The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club

by Glenn Chaple

NGC1964 – Spiral Galaxy in Lepus (Magnitude 10.8; Size 5.6’ X 1.8’ [photographic], 1.6’ X 0.6’ [visual]).

This month’s Observer’s Challenge takes us below the celestial equator to the constellation Lepus and the spiral galaxy NGC1964. Discovered by William Herschel on November 20, 1784, it bears the Herschel Catalog identification H214, his 21st Class 4 (Planetary Nebulae) entry. He described it as “Very small, stellar, very bright nucleus and very faint chevelure not quite central.” “Chevelure” in Herschel-speak was the hazy glow surrounding a comet or star, which explains why he misclassified it as planetary nebula.

NGC1964 is located at the 2000.0 coordinates RA 5h33m 21.8s and DEC -21o56’43”, about 11⁄2 degrees southeast of the 3rd magnitude star beta (β) Leporis. This southerly location means that NGC1964 transits the sky low above the southern horizon when viewed from mid-northern latitudes. The resulting atmospheric extinction dims the galaxy more than if it were at a higher altitude.

NGC1964 might be considered to be two galaxies in one. Visual observers will see the oval- shaped glow of its nucleus which spans some 1.6 by 0.6 arc-minutes while imagers will capture that, plus the surrounding spiral arms which increase the galaxy’s overall size to 5.6 by 1.8 arc-minutes. NGC 1964 has been glimpsed with apertures as small as 4 inches from rural dark-sky locations, but twice that aperture is recommended for suburban sites.

Most sources cite a distance to NGC1964 of 65 to 70 million light years. An inhabitant of a planet in that galaxy and equipped with highly advanced optical equipment would be able to view the earth around the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. With a diameter of around 100,000 light years, NGC1964 is approximately the same size as our Milky Way.

Skyward
February 2025
A new dawn at the Lowell Observatory������

David H. Levy

Last November 16, the Lowell Observatory opened its new Marley Foundation Astronomy Discovery Center. I think this center represents the most significant advance in inspiring young people to enjoy astronomy in the last 44 years, since Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in 1980.

Perched atop Mars Hill at the famous Lowell Observatory, this wonderful building is a dream. If you live in or near any part of Arizona, please plan to take your family to see this. A girl or a boy entering it is treated to a personal tour of the Universe. It begins with our small home planet, the Earth, and then moves outward past Mars, past Jupiter, and onward past the outermost planets. On the roof are telescopes, and an open-air planetarium from which one can see the real sky. Because Pluto was discovered just a few hundred meters away at this observatory, and because Lowell remains a busy center for work on Pluto, this Discovery solar system easily features nine planets.

One of the first things I wanted to see was the solar exhibit that Tim and Carol Hunter provided. It was way up on the building’s third floor, and it was stunning. The Sun, which in earlier times was studied only in its own “white light” and in later decades in the 20th century through the light of hydrogen alpha, is now visible by spacecraft in almost too many ways to mention. From big sunspots marching slowly across the surface of the Sun, to coronal streamers and filaments sighted by spacecraft, Tim’s exhibit gives us a look at our home star we have never seen before.

I was mentioning all this a recent meeting of the Denver Astronomical Society, One of the DAS members attending it that evening was Brad Schafer, professor emeritus at LSU but who now lives in Tucson. Casually that evening I mentioned that I had been monitoring the Sun since 1963, and he wrote to tell me that if all this is true, then I may have the longest record of solar observations of anybody in the world. More about this in a different article.

As exciting as the s Sun display was, I did want to get another look at my favorite telescope, the 13-inch astrograph telescope that Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto. Where the Discovery Museum showcases the Universe as we see it now, the 13-inch brings us back to an earlier time at Lowell, where Clyde Tombaugh looked out at the solar system, opened his eyes in wonder, and discovered a new world.

It is impossible for me to visit Flagstaff without letting the passions, the emotions of a city of discovery, travel through me. Flagstaff is alive with history, and even its street lights are shaded at night to allow views of the sky. This is the place where V.M. Slipher discovered the red shift that led to Edwin Hubble’s revealing the expanding universe. And who knows what youngster, with a first look at the Discovery center, might return some day to make a further detection of a cosmic secret whose essence we cannot even imagine?

by Glenn Chaple

NGC 891  – Spiral Galaxy Cluster in Andromeda (Magnitude 9.9, Size 12’ X 2’)

If you’re a fan of TV sci-fi shows and are old enough, the accompanying image of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891 taken by astroimager Mario Motta should look oddly familiar. It appeared, along with images of other galaxies, during the closing credits of the mid-1960s sci-fi anthology “Outer Limits.”

Typical of edge-on spirals, NGC 891 displays a luminous spindle shape bisected by a dark lane. This lane, created by dust clouds that inhabit the spiral arms, obscures the galaxy’s bright nucleus. As a result, NGC 891 is much darker than its listed magnitude of 9.9 might indicate. Although glimpsed with difficulty with apertures as small as 4 inches, this low surface brightness galaxy more realistically requires an aperture of 8 to 10 inches under a dark sky environment.

To find NGC 891, owners of GoTo telescopes need only enter its 2000.0 coordinates RA 2h22m33s and DEC +42o20’53” and press the button on the control paddle. I recommend, however, that you eschew the electronics and “go to” NGC 891 via the star-hop method. The reason? Your starting point is gamma (γ) Andromedae (Almach), 3 ½ degrees due west. Mirach is one of the finest double stars in the night sky, a dazzling amber and blue pair whose magnitude 2.3 and 5.0 components are 9.5 arc-seconds apart. What a great way to begin your journey to NGC 891!

NGC 891 was discovered by (who else?) William Herschel on 6 October 1784 with an 18.7 inch reflecting telescope. He described it as “Considerably bright, much extended above 15' 3' broad, a black division 3 or 4' long in the middle.”

Most references assign a distance to NGC 891 of 30 million light years. Its apparent 12 arc-minute breadth translates to an actual size of 100,000 to 120,000 light years.

Here are your NGC 891 challenges: 1. Can you behold the beauty of the topaz and sapphire gem set Almach without being moved to tears? (OK, maybe hyperbole on my part, but this colorful pair is a stunning can’t miss sight.) 2. Can you glimpse NGC 891 with a telescope aperture less than 8 inches? 3. What is the smallest aperture that will capture the galaxy’s dust lane?

David H. Levy

Palomar Mountain Observatory

Last month I drove all the way from my Vail, Arizona home to Palomar Mountain Observatory.  As most of this column’s readers know, I have visited this place many dozens of times from my first encounter in March of 1974, and regularly from the late summer of 1989 to the late spring of 1996.  I have always loved this magical place.  Each visit, as I would drive in, I would pass the expansive dome of the mighty 200-inch Hale Telescope.  As I drove by I felt the telescope waving at me.  It and I are the same age.  The telescope was officially inaugurated on June 3, 1948, just thirteen days after my birth on May 22 that year.  We are both 76. (I was probably too young to give a speech, with a poetic quotation, at that event.)  

The purpose of this visit was to watch the September 16th partial eclipse of the Moon with my close friend Jean Mueller.    I have known Jean for decades.  Jean operated telescopes at Palomar, mostly the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope which opened just before the giant 200-inch. While there, she exposed many photographic plates for the second POSS (Palomar Observatory Sky Survey)  survey.  Mueller would scan the plates for stars that appeared in and around galaxies and mark a galaxy. She would then compare that galaxy with a picture from earlier to see  if the star had newly appeared. If it had, she would measure the position of the star, and then an astronomer would confirm her discovery on the 200-inch. This meticulous work enabled Mueller to discover 107 supernovae in addition to fifteen comets and thirteen now-numbered  asteroids.  Jean Mueller is a prime, absolutely first-rate astronomer and observer of the night sky, and she is admired and highly respected around the world.

[Image left: Comet Tsuchinshan ATLAS]

It has been thirty years since I last visited Palomar, and I was overdue for a return.  As I cruised by the colossal dome housing the 200-inch Hale telescope, at one time the largest in the world; this was not my reason for visiting Palomar all those years ago.  Instead, I drove on some meters on to see the 18-inch Schmidt camera telescope.  This beautiful instrument was the first and is the oldest telescope on this mountain, and its record of discovery is dazzling.  It helped Fritz Zwicky discovered 121 exploding stars, or supernovae, in distant galaxies.  It has a historic record of discovery of asteroids and comets, by far the most important of which is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on March 23, 1993.  In July of 1994 the pieces of this shattered comet slammed into Jupiter.  Colliding at a velocity of 37 miles per second, each fragment left a very bright flash and a large brownish cloud that persisted for months.

During my March visit I learned how the 18-inch was moved to the observatory museum where it has become a lovely exhibit.  Whwen I saw my old friend again; I almost cried.  I then visited the outside of the dome that was our home for so long, and while there the treasured memories of working with Gene and Carolyn flooded back like an incoming ocean tide.  This time I could not hold back the tears of joy.

[Image left: Hale 200-inch telescope dome at twilight]

With the possible exception of our discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, this was by far the most emotive visit I’ve ever had to Palomar.  For the first time in my long association, the overwhelming history of the place really struck me.  I felt I was standing next to Russell Porter as he drew a sketch of the telescope, even before its mirror was installed, pointed towards the north.  He even flashed me his legendary grin.  Porter became famous long before he helped design the 200-inch.  In the November 1925 issue of Scientific American,  he published its lead article “The Heavens Declare the Glory of God.”  That piece of writing also marked the opening of Stellafane, the telescope makers conference still held every year atop Breezy Hill in Vermont. Last year Stellafane celebrated 100 years of its legendary pink clubhouse.

On that incredible evening of September 17, we watched a wonderful partial lunar eclipse.  Only 7% of the Moon was covered in the Earth’s central or umbral shadow, but the outer penumbra shadow dimmed much of the rest of the Moon.  And just five weeks later, mighty Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS painted its rosy picture across the evening sky.    May these haunting events add to our joy in the night sky that shall be remembered forever.

by Glenn Chaple

Messier 2 – Globular Cluster in Aquarius (Mag 6.5; Size 6-8” [visual], 12-16’ [photographically])

Autumn can be a wistful time of year for the globular cluster aficionado as the globular-rich constellations of summer, notably Ophiuchus, Scorpius and Sagittarius, are rapidly disappearing in the western sky. Fortunately, a few stragglers remain visible on October evenings, including the bright globular cluster Messier 2 (NGC 7089) in Aquarius.

Charles Messier found and cataloged it on the evening of September 11, 1760, 14 years to the day after it was stumbled upon by the Italian-born French astronomer Jean-Dominique Maraldi while observing de Chéseaux’s Comet. To both Maraldi and Messier, the object appeared nebulous. It was William Herschel who, in 1783, was able to resolve M2 into its individual stars.

M2 is located at the 2000.0 coordinates RA 21h33m27,0s and DEC -00o49’23.7”, some 5 degrees north of the 3rd magnitude star beta (β) Aquarii and roughly 10 degrees east and slightly north of 3rd
magnitude alpha (α) Aquarii.

M2 photo (left) by Mario Motta.

To find it manually, aim your telescope towards this location (refer to the finder chart, below) and conduct a low-power sweep until a hazy circular patch of light enters the field of view. From there, switch to higher magnifications for that “up close and personal” view.

M2 offers several challenges for the visual observer. 1. Can you see it with the unaided eye? At
magnitude 6.3, M2 should be barely visible from a dark-sky location on a clear, moonless night. 2. What’s the smallest aperture that will resolve M2 into its component stars? This would be an interesting activityfor an astronomy club whose members would observe M2 with different-sized telescopes and comparenotes. 3. Can you see a dark curving lane that crosses the northeast edge of M2? In The Messier Album,co-author John Mallas includes a sketch of M2 and the dark lane as they appeared in a 4-inch refractor. Most resources cite a distance to M2 of 37,000 light-years. It has a calculated diameter of 150 to 175 light-years and contains an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 stars.

(NOTE: Messier 2 was previously featured as the August, 2009, Observer’s Challenge)

Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? 

Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto, 1855.

Decades ago during the fall of a year that I recall might have been 1972, I attended Yom Kippur services at our family synagogue in Montreal, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim. The Congregation had instituted a new feature that year, a Yom Kippur Teach-in. I decided to give it a try. The topics were completely open that year, and the audience applauded every comment. I was a trifle nervous about saying anything, but I stood up and made a comment about God, and how our concepts of God are as
different as each of us might be. I ended my comment with these two lines from Robert Browning’s famous Andrea del Sarto:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? 

My comment did get a smattering of applause. Afterward my life went on, and on, until a few days ago, when writing a book featuring poetry about the night sky, I chanced upon Browning’s poem again.

This Browning poem is surely one of his most famous and insightful. The poet suggests that Mount Morello, in Italy near Florence, is “wrongly traced.” He then supposes that the mountain itself, if it has consciousness, wouldn’t care if its outline was correct or not: “what does the mountain care?” In the final two lines of this section the poet transcends geographically from Morello to infinity, from earthly cares to the outermost reaches of space and time”-- “Or what’s a heaven for?”

It is not often that someone can compare the reading of a great and fabulous poem with a sporting event, but here I try :

I like to compare these lines of “Andrea del Sarto” with watching a baseball game. In my experience a typical baseball game consists of lengthy stretches of strike-outs, some walks, breaks between innings, and other trivia.

But these breaks are interspersed with exciting base hits, doubles, triples, and home runs. These events often happen without warning, and a large crowd in the stands can be electrified instantaneously, rising to its feet as the ball heads off the field, into the stands. It does seem odd to compare a work of English Literature to a baseball game, but in this case, it works, offering us yet another way to enjoy the night sky.

Writing about ball games, I have missed a football game to see a deep partial eclipse of the Moon.

Observer’s Challenge – September, 2024 by Glenn Chaple

NGC 6822 – Barred Barred Irregular Galaxy in Sagittarius (Mag 9.3; Size 15.5” X 13.5’)

Last month’s Observer’s Challenge, the galaxy NGC 6703 in Lyra, escaped the eyes of both William Herschel and his son, John, primarily because of its relative faintness (magnitude 11.3) and small size (just 2.4 arc-minutes). Would a brighter and larger galaxy be easier to view? Ask anyone who has tried to catch a glimpse of this month’s Challenge, NGC 6822 (“Barnard’s Galaxy” in Sagittarius), and you’ll get a resounding “No!” See Mario Motta's image, below.

Barnard’s Galaxy is a full two magnitudes brighter than NGC 6703, but its light is spread out into an oval-shaped area that’s half the moon’s apparent diameter. And, yes, the Herschels missed this one as well. Barnard’s Galaxy bears the name of its discoverer, the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard. He spotted it with a small refracting telescope (sources disagree as to whether it was 5 or 6 inches in aperture) in 1884. And therein lies the secret to visually capturing this elusive galaxy – use small aperture and low magnification to encompass a field at least a degree across. In the early 1920s, Edwin Hubble noted that Barnard’s Galaxy was better viewed with low power in a 4-inch finderscope than with the primary focus of the 100-inch Mt. Wilson reflector! You can even see it with binoculars in areas where skies are exceptionally dark and transparent.

Barnard’s Galaxy is located at the 2000.0 coordinates RA 19h44m 56.6s and DEC -14o47’21”. Starhoppers can find their way using the accompanying chart, courtesy of www.skyledge.net. If, after an extensive effort, you’re unable to spot Barnard’s Galaxy, don’t leave the area! In the same low-power field, a little over a half-degree NNW at 2000.0 coordinates RA 19h43m 57.8s and DEC -14o09’12”, is the tiny (22 by 15 arc-second) planetary nebula NGC 6818. Under low magnifications, it may be mistaken for a 10th magnitude star. An eyepiece yielding 60X or more will reveal its fuzzy nature. Barnard’s Galaxy is classified as a dwarf barred irregular galaxy. At a distance of 1.5 million light-year, it has a diameter of around 700,000 light-years. It’s a member of the Local Group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.

David Levy's Skyward for August 2024

Area 377

By David H. Levy

For the first time in this series of articles, I am writing about the same subject, Comet Olbers, twice in a row.  This time I observed the comet using an unusual small telescope, a 4-inch reflector named Cole.  Joshua Cole is the central character in one of my Dad’s favorite childhood novels, Cole of Spyglass Mountain.  At the end of this beautiful story, Cole is informed that his discovery of life on Mars has been confirmed, and the book’s closing thought is this:  “First to Report Discovery:  Cole of Spyglass Mountain, famous in a night.”

On Sunday, evening, 7 July 2024, I joined my colleagues Tim Hunter and James McGaha at Tim’s Grasslands Observatory. While they prepared for an evening of astrophotography,  I set Cole up outside and began an hour of comet hunting in the northwest.  At first the comet seemed elusive.  But as I searched I noticed a familiar 10-square degree patch of sky.  This was area 377, and right away it brought me back to my teenage years, when I began observing with friends at the Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.    Among their many observing programs was an organized comet and nova search.  The sky was divided into 438 discrete areas, and I was assigned two:  Area 40, which included Vega and its constellation of Lyra, and 377, south of the Big Dipper’s bowl.   For years I faithfully checked these areas until the program, like some of the comets it never found, faded away more than half a century ago.  

Tonight was different. By sighting along some of the star patterns in area 377 I found a spot.  Slowly I moved Cole through this region of stars.  And then, just like that!  There it was, Comet Olbers, a little east of Area 377, brighter than it was last month, and sporting a nice 1-degree long tail.  Tim and James were able to spot it using Cole, and later through binoculars.  

Comets mark the passage of our lives.  My great-grandson Beau will be nearing the middle of his life when Halley returns, and his grandchildren may pause to take a look at Olbers’s comet when it next visits at the end of this century.  But whether they see these celestial apparitions or not, may they at least have the will to pause in their lives, and reflect upon the great cosmic clock that chimes not on the hour but at any minute when something new, different, and mesmerizing pays a visit to the planet that is our home.