I’ve been playing with Stellarium, an open source planetarium application.

It’s not as full featured as many other planetarium applications like The Sky or
Starry Night. But it’s got some neat features, it’s easy to use and you can’t beat the price (free, as in beer).

You can download Stellarium here.

The universe just got a whole lot smaller, or larger depending on how you look at it.

According to National Geographic,

scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

We are living in historic times folks.

Jupiter

Tonite, right after sunset, look directly south, about 1/3 of the way up from the horizon. That bright star you’ll see is Jupiter, the King of Planets.

For the next few weeks, Jupiter is dominating the night sky. It’s currently in the constellation Sagittarius, coincidentally one of the most deep-sky rich constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

In 1609, Galileo first viewed Jupiter through a telescope and saw right away the four Galilean Moons: Io, Calisto, Ganymede and Europa.

Over the course of several nights, the moons can be viewed orbiting around Jupiter - it was this discovery by Galileo that led to the downfall of the geocentric world view - that everything revolved around the Earth. This was the birth of the modern world-view, in short - the birth of modernity.

With binoculars, you can clearly make out Jupiter as a disk and see the moons. With a small telescope you can see the Jovian system. In my telescope I can see at least two equitorial bands and on a very clear night I can make out even greater details on the surface of Jupiter.

From Vega, in Lyra, at the top, down to Deneb in Cygnus and then right to Altair in Aquila, the Summer Triangle is unmistakable in the Summer sky. Just look east, a bit after sunset. Vega should be near the zenith; the three stars are often the first to be visible in the night sky.

The MIlky Way flows right through the Triangle. If you have a nice dark night with clear skies, you should be able to see faint dust clouds and star fields.

With binoculars, you can scan the triangle and pick out most of its treasures.

More on The Summer Triangle here.

DSC_0019

Originally uploaded by david parmet

Here’s the view from the backyard of our beach house. The bright ’start’ at the bottom is Jupiter, that’s about as high as it got over the trees.

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.

But to really learn what’s where and where you can expect to find what you are looking for, you need to spend many nights under the stars just looking. And a good star atlas can’t hurt either.

Most amatuer astronomers collect star atlases like baseball cards or matchbox cards. I currently have three.

The big one, the one that stays on the desk, is the Sky Atlas 2000.0. This comes in various editions - laminated for the field, white on black or black on white, with or without bound pages, you get the picture. It’s the big book of stars and it’s a sight to behold.

The one that goes with me to star parties and comes out at night with me is Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas. This has just enough detail to keep more advanced users happy but simple enough to use for beginners. Plus it’s small and can fit in your backpack. It’s also perfect to take along on a trip in case you get a nice clear night and need to find your way.

Last but not least is Will Tirion’s Bright Star Atlas. It’s a nicely sized reference guide, halfway between the full blown Sky Atlas and the pocket sized Sky and Telescope version.

There are a lot of other books out there. I would also recommend a copy of Sky and Telescope or Astronomy for the current month to get yourself started. They will alert you to anything new - a comet, nova or meteor shower in the sky, and let you know what planets are up and where to find them.

I have three Tele Vue eyepieces, the best by far is the 12.0mm Radian. The view out of this baby is like looking out the window of the Enterprise. It gives me 76X magnification, just enough to really show details on the Moon, color on Saturn and even the Equatorial Bands of Jupiter. It’s a lot to spend on an eyepiece but worth it. I’ve had mine for years and it never lets me down.

My telescope sits on an Orion EQ Deluxe, which they no longer sell. The current equivilant model is the Orion SkyView Pro Equatorial Mount. This guy is rock solid. The movements are as smooth as can be. EQ mounts can get very expensive, this is a good pick up for the money - you won’t do any better at this price point.

I own a Newtonian Reflector so collimation is a task of which I have become intimately familiar. If you don’t know what collimation is, I’ll be covering that soon. In the meantime, here’s a guide. I’ll just say that I couldn’t do it without my trusty Orion Collimating Eyepiece. Don’t stare down the eye piece barrel of your Newt without one!

Saturn is one of the easiest and most rewarding views for a small telescope.

A good pair of binoculars can show the rings. Moving up to a small telescope and you can see some cloud details, a moon or two and maybe even the elusive Cassini Division between the A and B rings.

The secret to viewing planets is having good seeing. Seeing is a losely defined term refering to the quality of the air between you, the viewer, and what you are looking at. It might be clear as a bell from where you stand but 60,000 feet above you there might be enough turbulance in the upper atmosphere to ruin a good night’s viewing.

The best way to deal with this is to stick with what you are viewing for at least a half hour. You’ll get enough breaks in that time for the skies above you to clear and the views to sharpen. So be patient. And enjoy the view.

Until then, read up and plan for clear, starry nights.