The Backyard Stargazer

DSC_0040, originally uploaded by david parmet.

Orion is chock full of interesting things to look at. Everyone knows the Great Nebula – M42 and it’s neighbor M42, but there’s also the Flame and Horsehead Nebulea as well as a host of interesting stars, star clusters and other things to look for.

You can scan the region of Orion’s belt and sword (pictured above) with a good pair of binoculars and see the Great Nebula. Orion is up in the East this time of year – you can catch it just after sunset right above the horizon.

Copyright © 2003 Torsten Bronger.

It’s summer time in the Northern Hemisphere, a perfect time to see the MIlky Way – if we didn’t have so much light pollution.

Cygnus the Swan glides over some of the most interesting lanes of our home galaxy, so if we did have perfectly dark skies, we’d be seeing dust clouds and nebula perfectly with the naked eye.

Unfortunately for me at least, living 40 miles from New York City, I have to settle for imagining how it would look. Still, there are treasures to behold in the celestial swan, even under bright skies.

In Greek mythology, Cygnus is the form taken by the god Zeus to seduce Leda, the wife of the King of Sparta.

Cygnus is easy enough to find, just look due east for a sideways cross about halfway up the sky.

Starting at the top, or at the tail as it were, the bright star Deneb (Alpha Cygnus) at magnitude 1.25 is the 19th brightest star visible from Earth. Deneb is one third of the Summer Triangle, the other components being Vega (in Lyra) and Altair (in Aqila).

At the other end, the beak of the swan, is Albireo (Beta Cygnus), one of the most beautiful double stars you can see with a small telescope. Even low magnification will bring out the blue and gold of the two stars. It’s very rare to get this much color in any star, let alone a double.

There are also a great deal of deep sky targets in Cygnus, the most notable being NGC 7000, AKA the North American Nebula. I’ve only ever seen it with a great deal of technological enhancements but it’s unmistakable once you find it. If your skies are darker than mine, just look a bit east of Deneb and you’ll see the familiar east coast of North America splayed out in the sky.

For more on Cygnus, the Small Wonders column on Cloudy Nights is a good place to start.

Click map to embiggin – I’m working on making these maps a bit clearer and bigger.

The best way to really learn the sky is to learn your constellations. Some are familiar to us – like Orion or Ursa Major. Others are harder to find. I’ll start with the easy ones.

This month Leo is out in the Eastern skies just after sunset. And as an extra added bonus, Saturn is spending 2008 sitting just to the left of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo.

From The Illustrated Guide To Astronomical Wonders:

Leo is home to scores of galaxies that are visible in amateur instruments, including no less than five bright Messier galaxies, and possesses several fine galaxies that are bright enough to be glimpsed with even a binocular. Several of these bright galaxies are tightly clustered, making it possible to observe multiple bright galaxies in the same low-power eyepiece field.

With binoculars you can see Saturn’s rings. A small telescope will show even more detail.

So go out tonite and tell me what you see.