41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák

Comet 41 P cruising in front of the stars in the constellation Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Taken with the 66mm. Altair Astro Doublet with 0.8x focal reducer and field flattener, Canon 600d DSLR all on a Star Adventurer equatorial mount. 22x30 second lights at ISO1600 with darks and flats stacked and processed using DeepSky Stacker.

This comet is visible currently from the United Kingdom. It is a 'periodic' comet - a comet that orbits the Sun and returns to its innermost point (perehelion) at known intervals. Comet 41 P will reach perehelion at the beginning of April 2017. After this encounter with the Sun it will head back out past the gas giant planets; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, following an elliptical orbit which will bring it back again in approximately 5.4 years.

The comet will pass Earth at its closest on the 1st of April 2017 when it will be at a distance of 13.2 million miles. You should be able to see this comet with binoculars but it may well be quite faint. It's nucleus is only about 1 mile in diameter.  In the past, this comet has been known to brighten quite unexpectedly so, after dark on the first few nights of April, it is worth looking in a wide area to the west of a line drawn between the Pole Star and the 'pointer' stars in the Great Bear and you just might get to see this comet .

Enlarged Image of 45P  taken at ISO6400 for 10x20 secs

"Comet the Observatory cat likes this one" Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Hyades and NGC1647

The Hyades and NGC1647 - two open star clusters in the constellation Taurus - Canon 600D DSLR camera with EOS 18-55mm lens mounted on a Star Adventurer Equatorial Mount

Lowestoft has been experiencing some cloud and moonlight free nights. Because of ongoing construction works the 127mm refractor has been out of action, so what astrophotography has been undertaken has been accomplished using widefield equipment.  As spring heralds lighter evenings Taurus is setting in the west as astronomical darkness falls.

"NGC1647 is an open star cluster of some 90 stars. The cluster was discovered by William Herschel in 1784.  NGC1647 is located to the top left of the above image which was taken from the Jodrell Plank Observatory. On average the stars that make up NGC1647 are 1800 light years distant from our Solar System and 150 million years old. By contrast the Hyades open cluster is closer to us than NGC1647 and made up of much older stars estimated as 625 million years. Consequently, the stars of the Hyades are less densely packed with those on the periphery, in the cluster's halo, probably in the process of escaping the cluster's gravitational influence.  The bright orange star Alpha Tauri or Aldeberan is not part of either star cluster residing much closer to Earth at an estimated 65 light years from the Sun". Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Credit: Wikipedia

Lunar Ejecta Rays

Super-moon 2015. The impact crater Tycho with bright ejecta rays radiating from the bottom left of this image are easily visible with low power binoculars.

When we look at the full moon through a low power eyepiece on a telescope, the ray systems associated with the very many impact craters are blatantly apparent. The most easly observed is associated with the crater Tycho.  Although there is plenty of evidence for volcanism on the moon, the majority of craters easily visible are related to massive impacts with asteroids which occurred aeons ago. The bright rays emanating from craters were created by the explosive nature of the impact and the ejection of excavated incandescent rock.

I am grateful to the excellent magazine 'Astronomy Now' for focussing my attention on a not so obvious issue:
" Have you ever wondered why the overwhelming majority of lunar impact craters are circular or nearly circular when, statistically, most incoming projectiles would presumably not have arrived from directly above?" Bill Leatherbarrow- Director of the British Astronomical Association's Lunar Section.

It turns out that unless the angle of incidence is very low indeed the impact crater remains roughly circular.  Once the angle drops below 15 degrees, strange things start to happen to the crater's shape and more dramatically to the pattern of the ejecta rays. In such circumstances a butterfly shape of ejecta is formed - with ejecta being thrown out down range with a zone of avoidance up range from the point of impact and 'butterfly wings' extending out at 90 degrees to the line of travel of the impacting projectile.

The craters: Proclus, Stevinus A and Furnerius A, and Messier and Messier A, show the affects of impacts incident at low angles. In the case of the Messier twin craters they probably show the affects of a glancing blow from one projectile!

The  large crater Copernicus with ejecta rays radiating out more or less equally in all directions from the centre of the crater.  The enormous impactor that created Copernicus would have had an incident angle greater than 15 degrees.

Craters Stevinus A and Furnerius A with their butterfly ejecta ray patterns associated with low incidence impacts

Impacting asteroids coming in from the west at less than 15 degrees

Small craters Messier and Messier A - thought to have been created by one impactor coming in at a very low glancing angle from the east. The 'comet like tail' is the down range ejecta from the double impact.

Credits: Astronomy Now and Bill Leatherbarrow
All images taken from the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

" Each and every day, I like to discover something new and fascinating about the universe outside my own backyard!" Kurt Thrust Director the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Man in the Moon

Image taken from our Backyard 08-03-2017 with a 90mm ETX Mak-Cassegrain telescope. Libration providing good views of Mares: Marginis and Smythii on the Lunar limb. The added image from NASA shows the planet Earth rising over the rim of Mare Smythii. The image was taken from the command module of Apollo 11 looking towards Mare Fecunditatis as Apollo 11 re-emerge from the farside.

Libration of the Moon: an apparent or real oscillation of the moon, by which parts near the edge of the disc that are often not visible from the earth sometimes come into view. The moon is tidally locked to Earth and that is why we can only view the nearside, the far side is forever out of sight. From Earth we can see slighltly more than one hemisphere, in fact we can see 59% of the moon's surface and this is due to libration.

In detail, there are three types of lunar libration:

• Libration in longitude results from the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit around Earth; the Moon's rotation sometimes leads and sometimes lags its orbital position.
• Libration in latitude results from a slight inclination (about 5 degrees) between the Moon's axis of rotation and the normal to the plane of its orbit around Earth. Its origin is analogous to how the seasons arise from Earth's revolution about the Sun.
• Diurnal libration is a small daily oscillation due to the Earth's rotation, which carries an observer first to one side and then to the other side of the straight line joining Earth's and the Moon's centers, allowing the observer to look first around one side of the Moon and then around the other—because the observer is on the surface of the Earth, not at its center. 

 Credit Wikipedia

By Tomruen (Lunar_libration_with_phase_Oct_2007.gif) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A composite of two images taken from my Backyard. The colour has been enhanced to show changes in surface minerology. I tend to think this is the view I might have out of the window of my imaginary space capsule some 100 miles above the lunar surface as I orbit the moon.

"From a distance, the moon appears to be perfect.  A smooth perfect sphere moving like clockwork around a circular orbit. Up close it is a cratered mass of lava flows and jagged rock that advances, recedes and wobbles along its celestial course - how very much like our species".  Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Observatory Cat

'Comet' the Observatory Cat

"The semi-resident Observatory Cat is very much like a comet. It does what it likes, no one knows where it comes from or where its going and it has a beautiful long tail"!  Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Mare Crisium

A crescent moon is such a beautiful sight! I pointed the 90mm Mak Cassegrain at the Moon and took this detailed image of part of the Sea of Crises through light cloud.

Some 3.9 billion years ago a very large meteor crashed into the surface of the moon and formed the roughly circular impact crater or basin  - Mare Crisium or Sea of Crises. The Mare is very flat and dark and has wrinkled edges at the periphery. It has a large surface area with dimensions of 620x570 km.  Mare Crisium is located towards the east north east limb and is visible to the naked eye as a round dark patch. It is best viewed through a telescope or binoculars 3 days after new moon or 2 days after full moon.

“Have you noticed how bad people and greedy folk invent crises and then whilst the rest of us are worrying about a crisis that doesn’t exist they steal away something real that we’ve all enjoyed for years.  There may be a Sea of Crises on the Moon, Mare Crisium, but there’s an even bigger Sea of Bullshit on the planet Earth”. Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Telescopes at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Telescopes or time machines? The further you look out into space the further back in time you peer.  The Jodrell Plank telescopes, although small, can look back long before homo sapiens had evolved to walk or pollute this benign and beautiful planet.

The Jodrell Plank Observatory has three optical telescopes and one radio telescope.

1.       The Meade 127mm. F7.5 Apo-chromatic Triplet Refractor.

2.       The Meade ETX 90mm F 13.8 Maksutov Cassegrain.

3.       The Altair Astro  Lightwave 66mm F6  ED Doublet Refractor

The LVST radio telescope with 3 element YAGI aerial and Funcube Dongle is usually operating at 143.050 MHz for the detection of radar reflections from meteors. The signals from the radar transmitter at Dijon, some 390 miles away in France, are monitored during selected meteor showers. Spectrum Lab freeware is used to analyse radar signals from the LVST.

The largest optical refractor is mounted on a Synta NEQ6Pro equatorial mount.  The 90mm. and 66mm. scopes can also be mounted on a Star Adventurer Equatorial mount providing opportunities for remote observations and imaging.

Cameras available for imaging with or without the telescopes include:

·         Canon 400D DSLR

·         Canon 600D DSLR

·         QHY5v planetary and guide video camera (primarily used for guiding)

·         QHY5-11 colour planetary video and still camera

A homemade slit-less spectrometer is available for use with any of the above optical telescope and camera combinations.

“The astro – kit at ‘’Jodrell Plank and the subjects of the pseudo-scientific explorations undertaken with its range of equipment, reflect my cosmic wonder and total refusal to focus in a world of increasing scientific specialisation”. Kurt Thrust - Observatory Director

The History of the Jodrell Plank Observatory

The Lowestoft Very Small (radio) Telescope the LVST at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

“The Jodrell Plank Observatory, set up in a shed by an alienated being from a dying democracy. Its location Lowestoft Suffolk Earth.   Its purpose: to seek the beauty and intelligence that is all around us on Earth and throughout the Cosmos.  Kurt Thrust is its founder and current director.  For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road near Beccles, looking for a shortcut that he never found.  It began with a closed deserted diner, and an architect too long without sleep to continue his career.  It began with the landing of an ideology from another time and place.  Now 'Thrust' knows that the ‘Fascists’ are here, that they have taken human form.  Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun”.