Australian Sky and Telescope 2015

MOON MAPPING: How did the
lunar craters get their names? p.18
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY: Tips for

using one-shot colour cameras p.66
FACT AND FICTION: Jules Verne

predicted modern space travel p.34
TEST REPORT:
Deep-Sky Planner 6
software p.70
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY
ISSUE 87
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
p.12
Chasing a solar
eclipse p.74
THE UNIVERSES
OLDEST LIGHT p.26
Contents
August/September 2015 Vol. 11, No. 6
NEWS & FEATURES

5
8
48 Double star notes

Double stars to see in Sagittarius
By Ross Gould
Spectrum
By Jonathan Nally
49 Variable stars
A Mira-type appears from the darkness
By Alan Plummer
News notes
10 Discoveries
By David Ellyard
75 10 & 5 Years Ago
Cover Story
12 Pluto: mission accomplished!
Our first up-close pictures of Pluto
and its moons, courtesy of NASA's
New Horizons fly-by mission.
By Jonathan Nally
18 The man who put the names
on the Moon
Giambattista Riccioli had a grander
plan than meets the eye and
perhaps a secret agenda.
By Andrew Livingston
OBSERVING & EXPLORING
50 Comets
Four comets to find in the southern skies
By David Seargent
42 Binocular highlight
A triple star and a globular cluster
By Gary Seronik
51 Targets
Objects of the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud
By Sue French
44 Tonight's sky
Stargazing on moonlit nights
By Fred Schaaf
54 Exploring the Solar System

Saturn's puzzling hexagonal cloud pattern
By Thomas A. Dobbins
46 Sun, Moon and planets

Three planets grace our evening skies
By Jonathan Nally
56 Exploring the Moon

Cracks and creases in the lunar landscape
By Charles A. Wood
p.34
Jules Verne's space predictions
26 Planck upholds standard

cosmology
Latest analysis of the universes oldest
light provides an exquisite look at the
cosmos.
By Camille M. Carlisle
34 Science of Jules Verne's ction
Nineteenth-century science and
technology shaped two classic tales of
imaginary spaceflight.
By Dean Regas
4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015
p.51
Deep sky sights in Sagittarius
Jonathan Nally
Spectrum
The final new world
A
p.74
Aurora and an eclipse
THE ASTRONOMY SCENE

60 Book review
A beautiful new star atlas for the ages
By Tony Flanders
64 Telescope workshop
A portable Newtonian for quick setups
By Gary Seronik
66 Astrophotography
Tips for using one-shot colour cameras
By Warren Keller
s I write this, two days after New Horizons historic fly-by of the Pluto system, I cant
help but feel a sense of sadness mixed in with all of the exhilaration and wonder. For
this will almost certainly have been the last exploration of a major Solar System body
in my lifetime. Why? Well, for a start, we know that there are no more planets within the
orbit of Neptune. Sure, there are thousands of Kuiper Belt Objects further out, but theyre all
probably pretty much like Pluto. If theres another large body out there to be discovered, its
going to be much farther out and astronomers have good reason to think it would have to
be at least three times Plutos distance from the Sun.
But lets say that one was found tomorrow, and a mission proposed. Itd take at least 5-6
years to design, build and launch it, and given that it took New Horizons almost 10 years
to reach Pluto it would take a good 30-odd years for the spacecraft to reach the new world.
So thats already 35 years, and assumes that a new planet is found tomorrow. It wont be. It
might be decades before one is discovered and a mission approved. So conservatively, were
looking at 50 years at the very least before we visit another major world for the very first
time assuming one exists.
But all that aside, I feel so fortunate to have lived during the initial era of space exploration,
and the first reconnaissance of the Solar System. And its certainly not over the Juno
mission will arrive at Jupiter next year, there are more Mars missions in the works, the James
Webb Space Telescope is soon to launch, and there are plenty of other places to visit and
explore. The years ahead will not be dull, thats for sure.
Jonathan Nally
Editor
[email protected]
70 Test report
Deep-Sky Planner 6 software
By Rod Mollise
Australian Sky & Telescope is now on Facebook. Complementing our website,

Facebook helps keep you alerted to astronomy news and information about
Australian Sky & Telescope.
74 Nordic nights
Experiencing a total solar eclipse
By Melissa Hulbert
76 Gallery
Best photos from our readers
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY

ISSUE NO 87 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015
79 Marketplace
80 Index to advertisers
82 Focal point
What to say to your astrology friends
By Alan MacRobert
SUBSCRIBE TO AS&T
41 Subscription offer
Subscribe and receive a Star Charts
CD or SpaceFlight DVD!
ON THE COVER:
First pictures from New Horizons'

historic encounter with Pluto and
its retinue of moons. See page 12.
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News Notes
OBSERVATORIES
Amateurs get keys to David Dunlap Observatory
n April 15, the Royal

Astronomical Society of
Canada (RASC) announced
that its 900-member Toronto Centre
is taking ownership of the historic
David Dunlap Observatory, located
in the suburb of Richmond Hill. The
observatory and its administrative
building are being donated by Corsica
Development, which purchased
the facility and 77 hectares of land
around it for US$70 million from the
University of Toronto in 2009. Thats
when local RASC volunteers, who had
been involved in the observatorys
outreach programs for decades,
stepped in to maintain and operate the
historic facility. Since then all parties
involved have been working amicably
toward this final arrangement. Corsica
is also giving 40 acres of the property
to the town, which will keep it from

being developed.
The observatory got its start in 1935
after the widow of David Alexander
Dunlap, a wealthy mining executive
and astronomy enthusiast, provided
the funds for construction. Its premier
instrument, a 1.9-metre reflector, was
then the second largest in the world
and remains the largest telescope in
Canada. But urban growth long ago
made the site unsuitable for most
types of observational research,
and the universitys astronomical
interests shifted to larger facilities
elsewhere. Dunlap is just one of
several observatories around the world
adapting to changing management or
financial circumstances.
David Dunlap Observatorys administration building,

with two of the facility's three telescope domes built
on top. JOHN H. MARTIN / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
J. KELLY BEATTY
DARK MATTER I How slippery is dark matter?

In their effort to understand the unseen
matter that holds spinning galaxies together
and forms the skeleton of cosmic structure,
astronomers are trying to determine how
much this dark matter interacts with itself.
The answer seems to be: not much.
Weakly interacting massive particles
(WIMPs), physicists most popular dark
particle candidate, are downright antisocial
they glide right past one another.
But in simulations, slippery dark matter
particles pool too easily, creating deep
gravitational wells in which galaxies crowd
more densely than observed out in the real
universe.
One way to overcome the pooling problem
is to make dark matter less slippery. In
alternative models, so-called hidden-sector
dark matter particles make contact, explains
Jonathan Feng (University of California,
Irvine). Many of these models have the
added benefit of explaining a mysterious
X-ray spectral line seen in some galaxies and
galaxy clusters.
Perfectly slippery dark particles should
have a self-interaction cross section (a
measure of how strongly they interact) near
0 cm2/g. Hidden-sector models propose
values that range from 0.1 to 10 cm2/g.

Astronomers can indirectly measure
dark matters stickiness by looking at galaxy
cluster collisions. When clusters collide, most
galaxies sweep right past one another, but
their tenuous gas halos crash together and
produce beautiful, complex X-ray emission.
If its slippery, dark matter will stay
closely aligned with the galaxies. (The
dark matter isnt seen directly but by its
gravitational distortion of background
light.) But if dark matter particles interact
with one another, then theyll do one of
two things: the dark mass will slow down,
lagging behind the galaxies motion, or the
dark particles will scatter, displacing the
dark mass from the galaxies. Either would
change the distortion pattern.
Previous observations have limited
the cross section to less than 1.25 cm2/g.
Narrowing the possibilities further has
proven a challenge, mostly because it is
difficult to understand individual systems
3D geometries.
But now David Harvey (Observatoire de
Sauverny, Switzerland) and colleagues have
taken a statistical approach, averaging out
the measurements of 30 galaxy clusters to
do away with any 3D uncertainty. Drawing

from the archives of the Hubble Space
Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory,
the team measured the offset between the
galaxies and the dark mass. The astronomers
found that, across 30 clusters, the offset
was essentially zero. Dark matter must be
slippery indeed, with a cross section less
than 0.47 cm2/g, the team reports in the
March 27 issue of Science.
The analysis is excellent, but there are
limitations, says Douglas Clowe (Ohio
University). For one, its all archival data,
collected for disparate science goals. To
level the playing field, the team opted to
limit the analysis to observations through
one filter. But that makes it difficult to
separate cluster galaxies from foreground
and background galaxies.
Even with the tighter limit from Harveys
study, hidden-sector models have enough
wiggle room to remain viable. The really
interesting message here, Feng says, is
that these observations are getting tighter
and tighter in a very interesting region of
parameter space.
MONICA YOUNG
GALACTIC CENTER
Mysterious
X-rays spotted
in Milky Way
NASAs NuSTAR mission has detected an
unexpected haze of high-energy X-rays in
our galaxys crowded centre. Kerstin Perez
(Columbia University) and colleagues
found the X-rays emanating from within
our galaxys central 10 light-years or so,
they report in the April 30 issue of Nature.
In and of themselves, X-rays from the
galactic centre arent unusual. But the
X-rays NuSTAR detects dont seem to be
associated with structures already known
to exist, such as the supernova remnant
Sgr A East or the dust and gas clouds of
Sgr A West that are falling toward the
supermassive black hole.
Instead, the team proposes that
thousands of dead stars could be
responsible for the high-energy X-rays:
massive (and still-growing) white
dwarfs, spun-up pulsars, or black holes
and neutrons stars feeding on lowmass companion stars. But each of the
proposed explanations has its own set of
challenges, and astronomers dont know
which is correct.
Take millisecond pulsars, potentially
the best option. These neutron stars flash
energetic beams in our direction as they
spin like blindingly quick lighthouses.
They began as the cores of massive stars
that went supernova, then spun themselves
up with gas stolen from companion stars.
Many massive stars die in the galactic
centre, so these pulsars existence seems
inevitable. Such a population might even
help explain a mysterious excess of gamma
rays seen from this region.
But although astronomers expect to
see lots of millisecond pulsars in the
galactic centre, so far theyve spotted
none. That might be because the gas and
dust between the galactic centre and us
smears out the pulsing radio signals. But
millisecond pulsars hot surfaces also emit
low-energy X-rays, so if there were a large
number of these pulsars, then other X-ray
telescopes such as NASAs Chandra X-ray
Observatory should have spotted them.
They havent.
MONICA YOUNG
SUN I Do explosions heat the Suns corona?

New evidence suggests that nanoflares,
small but potent bursts of energy, might
heat the Suns outer atmosphere. But the
evidence is still up for debate.
For decades, scientists have struggled
to understand why the Suns outer
atmosphere, known as the corona, is a
blistering-hot few million degrees when its
visible surface, the photosphere, bubbles
away far below at only thousands of
degrees. Ideas range from waves rippling
along magnetic field lines to field lines
twisted so tightly they snap, releasing
tremendous amounts of energy.
Theres also another question to answer:
is the heating process steady, or does it
occur in explosive bursts?
These bursts would be small stuff
they release only a billionth the energy
of regular flares, and theyd be too small,
quick and faint for telescopes to capture
individually. But even a nanoflare would
be equivalent to a 50-megatonne hydrogen
bomb, and millions going off per second
could feasibly heat the corona.
Now astronomers have found indirect
evidence that these small explosions heat
the solar corona. On April 28 Adrian Daw
(NASA Goddard) presented results from
the Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence

Spectrograph (EUNIS) sounding rocket
mission at the first Triennial Earth-Sun
Summit. The EUNIS results point to
short-lived pockets of superhot plasma
that are about 10 million Celsius, ten
times hotter than the sizzling corona
around them. The researchers argue that
these temperatures could only come from
the combined echo of many tiny flashes in
the solar atmosphere.
But if nanoflares behave like mini
versions of larger, well-observed flares
(and we dont know whether thats true),
then the energy they unleash ought to
accelerate particles, which will emit a
particular pattern of X-rays. Observations
with NASAs NuSTAR spacecraft reveal
X-ray emission from the super-hot gas, but
the telescope sees no sign of the particle
signature needed to cinch the case.
That might be because the Sun is still too
active, overwhelming NuSTARs vision. As
solar activity decreases, NuSTAR will have
a better shot at making out fainter, nonthermal emission and perhaps providing
definitive evidence for nanoflares.
MONICA YOUNG
GALAXIES
Runaway compact galaxies?

Astronomers have discovered
195 compact elliptical galaxies, upping
the known number of these weird objects
sixfold. These dwarf galaxies are puny balls
of old stars, each having maybe a few billion
solar masses. Most come in clusters, and
observers have found debris around some,
suggesting that they were once larger but
had their outer edges ripped from them
by other galaxies. But a couple sulk all by
themselves, making the tidal disruption
theory problematic: if theres nothing around
to strip material off these galaxies, did they
really shrink?
In the April 24 issue of Science, Igor
Chilingarian (Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory) and Ivan Zolotukhin (Moscow
State University, Russia) report their
discovery of 195 of these objects, with 56
in clusters, 128 in galaxy groups and 11 in
isolation. Given the galaxies motions and

sizes, the authors suggest that interactions
with two or more other galaxies could sling
these diminutive ellipticals into the cosmic
outback. That would explain how galaxies
created via tidal disruption sit out in the
sticks, where there arent many galaxies to
interact with.
But astronomers need to check this theory
with rigorous computer simulations its by
no means conclusive. Other researchers have
suggested that isolated compact ellipticals
might arise when dwarf galaxies merge.
With no additional stuff nearby to feed on,
the compact ellipticals would simply stop
growing and never reach full size. This new,
larger population will thus help astronomers
explore these galaxies origin.
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
David Ellyard
Discoveries
Mars and the meteorite

The continuing quest to nd life on the Red Planet
The desolate red plains of Mars are not where youd expect to nd life today but what about in the past? NASA
s there, or has there ever been, life on Mars?

The question has been posed many times
over the centuries. Many a science fiction
story has been built on the premise that Mars
does have life, and ongoing scientific
investigations using both spacecraft in orbit
and landers on the surface have sought
whatever evidence is available. It now appears
that conditions were once amenable to life,
albeit primitive, with indications that the
apparently bone-dry planet was once much
wetter and had a thicker atmosphere. That of
course is not proof that there was life, just that
it was possible.
A few decades back intriguing evidence
turned up in an unexpected place, namely on
the icecap of Antarctica. It took the form of a
meteorite, one of some 7,000 gathered by search
parties since the 1970s. Found in December
1984 in the Allen Hills region, it was given the
catalogue name ALH 84001. Weighing just less
than two kilograms, it looked like a large potato
and was partly covered in a black glassy crust,
the consequence of being partly melted as it
fought its way through the Earths atmosphere.
Dating using natural radioisotopes and other
technologies suggested its life history.
Indications were that the rock which formed
ALH 84001 had originally hardened from
molten lava on some planet or moon about four
billion years ago, before much later being
blasted into space by the impact of an asteroid.
The internal shock damage caused by that
immense event can still be seen within the
meteorite. Its time in orbit around the Sun
before being captured by the Earth could be
estimated from the results of collisions with
cosmic rays, which suggested about 16 million
years of wandering. Its location in Antarctica
indicated it arrived about 13,000 years ago
It is generally believed that the meteorite
came from Mars. The strongest evidence for
this comes from the traces of gas trapped
It has been suggested that tiny structures on

meteorite ALH 84001 are fossilised Martian
nanobacteria. NASA/JSC/STANFORD U.
within it. These gases represent a fragment of

the atmosphere of the planet from which it had
been blasted. The mixture of gases matched the
known atmosphere of Mars quite closely and
was very different from that of Earth, Venus or
any other planets atmosphere that has so far
been analysed.
Another intriguing piece of evidence was the
presence within the meteorite of tiny globules
of carbonate materials, of a kind most likely to
be produced when some sort of liquid, perhaps
water, penetrated the rock about 3.6 billion
years ago. That also points us towards the Red
Planet, since there is growing evidence that
water once flowed on Mars either on the surface
or underground. The carbonates were
precipitated at a temperature of about 18,
which is very much warmer than Mars is now.
But the real excitement came on August 6,
1996, when NASA announced that the
meteorite appeared to contain a tiny structure,
which some observers quickly described as a
fossil, implying some evidence remaining of a
primitive life form. The fossil looked like a
tiny tube, considerably less than a micron in
diameter (and therefore much less than 100th
the width of a human hair). It was located
within the carbonate globules just mentioned,
and therefore gives a possible geological timing
for the existence of a lifeform (if that was

indeed its origin).
The immediate response from those
sceptical of this suggestion was that the fossil
was very much smaller than any known
microorganism on Earth, which are a few
microns in diameter. But there had been
discussion for some years about the possibility
of nanobes, much smaller than microbes,
existing on Earth. Perhaps this was an example.
The meteorite contains some organic
compounds and some of the structures which
could be associated with biological activity.
If the structure within the meteorite was
actually a fossil, we would have the first
evidence of a life of any kind having existed
elsewhere than on Earth. That would indeed be
a very exciting find, and at the time it was seen
as so significant that the US president made an
announcement about it.
Since that time similar structures have
turned up in other Martian meteorites, which
could be taken to strengthen the case that they
really do represent traces of life. But all the
supporters of this idea really have to go on at
the present time is the shape of the structures,
and the doubters think that that is by itself an
unreliable guide. Better information would
come from analysing the chemical composition
of the structures, such as the ratio of carbon
isotopes within them, but available techniques
are not yet able to deal with structures so tiny.
So on this matter, as on the more general
question of life on Mars, we must accept that
the jury is still out. But with the pace of
exploration of Mars, with new landers and
orbiters now arriving every couple of years to
carry on the search, it is likely we will have new
evidence to go on very soon.
David Ellyard presented SkyWatch on ABC TV in
the 1980s. His StarWatch StarWheel has sold over
100,000 copies.
ROWE-ACKERMANN
SCHMIDT ASTROGRAPH
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Pluto encounter
Pluto:
"H
ome run! New

Horizons is returning
amazing results
already. The data look absolutely
gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are
just mind blowing." Alan Stern,
principal investigator for New
Horizons at the Southwest Research
Institute (SwRI) in Colorado,
speaking moments after the release of
the first close-up images of the
surface of Pluto, was understandably
elated. As leader of the New Horizons
team, he had shepherded the mission
from when it was just a concept on
paper, through to a flawless fly-by
encounter almost nine and a half
years after launch.
Around 9:50pm, Australian
Eastern Standard Time, on July 14,

New Horizons reached its closest
point to Pluto as it zipped past at
around 50,000 kilometres per hour.
Out of touch with mission control at
the time (its design meant it couldnt
take images and communicate
simultaneously), the dozens of people
in mission control at the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, and millions of people
around the world could only watch
the countdown clock and keep their
fingers crossed that everything was
proceeding smoothly.
They neednt have worried. Just
hours after that critical point, New
Horizons fired off a bunch of signals
to Earth to say it was in good shape
and had successfully completed all of

its imagery and data collection tasks.
And with that, the final unexplored
major Solar System body was a
stranger no longer 50 years to the
day since NASAs Mariner 4 had sent
back the first close-up images of
another planet, Mars.
Now, well all have to wait patiently
as New Horizons slowly sends back
the reams of data and thousands of
images it has taken. Due to its huge
(and increasing) distance from Earth,
and low radio power, the data has to
be sent back very slowly. Its going to
take about 16 months for it all to be
received. Its almost as if the spacecraft
will be tantalising us, drip feeding the
waiting scientists and the general
public with a slow flow of wonders.
But given that it has been 85 years
since Pluto was discovered, and after a
journey of almost a decade, I suppose
we can wait a little longer.
The images presented on these
pages were taken in the days leading
up to and around the encounter, and
include the first close-up image of
Plutos surface, released one day after
closest approach. We look forward to
bringing you more images of this
amazing double-planet system in the
months ahead.
HAPPY FACES The New Horizons mission
has involved hundreds of scientists,
engineers and technicians during all phases
of the project design, construction,
launch, deep space cruise, tracking and
communications, the encounter, and now
the data analysis to come. After a journey
of more than 9 years, its no wonder there
was jubilation at mission control when
the moment of closest approach to Pluto
arrived. NASA/B.INGALLS
A NEW WORLD Pluto

and its already famous
1,600-km-wide heartshaped region, now named
Tombaugh Regio after the
dwarf planets discoverer,
is seen in all its glory in the
last full-frame image taken
before closest approach.
The distance from the
spacecraft to Pluto was
about 768,000 kilometres.
NASA/JHU APL/ SWRI
ICY POLE This image from New

Horizons Linear Etalon Imaging
Spectral Array shows the
coverage of methane ice across
the surface of Pluto. Already,
scientists can see that there is
wide variation from region to
region. The spectrum plots come
from the two highlighted areas;
one from near the north pole
(green) and the other from near
the equator (red).
NASA/JHU APL/ SWRI
Pluto encounter
Exploring a double planet
luto and Charon are unique in

the Solar System, with some
scientists considering them to
be a double planet. This is because of
Charons large size compared to its
parent... unlike most moons, which
are tiny compared to their host planets.
(To be fair, many of those same
scientists consider the Earth and our
Moon to be a double planet too, since
the Moon is quite large.) The New
Horizons mission is giving us our first
up-close look at the distant pair. These
early images were released in the days
leading up to, and the day after, closest
approach on July 14. Well bring you
more imagery in future issues.
THE NINTH PLANET Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930, by a young astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh,
working at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Tombaugh noticed a tiny dot that had moved in the six days
between images taken on January 23 (left) and January 29. LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FAMILY PORTRAIT
Pluto has ve known
moons, shown in
this Hubble image
from 2012. Charon
was discovered in
1978, Nix and Hydra
in 2005, Kerberos
in 2011 and Styx in
2012. In keeping with
tradition, all of the
names were chosen
from mythologies of
the underworld. NASA/
ESA/L. FRATTARE (STScI)
THE SPOTTY SIDE Because New Horizons zipped past

Pluto so quickly, it was able to get close-up images of
only one side of the dwarf planet. This image, taken
from a distance of 4 million km, shows the other side.
Astronomers and geologists are intrigued by the
different features in the terrain. NASA/JHU APL/SWRI
DOUBLE PLANET New Horizons was still 3.7 million

kilometres from Pluto and Charon when its cameras
snapped this colour image of the pair. NASA/JHU APL/SWRI
COLOURFUL COMPOSITION These images

of Pluto (left) and Charon are presented in
false, exaggerated colour to bring out details
in the chemical composition of the bodies
surfaces. The distance between the two
worlds has been reduced too. Scientists will
use images such as these to tease out the
chemical make-up and history of the dwarf
planet and its largest moon. NASA/JHU APL/SWRI
HELLO HYDRA New Horizons

speed and trajectory meant that
it wasnt able to get close-up
images of all of the ve moons.
But a lot can be learned from
lower-resolution images. This
shot of Hydra gives scientists a
better handle on its size, which is
approximately 43 x 33 kilometres.
NASA/JHU APL/SWRI
SURFACE SCAN This is

the close-up image of
part of Plutos surface
released less than a day
after closest approach. It
shows mountains along
the dwarf planets equator.
The initial reaction from
mission scientists is that
the terrain is probably no
older than 100 million years,
which makes it quite young
in geological terms, and
probably indicates that Pluto
still has active geology.
Higher-resolution images
to be sent back in the
weeks and months head will
provide more information.
NASA/JHU APL/SWRI
Pluto encounter
he largest of Plutos five

moons, Charon, has
surprised scientists by
revealing a youngish and
complex surface, unlike the
crater-battered terrain many of
them had expected to see.
Originally I thought Charon
might be an ancient terrain
covered in craters. Many people
on the team thought that might
have been the case, said Cathy
Olkin, a mission scientist from
the Southwest Research
Institute. And so Charon just
blew our socks off when we had
the new image today.
MYSTERY MOON Many scientists were expecting

Charon to look a lot like our Moon plastered with
craters. But this New Horizons image, taken the day
before closest approach from a distance of 466,000
kilometres, shows a much more interesting terrain,
including a network of troughs and cliffs spanning
1,000 km on one side of the globe. The canyon on
the upper right edge is about 7 to 9 km deep.
NASA/JHU APL/SwRI
LUCKY DISCOVERY Charon was discovered accidentally in 1978 when

astronomer James Christy noticed a fuzzy blob extending from the
side of Pluto, in fuzzy images taken with a ground-based telescope. By
going back and looking at earlier images, he again saw the blob, and
it appeared to be circling Pluto in a little over six days. It could only
be a moon. The discovery was officially announced on July 7, 1978,
and Christy proposed calling it Charon the mythological underworld
ferryman who punted souls across the river Acheron. The name was
formally adopted in February 1985. US NAVAL OBSERVATORY
CHASMS AND CRATERS Taken three days before closest approach,

these images of Charon began to reveal the moons interesting
surface features including a dark area nicknamed Mordor in the
northern polar region. The larger image (top of page) has shown this
area to have a diffuse boundary, suggesting it is a thin covering of
dark material. NASA/JHU APL/SwRI
Naming the Craters
The man who put the names on the
Giambattista Riccioli had a grander plan than

meets the eye and perhaps a secret agenda.
ne benefit of binoculars is
their big-picture view. Take
the Moon. Looking at it with
only 8 or 10 power makes you focus
on larger issues, such as why did the
second-quarter (waxing gibbous)
Moon get the oceans with the
ominous names? And whats that
gulag of ancient Greek astronomers
doing, shivering on the shores of the
Sea of Cold? Why are the crater names
beginning with Al- so concentrated in
the south? And why was the great
Galileo assigned such an insignificant
little out-of-the-way crater that you
need 20 to spot it?
The man to ask, the man with the
plan, the man who named all the
major features on the Moon, was the
Italian Jesuit astronomer Giambattista
Riccioli (15981671).
Riccioli published his landmark
Moon map in 1651, just 42 years after
Galileo first turned a telescope to the
heavens and saw that the Moon was
rough and mountainous and 18
years after the Inquisition sentenced
him for advocating the Copernican
system of the Earth and planets
revolving around the Sun. Ricciolis

map of the Moon was the best one yet.
Its detail and accuracy are impressive
considering the small, primitive, hardto-use telescopes of the time.
And all those features on the map
needed names.
Look at the Moons celestial eastern
limb and just south of the equator
there Riccioli named a modest crater
for himself, giving him the
easternmost ringside seat on his
handiwork. Next to him is his
assistant Francesco Grimaldi, who
drew the map. Then comes the Polish
astronomer Johannes Hevelius, who
had recently published his own Moon
map, in 1647, featuring a grab bag of
royals, religious figures, scientists and
explorers. Finally, on the opposite side
sits Langrenus, whose earlier (1645)
map had used neutral but headscratchingly obscure names from
Greek and Latin geographies. Riccioli
left him in his own chosen place on
the shores of Mare Fecunditatis. There
they are, the three pioneers of
selenography, except it was pretty
much winner-take-all for Riccioli.
What made his names such a

success? And why do we use most of
them today?
The Moons eight octants

ANDREW
LIVINGSTON
Riccioli divided the Moon into eight

slices like a pizza, drawn on his map
and labelled around the edges as seen
on the facing page. They start in the
celestial northeast with I Octans
upper left on the map. An odd place
to start? Watch what happens.
Working around clockwise in a
historical timeline, Riccioli sprinkles
the Moon with ancient Greeks,
followed by Romans and early
Christians, then medieval scholars
both Christian and Muslim, to end
with a grand finale of his fellow
moderns in VIII Octans, the
easternmost and last to be wellrevealed as the Moon waxes to full.
Riccioli didnt always follow this
design strictly. Some eras spill out of
their octants, and along the southern
limb from Langrenus onward are
more of Ricciolis contemporaries
new authorities taking their seats
opposite the ancients.
Hold the Latin!

NAMING OF PARTS Ricciolis Moon map, from his Almagestum Novum (1651). The subhead
says, Men neither live on the Moon. Nor do their souls go there. Ricciolis rebuke of those
popular fancies is ironic thanks to him the Moon is full of famous men. And a few women.
ALMAGESTUM NOVUM
Sorry, not an option. In Ricciolis day,

scientists not only published in Latin
(Galileo was an exception) but were
Naming the Craters
Aristarchus
Galilaei A
Galilaei
Reiner
Gamma
Kepler
Copernicus
Galilaei
Reiner
Gamma
Reiner
THE COPERNICANS Aristarchus, the Greek Copernicus, is placed above Galileo, Kepler and prominent Copernicus himself. Right: Riccioli didnt intend Galileo to
end up with the tiny crater so named today. He applied the name to whats now called Reiner Gamma: an odd, at, light marking, part of a streamer with unusual
magnetism that may have been left by a comets ion tail. NASA LRO (2)
usually known by Latinised names.

Which gives the moderns on the
Moon a deceptively antique flavour.
Regiomontanus in VI Octans, for
example, was born Johannes Mller
von Knigsberg (Regents Mount) in
1436. A Johnny-come-lately by lunar
standards, he was the assistant of
Purbachius, the crater above. After
Purbachius sudden death in 1461,
Regiomontanus found himself
finishing off his masters update of
Ptolemys Almagest. They had been in
Italy, invited by the scholar Cardinal
Bessarion, whod gotten his hands on
an Almagest in the original Greek;
youll find Bessarion north of Kepler
(note that Riccioli often used the
obsolete long s, which looks almost
like an f ). Regiomontanus ended up
in Nuremberg, a scientific centre
where the wealthy Bernhard Walther
helped him build the first scientific
printing press. Valtherus, now Walter,
is positioned just below
Regiomontanus as if to support him.
Walthers house, later bought by
Albrecht Drer, is a Nuremberg
landmark to this day.
A quick tour of the octants

I and II Octans: Ancient Astronomers
On Ice. The north polar region glitters
with ancient Greeks. Plato, Aristoteles,
Archimedes and Eratosthenes are the

leading lights, but who outshines
them all? For Riccioli it was evidently
Aristarchus of Samos (circa 310230
BC), Copernicus predecessor who
first proposed a Sun-centred Solar
System with the planets in the right
order and the stars far away. Riccioli
assigned him the brightest marking
on the Moon. After he had been
ignored in favour of Aristotle and
Ptolemy for almost two thousand
years, Ricciolis map brings things
literally full circle Aristarchus
neighbours to the south at the end of
the timeline are the Copernican
astronomers of VIII Octans.
But here Riccioli, a Jesuit priest,
was treading on politically risky
ground just 18 years after Galileo
had been forced to denounce
Copernicanism and was dealt a life
sentence of house arrest. Elsewhere,
in public, Riccioli was quite the
orthodox anti-Copernican, as
displayed on his books frontispiece.
But did he harbour secret Copernican
sympathies? More on this later.
III Octans, outer: Sunset Myth.
Shortly after new Moon, when the
crescent hangs in the west after sunset,
the legendary Greek strongmen
Hercules and Atlas stand boldly on
the terminator. Hercules second-to-
Julius Caesar
earns his place here
thanks to the Julian
calendar, which
brought the dates
back in line with the
seasons for centuries
to come.
last labour was to retrieve the Golden
Apples of the Sun, apples that gave
you immortality. Guarded by a
serpent, they grew in the Garden of
the Hesperides, the Sunset goddesses,
at the western end of the world where
Atlas stood holding up the heavens.
Since the Hesperides were Atlas
daughters, he agreed to fetch the
apples if Hercules relieved him of his
burden. Note how Hercules, of mixed
birth, gets the smaller crater while
Atlas, the 100% god with the full-time
job, gets the larger.
III Octans (inner) and IIII: Rome.
Julius Caesar earns his place here
thanks to the Julian calendar, which
brought the dates back in line with the
seasons for centuries to come. (When
the calendar needed another tune-up
by 1582, Pope Gregory turned to
Aloysius Lilius and Christopher

Clavius, duly cratered in VI Octans.)
Manilius is next door for his epic
poem Astronomica. Agrippa to his
south wasnt the famous martial sonin-law of Augustus, but a later GrecoRoman astronomer about whom we
know next to nothing except that
Ptolemy mentioned him observing an
occultation of the Pleiades in AD 92.
IIII Octans raises the question:
Whats a Sea of Crises (Mare Crisium)
doing among the serene, tranquil seas
of the first quarter? Riccioli followed
a separate scheme for naming the
maria; they seem to follow
contemporary popular ideas about
the influence of the Moons phases on
moods and weather. New Moon, for
instance, was a time of changes
times of crises. But there may be a
Roman connection here too. Perhaps
Riccioli was referring to the
persecution of the early Christians by
ruthless emperors such as Nero, who
was quite unimproved by the
philosopher Seneca being his tutor.
Seneca, held in high regard by the
Church, got a crater for his efforts.
Later we move down to Firmicus,
astrologer-polemicist to the first
Christian emperor, Constantine. The
now defunct Terra Mannae, Land of
Manna, is populated by early Catholic
scholars such as Dionysius Exiguus,
the 6th-century monk who devised
our AD chronology of years, and
Hypatia
Abbot Alcuin of York, advisor to

Charlemagne. Alcuins gone from
modern maps; his dubious
astronomical credentials got him
swapped out for a more recent
Englishman, Sir John Lubbock.
V Octans: Christianity Triumphant.
The prominent crater trio Theophilus,
Cyrillus and Catharina lived in
Alexandria, which got them seaside
locations on Mare Nectaris. Fourthcentury Alexandria was the New York
of its time, and Saint Theophilus was
its crusading bishop. His destruction
of the famous temple of Serapis
symbolised the final triumph of
Christianity over paganism. His
nephew Saint Cyrillus followed in his
footsteps by banishing the Jews.
Hypatia, above them, is the only
astronomer here, with a crater nearby
for her father, Theon Junior. (His
neighbouring senior namesake lived
three centuries earlier.) The pagan
Hypatia, a remarkable scholar,
Neoplatonist philosopher and
mathematician, came to a sticky end
thanks to Saint Cyrillus. Her
gruesome death at the hands of
Cyrillus agents in AD 415 could be
said to have marked the end of the
classical world.
Saint Catherines martyrdom
parallels Hypatias; she is said to have
been a brilliant Christian philosopher
condemned to death by the last pagan
emperor, Maxentius, who didnt
appreciate her attempt to convert him.

No record of her exists until 500 years
later; some historians believe she was
invented to be a counter-martyr to
Hypatia. Both are among the very few
women on the Moon.
And how does astronomy fit into
this business? Hardly at all. Saint
Catherine was highly venerated in the
Middle Ages; lets guess that Riccioli,
with an eye to any criticism that might
come for including the Copernicans
on the other side of the Moon, was
banking a few points with the Church.
VI Octans. Arab Astronomy Takes a
Bow. European astronomers knew
how indebted they were to the Arab
world. The highlight of the terminator
at half Moon is the grand PtolemaeusAlbategnius-Alphonsus-Arzachel
group, with Hipparchus, the greatest
of the ancient observers, presiding.
Ptolemaeus (Claudius Ptolemy, an
Alexandrian Greek c. AD 90160)
gets the biggest crater. Throughout the
Middle Ages his Almagest (from almajisti, Great Treatise) was the
astronomy textbook. (Thebit, aka
Thabit ibn Qurra of Harran and
Baghdad, was a notable translator).
Ptolemys heliocentric model of the
Solar System, with its awkward
circling circles, did a respectable job
of predicting the motions of the
planets. Albategnius was the 9thcentury Syrian al-Battani, whose
extremely accurate trigonometry
FOCUS FEATURES NEWMARKET FILMS
Theophilus
NASA LRO
Cyrillus
Catharina
OPPOSITE MARTYRS The prominent twin craters of the Mare Nectaris region went to the Christians of the Hypatia episode; Hypatia received just a little one.
Whats interesting is that shes here at all. She and Catharina, two of the Moons very few women, both died for their beliefs and were placed on opposite sides of
Theophilus and Cyrillus. Right: Mathematician or witch? Rachel Weisz played Hypatia in the movie Agora (2009). Two centuries after Hypatias death, the Coptic
bishop John of Niki described her as a pagan devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her
Satanic wiles.
NASA LRO
Naming the Craters
NASA LRO
SHOULDERS OF GIANTS Ptolemy got pride of place with a grand walled

plain near the Moons centre. Below him gather some of his astronomical
descendants, the Arabs who laid the foundation for European astronomy.
NAME-DROPPING Riccioli honoured some of his own contemporaries in

the nal octants of his map, no doubt helping to ensure its acceptance.
tables were used by Copernicus and Tycho.

Alphonsus (Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile,
122184) bankrolled the Alfonsine Tables of
planetary positions based on the calculations of
Arzachel (al-Zarqali, the Engraver) in Muslim
Spain. Arzachel (102987) was a leading
astronomer and instrument maker, and perfector of
that medieval multi-tool, the astrolabe.
VII Octans. Sunrise on European Science.
Philosopher-priest Pierre Gassendi (15921655,
France) gets the top spot on Mare Humorum,
perhaps for being the first to observe a transit of
Mercury in 1631, perhaps for trying to reconcile
religious belief with a skeptical, scientific outlook, a
problem that never goes away. His seaside
neighbour Mersenius (Marin Mersenne, 15881648,
France) was a sort of Jesuit Robert Hooke, who in
addition to his own research he was a forerunner
of Cassegrain in reflecting-telescope optics acted
as a clearinghouse for all the latest developments.
Byrgius (Jost Brgi, 15521632) was a superskillful Swiss instrument maker and unlettered
genius who invented logarithms, though by the
time Kepler convinced him to publish his work
(Brgi didnt know Latin), he had been scooped by
the Scot John Napier.
Viete (Franois Vite, 15401603), lawyer and
mathematician, was involved in the reform of the
calendar until he had a falling out with Clavius,
Pope Gregorys scientific advisor. And finally
theres Peter Cruger (15801639, Germany and
Poland), who published many scientific papers and
was Hevelius teacher, appealing to him from his
deathbed to pursue astronomy which Hevelius
did in a big way, using fantastically long-focus
telescopes. These were a solution to the severe
chromatic aberration of the increasingly large
single-element lenses that astronomers had been
trying to use. Hevelius beer brewery, which no
doubt financed such projects, went out of business
only recently.
VIII Octans. Galileo, what were you thinking?!
Galileo Galilei (Italy, 15641642) is still a delight to
read (try The Starry Messenger), and not just for his
scorched-earth rebuttals of other scientists, many
of whom were unfortunately Jesuits. With Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems he really
burned his bridges with the Church. Comparing
Copernicus model of the Solar System with
Ptolemys, he couldnt resist giving the name
Simplicio to the hapless defender of the geocentric
camp. The name was supposedly after Simplicius
the Aristotelian of the 6th century, called by some
the last great philosopher of pagan antiquity and
perhaps a suitable representative for
Aristotelianism. But was anybody fooled? The word
can also mean dunce. Into Simplicios mouth
Galileo put the arguments of his old friend
Cardinal Barberini, now the Pope! The trial of 1633
followed shortly.
This made things awkward for Riccioli when it
came to putting Galileo on the Moon. The Church
ANTI-COPERNICUS On the frontispiece of his great Almagestum Novum, Riccioli displays the Muse of Astronomy judging Copernicuss Sun-centred Solar System
against Tychos Earth-centred version. The balance beam says, Their weights assessed. Tycho wins and Copernicus loses, the only safe way Riccioli could rule on
the question nine years after the passing of Galileo. At the bottom, old Ptolemy says I stand corrected. ALMAGESTUM NOVUM
was not in a forgiving mood; the ban

on Galileos books wouldnt be lifted
until the next century. So what was
Riccioli to do?
He had already assigned
Copernicus, Tycho and Kepler to the
splashiest craters, which luckily were
all on the waxing-gibbous quarter, the
side popularly associated with storms,
damp and misery. Tycho on the
Southern Highlands was happily high
and dry his geo-heliocentric model,
with the Sun and Moon orbiting the
Earth while the other planets orbited
the Sun, did not contradict the Bible.
But Copernicus and Kepler? They
were tossed on the Sea of Storms

(Oceanus Procellarum), with marshes
of fogs and putrefaction to the north
(Palus Nebularum and Palus
Putredinis), twin threats of disease
and insanity to the south (Palus
Epidemiarum and Peninsula
Deliriorum), and a thunder-andlightning battering from peninsulas
Fulminum and Fulgurum to top
things off.
Gothic excess? Not for an audience
with fresh memories of the Thirty
Years War. A religious war turned
political, it had drawn in mercenary
armies from across Europe and killed
a quarter to a third of the population

of the German states. The German
Kepler had danced around disaster
while he lived; not so his grave,
destroyed by the Swedes in the sack of
Regensburg. If Riccioli was using
hellish surroundings to launder the
Copernicans, perhaps hed be less
likely to get called out for
memorialising them so prominently.
Riccioli a closet Copernican?

Next up in the Tycho-CopernicusKepler progression was Galileo. But
try to spot Galileos pinprick of a
crater! Its invisible through most
Naming the Craters
So what
happned? Dont
blame Riccioli; only
later was Galileo
relocated to the
insignicant crater
that bears the
name today.
THE MONSTROUS BEAST OF WAR, detail from a typical ysheet of the time, shows the
Thirty Years War laying waste to the land, pillaging churches and towns, and slaughtering
their inhabitants. Were Ricciolis grim waxing-gibbous names a reection?
binoculars unless you catch it, and its

later-named satellite Galilaei A, as
twin sparks of light on the terminator.
So what happened? Dont blame
Riccioli; only later was Galileo
relocated to the insignificant crater
that bears the name today. (Beer and
Mdlers 1836 map seems to be the
culprit.) Riccioli gave Galileos name
to the last bright splash left in VIII
Octans: the flat albedo feature Reiner
Gamma, which Grimaldi had
mistakenly drawn as a largish crater.
Riccioli published his Moon map in
his great encyclopedic work the
Almagestum Novum, a book no
serious seventeenth century
astronomer could do without, as John
Flamsteed, Englands first Astronomer
Royal, put it around the 17th centurys
end. As its frontispiece illustrates
dramatically (see previous page),
Riccioli held in public that the
Copernicans got it wrong. He
discusses 77 objections to a moving
Earth. Most were variations on
wheres the big wind?, but a couple he
thought were legitimate. Where were
the Coriolis effects if Earth was
spinning? Falling objects and flying
cannonballs didnt seem to be
deflected. And if the Earth circled the
Sun without the stars showing
parallax motion, the stars would have
to be extremely far away. But the small
telescopes of his day showed them as

little disks (now known to be illusory
diffraction disks), which at such a
distance would make the stars huge
beyond belief.
As for the first objection, and as the
Jesuit in Riccioli might have
suspected, absence of evidence was
not evidence of absence. Coriolis
effects are significant only on large
scales, because Earth is large; they
would be demonstrated in the 19th
century. So would the stars
parallaxes. Against these objections
was the Copernican systems
seductive simplicity.
So did Riccioli have his doubts?
Well never know, but its telling that
he gave Aristarchus, the Greek
Copernicus, such a blazing beacon
unifying the ancient and modern
octants, and Copernicus himself a
crater second only to Tycho.
The practical purpose for mapping
the Moon so that terminator
timings could be used to determine
longitude on ocean voyages turned
out to be impractical. But that didnt
stop Ricciolis map from becoming a
hit with astronomers from Rome to
Greenwich. Who could argue with a
Hall of Fame, especially if it included
them? And hats off to the way Riccioli
handled the Copernicans. But the
maps enduring appeal was poetic. The
Moon, its gaze fixed upon Earth, had

seen a lot of history. Riccioli made it
bear witness to all those centuries of
observation, speculation and
calculation.
As for Galileo getting shortchanged, theres a postscript. In the
far-off future, a spacecraft orbiting the
Moon would discover something
unusual that the Reiner Gamma
marking is a magnetic anomaly whose
mini-magnetosphere may be shielding
it from the darkening effect of the
solar wind. Left where Riccioli put
him, Galileo would have kept his
name in lights, and in binoculars, for
millennia to come.
In all his years in advertising, Andrew
Livingston has never seen such an actionpacked layout as Ricciolis map of the
Moon. As for Galileo, when binoculars
show the Sun rising on his crater, he gets
an honorary visit courtesy of a 33-cm
Dobsonian.
FURTHER READING
Antonn Rkls indispensable Lunar Atlas is a
labour of love deserving a crater of its own. It
includes a wealth of lunar information as well as
a whos who on our side of the Moon.
Ewan Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the
Moon. This is the 'Almagest' on the topic, by
someone who had a hand in directing the
International Astronomical Unions lunar
nomenclature and in preparing the map used by
the Apollo missions.
C. M. Graney, Teaching Galileo? Get To Know
Riccioli!, available at arxiv.org/abs/1107.3483.
Also by Graney: Giovanni Battista Ricciolis
Seventy-Seven Arguments Against the Motion of
the Earth, arxiv.org/abs/1011.3778.
Cosmology Primer
Planck Upholds
Standard
Cosmology
The latest analysis of the

universes oldest light provides
an exquisite look at the cosmos.
spent the end of 2014 squirming.

For months Id been waiting for
the release of the full-mission data
from the European Space Agencys
Planck spacecraft. Planck launched in
2009 to study the cosmic microwave
background (CMB), the relict
radiation from the universes birth. Its
the latest advance in a field fairly
young by astronomical standards: 50
years ago this month, Bell Labs Arno
Penzias and Robert Wilson published
their landmark detection of the CMB.
The 1965 paper, A Measurement of
Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080
Mc/s in the Astrophysical Journal, is
CAMILLE
M. CARLISLE
less than two pages long. Only two

paragraphs talk about the
unaccounted-for antenna
temperature Penzias and Wilson had
stumbled upon, and the authors
politely leave suggestions for its origin
to a companion article by Robert
Dicke and others at Princeton. (The
Princeton folks, who had been
hunting for the CMB, had the good
grace to accept theyd been scooped.)
Since then, CMB studies have
revolutionised our understanding of
the cosmos, giving birth to an era of
precision cosmology. Many of us
today recognise the splotchy maps,
COBE
the pattern they record spawned by

density fluctuations in the universes
earliest moment. The CMB might
seem esoteric, but it has big
implications: the density fluctuations
also served as seeds for the growth of
cosmic structure, the sprawling web of
galaxy clusters in which nearly all
matter resides. From dark matter and
cosmic expansion to when galaxies
first set the universe alight, the
remnant radiation touches a boggling
number of areas in astronomy.
Understanding why the CMB looks
the way it does thus helps us
understand the entire universe.
WMAP
Hence my squirming.
Planck observed in nine frequencies
spanning 30 to 857 GHz, mapping the
CMBs temperature in all nine
frequencies and its polarisation in
seven, before shutting down on
schedule in 2013. The team released
the temperature observations from
the missions first 15 months that same
year. These data were mostly in
beautiful agreement with the standard
picture of cosmology astronomers
have developed.
Since then, the team has been
working feverishly to analyse the full,
four-year data set. This past
December, members presented those
data at a conference in Ferrara, Italy,
and the team released most of the 28
official analysis papers in February. (A
few stragglers were still in the wings
in March.) The results provide a wowworthy view of the universe and of
how precision cosmology works,
although if youre like me, youll need
some help to see how this psychedelic
picture comes together and maybe
some ibuprofen when were done.
How astronomers nd the

universe in the CMB
At first glance, CMB maps look like
toddler finger-paintings colourful,
but enigmatic. Its not obvious how
cosmologists derive things such as the
universes age from them.
Yet they do. They start with the
splotchy CMB pattern. Then they
make some assumptions about what
kind of universe theyre dealing with.
In astrospeak, they assume the
standard lambda-CDM model, the
cosmological framework astronomers
currently use. This framework

includes:
1. a particular solution to the
general relativistic equations of
gravity, including an anti-gravity
force called the cosmological
constant, or lambda (whats now
called dark energy);
2. an expanding universe that looks
basically the same on large scales;
3. an early period of stupendous
expansion called inflation;
4. quantum fluctuations that seeded
todays large-scale matter
distribution (those density
fluctuations I mentioned earlier);
and
5. the existence of a type of matter
that responds to gravity but not to
electrical or magnetic forces
(generally called dark matter).
From there, they start tweaking the
specific values of different parameters,
like a dressmaker tucking and letting
out a dress pattern until it fits. They
could even chuck any assumption that
proves to be wrong. Eventually, they
find the pattern that most successfully
fits the CMB.
The amazing thing is, this method
works. It works really well. Thats
because back when the universes
contents cooled down enough to stop
being plasma and release the CMBs
photons (about 370,000 years after the
Big Bang), the universe was simple,
says team member Charles Lawrence
(JPL) basically a hot, bland soup of
particles and dark matter, with no
chemical reactions going on. So
scientists can actually figure out the
exact physical setup that would create
the CMB we observe.
Six numbers tell all

Plancks 2015 release upholds that of
2013, with only slight changes. The
results still overwhelmingly favour an
early universe defined by only six
parameters:
1. The density of baryonic matter
(a.k.a. normal matter, like you
and me) in the universes first few
minutes;
2. The density of cold dark matter at
that same time;
3. How far sound waves travelled
from the end of inflation to when
the CMB photons were released;
4. The fraction of CMB photons
that have scattered off freefloating electrons and protons
over the universes history. These
particles were set free by
radiation from stars and quasars
ionising the neutral hydrogen
filling the cosmos. This number is
directly related to when the first
galaxies had pumped out enough
stars to set the universe aglow;
5. The strength of the initial density
fluctuations on a scale of about 65
million light-years at the end of
inflation. Fun fact: Plancks value
of parameter #5 says that, after
inflation, the density of matter
varied only 0.000000002 across
65 million light-years; and
6.How the strength of the density
fluctuations at the end of inflation
changes depending on how big a
patch of sky you look at.
From these parameters, the team
can calculate just about anything you
please, such as the universes age. The
exact values depend on which data
subsets scientists include in the
PLANCK
our view of the cmb One of our rst detailed

views of the CMBs temperature spots came
from the Cosmic Background Explorer
(COBE), launched in 1989. The Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
followed in 2001 and Planck in 2009. The
COBE map here has an angular resolution of
10 degrees, WMAPs is about 15 arc minutes,
and Plancks is 5 arc minutes. COBE: NASA; WMAP:
NASA WMAP SCIENCE TEAM; PLANCK: ESA PLANCK

COLLABORATION
Cosmology Primer
6000
Temperature uctuations
(microkelvin2)
5000
Planck CMB
Power Spectrum
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
90
18
0.2
0.1
0.07
Angular scale
MORE THAN JUST WIGGLES This graph is the cosmic microwave background's (CMBs) power spectrum. It plots the magnitude of temperature variations (vertical)
at different angular scales (horizontal, approximate). The red line is the standard cosmological model, the blue dots are Planck data. Once cosmologists conrm
that the standard model is a good match to the real universe, they can use the power spectrum to determine cosmological parameters an easier task than tting
directly to the map. The spectrum reveals that temperature variations are strongest on a scale of about 1. Although theres a tiny dip around 10, at the moment
theres no strong evidence that it requires a physical explanation. S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN, SOURCE: PLANCK COLLABORATION
calculations and there are reasons

for not always using the kitchen sink.
In this article, Ive chosen to use the
version highlighted in the teams
overview paper, which includes
information from all the temperature
and some low-frequency polarisation
measurements. It also accounts for the
slight blurring in the splotchy pattern
created when CMB photons pass
massive cosmic structures and are
bent slightly from their straight-shot
paths by gravity.
Of all the numbers that come out of
the results, here are three worth
remembering:
t "HF PG VOJWFSTF
billion years (note: that means we
know the age of the universe to
within 38 million years)
t 'SBDUJPO PG VOJWFSTFT DPOUFOU UIBU
JT EBSL FOFSHZ
t 6OJWFSTFT FYQBOTJPO SBUF
0.9 km/s/mega-parsec (a parsec is
3.26 light-years)
The universes expansion rate, called
the Hubble parameter or Hubble
constant, not only sets the time scale
for cosmic expansion but also the
scale for the universes size and age.
When Plancks 2013 results came out,
the fact that the team derived a rate
If astronomers can
measure an expansion rate
for todays universe thats
clearly higher than Plancks
value... it would be evidence
that something is missing
from our cosmology.
But several other measurements

have now also pushed the Hubble
parameter down, so a lower expansion
rate might be here to stay. On the
other hand, not all measurements
have. If astronomers can directly
measure a precise expansion rate for
todays universe thats clearly higher
than Plancks value, then it would be
strong evidence that theres something
missing from our cosmology.
below 70 km/s/Mpc caught attention.

Its predecessor, NASAs Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe
(WMAP), had also found a lower
value, in conflict with the 73-andchange value calculated using
supernovae. The Planck value is a
forward-looking extrapolation, a
prediction of how fast the universe
should be expanding today, given
what we see in the early universe,
explains Planck team member Martin
White (University of California,
Berkeley). So if its different from what
we actually see, thats a sharp test of
our understanding and could
potentially indicate new physics, new
constituents of the universe, or show
we dont understand as much as we
think we do, he says.
Of stars and galaxies
The latest Planck data say some

interesting things about the universe.
One neat result is that the era of
reionisation basically, when the
universes galaxies really started
lighting up with stars is later than
estimated using data from WMAP.
WMAP had favoured reionisation at a
redshift of 10.6 (440 million years after
the Big Bang), but Planck pegs it at 8.8
(560 million years after the Big Bang).
For many cosmologists, I would
say that it is a relief, says David
Spergel (Princeton), who worked on
the WMAP team.
The problem was that astronomers
studying early star formation had a
hard time explaining the earlier start
time from WMAP. Astronomers think
Cosmology Primer
the universes first stars formed about
100 million years after the Big Bang;
the first black holes came soon after.
When stars and black holes madly
gobble down gas, they emit light. But
the era of reionisation happened when
there were so many photons flying
around that much of the plain old
hydrogen atoms filling the universe
lost their electrons and got ionised.
(Because everything started out
ionised at the universes birth no
atoms formed until things cooled
down 370,000 years in this is the
second time things are ionised, hence
reionisation.) And with the earlier
WMAP date, there just shouldnt have
been enough photons around to break
up the hydrogen.
Plancks result makes things better,
although not perfect. Were still kind
of short of photons, says Marta
Volonteri (Institut dAstrophysique de
Paris), but with some extrapolations
and optimistic assumptions, it seems
that galaxies may provide enough
photons.
There also remains the strange
problem of the missing galaxy
clusters. The Planck team finds a
certain lumpiness in the CMB, which
should match up with the lumps in
the distribution of matter in the
universe. This distribution manifests
as cosmic structure, which is made up
of galaxy clusters. But Planck predicts
about 2.5 times more clusters than are
actually observed. This could be due
to error in the estimates from either
side, or due to new physics.
Cosmic ination and whatnot

Then there are the implications for
inflation. No. 6 in the list of
parameters (how the strength of the
density fluctuations changes with
angular scale on the sky) is called ns
or the scalar spectral index. Its
important because it describes the
state of affairs at the end of inflation,
and the fluctuations it measures are
the ones that started sound waves
sloshing in the universes primordial
plasma, ultimately leading to the CMB
we see. Planck finds a value of 0.968,
which means that the strength of the
fluctuations is slightly larger on larger
scales a tilt predicted by most
inflation models. This offset has a
slight effect on galaxies formation rate
over time, Spergel says.
For polarisation, theres still no sign
Baryonic
matter
4.9%
The cosmic pie
Dark
matter
The latest Planck results suggest the uni25.9%
Dark
verse breaks down to 69.2% dark energy,
energy
25.9% dark matter and 4.9% baryonic
69.2%
(or 'normal') matter. But the exact values
of these fractions can change by several
tenths of a percentage point, depending on
the data subsets used and assumptions made
for example, the six different combinations the Planck
team lists in its cosmological parameters analysis give a
range for dark energy from 68.4% to 69.4%.
COS M I C E XPA N S I O N
The units for the universes expansion rate, kilometres
per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc) can be confusing. They mean that, the more distant the galaxy,
the faster its receding from us. Think of the universe
like a loaf of raisin bread baking in the oven. If a unit
of dough always doubles in size in 10 minutes, then in
10 minutes, two raisins that began 2 units apart will be
4 units apart, but two raisins that were 4 units apart
will now be 8 units apart. In other words, because the
expansion rate of the dough is the same throughout
the loaf, raisins move apart from one another at a
speed thats proportional to the distance between
them. Thats what the units of the Hubble constant
(km/s/Mpc) mean: a galaxy is moving away from us at
a speed thats proportional to its distance.
of primordial B-modes, the swirly

polarisation patterns that would be
the signal from spacetime ripples
triggered by cosmic inflation. These
gravitational waves would have
various wavelengths, and some waves
would be stronger than others,
meaning that, like with the CMBs
fluctuations, their strength changes
depending on how big a patch of sky
you look at. Focusing on a scale of 65
million light-years (for conventions
sake), the Planck team calculated an
upper limit for the ratio of the
gravitational waves strength to the
strength of the run-of-the-mill density
fluctuations of 0.11. Combining that
with the joint analysis done with the
BICEP2/Keck Array team gives 0.09.
In other words, the gravitational
waves strength must be less than 9%
that of the regular fluctuations.

On their own, these numbers sound
like jargon. What matters is that they
home in on some of the simpler types
of inflation. (By one count, there are
four dozen inflation models out
there.) These simpler types involve an
inflation generated by the decay of a
single energy field, a field that
decreased slowly compared to the
universes expansion rate although,
given that the observable universe
expanded at least 5 billion trillion
times in 10 nano-nano-nanonanoseconds, thats not that slow. The
energy scale implied for inflation is
less than 2 1016 gigaelectron volts,
on par with the level expected for the
merger of the strong, weak, and
electromagnetic forces into one, called
the Grand Unified Theory. Physicists
Cosmology Primer
NA
SA
JP
L- C
A
LT E
C
DUSTY VIEW To study the CMB, cosmologists must rst peel away all
the foreground emission from the Milky Way a herculean task, as
apparent from this false-colour composite. The most widespread feature
is dusts thermal glow (red). Also shown are radiation from high-energy
electrons corkscrewing through the galaxys magnetic eld (blue);
carbon monoxide gas (orange), a tracer for the molecular hydrogen
from which new stars form; and emission from hot, ionised gas near
massive stars (green). As expected, the last two are concentrated in the
galaxys disk, where star formation is ongoing.
think these forces were united in the

first mini-moment of the universe,
then broke apart. Their breakup might
somehow be connected to inflation.
These are only selections from the
cosmology results. Planck also
amassed tonnes of information on
foreground stuff, such as the dusty
Milky Way within which our Solar
System twirls, but the team is focusing
on the core cosmological science and
leaving much of the astrophysics to
others. Astronomers have already
been playing with Plancks data, and
there will be a focus meeting at the
International Astronomical Union
conference in August devoted to
exploring uses for the missions
results. The team will release a final
data set in a year, with improved
calibration and other fine-tuning.
Then they will essentially step aside
and leave the riches for the worlds
astronomers to explore
Every time she writes about cosmology,
Science Editor Camille M. Carlisle feels
like shes knocking her head against a wall,
hoping the debris will lodge in her brain.
ESA PLANCK COLLABORATION (2)
ES
POLARISATION OF THE CMB A small fraction of the CMB is

polarised, meaning the light vibrates in a preferred direction. The
photons became polarised in their nal encounter with electrons
in the primordial plasma soup, before the universe cooled enough
for radiation to travel freely. Thus, the CMBs polarisation contains
information about the distribution of matter in the early universe,
and its pattern follows that of the tiny uctuations observed in the
CMBs temperature. In these maps, colours represent temperature
differences, while texture indicates the direction of the polarised
light. The all-sky map at the top of p. 26 is ltered to mostly show
the signal detected on a scale of 5 (as is the left patch above) on
the sky, but Planck detected uctuations on smaller angular scales
as well (right, same patch at 20).
Other notable results

In the discussion of what dark matter is, one idea is that it is its
own antiparticle; thus, if two dark particles collide, theyll go poof.
Planck scientists dont need dark matter annihilation to make
sense of the CMB, although interpreting what that means for dark
matter depends on the properties we assume dark matter has.
A delightful consequence of having to clean Plancks data

of other stuff in the universe is all the insight gained about
that intervening stuff. As CMB photons pass through cosmic
structure, the matter acts as a gravitational lens, bending the
photons path. The resulting zigzag paths slightly blur the CMBs
pattern. Because Plancks observations are so precise, the
team had to take this gravitational blurring into account. As a
result, they created a detailed map of all the matter the photons
passed from 370,000 years after the Big Bang until now.
The Reality of Make-Believe
Jules Vernes
DEAN REGAS
Nineteenth-century science and

technology shaped two classic
tales of imaginary spaceight.
nder a Floridian sky, three

astronauts boarded their
metallic spacecraft. As
throngs of well-wishers nervously
looked on, at the awaited moment the
crew blasted up, up into the warm,
clear air soaring toward the Moon.
Flying where no human had gone
before, they approached the cratered
lunar surface, orbited around the
silvery orb and beheld the farside of
the our natural satellite.
Then the spacecraft returned to
Earth and plunged into the Pacific
Ocean, where an American naval
vessel gathered the intrepid astronauts
and carried them safely back to the
United States to be welcomed as
national heroes.
This is the true story of the
Apollo 8 mission, during which three
American astronauts circumnavigated
the Moon in December 1968. It also
happens to be the plot of Jules Vernes
1865 science-fiction classic, From the
Earth to the Moon, and his 1870
sequel, Around the Moon. There are a
number of amazing coincidences
between the fantasy journey and the
real-life mission undertaken a
century later.
Vernes research on the latest

astronomical discoveries, along with
his familiarity with cutting-edge
technology, allowed him to construct
a realistic journey complete with
comedy, drama and education. Like
Verne himself, the novels adventurers
were scientifically minded; they
hypothesised, explained and debated
maths, science, engineering and
astronomy throughout their journey.
Today, 150 years later, Vernes
science-fiction stories provide an
illuminating window into 19thcentury scientific knowledge.
The year is 1865, and Verne
introduces the Gun Club, a fictional
organisation in Baltimore. The clubs
members (who possess, according to
one account, not quite one arm
between four persons and exactly
two legs between six) are artillery
specialists who lament the end of the
Civil War. So they must grudgingly
turn their efforts to peaceful
endeavours. President Impey
Barbicane envisions a new course for
the club and his country. It is
reserved for the practical genius of
Americans to establish a
communication with the sidereal
Apollo 8s
recovery
world, he says. He proposes to shoot

a cannonball at the Moon and to
hit it. After rousing applause he states,
I have the honor, my brave
colleagues, to propose a trial of this
little experiment.
With worldwide financial, moral
and spiritual support, the experiment
begins. In order to reach the Moon,
members of the Gun Club must build
a monstrous cannon. They intend to
fire it when the Moon is closest to
Earth and directly overhead
something that can only occur
between 28 north and 28 south
latitude. After fierce lobbying (and
ample name-calling) from residents of
Texas and Florida, Barbicane selects
Tampa Town, Florida, as the projects
base of operations. Soon the
artillerymen construct a 275-metrelong cannon, called Columbiad, and
load it with a mountain of
explosives.
A century later, in 1958,
engineers at the nonfictional
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA)
also determined Texas and
Florida to be well suited for
Americas rocket launches. If a
A
S
NA
FACING PAGE: The bullet-shaped projectile

arrives at Stones Hill, near Tampa Town
in Florida. This and other engravings are
reproduced from an 1886 printing of Jules
Vernes From the Earth to the Moon and
Around the Moon and provided by Jared
Woodll.
rocket is propelled eastward from

close to the equator, the added
velocity of the spinning Earth will
help it more easily break free of its
gravitational pull and require less fuel.
NASA managers likewise chose
Florida over Texas as its principal
launch site for orbiting satellites and
for trips to the Moon and beyond.
In Vernes 19th-century rendition,
the Gun Club initially plans for an
To accelerate the
projectile to high
speed, the Gun
Clubs members
build a mammoth
cannon, Columbiad,
that is 275 metres
long.
unmanned mission. However, the

inclusion of passengers is prompted
by an audacious Frenchman named
Michel Ardan, who arrives in Tampa
Town demanding to fly in the
projectile. In a typical Vernian twist,
Barbicane and his rival, Captain
Nicholl (an armour-plate magnate and
foil to the Gun Club) agree to put
aside their differences and join Ardan
in a well-furnished bullet to be shot at
the Moon. How they will return home
is not fully discussed or detailed until
they are en route.
In order to test the projectile, the
Gun Club team practices with two
small passengers: a cat and a squirrel.
However, after the cannon fires and
the ball falls back to Earth, only one
emerges the cat had feasted on the
squirrel during the journey.
NASA engineers likewise tested
their rockets with animals,
specifically monkeys and mice, prior
to launching human passengers. By
then the space race was well under
way, and in September 1968 (three
months before Apollo 8) the Soviet
Unions Zond 5 mission successfully
flew a unique combination of
tortoises, mealworms, flies, bacteria,
plants and seeds around the Moon
and returned them safely to Earth.
Back in Tampa Town, it is launch
day. Five million visitors have flooded
into central Florida to witness the
momentous event, which has to occur
precisely at 10:48:40pm. The three
explorers descend into the cannon
and board their projectile. As the

blastoff approaches, some in the
crowd count up: . . . thirty-eight!
thirty-nine! forty! FIRE!!!
Frankly, anyone shot out of such a
cannon would be instantly killed.
Verne knew this, and so he explains
how the shock would be dampened
with compartments of water. In truth,
this would not have protected the
astronauts. However, in the novel, the
abrupt liftoff merely knocks the trio
unconscious though it kills one of
the two dogs aboard (yes, they
brought dogs).
When the crew regains
consciousness, they reorganise their
vessel and risk opening a porthole to
dispose of the unlucky canine
which then tragically drifts next to
them throughout the journey. In the
novel, this open-door gamble works
tremendously well, but in reality the
extremely low pressure of space would
suck the crew from the projectile.
Earths second moon

Once above Earths atmosphere, the
crew faces a new crisis: a giant
boulder hurtles into view. It narrowly
misses their tiny craft but leaves the
crew shaken. What was that thing?
Barbicane concludes that it was Earths
second Moon.
In the mid-19th century, planet
hunting had become all the rage. The
discovery of Neptune in 1846 let loose
a mob of astronomers claiming the
existence of new, unseen celestial
Far left: The

projectiles interior
is well appointed,
with room for its
crew of three and
several animals.
A bed of water
under a wooden
oor cushions the
passengers during
launch.
Left: The liftoffs of
Vernes ctional
spaceship and
of Apollo 8 both
occurred in Florida.
bodies. Also in 1846, French

astronomer Frdric Petit claimed
that two of his countrymen had
observed Earths second moon. Based
on their accounts, Petit calculated its
orbit and published his findings in
1861. Verne read this theory and
seized upon it as a plot device in this
novel. Barbicane even cites Petit as his
source! (With 150 years of hindsight,
however, Earths second moon
remains pure fiction.)
As Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan
approach the Moon, they describe
their observations of the lunar
landscape in great detail. They spy
deep craters and towering mountain
In the 19th century,

scientists believed that
volcanoes had formed the
craters on the Moon. The
Apollo missions ultimately
dashed any lingering faith in
the volcano theory.
The force of the launch kills Satellite, one of

two dogs aboard. So the passengers open a
hatch to dispose of it. But the carcass oats
alongside the craft en route to the Moon.
peaks, radiating rays of debris, dark

seas of rock and deep rifts. The
travellers then notice something is
amiss: the projectile will not land on
the lunar surface as planned but
instead carry them to within a few
kilometres of the Moons north pole.
What had gone wrong their
maths, aim or velocity? It was that
wayward rock, that second moon,
whose proximity and gravitational
pull perturbed the course of the
projectile. As the explorers realise this
failure, they pass over the pole and are
plunged into utter darkness.
The farside (and dark side)

of the Moon
Freed of Earths gravity, the three passengers and assorted animals

oat freely as the spacecraft coasts toward the Moon.
The Moon is tidally locked to Earth.

Therefore, from here we can only ever
view one hemisphere of its surface.
Not until 1959 did a robotic Soviet
spacecraft, Luna 3, provide the first
crude images of the unseen farside.
So what spectacular images would
Verne dream up about the farside of
the Moon visions that would not be
challenged for almost 100 years? Until
this point of the story, Vernes
descriptions were based on known
science; however, the lunar farside was
a great unknown in the 19th century.
The projectile reaches the Moon
when it appears full from Earth, so the
farside is almost pitch black. Ardan
expresses his disappointment: Here
is, however, a good opportunity lost of
observing the other side of the moon.
Yet it is not a complete loss. The warm
glow from an erupting volcano
illuminates its surroundings and gives
the travellers tantalising views of this

terra incognita.
In the 19th century, scientists
believed that volcanoes had formed
the craters on the Moon. Earths
volcanoes resembled the lunar surface
from afar, and therefore geologists
imagined innumerable volcanoes as
the source of lunar craters. Vernes
knowledge of current geological
theories surely satisfied his scienceminded followers.
The Apollo missions ultimately
dashed any lingering confidence in
the volcano theory. Samples collected
by its astronauts, along with
spectrographic data from orbiting
craft, prove that high-velocity impacts
formed the vast majority of lunar
craters. There are no active volcanoes
on the Moon, though eruptions
shaped the topography in the distant
past. The large, dark, characteristically
circular maria are in fact vast lava
plains that partially filled basins
excavated by titanic impacts. Billions
of years later, these lava seas made
ideal landing pads for the six Apollo
missions that reached the lunar
surface.
As Vernes astronauts continue
around the farside of the Moon, a
meteor streaks below them and
explodes above the surface. The fireball
brightens the lunar landscape
momentarily, and the travellers are able
to decipher what appear to be clouds,
continents, seas and forests. During the
journey, Verne cites many scientists of
the day who debated the existence of a
lunar atmosphere. The three astronauts
While coasting in darkness over the lunar farside (left), the passengers endure extreme cold inside their capsule.
But they warm quickly (right) once the capsule returns to sunlight.
Nothing belonging to a living world

everything to a dead world, where
avalanches, rolling from the summits
of the mountains, would disperse
noiselessly at the bottom of the abyss. .
. . In any case it was the image of death,
without its being possible to even say
continue that debate and wonder if it

was merely an illusion.
As it rounds the south pole, the
projectile emerges into daylight. The
travellers then observe the bleak,
scarred landscape of the Moons
southern hemisphere. They see,
Apollo 8 Mission Highlights
Parking
orbit
Recovery
in Pacic
Ocean
Tran
sea
rth
traje
ctor
Lunar
orbit
y (5
8 ho
urs)
Launch
from
Florida
Engine
restart
ry
cto
raje)
t
r
na rs
nslu hou
Tra (66
ry
t trajecto
slingsho
Rocket
Command/service module
and rocket separate
Apollo 8s December 1968 ight to the Moon and back took 6 days. Its three-man
crew orbited the Moon for 20 hours at an average altitude of 110 kilometres. S&T
To
solar
orbit
that life had ever existed there.

Buzz Aldrin, who in July 1969
became the second astronaut to walk
on the Moon, expressed his awe and
wonder about the beautiful but barren
lunar landscape, calling it
magnificent desolation.
The inertia of Columbiads
projectile then carries the crew away
from the Moon and returns them to
Earth. The projectile streaks through
the atmosphere like a shooting star
and splashes into the Pacific Ocean.
The Gun Club frantically scours the
seafloor but later simply finds the
projectile bobbing atop the waves, an
American flag flapping from the top
of its cone. The astronauts have
returned safely!
Visions of the future

The exciting circumlunar journey not
only brings fame to the three
explorers but also emboldens
American scientists and engineers.
Verne writes, Since Barbicanes
attempt, nothing seemed impossible
to the Americans. The Gun Club

helps to create the National Company
of Interstellary Communication
(NCIC) a fictional forerunner of
NASA with a mandate to facilitate
travel between the Earth and Moon,
as well as to the planets and stars.
When founded in 1958, NASA
likewise employed many former
military scientists and engineers for
the purely peaceful exploration of
space. A decade later, NASAs Apollo
team accomplished the Herculean
endeavour of sending astronauts first
around the Moon and then, just
months later, down to its surface. It
was a golden age for science and
technology.
Its difficult to measure what impact
the fictional writing of Jules Verne had
on the real NASA missions that would
follow. Surely many of the space
agencys scientists, engineers and
astronauts nurtured their enthusiasm
for space travel as children dreaming
of what must lie beyond our Earth.
Neil Armstrong certainly felt a
connection to Vernes adventure story.
On July 23, 1969, returning home
after he and Buzz Aldrin had
completed their history-making
moonwalks, Armstrong began his
broadcast to Earth with these words:
A hundred years ago, Jules Verne
wrote a book about a voyage to
the Moon. His spaceship,
Columbia [Columbiad], took off
from Florida and landed in the
Pacific Ocean after completing a
trip to the Moon. It seems
appropriate to us to share with
you some of the reflections of the
crew as the modern-day
Columbia completes its
rendezvous with the planet Earth
and the same Pacific Ocean
tomorrow.
Often the lines between science fiction
and science fact become blurred. But,
more interestingly and prosperously,
they inspire each other. All new
scientific discoveries are born in the
imagination of dreamers. On this
150th anniversary of Jules Verne epic
journey, pick up a copy and see what
you discover
Dean Regas is the outreach astronomer for

Cincinnati Observatory and co-host of the
bite-sized astronomy program Star Gazers
on US channel PBS.
Apollo 8: Life imitates art

Vernes 1865 ctional trip around the Moon had several
startling similarities to Apollo 8s circumlunar trip in
December 1968. Both missions had a crew of three: Ardan,
Barbicane and Nicholl in the novel; Anders, Borman and
Lovell aboard Apollo 8. Vernes ctional projectile blasted
off from Tampa Town, only 212 kilometres from NASAs
site at Cape Canaveral. Vernes Columbiad red its
projectile at 39,500 kilometres per hour. Apollo 8 initially
orbited Earth, and then rockets accelerated the capsule to
38,930 kilometres per hour toward the Moon. Neither craft
had enough velocity to break free of Earths gravitational
pull; instead, both reached a point at which the Moons
gravity attracted them the rest of the way.
Vernes projectile then skimmed the lunar surface during
a full Moon, which meant that Ardan, Barbicane and
Nicholl could hardly see anything when looking back at
the new Earth. But Anders, Borman and Lovell arrived
during a waxing crescent phase. Consequently, after
rounding the Moon, they were able to capture the timeless
image of a gibbous Earth rising over the lunar landscape.
Vernes craft ultimately landed in the Pacic Ocean and
was recovered by the Susquehanna, a vessel from the U.S.
Navy. Apollo 8s capsule likewise dropped into the Pacic
Ocean (8,000 kilometres from Vernes landing spot) and
was recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Both
capsules were constructed of aluminium and both
oated.
As the crew of Apollo 8

emerged from the Moons
farside, they saw a gemlike
gibbous Earth rising above
the bleak lunar terrain
below them. NASA
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Gary Seronik
Binocular Highlight
USING THE
STAR CHART
OPHIUCHUS
WHEN
M80
5 binoc
HOW
ula
rv
ie w
m
Antares
M4
Early August
10pm
Late August
9pm
Early September
8pm
Late September
Dusk
These are standard times.
SCORPIUS
PISC
Go outside within an hour or

so of a time listed above. Hold
the map above your head with
the bottom of the page facing
south. The chart now matches
the stars in your sky, with the
curved edge representing the
horizon and the centre of the
chart being the point directly
over your head (known as the
zenith).
ES
FOR EXAMPLE: Look at
FO
NOTE: The chart is plotted

for latitude 35S (for example,
Sydney, Buenos Aires, Cape
Town). If youre much further
north of there, stars in the
northern part of the sky will be
higher and those in the south
lower. If youre further south,
the reverse is true.
5th-magnitude primary with an

equidistant duo of 7th-magnitude
companions forming a tidy
triangle. I can easily see all three
component stars with 735s.
Half a binocular field west
of Rho, we find our bonus
object, globular cluster M80.
Most globulars are tricky at the
low magnifications of typical
binoculars, but M80 is doubly
difficult because its so small. What
youre hunting for is something that
looks like a slightly out-of-focus
7.3-magnitude star. Even with my
1545 image-stabilised binoculars,
M80 doesnt exactly jump out
of the field. Fortunately, its the
brightest point of light in that spot.
It also serves as the westernmost
tip of a triangle that includes Rho
Ophiuchi and Omicron () Scorpii.
M80 is one of those binocular
targets thats not difficult to see but
is a challenge to identify.
CETUS
n observing friend of mine

has a particular fondness
for what he calls pizza
objects. These are celestial twofor-one deals a pairing of targets
lying in the same field of view. Two
objects for the effort of finding one.
And if theyre different from each
other, so much the better variety
is the spice of life! So in his honour,
lets enjoy a two-for-one binocular
field northwest of the star Antares
that gives us an easy triple star and
a much more challenging globular
star cluster.
The triple star is Rho ()
Ophiuchi. It might just be the most
famous star youve never seen.
In long-exposure photographs
of the region, Rho is surrounded
by a colourful fog of nebulosity.
Indeed, the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula
is so well-known that few seem
aware that Rho is also a striking
binocular triple. It comprises a
E C L
Fa c i n g E a st
A triple and
a globular
A
the chart, and youll see that

the bright star Altair in the
constellation Aquila is about
halfway between the northern
horizon and the middle of the
chart. So if you look into the
northern sky, youll nd Altair
about halfway between the
horizon and the zenith.
ONLINE
You can get a sky chart
customised for your
location at any time at
SkyandTelescope.com/
skychart
1
0
1
2
3 Star
4 magnitudes
Fa c i n g N o r t h
Deneb
19h
M92
Vega
M5
M1
Z
D
T
Antares
M4
LU
G
Q
H
G
CO R
DR
D RUX
C
SW
20n
V O LA N S
7h
CAR
INA
in
c
Fa
10 h
60n
VUS
G
CE
TA
U
RU
HY
da
Ha
80n
PU
Spica
ILA
S
15
CH A M A EL EO
VIRGO
LI BR A
B
A
M6
M7
SCORPIUS
NU
SC U TU M
E
n
Ce
W
M11
M
P
AQU
SERP
E
( C AU N S
DA)
HI
Altair
0n
12
LP
T TA
US l
C I N Rigi t
n
Ke
CA
MUS
F a c i n g We s t
PH
IU
CH
CIR
Large
Magellanic
Cloud
NS
PE UT )
R
SE AP
(C
475
PIC TO R
ci
us
ur
ct
r
A
SAGI
ci
ADO
Fa
APUS
RUS
DE
+20n
80n
13
M27
VULPECULA
A
30 Dor
DOR
RM
UM
NO
NS
Fa
UM
IX
GI
ICUL
RC
US
A
EN
HYD
RET
HE
ci
US
O C TA
S
Mag mall
ell
Clo anic
ud
ARA
M57
LE
S
US
GR
US
PH
na
LU M
NGU
TRIA STRALE
AU
LO
IU
NA
RN
G
STRIN
A
A
er
C
B OR
O
RE ONA
AL
IS
CYGN
P
RIC
O
IUS
D
S AU
aut
US
RO
OP
47 T
uc
HO
C
ES
OR
NA
SE
M8
60n
CA
CA
AR
PISCI
lh
Foma
LPT
22h
AQ
U
M2
SCU
TE
Fa
M29
LY R A
OR
G
AS
US
16h
PE
IN
TU
AN
40n
E Q
U A
T O
R
M2
TT
AR E
IU
Zenith
S
Ac
h
ID
GI
CO RO NA
AU ST RA LI S
NW
+40n
SA
PAV O
S M22
ER
13
NE
L I P T I C
M1
M2
LA
Galaxy
Double star
Variable star
Open cluster
Diuse nebula
Globular cluster
Planetary nebula
Fa c i n g S o u t h
Fred Schaaf
Tonight's Sky
Stars for a moonlit night
Bright moonlight is no excuse for not getting out under the constellations
CHRIS ISHERWOOD / FLICKR / CC BY-SA 2.0
his column is normally dedicated

to the stars and constellations.
But the stars do cohabit the night
sky with other celestial bodies, and
there's one such nighttime object that
radically affects the visibility of stars. It
is, of course, the Moon.
It's all about star-people versus Moonpeople. This sounds like a conflict in a
B-grade science-fiction movie but the
question is how do you see yourself: as a
star-person or a moon-person? Do you
enjoy exploring all the details of the
brightest satellite in the Solar System?
Or do you like to travel and revel in the
starry universe?
Most of us, of course, enjoy both
lunar and stellar observing. But bright
moonlight can make for a frustrating
experience for would-be stellar and deep
sky observers. So lets get a few things
straight about moonlight.
First of all, we should never begrudge
it. Its just too magical even
scientifically speaking. Moonlight covers
everything like the finest of meshes. But
consider some of the scientific facts

about this seemingly mystical radiance.
A sheet of white paper under moonlight
is about 2,000 times darker than black
velvet in sunlight. On the other hand,
the light of the full Moon is about 33,000
times brighter than Sirius. It is more
than 2,000 times brighter than Venus
when the planet is brightest. Full
moonlight is even about 1,000 times
brighter than the combined light of all
the nighttime stars. And it isnt millions
of times dimmer than the Sun, just
400,000 times dimmer.
But theres good news for those of us
who want to do some stellar observation
while the Moon is in the sky. The first
quarter Moon a half-lit Moon isnt
half as bright, but only one-eleventh as
bright as the full Moon. This is due to
the terminator and the many large
shadows near it stretching down the
Moons central meridian at first quarter,
as well as to the lack of a special kind of
retro-reflecting that occurs from the
lunar surface only very near full phase.
Last quarter Moon is even dimmer

than first quarter due to its higher
proportion of the dark maria. The lunar
light is half as bright as full Moon not
seven days before full (around first
quarter) but a mere 2 days before. This
explains why observations of the stars
and even extended deep sky objects
through telescopes are not as
compromised by most phases of the
Moon as people expect.
A lesson can be learned from meteor
observers. They simply watch for
meteors in a direction away from the
Moon or, if the Moon is especially
bright, they might block the direct
moonlight with a tree, building or
even an umbrella. So when its raining
moonlight (the grand Mare Imbrium is
the Sea of Rains after all), why not use
an umbrella or parasol or would it be
called a paralune?
Fred Schaaf welcomes your comments at

[email protected].
We have some pretty

amazing objects in
our southern skies.
This amazing image
of nebula NGC 3579 in
Carina was taken by
Jos Joaqun Prez
(WWW.ASTRO-AUSTRAL.CL).
Sun, Moon and Planets Jonathan Nally
An evening gathering
Three planets and a star will grace our western skies
ercury returns to our evening

skies in August, low down on
the western horizon but slowly
climbing higher as the month
progresses. And it wont be alone
Jupiter and Venus will be nearby, as will
the star Regulus on August 7 and the
crescent Moon on the 16th. Moving into
September, Mercury will appear close to
the star Spica, before sliding back down
towards the horizon and the Suns glare.
Look for the Moon nearby on
September 15.
As mentioned, Venus will be low on
the western horizon after sunset at the
beginning of August, but will be lost in
the glare of the Sun by mid-month as it
slides between us and our star. But dont
worry, it will be back at the end of the
month, this time on the eastern horizon
in the hours before dawn. Thereafter, it
will be visible all through September
look for the Moon nearby on the 10th.
Mars was too close to the Sun for
observation during July, but will return
to our eastern, morning skies in August.
Initially remaining close to the horizon
and embedded in the dawn light, it will
rise higher as the weeks progress and by
September will be more easily visible.
The Red Planet will appear to pass right
through M44 an open star cluster, also
known as the Beehive Cluster on
August 20 and 21. Get out your
binoculars and take a look. And then
also keep an eye out for the planet as it
comes near to the star Regulus from
September 24 to 26. The reddish Mars
and blue star will make a fine contrast.
Jupiter begins August low on the
western horizon, in company with
Venus and Mercury. Like Venus, Jupiter
too will soon sink toward the horizon as
the days pass, and be lost in the Suns
glare by mid-month. Watch for the
triangle made by Jupiter, Mercury and
the star Regulus on August 7. Jupiter
will reappear to the east in the morning
sky in late September, joining Mars and
Venus by months end.
Saturn is well placed for evening
viewing during August and September,
reaching quadrature where the angle
between Sun, Earth and Saturn is 90
degrees on August 22. This means
that it will be at its highest point in the
CO R V U S
Dusk, Aug 7
30 minutes after sunset
VIRGO
Look for a gathering
of celestial bodies
Venus, Jupiter,
Mercury and Regulus
low in the western
sky after sunset on
August 7. Youll need
a clear horizon.
Denebola
HYDRA
LEO
Venus
Jupiter
Regulus
Mercury
Looking West
Betelgeuse
Dawn, Sept 11
40 minutes before sunrise
CANIS MINOR
By mid-September,
Mars will be in the
morning sky before
dawn, with Venus
sailing higher above.
Procyon
Sept 8
HYDRA
Sept 9
GEMINI
Sept 10
Pollux
Venus
Castor
Sept 11
Mars
Regulus
Sept 12
Looking East-Northeast
northern sky as the Sun is setting. Watch

for the Moon nearby that same night, and
again on September 19.
And finally, Earth will reach the spring
equinox on September 23, a day on which

the hours of daylight and darkness are
more or less equal. The equinox is also a
sign that summer is on its way.
Events Of Note
Aug
1
7
7/8
9
13
16/17
20
21
23
23
29
Sept
5
10
11
11/12
15
16
19
20
23
25
Jupiter 6q north of Venus

Jupiter 0.6q south of Mercury
Mercury 1q north of Regulus
Aldebaran 0.7q south of the Moon
Mars 6q north of the Moon
Mercury 2q north of the Moon
Spica 4qsouth of the Moon
Mars 0.2q south of Beehive Cluster
Saturn 3q south of the Moon
Antares 10q south of the Moon
Mars 9q north of Venus
Aldebaran 0.6q south of the Moon
Venus 3q south of the Moon
Mars 5q north of the Moon
Regulus 3q north of the Moon
Mercury 5q south of the Moon
Spica 4q south of the Moon
Saturn 3q south of the Moon
Antares 10q south of the Moon
Spring equinox, 6pm AEST
Mars 0.8q north of Regulus
Times are listed in Australian Eastern Standard Time
ANTO
NN
KL
August 2015
Phases
Last Quarter August 7, 02:03 UT
New Moon August 15, 02:53 UT
First Quarter August 22, 19:31 UT
Full Moon
August 29, 18:35 UT
Distances
Perigee
Apogee
Perigee
August 2, 10h UT
362,139 km
August 18, 01h UT
405,848 km
August 30, 15h UT
362,139 km
September 2015
Phases
Last Quarter September 5, 09:54 UT
New Moon September 13, 06:41 UT
First Quarter September 21, 08:59 UT
Full Moon
September 28, 02:51 UT
Distances
Apogee
Perigee
September 14, 11h UT

406,464 km
September 28, 00h UT
356,877 km
This composite image of the Milky Way and a

formation in the Mungo National Park in NSW,
was taken by Damien Seidel. He used a Nikon
D810 with a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens.
Celestial Calendar
Return to Sagittarius
Several of the
double stars
covered this
month were
identied in the
1830s by John
Herschel.
Sweeping up doubles in south-west Sagittarius
his issues doubles are in the

southwest corner of Sagittarius,
and not near the Milky Way. With
no bright guide stars and only a few stars
of 4th and 5th magnitude, the use of
Go To systems, or setting circles, makes
for easier finding than star-hopping. Even
so, our targets can be found with optical
finders of 50-mm and a good star map.
All of them are 19th century discoveries,
four of them by John Herschel from his
southern sky survey of the 1830s.
Starting with the most northerly, the
attractive multiple star HJ 5188 (oldstyle, h 5188) is a John Herschel
discovery from 1834. An 18-cm refractor
at 100 showed a bright white star (A)
with a well-separated magnitude-7.5
companion (C), and a much closer
magnitude-10 star north-east (B); wide
north-east was a little 10th-magnitude
pair (DE). Altogether a fine effect. Ernst
Hartung in his classic book Astronomical
Objects for Southern Telescopes, says all
this is visible with 7.5-cm; I'd suggest
more aperture is better. Hartung
mentions a reddish star 5' north-west
that contrasts nicely with the white A
and C stars.
Some 5 degrees south-southwest from
HJ 5188 is HJ 5178, of 7th and 8th
magnitudes at nearly 3" separation,
visible with an 8-cm telescope. The 18cm refractor showed a somewhat uneven
deep yellow pair, nicely seen at 135.
Little changed over time and, with similar
proper motions, this is likely a binary
with a very long-period orbit.
From HJ 5178, two degrees north-east
is the 8th-magnitude pair STN 64,
discovered by Ormond Stone with the
28-cm refractor of the Cincinnati
Observatory. It's been closing slowly
since discovery; the 18-cm refractor
showed a tight yellow pair at 100 that
was easy at 180. Another long-period
binary, it will be many years before the
orbit can be calculated.
Some 2 degrees north-west from
HJ 5178 is one of this month's test objects
for larger telescopes. SEE 404 was
discovered by T.J.J. See in 1897, since
when the position angle has increased,
with little change in separation. In 1991,
the Hipparcos satellite measured the
-1.4
The apparent
orbit of R 321
1980
-0.9
2015
-0.4
-0.4
2051
0.1
0.6
0.1
1.1
East
1.6
2086
1944
0.6
North
separation as just 0.63" the brightness

difference of the stars, magnitudes 6.6
and 9, makes it more difficult still. The
current separation appears similar to
1991, and this fits the Rayleigh Criterion
for 22-cm aperture; optimists might try it
with that aperture. Around 28- to 30-cm
aperture will place the secondary star
right on the first diffraction ring, making
it very difficult. I'd suggest 32-cm and
larger scopes in good seeing for this one.
There's also a wide dim companion,
south of the primary.
Continuing southwards, 4 degrees
south-east from HJ 5178 is the changing
binary R 321, an 1880 discovery by

H.C. Russell at the Sydney Observatory
using its 29-cm refractor. These days
R 321 is wider than in 1880. With an
18-cm refractor, it was a bright orange
star, not quite single at 100, in a field
with lesser stars in lines and triangles.
Increasing the power to 180 neatly
separated the stars, showing a close,
moderately uneven pair; a fine object.
A preliminary orbit calculation gives
the period as nearly 180 years. The
separation had decreased to a minimum
around 1950, with a gradual increase
since then, and it's now approaching the
maximum of 1.6" around 2026, after
which there will be a slow decrease for a
hundred years. R 321 is about 120 lightyears away; the orbit, in projection, has
a maximum size about 60 a.u. twice
the distance from the Sun to Neptune.
From R 321, just over 1 degree westnorthwest is HJ 5189. Its stars are of 8th
and 9th magnitude, at an easy
separation, and 8-cm will show it,
though more aperture improves the
effect. It looked better than the numbers
suggest with 18-cm at 100 it is a
neat little pair, placed between two 9thmagnitude stars. With 35-cm both stars
appear yellowish.
From R 321, 3-plus degrees southwest is the easy pair DUN 230, a fairly
Selected double stars in Sagittarius

Star Name
R. A.
hh mm
Dec.
Magnitudes
o '
Separation
Position
(arcseconds) Angle(o)
Date of Spectrum
Measure
SEE 404
20 05.5 -33 00
AB 6.6, 9.0
0.6"
109
1991
"
"
AC 6.6, 12.6
21.7"
186
2010
"
B4III
HJ 5178
20 13.7 -34 07
7.1, 8.2
2.8"
009
1991
K1/2III
STN 64
20 16.9 -32 36
8.1, 8.5
1.7"
296
2008
G5V
DUN 230
20 17.8 -40 11
7.4, 7.7
9.9"
112
2010
F8
HJ 5188
20 20.5 -29 12
AB 6.7, 10.1
3.6"
042
1998
A2III
A2III, A1
"
"
"
AC 6.7, 7.6
27.2"
320
2010
"
"
"
AD 6.7, 10.0
120"
038
1999
"
"
"
DE 10.0, 10.0 4.7"
186
1999
HJ 5189
20 21.8 -36 54
8.8, 9.6
7.5"
294
1998
F6V, G5
BU 763 (Kappa-2)
20 23.9 -42 25
5.7, 7.3
0.3"
345
2013
A5V
R 321
20 26.9 -37 24
6.6, 8.1
1.6"
126
2013
K2IV, K1V
Data from the Washington Double Star Catalog
F0V
bright yellowish double in a field with a

scattering of 9th- and 10th-magnitude stars.
This is a neat double accessible to small
scopes; the separation has become closer
since James Dunlop found it in the 1820s.
Common proper motion of the stars
suggests it is a long-period binary.
To end, the ultra-close bright pair
Kappa-2 Sagittarii, BU 763. Discovered by
Sherburne Wesley Burnham using a 15-cm
refractor, by 1960 when Hartung observed it
the pair was closing, and he noted: 15cm
showed the stars in contact with dark line
Celestial Calendar
between, and 20cm was needed to separate

them It closed to a minimum of 0.3"
around 2000, and is now slowly widening,
though at present is still only 0.4"; I'd
suggest apertures of 30-cm or more. A
preliminary orbit with a period of 700 years
has been calculated, suggesting that 200
years from now it will be an easy pair at a
separation of 2.8".
Ross Gould has been a long-time observer from
the suburban skies of Canberra. He can be
reached at [email protected]
Alan Plummer
The rise of RU Sagittarii
7KH0LOUR\7HOHVFRSH
Invites You
Astro-photographers
^
The Public and Tourists
Watch this Mira-type variable appear out of the darkness
eve got a challenging, and

hopefully satisfying, target
this month: RU Sagittarii.
A Mira-type pulsating variable star,
RU Sag has a period of 240.49 days
(although this is known to vary a little)
and a spectral class of M3e-M6e.
Although RU Sags maximum light
(6th magnitude) is not predicted to
occur until October 11, as this issue
comes out it should have risen past
11th magnitude.
At first, unless you use a telescope
of 15-cm aperture or more, youll
most likely be logging negative
observations in other words, it will
be fainter than the faintest star you
can see. But no matter what
instrument you have whether
binoculars, a 100mm refractor, or a
bigger light bucket keep watching
RU Sags field night after night and
eventually youll see the star begin to
appear out of the darkness (although
make sure youre not confused by the
10th-magnitude companion star close
to the north-east.)
Its always worth a reminder of why
we amateurs make these observations.
No professional astronomer can hope
to watch all of the catalogued variable
stars, so they rely on dedicated
amateurs to help them out by making
visual observations. Automated
surveys are good but some stars,
including RU Sagittarii, have visual
data sets going back more than a
century, and continuity and
HOW TO FIND RU SAGITTARII North is to the top in

these charts, which come courtesy of the AAVSO. The
large-scale chart is approximately 5 degrees from north
to south, while the small scale chart is approximately 1
degree from north to south. RU Sgr is located at (J2000)
19h 58m 42.87s, -410 50c 57.9s.
consistency of data and observing methods

are invaluable. And, not the least, having
an eye at the eyepiece is often useful for
spotting the unexpected!
Alan Plummer observes from the Blue
Mountains west of Sydney, and can be contacted
on [email protected]
to use the largest telescope available

for your unique astronomy interest.
Astro-holiday packages available
s

Celestial Calendar
Four comets to find
David Seargent
Several comets, some hard, some easy, are on show for southern observers
ith the Rosetta comet 67P/

Churyumov-Gerasimenko
reaching perihelion on August 13
at 1.24 a.u. from the Sun, the attention of
comet enthusiasts during this period is likely
to be concentrated on the Internet rather than
the night sky. The comet itself will be low in
the morning twilight for Southern
Hemisphere observers and, although
magnitude predictions differ, it will not be an
easy visual object for small telescopes.
Churyumov-Gerasimenko is unlikely to be
much brighter than 13th-magnitude or
thereabouts (although some predictions are a
little more optimistic) and this, coupled with
its small elongation angle from the Sun and
early morning appearance, will not make it a
suitable object to show the general public at
field nights.
After passing perihelion at just 0.31 a.u. on
July 6, C/2014 Q1 (PANSTARRS) should still
be visible low in the evening sky during the
first half of August. Crossing from Sextans
into Crater during the first week of that
month, this comet will reach Hydra around
the middle of August as it continues to sink
into the western sky. Assuming that it
survives its close encounter with the Sun in
July, it may still be around magnitude 8.5 as
August begins, but is expected to fade quite
rapidly to around 10 as it sinks into the
western twilight mid-month.
Also mentioned in the previous issue,
C/2013 US10 (Catalina) is likely to be
around magnitude 9 at the start of August
and will be well placed for southern observers
during the months of August and September.
It will be circumpolar from mid-southern
latitudes for much of this time and will stay

within 20 degrees of the south celestial pole
from August 7 until August 21.
At the end of August, the comet will be
located in Triangulum Australis, moving into
Lupus where it spends most of September
until crossing into Centaurus during the last
week of that month. If the comet brightens as
expected, it should be around magnitude 7 to
7.5 by the end of September and readily
visible through ordinary binoculars.
Another comet which may be of visual
interest, especially to more northerly placed
observers, is C/2015 F4 (Jacques). This object
was discovered by C. Jacques on CCD images
taken using the 0.28-m astrograph at the
Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) will be high

in the southern sky during mid-August.
This view shows its position on August 15.
(Comet symbol is not shown to scale; itll
be much fainter and smaller.)
SONEAR Observatory at Oliveira (Brazil) on

March 27 this year. At that time, it was
estimated to be magnitude 16. It will reach
perihelion on August 9 at 1.7 a.u. from the
Sun and will be visible during August and
September in the region of Vulpecula/
Hercules/Lyra. Unfortunately, current
magnitude estimates indicate that it will
remain rather faint in the magnitude 12 or
13 range but as these predictions are based
on CCD estimates, there is a possibility that it
may become somewhat brighter than this.
David Seargents latest book on comets, Snowballs
in the Furnace, is available as a paperback-ondemand from Amazon.com
Sue French
Targets
Small Sagittarius Star Cloud

The Sagittarius Milky Way is home to fascinating dark nebulae and open clusters
n moonless nights away

from the glow of outdoor
lighting, the misty trail of
the Milky Way stretches across the
sky through Sagittarius. Its gossamer
glow is fashioned from remote
swarms of innumerable stars, and the
silvery splendour of their
intermingled light shows us the plane
of the disk-shaped, spiral galaxy in
which we live. For the most part, the
stars that lie along this section of the
Milky Way, as well as the dark clouds
that decorate it, lie within the
Sagittarius-Carina Arm of our
galaxy. This is the next spiral arm
inward from ours, and it blocks the
view beyond. The Sagittarius Milky
Way is interlaced with dark rifts,
however. Within one dark rift, a gap
allows us to peer deeper into the
galaxy. The stars that shine through
18h 30m
south of the first, as a circular

collection of beautiful starlets
arranged in several rays diverging
from its brightest star. Its chart is
labeled Gruppo a raggera (Sunburst
Group). He refers to yet another
section, next to the Sunburst, as a
magnificent system of crossed arcs,
the middle strewn with faint stars
too numerous to count.
Indeed, one cant help but point a
telescope anywhere within the 2
1 oblong of M24 without being
struck by the richness and variety of
the star fields. Through my 130-mm
refractor with a wide-angle eyepiece
at 23, M24 spans most of the field
of view. Its best-known features are
the dark nebulae Barnard 92 and
Barnard 93, seen in projection
against the cloud like dusky eyes in a
fuzzy face. B92 is a nearly north-
this hole make up Messier 24, the

Small Sagittarius Star Cloud.
Messier 24 is sometimes called
Delle Caustiche, a name attributed to
the 19th-century Italian astronomer
Angelo Secchi. However, Secchi
made it clear in his 1877 book Le
Stelle that he was only describing a
small part of M24. He writes of a
little cloud, less than half the Moons
apparent diameter, made up of a
multitude of separate groups of tiny
stars. Two of these groups are
charted as seen through a 9.6-inch
telescope. The first is labeled
Gruppo delle Caustiche (Group of
Caustics), because its diminutive
stars are arrayed in arcs that
resemble caustic curves (such as are
formed when sunlight shines
through a drinking glass). Secchi
describes the second group, close
18h 25m
18h 20m
18h 15m
18h 10m
M18
18
18h 05m
18h 00m
17h 55m
M24
Cr 469
6603
6567
M23
M25
Star magnitudes
20
4
5
6
7
8
9
SAGITTARIUS
15
m
14
22
Targets
how much more obvious and

intricate the dark nebulae are at this
magnification. A fairly conspicuous
thread runs east-northeast from B93,
leading to a large area of patchy
darkness that contains Barnard 307.
Much dark nebulosity spreads west
from B92, and a long, forked patch
(Barnard 304) reaches southwest.
Collinder 469 and NGC 6603 share a
field of view. Cr 469 shows six stars
that form a capital A pointing
northeast, while pretty NGC 6603 is
a granular patch of mist. At 117,
Cr 469 displays 11 stars in a group
whose longest dimension is about
3.25. A bit larger but much more
crowded, NGC 6603 is sprinkled
with many faint- to very-faint stars
over haze. It sports a prominent
southeast-northwest band of stars
that cuts across the clusters centre.
NGC 6603 is wonderfully
transformed by a 25-cm scope. At
213, its a beautiful cluster of myriad
diamond-dust stars, with little
unresolved haze remaining.
You might think that M24 would
be a terrible place to look for a petite
planetary nebula, but I was surprised
to find NGC 6567 reasonably easy to
south ink spot covering about 13.5

8. B93 is an 8 3 band with a less
pronounced extension bending
southward from its southwestern
end. This eye seems to be winking.
Collinder 469 is a little knot of stars
just a few arcminutes off the
extensions end. A very long and
distinctive line of faint stars sweeps
east-northeast to west-southwest
across M24. The star chain skims
north of B92 and B93, and it has a
northward bump between them.
The open cluster NGC 6603 is a
nicely obvious patch of haze flecked
with a few superimposed stars. Its
perched near a red-orange star, which
is the middle star in the northern arm
of a 20 V of 7th- and 8th-magnitude
stars. The middle star in the southern
arm of the V is the double SHJ 264
(S,h 264). Its whitish components are
well separated, with the
7.6-magnitude companion 17
northeast of its 6.9-magnitude
primary. The pairs designation tells
us that its the 264th entry in James
Souths and John Herschels multiple
star catalogue of 1824.
Although I cant fit all of M24 in
the field of view at 63, its amazing
spot through my 130-mm scope. At

37 it appears bluish and minuscule,
but most definitely not stellar. A
magnification of 117 reveals a tiny
blue-grey disk thats fairly bright. A
dim star sits just off the nebulas
eastern side. At 205 the nebula
seems to have a brighter centre.
Through my 25-cm reflector at
115, NGC 6567 presents a strikingly
blue-green disk that I judge to be
about 9 across.
A few other star groups from
Charles Messiers famous 18thcentury catalogue keep M24
company. Its nearest neighbour on
the sky is the open cluster Messier 18,
which hovers north of the star clouds
northeastern end. My 130-mm
refractor at 48 shows 15 moderately
bright to faint stars, most arranged in
a cute shape resembling a slightly
mangled hairpin. At 91 I count 24
stars loosely scattered across
approximately 7.
Two richer star clusters bracket
M24. To the west we find Messier 23,
which blossoms into a populous
collection of 9th- to 12th-magnitude
stars when seen through a 130-mm
scope at 37. The cluster spans about
M24 Small Sagittarius Star Cloud
M20
M8
NGC 6604
M16
B307
M17
B304
B92
Cr 469
B93
IC 4685
NGC 6589
JASON JENNINGS
NGC 6595
NGC 6603 IC 1284
10,000 to 15,000 light-years away

from us. This would include stars
from the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, the
major spiral arm between us and the
galactic centre. M24 may also include
stars within a minor spiral arm
farther inward, the Norma Arm.
Thus, M24 is not a true physical
object, but merely a pile-up of stars
along our line of sight.
At a distance of 12,000 light-years,
NGC 6603 is actually within the
bounds of the Star Cloud. Its difficult
to tell where NGC 6567 fits into the
scene. As is often the case with
planetary nebula, even recent distance
estimates are widely varied in this
case from 5,500 to 12,000 light-years.
The other objects are in the
foreground, and we simply see them
projected against M24. Collinder 469
is about 4,800 light-years distant,
while the dark nebulae are roughly
700 light-years away from us.
Most Messier objects are also listed
in the 1888 New General Catalogue of
Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC),
but neither M24 nor M25 is among
them. They were added to the 1908
supplement to the NGC, known as the
Second Index Catalogue of Nebulae
and Clusters of Stars (IC). In the
catalogue, IC 4715 (M24) is described
as a most extremely large cloud of
stars and nebulae and IC 4725 (M25)
as a cluster, pretty compressed. We
can just call them beautiful.
M18
nice double star 3 south of the D is

Burnham 966 CD (966 or BU 966),
with a yellow primary whose
companion rests 11 to its south.
Altogether, the stars form a vaguely
rectangular gathering thats about 40
long, tipped a bit east of north.
The Small Sagittarius Star Cloud
plumbs our galaxy to considerable
depth. Its stars spread from about
Sue French welcomes your comments at

[email protected].
Deep sky targets in the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud

Object
Type
Mag(v)
Size/Sep
RA
Dec.
Messier 24
Star cloud
2.5
2 1
18h 16.8m
18 33
NGC 6567
Planetary nebula
11.0
12
18h 13.8m
19 05
Messier 18
Open cluster
6.9
7.2
18h 20.0m
17 06
Messier 23
Open cluster
5.5
29
17h 57.1m
18 59
Messier 25
Open cluster
4.6
32
18h 31.8m
19 07
M25
966
Angular sizes and separations are from recent catalogues. Visually, an objects size is often smaller
than the cataloged value and varies according to the aperture and magnication of the viewing
instrument. Right ascension and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
Right: The double star Burnham 966 CD (966) lies 3 south of the
D-shaped gure resting at the heart of open star cluster M25.
POSS-I / STSCI / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY /

CALTECH/ POSS-II / PALOMAR OBSERVATORY
0.5 and boasts about 90 stars strung

in glittering chains meandering
through the group. Pushing the scope
east from M24 brings me to Messier
25, a lovely cluster of 70 mixed bright
and faint stars prettily displayed in
sprays and gently curving lines. The
four brightest stars shine gold, and
theres an adorable little D of seven
faint stars at the groups heart. The
Exploring the Solar System Thomas A. Dobbins
Saturns polar polygon puzzle

Why is the ringed planet crowned by a hexagonal cloud pattern?
aturns rotational axis is tilted

by almost 27 to the plane of its
orbit, giving the ringed planet
a full array of seasons. While seasons
on Earth last only three Earth months,
Saturns endure for more than seven
Earth years, owing to its 29.5-Earthyear-long orbital period.
The northern summer solstice on
Saturn will occur in May 2017, when
the planets north pole and the northern
face of its rings will be tipped toward
the Sun and toward Earth to
their maximum extent. While the
increasingly apparent opening of the
rings is undoubtedly the principal
attraction, this favourable viewing
geometry also affords an opportunity
to observe colourful features at high
northern latitudes on the planets globe.
Saturn displays alternating dusky
belts and bright zones that resemble
those of Jupiter but are comparatively

muted in contrast and bland in
appearance. In many respects, Saturns
atmosphere is similar in structure
and composition to Jupiters, with a
deck of water clouds at the bottom,
ammonium hydrosulfide (NH4SH)
clouds in the middle, and a deck of
frozen ammonia (NH3) clouds at the
top the one we see discoloured
by traces of nitrogen, sulfur and
phosphorous compounds. The upper
troposphere, which lies above this
layered sandwich, consists of colourless
hydrogen and helium with a trace of
methane (CH4) and a murky haze of
photochemical smog.
Two factors account for the dramatic
difference in the appearance of the two
gas giant planets. Clouds form deeper
down at the cooler temperatures that
prevail at Saturns greater distance from
In this 2012 Cassini

image, the giant moon
Titan looms in front of
Saturn, whose north
temperate latitudes
are becoming less blue
as summer approaches
and its southern ones
more so as they edge
toward winter.
Although seen distinctly at visual

wavelengths, Saturns enigmatic north-polar
hexagon was even more striking when
recorded in near-infrared light by Cassini in
2013. This feature, rst discovered in Voyager
images, is twice Earths diameter in size. The
day-night terminator is at upper left.
NASA / JPL / SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE (2)
the Sun. This thermal effect is greatly

reinforced by the planets weaker
gravity. (Although only slightly smaller
in diameter than Jupiter, Saturn is only
30% as massive.) Jupiters atmosphere
is pulled much more powerfully toward
the centre of the planet, so the pressure
gradient in the Jovian atmosphere is
almost three times steeper.
Viewing Saturns cloud deck through
the planets hazy, distended upper
troposphere washes out details and
subdues the saturation of colours.
Saturns dark belts appear pale greyish
brown rather than the reddish sepia
characteristic of Jupiters belts, while the
ringed planets tropical and temperate
zones feature a delicate palette of straw
yellow, butterscotch and saffron hues.
Saturns dusky polar regions, however,
often display assorted cooler colours
reminiscent of the frigid ice giants
Uranus and Neptune. Ranging from
olive green to teal, aquamarine and
azure blue, they can be detected by a
keen-eyed observer through a telescope
of only 15- to 20-cm in aperture. Yellow
(Wratten 12 or 15), orange (Wratten
21) and red (Wratten 23A or 25) filters
enhance this distinction.
As long ago as 1806 William
Herschel noted that Saturns poles
Thanks to the favourable tilt of Saturns north

pole toward Earth, amateur astrophotographers are getting a good look at the
planets polar hexagon for the rst time since
its discovery in 1988. DAMIAN PEACH
appear to darken as they slowly tilt

sunward. Decades of observations
amassed by the British Astronomical
Associations Saturn Section show a
close correlation between solar altitude
and the darkness of the polar regions,
suggesting that Saturns atmosphere
responds quickly to the increasing
input of sunlight.
The Suns intensity at Saturn is
only 1/90-th of that on Earth, and the
ringed planet radiates about twice as
much internal heat as it receives from
the Sun. So warming temperatures
are not responsible for intensifying
the polar colours. Instead, the
greenish and bluish hues are widely
attributed to Rayleigh scattering by
hydrocarbon aerosols produced by
solar ultraviolet radiation and charged
particles, augmented by the selective
absorption of light from the red end
of the spectrum by methane. But the
chemistry of Saturns polar hazes is
surprisingly complex for example,
polarimetry data suggest that the haze
particles are shaped like microscopic
grape clusters and in truth the exact
cause for the distinct hues remains
uncertain.
north pole in 2006. The Voyager images

revealed that clouds along the hexagon
are propelled by fierce jet-stream winds
that exceed 400 kilometres per hour.
Physicists at the University of Oxford
recently recreated the appearance of
this mysterious feature by placing a
cylinder of water on a slowly spinning
table to simulate Saturns atmosphere
spinning with the planets rotation.
Inside this vessel they placed a small
ring that rotated more rapidly than
the cylinder to mimic an atmospheric
jet stream. The researchers used
fluorescent green dye to make the
currents visible. They soon noticed that
the greater the difference in rotation
rate, the less circular the turbulent
boundary became. Stable vortices of
similar size formed on the slower, outer
side of the fluid interface, and these
interacted with each other to space
themselves out evenly around the
perimeter. By varying the rate at which
the inner ring spun, the investigators
were able to generate a variety of
polygons, but a hexagonal form was
the most common and stable. You

can watch a video of the simulation at
http://is.gd/saturn_hexagon.
Is that whats happening on Saturn?
Perhaps, though Cassini has not
observed any differential rotation
between the hexagons interior
and exterior. Also, why is there no
comparable feature surrounding the
planets south pole?
In any case, the north-polar
hexagon is huge, spanning 25,000
kilometres (twice the diameter of
Earth), and it subtends more than 3
arcseconds for earthbound observers
four times the apparent diameter
of Titan, Saturns largest satellite.
Although well-equipped webcam
imagers are routinely capturing
stunning images of this feature,
discerning its straight-sided outline
poses a challenging test for purely
visual observers. But dont let that
dissuade you from trying. Saturn
reached opposition in late May, so now
is an excellent time to see the ringed
planet at its best hexagon or no.
ASTRO-PHYSICS Inc.
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A curious aspect
Saturns colourful northern polar region
is the site of a persistent hexagonalshaped cloud feature centred at
latitude 76 north. Curiously, it has no
counterpart at the planets south pole.
First noticed in 1988 on old Voyager
spacecraft images, it was still present
and seemingly unaltered when the
Cassini spacecraft imaged Saturns
Contact ATS
for the ultimate in CCDs
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Charles A. Wood
Exploring the Moon
Faulting the lunar crust

Subtle cracks and creases betray shifts in the lunar landscape.
he realisation in the late 1940s

that the Moons dark, circular
maria exist within very large
impact craters (called basins) was
profoundly important. Excavated during
titanic impacts, these big, deep holes
threw their ejecta widely across the
Moon, later became filled with mare
lava flows, and eventually developed
concentric fractures and mare ridges as
they subsided. Basins are thus the most

important lunar landforms.
When observing the Moon, your eye
is drawn to the major lava-filled basins
such as Imbrium, Crisium, Humorum
and Nectaris, but numerous smaller
ones are often overlooked.
A powerful tool that has helped
geophysicists recognise basins is
the global gravity map created by
MARE
IMBRIUM
Eratosthenes
SINUS
AESTUUM
Ri
Hy
NASA LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER
Copernicus
Manilius
MARE
VAPORUM
Fauth
MARE
INSULARUM
ginu
100 km
MARE
SERENITATIS
J. C. ANDREWS-HANNA NATURE
COPERNICUSFAUTH BASIN
NASAs Gravity Recovery and Interior

Laboratory (GRAIL) orbiters, twin craft
that circled in tandem at low altitude
before crashing onto the lunar surface
in December 2012. New Zealand
amateur Maurice Collins created
the colour map at lower left that is a
mash-up of GRAIL gravity data with a
visualisation of Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter digital topography. The area
shown, about 1,000 kilometres wide,
stretches from west of Copernicus to
just east of Manilius.
The map's colours represent the local
gravity field gradients (from an analysis
by Jeffrey C. Andrews-Hanna of the
Colorado School of Mines), with blue
indicating where the field is stronger,
and red weaker, than average. These
variations result from the amount of
mass present near the lunar surface. A
lower-mass signature can be caused by
a big hole in the ground or by lowerdensity rocks such as those of the lunar
highlands. Higher gravity readings
require dense rocks such as lava flows or,
more importantly, an upwelling of the
lunar mantle beneath the surface.
Basins are usually surrounded by
uplifted circular rims of pulverised,
overturned rock that create gravity
lows (notice the red rim of Serenitatis
at upper right). The interiors of many
basins are pronounced gravity highs,
the famous mass concentrations or
mascons discovered in the early days of
lunar exploration.
The exceptional spatial resolution of
the GRAIL data allows unprecedented
delineation of gravity highs and lows,
and Collins mash-up clearly defines
three smaller basins southeast of Mare
Imbrium. Two of these can be seen by
Top: The lunar landscape between
Copernicus and Manilius features several
small maria. Two of these ll the basins
Aestuum and Vaporum. Bottom: A third
basin, now covered by Mare Insularum, only
becomes evident in the gravity map of this
region compiled by NASAs Gravity Recovery
and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft.
Red regions denote gravity elds that are
lower than average and blue ones those
higher than average.
Exploring the Moon
The central peaks in Copernicus, as seen obliquely from the west by NASAs Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter. They rise about 700 metres above a sharp boundary with now-solid
lava that was liqueed by the impacts energy and ooded the oor of the crater in its nal
stages of formation. NASA LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER
eye in the topography, but the third is

nearly invisible.
Mare Vaporum very likely fills a
small impact basin even though it isnt
ringed with mountains. Instead, notice
the modest gravity high caused by dense
lava filling a depression. GRAIL data
clearly show a curved red rim on the
southern side of the mare. The diameter
^ W
2nd October An evening
of banter and debate with
science broadcaster and
journalist, Robyn Williams,

astronomers Prof
Amanda Bauer, Prof Naomi McClure-' W
Lisa Harvey-Smith and Prof
Vicki Meadows.
of the Vaporum basin, as defined by the

partial red ring, is about 250 km.
At the telescope you can see that the
end of the rille Rima Hyginus abruptly
stops when it reaches the southeast edge
of Mare Vaporum, showing that those
lavas are younger than the rille.
A more pronounced red gravity ring
defines the basin of Sinus Aestuum,
^^K K 3rd October

d s
dll be
music, food and refreshments, science exhi
talks from ANU and AAO astronomers and
talks about astronomy for children.
>4th October
Prof. Vicki Meadows is the Prin/E^
/s Virtual
Planetary Laboratory Lead
D ^Y W 3rd October
Team and a Professor with the
Experience the best Southern Sky by night.
University of Washington. Prof
Viewing through the telescope and
Meadowsprimary research
other large Dobsonian telescopes. Cam
interests are in determining
Wylie will give a talk about the night sky
how to recognise whether a
as you enjoy the nights Star-B-Que.
distant extrasolar planet is able
to harbor life.
&^^K^&
which does not retain any remnant of its

topographic rim except for the isolated
mountain southwest of Eratosthenes.
We used to think this little elongated
mountain was an isolated plop of
Imbrium ejecta, but the gravity data
suggest that in reality its part of the small
basins rim. Based on the red gravity ring,
the basin is about 275 km wide.
The Aestuum mascon is more
pronounced than Vaporums, perhaps
indicating a thicker lava filling. The
ridges that form an inner basin ring at
Aestuum were produced by faulting in
the mare when the underlying basin
subsided.
A red ring and blue mascon bullseye defines a third small basin on
which Copernicus later appeared. This
small, 200-km-wide basin displays no
convincing evidence of a topographic
rim and, unlike Vaporum and Aestuum,
wasnt identified previously. Some lunar
geologists suspected it was the eastern
half of a larger, rather speculative basin
called Insularum. However, thanks to the
GRAIL data, we now know that no basin
underlies Mare Insularum. So, to avoid
confusion, I informally call this newly
recognised feature Copernicus-Fauth
basin, after the only two named craters
within it.
The fact that Copernicus formed
directly above the basins now-absent rim
might explain a peculiar compositional
aspect of the craters central peaks. These
contain the mineral olivine, thought to
be common in the lunar mantle. The rim
of the Copernicus-Fauth basin might
include olivine excavated from great
depth and later brought to the surface as
the Copernicus peaks.
Volcanism, which commonly occurred
inside large basins, also marks all three
of these smaller ones. For example, a
small, steep-sided volcanic dome was
recently recognised along the north shore
of Mare Vaporum. The Moons most
extensive deposits of pyroclastic (ash)
material occur along the eastern and
southern shores of Aestuum, and a similar
deposit lies along the southeast rim of my
Copernicus-Fauth basin.
All of these volcanic features can be
observed with a telescope, but its a bigger
challenge to find evidence for the rims of
these three small basins.
Charles Wood (lpod.wikispaces.com) is coauthor of the new book 21st Century Atlas of
the Moon.
NGC 5367 imaged with ProLine PL16803. Image courtesy of Wolfgang Promper.
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Tony Flanders
Book Review
A paper atlas
for the digital age
interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas
Ronald Stoyan and Stephan Schurig
Oculum-Verlag GmbH and Cambridge University Press, 2015
Desk Edition, 264 pages, ISBN 9781107503380
Field Edition, 264 pages, ISBN 9781107503397
s there a future for paper star charts

in an era of computers and handheld electronic devices? Cambridge
University Press and German publisher
Oculum-Verlag seem to think so.
Theyve collaborated to produce an
English-language version of the
interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas, which
has been available in German since late
2013. Its the most ambitious star atlas
in many years and one of the most
innovative ever.
Viewed in daylight, the atlas is

gorgeous. It comes in two different
editions with identical contents. The
Desk Edition is printed on highquality paper, while the Field Edition
is printed on synthetic paper thats
waterproof, light and tough. Facing
pages form a single spread when the
atlas is laid open on a table, and the
S&T: SEAN WALKER
wire binding makes it easy to fold the

atlas back into single-page format.
I found the volume easy to hold
next to the eyepiece of a telescope
or finderscope by resting it in the
crook of my elbow. Thats much more
convenient than running back and
forth between the telescope and the
observing table when working out a
complex star-hop.
With thicker, whiter paper, the Desk
At 28.7 28.5 cm and 1.3 kg, the Field
Edition is easy to hold next to the eyepiece
of a telescope.
As the chart of Orion

shows, the more
vibrant the colour, the
smaller the instrument
needed to spot the
target. Galaxies
are shown in blue,
reection nebulae in a
paler blue, planetary
nebulae in green and
emission nebulae in
salmon with a dark
outline. Labels vary
in size to reect an
objects visibility.
To Scale
Edition is indeed slightly easier to read at a

desk, while the Field Editions lighter weight
makes it easier to hold next to the eyepiece.
The Field Edition will presumably hold up
longer against dew, but the Desk Edition is
also highly dew resistant. In fact, both editions
work very well both day and night.
The colour scheme is carefully chosen; it
provides extra legibility during the day but
also works well by red light. Unlike most
recent atlases, this one depicts galaxies as
blue, making them quite prominent by red
light. Reflection nebulae are shown in paler
blue and emission nebulae in a salmon colour
with a dark outline a useful distinction
not made in most star charts. For more of
the atlass many innovative features, see
deepskyatlas.com.
The atlas aims to show all deep sky objects
visible through a 30-cm scope under dark
skies, as well as some fainter objects of special
interest. That adds up to 15,000 deep sky
objects, which are plotted on a field of 200,000
stars down to magnitude 9.5. In addition to
the 114 basic charts, there are 29 detailed
charts for crowded fields. Deep sky objects
are divided into four classes depending on the
aperture needed to see them: 10-cm, 20-cm,
30-cm or more. The objects labels are scaled
according to their visibility class, just as major
cities get larger labels than do small towns on
a conventional road map.
To see how this all works out in practice,
I took the atlas out for two long nights of
observing with my 31-cm Dobsonian. For
comparison, I also brought my 7-inch tablet
running a planetarium app.
The planetarium app is excellent in
many ways. Its tremendously flexible and
configurable, and it can display far more
stars and deep sky objects than any paper
atlas ever produced. However, paper charts
have compensating virtues. Theyre easier
to read without losing dark adaptation and
considerably easier to manipulate with cold
fingers. Above all, paper can show far more
information at a single glance.
The interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas charts are
printed right to the edge of the page, with zero
wasted space. (Page numbers and coordinate
grid labels are overlaid on the corners and
edges, in the space thats overlapped between
adjacent maps.) Each two-page spread has 10
times the area of a chart on my 7-inch tablet.
That allows a spread to cover more than 500
square degrees of sky, or about the size of an
average constellation. Constellation lines are
drawn in, which made it easy for me to get my
initial fix on the sky. The stars plotted in the
atlas are an excellent match to those visible
through my 850 finderscope, so I could then
star-hop to the correct low-power telescopic
Book Review
eyepiece field in just a minute or
two. I could see all relevant levels of
detail at a glance in the atlas. That
would require several pan-and-zoom
operations with my planetarium app;
my tablets tiny screen can show either
the big picture or the small, but not
both together.
It was only when I arrived at my
destination that I started to appreciate
the atlas properly. My usual observing
style is to seek out a specific object
and then poke around and see what
else is worth looking at in the vicinity.
Thats hard to do with most highly
detailed atlases, which show thickets
of nearly identical symbols in any
crowded galaxy cluster or Milky
Way field. The different-sized labels
in the interstellarum atlas bring a
crowded field to life, giving a sense
of the character and diversity of the
individual objects. I could then start
with the most prominent ones and
work as far down the visibility classes
as I liked.
In addition, the atlas marks double
and multiple stars with ticks whose
length indicates the component stars
separation, and each of the 2,950
double stars is labelled with its name.
Im a huge double star fan, so this
pleases me greatly.
Of course, no atlas is perfect,
and due to its huge ambition and
originality, the interstellarum atlas
has more flaws than most. The biggest
labels are delightfully legible, but
the smallest are pretty hard to read.
Thats arguably appropriate when
youre labelling a very faint object.
But I rely heavily on right ascension,
declination and Greek Bayer letters
for stars, and those are also in
minuscule type. And the atlas never
uses leader lines to connect symbols
to their labels. That sometimes
makes it hard to puzzle out the
correspondence in a crowded field.
Although the atlas claims to be
complete for 30-cm scopes, it doesnt
plot all the objects Ive spotted with
my 31-cm scope. For instance, I found
six galaxies inside Messier 44 with my
31-cm. The atlas only plots two and
theyre not the ones that I found easiest
to see. Nonetheless, itcertainly shows
almost all objects of interest to me or
most other backyard astronomers.
The atlas is very strong on open
clusters but possibly goes a little too far
in this direction, showing some large,
obscure open cluster candidates with
no little or no visual appeal. I would
To Scale
The limiting magnitude of the atlas is 9.5. As is shown here with 6666
in Auriga, double stars are marked with ticks, the length of which
indicates component separation. Each of the 2,950 double stars
included is labelled with its name. Also shown are 1,168 variable stars
with a maximum magnitude brighter than 9.0.
also prefer fewer asterisms and fewer

nicknames for deep sky objects.
But to some extent this is quibbling.
All star charts require choices and
compromises. The interstellarum
Deep Sky Atlas comes very close to
maximising the information that
can be shown in a convenient, handholdable atlas without compromising
clarity. I find that it adds more to my
observing sessions than any other
printed atlas Ive used.
The atlas biggest limitation is its
scale and star depth: they arent really
adequate to pin down the locations of
its faintest objects. But thats where my
planetarium app comes into its own.
If I cant spot my target immediately
once I get down to the medium-power
eyepiece level, I bring out my tablet,
with its inexhaustible supply of faint
stars, to help me finish the job. I dont
see the atlas and app as competitors;
instead I find that they complement
each other perfectly the atlas for the
big picture and the app for the nittygritty details.
Tony Flanders produced almost 1,000 star

charts while he was an associate editor at
Sky & Telescope.
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[email protected]
Ph. 61 7 3423 2355

Fax. 61 7 3423 2366
Open Weekdays 9am to 4:30pm and
Saturday 9am to 1pm
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
A minimalist telescope
A portable Newtonian optimised for quick and easy setups
ost home-built scopes are

variations on existing designs,
but through little tweaks and
additions become something unique.
Michael Wolfsons 37.5-cm Newtonian
reflector is a fine example.
After acquiring many telescopes
while searching for the sweet spot
between portability and performance,
I concluded that an ultra-light
Dobsonian was the way to go,
Michael says. He wanted the greatest
aperture with the least weight, in a
scope that he could use without a
ladder or step stool.
Albert Highes book, Engineering,
Design and Construction of Portable
Newtonian Telescopes, which details
Right: Michael
Wolfsons 37.5-cm
f/4.6 Newtonian
reector combines
excellent portability
and performance.
Bottom: Friction
in the altitude axis
is controlled by
turning a hand knob,
which pulls a pad of
Teon against the
inside surface of one
of the aluminium
side bearings.
MICHAEL WOLFSON (2)
building highly portable large-aperture

scopes, was one source of inspiration
and ideas. Michael had also seen a
single-strut Newtonian at a star party,
which prompted him to build several
smaller versions to gain experience. So
when he acquired a 37.5-cm f/4.6
quartz primary mirror, the broad
outlines of his new scope were set.
One feature that Michael put his own
spin on was the scopes bearings.
Instead of counting on Teflon and
Formica to provide just the right
balance of stiction and friction, he
explains, I decided to start with
bearings that move as freely as possible,
and then increase the friction in a
controlled manner.
His solution uses a
33-cm-diameter lazy
Susan bearing in azimuth,
and aluminium semicircle plates riding on
cam-follower bearings for
the altitude. This
arrangement is well suited
to a motor-drive system
Michael plans to add in
the future. But for
controllable manual
slewing, some additional
friction is required. To
achieve this, Michael
resorted to some oldschool Dobsonian
technology. On the
azimuth axis, he affixed a
38-cm-diameter circle of
laminate between the
ground board and the
lazy Susan bearing, with
only the outer couple of
centimetres of the
laminate exposed. With
the turn of a knob located
inside the rocker box, a
thick pad of Teflon
gradually presses against
the outer edge of the
laminate disk, increasing
friction. For the altitude
motion, the aluminium
bearing on the focuser
A Teon pad bears against Formica to

regulate friction in the scopes azimuth axis.
A knob controls the pressure.
MICHAEL WOLFSON
side of the scope moves between two

pieces of Teflon: one attached directly
to the interior of the rocker box, the
other screwed to an adjustable, springloaded aluminum plate. Tightening a
knob forces this second Teflon piece
against the altitude bearing,
sandwiching it between the two pads
similar to an automobile disk brake.
His scavenging skills were also put to
good use when it came to the primary
mirror tube assembly. For this part,
Michael repurposed a 40-cm-diameter,
6-mm-thick drum shell, salvaged from
a local music store. He sanded off the
drums original finish, then applied
several layers of clear Varathane to the
outside and a coat of flat-black paint to
the interior.
Another nifty refinement is the
ability to move the focuser and
secondary mirror assembly up and
down the strut pole. If I want to use
my bino viewer, he explains, all I have
to do is loosen the U-bolt clamps, slide
the assembly closer to the primary
mirror, then recollimate and rebalance.
Michaels lightweight and versatile
scope is tailored to his observing needs.
There are many lovely trees around, so
depending on which part of the sky I
want to observe, its helpful to be able to
easily relocate the scope exactly why
I wanted one thats lightweight and
quick to set up, he says.
Contributing editor Gary Seronik is an
experienced telescope maker and observer.
You can see some of his lightweight scopes
on his website at garyseronik.com.
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Colour Camera Processing
Done
WARREN
KELLER
in
Todays one-shot colour cameras can take world-class

astrophotos. Heres an easy way to make your images shine.
need to shoot through individual
colour filters, making it easier than
ever to take colour astrophotos, it
does have some limitations.
The Bayer matrixs ability to collect
colour in a single exposure prevents
the collection of unfiltered
luminance. As each pixel always
looks through an attenuating filter,
the detectors quantum efficiency (or
sensitivity to light) is limited by those
same filters. Because the Bayer filter
divides the sensor into three images
(50% green, 25% red and 25% blue),
the information is inherently of lower
resolution than images captured with
What is one-shot colour?
of filters known as a Bayer matrix,

named for its inventor, the late Dr
Bryce Bayer. This grid places a red,
green or blue filter over each
individual pixel. When an exposure is
made, the colour information is
immediately available, unlike with
monochrome cameras, in which you
must take individual exposures
through separate filters and then
combine them to reveal the colour.
Most digital SLRs (DSLRs) are built
around OSC CMOS sensors, and
some astronomical cameras are
available with OSC CCD detectors.
While an OSC device eliminates the
One-shot colour (OSC) cameras are

actually monochrome sensors with
one important addition. Unlike a
monochrome detector, OSC sensors
are covered with a microscopic grid
ALL IN ONE The best colour deep-sky astrophotography used to be the exclusive realm of
monochrome cameras equipped with individual lters, leaving many amateurs to assume
that images like this photo (above) of the Leo Trio of galaxies are beyond their reach.
Author Warren Keller shows you how this really isnt the case anymore. All images are
courtesy of the author.
n the realm of deep-sky imaging,

single-shot colour cameras have
long played second fiddle to their
monochrome cousins paired with
colour filters. While monochrome
cameras are generally more sensitive
and produce the best results, the
difference isnt so obvious anymore.
Todays one-shot colour cameras,
combined with the latest processing
software, can produce stunning
astrophotos that rival the best,
typically with a lot less money and
time spent.
a monochrome camera. The OSC

colour channels are interpolated to
fill in the gaps between the pixels,
though the latest interpolation
routines make this difference nearly
imperceptible. Finally, while
narrowband filters are available for
OSC cameras, the loss of light
sensitivity when combined with the
Bayer filter makes imaging through
them a challenge.
Despite these limitations, OSC
cameras can be fantastic performers,
particularly when used under dark
skies with fast focal-ratio optics, and
they are the perfect complement to
fast astrographs such as Celestrons
Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt
Astrograph.
Taking OSC astrophotos

Capturing images with an OSC
camera is certainly simpler than with
monochrome detectors, but most of
the technique is the same. As with all
deep sky imaging, exposures should
be long enough to produce adequate
signal. Depending on your focal
ratio, 16 or more 5- to 10-minute
exposures should be adequate to
produce a smooth result.
Image calibration is nearly as
important with OSC images as it is
with monochrome cameras. Most
recent models of DSLR cameras and
many astronomical OSC CCD
cameras are based around extremely
low-noise sensors, making dark
frame subtraction (and bias
calibration) often unnecessary.
However, flat-field calibration frames
may still be required. These are
exposures of an evenly illuminated
surface that record vignetting or outof-focus dust in your optical system.
These images are then applied to your
light exposures to remove their
effects from your images.
the detector in your camera records

a monochrome image with a pattern
of tiny filters over the sensor, so
what you see here is the difference in
light sensitivity of your sensor to red,
green and blue light. This now
requires converting into colour
images through a process called
debayering, which extracts the
colour information from the grid.
With your first image open in
Astroart, select Colour > CCD
Colour synthesis. Astroart requires
you to establish the order of the
Bayer filters in their sensors by
adjusting the Synthesis, XY Offset?
numbers and clicking OK. In this
new window, a greyscale and colour
grid representing the filter matrix is
displayed. Matching the brightness
value of the greyscale grid to the
colour grid should help to guide you
to the proper setting. Try the default
settings first by clicking the OK
button, but if the result appears
monotone green or blue, these
default offsets are incorrect. Try
different combinations by changing
the top offset from 0 to 1, and

continue until a natural colour image
is produced. Once the conversion
parameters are established, close the
image without saving any changes;
the software will store these settings
until you change them to
accommodate a different camera.
They will be applied momentarily.
Calibration and stacking

Now that youve established your
debayer settings, open the
Preprocessing tool (Tools >
Preprocessing). In this window youll
select, combine and apply your
calibration frames to your light
images, as well as execute a number
of other actions that will result in a
final calibrated stack of all your
images. Beginning with the Files tab,
navigate to the image folder where
your light exposures reside and drag
them to the Images section at the
right. Do the same for any
corresponding flats, darks and bias
images and place them in their
respective boxes.
Left: BAYER MATRIX Colour cameras have

monochrome detectors with a microscopic
grid known as a Bayer matrix of red,
green or blue lters placed over each pixel.
This information is then re-interpreted as
the colour image.
Below: RAW GRID Unprocessed RAW or

FIT astrophotos appear as black-and-white
images with a grid-like appearance.
Debayering
Before calibrating and combining
your images, your first task is to
determine your particular CCD
sensors filter pattern. I enjoy using
Astroart (msb-astroart.com)
software when processing my OSC
images, because it includes many
tools designed specifically for OSC
data. Opening an unprocessed OSC
FITS or RAW file in Astroart reveals
a greyscale image with a grid-like
appearance. As mentioned earlier,
Colour Camera Processing

Converting your
RAW or FITS image
in Astroart requires
you to experiment
with the order of
the lters. Change
the Synthesis, XY
Offset ? from 0 to 1
and click OK to nd
the proper order of
your cameras lter
array.
PREPROCESSING Astroart combines all of the routine calibration,

image alignment and stacking actions into one easy-to-use tool
called Preprocessing (above left). Here you can add all of your light
images and calibration frames and perform everything necessary to
produce a smooth image ready for enhancement.
GRADIENT REMOVAL Once youve calibrated and stacked your

images, address any gradients. Pressing F5 on your keyboard will
equalise the image and help reveal any gradients in your image.
Select Filters > Remove gradient and select the tool that best
describes the gradient or vignetting present in the image. If youre
unsure which lter is the best t for your data, Adaptive (subtract) is
the most powerful and versatile choice.
Next, click on the Options tab at

the top left of the Preprocessing tool
to select the actions that will be
applied to all your images. Begin
here with the Result image section,
and choose the type of image
stacking algorithm you prefer to
use. Sigma (Average) is my
preferred combination method.
This produces a strong signal-tonoise ratio, while rejecting outlier
pixel values such as satellite trails,
hot pixels, and other random signal
that doesnt repeat in every
exposure.
Adjust any other settings you
want to apply to your images here.
For example, select Auto Alignment
to open another dialogue box that
offers a few alignment options
depending on your subject and
guiding. You can experiment to
determine which alignment method
best suits your images.
Clicking on CCD colour
synthesis reopens that dialogue we
explored earlier. Confirm that your
offset settings are correct, though
you may want to increase the Hot
pixels threshold, particularly if you
forgo dark calibration.
If youre combining multiple
calibration frames, youll need to
choose the method of combination
for each at the bottom of the tool
window. Finally, the Extra tab
offers additional options which,
when enabled, may be applied
before or after calibration. This
section is particularly useful for
removing bad columns and rows
from your images before
combining the result.
Experiment
with some of the
other tools found
in the program
until youre
satised with the
results.
Now that you have all your

preprocessing actions prepared,
click OK, and Astroart will
methodically reduce all your data
into a final, smooth result ready for
additional processing. Be sure to
save this image before applying any
additional processing; this is your
master stack.
Your stacked image should look
pretty good. At this stage you
should address any colour
gradients. Press F5 on your
keyboard to activate the Equalise
function. This displays the image
with a strong non-linear stretch,
which helps to reveal any
background illumination issues
(clicking F8 returns your image to
a linear display). Be sure to crop
away any black border in the image
that is leftover from aligning the
individual frames. If there are
gradients, simply apply Filters >
Remove gradient > Adaptive
(subtract). This should produce a
much more even background. At
this point you can experiment with
the programs various
END RESULT Final tweaks, including sharpening, noise reduction and colour saturation adjustments, can all be performed in Astroart 5 to produce a nal result
indistinguishable from images assembled using the tri-colour method. This detailed image was captured through a 25-cm Ritchey-Chrtien telescope equipped with
an Atik 11000C one-shot colour CCD camera.
deconvolution filters (Filters >

Deconvolution) to tighten up any
small-scale details.
Once you have sharpened and
addressed any gradients in your
image, its time to stretch the data
into an artful photograph. Astroarts
DDP (Digital Development Process)
is an easy and effective way to
perform non-linear stretches in your
image as well as enhance subtle
contrasts. You can apply the default
setting or lower the Threshold and
High pass: Sigma levels to compress
the dynamic range to better display
the entire brightness levels in your
image. Also adjust the High pass:
Strength to between 0 and 10 to
enhance details in your nebulae and
galaxy images. Clicking OK yields a
beautiful, non-linearly stretched
image with enhanced midtones and
compressed highlights.
While the image remains a bit
dark, you can fix this with the Filters
> Histogram stretch. Activating this
filter displays a histogram with a few

options; click the CURVES button,
which allows you to manipulate the
high, low and mid-points of the
histogram, if needed.
Finishing touches
With our image now nonlinear, you
can increase the colour saturation
(Colour > Saturation). This tool
allows you to limit the saturation
increase to only the brighter areas
and avoid increasing colour noise in
the sky background.
At this stage, you may want to
suppress any graininess in the sky
background. Use the Low Pass filter
(Filters > Low pass) to address this
issue. Be sure to check the Enabled
box to activate the Adaptive function.
This helps you limit the filters effects
to the background and low-signal
areas of your image.
Now your photograph is just about
complete. You can further enhance it
using Astroarts Unsharp Mask filter
(Filters > Unsharp mask) or by

increasing contrast before saving the
final results. Experiment with some
of the other tools found in the
program until youre satisfied with
the results there are no hard rules
to adhere to at this point. After all,
you are your biggest critic!
Todays one-shot colour cameras,
combined with the latest imageprocessing software, are capable of
producing stunning deep-sky images
that are virtually indistinguishable
from those produced with a more
complex setup. So if the cost and
patience required for tri-colour
imaging is more than you are
currently willing to invest, a one-shot
colour CCD or DSLR camera may be
your best shot at producing beautiful
astrophotos.
Warren Keller produces a series of imageprocessing tutorials to help you get the most
out of your images go to ip4ap.com.
AS&T Test Report Rod Mollise
Organised observing
Deep-Sky Planner 6
Software designed
to help you get the
most out of your time
at the eyepiece
Deep-Sky Planner 6
ll admit Im not the most

organised person in the world. Its
all too common for me to forget to
pick up the bread at the shops or take
a wrong turn on the highway. But on
the observing field its different I
always know where Im going and
what I want to see through my
telescope. Thats because I have a plan
in the form of an observing list.
Making observing lists used to
be a pain, particularly when paging
through dusty books and atlases to

choose targets of interest. Fortunately,
theres now software that takes the pain
away. The main purpose of a planner is
to help you easily compose observing
lists and record your observations. Of
the numerous observing planners on
the market, Knightwares Deep-Sky
Planner 6 (DSP 6) is the most mature,
having been continuously updated for
more than 20 years.
DSP 6 is available on CD-ROM or as
S&T: SEAN WALKER
Available on CD-ROM or as a download

knightware.biz
WHATWELIKE:
Large databases
Works with popular
planetarium software
WHATWEDONT LIKE:
Slew To button hard to find
Does not automatically open
last observing plan
a digital download from the companys

website. The file is only 59 megabytes,
so it doesnt take long even with
sluggish download speeds.
Having used previous versions
of the software, I was eager to try
DSP 6 because author Phyllis Lang
has added some useful new features
and improved on the existing
ones. Particularly welcome was the
programs new ability to automatically
download images for nearly all the
objects in an observing list.
Getting started
If youre new to planning programs,
your first look at DSP 6 may be a little
daunting. What comes up on your
display is a blank screen with a fairly
standard Windows pull-down menu
across the top. Beneath it is an icon
bar, and below that are additional
menus with a clear astronomical bent:
Instrument, Camera, Eyepiece, Filter,
Barlow/Compressor and Observer.
So where to start? As with most
astronomy programs, begin by
entering the particulars of your
location and equipment. Most
important is location, which is opened
by selecting the Options > Location
Manager. A new window opens, with
two primary categories: Location By
Area at left, and All Locations at right.
Once you choose your city, a
window will appear with the locations
particulars filled in. Make sure
everything is correct latitude,
longitude, time zone make any
changes if needed, then click OK and
youre done. If your city is not on the
list, you can select New Location
and enter the particulars of your site
manually.
Next up is inputting your
equipment. Select Equipment/
Observer > Instrument Browser from
Like all planning

programs, the rst
thing youll need
to do is input your
location and your
equipment. You
can select your city
from an extensive
built-in list, or nd
your area in the
Map (Web) tab,
which is a link to
Google Maps.
the pull-down menu at the top of the

screen. Now click the New button
at top left of this new window and
key in your scopes statistics. Do the
same for other gear youre using in
each category. The program requires
this data because DSP 6 is a planning
and logging program. Entering this
information means DSP can insert it

in log entries automatically, meaning
less typing in the field.
Your basic setup is complete, so
its time to get to know the program.
The main purpose of DSP 6 is to help
you build observing lists by choosing
objects from its database. Theres
The program offers you many options to narrow down your observing list, with options to ignore objects
that never rise from your site, or target only objects within a designated constellation. Additionally, DSP 6
can download a Digitised Sky Survey image of nearly any deep sky object you want to observe.
AS&T Test Report
Deep-Sky Planner 6 enables you to link to most popular planetarium programs to create nder charts.
Simply select your preferred software in the pull-down menu Options > Star Chart Programs.
no lack of objects to choose among

here DSP 6 includes more than
1.25 million entries in its deep sky
and stellar databases: 841,000 star
clusters, galaxies and nebulae, and
411,000 stars.
Before making an observing list,
note that Knightware provides a
sizable library of Observing Plans
on its website. Nearly 350 plans are
available, encompassing everything
from binocular objects to galaxy
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
PC with Intel Pentium processor (or equivalent),
1 GHz or faster.
32- or 64-bit edition of Windows (XP or later)
including the latest updates from Microsoft
128 MB RAM for Windows XP, 512 MB RAM for
Windows Vista, 1 GB RAM if operating 32-bit
Windows 7 or 8, 2 GB RAM if running 64-bit
Windows 7 or 8.
Installation requires about 366 MB of hard disk
space.
XGA (1024 x 768) or better graphics, Windows XP
or Vista, DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0
or higher driver on Windows 7 or 8.
clusters. You can access and download

any of these pre-generated observing
plans by selecting Help > Community
Page (Online).
If none of the plans in the library fit
your specific needs, its easy to make
your own. Lets assume youre after
deep sky objects (DSP 6 also includes a
large selection of Solar System objects
including asteroids and comets). Click
the spiral galaxy icon on the toolbar:
this opens the obliquely named but
powerful Deep Sky catalogue search
documents search engine.
The first step is choosing the deep
sky catalogues you want to search.
Click the General tab in the search
window, which displays a list of the
programs catalogues. For example,
I highlighted NGC: Revised New
General Catalogue. Clicking the
Search button now will retrieve all
the NGCs, but I certainly didnt want
7,840 objects in my plan. Fortunately,
you can simply use the other tabs to
help narrow the search.
Given my experiences with other
planners, I expected to wait awhile
after clicking the Search button, but
in just a couple of seconds DSP 6
produced a comprehensive list of all
the 10th-magnitude-and-brighter
NGC objects in a spreadsheet
The program
incorporates the
ASCOM universal
telescope
protocol, so it will
communicate with
most computerised
scopes and
mounts.
containing plenty of information
about each. These results can then
be ordered in any way you prefer by
clicking the title above each column.
To turn these search results into
an observing plan, select New >
Observing Plan from the pull-down
menu. You then populate your
Observing Plan by dragging and
dropping single or multiple objects
from the search results window.
Highlight multiple objects by holding
the shift key while clicking objects in
the search window before dragging
them into the Observing Plan window.
Deep-Sky Planner 6 also allows
you to import plain text (ASCII) files
of objects. The program took a little
over a minute to import my list of

700 objects and convert them into an
Observing Plan.
With my completed plan on screen,
I took a look at the programs other
options. One button on the Observing
Plan window titled Run puzzled
me at first, though it turned out to
be one of the programs most useful
features. In the tabs at the top of this
window, the Alt/Az tab allows you to
specify observing altitude parameters
to filter out objects that are too low
to observe, or prevent an alt/az
mounted Go To scope from pointing
at the zenith. Clicking the Run button
updates your plan to show only
objects within these parameters, and
adds new objects as they meet these
criteria. Run is a great feature, but
I wish the button were more clearly
labelled, perhaps as Update.
The Run feature can be used to filter
objects based on magnitude, observed/
Once youve successfully observed a target, click on the

Observations tab at the far right of your Observing List
window to enter any notes on the object.
not observed status. It can also be set

to specify how often your spreadsheet
will be automatically updated using
the Auto button.
At the telescope
Now that youve got a plan, what do
you do with it? You could print it out
and carry the hard copy into the field,
though Deep-Sky Planner 6 is wellsuited to running on a computer at
your telescope. The program, which
includes a useful red-screen, nightvision mode, is as useful for noncomputerised Dobsonian telescopes as
it is for Go To rigs, but it is a joy to use
with a Go To-enabled telescope.
The program incorporates
the ASCOM universal telescope
protocol, so it will communicate
with most computerised telescopes
and mounts. Simply connect your
mount to your computer and find
your model in the Telescope Control
menu, and you can issue go-to
commands by right-clicking a target
object in the Plan and selecting Slew
To. This works well, though it would
be helpful if the button were located
on the main screen.
I often find it helpful to look at
the photo of an object I am hunting,
and DSP 6 makes that easy. Click the
Get DSS Images button on the right
side of the Observing Plan window,
and you can retrieve an image for
the highlighted object. DSS refers to
the Digitised Sky Survey, the online
version of the Palomar Observatory
Sky Surveys. You can download DSS
pictures for objects individually or in
batches. The images are then saved on
the hard drive for future use and can
be viewed at any time.
Sometimes a picture isnt enough;
sometimes I need a star chart. Rather
than generating its own maps, DSP 6
works with third-party planetarium
software, including TheSkyX, Starry
Night and Cartes du Ciel. Select your
planetarium program in the Options
menu, and DSP 6 will link to it for
your charting needs. Right-click an
Deep-Sky Planner 6 can also control

most Go To telescopes, enabling you
to slew to your next target, though it
isnt immediately apparent how to do
this. Right-clicking on an object in your
Observing List opens a dialog box that
includes the Slew To function halfway
down the screen.
object in your Observing Plan, select

Show Chart, and DSP 6 will minimise
and the planetarium program will
open, centred on the target.
After youve taken a good, long
look at an object, its time to record
your observation. To do so, select
the Observations tab in the same
right-hand pane you see the DSS
image. Click Add Observation and
the programs logbook will open. Most
information, including date, time
and the telescope and other currently
selected equipment is already filled in
for you. All you have to do is record
your impressions.
I wont hesitate to say Deep-Sky
Planner 6 was one of the most
professional, best-working astronomy
programs Id used in a while, but
that doesnt mean it was perfect
what software is? It would be nice
if the program would load my last
Observing Plan at startup. Id also like
to be able to set an objects status in
the Plan spreadsheet to Observed
without having to make a log entry.
Finally, a couple functions werent
clearly named fortunately, the
excellent help menu always made
their purposes clear.
Using Deep-Sky Planner 6, Im
seeing more objects, and thanks to
being prompted to make descriptive
log entries Im seeing more details
than ever in those objects. I wont
say Deep-Sky Planner 6 has changed
my life, but its definitely improved
amateur astronomy for me, and that is
a big part of my life.
Contributing editor Rod Mollise writes an

astronomical blog at uncle-rods.blogspot.
com
Eclipse Trip
Nordic nights
Intrepid Aussie amateurs hunt an eclipse and
aurorae at the other end of the planet.
BY MELISSA HULBERT
t was four years ago that Cathi

Humphrey-Hood and I started
planning for the March 20, 2015
total solar eclipse, which would be
visible from the far north of the planet.
After first deciding to go to the Faeroe
Islands for witness it, further research
indicated there was a marginally (and I
mean minutely marginal) better chance
of good weather in Svalbard, so we
opted for the latter archipelago, well
inside the Arctic Circle. Joining us on
the trip were David and Wendy Bevan,
Rob Lucas, Helen Robinson and Cathis
children Elswyth and Aengus.
Of course a visit to this part of the
world in March meant that aurora
hunting was also going to feature, so
we planned a trip to encompass the
Norwegian mainland as well as
Svalbard.
After a few days in Oslo we headed to
Alta, but unfortunately cloudy nights
and snow storms prevented any aurora
viewing. We arrived in Troms to find
cloudy skies but upon enquiry were
told that Saturday night (two nights
away March 14) would be the best
chance. We chose to go with Troms
Safari for our first night of aurora
chasing as they impressed us with their
knowledge and they were even
prepared to take you to the Finnish
border so that you could see the
aurorae. We were not disappointed.
We arrived at one of their base
camps overlooking the fjords and
waited. About 9pm the soft glow of the
Setting up on eclipse day at Fjordnibba in Svalbard.
aurora started and over the next few

hours intensified. Dancing curtains of
light gently swirled and moved above us
and not only were we treated to the
usual green and often red but also
purple and yellow.
It was rather cool during the night
(about -10 degrees) however the
company had two large fire pits and a hut
with warm drinks and snacks to keep
everyone going. I have to say I only
ventured inside towards the end of the
evening as the aurora died down, as I
couldnt pull myself away from the
wonderful show happening above and
around me. I did hear that some people
on the tour were disappointed as they
expected to see the wonderful colours
you see in photographs. For us this wasnt
the case; perhaps as experienced
observers we were used to the fact that
the colours seen with the eye tend to be
more greyish. That said, we were still able
to see the green hues as well as some red
and turquoise.
The following night was unfortunately
cloudy, but the 16th was clear and we
joined friends Joe Cali, Matt Poulton and
Bengt Alfredsson on an aurora chase to
Kvaloya, another Norwegian island.
Although slightly fainter than on the
14th, the purple and yellow in the

aurorae were stronger and, along with
the usual green and red, we also saw a
deep turquoise blue from time to time.
The next day saw us heading to
Svalbard. Approaching Longyearbyen
airport we saw lots of sheet ice over the
ocean and small icebergs we were
definitely well inside the Arctic Circle.
Longyearbyen is a small frontier town in
the Svalbard archipelago and I must say I
wondered what the locals thought when
thousands of astronomers and
umbraphiles descended upon them for a
week in March. We had arrived a few
days early and, after two days of cloud,
the 19th dawned bright and clear, and in
fact was only the third day the Sun had
been seen since it returned to the sky on
Astro Calendar
Queensland Astrofest
August 7-16
Annual star party
qldastrofest.org.au
National Science Week
August 15-23
Lots of public astronomy activities held
around Australia
scienceweek.net.au
The diamond ring effect.
February24. We were all hoping that this

weather would hold for the eclipse the
following day surely Mother Nature
wouldnt taunt us so?
Eclipse day dawned cold (-24
degrees), bright and clear and we
headed off early on snowmobiles to a
remote area away from Longyearbyen.
High on the mountain at Fjordnibba,
overlooking Tempelfjorden, was the
perfect place from which to witness
the eclipse.
Although it took some time to reach
our observing destination and we
missed the very start of the eclipse, we
were very pleased with the choice of site.
The partial phases passed quickly and as
the diamond ring approached, amazing
shadow bands rippled like bands of fairy
lights across the snowy plain in front of
us an incredible sight.
Then, what we had come all this way
for totality! This eclipse appeared
mostly pink with soft blue undertones to
the eye and the soft glow around the
surrounding hills was spectacular.
Totality once again passed all too
quickly and the second diamond ring
signalled the end and a return to the
partial phases.
To be in such an amazing, remote
and wonderful place with crystal clear
skies and watching the twilight at
totality lighting the mountains,made
this one of the most memorable
eclipses I have seen.
The aurora nights and the eclipse day
were the highlights of our Nordic
adventure, and an experience that my
friends and we will never forget.
10 & 5 Years Ago

August 2005
First pictures of exoplanets?

On April 27, 2004, a European/American imaged the dim brown
dwarf 2M 1207, revealing an extremely faint, red blip just 0.78
arcsecond from it. We understood essentially immediately
that we had a very strong exoplanet candidate, says Ben M.
Zuckerman (UCLA). In January 2005 Glenn H. Schneider (U.
Arizona) presented Hubble observations that essentially confirmed that the star and its
companion have common motion across the sky, a very strong indication that they are
gravitationally bound.
Aug/Sep 2010
Stars are not born equal

With masses tens of times that of the Sun and with light outputs
millions of times higher, the largest stars hold the power of life
and death. They destroy protoplanetary disks and trigger the birth
of other stars. And after their brief but flamboyant lives, they die
in titanic supernova explosions. Because the most massive stars
produce the greatest impact, the record holders constitute an astronomical holy grail.
So if you want to understand the universe, you need to understand these huge objects.
World Record Stargazing

August 21
Mt Stromlo Observatory leads two worldrecord stargazing efforts
rsaa.anu.edu.au/world-record-stargazing
StarFest 2015
October 2-4
Held at Coonabarabran, home to Siding
Spring Observatory, there'll be three days of
activities during the Festival of the Stars
starfest.org.au
Siding Spring Open Day 2015
October 3
Australia's largest optical observatory throws
open its doors to the public
starfest.org.au
Border Stargaze
October 8-11
Amateur astronomy star party near Albury
on the NSW-Vic border
asaw.org.au/bsg
VicSouth Desert Spring Star Party
November 6-9
Annual star party hosted by the astro
societies of Victoria and South Australia
vicsouth.info
National Australian Convention of
Amateur Astronomers
March 25-28, 2016
Held every second year, the NACAA is
Australia's premier get together for amateur
astronomers to discuss research projects
and the latest technologies. In 2016 it will
be hosted by the Sutherland Astronomical
Society in Sydney.
nacaa.org.au
WHATS GOING ON?
Do you have an event or activity coming up?

Email us at [email protected].
Gallery
Astrophotos from our readers
SCORPIUS RISING
Gary Plummer
Theres nothing quite like the sight of the Milky Way rising over the horizon at a dark sky location, such as West Barwon Dam,
near Forrest, Victoria, from where Gary made this eight-image panorama. He used a Sony A99 camera and Samyang 24mm
lens; each exposure was 20 seconds at f/1.4, 3200 ISO.
HOT FILAMENT
Teale Bristra
This was how the Sun looked on February 9 this year,

with a huge lament spanning its surface. Teale used
a Lunt LS50THa/B600 H-alpha telescope and a ZWO
ASI 120MM-S monochrome camera. From about 2,000
frames he stacked the best 150 with Registax; colour
was added later using Photoshop.
SOMBRERO GALAXY
Paul Haese
The Sombrero galaxy, or M104, is 28 million light-years

from Earth. Paul snapped it using an STXL-11002 camera
and GSO RC12 telescope. Software used was MaximDL,
Focusmax, Pinpoint, CCDautopilot 5, CCD stack and
Photoshop CS6.
ECLIPSE PROGRESSION
Will Godward
Skies were clear in South Australia for the lunar eclipse earlier this year. Will used
a Canon 5D mk2 camera, Canon 400mm 2.8 lens and a Skywatcher EQ6 pro.
Exposures were at f/5.6, between 1 second and 1/500th-second at ISO 400-800.
EMU RISING
Katrina Edmunds
The emu in the Milky Way was captured from Ben

Lomond in Tassie. Katrina used a Canon EOS 60 Da
camera with a Canon 10-22mm lens, set at 10mm
f/8. Exposure time was 10 minutes at ISO 1600.
WISHING WELL
Barry Brook
The famous southern open star cluster NGC 3532, sometimes known
as the Wishing Well, is about 1,300 light-years away in the direction of
Carina and covers an area of sky around twice that of the full Moon. Barry
used an Orion ED80T CF refractor at f/4.8 on a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 GT
mount, a QHY22 monochrome camera and a total of 5.5 hours exposure.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR IMAGES
Images should be sent electronically. Please email your [email protected] and provide full details
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Maksu
Focal Point Alan MacRobert
Why astrology works
People pay attention to astrology for a good reason. Astronomers should know it.
id that get your attention? As

an editor whos not shy about
explaining pseudoscience to
its believers faces, and ranting about
pathetic woo (skepdic.com/woowoo.
html) behind their backs, Im treated
with a certain caution by the three
professional astrologers among my
friends and acquaintances.
By professional I mean theyve cast
horoscopes for pay. They apparently
give good value; customers come back.
Theyve learned better than to try to
give me lame physics woo, such as
the stuff youll hear about our bodies
being mostly water and celestial
objects raising tides within us. Theyve
been well instructed that each of the
millions of pebbles in your yard has a
greater tidal effect on your body (water
or otherwise) than Jupiter, Mars or
Venus do. (Here are the maths: is.gd/
pebbletides.)
And they know Ill also tell them
about the many experiments showing
that you can take the best professional

horoscopes, shuffle them up, and
people will deem a random one just
as amazingly insightful as their own.
Nor can people pick their own reading
from a selection more often than
chance. The planets have nothing to
do with it.
But thats not the point. If you want
to get through to your believing sisterin-law or your uncle in Woop Woop,
the way to do it is not to argue physics
or astronomy, but to explain why
astrology works.
I tell this with my own story. When
I was in primary school, I practiced a
form of divination that you could call
bazookamancy. Back then, Bazooka
Joe bubble gum was popular. It
came wrapped in a little comic strip
about Bazooka Joe and his gang.
The wrappers were on the ground
wherever kids littered. The custom
was, when you saw one, you stopped
and asked it a question. Then you
picked it up and read it. The comic was
a parable that answered your question.
Often you had to look mighty hard to
find your answer. But if you looked
hard enough, it was always there.
Even at age 10, I explain, I was smart
enough to know that cosmic forces had
not placed the comic in my path. It was
there because some kid threw it away.
But it confronted me with a random
reading, a random input from outside
VINTAGEHALLOWEENCOLLECTOR/FLICKR/CC BY-ND 2.0
of myself, just like a horoscope: an

assertion about me and my situation. It
forced me to see things from an outside
perspective. And that could be a dash
of cold water.
Two Bazooka Joe revelations that I
remember: a friend was teasing me not
because he wanted my attention as my
mother said, but because he actually
disliked me. It was a wake-up I needed.
The other: I shouldnt join a group
that was planning to get a ladder and
climb into a second-story window after
school, because trouble was brewing.
As it was. It took a prompt for me to
grasp that.
Ive described my practice of
bazookamancy to two of my astrologer
friends. Each of them lit up and said,
Youve got it! So at some level they
know it isnt about the planets, not
if one form of divination is as good
as another. Any reading or fluke or
chance any metaphor looking for
its referent will serve your uncle in
Woop Woop just as well.
With that out of the way, he may
be more willing to talk about how the
planets and tides really work and
maybe how humans work too.
Alan MacRobert, an astronomy editor for

33 years, happily participates in solstice
drum circles, visionings in clouds and
other forms of woo that stay in their place.
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MOON MAPPING: How did the

lunar craters get their names? p.18

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY: Tips for

FACT AND FICTION: Jules Verne

NEWS & FEATURES

48 Double star notes

OBSERVING & EXPLORING

54 Exploring the Solar System

46 Sun, Moon and planets

56 Exploring the Moon

Jules Verne's space predictions

26 Planck upholds standard

4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015

Deep sky sights in Sagittarius

The final new world

Aurora and an eclipse

THE ASTRONOMY SCENE

Australian Sky & Telescope is now on Facebook. Complementing our website,

THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY

First pictures from New Horizons'

SKY & TELESCOPE

Orion 8" f/8.0 RitcheyChrtien Astrograph

Orion 10" f/8.0 RitcheyChrtien Astrograph

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Orion 1.25" Dark Frame

Orion 7.52" ID Deluxe

Orion High-Power 1.25"

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Extensive assortment of award

Orion StarShoot G3 Deep Space

The Binocular & Telescope Shop

84 Wentworth Park Road

Shop 8, Underwood Centre

Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer

Everything for the Amateur Astronomer

Orion Otter 8x42 WP

Orion HDX110 EQ-G

Orion Thin Off-Axis

Orion Magnificent Mini

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Orion SteadyPix Pro Univ.

Orion StarShoot Solar

Orion 9.25" ID Full

Orion Resolux 15x70 WP

Orion GoScope II 70mm

Orion Shorty 1.25"

Dob Dolly for Orion 4.5-10"

Shopping has never been easier.

Amateurs get keys to David Dunlap Observatory

n April 15, the Royal

to the town, which will keep it from

David Dunlap Observatorys administration building,

DARK MATTER I How slippery is dark matter?

values that range from 0.1 to 10 cm2/g.

8 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015

do away with any 3D uncertainty. Drawing

SUN I Do explosions heat the Suns corona?