BBC The Sky at Night (1957) s23e08 Episode Script
Astral Autumn
Good evening from my garden in Selsey.
Well, autumn is upon us.
The nights are getting longer.
Believe me, there's plenty to see.
We're now going to look at the stars of autumn.
I've got my own observatory of course but other observers have come here and brought their telescopes.
Earlier on, Chris joined them as they were setting up.
There'll be plenty to see this evening.
I'm looking forward to the Andromeda galaxy, to catching the International Space Station as it passes by and even looking at the moon when it rises.
We've got dozens of telescopes, loads of astronomers, and all we need is the sky to stay clear.
I'm going to try and photograph that, then.
So what are you hoping to see tonight? Mainly the moon.
OK.
Anything else we can find, really.
We're in between, with winter skies in the early morning and the summer triangle disappearing.
There's lots I'm hoping to look at.
Clusters are on my list.
There, that's it.
What's this doing up here? That's a dew shield.
Ah, OK.
It's got a little heater on in case it gets too dewy.
OK.
It gets rid of the moisture so the lens doesn't dew up.
That's most ingenious.
It is.
A perfect educational tool.
Very good.
We came over from Dublin and we're basically planning on doing just some visual observations tonight - the moon, Uranus and, um some deep sky objects as well.
We've got a good place for the last quarter moon tonight.
That's my main focus.
Hopefully I'll get some nice mosaics of some of the craters.
So, Bruce, what's the plan for this evening? I'll be looking at the moon.
Your specialist subject! Looking or imaging as well? I'll be imaging, taking advantage of the good libration, and hopefully get images of the South Pole.
What's libration? It's the wobble effect of the moon.
We see 59% of the moon.
We get his opportunity, every so often, to see parts we don't normally see through the year.
Looking at the craters around the South Pole? I will be, yes.
This is a lovely little new-looking telescope.
What's the plan for this evening? As you say, it's little, so it doesn't have great light-gathering.
So planets are excellent.
Jupiter should be good tonight.
Then, later on, just the moon.
We've got a pass of the International Space Station this evening as well and something special next to it.
Yes, there's the Jules Verne ATV - Automated Transfer Vehicle.
This is part of the European contribution? It's going to have a fantastic end in a few days' time because they'll re-enter it and it will burn up over the Pacific.
It's a big vehicle, About 22 tonnes, something like that, which is huge.
Tonight no re-entry just flying in formation.
It will be tight because we'll only get 30 seconds of the Jules Verne craft before it enters the Earth's shadow.
Well, it's a nice, dark evening now.
I ordered it specially, of course.
I'm joined now by one of our great friends, Dr John Mason.
Welcome back, John.
Nice to be here.
The autumn sky - plenty to see.
Where shall we start? Well, where most beginners start, and that is with the Plough or Big Dipper.
In the north? Rather low down in the north at this time of year, so not as obvious.
Look at the two pointers.
Dubhe - definitely yellow.
Merak - pure white.
Yes.
If you start with the Plough, with the bowl, the saucepan shape with the handle to the left and take the two stars at the right - Merak and Dubhe, the pointers - and you go up and to the right, you of course come to the pole star, Polaris, in Ursa Minor.
Now, of course, if you continue that line from Merak and Dubhe up through Polaris and keep on going, you come to the W of Cassiopeia.
Or the M, if you like! Well, this time of year, it is like a W that's been sat on! A squashed W! When the Plough is low down, Cassiopeia is always high up and Cassiopeia is the main and most distinctive marker - high in the eastern sky.
Two very interesting stars there - the middle star, Gamma - is definitely variable.
It can vary as much as 1.
5 mag.
sometimes.
And back in 1936 it was particularly bright.
Beta definitely doesn't vary much.
No.
That's the top right of the W.
Now, while we're on the subject of Beta, if you come right of Beta, in a pair of binoculars, there's a line of three stars - Tau, Rho and Sigma.
Now, the middle one, Rho, is a very interesting star.
Hypergiant! A yellow hypergiant.
10,000 light years distant.
A very remote star, very luminous.
A star that's almost certain to go supernova.
Indeed, there are people who believe it's already gone supernova and the light is travelling towards us but we haven't seen it.
It may well be.
When it does go, it will be a real sight.
It certainly is.
Then there is Cassiopeia's husband, Cepheus.
Yes.
Of course the Milky Way flows, more or less, overhead and down past Cepheus and through Cassiopeia.
There are lots of nice, rich, open star clusters along that band of the Milky Way.
There's that one in Cepheus - NGC 188, which I think is the first entry in your Caldwell Catalogue.
It is.
And I believe it's not only one of the oldest open star clusters - in excess of 5 billion years old - but I believe it's the closest open cluster to the North Celestial Pole.
Not far from Polaris.
It's very close.
Then we come into Cassiopeia.
There's three open clusters in Cassiopeia I want to mention.
They're all quite close to the star Ruchbar, which is Delta Cass.
, which is the lower one of the left-hand V of the W.
Now, if you come to the left of that, there's two clusters - NGC 663, which is a nice cluster, about 80 stars.
Quite nice in binoculars and a low power.
And then, between that and Ruchbar, you've got M103.
Now, that's not so prominent.
No.
A triangular, fan-shape of stars.
And if you then come below and to the left of Cassiopeia, following the Milky Way down, we come to the wonderful sword handle.
Double cluster in Perseus.
It's a marvellous sight! You can see it with the naked eye.
Two clusters next to each other, nothing quite like it in the sky.
No and, of course, between the top of Perseus and Epsilon Cass.
, And lovely in binoculars, beautiful in low-power telescope and if you use the right power, and a wide field, you can get the two clusters sitting nicely side by side.
One of them, of course, rather brighter and more concentrated.
The other more scattered and irregular but a lovely sight.
And very easy to photograph too.
Indeed.
Now, I suppose one of the most intriguing objects in Perseus is the Demon Star! Algol - the Demon Star! Usually second magnitude but then it periodically fades down.
You can almost see it going down.
It winks every 2.
87 days and that's because it's not one star varying, it's actually two stars.
It's a binary.
I've got them in my hand.
There's a yellow giant star, which is quite dim, and a smaller blue main sequence star, which is bright.
When you see the two side-by-side like that, then it's the normal brightness.
When the blue one goes in front of the yellow one, there's a tiny dip in brightness but not very much.
It's when the blue one goes behind the yellow one that there's a major dip in brightness that you see.
It goes down from second magnitude to third magnitude and that happens every 2.
87 days.
It's called an eclipsing binary and the two stars are going around their common centre of mass.
Not really a true variable star, in that sense, but interesting.
Once you come down through Perseus to the north-east horizon, the Milky Way is going away and that's really from Cepheus, through Cassiopeia, through Perseus.
That's the arc of the Milky Way going down to the north east.
You do need a dark sky to see them very properly.
In a city you won't see it.
Quite right.
So there's plenty up there.
Well, John, now time I think to kill our lights and turn on our infrared and see how Chris is getting on.
Well, it's early evening, it's a beautiful clear night and Pete you've seen one event - the passage of the International Space Station.
Right.
We got a view of it from the garden here but I decided to try and get the early part of the track.
So, to do that, I had to go down to the beach, for the flat horizon.
And it was quite an impressive pass this time.
But very short and ended quite low.
What was interesting is that at the end, as it went above Jupiter, it went into the Earth's shadow and from the beach, where it's slightly darker, I could see it as a tiny dot still going through the shadow.
So was that reflected light, or from the station itself? It's like a lunar eclipse - you just have that little reddish glow.
You can actually see it in this photograph.
Oh, yes, it's obvious.
The track continues.
That's fun! What was exciting, again, was there was also the Jules Verne module, now detached from the space shuttle.
The European Transfer Vehicle.
It is.
That was also visible a bit later on.
Following in roughly the same track? No, not the same at all.
OK.
It was a different track.
Very faint.
The camera picked it up.
Well, this is an unusual view of an unusual object.
What is it? This is the Pacman Nebula, or NGC 281.
I prefer the Pacman! Yes.
Wow, look at that! I've spent a lot of time imaging M33 because it's very, very faint.
To the naked eye, you'd need exceptional dark sight to see it.
Look at the detail! You've got the spiral arms picked out in young star clusters - the blue things.
We've got these bright Hydrogen Alpha.
These pink regions, they're very young stars, I guess.
Yes.
Active star-forming regions.
It's nice to see our neighbours so well.
Yes, it is.
Thank you.
I've finally managed to image M39- a cluster I've been looking at.
I think I got quite a good image.
So why M39 in particular? It's a really enigmatic cluster.
It's really nice through the telescope- particularly the rich, wide-field retractor I use.
It sparkles against the Milky Way and it's nice through the telescope.
Well, as I'm looking north, we now look south.
And we still see the Summer Triangle - Vega, Deneb, Altair.
It's very definitely part dispersed.
It is.
It's now moving over into the south-western sky.
For anybody coming out on a clear evening, early on, Deneb more or less overhead, Vega rather brighter to the west, and of course Altair - the southern-most of the three with the two little stars on either side.
Of course the Milky Way runs right overhead, down through the Summer Triangle, past Deneb, below Vega and down into the south-western sky.
So the Summer Triangle is, as you say, past its best, but you will see it for some time.
Although only Altair actually sets.
That's right.
And now the main autumn constellation, which is Pegasus.
In mythology, Pegasus was a flying horse.
In the sky, he's a square! He is and, of course, the four stars of the square in a lot of maps, you think the square is smaller and the stars brighter than it is.
Actually, the square is quite large and the stars are second or third mag.
It is the main autumn constellation.
You do have a main outlier to the square - that's the star Enif, which is some way to the west and about the same brightness as the four stars in the square.
Now, of course, the square itself is of interest but top right we have a very interesting orange variable star.
Beta Pegasi or Scheat.
That is a genuine variable, not fake like Algol! It really is variable.
Yes.
It's a giant star.
It's an orange giant star, about 90 times as luminous as the sun, low surface temperature, and it's slowly pulsating.
As it pulsates, it varies in brightness from about magnitude 2.
3 to magnitude 2.
8.
I make it reasonably faint this evening.
There's one lovely globular structure in Pegasus.
Yes, M15.
If you go to Enif and come above and to the right, there is M15.
Let's remind ourselves what globulars are.
They are spherical associations of very old stars - between 100,000 and one million stars per cluster.
Some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way.
Yes.
But globular clusters form a halo all around our galaxy and M15's a fine example.
We also have a lot of interesting galaxies in and around a square.
If you go to the top right, Beta Pegasi, there's a triangle of stars - Beta, Eta and Mu.
And, just above that little triangle, there is a group of galaxies - the NGC 7331 group.
Three main galaxies there.
There are other interesting things there too.
Yes.
Just below that little group of galaxies is Stephan's Quintet.
Yes.
This is very interesting.
As the name quintet says, there are five galaxies as part of this group.
But it seems, when you look at the redshifts, four have near-identical redshifts and are at great distance.
The other one, which appears to be a member of the quintet, has a much lower redshift and is therefore a foreground object.
So, when you look at it and see them appearing as a group, one is nearer than the other four.
Now, coming back to things to see with the naked eye.
Two more stars we can identify from the square of Pegasus.
First of all, let's take the two right-hand stars - following the line down almost to the horizon - and there you come to Fomalhaut and the Southern Fish.
The southernmost first magnitude star seen from here.
And, of course, Selsey is an ideal place to see it because you have a sea horizon, looking south.
Fomalhaut is quite easy to see but very low down and, in fact, Fomalhaut itself is an interesting star.
It's been found that it has a debris disk around it, which is indicative that a planetary system is forming there.
This disk has a ring associated, probably with a massive Neptune-mass planet that's cleared a lot of debris away, leaving the ring further out.
Again, a fascinating object, low down in the southern sky.
Also one of our nearer neighbours in this place.
Are there planets there? Is anyone there looking at us!? I think it's too young a planetary system to have planets with life but maybe in the far, far future.
I wonder.
We had some beautiful views of deep-sky objects in the first half of the night.
I had a particularly good view of a gorgeous globular cluster - M15.
But now, with the moon rising, it's time for all the telescopes to point towards our nearest neighbour.
Jon, we were last here for the lunar eclipse in April.
How was your summer? Did you get much observing in? Well, it's been a bit grim with the weather, although when it was crucial it was clear, such as the lunar eclipse, at about 3am there was a nice It was a good night.
Slightly hazy but enough to see it.
We had the solar eclipse as well.
Yes.
There was a glimpse there.
At the crucial moments, when we needed some visibility, the rain and clouds abated.
But most of the time it's been overcast and a little bit miserable.
Not what we'd want.
Here we are.
This is a great one.
This is nice.
You never get bored of the moon, do you? There's always something different to look at - all the different phases that show you different areas of the moon.
You're a low-tech observer.
It's going out with binoculars to enjoy the sky? Yes.
I just enjoy the majesty, rather than doing measurements.
If I want to know measurements, I'll ask you! Yes.
Or the wonderful images the guys around us produce as well.
But tonight, Sir Patrick has done it again.
He must have ordered the weather.
It doesn't seem like there'll be clouds or interference at all.
This is looking very good, boding extremely well.
Well, Pete, the moon is perfectly positioned and you're looking at one particular region.
What are you looking at? It's a feature which I find quite enigmatic, actually.
it's an amazing thing.
It's called Reiner Gamma.
It's a bright albedo - a bright reflective feature on the moon.
The thing which is really interesting, is how it formed.
It's believed there's a strong magneticfield in this region.
One rather exotic theory, which I rather like, is that something slammed into the back of the moon, sent a shockwave through the moon, and puffed up the material which then settled and was guided by the magnetic fields.
You can see a central region, like an eye, and these tendrils that go out in each direction.
It's lovely.
Well, you've spent the whole evening looking at one object.
What is it and what's on the screen? This is a wide-angled crescent nebula, taken with the HyperStar.
It was taken with a H-Alpha filter, which allows me to cut through the moon glow.
So how long an exposure has this been to get to this stage? These are five-minute images but it's been 4.
5 hours so far, And you've got plenty of work to do at home? Yes.
You'll turn those five hours of work into something.
I'll leave them stacking, eat, say hello to the wife, process it and she'll be happy.
I'm looking forward to the final image! Thank you.
Nearly midnight now and it's still clear.
The moon is rising.
Back to our autumn sky, Pegasus.
What about Aquarius, the water bearer? Yes.
Aquarius is a fairly faint pattern below and to the right of the square of Pegasus.
Alpha and Beta Aquarii form a line going out from the diagonal of the square extended.
There are quite a few interesting objects in and around Aquarius.
Zeta's a nice double.
Zeta's a nice double.
And you've got the Saturn Nebula - NGC 7009.
Now, the Saturn Nebula, of course, was given that name by the Third Earl of Ross in the 1840s.
Yes.
Through a large telescope, it does resemble Saturn with the rings.
Through a small telescope, it's like a rather fuzzy egg shape.
We've got no bright planets in Aquarius but we do have a planet and that is Uranus.
Yes.
Uranus of course is at the threshold of naked-eye visibility, about magnitude 5.
7, and the way to find it at the moment - if you go below the square of Pegasus, there's part of Pisces - a group of stars known as the Circlet, which makes an irregular polygon shape directly below the square.
The stars are quite faint, about fourth magnitude, but if you take the bottom star of the Circlet and come down on to where the ecliptic is, that is where Uranus is and it's at the threshold of visibility.
With binoculars you can see Uranus, a small disc, and with a telescope it's obvious.
With my 14-inch, I can see the four main moons - Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.
Yes.
Worth looking for.
This is my kind of astronomy - just enjoying a view of the moon.
We don't always see the same parts of it, though.
As it orbits the Earth, it wobbles.
Tonight the South Pole is towards us.
It's an effect called libration.
Damian, it's three in the morning.
How are we doing? You wanted to see the South Pole? Yes.
It's going well so far.
At the moment, I'm looking at a crater we rarely ever see called Drygalski.
This crater is quite close to the south polar area.
It's only ever visible during a good southern libration, which we have tonight.
It's quite a large crater - nearly 170km - If it were actually further onto the near side, it would be a very prominent crater.
I was out looking at M57.
The Ring Nebula.
Yes.
There's a great structure - you can see the central star.
Then we turned on to M27.
The Dumbbell.
The Dumbbell Nebula.
It was really good.
I looked at it through one of the others.
Amazing detail on that.
And then, when the moon rose, we were able to look at good craters at 439 times magnification! Wow! Like you're standing above the surface, I guess.
Yes.
It was exciting.
And your highlights? I'm a bit of a galaxy fan.
The show featured Stephan's Quintet.
Wow, you saw Stephan's Quintet? Only the second time in my life! In particular, we clearly picked out NGC 7320, which is a bit unusual because some believe it's not associated with the quintet.
You saw all five? I saw them all simultaneously and, um I also saw NGC 7331, which is the Dear Lick Galaxy.
A much brighter galaxy, so easy to see in the telescope.
Plus a couple of the fainter galaxies.
Very enjoyable indeed.
A mixture of everything - moon, nebulae and galaxies.
Great fun.
Well, Rob, you were going to look at Uranus.
Yes.
How did you get on? I'm very pleased, really.
I found Uranus earlier and managed to produce a spectrum from it.
There we are! There we are, yes.
We can see the continuous solar spectrum.
That's reflecting the sun's light.
Yes.
If we can identify them, they tell us what Uranus is made of.
Exactly.
So can we identify them? Somebody's done it for me.
In fact it's methane in the atmosphere.
You've done some imaging as well, Jon.
Indeed.
Lower tech, perhaps.
If you position your camera phone in place for the eye piece, you can record some quite nice images.
That's pretty good.
Yes.
For a camera phone, that's not too bad at all! Back to the square of Pegasus.
The top left-hand star being given a free transfer to Andromeda.
Andromeda itself a line of bright stars leading away from a square.
And the third of these, Almach, is a nice double.
It is.
And the line of stars in Andromeda actually extends from the top left of the square and points towards Mirfak - the brightest star in Perseus - which we mentioned when looking to the north east.
There are interesting objects in Andromeda.
There's an interesting planetary nebula - NGC 7662.
Above the centre of Pegasus there's a triangle of stars - Kappa, lota and Omicron Andromedae - and towards the bottom of that triangle, in the bottom side of it, you'll find this planetary nebula.
It's small but it is surprisingly bright and easy to find.
And, of course, there are a number of interesting galaxies.
One of my favourites, close to Gamma Andromedae, is NGC 891.
Almost edge on? Yes, it's almost edge on.
And it has a very dusty line, extending right along the plane of the galaxy.
But, of course, I suppose the highlight of them all - M31- the great galaxy in Andromeda.
Unfortunately at a rather unfavourable angle to us.
The full beauty of the spiral is lost.
there it is.
You can see it with the naked eye.
In a sense, a bit disappointing.
I have to say, I think the view through binoculars like this is infinitely better than the low-power of a small telescope.
But there is one spiral clear and that's M33 in Triangulum.
Yes.
Now, Triangulum is a fairly faint pattern - in the shape of a triangle, of course - and if you find Gamma and Beta Andromedae, and you make an equilateral triangle coming down from those two stars, you eventually find these three stars of Triangulum.
Alpha Triangulae is the star that marks the apex of the triangle.
If you come above and to the right of that star, there you'll find M33.
Under incredibly good, dark skies, it is just at the threshold of naked-eye visibility.
I've only ever glimpsed it once with the naked eye in very dark conditions.
As you say, in binoculars, it is a nice, face-on spiral.
We have, in a way, at this time of year, the three brightest local-group galaxies.
We've got the Milky Way, arching right across the sky, we've got M31 in Andromeda and M33- the Triangulum spiral.
So we've looked round the sky - North, South, East, West - plenty to see! John, thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
Well, there's interesting news about the solar system.
Chris has the details.
The Hubble Space Telescope is in trouble.
Just a few days ago, the main control system shut down - leaving Hubble floating helplessly in space.
Astronauts had been due to visit the telescope in mid-October.
This has now been delayed until next year, to prepare a plan and get ready the astronauts for what was already the most complex space-shuttle mission ever attempted.
More cheerfully, we now know it snows on Mars.
The discovery was made by the Phoenix Lander, continuing its experiments in the Martian Arctic Circle.
Amongst these wintry clouds, Phoenix discovered snowflakes.
Earlier, we were looking at the Jules Verne Spacecraft, which had been visiting the ISS.
It's since deliberately been burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere, providing this spectacular show.
Don't forget, it's newsletter time.
If you want your newsletter, send your stamped addressed envelope to: So, next month, Chris will be going to Arizona to hear the latest on the Phoenix probe, and I'll be here, talking about the biggest explosions in the universe.
So until then, from my garden in Selsey, good night.
for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2008 E- mail subtitling@bbc.
co.
uk
Well, autumn is upon us.
The nights are getting longer.
Believe me, there's plenty to see.
We're now going to look at the stars of autumn.
I've got my own observatory of course but other observers have come here and brought their telescopes.
Earlier on, Chris joined them as they were setting up.
There'll be plenty to see this evening.
I'm looking forward to the Andromeda galaxy, to catching the International Space Station as it passes by and even looking at the moon when it rises.
We've got dozens of telescopes, loads of astronomers, and all we need is the sky to stay clear.
I'm going to try and photograph that, then.
So what are you hoping to see tonight? Mainly the moon.
OK.
Anything else we can find, really.
We're in between, with winter skies in the early morning and the summer triangle disappearing.
There's lots I'm hoping to look at.
Clusters are on my list.
There, that's it.
What's this doing up here? That's a dew shield.
Ah, OK.
It's got a little heater on in case it gets too dewy.
OK.
It gets rid of the moisture so the lens doesn't dew up.
That's most ingenious.
It is.
A perfect educational tool.
Very good.
We came over from Dublin and we're basically planning on doing just some visual observations tonight - the moon, Uranus and, um some deep sky objects as well.
We've got a good place for the last quarter moon tonight.
That's my main focus.
Hopefully I'll get some nice mosaics of some of the craters.
So, Bruce, what's the plan for this evening? I'll be looking at the moon.
Your specialist subject! Looking or imaging as well? I'll be imaging, taking advantage of the good libration, and hopefully get images of the South Pole.
What's libration? It's the wobble effect of the moon.
We see 59% of the moon.
We get his opportunity, every so often, to see parts we don't normally see through the year.
Looking at the craters around the South Pole? I will be, yes.
This is a lovely little new-looking telescope.
What's the plan for this evening? As you say, it's little, so it doesn't have great light-gathering.
So planets are excellent.
Jupiter should be good tonight.
Then, later on, just the moon.
We've got a pass of the International Space Station this evening as well and something special next to it.
Yes, there's the Jules Verne ATV - Automated Transfer Vehicle.
This is part of the European contribution? It's going to have a fantastic end in a few days' time because they'll re-enter it and it will burn up over the Pacific.
It's a big vehicle, About 22 tonnes, something like that, which is huge.
Tonight no re-entry just flying in formation.
It will be tight because we'll only get 30 seconds of the Jules Verne craft before it enters the Earth's shadow.
Well, it's a nice, dark evening now.
I ordered it specially, of course.
I'm joined now by one of our great friends, Dr John Mason.
Welcome back, John.
Nice to be here.
The autumn sky - plenty to see.
Where shall we start? Well, where most beginners start, and that is with the Plough or Big Dipper.
In the north? Rather low down in the north at this time of year, so not as obvious.
Look at the two pointers.
Dubhe - definitely yellow.
Merak - pure white.
Yes.
If you start with the Plough, with the bowl, the saucepan shape with the handle to the left and take the two stars at the right - Merak and Dubhe, the pointers - and you go up and to the right, you of course come to the pole star, Polaris, in Ursa Minor.
Now, of course, if you continue that line from Merak and Dubhe up through Polaris and keep on going, you come to the W of Cassiopeia.
Or the M, if you like! Well, this time of year, it is like a W that's been sat on! A squashed W! When the Plough is low down, Cassiopeia is always high up and Cassiopeia is the main and most distinctive marker - high in the eastern sky.
Two very interesting stars there - the middle star, Gamma - is definitely variable.
It can vary as much as 1.
5 mag.
sometimes.
And back in 1936 it was particularly bright.
Beta definitely doesn't vary much.
No.
That's the top right of the W.
Now, while we're on the subject of Beta, if you come right of Beta, in a pair of binoculars, there's a line of three stars - Tau, Rho and Sigma.
Now, the middle one, Rho, is a very interesting star.
Hypergiant! A yellow hypergiant.
10,000 light years distant.
A very remote star, very luminous.
A star that's almost certain to go supernova.
Indeed, there are people who believe it's already gone supernova and the light is travelling towards us but we haven't seen it.
It may well be.
When it does go, it will be a real sight.
It certainly is.
Then there is Cassiopeia's husband, Cepheus.
Yes.
Of course the Milky Way flows, more or less, overhead and down past Cepheus and through Cassiopeia.
There are lots of nice, rich, open star clusters along that band of the Milky Way.
There's that one in Cepheus - NGC 188, which I think is the first entry in your Caldwell Catalogue.
It is.
And I believe it's not only one of the oldest open star clusters - in excess of 5 billion years old - but I believe it's the closest open cluster to the North Celestial Pole.
Not far from Polaris.
It's very close.
Then we come into Cassiopeia.
There's three open clusters in Cassiopeia I want to mention.
They're all quite close to the star Ruchbar, which is Delta Cass.
, which is the lower one of the left-hand V of the W.
Now, if you come to the left of that, there's two clusters - NGC 663, which is a nice cluster, about 80 stars.
Quite nice in binoculars and a low power.
And then, between that and Ruchbar, you've got M103.
Now, that's not so prominent.
No.
A triangular, fan-shape of stars.
And if you then come below and to the left of Cassiopeia, following the Milky Way down, we come to the wonderful sword handle.
Double cluster in Perseus.
It's a marvellous sight! You can see it with the naked eye.
Two clusters next to each other, nothing quite like it in the sky.
No and, of course, between the top of Perseus and Epsilon Cass.
, And lovely in binoculars, beautiful in low-power telescope and if you use the right power, and a wide field, you can get the two clusters sitting nicely side by side.
One of them, of course, rather brighter and more concentrated.
The other more scattered and irregular but a lovely sight.
And very easy to photograph too.
Indeed.
Now, I suppose one of the most intriguing objects in Perseus is the Demon Star! Algol - the Demon Star! Usually second magnitude but then it periodically fades down.
You can almost see it going down.
It winks every 2.
87 days and that's because it's not one star varying, it's actually two stars.
It's a binary.
I've got them in my hand.
There's a yellow giant star, which is quite dim, and a smaller blue main sequence star, which is bright.
When you see the two side-by-side like that, then it's the normal brightness.
When the blue one goes in front of the yellow one, there's a tiny dip in brightness but not very much.
It's when the blue one goes behind the yellow one that there's a major dip in brightness that you see.
It goes down from second magnitude to third magnitude and that happens every 2.
87 days.
It's called an eclipsing binary and the two stars are going around their common centre of mass.
Not really a true variable star, in that sense, but interesting.
Once you come down through Perseus to the north-east horizon, the Milky Way is going away and that's really from Cepheus, through Cassiopeia, through Perseus.
That's the arc of the Milky Way going down to the north east.
You do need a dark sky to see them very properly.
In a city you won't see it.
Quite right.
So there's plenty up there.
Well, John, now time I think to kill our lights and turn on our infrared and see how Chris is getting on.
Well, it's early evening, it's a beautiful clear night and Pete you've seen one event - the passage of the International Space Station.
Right.
We got a view of it from the garden here but I decided to try and get the early part of the track.
So, to do that, I had to go down to the beach, for the flat horizon.
And it was quite an impressive pass this time.
But very short and ended quite low.
What was interesting is that at the end, as it went above Jupiter, it went into the Earth's shadow and from the beach, where it's slightly darker, I could see it as a tiny dot still going through the shadow.
So was that reflected light, or from the station itself? It's like a lunar eclipse - you just have that little reddish glow.
You can actually see it in this photograph.
Oh, yes, it's obvious.
The track continues.
That's fun! What was exciting, again, was there was also the Jules Verne module, now detached from the space shuttle.
The European Transfer Vehicle.
It is.
That was also visible a bit later on.
Following in roughly the same track? No, not the same at all.
OK.
It was a different track.
Very faint.
The camera picked it up.
Well, this is an unusual view of an unusual object.
What is it? This is the Pacman Nebula, or NGC 281.
I prefer the Pacman! Yes.
Wow, look at that! I've spent a lot of time imaging M33 because it's very, very faint.
To the naked eye, you'd need exceptional dark sight to see it.
Look at the detail! You've got the spiral arms picked out in young star clusters - the blue things.
We've got these bright Hydrogen Alpha.
These pink regions, they're very young stars, I guess.
Yes.
Active star-forming regions.
It's nice to see our neighbours so well.
Yes, it is.
Thank you.
I've finally managed to image M39- a cluster I've been looking at.
I think I got quite a good image.
So why M39 in particular? It's a really enigmatic cluster.
It's really nice through the telescope- particularly the rich, wide-field retractor I use.
It sparkles against the Milky Way and it's nice through the telescope.
Well, as I'm looking north, we now look south.
And we still see the Summer Triangle - Vega, Deneb, Altair.
It's very definitely part dispersed.
It is.
It's now moving over into the south-western sky.
For anybody coming out on a clear evening, early on, Deneb more or less overhead, Vega rather brighter to the west, and of course Altair - the southern-most of the three with the two little stars on either side.
Of course the Milky Way runs right overhead, down through the Summer Triangle, past Deneb, below Vega and down into the south-western sky.
So the Summer Triangle is, as you say, past its best, but you will see it for some time.
Although only Altair actually sets.
That's right.
And now the main autumn constellation, which is Pegasus.
In mythology, Pegasus was a flying horse.
In the sky, he's a square! He is and, of course, the four stars of the square in a lot of maps, you think the square is smaller and the stars brighter than it is.
Actually, the square is quite large and the stars are second or third mag.
It is the main autumn constellation.
You do have a main outlier to the square - that's the star Enif, which is some way to the west and about the same brightness as the four stars in the square.
Now, of course, the square itself is of interest but top right we have a very interesting orange variable star.
Beta Pegasi or Scheat.
That is a genuine variable, not fake like Algol! It really is variable.
Yes.
It's a giant star.
It's an orange giant star, about 90 times as luminous as the sun, low surface temperature, and it's slowly pulsating.
As it pulsates, it varies in brightness from about magnitude 2.
3 to magnitude 2.
8.
I make it reasonably faint this evening.
There's one lovely globular structure in Pegasus.
Yes, M15.
If you go to Enif and come above and to the right, there is M15.
Let's remind ourselves what globulars are.
They are spherical associations of very old stars - between 100,000 and one million stars per cluster.
Some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way.
Yes.
But globular clusters form a halo all around our galaxy and M15's a fine example.
We also have a lot of interesting galaxies in and around a square.
If you go to the top right, Beta Pegasi, there's a triangle of stars - Beta, Eta and Mu.
And, just above that little triangle, there is a group of galaxies - the NGC 7331 group.
Three main galaxies there.
There are other interesting things there too.
Yes.
Just below that little group of galaxies is Stephan's Quintet.
Yes.
This is very interesting.
As the name quintet says, there are five galaxies as part of this group.
But it seems, when you look at the redshifts, four have near-identical redshifts and are at great distance.
The other one, which appears to be a member of the quintet, has a much lower redshift and is therefore a foreground object.
So, when you look at it and see them appearing as a group, one is nearer than the other four.
Now, coming back to things to see with the naked eye.
Two more stars we can identify from the square of Pegasus.
First of all, let's take the two right-hand stars - following the line down almost to the horizon - and there you come to Fomalhaut and the Southern Fish.
The southernmost first magnitude star seen from here.
And, of course, Selsey is an ideal place to see it because you have a sea horizon, looking south.
Fomalhaut is quite easy to see but very low down and, in fact, Fomalhaut itself is an interesting star.
It's been found that it has a debris disk around it, which is indicative that a planetary system is forming there.
This disk has a ring associated, probably with a massive Neptune-mass planet that's cleared a lot of debris away, leaving the ring further out.
Again, a fascinating object, low down in the southern sky.
Also one of our nearer neighbours in this place.
Are there planets there? Is anyone there looking at us!? I think it's too young a planetary system to have planets with life but maybe in the far, far future.
I wonder.
We had some beautiful views of deep-sky objects in the first half of the night.
I had a particularly good view of a gorgeous globular cluster - M15.
But now, with the moon rising, it's time for all the telescopes to point towards our nearest neighbour.
Jon, we were last here for the lunar eclipse in April.
How was your summer? Did you get much observing in? Well, it's been a bit grim with the weather, although when it was crucial it was clear, such as the lunar eclipse, at about 3am there was a nice It was a good night.
Slightly hazy but enough to see it.
We had the solar eclipse as well.
Yes.
There was a glimpse there.
At the crucial moments, when we needed some visibility, the rain and clouds abated.
But most of the time it's been overcast and a little bit miserable.
Not what we'd want.
Here we are.
This is a great one.
This is nice.
You never get bored of the moon, do you? There's always something different to look at - all the different phases that show you different areas of the moon.
You're a low-tech observer.
It's going out with binoculars to enjoy the sky? Yes.
I just enjoy the majesty, rather than doing measurements.
If I want to know measurements, I'll ask you! Yes.
Or the wonderful images the guys around us produce as well.
But tonight, Sir Patrick has done it again.
He must have ordered the weather.
It doesn't seem like there'll be clouds or interference at all.
This is looking very good, boding extremely well.
Well, Pete, the moon is perfectly positioned and you're looking at one particular region.
What are you looking at? It's a feature which I find quite enigmatic, actually.
it's an amazing thing.
It's called Reiner Gamma.
It's a bright albedo - a bright reflective feature on the moon.
The thing which is really interesting, is how it formed.
It's believed there's a strong magneticfield in this region.
One rather exotic theory, which I rather like, is that something slammed into the back of the moon, sent a shockwave through the moon, and puffed up the material which then settled and was guided by the magnetic fields.
You can see a central region, like an eye, and these tendrils that go out in each direction.
It's lovely.
Well, you've spent the whole evening looking at one object.
What is it and what's on the screen? This is a wide-angled crescent nebula, taken with the HyperStar.
It was taken with a H-Alpha filter, which allows me to cut through the moon glow.
So how long an exposure has this been to get to this stage? These are five-minute images but it's been 4.
5 hours so far, And you've got plenty of work to do at home? Yes.
You'll turn those five hours of work into something.
I'll leave them stacking, eat, say hello to the wife, process it and she'll be happy.
I'm looking forward to the final image! Thank you.
Nearly midnight now and it's still clear.
The moon is rising.
Back to our autumn sky, Pegasus.
What about Aquarius, the water bearer? Yes.
Aquarius is a fairly faint pattern below and to the right of the square of Pegasus.
Alpha and Beta Aquarii form a line going out from the diagonal of the square extended.
There are quite a few interesting objects in and around Aquarius.
Zeta's a nice double.
Zeta's a nice double.
And you've got the Saturn Nebula - NGC 7009.
Now, the Saturn Nebula, of course, was given that name by the Third Earl of Ross in the 1840s.
Yes.
Through a large telescope, it does resemble Saturn with the rings.
Through a small telescope, it's like a rather fuzzy egg shape.
We've got no bright planets in Aquarius but we do have a planet and that is Uranus.
Yes.
Uranus of course is at the threshold of naked-eye visibility, about magnitude 5.
7, and the way to find it at the moment - if you go below the square of Pegasus, there's part of Pisces - a group of stars known as the Circlet, which makes an irregular polygon shape directly below the square.
The stars are quite faint, about fourth magnitude, but if you take the bottom star of the Circlet and come down on to where the ecliptic is, that is where Uranus is and it's at the threshold of visibility.
With binoculars you can see Uranus, a small disc, and with a telescope it's obvious.
With my 14-inch, I can see the four main moons - Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.
Yes.
Worth looking for.
This is my kind of astronomy - just enjoying a view of the moon.
We don't always see the same parts of it, though.
As it orbits the Earth, it wobbles.
Tonight the South Pole is towards us.
It's an effect called libration.
Damian, it's three in the morning.
How are we doing? You wanted to see the South Pole? Yes.
It's going well so far.
At the moment, I'm looking at a crater we rarely ever see called Drygalski.
This crater is quite close to the south polar area.
It's only ever visible during a good southern libration, which we have tonight.
It's quite a large crater - nearly 170km - If it were actually further onto the near side, it would be a very prominent crater.
I was out looking at M57.
The Ring Nebula.
Yes.
There's a great structure - you can see the central star.
Then we turned on to M27.
The Dumbbell.
The Dumbbell Nebula.
It was really good.
I looked at it through one of the others.
Amazing detail on that.
And then, when the moon rose, we were able to look at good craters at 439 times magnification! Wow! Like you're standing above the surface, I guess.
Yes.
It was exciting.
And your highlights? I'm a bit of a galaxy fan.
The show featured Stephan's Quintet.
Wow, you saw Stephan's Quintet? Only the second time in my life! In particular, we clearly picked out NGC 7320, which is a bit unusual because some believe it's not associated with the quintet.
You saw all five? I saw them all simultaneously and, um I also saw NGC 7331, which is the Dear Lick Galaxy.
A much brighter galaxy, so easy to see in the telescope.
Plus a couple of the fainter galaxies.
Very enjoyable indeed.
A mixture of everything - moon, nebulae and galaxies.
Great fun.
Well, Rob, you were going to look at Uranus.
Yes.
How did you get on? I'm very pleased, really.
I found Uranus earlier and managed to produce a spectrum from it.
There we are! There we are, yes.
We can see the continuous solar spectrum.
That's reflecting the sun's light.
Yes.
If we can identify them, they tell us what Uranus is made of.
Exactly.
So can we identify them? Somebody's done it for me.
In fact it's methane in the atmosphere.
You've done some imaging as well, Jon.
Indeed.
Lower tech, perhaps.
If you position your camera phone in place for the eye piece, you can record some quite nice images.
That's pretty good.
Yes.
For a camera phone, that's not too bad at all! Back to the square of Pegasus.
The top left-hand star being given a free transfer to Andromeda.
Andromeda itself a line of bright stars leading away from a square.
And the third of these, Almach, is a nice double.
It is.
And the line of stars in Andromeda actually extends from the top left of the square and points towards Mirfak - the brightest star in Perseus - which we mentioned when looking to the north east.
There are interesting objects in Andromeda.
There's an interesting planetary nebula - NGC 7662.
Above the centre of Pegasus there's a triangle of stars - Kappa, lota and Omicron Andromedae - and towards the bottom of that triangle, in the bottom side of it, you'll find this planetary nebula.
It's small but it is surprisingly bright and easy to find.
And, of course, there are a number of interesting galaxies.
One of my favourites, close to Gamma Andromedae, is NGC 891.
Almost edge on? Yes, it's almost edge on.
And it has a very dusty line, extending right along the plane of the galaxy.
But, of course, I suppose the highlight of them all - M31- the great galaxy in Andromeda.
Unfortunately at a rather unfavourable angle to us.
The full beauty of the spiral is lost.
there it is.
You can see it with the naked eye.
In a sense, a bit disappointing.
I have to say, I think the view through binoculars like this is infinitely better than the low-power of a small telescope.
But there is one spiral clear and that's M33 in Triangulum.
Yes.
Now, Triangulum is a fairly faint pattern - in the shape of a triangle, of course - and if you find Gamma and Beta Andromedae, and you make an equilateral triangle coming down from those two stars, you eventually find these three stars of Triangulum.
Alpha Triangulae is the star that marks the apex of the triangle.
If you come above and to the right of that star, there you'll find M33.
Under incredibly good, dark skies, it is just at the threshold of naked-eye visibility.
I've only ever glimpsed it once with the naked eye in very dark conditions.
As you say, in binoculars, it is a nice, face-on spiral.
We have, in a way, at this time of year, the three brightest local-group galaxies.
We've got the Milky Way, arching right across the sky, we've got M31 in Andromeda and M33- the Triangulum spiral.
So we've looked round the sky - North, South, East, West - plenty to see! John, thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
Well, there's interesting news about the solar system.
Chris has the details.
The Hubble Space Telescope is in trouble.
Just a few days ago, the main control system shut down - leaving Hubble floating helplessly in space.
Astronauts had been due to visit the telescope in mid-October.
This has now been delayed until next year, to prepare a plan and get ready the astronauts for what was already the most complex space-shuttle mission ever attempted.
More cheerfully, we now know it snows on Mars.
The discovery was made by the Phoenix Lander, continuing its experiments in the Martian Arctic Circle.
Amongst these wintry clouds, Phoenix discovered snowflakes.
Earlier, we were looking at the Jules Verne Spacecraft, which had been visiting the ISS.
It's since deliberately been burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere, providing this spectacular show.
Don't forget, it's newsletter time.
If you want your newsletter, send your stamped addressed envelope to: So, next month, Chris will be going to Arizona to hear the latest on the Phoenix probe, and I'll be here, talking about the biggest explosions in the universe.
So until then, from my garden in Selsey, good night.
for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2008 E- mail subtitling@bbc.
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