degrees declination, to which Canopus belongs as well. Now looking at the circumpolar stars from New Zealand you will notice that they seem to progress on the sky clockwise, which makes that region of the sky look even more like a clock.

Within the Grand Clock of the Heavens - The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC respectively) are two nearby galaxies visible to the naked eye south of the zenith. They are so prominent in the sky that the first time I spotted the Large Magellanic Cloud I simply believed it was a cirrus cloud, biased by my Northern Hemisphere image of how a galaxy should look like. Imagine my awe when I realised what I was looking at.

And if you wonder where our Milky Way galaxy disappears to, as we can only see a few very bright stars in the sky at the moment --- well it actually hasn't gone away! It is well known that in New Zealand there are times when the Milky Way stretches as a band of stars from North to South going through Zenith. This is one of them. At dusk (around 10 pm in New Zealand, since right now it is still summertime and the night falls very late), the band of the MIlky Way comes up from the Northern Horizon where Capella is hiding below it, and then arches through Betelgeuse, Sirius, the Southern Cross and its two pointers, where it is brightest, and then descends to earth through the south. But during this time of the year we are looking towards the outskirts of the Milky Way, especially when we turn our gaze towards Orion. Thus we see less stars in the sky than when we are looking towards the center of the Milky Way.

With the Milky Way stretching as an arch high across the sky, its brightest regions are well positioned for observing, up in the sky away from the atmospheric haze of the horizon. So let's turn our gaze south of Zenith, to the ancient constellation of Argo Navis. Argo Navis lies entirely in the southern celestial hemisphere, which is the part of the sky south of the celestial equator, the projection of Earth's equator in the sky. Even though it is called the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, because the sky is really huge we can see most of it from anywhere in the world apart of the regions of the sky covered by the Earth itself. This is the reason why we cannot see for instance the Big Dipper or Casiopeea from Wellington or the Southern Cross from Northern Europe. Argo Navis can be found east of Canis Major, south of Monoceros and Hydra, largely in the Milky Way covering a great extent of the sky, almost nearly 75 degrees in length and containing 829 naked eye components. Modern day astronomers have divided Argo Navis into three constellations: Karina the Keel, Puppis the Stern and Vela the Sail. No bow. The Ship is said to be moving stern-forward.

The -naut of argonaut and the Navis of Argo Navis come from the same indo-European root náu- 'Boat or ship'. We constructed many of our modern words from this ancient termination: aeronaut, aquanaut, astronaut, cosmonaut…

Of the three constellations that made the ancient Argo, Puppis marks the stern. Inside Puppis, two less known Messier Objects, M 46 and M 47 are revealing their beauty to southern hemisphere observers. Messier 46 (also known as M 46 or NGC 2437) is an open cluster at a distance of about 5,500 light-years away. Approximately 500 stars make the young cluster, which is thought to be only around 300 million years old. That is a very young age for a star! There is also a planetary nebula NGC 2438 near the cluster's northern edge.

But that's no planet at all. A planetary nebula is an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from old red giant stars late in their lives as the outer layers of the star are expelled by strong stellar winds.

Messier 46 open cluster is located close by Messier 47 another open cluster, which is about one degree west in the sky, so the two fit well in a binocular or wide-angle telescope field, like two close sisters, a name to which they are often referred.

Messier 47 (Messier Object 47, M47, or NGC 2422) was considered for a while the 'lost Messier Object', as the coordinates indicated by Charles Messier did not reveal anything for a long time. Rediscovered independently as NGC 2422 by a Canadian astronomer T. F. Morris who had the realization that NGC 24202 and M47 were the same thing, M47 lies at a distance of about 1,600 light-years from Earth with an estimated age of about 78 million years. There are about fifty stars in this cluster.

If the evening sky belongs to the brightest stars at this time of the year, the morning is a regal of planets. Jupiter comes up at dusk, shining brightly with a steady golden light.Until 20 February the bright planets are forming a magnificent alignment before dawn. Golden Jupiter looms in the northwest sky, reddish Mars climbs northeast of the zenith, while creamy Saturn is midway up in the eastern sky. Brilliant Venus adorns the eastern horizon and Mercury shimmers below and to the right of Venus, near the horizon. The next occurrence of the kind is in August 2016, and then not again until 2018. So to see it all you have to do is wake up before sunrise!

I found this beautiful poem by ancient poet Aratos:
Sternforward Argo by the Great Dog's tail
Is drawn; for hers is not a usual course,
But backward turned she comes, as vessels do
When sailors have transposed the crooked stern
On entering harbour; all the ship reverse,
And gliding backward on the beach it grounds.
Sternforward thus is Jason's Argo drawn.
Canopus at its helm.

Thank you for listening to the February 2016 podcast, until next time Kia Ora and Kia Kaha from Space Place at Carter Observatory in the Southern Hemisphere.

References
Australian Geographic
Science Daily

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during January 2016.

The Stars

In the mid to late evening January sky the brilliant constellation of Orion may be seen in the south. Moving up and to the right - following the line of the three stars of Orion's belt - brings one to Taurus; the head of the bull being outlined by the V-shaped cluster called the Hyades with its eye delineated by the orange red star Aldebaran. Further up to the right lies the Pleiades Cluster. Towards the zenith from Taurus lies the constellation Auriga, whose brightest star Capella will be nearly overhead. To the upper left of Orion lie the heavenly twins, or Gemini, their heads indicated by the two bright stars Castor and Pollux. Down to the lower left of Orion lies the brightest star in the northern sky, Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major. Finally, up and to the left of Sirius is Procyon in Canis Minor.

The Planets

• Jupiter, shining at magnitude -2.2, rises at around 20:30 UT at the beginning of the month lying low in south-eastern Leo. It begins its retrograde motion, moving westwards across the heavens, on January 8th. By the end of the month it rises at around 19:30 UT with a slight increase in magnitude to -2.4. It will then be due south and so highest in the sky at an elevation of 45 degrees around 01:30 UT. As the Earth moves towards Jupiter, the size of Jupiter's disk increases slightly from 39 to 42.4 arc seconds so one should be easily able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere, sometimes the Great Red Spot and up to four of the Galilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn is now a morning object, rising at 06:15 UT as the month begin but by about 04:30 UT at its end. It lies in the southern part of Ophiuchus some 7 degrees up and to the left Antares and close to the stars that mark the head of Scorpius. Its diameter increases from 15.3 to 15.8 arc seconds during the month with its ring system spanning some 35 arc seconds. It will be shining at magnitude +0.5 and be high enough in the south-east before dawn to make out the beautiful ring system which has now opened out to ~25 degrees.
• Mercury on New Year’s Day will shine at magnitude -0.4 about 7 degrees above the south-western horizon 30 minutes after sunset. Binoculars will be probably needed to spot it but please do not use them until after the Sun has set. Over the next week it falls back towards the horizon with a much reducing magnitude (down to +1.8) and will be increasingly difficult to spot. It passes through inferior conjunction with the Sun on January 14th and might be just possible to spot in the east before dawn at the end of the month shining at at magnitude 0.0. At its next inferior conjunction on May 9th it will be seen to transit across the face of the Sun, its first transit for 10 years.
• Mars, moving eastwards relative to the stars, starts the month in Virgo, 6 degrees from Spica, but moves into Libra mid month. Its brightness increases slightly from magnitude +1.3 to +0.8 during the month as the angular size of its disk increases from 5.6 to 6.8 arc seconds. Mars rises about 01:30 on New Year's Day and around half an hour earlier by month's end when it will lie just 1.3 degrees north of the double star Alpha Librae. Given really good seeing, some details on the surface such as Syrtis Major and the polar caps may be visible with a telescope, but will be far better seen at opposition in May when it will appear around three times wider.
• Venus rises around three hours before the Sun as January begins but only 2 hours at month's end. Starting January around one degree from Beta Scorpii, it moves quickly into Sagittarius, passing close to the Trifid Nebula (M20) on the 24th and reaches the handle of the 'teapot' by February. Its angular size reduces from 14.3 to 12.4 arc seconds during the month but, as it does so, the percentage of the disk which is illuminated increases from 77 to 85 percent and the brightness hardly changes, staying at magnitude -4 for much of the month and falling by just 0.1 of a magnitude by month's end.

Highlights of the month

January - a great month to view Jupiter
Jupiter now lies in southern Leo, reasonably high in the ecliptic. Hence, when due south it may be seen at an elevation of ~45 degrees.
The Great Red Spot is currently a pale shade of pink, and other features of the Jovian Giant’s atmosphere have also changed significantly over the last few years. See if you can spot any differences between Jupiter now, and these pictures, taken in 2011 and 2012.

Comet Catalina moves into our northern skies
This month Catalina may reach unaided eye visibility, but the use of binoculars or a small telescope will make for easier viewing. It starts the month just above the bright stars Arcturus in Bootes and tracks northwards until, at mid-month, it passes by the handle of the Plough in Ursa Major. This chart shows its path during January. The smartphone app Sky Safari Plus could help in your search- it will automatically download the orbital elements of comets visible and show exactly where there are to be found.

January 9th
One hour before dawn at magnitude +0.5, Saturn will lie 6 arcminutes from, 60 times brighter, Venus at Magnitude -4 Both have very similar angular diameters at 14 (Venus) and 15 (Saturn) arc seconds. But Saturn will be still noticeably brighter than Antares 7 degrees down to their lower right.

January 19th
After sunset a waxing Gibbous Moon will, if clear, be seen just to the right of the Hyades Cluster in Taurus. During the following evening and night, it will move across the cluster, and by 4am next morning will lie very close to Aldebaran. (As seen from North America a little later, Aldebaran will be occulted.)

January 27th
After sunset a waning gibbous Moon will be seen, if clear, to pass below Jupiter as it lies in the southern part of Leo. At their closest, about midnight, they will lie 4 moon diameters apart.

The Moon

January 18th: The Two Great Lunar Craters
Tycho and Copernicus are two of the greatest craters on the Moon, and this is a great night to spot them, with the terminator nearby. Tycho is towards the bottom of Moon in a densely cratered area called the Southern Lunar Highlands. It is a relatively young crater, about 108 million years old, and is thought to have been formed by the impact of one of the remnants of an asteroid that gave rise to the asteroid Baptistina. Another asteroid originating from the same breakup may well have caused the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago. It has a diameter of 85 km and is nearly 5 km deep. At full Moon the rays of material that were ejected when it was formed can be see arcing across the surface. Copernicus is about 800 million years old and lies in the eastern Oceanus Procellarum beyond the end of the Apennine Mountains. It is 93 km wide and nearly 4 km deep and is a classic "terraced" crater. Both can be seen with binoculars.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during January 2016. In this month's Night Sky South, the music you will hear was very kindly provided by brilliant New Zealand composer Rhian Sheehan, who among other projects has produced music for over a dozen UK and US produced Planetarium films.

The Milky way, which is the proud and joy of the Southern Hemisphere compared to the month of July, is now almost hidden from our sight. The Milky Way is in the eastern sky, brightest in the southeast toward Crux. It can be traced towards the north but becomes faint below Orion. Binoculars show many star clusters and a few glowing gas clouds in the Milky Way, particularly in the Carina region. The Milky Way is faint left, or north, of Orion because we are looking toward its thin outer edge. 180 degrees, on the opposite side of ORion, the milky center of our galaxy now lays behind the Sun. the regions in Scorpius and Sagittarius,which hold the galactic bulge are hidden in the solar haze. This is the zenith of summertime.

This time of the year, Tamanui Te Ra (the Sun) travels high in the sky with his summer wife, Hine Raumati. At dusk, his winter wife Hine Takurua (Sirius) rests lonely in the Eastern Sky. Shining as the brightest star, throughout the night Takurua-Sirius is slowly climbing into darkness longing for her husband. With her, standing higher than any of the shining ones, is radiant Atutahi (Canopus).

Canopus, luminous and distant is the second brightest star of the sky. Circumpolar star, he always can 'see' all the others, which make him a great chief of stars, Te Ariki I Tonga I Tarewa/Ke Ali'i o Kona I Kalewa: The Chief Risen in the South. Left of Takurua-Sirius as the sky darkens is Tautoru: The Three Resting (Orion's Belt) Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka, the latter one positioned exactly on the celestial equator. Mintaka is the star that always rises exactly due East and sets due West. Below Tautoru, Putara-Betelgeuse shines red giant glimmers. Above Tautoru, Puanga-Rigel is glistening in blue. To Kiwis, Tautoru also makes the bottom of 'The Pot'.

Tawhiti the bird catcher draws a line from Takurua across Tautoru to Taumata Kuku: The Wood Pigeon's Mountain Peak (the Hyades star cluster) to signal it's the time when pigeons are good to eat. At the bottom of the Mountain Peak bright Matakaheru-Aldebaran, visually on the line of sight is half the cluster's distance. Left again, towards north and lower, Te Tawhiti - the Shining Ones (the Pleiades star cluster) forms the noose of the bird catcher. Opposite and low in the south is Te Punga: The Anchor (Southern Cross). Its Pointers, Beta and Alpha Centauri are the rope of the anchor. Alpha Centauri is the closest naked-eye star, 4.3 light years away. The flounder, Te Rua Patiki (the pit of patiki) hides in the coalsack, nestled in Te Punga.

The brightest stars sparkle like diamonds in the sky here in New Zealand. This time of the year, in any clear night, one can see Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky, Canopus, the Cat Star, the second brightest star in the sky and Alpha Centauri, the third brightest star in the sky. Alpha centauri is also our closest neighbour. Facing south, after nightfall from left to right, arched high across the sky are Canopus, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic cloud. More bright objects are in the morning sky or the late night. Jupiter rises due east before 1 a.m. at the beginning of the month. It is a very bright golden 'star' shining with a steady light. By the end of January Jupiter will be up after 10:30. The disk of Jupiter is seen in a small telescope with its four 'Galilean' moons lined up on each side like stars, changing positions from night to night. It is 720 million km away mid-month.

Planets

Brilliant Venus rises after 3:30 a.m. through the month; up about 2½ hours before the sun. It is the brightest 'star' in the sky by far. At the beginning of the month Saturn is below and right of Venus, looking like a bright creamy-white star. Around January 9-10 Saturn will make a close pairing with Venus, a conjunction as it passes the brighter planet. Mars is midway between Jupiter and Saturn, a medium brightness orange 'star'.

Deep Sky

the open star cluster NGC 2244, or the rosette nebula in Monoceros, will be well placed for observation. It will reach its highest point in the sky in Wellington around midnight local time but will be visible all night. Look for the bright red giant Betelgeuse and then search to the right for the elusive Monoceros, the Unicorn. Monoceros is hard to see with the naked eye, as it only has a few fourth magnitude stars. Inside it, Beta Monocerotis is an impressive triple star system, forming a triangle described by William Herschel who discovered it in 1781 and described it to be "one of the most beautiful sights in the heavens".

A few great Messier targets are the spectacular M42 in the sword of Orion, a place where stars are born, M1, the Crab Nebula and Messier 35 at the foot of the divine twin, Pollux.

47 tucanae globular cluster is high in the sky, located in the birdy constellation of the Toucan. 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) or just 47 Tuc is about 16,700 light years away from Earth, and 120 light years across. It can be seen with the naked eye, with a visual apparent magnitude of 4.9 and under a very dark sky like we have here in New Zealand it can appear roughly the size of the full moon in the sky. For those who like spiders, Tarantula nebula is another breathtaking sight but it takes patience to see it looking with your eye through a telescope.

May you enjoy the beginning of another happy rotation around the sun!

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during December 2015.

Highlights of the month

December - the first good month to view Jupiter
This is the first of several great months to observe Jupiter. It now lies low in Leo and so is still reasaonably high in the ecliptic and hence, when due south, at an elevation of ~45 degrees. It is looking somewhat different than in the last few years as the north equatorial belt has become quite broad. The Great Red Spot is currently a pale shade of pink but can be easily seen as a large feature (which appears to be shrinking in size) in the South Equatorial Belt.
The features seen in the Jovian atmosphere have been changing quite significantly over the last few years - for a while the South Equatorial Belt vanished completely (as seen in the accompanying image by Damian Peaches) but has now returned to its normal wide state. The diagram on right shows the main Jovian features as imaged by the author at the beginning of December 2012.



See more of Damian Peach's images: Damian Peach's Website

December - Comet Catalina heads upwards to Arcturus
As December progresses, a bright comet, 2013 US10 Catalina, will rise up into our pre-dawn skies. Initially lying close to the Virgo-Libra border, it is heading north at a rate of more than half a degree a day and, by month's end, will be easily found as it lies close to Arcturus in Bootes. By the 10th December it will stand ~20 degrees above the south-eastern horizon at 06:00 UT lying some 6 degrees above Venus. So simply find Venus in binoculars and slowly sweep up and to the left to find the comet. The best guess as to its brightness is that it will be ~5th magnitude - so not visible to the unaided eye but easily visible in binoculars.

December 4th: Jupiter and the Moon
Before dawn and looking south-east will be seen, if clear, Jupiter just over 2 degrees above the 3rd quarter Moon in Leo.

December 6th: Mars and the Moon
Before dawn and looking east will be seen, if clear, Mars just 2 degrees above the waning Moon in Leo.

December 7th and 8th: Venus and the Moon
Before dawn and looking to the east will be seen, if clear, Venus within 5 degrees (below on the 7th and above on the 8th) of a waning crescent Moon.

December 14th and 15th after midnight: the Geminid Meteor Shower
The early mornings of December 14th and 15th will give us the chance, if clear, of observing the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. Happily, this is a good a year as the waxing crescent Moon will not hinder our view. An observing location well away from towns or cities will pay dividends though. The relatively slow moving meteors arise from debris released from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. This is unusual, as most meteor showers come from comets . The radiant - where the meteors appear to come from - is close to the bright star Castor in the constellation Gemini as shown on the chart. If it is clear it will be cold - so wrap up well, wear a woolly hat and have some hot drinks with you.

December 22nd/23rd - midnight onwards : the Ursid Meteor Shower
The night of the 22nd/23rd December is when the Ursid meteor shower is at its best - though the peak rate of ~10-15 meteors per hour is not that great. The Moon is just before full so I suspect only a very few of the brightest meteors to be seen. The radiant lies close to the star Kochab in Ursa Minor (hence their name), so look northwards at a high elevation. Occasionally, there can be a far higher rate so its worth having a look should it be clear.

December - 13th and 29th: The Alpine Valley
An interesting valley on the Moon: The Alpine Valley
These are good nights to observe an interesting feature on the Moon if you have a small telescope. Close to the limb is the Appenine mountain chain that marks the edge of Mare Imbrium. Towards the upper end you should see the cleft across them called the Alpine valley. It is about 7 miles wide and 79 miles long. As shown in the image a thin rill runs along its length which is quite a challenge to observe. Over the next two nights following the 3rd/4th the dark crater Plato and the young crater Copernicus will come into view. This is a very interesting region of the Moon!

Observe the International Space Station
Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

Find details of sighting possibilities from your location from: Location Index

See where the space station is now: Current Position

The Planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter shining at magnitude -2, rises at around 00:30 UT at the beginning of the month lying low down in Leo close to the boundary with Virgo into which it moves early in January. By month's end it rises about 22:30 UT and shines at magnitude -2.2 whilst, during the month, its angular size increases from 35.6 to 38.9 arc seconds It will then be due south and so highest in the sky at an elevation of 44 degrees at around 05:00 UT in the pre-dawn sky. As the Earth moves towards Jupiter, early risers should be able to easily see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere and the four Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn
  Having passed behind the Sun on the 20th of November may be seen again around mid December rising an hour before sunrise. Sadly, it is lying in the southern part of Ophiuchus just over 6 degrees above Antares in Scorpius so its elevation when on the meridian next year will be only be 20 degrees above the horizon. It will be shining at magnitude +0.4 and, by the end of the month, be high enough in the south-east before dawn to make out the beautiful ring system which has now opened out to ~25 degrees. By month's end it rises around an hour earlier, some 2 hours before the Sun and we will see it approached by Venus as it returns towards the Sun.
• Mercury
  Mercury, at magnitude -5 may be seen at the end of the month low in the south-western sky as it reaches greatest elongation on the 29th of December when it lies 20 degrees from the Sun. It will be only a few degrees above the horizon at twilight and so the use of binoculars and a low horizon will be needed to spot it - but please do not try until after the Sun has set!
• Mars
  Mars rises in the east about 2 hours before the Sun at the start of December and about half an hour earlier as we move towards the new year. It brightens from +1.5 to +1.3 when it be nearly as bright as Spica, in Virgo, when it passes about 4 degrees up and to its left on the mornings of the 23rd and 24th of the month. It passes close to the double star Porrima at the beginning of December and, on the 12th and 13th skirts, 4th magnitude star, Theta Virginis. Mars' angular diameter will have reached just 5 arc seconds by the 10th of the month so it will be hard to spot any details on its salmon-pink surface. By month's end Mars will have reached an elevation of 28 degrees above the south-eastern horizon as dawn appears in the sky. At its closet approach in May next year its angular size of ~18 arc seconds will be greater than any time since 2005.
• Venus
  Venus, is now moving back towards the Sun but, by month's end still rises almost three hours before sunrise. A telescope will show that its angular size reduces from 17.5 to 14.5 arc seconds during December but at the same tine the illuminated percentage of the surface increases from ~66 percent to ~75 percent which is why the magnitude only drops from -4.2 to -4.1. Venus will lie some 5 degrees from Spica in Virgo at the start of the month, pass by the double star Alpha Librae on the 17th and 18th and will be very close to Beta Scorpii as we reach the New Year.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during December 2015.

Welcome to December. My name is Haritina Mogosanu and today I am your starryteller from Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The name December comes from Latin, meaning the tenth. In ancient times, it was the tenth month from the beginning of the year.





Where do calendars come from? What do people see when they look at the Stars and the moon and what do these celebrations mean for us in general? And what was their connection to the land?

























Jupiter, Mars and Venus are all visible in the morning sky. Saturn joins them at the end of the month. At the beginning of December Jupiter rises around 2:30 a.m.; reducing to 12:30 a.m. by the 31st. It is a bright golden-coloured 'star' shining with a steady light. Venus is up around 4 a.m., a brilliant object bright enough to cast shadows in dark locations. Mars is between the two bright planets, looking like a medium-bright reddish star. Jupiter and Mars rise steadily earlier while Venus stays put in the dawn. In the second half of the month Mars is near, then passing below, the bluish-white star Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. At the end of the month Saturn emerges from the dawn twilight below and right of Venus, at the bottom end of the diagonal line of planets. The crescent moon will be close to Venus on the morning of December 8th.









Kia Kaha and clear skies from the Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Northern Hemisphere

Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere night sky during November 2015.

Highlights of the monthNovember early mornings - meteors

In the hours before dawn, November gives us a chance to observe meteors from two showers - the Northern Taurids shower and the better known Leonids. The Northern Taurids shower has a broad peak of around 10 days but normally gives relatively few meteors per hour. The peak is around the 10th of November and, pleasingly, the Moon is new on the 11th. The meteors arise from comet 2P/Encke, which has a tail especially rich in large particles, so it is possible that a number of fireballs might be observed!

The Leonids are also expected to produce bright events, peaking on the night of the 17th/18th of the month, with up to 15 meteors an hour visible to those near the zenith. The Moon sets at 21:30 on the 17th so will not be a problem when observing the first predicted peak at 21:00 UT on the 17th and the second at 04:00 on the 18th. As one might expect, the shower's radiant lies within the sickle of Leo and meteors could be spotted from the 15th to the 20th of the month. The Leonids enter the atmosphere at ~71 km/sec and this makes them somewhat challenging to photograph but it's worth trying as one might just capture a bright fireball. The Leonids are famous because every 33 years a meteor storm might be observed when the parent comet, 55P/Temple-Tuttle, passes close to the Sun. In 1999, 3,000 meteors were observed per hour but we are now halfway between these impressive events hence with a far lower expected rate.

November 3rd - before sunrise: Venus and Mars under a degree apart.

Before dawn on the 3rd, brilliant Venus shining at magnitude -4.5 will be very close to Mars at magnitude +1.7. Jupiter will lie ~7 degrees to their upper right.

November 7th - before sunrise: A thin crescent Moon joins the morning planets.

An excellent imaging opportunity arises before dawn on the 7th as a thin crescent Moon lies close to Venus and Mars with Jupiter some 9 degrees to their upper right.

Find The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) around the second week of November - and for an extra challenge, perhaps M33 in Triangulum

In the evening, the galaxy M31 in Andromeda is visible in the south. The chart on the Jodrell Bank night sky page shows two ways of finding it:

1. Find the square of Pegasus Start at the top left star of the square - Alpha Andromedae - and move two stars to the left and up a bit. Then turn 90 degrees to the right, move up to one reasonably bright star and continue a similar distance in the same direction. You should easily spot M31 with binoculars and, if there is a dark sky, you can even see it with your unaided eye. The photons that are falling on your retina left Andromeda well over two million years ago!
2. You can also find M31 by following the "arrow" made by the three rightmost bright stars of Cassiopeia down to the lower right as shown on the chart.

Around new Moon (11th November) - and away from towns and cities - you may also be able to spot M33, the third largest galaxy after M31 and our own galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies. It is a face on spiral and its surface brightness is pretty low so a dark, transparent sky will be needed to spot it using binoculars (8x40 or, preferably, 10x50). Follow the two stars back from M31 and continue in the same direction, sweeping slowly as you go. It looks like a piece of tissue paper stuck on the sky, just slightly brighter than the sky background. Happy hunting!

November 25th to 30th - 1 hour before sunrise: Jupiter rises higher in the sky.

In the last week of November, Jupiter, rising 40 minutes after midnight, will have reached an elevation of 20 degrees or more for 2 hours of astronomically dark sky. Then will be the time to start seriously observing and imaging it. This is a great opportunity to take a look at its Great Red Spot - is it still shrinking?

November 25th - evening: The full Moon close to the Hyades Cluster.

This evening, the full Moon will be seen just to the right of the Hyades Cluster in Taurus. Lying halfway towards the cluster is the red-giant star Aldebaran.

The planets

• Jupiter
  Jupiter is now a wonderful morning object, rising soon after midnight by the last week of November. On the morning of the 24th of October I saw it lying close to brilliant Venus as a prelude to this month's morning parade of the planets Mars, Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter starts the month shining at magnitude -1.8 with an angular diameter of 33 arc seconds. During the month, these increase to -2.0 and 35.5 respectively. It lies in Leo, 8 degrees over to the right of Denebola and is gradually moving down towards Virgo before it starts its retrograde motion in January. With a small telescope, early risers should be able to see the equatorial bands in the atmosphere and the four Gallilean moons as they weave their way around it.
• Saturn
  Saturn passes behind the Sun on the 29th of November. It might just be seen using binoculars at the very beginning of the month, just a few degrees above the southwestern horizon 45 minutes after sunset but, really, we will have to wait for a while yet to see it in the pre-dawn sky.
• Mercury
  Mercury reaches superior conjunction (that is, on the far side of the Sun) on November 17th and will not be visible for much of the month. It might just be picked up using binoculars low in the east about 20 minutes before sunrise in the first few days of the month.
• Mars
  Mars rises about 3:30 am as the month begins, shining at magnitude +1.7. This increases to magnitude +1.5 as the month progresses with its angular diameter increasing from 4.2 to 4.7 arc seconds. This is still too small for any details to be seen on its salmon-pink surface. As the highlights have detailed, at November's start, it will lie close to both Jupiter and Venus, making a wonderful grouping in the sky. However, by month's end, Mars will be about 20 degrees to the lower left of Jupiter and 14 degrees to the upper right of Venus. It starts the month in Leo, later moving down into Virgo and making a close approach to Eta Virginis on the 21st.
• Venus
  Venus, rising at ~03:30, starts the month dominating the eastern sky before dawn in a close grouping with both Jupiter and Mars as detailed in the highlights above. Its magnitude drops only slightly from -4.4 to -4.2 during the month whilst its angular diameter drops from 22.7 to 17.6 arc seconds. But, as the illuminated disk increases from 54% to 63% at the same time, the observed magnitude stays almost constant. Venus is rapidly moving closer to the Sun and will have dropped by around 30 degrees towards the horizon by the end of the month, becoming less prominent. Moving from Leo into Virgo, it passes 0.4 degrees from magnitude 3.6 Beta Virginis on the 13th and less than 0.2 degrees from Eta Virginis on the 21st.

Southern Hemisphere

Haritina Mogosanu from the Carter Observatory in New Zealand tells us about the southern hemisphere night sky during November 2015. Click here for the full, fantastic transcript of her starrytelling. In this month's Night Sky South, the music you will hear was very kindly provided by brilliant New Zealand composer Rhian Sheehan, who among other projects has produced music for over a dozen UK and US produced Planetarium films. You may even have heard his handiwork during a Super Bowl commercial or two!

Welcome to November. My name is Haritina Mogosanu and today I am your starryteller from Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa New Zealand. November is my favourite month of the year. The name of November comes from Latin, it means the ninth. It was the ninth month after the beginning of the year, in March.November is the time when the starcluster that we know as the Pleiades is visible again, but on the evening sky. In the Northern part of the world November is a month of contrasts. Too dark, too sharp, frost, mud, chernozem, dead forest leaves and the river, is all that I remember was left of life in the Novembers of my childhood.

On the other side of the world, in Aotearoa, New Zealand, where the sea surrounds us from all directions, the sky is darker than dark and the stars are very bright as we prepare for summer. November here is called Orongo, which means the time after the great rain. Orongo is spectacular in Aotearoa. It harbours the most beautiful asterism I have ever seen, the grand canoe.

The people of New Zealand have an ancient tale which tells of how the stars were shining pebbles laid in a lightless sky by a warrior called Tamatereti, who travelled there in this canoe. Read the tale here and continue reading below to find out why the canoe of Tama Rereti, te waka o Tama Rereti, is an important part of the Aotearoa night sky in November.

If you want to see the canoe from this tale, start from where the Sun has set. There is the Scorpion which represents the prow of the canoe and the sting of it is the beautifully carved wood above the bow of the canoe. A short distance below this is the star at the end of the Scorpion's curving tail that marks the place where the bow meets the water. The curve of the Scorpion's tail and body sinks into the waters of the Milky Way, which at this time of the year surrounds Aotearoa like a beautiful glistening river. As water waves move along the side of the canoe, the bright, orange star, Antares, marks the crest of a wave as the great waka rides at anchor.

From the bow, the anchor rope is marked by Alpha Centauri, the third brightest star in the sky, and Beta Centauri, which are also known as the Pointers of the southern cross. The Southern Cross represents the great stone anchor that that keeps the canoe from the tale in its place, to remind the people of New Zealand how the stars and Milky Way were placed in the night sky so long ago. A tall mast rises from the canoe all the way to the star Achernar, which marks in the Northern World the end of the river Eridanus. The two beautiful galaxies that we know as the Magellanic Clouds are the sails of the waka.
Atutahi, also known as Canopus, is the second brightest star in the sky and is the chief of all stars as well as the navigator of the canoe. Orion makes the stern post, it is elaborately carved and it goes all the way from Betelgeuse, a red-giant star, to high above the water - marked by Rigel, a bluish supergiant star, directly above the line of three stars. From the top of the stern post there is a ribbon of flax blowing out in the wind. At the tip of it, is orange Aldebaran. The flax is the Hyades cluster. Still further left is the Pleiades, which at this time of the year are only making the feathers that adorn the canoe floating on the ripples left behind by the waka o tamarereti. Matariki, the name that the Maori sometimes give to this cluster, is only a memory of winter, as the cluster is only called so in the morning of July when it is wintertime here and it marks the Maori new year. Still six stars are visible to the eye; dozens are seen in binoculars. The cluster is 440 light years away and around 70 million years old.

On the opposite side of the sky to Alpha Centauri and Canopus-Atutahi, the great square of Pegasus is riding the Northern horizon. Not only can see the three brightest stars in the sky at the same time in Aotearoa, New Zealand , we can also see the most prominent four galaxies of our world with the naked eye: The Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds and very low in the north is the Andromeda Galaxy, easily seen with binoculars in a dark sky and faintly visible to the eye. It appears as a spindle of light.

Planets

Saturn is the only naked-eye planet in the evening sky. It sets in the southwest two hours after the sun at the beginning of the month. It looks like a medium-bright creamy-white star directly below orange Antares, the brightest star in the Scorpion. Because it is low in the sky it will look rather fuzzy in a telescope. By mid-month it is disappearing in the dusk.

Venus, Mars and Jupiter are in the eastern dawn sky. The three planets are close together at the beginning of the month, rising after 4 a.m. Venus is brightest, with Jupiter a close second. Mars is a fainter red 'star', just below Venus. The goddess of beauty Venus and the god of war Mars have a brief encounter on the beginning of November, what we earthlings call a conjunction.

This concludes our Jodcast for November 2015 at space place at carter observatory. As the Maori say: E whiti ana nga whetu o te Rangi (the stars are shining in the sky) ko takoto ake nei ko Papatuanuku (whilst Mother Earth lays beneath).

Kia Kaha and clear skies from the Space Place at Carter Observatory in Aotearoa, New Zealand.