Venus setting over the pond at Letha House Park
AR1476 and her “children” on the face of the Sun. Photo by James Guilford.
Sunday, May 13 dawned reasonably clear and so, with cloudy skies anticipated, a few rushed observations were made of our Sun. AR1476 continues to dominate the solar disk through it has been joined by several smaller but notable sunspots. A CME was Earthbound and expected within a few hours with minimal effects expected. Also visible in this photo are granulation and other disturbances in the solar atmosphere. The photo above was made by CAA member James Guilford: Canon EOS 50D: ISO 400, f/8, 1/1,250 sec., 400mm, AstroZap white light film solar filter, May 13, 2012 at 9:15 AM.
AR 1476 as photographed May 10 through the clouds by Jay Reynolds.
Sunspot group AR1476 finally spit out a coronal mass ejection (CME) though perhaps a bit late for a direct shot at Earth. The active region has been the focus of much attention from solar-interested scientists and amateur astronomers of every ilk. The huge grouping is rotating away from the center of the Sun’s disk and will soon pass over its limb. In the mean time, clouds and inclement weather are moving into the Northeastern Ohio area, obscuring the fascinating markings … visible to the unaided (but properly-protected) eye.
SpaceWeather.com reports: “On May 11th at 23:54 UT, a coronal mass ejection raced away from the sun faster than 1000 km/s. The fast-moving cloud will deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on May 14th around 14:30 UT, according to a revised forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab. Mars is also in the line of fire.”
Photo Notes: AR 1476 as photographed through the clouds May 10, 2012, by Jay Reynolds who was birding when lake effect clouds reduced the brightness enough to get this photo. Canon 400mm telephoto, 1/1,250sec., f/13. Extreme caution is warranted when photographing the Sun. A clearing in the clouds or a hole in a solar filter can instantly and permanently damage the eyes.
Sunspot group AR1476 via telescope & smartphone by Christopher Christe
A string of clear-sky days has allowed amateur astronomers to get a good look at a string of sunspots. AR1476 was rotating towards the center of the Solar disk on Thursday, May 10, when CAA member Christopher Christe aimed his telescope (a six-inch Newtonian) for a look. Protected using a Baader solar filter, Chris could clearly see the huge sunspot group and, holding the lens of his camera-equipped smartphone to the eyepiece, shot a photo. As smartphone cameras become more common and continue to improve, we are seeing them employed in astrophotography more often.
Today (May 11) AR1476 was aimed squarely at Earth. SpaceWeather.com made the following comments: “NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of M-class solar flares and a 20% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. Any eruptions are likely to be geoeffective because the source, sunspot AR1476, is directly facing our planet.”
The Sun on May 9, 2012 sporting huge sunspot group AR1476. Credit: SDO/HMI
A huge sunspot group designated AR1476 (upper-left in the image above) has emerged from the Sun’s limb and is rotating around to an Earth-facing position. Solar experts are watching solar activity especially close. From SpaceWeather.com: “Huge sunspot AR1476 is crackling with M-class solar flares and appears to be on the verge of producing something even stronger. The sunspot’s ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field harbors energy for X-class flares, the most powerful kind.” Skies over Northeastern Ohio are expected to clear out over the next couple of days perhaps allowing amateurs daytime observing opportunities and nighttime aurora hopes. Our Sun is increasingly active as it runs on toward “Solar Max” so we can be sure we will have plenty more reports of this nature as the cycle progresses.
Trail of the International Space Station in the evening sky. Photo by Bruce Lane.
CAA member Bruce Lane photographed a portion of the International Space Station’s (ISS’s) trail as is passed through twilight skies over Northeastern Ohio. The April 12, 2012 pass put the ISS between the constellation Orion (left) and brilliant planet Venus (right). Wispy clouds decorated the darkening sky. Here’s what Bruce said of his photograph: “I took the … photo of last night’s ISS pass at 9:04:27. It was a nice pass that faded into the clouds as the ISS headed into … the east.” {This image shows the western sky with the ISS moving up, towards the upper-right of the frame.} Technical stuff: Tripod-mounted Canon Digital Rebel XT, ISO 200, 18 mm., 20 sec., f/3.5.
The stars of the M9 globular cluster. Photo credit: NASA & ESA.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most detailed image so far of Messier 9 (M9), a globular star cluster located close to the center of the galaxy. This ball of stars is too faint to see with the naked eye, yet Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining in it.
M9, pictured here is a roughly spherical swarm of stars that lies around 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of the Milky Way, so close that the gravitational forces from the galactic center pull it slightly out of shape. Globular clusters are thought to harbor some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, born when the Universe was just a small fraction of its current age. As well as being far older than the Sun —around twice its age— the stars of M9 also have a markedly different composition, and are enriched with far fewer heavier elements than the Sun.
In particular, the elements crucial to life on Earth, like oxygen and carbon, and the iron that makes up our planet’s core, are very scarce in M9 and clusters like it. This is because the Universe’s heavier elements were gradually formed in the cores of stars, and in supernova explosions. When the stars of M9 formed, there were far smaller quantities of these elements in existence.
M9, as its name suggests, was discovered by the great French comet hunter Charles Messier in 1764. Even through the most advanced telescopes of the day, none of the stars in the cluster could be seen individually. Messier, seeing only a faint smudge, therefore classified the object as a nebula –or “cloud” in Latin– and put it on his list of objects that looked like but were not comets. It was only later in the 18th century that astronomers, most notably William Herschel, began to spot stars within the cluster.
The contrast between Messier’s equipment and the tools at the disposal of today’s astronomers is stark. Hubble’s image, the highest resolution image yet made of M9, is able to resolve individual stars, right into the crowded center of the cluster. Over 250,000 of them are neatly focused on the detector of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, in an image which covers an area of sky no bigger than the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length.
As well as showing the individual stars, Hubble’s image clearly shows the different colors of the stars. A star’s color is directly related to its temperature — counter-intuitively, perhaps, the redder it is, the cooler it is; and the bluer it is, the hotter. The wide range of stellar temperatures here is clearly displayed by the broad palette of colors visible in Hubble’s image of M9.
