M51 & Lulu

Clear dark skies were forecast for Monday night, though it didn't look very promising early on as the sky was thinly overcast. At 10pm, after 24, I took another look out the back door and saw Jupiter. Locked up the cats, dimmed the lights and grabbed the binocs.

With my Messier target list fresh in my head, I set out for the first object that came to mind - M51 - by scanning between Alkaid and Cor Caroli (alpha Canes Venatici). After a few passes I was able to see a faint glow near a triangle of 7th mag stars. Checking Sky Atlas 2000 and Starry Night Pro confirmed the position, thus I am pleased to report that M51 is still where it's supposed to be.


Now, M51 isn't much to look at through hand-held 10x50 binoculars, but the fact that I could find the bitch without too much trouble is a good indication that my starhopping skills are improving, despite my being spoiled by Go-To mounts and digital setting circles.

Unrelated to deep sky observing, Miss Lulu came by to see me; it looks like she made it through the winter OK. I brought her some food and water, but she was more interested in getting some lovin' than eating. I went back in to look at the charts, and she was gone when I went back out.

Messier Targets in Ursa Major & Canes Venatici

As April returns to Lake Wallkill, so too does Ursa Major. Although mostly circumpolar at 41°N latitude, it's lost to the trees by mid summer; but by the end of April UMa rides high overhead just north of zenith, little affected by the lights from Rt. 23 or the infernal Mountain Creek.


A good number of Messier objects are located around the Big Dipper asterism and it's companion, Canes Venatici - mostly galaxies, with a globular cluster, a double star, and a planetary nebula thrown in (links go to entries on the superb SEDS web site):

• M3: Globular Cluster (NGC 5272), class VI, in Canes Venatici
• M40: Double Star (WNC 4) in Ursa Major - Winnecke 4
• M51: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 5194), type Sc, in Canes Venatici - Whirlpool Galaxy
• M63: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 5055), type Sb, in Canes Venatici - Sunflower Galaxy
• M81: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 3031), type Sb, in Ursa Major - Bode's Galaxy
• M82: Irregular Galaxy (NGC 3034), type Ir-II, in Ursa Major - Cigar Galaxy
• M94: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 4736), type Sb, in Canes Venatici
• M97: Planetary Nebula (NGC 3587), type 3a, in Ursa Major
• M101: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 5457), type Sc, in Ursa Major - Pinwheel Galaxy
• M106: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 4258), type Sbp, in Canes Venatici
• M108: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 3556), type Sc, in Ursa Major
• M109: Spiral Galaxy (NGC 3992), type SBc, in Ursa Major

A New Moon on April 27 makes the last week of the month an ideal time to observe these objects. The upcoming (March 28) New Moon looks to be a washout.

Of Skypods & Refractors

Here's an interesting scope/mount I just stumbled upon in the Vixen-Scopes group:

It looks like a GOTO version of the Porta with a "lite" version of the Sphynx SkyBook controller. The mount is rated for a 5kg (11 lb) load, adequate to carry that 4" refractor that I hear calling me lately.

No mention of the Skypod anywhere on the Vixen North America site (or the Vixen Japan site, either) but it is listed by Orion Optics in the UK at £699.00 (a bit over $1,200.00 in Yank money). That price includes a 110mm (f9.4) modified Cassegrain, which might not be too bad for a second small scope to complement the TV85 (assuming I don't sell one or the other, or both, to help pay for a 4".) No word yet whether the mount is available as a stand-alone; I'd rather see the Skypod mount packaged with a nice wood tripod than with the scope.

On the refractor front, I have been doing some window shopping and find myself very impressed with three somewhat affordable 4" apo refractors: Vixen ED103SWT, William Optics ZenithStar 105 [since replaced by the ZenithStar 110], and Tele Vue TV-102. The Vixen and WO scopes include mounting rings (and a 2" diagonal, in the case of the latter); the TV-102 is OTA-only. At this point, the WO is looking like like the best value.

A couple of good reviews of the ED103SWT and ZS105ED on AstroMart.
Counting the days until NEAF...

Horrendous Space Kablooie Update

Another nail in the coffin of the Steady State theory has been hammered into place by the WMAP mission.

NEW SATELLITE DATA ON UNIVERSE'S FIRST TRILLIONTH SECOND

Scientists peering back to the oldest light in the universe have new evidence for what happened within its first trillionth of a second, when the universe suddenly grew from submicroscopic to astronomical size in far less than a wink of the eye.

Using new data from a NASA satellite, scientists have the best evidence yet to support this scenario, known as "inflation." The evidence, from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, was gathered during three years of continuous observations of remnant afterglow light -- cosmic background radiation that lingers, much cooled, from the universe's energetic beginnings 13.7 billion years ago.

In 2003, NASA announced that the WMAP satellite had produced a detailed picture of the infant universe by measuring fluctuations in temperature of the afterglow -- answering many longstanding questions about the universe's age, composition and development. The WMAP team has built upon those results with a new measurement of the faint glare from the afterglow to obtain clues about the universe's first moments, when the seeds were sown for the formation of the first stars 400 million years later.

"It amazes me that we can say anything about what transpired within the first trillionth of a second of the universe, but we can," said Charles L. Bennett, WMAP principal investigator and a professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University. "We have never before been able to understand the infant universe with such precision. It appears that the infant universe had the kind of growth spurt that would alarm any mom or dad."

WMAP results have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and are posted online at http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/results.

The newly detected pattern, or polarization signal, in the glare of the afterglow is the weakest cosmological signal ever detected -- less than a hundredth of the strength of the temperature signal reported three years ago.

"This is brand new territory," said Princeton University physicist Lyman Page, a WMAP team member. "We are quantifying the cosmos in a different way to open up a new window for understanding the universe in its earliest times.

Comparing the brightness of broad features to compact features in the afterglow light (like comparing the heights of short-distance ripples versus long-distance waves on a lake) helps tell the story of the infant universe. One long-held prediction was that the brightness would be the same for features of all sizes. In contrast, the simplest versions of inflation predict that the relative brightness decreases as the features get smaller. WMAP data are new evidence for the inflation prediction.

The new WMAP data, combined with other cosmology data, also support established theories on what has happened to matter and energy over the past 13.7 billion years since its inflation, according to the WMAP researchers. The result is a tightly constrained and consistent picture of how our universe grew from microscopic quantum fluctuations to enable the formation of stars, planets and life.

According to this picture, researchers say that only 4 percent of the universe is ordinary familiar atoms; another 22 percent is an as-yet unidentified dark matter, and 74 percent is a mysterious dark energy. That dark energy is now causing another growth spurt for the universe, fortunately, they say, more gentle than the one 13.7 billion years ago.

WMAP was launched on June 30, 2001 and is now a million miles from Earth in the direction opposite the Sun. It is able to track temperature fluctuations at levels finer than a millionth of a degree.

The WMAP team includes researchers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; The Johns Hopkins University; Princeton University; the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto; the University of Texas at Austin; Cornell University; the University of Chicago; Brown University in Providence, R.I.; the University of British Columbia; the University of Pennsylvania; and the University of California, Los Angeles.

For images and more information: http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/results

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a cornerstone of the Big Bang theory, was predicted in 1948 by Gamow, Alpher and Hermann. If the Big Bang really occurred, the first photons released after the initial cooling of the universe should be detectable in all directions, red-shifted to microwave frequencies by the expansion of the universe.

The CMB was first detected in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson as what they first thought to be interference. Unable to pinpoint it's location, it soon became evident that the source of the "interference" was the creation of the universe 14 billion years or so ago. Cosmologists have been measuring and studying the CMB ever since with both ground- and space-based instruments, WMAP being presently the biggest and baddest.

(Chapter 6 of Timothy Ferris' "The Red Limit" is an excellent account of the initial prediction of the CMB by Gamow, Alpher and Hermann, and it's accidental discovery by Penzias and Wilson.)

These latest findings from the WMAP team add new evidence for the inflationary model of cosmic expansion, and lend further understanding to the nature of dark matter and dark energy - predicted by theory but unobservable with current technology.

Other coverage and resources:

• WMAP Bolsters Case for Cosmic Inflation (S&T)
• WMAP Mission (NASA)
• Inflation for Beginners (John Gribbin)
• WMAP (Wikipedia)

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

I was tipped off to this event by Sky & Telescope's "This Week's Sky at a Glance" online column. After I left DiBella's around 6pm I caught the full moon rising in the East. Despite some clouds, a slight darkening of the eastern lunar limb was evident and remaind so most of the drive home. Not a great example of a lunar eclipse, but it was better than nothing.

Later, around 11pm, I noticed Jupiter rising in the southeast. Summer is near!

Don't forget the sunblock.

Bad news for ham radio operators:

For almost the entire month of February 2006 the sun was utterly blank. If Galileo had looked at the sun on his 442nd birthday, he would have been disappointed - no sunspots, no spin, no discovery. What's going on? NASA solar physicist David Hathaway explains: "Solar minimum has arrived."

Good news for ham radio operators:

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, have declared a breakthough in understanding our Sun's 11-year activity cycle. And they are using their new model to make predictions: that the next solar cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the one now ending, and that it will begin 6 to 12 months late.

Other coverage and resources:

• National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
• NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• NASA Graphics
• A Primer on Space Weather