September - October 2022

Australian Sky & Telescope

The Essential Magazine of Astronomy

Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Tamworth Astronomy Experience
24 to 28 OCTOBER 2022 The Tamworth Regional Astronomy Club Inc. offers you are a rare opportunity for an astronomy experience like no other. Visit observatories and be guided by experts as you link into the amazing world of citizen science in astrono
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Welcome To The Webb Of Wonders
THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER. Less than seven months after launch and a journey of almost two million kilometres, the James Webb Space Telescope’s multi-decade voyage of exploration has begun with the release of its first science images. If they seem a l
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Australian Sky & Telescope
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO ASTRONOMY Check out the Australian Sky & Telescope website for the latest astronomy news from Australia and around the cosmos. skyandtelescope.com.au EDITORIAL EDITOR Jonathan Nally ART DIRECTOR Lee McLachlan REGULAR CONTRIBUTO
Australian Sky & Telescope6 min read
New Telescope Array For Australia
A NEW TELESCOPE SYSTEM designed to help in the hunt for the origins of gravitational waves will soon start operating in Australia. To be situated at Siding Spring Observatory in NSW, the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO), led by th
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
X-ray Flash From White Dwarf Fireball Observed
For the first time, astronomers have spotted the X-ray flash that precedes a nova, as reported in the May 12 issue of Nature. The flare was the first sign that a white dwarf’s entire surface had ignited in a colossal, expanding fireball. Astronomer R
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
In Brief
NASA’s Insight Mars lander witnessed the biggest quake yet in the nick of time — just before the craft began to run low on power. The record-breaker wasn’t strong by Earth standards, but it was the strongest quake recorded on another planet. The Seis
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
Other Astronomers We Should Remember
Astronomy as we know it today had its start in Europe around the start of the 17th century. The Greeks and the Muslims had made discoveries earlier, but they were shackled by a conviction that the Earth was the centre of the cosmos, and by a confusio
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
The Solar Cycle Restarts
The Sun is waking up: After years of solar quiescence, recent months have seen numerous X-class flares, large sunspot groups and coronal mass ejections. The uptick isn’t surprising: The Sun goes through 11-year cycles of magnetically instigated activ
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
First Light
NASA HAS WOWED the collective minds of the astronomical community with the release of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first science images, revealed at a White House press conference on July 13 (Australian time). The deep field: Showing off the grav
Australian Sky & Telescope9 min read
Seeing Saturn’s Ring Spokes
IN 1850, HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY astronomers William Cranch Bond and his son George Philips Bond discovered a new inner ring of Saturn. The feature was subsequently designated ring C, and British astronomer William Lassell dubbed it the crepe rin
Australian Sky & Telescope12 min read
Flying With Ingenuity On Mars
“WHAT SCIENCE COULD YOU do with a helicopter on Mars?” Robotics expert and aerospace systems engineer Bob Balaram (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) posed that out-of-the-blue question to his JPL colleague Matt Golombek back in 2013. After “a momentary and
Australian Sky & Telescope11 min read
SETI’s BIG Boost
THE KEPLER SPACE TELESCOPE’S haul of more than 100 potentially habitable planets has revolutionised our search for life in the universe. In the next decade, astronomers will pursue a step-by-step program to find and study Earth-like exoplanets, which
Australian Sky & Telescope10 min read
SMASH & Nudge
FOR ALL ITS DESTRUCTIVENESS, smashing stuff together tells us a great deal about the universe. Colliding suspended balls demonstrated conservation of momentum and energy in the 17th century and led to every 1980s executive’s favourite desk decoration
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
A Tail Of Two Clusters
Our targets this issue are the open clusters Messier 6 and Messier 7 in the tail region of the constellation Scorpius, the Scorpion. M6 is also called the Butterfly Cluster owing to its appearance, while M7 is known as Ptolemy’s Cluster after Claudiu
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Coming Up Empty
Ultimately, what SETI seeks is signals. So, what happens if we don’t find any? Do we give up? Stop funding SETI? Similar questions have arisen around other topics, such as dark matter. Ample indirect evidence suggests dark matter’s presence in galaxi
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Using The Star Chart
WHEN These are standard times. Add 1 hour for daylight savings. HOW Go outside within an hour or so of a time listed above. Hold the map out in front of you and turn it around so the label for the direction you’re facing (such as west or northeast) i
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
Crash As Trash
Shards of alien metal lie strewn about the crash site of a derelict contraption from another planet, the remains of an intricately machined saucer sent by a strange and distant civilization… Ours. In April, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, which is taggi
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Vistas
DUSTY CROWN The constellation Corona Australis (the ‘southern crown’) is located almost overhead on September evenings for those at mid-southern latitudes. Within it lies the binary star R Coronae Australis, which is accompanied by a blue reflection
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
Jove Rules The September Nights
The run of planetary oppositions continues in the latter half of 2022, with Jupiter and Neptune reaching this milestone in September and more to come in the following months. Mercury (mag. 0.5, dia. 8.4”, Sep. 5) begins September low in the western s
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
Prepare To Be Swarmed
The Southern Taurids meteor shower is active from September 10 to November 10, with a peak on the morning of October 10. (It shouldn’t be confused with the Northern Taurids, which peaks on November 12). This year the shower will be affected by presen
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
An Old Friend Continues To Charm
Even though it won’t reach perihelion until December, comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) already seems like an old friend — we’ve been covering it in these pages since the beginning of the year! September will see it drifting steadily through the head of Sc
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
Getting All Aquiver About R Aquilae
This month we go north into the ancient constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. Aquila represents the bird that carried the thunderbolts that Zeus hurled at his enemies. The constellation’s first magnitude star Alpha Aquilae is better known by the name A
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
A New, Old Jupiter
Jupiter reaches opposition this year on September 27th (Australian time), when it sits astride the celestial equator in Pisces, shines at magnitude -2.9 and presents a disk 49.9” across. It’s also unusually close this year. That’s because the planet
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Neptune And Juno At Their Best
Neptune comes to opposition on September 17 in eastern Aquarius, where it shines at magnitude 7.8. The planet’s disk spans just 2.4”, but with a magnification of 200× under steady seeing conditions, I can discern a tiny, pale blue disk through my 25-
Australian Sky & Telescope4 min read
Of Ghosts And Graveyards
Innumerable impact craters have formed throughout the Moon’s 4.6-billion-year history. The formation of subsequent craters and basins obliterated many previously existing impact craters, while lava flows surrounded, flooded or completely buried other
Australian Sky & Telescope4 min read
A Lingering Jovian Mystery
Io is the innermost of Jupiter’s four Galilean satellites and the most geologically active body in the Solar System. A world of fire and brimstone, the 3,643-km-wide moon is dotted with hundreds of active volcanoes powered by tidal heating generated
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
What Is The Ecliptic?
THE ECLIPTIC, SIMPLY PUT, is the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. It extends beyond that to include the seven other planets — and, because it’s imaginary, actually beyond that into infinity. But for our purposes, picture a flat, round disk with
Australian Sky & Telescope5 min read
Understanding Focal Ratios
principles of photography is that the more light you collect, the less image noise you’ll have. This is especially relevant when it comes to photographing the night sky, in which a good signal-to-noise ratio is vital for pleasing results. The bottom
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
New Product Showcase
Starlight Xpress announces the Oculus PRO All-Sky Camera (£995). This self-contained sky-monitoring system is based around the super-sensitive ICX825AL Sony ExView II interline CCD, with a 1,392 × 1,040 array of 6.45-micron-square pixels. It comes wi
Australian Sky & Telescope7 min read
Nightscaping with Sequator
Price: free https://sites.google.com/view/sequator What we like Freeware Automatic alignment and stacking Accepts RAW camera files What we don’t like Occasionally fails to align images accurately Auto brightness sometimes overly aggressive over a pic
Australian Sky & Telescope7 min read
Astrophotography’s NEXT BIG thing
IT SEEMS THAT EVERY FEW YEARS someone states, “We are in the golden age of astrophotography!” This is usually followed by a string of examples explaining why they believe it to be so. Here we are again at a crossroads, with astro-imaging gaining trac
Australian Sky & Telescope5 min read
Over-under Binoculars
I wrote about Frank Szczepanski’s unique approach to making a binocular telescope using only four mirrors instead of the traditional six. Frank has since reduced the number of mirrors required to two. Of course, that requires a set of objective lense
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Plans Available
When I publish a column about a particularly nifty telescope design, I’m often asked if the designer would consider making kits available for people who don’t have the shop capabilities to build one themselves. My usual response is “Alas, no,” but th
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
On The Stellar Shortlist
Three Australian astrophotographers have made the shortlist for the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition — Paul Milvain for his image of a portion of the Vela Supernova Remnant, Peter Ward for his shot o
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
Diego Colonnello
In less than a decade, Melbourne-based Diego Colonnello has gone from being a budding amateur astronomer to an accomplished astrophotographer and proprietor of a company (Astroworx.com.au) that builds hi-tech telescopes, as well as offering observato
Australian Sky & Telescope1 min read
Readers’ Gallery
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR IMAGES Images should be sent electronically and in high-resolution (up to 20MB per email) to contributions@skyandtelescope.com.au. Please provide full details for each image, eg. date and time taken; telescope and/or lens; mount; i
Australian Sky & Telescope3 min read
The Search Is On
You and the paper (or screen) on which you’re reading this are both here thanks to dying stars. Previous generations of stars forged elements heavier than hydrogen and helium — such as the carbon in the wood pulp in this magazine’s paper — and then s
Australian Sky & Telescope2 min read
“Here, Dad, Take A Look”
The sight and sound stopped me in my tracks. There was my 20-year-old son, lining up my Celestron CPC 925 to find Saturn through the eyepiece. When he said those five simple words above, it brought back a surprising flood of memories, both of my fath

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