The Dudley Observatory Skywatch Line for Wednesday, June 25th and Thursday, June 26th written by Louis Suarato Charles Messier was born on June 26, 1730 in Badonviller, France. Messier was an astronomer devoted to discovering comets. While searching for a comet predicted to appear by Edmund Halley, Messier observed a fuzzy, comet-like object in the constellation Taurus. Realizing the object did not move relative to background stars, Messier sought to catalogue all objects that appeared to be comets but were “nebulae”. In doing so, Messier created a catalogue of 103 nebulae, or fuzzy objects that resembled comets, so other astronomers wouldn’t be confused. The first object, M1, was the Crab Nebula, in the constellation Taurus. The Messier Catalog remains an important tool for amateur and professional astronomers and contains the locations of 12 nebulae, 26 open clusters, 29 globular clusters and 42 galaxies. Two of Messier’s deep sky objects that can be seen in the June night sky are the spectacular globular cluster, M3, located approximately 20 degrees west of Bootes’ brightest star, Arcturus. Discovered by Messier in 1764, M3 is a 6th magnitude object that joins M5 and M13 as one of the three brightest globular clusters in our sky. M3 is about 33,900 light-years away and contains a half million stars. Another Messier object is M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, a face-on spiral galaxy located about 12 degrees west of the last star in the Big Dipper’s handle, Alkaid. The Pinwheel Galaxy is about 27 million light-years away and is 7th magnitude in brightness. Jupiter appears only 7 degrees above the west-southwestern horizon at twilight and sets at 10 pm EDT. Mars can be found approximately 30 degrees over the southwestern horizon in the constellation Virgo, with Spica 10 degrees to its south. Saturn, in Libra, is to the south of Spica and Mars. The summer triangle refers to the stars Altair, in the constellation Aquila, Deneb in Cygnus, and Vega in Lyra. Look for the summer triangle rising over the eastern horizon as the sky darkens. Venus rises at 3:25 am Thursday. The New Moon occurs at 4:09 Thursday morning. The latest sunsets of the year occur at 8:37 pm Thursday, June 27th through July 1st. The Dudley Observatory invites you to a Star Party on Friday, June 27 beginning at 8:00 PM, rain or shine, at the Octagon Barn in Knox, 588 Middle Road at the intersection of Beebe Road. Glenn Coilek, a PhD student from RPI, presents Outflows and Shock Waves in Star-Forming Interstellar Clouds. Glenn studies star formation, which is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space, sometimes referred to as stellar nurseries or star-forming regions, collapse to form stars. Amateur astronomers and families are invited to bring binoculars and telescopes. Call (518) 618-5376 for more information. Also, the Albany Area Amateur Astronomers invite you to join them for public star parties Friday, June 27th and Saturday, June 28th at the Landis Arboretum in Esperance, NY, weather permitting. Numerous telescopes will be available for guests to view planets and many Messier deep sky objects.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 20:39:39 +0000
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