[Music] the sky this month with your H day [Music] with welcome to the sky this month I'm your host Dave McDonald and this is January 2024 happy New Year everybody it's a new year and we've got some great Celestial Delights to talk about we're going to do the format just a little different for this show we're going to start off talking about the night sky and constellations and stars and planets that you can see and then in uh just a little bit uh later on I'm going to be introducing to you Tyler Flanigan as a special guest and we're going to be talking about the latest and the greatest with the James web space telescope but uh right now we're going to talk about what's up in the sky that you can see from your own backyard that's where you find the greatest show on Earth and you don't have to go very far sometimes a little drive to a darker place a dark site uh might be helpful so I want you to know that at January 2nd Earth is closest to the Sun and then it's in July around July 4th that Earth is furthest away from the Sun and you may ask yourself well that doesn't make sense but think about the people in the southern hemisphere it's kind of opposite for them but as far as the whole planet goes we are closest to the Sun in January January 2nd about uh 91.4 million miles and then we get as far away in July as 95.6 million miles miles so on average we're about 93 million miles on average which we consider to be One AU or one astronomical unit now something else happening at the beginning of the month are the quadrant meteor showers or medeia shower so late night January 3rd early morning we're talking like after midnight to like 4:00 a.m. uh on January 4th so that's late Wednesday night to early uh Thursday morning look towards the north anywhere overhead is going to do the trick but a little towards the north as the quadrants take place a little bit between the Big Dipper and botes the upper part of botes the herdsman and uh enjoy another meteor shower dress warm go out and have some hot chocolate and some donuts and a lounge chair sleeping bag whatever to keep warm and uh hopefully you'll see some cool meteors I hope that you got to enjoy the Geminid meteor shower uh last month and we also had the ursids last month so what we're looking at here behind me and I'll just step aside to reveal January 8th this is early morning before sunrise on January 8th and now look at what I have just revealed uh we have the Moon Venus and Mercury Mercury is tough to see it's uh what we call a Morning Star even though it's a planet and Venus is a Morning Star even though it is a planet Venus you can't miss it's blazing bright Mercury is tough uh binoculars will be a big help to you to find Mercury but this is the layout early morning around uh 6:30 or so January 8th and I chose January 8th one because Mercury is is far above the Horizon as it's going to get for any given time and the Moon is in the picture it's not a full moon this kind of looks like a full moon here but it's actually a uh waning crescent moon as it's going to be approaching towards the Sun but a beautiful view great camera opportunity get your phone out and take some pictures but uh early morning you know the 7th 8th 9th is all going to be fine this just happens to be uh a picture of what it's going to look like or it did look like on January 8th in the morning okay so now we're going to jump ahead to January 14th and what we're looking at here now we're looking in the Western sky obviously Mercury Venus and the moon was in the East uh Before Sunrise now we just had Sunset and this is around 6:00 at night looking Southwest and we we have the planet Saturn and the moon and once again the Moon is depicted here looking full but it's really a uh a waxing crescent moon making its way towards first quarter but this is a good uh evening to check out Saturn in relationship to the Moon Saturn is at a magnitude n and the uh diameter as you look at the planet itself is 16 seconds of Arc and it is going to be dwindling is a little bit as we get further and further away from Saturn down to 15 seconds of Arc which isn't really a noticeable change and then from a ring Edge to ring Edge you're looking at something in the realm of 36 uh what we call seconds of our seconds of our so the ring tilt as you look at it is about 9° so it's a great time to look at Saturn and enjoy the moons there's four moons that you you'll be able to see Titan uh is further away and then there are a few others that are a little bit uh closer that you can enjoy so uh let's the next image I I want to show you this is the artwork of the constellations and so just to show you that Saturn and the moon again this is uh evening 6:30 or so 6:00 on January 14th and you'll notice that we're in the constellation of Aquarius now every night the moon moves from west to east so the moon is going to be moving in this direction about a fist's width uh from night to night from West towards East and and it's and as I said it's in the waxing stages so you're going to see more and more of the Moon lit uh each night but Saturn is going to be still hanging out in this area of aquarius so speaking of the moon I I want to show you an image and this image of the Moon here is around the 18th of January and it looks like pretty much what we have here is the first quarter moon and we see the Terminator line the Terminator is that line that separates nighttime on the moon from the daytime on the moon so there's really no Dark Side of the Moon we have a daytime and a nighttime side and we have the near side and The Far Side of the Moon sometimes people confuse The Far Side of the Moon with being the dark side and it's not all parts of the Moon have equal day equal night in the course of a moon now if you have binoculars you might be able to barely make it out with the uned eye but if you have binocular I want to point out a couple things that you can see first quarter and Beyond as we continue to wax towards full moon which is about another week away so we have the head do you see a soccer player I want to show you the soccer player here right we have a ball we have the head the body kicking foot and we have the ball so the head is the Sea of Serenity the body of the soccer player is the Sea of trans quility then the kicking foot is the Sea of fertility and then the soccer ball is the Sea of Crisis so my psychology lesson to help you to remember these Seas which are not filled with water once upon a time that was the thought since Earth came from sorry since the moon came from Earth and Earth is 74% water then these dark spots they they must be oceans or Seas or Maria on the moon but we learn later no that's not the case they're actually dried Lava Beds of bass salt is what the darker material is and the lighter material is called a northy but the head of the soccer player is the Sea of Serenity Isn't it nice when you have Serenity in your mind in your head and then the body is the Sea of Tranquility once again it's nice when you have Tranquility in your body and you're kicking the crisis out of your life the ball is the Sea of crisis so a couple of identifiable portions of the Moon and as we just pass the U anniversary of Apollo 8 circling the moon and also the last mission to the moon was December 17th 1972 but Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility right about uh here where I'm pointing in the lower left area of the Sea of Tranquility roughly around here so interesting enough okay so now let's take this Moon and put it up in the sky and what you can see here is the moon is hanging out with Jupiter and again this is the 18th this is about 7:00 at night and again the Moon is not full it's about that quarter it's that image that I just showed you but it's hanging out near Jupiter so another great evening to be able to find the Planet uh Jupiter and then we have the planet Uranus which you cannot see a naked eye particularly when the moon is handed uh so close but it's a easy binocular object and you can notice that between Jupiter and the plees the star cluster here we talked a little bit about last month uh is where Uranus is located so get yourself online you get a a a star map with planets and Uranus you may have some good luck to find it with binoculars it's at a magnitude uh excuse me a magnitude 5.7 which in theory is naked eye on a dark clear ideal night but uh that's a that's a tough one binoculars will bring it into view okay so Jupiter and the Moon are hanging out and I want to show you uh the artwork here and there's some other things that we can look at so we have uh Jupiter this is the pleades that I mentioned on the shoulders of Taurus the Bull Al Deon is the eye of the bull and it's a magnitude one star an orange star and then very famous we have Orion and Tyler showed us early the Orion Nebula which is right here and you can just make it out uh naked eye hanging below Orion's belt and I love to say those star names of the belt Al Alam and minaka minaka actually means belt in Arabic and hanging below the belt is the sheath for the sword and that's where Orion Nebula is found uh m44 and you notice that uh Orion is holding over his head the The Sword and the armpit is Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice means armpit of the great Hunter and Beetlejuice is a red star it's a cool star Al debron being orange is a little bit warmer and Riel the lower right star over Rion is a hot white blue star and those are really hot stars and it's about a magnitude zero so Orion pretty easy to find and if you take Orion's Belt and you go upwards you find El debron easy enough it's fairly bright so magnitude one but then if you take Orion's Belt and you go downwards pretty much following that straight line of the belt downwards you come down to sirius and I'm serious about that and Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky glowing at about a negative 1.44 magnitude so it's the brightest star in the night sky of either hemisphere North or Southern Hemisphere and Cirrus is also referred to sometimes as the dog star because it's in the constellation of Canis Major uh the big dog and if you go diagonally from Riel through Beetle Juice you're going to go up by diagonally and you're going to come to the twin stars Castor which is not labeled here and Pollock Pollock and Castor are the twin stars and you see Gemini the Twins and then you notice well there's a little dog here proci is also pretty right and that is a little dog star and then you have Cirrus rosion cter and poock are the twins we have El Deon the eye of the bull we have Orion Beetlejuice is the armpit of the great hunter red star cool Riel blue white very hot representing Orion's left foot but the bottom right Star as we look at it and so great things to be able to see uh in the night sky next uh I just want to show you the stars without the artwork because when you go outside to look up you know we don't provide the artwork for you we haven't figured out how to project that on your backyard night sky but see if you can find it start with Orion take Orion's Belt follow it upwards to Al Deon bright orange star not quite as bright briest Beetle Juice and then if you take Orion's Belt and you go downwards you come down to sirius the brightest star in the night sky either Hemisphere and then if you go diagonal from Riel through Beetlejuice it's going to take you up to the twin stars Castor and Pollock Castor is the upper one and Pollock is the lower one and poock is just a tad Tad brighter than Castor is and then in between Pollock and Sirius the other bright star that you see which is to the left of Orion as you look at Orion is pro the little dog star so lots of things to look at and enjoy in the night sky and so um stay tuned we're going to I'm going to introduce to you Tyler Flanigan and we're going to be talking about the James web Space Telescope so I hope you enjoyed that star talk and enjoy going out and looking at at the night sky let me introduce Tyler to you well at this time it gives me great pleasure to introduced to you Tyler Flanigan Tyler is the treasurer for the Belmont High School astronomy club uh welcome to the show Once Again Tyler welcome to be here uh yeah I've been on it once before it's pretty fun you yeah it is it's a it's a ball there's never a dull moment on the sky this month and uh just noticing uh the sweatshirt you're wearing what is that image that uh is on the front that is a solar eclipse and in 2024 April 8th there is one actually once in a lifetime experience so uh you don't want to miss that and that's going to be uh for New Hampshire up in Coos County uh we'll be talking more we have talked about it we'll be talking about it more as the time comes so as I already mentioned behind us you see this uh plethora of plethora of galaxies and and every point of light you see from the big ones that may obviously look like galaxies to the small pinpoints and the faint fuzzy spots they're all galaxies uh this is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field but there's a a new spaceship a new telescope on the Block so to speak the James web Space Telescope and Tyler is going to get us into what's the latest and the greatest with a little bit of introductory history about the James web Space Telescope so take it away Tyler all right so on December 25th of 2021 at about 7:20 a.m. uh the James web Space Telescope was launched with Aran 5 which was provided to the US with um or by the European Space Agency to the US with a fundless exchange uh it was launched out of kururu it's near the equator which gives additional push because of the spin of of the earth so that launched it further and Earth is spinning a, 37 miles an hour at the Equator so the closer you are to the equator as Earth spins you get that extra push which is nice right three miles per hour uh so the first light the James web Space Telescope has a camera function on it that allows us to take a spectrum of every galaxy in the field of view um some scientists showed that the bubbles of transparent ionized gas seen in the Spectrum were in the exact location of the star forming Galaxy seen by the James web Space Telescope so this is uh this supports the idea that ordinary galaxies did most of the work clearing the space around them uh these are some amazing things that we've learned uh about and from the James web Space Telescope uh it's observed four of the most distant galaxies known which means they are the oldest uh web observed the galaxies as they appeared about 13.4 billion years ago when the universe is only 2% of its current age um we've discovered the first direct images of exoplanets I think last time I was on here I was talking about those actually ironic enough and uh there're over 3,000 of them known and only about two dozen have been observed since the Jame web James web Space Telescope used infrared unlike the Hubble it can see straight through the dust and the clouds of whatever you want to look at and uh it we've seen intense star clusters being formed as galaxies Collide into each other and that is one of the strong points of the James web Space Telescope is its ability to see through that gas and dust whereas Hubble is mostly looking at visible light what separates them yeah uh on March 11th the final stage of alignment called Fine phasing was completed uh at this point every parameter uh Optical every lens has been tested and checked and at is at or above the expectations we thought they would meet there are no blockages or objects in the way of the telescope so it's free to just take pictures for us really which is really nice so Tyler tell us where is the James web Space Telescope so I think people think that it is on an orbit around the Earth but that is not true it's actually on an orbit around the sun uh it's at something called the second lag range point or L2 and it lets it stay in line with Earth while the heat shield protects it from the Heat and lead of the sun earth and the moon so it's really it's not going to overheat it's not going to get you know glares ultimately but yeah and we can see how far away it is too the Moon is about a qu Million Miles Away and the the web Space Telescope is uh just about uh A Million Miles Away about more than triple yeah yeah more than triple which just about four times and so whereas we had uh when we had the space shuttle missions we could go up to the hble Space Telescope and make uh some changes or some repair missions of which there were four uh so web is basically on its own uh amazing that it has worked as well as it has but uh there's no repair missions possible so good luck Mr James web uh so these are the Pillars of Creation uh they're pretty Infamous because this is one of the more popular photos taken by the Hubble and as you can that picture on the right is actually taken by the Hubble telescope and in a few slides I'll uh I'll show you what the James web Space Telescope picture of the pill of creion look like and I think you'll notice it's a pretty big difference so here are some pictures by them uh so that's it right on the left there I think you can really see how more defined and and vibrant this telescope really makes every image it takes uh but basically The Pillars of Creation are elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust located near the uh Eagle ey uh nebula about 6 or 7,000 light years away from Earth so it's pretty far and uh on the right there that is Jupiter I'm sure you've seen Jupiter you know photos before and you think it's like this tan kind of tattooing looking planet from Star Wars but it's got that kind of green glow to it I guess and I I think that really caught a lot of people off guard and the uh pillows of creation you notice that on the pillars of creation we see a lot more through it then with the Hubble like it almost looks like uh James web has uh yeah because of the infrared it almost like has x-ray vision to be able to see through it so here are some more pictures that we've seen I think these were some of the cooler ones uh this is called the cartwheel Galaxy it's a lenticular ring Galaxy about 500 million light years away uh in the constellation sculpt there um it has a diameter of 44.2 three kilop Paris it was discovered by Fritz Zuki in 1941 and uh a kilo Parc obviously uh you you know that a kilo means a thousand and a Parc is 3.26 light years so you take uh 3.26 multiply that by 44 and then multiply that by a th000 so you can see that it's a pretty hefty it's a lot of light years yeah it's a lot of light in diameter yes um so the one on the right you know a little a little less about but it's called herbig hero 211 uh it's basically an outflow of a young star um things like this are formed when jets of gas sping from a newborn star form a shock wave colliding with nearby gas and dust at insanely high speeds and just makes this beautiful I don't even know what to call it just a an image yeah you can definitely I think see the the outflow from this uh young starts uh and again once another amazing picture from James web uh this picture is cool to me so the one on the right is the Hubble you can see how you know it's it's pretty fuzzy if you really look at it and um kind of unclear and then the one on the left is a James web Space Telescope and you can just you can see every minor detail really what's minor to us I guess yes but you can again you can see kind of right through it and uh that's the the infrared coming in I may make a a comment on the uh a comment not a comment of the image on the right so at the Mcall shepher Discovery Center which I again I would just put in a plug so every first Friday night of every month so this would be uh January 5th we have have a special program uh at the mall Shepard Discovery Center check it out at Star Hop s r h o p.com uh we this image on the right is uh as Tyler said an image from the Hubble Space Telescope and there was an opportunity to apply for high resolution images that were like uh uh something like a 3tx 4T big image and the mall shepher Discovery Center we earned I'd say the right to have one of those images so you can see that image on the right in big format uh and you you can walk right up to it and uh touch it and look at it and see the amazing uh detail but as Tyler said looking at these two together it it does look uh you know a little fuzzy when you see the image on the left and the detail taken by James web now this is is a picture of the whirpool Galaxy which we affectionately know as M51 and it's in the constellation of canis vanis tisi uh the hunting dogs and which is a little bit below uh the big dip well I guess depending upon the time of night uh it's a little bit below the crook of the handle of uh the Big Dipper is where it is and it's about the same size of our G Galaxy uh it's about 109,000 Lighty years in diameter our galaxy is a little more than 100,000 light years and uh also another claim to fame is this was the first Galaxy that was actually categorized as a spiral galaxy but as Tyler pointed out on the left you know you can see amazingly uh how much the detail you can see versus the Hubble which we thought was really good but now it's uh it's even better might have to update that picture at the Chris mccul Museum yes maybe they'll have a contest or something that we can get a James web Space Telescope picture that' be cool it would updating with the times uh so this is a a cool picture I found um it's called stepan quintet um it's a group of five galaxies about 270 million light years away from Earth uh so again all these are going to be really really far away um this group provides a pristine laboratory for the study of galaxies and the collisions and what they what kind of impact they have on the environments around them I have um a fairly large picture of this that I won actually at the main star party a couple summers ago we had a trivia contest there was about 40 or so amateur astronomers there and uh I got in the top three so I won one of these pictures and there were several to choose from and I chose Stefan squint so good pick Stefan squint is very near and dear to my heart so this one's really cool this is the Orion Nebula you can see this from Earth uh pretty well uh those three stars on the bottom left I think that's known as Orion's Belt you can pick that out pretty easily it's three stars right in the line and uh in a little bit I'm going to show uh well you remember from looking at Orion I showed you below his belt where the Orion Nebula actually is and if you have binoculars it's uh pretty cool to look at the Orion neb with binoculars and if you have a telescope a small telescope it's uh very cool to take a a nice close look at uh the Orion Nebula so um I I think uh anything else you want to add about the James web Space Telescope Tyler well pictures are always coming out so you know keep keep on the eye for those uh beautiful pictures like the ones uh we just showed you are really always coming out so just keep an eye for that and I'm excited for the future and have you heard um are there any issues technologically operationally mechanically going on with the Space Telescope I haven't heard about any major ones no yeah I think good it's very good cuz as I mentioned there's no we're not going to be able to have any repair missions right yeah go up go up there what we have is what we have it is and uh it's supposed to be about a last for about 10 years and one of the reasons for that is it does have a limited amount of of fuel on board it doesn't need a lot of fuel because it's in as Tyler mentioned that lrange two point and a lrange point the way the gravity it works it allows it just to kind of hang out there relying on the Gravity from uh the sun earth and the moon but it just needs a little bit of propulsion to have a little bit of an orbit uh in that area and but when the fuel runs out which is 10 to 12 years or so then we're not going to be able to control it uh anymore and uh will just be left to its own devices so to speak but it should be it would seem like it's going to be success 10 to 12 years of successful images and I'm pretty sure the Hubble lasted longer than they thought it would too so yes very much longer and Hubble is another our Space Telescope still doing great work um but uh when it meets its demise uh there's nothing we're going to be able to do about that either because even though that's not very far far up so to speak it's only 400 only 400 miles up about twice as far up as the International Space Station uh but we just don't have any way to get there anymore since the shuttle program uh ended uh we just can't get there so uh good luck Hubble keep on going but one of the nice things that has typically been true over the past decades is whatever NASA has built has lasted long longer yep than expected right which is again a good thing and uh you know we we could talk about the Mars rovers spared an opportunity you know they were hoping to get 90 days was the plan they were hoping praying on their knees could we please get 120 days out of both spirit and opportunity and they both exceeded six years uh crazy the uh we know of the perseverance Rover on Mars and it had Ingenuity as the helicopter uh under its belly and uh they were hoping that this helicopter would make five successful short flights and NASA would be thrilled well we're we're well over 50 flights and uh so NASA's been very fortunate with their Partners JPL laboratory and the Applied Physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins and uh that have been building these spacecrafts that have just done an extraordinary job of exceeding expectations so Tyler thank you so much for uh being with us on the show no problem and thanks for the research you put in for the James web Space Telescope and enlightening on some of its greatest uh recent pictures and images and discoveries my pleasure well thank so much you're welcome and we we we're sure to have you back another time sure definitely okay well uh that about wraps it up and I thank everybody for joining us on the sky this month and remember the greatest show on Earth it's found in your backyard just keep looking up I'm Dave McDonald for the sky this month
