How Deep-Sky Catalogs Work

November 23, 2022November 23, 2022 / Emma / 14 Comments

Meet the Veil Nebula, one of my favorite deep-sky objects.

The Veil is one of the more common star party requests I get from more experienced participants. Unfortunately, it requires a very powerful telescope. My 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain–pretty advanced, as far as intermediate amateur telescopes go–can barely manage it with a nebula filter.

The Veil has several different segments and can’t be viewed all at once. Seriously–the entire Veil Nebula covers an area six times the diameter of the full moon! If it were bright enough to see with the naked eye, it would be a very visible object.

Together, the segments of the veil make up the Cygnus Loop: a ring-shaped phenomenon that is a supernova remnant, formed roughly 10,000 years ago. That’s actually not that long ago, in astronomical terms. But other supernova remnants, such as the Crab Nebula, are much younger.

Those segments have all been observed separately over time and ended up with separate designations in star catalogs, too. The Veil’s components within the NGC star catalog are NGC 6960, NGC 6992, NGC 6995, and IC 1340. It is also known in the Caldwell catalog by Caldwell 34 and 33.

Fainter “knots” of nebulosity that you might not immediately realize are part of a broad, wispy loop are noted as NGC 6974 and NGC 6979.

Different portions of the supernova remnant have also been named the “Witch’s Broom” and “Pickering’s Triangle.” In particular, the Witch’s Broom refers to the same segment as the picture shown above–the Western Veil.

For this post, I thought tell you a bit about how star catalogs work–and share an interesting story about the NGCs!

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The Hubble Space Telescope

October 13, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / 4 Comments

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most famous telescopes in the world.

Oops, excuse me—one of the most famous telescopes built.

Hubble, after all, is certainly not in this world. Unless you call the universe the “world,” it’s about as far from being in this world as you can get. It’s in space.

Hubble isn’t that different from an ordinary, ground telescope. It’s only as big as a bus. There are bigger optical telescopes. Its mirror is 2.4 m across—hardly an achievement by modern-day standards.

Palomar Observatory, which was the biggest telescope in the world when it was built, has better optics than Hubble, meaning its images are a bit crisper.

But that doesn’t keep astronomers from continuing to use Hubble. In fact, if you want to use Hubble, you have to get in line—it hardly has time to complete all the projects astronomers ask of it, even observing the night sky 24/7.

So why is Hubble so useful?

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Info in a Rainbow

October 9, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

What do you see in this image?

If you’re from a larger city and haven’t had the opportunity to venture into a place like the desert, you might not know what you’re looking at. That’s the Milky Way, our name for our galaxy.

Inside this galaxy are billions of stars, including our own. Galileo Galilei was the first to discover that it was really many tiny points of light, not just a cloud-like haze across the dark night sky.

We can’t see our galaxy from outside, but we can learn a lot about it by looking out at it from within. It’s difficult. It’s like trying to learn about a building if you can never step outside one of its rooms.

But we can do it, with the help of the spectrograph.

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A Telescope Tour

October 6, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / 15 Comments

For the past few days, I’ve done a lot of talking about differences between types of telescopes and mounting systems. On occasion, I’ve mentioned some of their parts, though I haven’t focused on that.

Today, I will.

This post is meant to be a brief overview of differences between telescopes and their parts. If you want some more in-depth explanations, I’ll link back to those I’ve already written.

In the image above, you see just a few different examples of telescopes. And just in this image, they range far and wide. Most stand on tripods, but some don’t. I can see two different telescope shapes. Some have the eyepiece in different places.

There are more variations of telescopes than are shown here.

So climb on board…I’m about to take you on a telescope tour!

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Light Pollution

October 2, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

This photo was taken at night.

Seriously. At night.

But…it looks too bright for the night. I’ll bet I wouldn’t even have to shine a flashlight to see my way around here.

Need proof? Here’s New York City during the day.

The lighting comes from the sun. Not the billboards and flashing advertisements.

Who needs that many adverts in their life, anyway?

But I’m not interested in judging New York City…all I want is to make a protest against light pollution.

What is light pollution, anyway?

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Telescope Powers

October 1, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

Have you seen one of these guys before?

You probably have, even if you don’t recognize this brand-new innovation. This is the European Extremely Large Telescope, or the E-ELT. I know, imaginative name, huh? Anyway, it’s not all that different from one of those white observatory domes you’re used to seeing.

Astronomers keep building new observatories. They keep putting new telescopes into space—Hubble, Spitzer, and James Webb, to name a few. But the common goal of all the telescopes they build is to make telescopes that are as big as possibly possible.

Why? I mean, are astronomers just huge braggarts that like to impress us all with their big toys?

Well…I’ll admit that we astronomers have a lot of fun with our toys. But we need huge telescopes for a much better reason than bragging.

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Refracting & Reflecting Telescopes

September 30, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / 4 Comments

Right next to light, the telescope is an astronomer’s most valuable tool. There are so many different varieties of telescopes, it can be hard to keep them all straight. But they can all be sorted into a few basic types, and that makes choosing one a lot simpler.

Two very common types are reflectors and refractors, and each one in the image above is one of these. You can tell a reflector by its cylindrical design. They all look like cylinders, you say? Well…refractors are a little bit different.

Take the two telescopes on either end of this lineup, for instance. These two—the far left and the far right—are refractors. And you may notice that, unlike most of the rest, they’re not perfect cylinders.

Look closely. You’ll see that, not only is the end pointing up a bit wider than the rest of the telescope, but there’s a little tiny piece tacked onto the end. That same little tiny piece is tacked onto the side for the reflectors.

Every reflector and every refractor can be recognized by these basic qualities. But what they do with light is more important.

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The Spectrum of Light

September 29, 2017November 23, 2022 / Emma / 7 Comments

Rainbow-Stretching-Hilly-Forest-Mountains.jpg.638x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg

Does this look familiar?

People think of rainbows as a symbol of happiness and fortune. There are even myths that leprechauns hide gold at the end of a rainbow. That’s more of a tease than good fortune, if you ask me, because it’s impossible to reach the end of a rainbow.

That’s right. Impossible.

Some people wonder if rainbows look the same from the back. The answer’s no. They don’t. You wouldn’t see a rainbow if you were standing behind it.

Whoa…why would that be?

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