I’m currently working with the Strathnairn community to locate and certify a public observing area.  There’s a few potential sites under review and Caroline Tucker who runs the community magazine invited me to submit an article on stargazing and dark skies.  It’s reproduced below:

Epsilon Lyrae is a nice easy double star you can view in binoculars all year round in northern latitudes. It sits high in the southern sky very close to the bright star Vega, so is relatively easy to find.

Viewed with the naked eye, it’s just a normal looking 5th magnitude star, but point some binoculars at it and it splits into two clearly separated stars. Things get even more interesting if you train a telescope on the pair, as they’ll split again, revealing a pair of double stars!

The main pair are gravitationally bound and orbit each other every 1200 years with a separation of 160AU (or 160 times the distance from Earth to our Sun). The system is approximately 170 light years away.

Double star systems are the norm in our galaxy with over 60% of star systems containing double or multiple stars orbiting each other at various distances. Our Sun, so far as we know, is a lone wanderer.

Simulations of quadruple star systems suggest they’re relatively unstable, and easily disturbed from their rotating reels by the passing tug of galactic neighbours.

Neptune reaches opposition on September 2nd meaning it’s at its closest approach to Earth over the next while. It’s up almost all night in the southern sky within the constellation Aquarius, below and right of Pegasus.

You’ll need a good horizon to see it however as it’s very low on the horizon this far north, never getting higher than 27 degrees.

During opposition Neptune will be at a distance of 28.94 AU with a disk size of 2.4 arcsec. In a good telescope of 6 inches or more you should be able to see a tiny blue disk and perhaps its companion Triton.

Neptune was first observed in a telescope in 1846.  It’s existence was implied from solar system models rather than from direct observation.  Like Saturn and Jupiter, it’s a gas giant with an atmosphere largely composed of hydrogen and helium, but this far out it also contains some “ices” such as water, ammonia, and methane.  

Neptune also has some of the weirdest and wildest weather in the solar system, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 kilometres per hour!  This is what drives some of the mesmerising cloud streaking witnessed during Voyager 2’s flyby.  It’s also an extremely cold place – its cloud tops have recorded temperatures as low as -220 C.  Not surprising given how far it is from the sun.