Orion

January 2022 Star Stories at Abriachan Forest

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The brilliant stars of Orion shining down over Abriachan Forest.

Many thanks to everyone who made it up to Abriachan Forest for our Burns stargazing event on Saturday. Big thanks to Jim for his excellent Haggis address and the Abriachan team for the delicious Burns supper fare.

Skies were a little patchy but we did see good naked eye views towards the south and the main focus of the evening talk – the mighty Orion constellation.

After observing Orion we headed inside to explore some of the amazing deep sky objects hidden within this giant of the night sky, like the beautiful Horsehead and Flame nebulae, part of the enormous star forming Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

This region contains areas of dark, emissive and reflection nebulosity, with hot young stars blasting intense radiation into the hydrogen clouds producing the distinctive red areas due to ionisation.

At this scale the extent of our solar system (out to Neptune) would be one 10,000th of the width of the picture you see below on the right – less than a single pixel element within the image!

The Horsehead nebula sits close to the left most belt star in Orion, Almitak

Ticket links will go up very shortly for our February and March guest speaker Star Stories events with Martin Hendry and Catherine Heymans. I hope to see you all there.

Stargazing Guide to April Skies

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This took way more time than I anticipated to edit but it was great fun putting together with my friend Steve Owens. I hope you enjoy this more conversational style look at the stars.

It’s a good 30 minutes long so best grab yourself a brew or beverage of choice and get comfortable for this one.

Discussions in this episode include:

1. A farewell look at Orion and nearby stars and clusters

2. The crescent Moon in mid April

3. Planet Mars

4. Leo and the double star Algeiba

5. Northern skies and Polaris

6. The M81 and M82 galaxies

Happy April skywatching and stargazing!

Dark Sky Observing at Abriachan

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A lovely crescent Moon hung in the West for most of the evening

We enjoyed another superb evening of stargazing and storytelling up at Abriachan Forest last Saturday – the last dark sky session until stargazing returns in October 2019.

There were beautiful crisp skies all evening long, allowing me to guide both groups outside for views of the Milky Way and numerous open star clusters like the Hyades, Pleiades, Beehive and the stunning double cluster in Perseus.

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Orion…of course

We also studied the Orion star forming nebula, the great spiral galaxy in Andromeda and some fainter galaxies in Ursa Major (M81 and M82), and even had a go at sighting the triplet of galaxies in Leo, which some of the keen eyed youngsters successfully glimpsed in the 8×40 binoculars.

Clelland was also back in action with the story of Arden and the birth of Merlin in the roundhouse.

Thanks to everyone who came along.  Please check my Facebook site for details of future summer events.

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Perseus and the double cluster

Orion The Hunter

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With the mighty Orion holding court over our southern skies at the moment I thought I’d put together a short video tour of the main sights within the constellation, one of the oldest catalogued outside those of the ancient celestial pathway (or Zodiac).

This was also an opportunity to collaborate with some purveyors of quality ambient music.  For this video I’d like to thank artist Mlt and Nick Miamis and the team at Cosmicleaf Records for their fantastic music.

In future videos I plan to collaborate with some more artists, starting with tracks donated by Japan’s Kay Nakayama and Robert Hundt of Glitchy Tonic Records in Berlin.

Clear skies.

Sirius Rising

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The dog star ‘Sirius’ is now high and visible in winter skies looking South. Draw a line down and left from Orion’s belt and you can’t miss the brightest star in the night sky.

Sirius means ‘scorching’ and was considered a second Sun of sorts to many ancient cultures. Its incredible brightness is due to its close proximity. At only 9 light years away it’s the 5th closest star system to our Sun and a fairly typical hydrogen fusing main sequence star likely to live a long stable life of several billion years.  This is in contrast to short lived giant stars like Rigel and Betelgeuse, which are very distant and appear bright  due to their bloated sizes and massive energy output.

Sirius
Procyon is sometimes mistaken for Sirius but it rises earlier, hence its name which means ‘before the dog’.  The Arabs told a tale linking Procyon and Sirius as two sisters, who became separated by a great river (the Milky Way) while searching for their missing brother.

Winter Open Star Clusters

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You can see three excellent examples of open star clusters within the Orion and Taurus constellations, all in one convenient direction during winter skies (looking south or south east) and in a rough line drawn out by Orion’s belt.

Open clusters

Start with the Orion nebula (M42), below the three belt stars in Orion.  This star forming region contains a very young open cluster called the Trapezium which is surrounded by glowing clouds of ionised hydrogen gas. You can see this nebula in binoculars but it looks best in a low or medium power telescope eyepiece.

Moving up into the eye of Taurus to the red giant star Aldebaran, we find the Hyades cluster. Aldebaran is like a premonition of the fate that awaits out own sun. A red giant around 7 billion years old, bloated and shuddering in its final gasps before it collapses down to a white dwarf. Shining brightly all around Aldebaran are the members of the Hyades open cluster (although they are much further away) – quite a mature cluster at around 500 millions years old.  Best viewed in binoculars.

And finally moving higher and to the right we find the Pleiades, a lovely jewel box of middle age hot stars (and many less bright members) slowly drifting apart to join the general distribution of stars. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth this cluster would have resembled the Orion nebula – bright and nebulous, its hot infant stars lighting up the surrounding hydrogen gas clouds.

Clear skies.

The Pleiades and Orion’s Return

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The Seven Sisters

The lovely Pleiades star cluster (Seven Sisters) is becoming a viable late night stargazing target for observers in northern Europe again.  Look up in the East after 11pm to see the distinct jewel like arrangement of stars.  Note the red supergiant Aldebaran (Abarbic for “The Follower”) trailing just behind and to the left.  Pick out a pair of binoculars to see the Pleiades at their best – telescopes reduce the field of view too much for objects like this.

The Pleiades is an excellent example of an open cluster.  These are relatively younger energetic stars still in close proximity to their siblings having all emerged from the same region of intestellar dust and gas.  Eventually these stars will move apart and join the general distribution of more widely dispersed stars.

If you’re awake after that, the hunter Orion will begin rising from the East around 1am. Grab your binos again and marvel at the star forming emmission nebula below the main three stars in the belt.  This is an active star forming region over 1000 light years away, where new stars are being born from dense clouds of hydrogen.  Train a telescope at moderate magnification on the Orion nebula and you’ll be blow away by the majesty of the extended dust clouds, energised and glowing due to the nearby influence of young hot stars.

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The Orion Nebula

Planet wise, Neptune and Uranus can be observed almost all evening after darkness, but you’ll need a reasonably powerful telescope to resolve them as tiny blue-green disks.

All the best and clear skies!