Over the next few days Venus will swing quite close to Neptune. Today the pair is separated by 2°41′. This will decrease to 49′ on the 11th and remain close at 51′ on the 12th.
The pair is quite a mismatch… Neptune is a mere 7.9 magnitude while Venus is a brilliant -4.2, over 60,000 times brighter. The 4.8 magnitude star σAqr will be 1.5° southwest of the two, the only nearby object that can be confused for the planet.
Next month, on May 15th, Venus will pass about 1° from to Uranus for a similar oddball conjunction.
The flowing stream. An easy and fun shot that should be in any photographers skill set. Not only a pretty shot that captures the feel of a flowing stream, but a shot that teaches a little basic photography in the taking.
A stream tumbles through boulders on the Hamakua CoastThis shot was taken at the Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Gardens at Onomea Bay north of Hilo. Several typical rainforest streams tumble through the gardens flowing to the cove below. This is a shot that can be taken thousands of places on this rainy coastline, there are hundreds of streams and waterfalls to choose from. This one happens to have a little bridge to keep your feet and tripod dry.
While I was taking this shot another couple was taking the same photo beside me on the bridge. They wondered what I did to get the shot they saw on my screen. I offered them a turn on my tripod for a moment and talked them through the steps needed to create the flowing stream look. The Canon Rebel T5i they were using was perfectly capable of achieving the same effect. A minute later they had succeeded, happy with a very pretty photo. I suspect they learned a little in the process.
Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, at 10:56HST, most of an hour ahead of Jupiter, placing the two quite high in the sky at sunset. The Moon will be 39% illuminated and about 10° from the bright planet. Tomorrow night the pair will be much closer, about 6.5° apart.
It was a dark and stormy night in the city of Angels. Well, actually it wasn’t. But more on that later…
It was a clear night on the summit of Mauna Kea at Keck Observatory on the 20th March. My colleagues and I were using the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) instrument, which looks at faint objects in the visible wavelengths, to study star clusters and small galaxies.
Can you spot the supernova? Supernova SN2014ai on March 20th, 2014I was actually in our special ‘remote ops’ room at Swinburne University, with my postdoc, Joachim Janz. This is a room decked out with a computer, a backup computer, a video-link to Keck Observatory and a dedicated Internet connection. As we are 21 hours ahead of Hawaii, it was a Friday afternoon when we started observing that Thursday night. My colleagues Sam Penny and Mark Norris were in the Keck control room, and Aaron Romanowsky was in his remote ops room at UC Santa Cruz.
Shortly into our night’s observing, we noticed a bright source in the guide camera image that wasn’t on our finding chart of that region. Still we managed to find our target and took a spectrum of it. But we decided to go back and see if that `new’ bright source was still there. Sure enough it was and it hadn’t moved. It was probably a supernova (or an asteroid coming straight at us!), so I decided to get a 5min spectrum with ESI. And indeed we had found a supernova—a type Ia to be exact. Type Ia supernovae are fairly rare in the nearby Universe and represent the explosion of at least one white dwarf star in a binary system. It is this same type of supernova that led to the discovery of Dark Energy in the Universe using the Keck Observatory, and three Nobel prizes.
Our supernova is located in the outskirts of a galaxy some 100 million light years from us—so it exploded 100 million years ago but the light only reached us that night.
I later found out that an automated telescope on the Palomar Mountain overlooking Los Angeles detected the supernova shortly before us. They also managed to get a spectrum but that was taken after our Keck II/ESI spectrum. The exciting thing is that both the Palomar Observatory and ourselves managed to observe the supernova in the 1-2 weeks before it reaches its maximum brightness (and then fades steadily after that).
The supernova has been given the designation SN2014ai.
All in all, not bad for a late night at the office…
Duncan Forbes is a professor of astronomy at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, and a 2014 Evenings with Astronomers presenter at the signature Friends of Keck lecture series. Swinburne astronomers are awarded time for their research on Keck Observatory through an agreement with the California Institute of Technology.
The center of Virgo is thick with galaxies. The nearest large super-cluster of galaxies lies a mere 53 million lightyears away, includes upwards of 1300 member galaxies and spans over 8° on the sky. The center of the Virgo Cluster is marked by the large elliptical galaxies M84, M86 and M87.
Markarian’s Chain is the long sweep of galaxies stretching from the M84 and M86 pair at the lower right to NGC4477 at the upper left.
The galaxies of the Virgo Cluster, including M84, M86 and M87, Canon 6D and TV-76mm, 10x240s+10x60s+10x15s
A total lunar eclipse will occur on the next full Moon, April 14th. The eclipse will be visible across much of the western hemisphere, including the west coast of North America and across the Pacific. This is an excellent eclipse for observers here in Hawai’i, the entire eclipse will be visible from start to end.
Total lunar eclipse, photo is a 8sec exposure with a Canon 20Da on a 90mm f/12 APOSome references note that this eclipse will occur on the 15th, and so it will for much of the world. For Hawai’i this will occur late on the 14th when considering the time zone correction.
The Moon will be thoroughly submerged in the umbra, the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow, with an umbral magnitude of 1.29. The Moon will not pass directly through the umbra, but rather through the northern section, thus the north pole of the Moon will remain somewhat brighter, even at maximum.
Observing a total lunar eclipse requires no special equipment, simply the desire to look up. The most useful piece of equipment will be a reclining chair or some other method of staying comfortable while watching the sky. A pair of binoculars or small telescope can provide beautiful views of the Moon during an eclipse. Photography is somewhat more challenging, but not that difficult. Focal lengths of around 1000mm will fill the field of most DSLR cameras allowing photos like that shown here.
Penumbral Eclipse Begins
18:53:37 HST
04:53:37 UT
Partial Eclipse Begins
19:58:19 HST
05:58:19 UT
Total Eclipse Begins
21:06:47 HST
07:06:47 UT
Greatest Eclipse
21:45:40 HST
07:45:40 UT
Total Eclipse Ends
22:24:35 HST
08:24:35 UT
Partial Eclipse Ends
23:33:04 HST
09:33:04 UT
Penumbral Eclipse Ends
00:37:37 HST
10:37:37 UT
Timing for the 14Apr2013 total lunar eclipse
In Hawai’i the eclipse will begin not long after moonrise. The entire eclipse will be visible during the evening hours, quite convenient for amateur and casual sky-watchers. This is an excellent eclipse to publicize and use for outreach purposes.
The next total lunar eclipse in October will also be visible across the Pacific region. It will occur somewhat later in the night and be slightly brighter, only 1.16 umbral magnitude. With two good lunar eclipses 2014 is a treat for sky watchers across the western hemisphere. An annular eclipse is visible later in April in Australia and the South Indian Ocean, a partial solar eclipse is visible in late October across North America.
