Australian Sky & Telescope - 2015

Raise your astro imaging to a new
level with our expert tips p.74
Deep Sky treats for backyard

observers p.68
Mars explorers train in the

Australian Outback p.18
HIDDEN
OCEANS:
Are moons
where we
should look
for life? p.90
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY
Big
Hurdles
for Big
Scopes
p.24
TEST REPORT:
A winning ensemble
from Celestron p.86
ISSUE 83
LX90 ACF SERIES

2014 Meade Instruments Corp. All rights reserved. Patents pending. Speciications and prices subject to change without notice. 30-13080
ASTRONOMYS TRIPLE CROWN
12 LX90 ACF
10 LX90 ACF
8 LX90 ACF
OWN THE LEGEND
BINOCULAR
TELESCOPE
BINOCULAR& &
TELESCOPESHOP
SHOP
02.9518.7255
02.9518.7255
ADELAIDE
OPTICAL
ASTRO OPTICAL
SUPPLIES
PTY.CENTRE
LIMITED
08.8232.1050
02.9436.4360
ADELAIDE OPTICAL CENTRE SIRIUS OPTICS

08.8232.1050
07.3423.2355
SIRIUS OPTICS
07.3423.2355
www.meade.com
30-13080_LX90AstrnyTrplCrwn_FP_MayJune2014_AST .indd 1
3/19/2014 2:22:50 PM
NGC 5367 imaged with ProLine PL16803. Image courtesy of Wolfgang Promper.
Widest Field and Highest Resolution: Introducing our 50 Megapixel ML50100

Absolute Quantum Efficiency
70
KAF-50100 with microlens
60
KAF-50100 without Microlens
50
40
30
20
10
1020
960
900
840
780
720
660
600
540
480
420
360
The worlds first KAF-50100 sensor with microlenses is the result of a year-long
collaborative effort between ON Semiconductor (formerly Kodak) and Finger Lakes
Instrumentation. Our goal: to create a sensor with both high resolution and
excellent quantum efficiency (QE). The significantly boosted QE of our new
ML50100 with microlens technology makes it as sensitive as the popular
KAF-16803 detector, but with 3X higher spatial resolution. The ML50100 is the
ideal camera for wide field imaging with shorter focal length telescopes.
At Finger Lakes Instrumentation, we design and build unrivaled cameras, filter
wheels, and focusers to pave your way to successwhichever path you choose.
Designed and manufactured in New York, USA.
Wavelength (nm)
Significant Increase in Sensitivity

ML50100:
8136 x 6132
6 micron pixels
3X more resolution than the ML16803
1/3 more area than the ML16803
2015
For more information, visit

www.flicamera.com/51.html
MADE IN USA
2015 Finger Lakes Instrumentation, Inc. All rights reserved.
TM
Finger Lakes Instrumentation
Contents
February/March 2015 Vol. 11, No. 2
p.24
Technical challenges of giant scopes
NEWS & FEATURES

8
Spectrum
A Year of Discovery
By Jonathan Nally
10

News Notes
Comet skims past mars
Evidence for lunar volcanism
Work begins on giant scope
and more
13 10 & 5 Years Ago

By Jonathan Nally
p.36
14 Countdown to Pluto
By Jonathan Nally
16 Discoveries
Comet compatriots
By David Ellyard
17 No Landing Here
NASA's new view of Europa
Cover Story
24 Flawed Giants
The worlds largest optical telescopes
have had to overcome serious hurdles,
delaying their scientific success.
By Jonathan Fortney
18 Outback Mars
The Australian desert is the ideal
place to simulate living on Mars.
By Jonathan Clarke
36 Hubble Goes the Distance
Using natures gravitational lenses,
astronomers are pushing the Space
Telescope to its very limits.
By Govert Schilling
44

Hubble's deepest views
Into Thin Air

Astronomers continual quest for
optimal seeing conditions has ensured
that leading observatories get built on
ever-higher mountaintops.
By Tom Gale
84 Open Skies
Sydney Observatory's new dome and
telescope offer access for all.
By Toner Stevenson
84 A Universe of Dark Oceans
The icy bodies of the outer Solar System
might be teeming with life.
By Caleb Scharf
AS&T TEST REPORT

86

A Lot for a Little

An ensemble of Celestron equipment
provides excellent visual and
photographic performance.
By Rod Mollise
4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
OBSERVING & EXPLORING

50 Binocular Highlight

The Alpha Persei Association
By Gary Seronik
52 Tonights Sky

Stalking the Hunter
By Fred Schaaf
54 Sun, Moon, and Planets

Dynamic duo
By Jonathan Nally
58 Celestial Calendar

Last chance for Comet Lovejoy
By David Seargent
59 Celestial Calendar

BL Orionis
By Alan Plummer
60 Double Star Notes

Prowling through Puppis
By Ross Gould
p.84
Sydney's historic observatory
p.74
Take better astrophotos
64 Targets
The Fire Down Below
By Sue French
66 Exploring the Solar System
An Observational Mystery
By Thomas A. Dobbins
68 Deep Sky Marvels
Hopping Around the Backyard Sky
By Rod Mollise
THE ASTRONOMY SCENE

73 Telescope Workshop
Awesome Binocular Telescope
By Gary Seronik
74 Composing the Universe
Planning your composition can raise
your imaging to a whole new level.
By Robert Gendler
p.18
Training for Mars in the Aussie desert
90 Gallery
Best photos from our readers
ON THE COVER:
Like its bigscope brethren, the Gran Telescopio Canarias

has had to overcome some big obstacles. PABLO BONET / IAC
94 Marketplace
97 Index to Advertisers
97 Manufacturer and Dealer
Directory
98 Focal Point
Stu's Last Lesson
By Damian G. Allis
SUBSCRIBE TO AS&T
65 Subscription Offer
Subscribe and receive a 2015
Astronomy Calendar or Yearbook!
AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE (ISSN 1832-0457) is published 8 times per

year by Odysseus Publishing Pty Limited, PO Box 81, St Leonards, NSW,
1590. Phone (02) 9439 1955, fax (02) 9439 1977. 2015 Odysseus Publishing
Pty Limited. All rights reserved.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 5
Orion StarShoot HD
Video/Web Camera
#52099
Supports giant
astronomical
binoculars weighing
up to 15 lbs.
Orion Monster
Parallelogram
Binocular Mount
& Tripod
#5738
Orion 38mm Q70 WideField Telescope Eyepiece
#8829
(binoculars not included)
Orion StarShoot
AutoGuider Pro Camera
#52031
Orion Mini Deluxe Pro

AutoGuider Package
#20011
Big-aperture
exhilaration and
state-of-the-art
GoTo electronics
Orion SkyQuest
XX16g (406mm)
GoTo Truss Tube
Dobsonian
#8968
Orion SteadyPix Universal

Smartphone Mount
#5337
Orion Planetary
Observing Guide Kit
#25703
Trust
Proven reputation for innovation,

dependability and service
for over 40 years!
Superior Value
High quality products at

affordable prices
Orion Giant View 25x100

Astronomy Binoculars
#9326
Wide Selection
Orion
Awesome AutoGuider
Refractor Package
#24770
Extensive assortment of award

winning Orion brand products
and solutions
Customer Support
Orion products are only available

through select authorised dealers
able to offer professional advice
and post-purchase support
ORION
AUTHORISED
DEALERS
Cutting-edge technology at an
unbelievably low price.
Orion StarShoot G3 Deep Space

Imaging Camera
Color #53082; Mono #53083
Orion SteadyPix Deluxe

Camera Mount
#5338
Orion LaserMate
Deluxe II Laser Collimator
#5691
The Binocular & Telescope Shop
Sirius Optics
Astro Optical Supplies
84 Wentworth Park Road

Glebe, Sydney, NSW 2000
02.9518.7255 NSW
03.9822.0033 Vic
info@bintel.com.au
www.bintelshop.com.au
Shop 8, Underwood Centre

2898 - 2900 Logan Rd,
Underwood QLD 4119
07.3423.2355
soptics@bigpond.net.au
www.sirius-optics.com.au
22 Punch Street
Artarmon 2064
02.9436.4360
enquiry@astro-optical.com.au
www.astro-optical.com.au
Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer

for Refractor Telescopes
#8894
Astronomy
Adventures NZ
84 Bertrand Road West
New Plymouth, Rd3 4373
64.09.439.1856
www.skydome.org.nz
astronomy@igrin.co.nz
Since
1975
Everything for the Amateur Astronomer

Orion StarBlast 62mm Compact
Travel Refractor #10149
Orion
EON 130mm ED
Triplet Apo Refractor
#9565
Orion Otter 8x42 WP

Binoculars
#51661
Orion HDX110 EQ-G

GoTo Equatorial
Mount with
Tripod Pier
#10011
Orion StarShoot 5 MP
Solar System Color Camera
#52097
Orion Thin Off-Axis

Guider #5531
Orion Magnificent Mini

Deluxe AutoGuider Pkg.
#24437
Orion SkyQuest
XT8 PLUS Dobsonian
Reflector Telescope
#8974
Orion Dual Finder Scope

Mounting Bracket
#10145
Fully motorized
object location and
automatic tracking
of over 42,000
celestial wonders!
Orion StarShoot
All-In-One Camera
#52098
Orion 70mm Multi-Use
Finder Scope
#7220
Orion SteadyPix Pro Univ.

Camera/Phone Mount
#5306
Orion 8"
(203mm) f/3.9
Newtonian Astrograph Reflector #8297
Orion StarShoot Solar

System Color Camera IV
#52175
Orion 9.25" ID Full

Aperture Solar Filter
#7722
Orion SkyQuest
XT8g Computerized
GoTo Dobsonian
Telescope
#10134
Orion Resolux 15x70 WP

Astronomy Binoculars
#9546
Orion GoScope II 70mm

Travel Telescope Moon Kit
#10034
Orion Shorty 1.25" (31mm)

2x Barlow Lens
#8711
Orion StarShoot
AllSky Camera II
NTSC #52191; PAL #52197
Orion StarBlast
6i IntelliScope
Reflector Telescope
#27191
Shopping has never been easier.

To learn more about Orion products and see a
larger assortment, please check out the digital
eCatalogs on our website!
Check out the Orion page on Facebook
www.facebook.com/oriontelescopes
Jonathan Nally
Spectrum
A Year of
Discovery
I
t's great to back in the editor's hot seat at Australian Sky & Telescope, 10 years
after we launched the magazine. So much has changed during that decade, but
one thing has stayed the same the flood of amazing discoveries and insights
into our cosmos just keeps getting stronger as each year goes by. New telescope
technologies and huge computing power are enabling astronomers to tackle
research problems they could only have dreamed about in decades past. Were
truly experiencing a golden age discovery.
For all that new technology, though, there are always challenges to solve. As our
cover story illustrates, as telescopes grow in size and complexity, so too does the
potential for things to go wrong. Todays telescopes are huge enough, but
tomorrows behemoths such as the recently approved Thirty Metre Telescope,
and the Square Kilometre Array will no doubt present difficulties that havent
been anticipated yet. But the engineers and scientists who conceive, design and
build these giants are a resourceful lot, and will no doubt rise to the occasion.
This is going to be such an exciting year for space exploration, with the New
Horizons spacecraft soon to reach Pluto, and Dawn continuing its reconnaissance
of the asteroid belt as it arrives at Ceres. Two missions, two dwarf planets. Well
also be following the life and times of Rosetta with great interest, as it heads
sunward in the company of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Back down here on Earth, and kudos to Sydney Observatory for
commissioning a new telescope that will be accessible to those with physical
disabilities. Equipped with a special eyepiece, the viewer will be able stay in one
spot as the telescope moves to track different targets. The buildings dome is
actually that from the old astrograph building that was demolished in 1986, and
the astrograph itself will return to be put on display. I have fond memories of
using this instrument to take photographic plates of Comet Halley as part of the
International Halley Watch project. It was a great old device, and it's wonderful to
know that itll be there to show the younger generations what a 'real' telescope
looked like.
I'm keen to hear your ideas for how we can make AS&T even better for you.
Please drop me a line at editor@skyandtelescope.com.au and let me know what
you'd like to see more of in the magazine.
Jonathan Nally
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE

OF ASTRONOMY
ISSUE NO 83
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
EDITORIAL
EDITOR Jonathan Nally
DESIGN Simone Marinkovic
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
John Drummond, David Ellyard,
Ross Gould, Steve Kerr,
Alan Plummer, David Seargent
EMAIL info@skyandtelescope.com.au
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING MANAGER Jonathan Nally
EMAIL jonathan@skyandtelescope.com.au
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
TEL 02 9439 1955
EMAIL subs@odysseus.com.au
ODYSSEUS PUBLISHING PTY LIMITED
ABN 39 122 001 665
TEL 02 9439 1955
FAX 02 9439 1977
ADDRESS Suite 15, Level 2/174
Willoughby Road, Crows Nest NSW 2065
PO Box 81, St Leonards, NSW, 1590
PUBLISHERS
Ian Brooks and Todd Cole
Printed by Webstar
Australia distribution by Network
Services. New Zealand distribution by
Gordon & Gotch. 2015 F+W Media, Inc.
and Odysseus Publishing Pty Limited.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, translated, or converted into
a machine-readable form or language
without the written consent of the
publisher. Australian Sky & Telescope is
published by Odysseus Publishing Pty
Limited under licence from F+W Media,
Inc. as the Australian edition of Sky &
Telescope. Australian Sky & Telescope is
a registered trademark of F+W Media,
Inc. USA. Articles express the opinions of
the authors and are not necessarily those
of the Editor or Odysseus Publishing Pty
Limited. ISSN 1832-0457
Editor
editor@skyandtelescope.com.au
SKY & TELESCOPE
INTERNATIONAL
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Peter Tyson
Australian Sky & Telescope is now on Facebook. Complementing our website,

Facebook helps keep you alerted to astronomy news and information about
Australian Sky & Telescope. Visit www.skyandtelescope.com.au, click on the
Facebook link, and become a fan today.
EDITORIAL
SENIOR EDITOR
Alan M. MacRobert
EQUIPMENT EDITOR Sean Walker
SCIENCE EDITOR Camille M. Carlisle
WEB EDITOR Monica Young
OBSERVING EDITOR Susan N. JohnsonRoehr
SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
J. Kelly Beatty, Robert Naeye, Roger W.
Sinnott
DESIGN DIRECTOR Patricia Gillis-Coppola
ILLUSTRATION DIRECTOR Gregg
Dinderman
Founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr.
and Helen Spence Federer
ROWE-ACKERMANN
SCHMIDT ASTROGRAPH
CGE PRO MOUNT
11 inch f/2.2 optical design with rare-earth glass for

images free of false color, coma, and field curvature
70mm optimized image circle maintains pinpoint stars to
the far corners of even the largest astroimaging sensors
Custom engineered linear brass focuser bearing reduces
image shift, while dual-speed 10:1 FeatherTouch Micro
Focus Knob provides the most precise focusing
Quiet, high-output 12V MagLev fan reduces cooldown
time and blocks dust
Common camera adapters (T-thread and M48) included
for easy attachment to popular CCD and DSLR cameras
Capturing impressive deep-sky astroimages is easier than
ever with Celestrons new Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt
Astrograph, the perfect companion to todays top DSLR or
astronomical CCD cameras. This fast, wide-field f/2.2 system
offers two huge advantages over traditional f/10 astroimaging:
better apparent tracking and shorter exposures. That means
youll create better-looking astroimages in a fraction of the
time, even without the use of an autoguider.
The Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph builds on the
legacy of Celestrons Schmidt Camera, which allowed
astrophotographers to produce images on film in the 1970s.
Today, with CCD sensor sizes as large as filmor larger
the Schmidt Astrograph offers a full 70mm optimized image
circle to capture pinpoint stars on the largest imaging chips.
Combine this large image circle with a focal length of just
620mm and you have an instrument suitable for wide-field
imaging, creating huge mosaics of the night sky, surveying,
and even comet hunting.
Australian Geographic
shop.australiangeographic.com.au
OzScopes
www.ozscopes.com.au
Telescopes Direct
www.telescopesdirect.com.au
Optics Central
www.opticscentral.com.au
For more information or for a complete list of Celestron retailers call 1800 808 971 or email celestron@sheldonandhammond.com.au
News Notes
SOLAR SYSTEM I
Comet Siding Spring Skims Mars

Comet Siding Spring
(below center) made
its closest approach
to Mars (big reddish
blob) on October
19th, a few hours after
astrophotographer
Damian Peach captured
this image of the pair.
SEN / DAMIAN PEACH
istory was made on October 19,

2014, as a comet passed closer
to a planet (without hitting it)
than ever before in recorded memory.
Unfortunately for backyard observers,
that planet was Mars.
Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1)
passed 137,000 kilometres above the
Red Planets surface about a third
of the distance between the Earth and
the Moon. The dust tail left in its wake
missed Mars, but not by much.
This Oort Cloud comet is a firsttime visitor to the inner Solar System.
When spotted in January 2013 by
veteran comet-hunter Rob McNaught,
C/2013 A1 was still 7.2 astronomical

units (1.1 billion km) from the Sun.
By then its nucleus had already started
releasing gas and dust to form a coma.
Most comets dont turn on until they
get much closer in.
Planetary scientists, excited by the
prospect of studying a pristine relic
from the Solar Systems formation,
readied an armada of spacecraft and
ground-based telescopes for the event.
The most anticipated observations
came from NASAs three orbiters: Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey,
and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile
Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft.
Also on the scene were the European

orbiter Mars Express and Indias Mars
Orbiter Mission (MOM), as well as the
Opportunity and Curiosity rovers on
the planets surface.
As a precaution, engineers from
NASA and the European Space
Agency manipulated the trajectories
of their respective orbiters to put the
spacecraft all on the opposite side
of the planet during the window of
greatest danger. Initial results confirm
these craft weathered the event
unharmed by debris.
Comet Siding Spring passed through
its orbits perihelion just 5 days
after zipping past Mars, so activity
was expected to be very high during
its pass. However, observers noted a
fall-off in the comets brightness as the
encounter neared. Preliminary images
from MROs HiRISE camera also
suggest that the comets icy nucleus
is only half as large as the 700 metres
scientists had estimated.
Meanwhile, MAVEN and MOM
were both watching for changes in
the composition and temperature of
the planets upper atmosphere as the
comets extended gas-and-dust coma
briefly enveloped the planet. Scientists
are working to disentangle the effects
from the coronal mass ejection that
passed Mars around the same time.
J. KELLY BEATTY
IN BRIEF
Citizen Scientists Probe Early Galaxies. Data collected by Galaxy
Zoo volunteers show galaxies form barred structures much earlier in
cosmic history than previously thought. Previous observations have
shown that the fraction of barred galaxies dropped from 5070% in
the nearby universe to 10% when the universe was only 6 billion years
old. But as Brooke Simmons (Oxford, U.K.) and colleagues report in an
upcoming Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, extending
the data back to when the universe was only 3 billion years old shows
that the number of barred galaxies was still as high as 10%, and not the
expected zero. These early galaxies might have formed either because
their contents settled down earlier than thought would happen, or
because they were formed by two galaxies colliding.
Neutrino Detection Confirms Suns Power Source. Deep inside

the Sun pairs of protons fuse to form deuterium nuclei, kick-starting
nuclear fusion. Although the complex proton-proton chain is now
standard theory, the solar neutrinos produced in the chains first
step have eluded detection for decades. Now, researchers using the
Borexino detector a tub of liquid designed to emit light when
neutrinos interact with the liquids electrons have captured the
elusive neutrinos. The results, published in the August 28 issue of
Nature, confirm that 99% of the Suns power comes from the protonproton fusion process and demonstrate the intricate interplay between
theory and observation. Although the particles existence was not in
question, its an incredible feat to detect them.
SHANNON HALL
SHANNON HALL
LUNAR I Geologically Recent Volcanism on the Moon

Images from NASAs Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter show 70
small, curious features that might
be from volcanic eruptions in the
past 50 to 100 million years, Sarah
Braden (Arizona State University)
and colleagues report October 12th in
Nature Geoscience.
The suspect locations are what
geologists term irregular mare
patches, or IMPs. These distinctive
rock deposits, up to 5 kilometres long,
can be either rough, blocky outcrops
or smooth patches with uniform
texture. Both types exhibit very few
impact craters, even down to the
0.5-metre resolution of the narrowangle camera on NASAs Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter. The lack of
craters suggests that the features are
relatively young.
The best known IMP, named Ina (or
Ina D), was spotted in images taken
by the crew of Apollo 15 in 1971.
Even back then, lunar geologists had
a hunch that Ina was a collapsed vent
topping a low, broad, shield volcano.
But Inas age has been uncertain.
Now, thanks to LROs keen
resolution, that site and many
others appear to be quite young. The
IMPs spectral characteristics suggest

relatively fresh surfaces that have not
been darkened by eons of exposure to
space radiation. The smooth deposits
are also the same thickness as other
lunar basalt flows and havent had
their steep edges worn down, as older
features have. Curiously, all the IMPs
are on the Moons nearside hemisphere,
although statistically a few should have
been spotted on the farside.
So, rather than a complete shutdown
of lunar volcanism at least a billion
years ago, as had been widely assumed,
the process was apparently much more

drawn out. Pockets of molten rock must
have remained in the lunar mantle until
very recently and might still be there
now. These findings have implications
for how warm the lunar interior still
is (and the true extent of its partially
molten core). They also might suggest
that heat flow measurements taken
during the Apollo 15 and 17 missions
were not anomalously high after all, as
many have thought.
Shown in this
oblique view from
NASAs Lunar
Reconnaissance
Orbiter, the feature
Ina (big mottled
region) might
be from a recent
volcanic eruption
on the Moon. The
shallow depression
is about 50 metres
deep. Illumination
is from the bottom;
the smooth patches
are convex and lie
above the rough
surface. (If the
smooth patches
look like holes
to you, imagine
pressing your thumb
into Inas depression
it can help reset
your perspective
of the edges.) NASA
/ GSFC / ARIZONA STATE
UNIVERSITY
J. KELLY BEATTY
IN BRIEF
Work Begins on Thirty Metre Telescope.
Officials gathered on October 7 for the
dedication and groundbreaking of the
Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), slated for
completion in 2022. TMT will combine
492 individual hexagonal reflectors, each
1.4 metres across, in a honeycomb primary
mirror with an effective diameter of 30
metres. The primary promises to provide
144 times more collecting area and 10
times better spatial resolution than the
Hubble Space Telescope. Ceremonies were
interrupted for several hours by a peaceful
protest from native Hawaiians who oppose
additional telescopes on the sacred summit
of Mauna Kea. (See page 24 for more on
hurdles faced by big scopes.)
J. KELLY BEATTY
Gamma-ray Novae Explained?

Astronomers might have an explanation
for why classical novae emit gamma
rays. Laura Chomiuk (Michigan State
University) and colleagues used several

radio arrays to observe the nova V959
Monocerotis, starting about two weeks after
the gamma-ray discovery and spread over
several months. The observations revealed
synchrotron radiation, which is produced
by relativistic particles and suggests the
presence of shock fronts. What probably
happened is, when the white dwarf went
nova, it first spewed out thick, warm gas
in a spherical shell around itself and its
companion. As the gas flowed past the other
star, the interaction forced the gas into a
dense belt instead of a sphere. When the
white dwarf later blew out a fast wind, the
thick stuff funneled that wind out along
the poles. Shocks formed at the boundaries
between the slower, thick outflow and
the faster, thin outflow. These shocks
accelerated the particles responsible for the
gamma rays and the synchrotron emission,
the team reports October 8 in Nature.
Small Galaxy Boasts Big Black Hole.

Astronomers have detected a supermassive
black hole in the center of the ultracompact
dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 where it has
no right to be. Ultracompact dwarf galaxies
are similar in size to globular clusters but
at least 10 times more massive. Scientists
have debated whether they are unusually
massive star clusters or the remnants of
larger galaxies that have been stripped down
to their cores. But dwarf galaxies normally
dont have supermassive black holes, and
M60-UCD1s black hole is 21 million times
the mass of the Sun, about 5 times more
massive than the Milky Ways black hole.
The mass suggests the original galaxy had
a central bulge roughly 100 times more
massive than M60-UCD1s total stellar
mass, Anil Seth (University of Utah) and
colleagues report September 18 in Nature.
The detection is the first observational
evidence for the stripped-down theory.
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
EMILY CONOVER
News Notes
BLACK HOLES I
No Big Beast for Two ULXs

Two studies suggest that some of the
ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs)
thought to be beefy black holes are
created by much less massive objects.
ULXs spew out X-rays at luminosities
roughly a trillion times the Suns X-ray
luminosity. The standard explanation
for a ULX is that the X-rays come from
extremely hot material that a black
hole has pulled from a companion star.
The more massive the black hole, the
brighter its accretion disk can be.
But ULXs are uncomfortably bright:
to explain them, a stellar-mass black
hole would need to reach or surpass its
maximum gas-gobbling rate, called the
Eddington limit. That might be possible
due to force-feeding that can occur
under certain conditions. Or these
sources might be intermediate-mass
black holes (IMBHs), theoretical objects
with masses of hundreds to thousands
of Suns that would fill the no-mans land
between stellar-mass and supermassive
black holes.
Among ULXs, the sources M82 X-1
and ESO 243-49 HLX-1 are the two best
IMBH candidates; evidence suggesting
that M82X-1 is a 400 solar-mass black
hole appeared in the September 4, 2014,
issue of Nature.
GALAXIES I
Mergers Create
Disk Galaxies
Now, a pair of papers published on

October 9 in Nature demonstrate that
two other ULXs are not IMBHs.
Christian Motch (University of
Strasbourg, France) and colleagues
observed variations in a ULXs
emission in the spiral galaxy NGC
7793. The measurements pegged the
orbital period of the black hole and its
companion to 64 days and constrained
the black holes mass to be less than
15 solar masses. This means that the
black hole gobbles up matter at twice its
Eddington limit, confirming the forcefeeding picture.
The more surprising result comes
from Matteo Bachetti (University of
Toulouse, France) and colleagues,
who detected pulsations from another
ULX in the galaxy M82, proving its
not a black hole at all, but a pulsar.
Astronomers hadnt expected pulsars
to be ULXs, because to do so pulsars
would have to exceed their Eddington
limits to an extreme degree. In this case,
the pulsar surpasses its Eddington limit
by a factor of 100 an unprecedented
amount, and difficult to reconcile with
theory.
Observations from several radio telescopes

confirm that, when two galaxies merge, their
progeny often have extended gaseous disks.
Simulations from the 1970s suggested that,
when two big disk-shaped galaxies merged,
theyd create a big elliptical galaxy, a fairly
featureless spheroid of stars. But about a
decade ago, better simulations by several
teams showed that, if the disk galaxies have
a lot of gas, the object their merger creates
will also be a disk galaxy, with spiral arms or
maybe even a central bar.
Junko Ueda (National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan) and colleagues
have now confirmed this prediction with
observations, published in the September
Astrophysical Journal Supplement. The team
looked at emission from cold molecular gas
from 37 merger-created galaxies, using both
new and archival data. Of the 37 galaxies,
the team easily detected gas in 30, and 24
showed signs of disk rotation.
Of the 24, 11 (46%) have big gas disks,
meaning they are on their way to forming
either spiral or lenticular galaxies. The disks
of the remaining 13 are smaller than their
stellar bulges; those galaxies will become
ellipticals.
EMILY CONOVER
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
GALACTIC CENTER I G2 Survives Pass

Last year, the worlds astronomers watched
a mysterious, gaseous object called G2
slingshot around the supermassive black hole
at the centre of the Milky Way. Astronomers
first spotted G2 in 2011, and its crazy orbit
immediately sparked debate: G2 makes a
beeline for the black hole, whips around
it, and shoots straight back out again. To
do so, the object must have somehow lost
enough angular momentum that, instead of
following a more circular orbit, it started to
fall headlong toward the black hole, called
Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A star").
The answer to the mystery is twisted up in
G2s nature: is it merely a gas cloud, or does it
hide a star inside?
The hope was that G2 would reveal its
nature during its close encounter with Sgr
A* in March 2014. However, the data are still
inconclusive. The issue is that the two teams
that spearheaded the infrared observations of

our galactic downtown depend on different
types of data.
The Max Planck Institute team has
fabulous measurements from the SINFONI
spectrograph at Paranal Observatory in
Chile. These data show an extended gas tail
disrupted during the close pass. On the other
hand, the UCLA team has exquisite images
from the Keck Observatory on Mauna
Kea. The images for autumn and winter
2014 show an unresolved compact object
that didnt brighten and stuck to its orbit
during the pass, as youd expect for a dustenshrouded star.
The discrepancy might exist because
the two types of observations are looking
at different features: the spectra catch gas
thats stretched out from the orbit, while
the images catch the dusty shell heated by
the star within. The MPI observations thus

wouldnt rule out a star; they would just show
that gas was yanked out during the close pass.
As G2 moves farther from Sgr A*, the view
will become clearer. And if Sgr A* slowly
brightens in the next few years, itll indicate
that it did indeed tear gas off G2 and that this
gas fell through the accretion flow toward the
black hole. That could reveal G2s nature and
how much stuff it lost during the pass.
A completely different probe is also in
place: the star S2, which at closest approach
whizzes closer to the black hole than G2 did.
S2 will reach pericentre around 2018, and the
effect it has (or doesnt have) on the hot gas
surrounding the black hole could reveal much
about the environment and, potentially, why
G2 behaved the way it did during its pass.
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
10 & 5 Years Ago

February 2005
Uranus Kicks Up A Storm

Many astronomy enthusiasts had a hard time getting
excited about Uranus after Voyager 2's 1986 flyby.
Unenhanced imags of the planet showed a featureless
aquamarine ball in stark contrast to Jupiter's and
Saturn's richly detailed belts and storms. But recent nearinfrared images from the 10-metre Keck II telescope in
Hawaii demonstrate that first impressions can be deceiving.
The images, taken in 2003 and 2004 with adaptive optics to counter atmospheric
blurring, revealed dozens of discrete clouds, more than the total seen in all previous
observations up to 2000. The clouds vary in size, brightness and longevity, proving
that Uranus (like Neptune) has a dynamic and complex atmosphere after all The
major reason for Uranus' new-found dynamism is probably its extreme seasonal
cycle. Uranus is the Solar System's only planet whose rotation axis is tipped nearly
into its orbital plane.
Ten years later, and Uranus is still kicking up storms. In November 2014, astronomers
using Keck II were tracking a huge storm and several smaller ones. Even amateur
astronomers with advanced gear could see them.
Feb/Mar 2010
Finding the First Galaxies

In May 2009, astronauts installed two new cameras
in the Hubble Space Telescope, making Hubble more
powerful than ever. The new Wide-Field Camera 3
(WFC3) increases Hubbles sensitivity and field of view
at near-infrared wavelengths, improving its ability to
search for distant galaxies by as much as a factor of 20.
It didnt take long for WFC3 to make its mark. Garth

Illingworth, Rychard Bouwens (both at the University
of California, Santa Cruz), and their colleagues recently used WFC3 to find 5
galaxies, circled in the image to the left, that are more distant than any seen before,
pushing our knowledge of galaxy evolution back to just 600 million years after the
Big Bang (a redshift of about 8.5).
These early galaxies are about the same distance as gamma-ray burst 090423, which
recently established the record for most-distant known object (AS&T: October
2009, page 34). But were interested in more than just breaking records. We want to
understand how galaxies formed, and how they built themselves up into the giant
congregations that we see today.
As covered in this issue (pages 36-42), astronomers are now using the serendipitous
alignment of galaxy clusters to act as zoom lenses and push back the time and
distance to which Hubble can see into the distant past. Astronomers hope to see
almost back to the dawn of time.
Astro
Calendar
WA Astrofest
March 28
Biennial Victorian astronomy conference,
hosted in 2015 by the Bendigo
Astronomical Society
caastro.org/Astrofest
VASTROC
April 17-19
Biennial Victorian astronomy conference,
hosted in 2015 by the Bendigo
Astronomical Society
vastroc.net
Royal Astronomical Society of NZ
Conference
May 8-10
Annual meeting of New Zealand's
astronomers
rasnz.org.nz/Conference/
Trans-Tasman Symposium on
Occultations
May 11
Australasian get-together for occultation
observers, this year to be held in Lake
Tekapo, NZ
occultations.org.nz
South Pacific Star Party
May 14-17
Annual star party hosted by the
Astronomical Society of NSW
asnsw.com/spsp
CWAS Astrofest
July 18-19
Annual conference held in Parkes (home
of 'the Dish'), including the David Malin
Awards
cwas.org.au/Astrofest/
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
WHATS GOING ON?
Do you have an event or activity coming up?

Email us at editor@skyandtelescope.com.au.
Countdown to Pluto Jonathan Nally
Ready For A Close Encounter
New Horizons awakens and prepares for Pluto
s I write this, NASA's New

Horizons spacecraft has just
come out of its final period of
hibernation. On December 7, 2014, a
simple "I'm awake and okay" tone was
received at the agency's Deep Space
Network station at Tidbinbilla, near
Canberra. That tone was carried by
radio waves more than 4.6 billion
kilometres from the spacecraft to
Earth, taking a little under four and a
half hours to reach us.
Now that the craft is conscious
again and preparing for its final
run in to Pluto in July this year, the
serious investigations can begin in
earnest. Let's look at the timeline
between now and encounter day.
In the middle of January the
science phase began, as New
Horizons started to collect data on
Pluto and its moons. They're still
small dots in the distance as this
stage, but they'll grow bigger each day
as the spacecraft closes in at a speed
of about 50,000 kilometres per hour.

Three months out, and still
100 million kilometres away, the
spacecraft's cameras will be able
to start making their first maps of
Pluto's surface. By ten weeks out, New
Horizons will begin to provide better
views than the Hubble Space Telescope
has given us so far. And in the last few
weeks before encounter, scientists will
map surface maps every half-day to
look for daily changes.
On encounter day, July 14, 2015,
detailed observations at many
wavelengths will be made of the dwarf
planet's surface and atmosphere, and
the same goes for its largest moon,
Charon. Details as small as 25 metres
across should be seen.
New Horizons' closest approach
to Pluto will be at a distance of about
10,000 kilometres and at a speed of
14 kilometres per second. Closest
approach to Charon will be about
27,000 kilometres.
At this time, Pluto will be

approximately 4.92 billion kilometres
from Earth, and it will take 4 hours and
25 minutes for New Horizons' signals
to reach us.
But the science won't stop on
encounter day. After passing by, New
Horizons will turn around and look
back to make more observations it'll
be looking to see if there's any haze in
Pluto's atmosphere, and whether there
are any rings circling the planet. Rings
are often easiest to see when backlit by
sunlight.
It'll take up to nine months for
the entire encounter data set to be
downloaded back to Earth. Meanwhile,
as reported in our January issue, New
Horizons will be retargeted onto an
interception course with a Kuiper Belt
object one of Pluto's icy cousins in
the far reaches of the Solar System.
I can't wait for our first up-close look
at Pluto. The next six months are going
to be absolutely thrilling.
New Horizons'
trajectory through
the Solar System to
Pluto and beyond
to its Kuiper Belt
target, PT1. Also
shown as many are
the positions of the
millions of smaller
bodies that inhabit
our neighbourhood.
ALEX PARKER
David Ellyard
Discoveries
Comet 1P/Halley
was named after
Edmond Halley, but
not discovered by
him. Halley was the
first to work out
that some comets
returned again and
again to the inner
Solar System. ESO
Comet compatriots
Halley, Tycho and comets
dmond Halley, who flourished around

the start of the 18th century, had many
remarkable achievements. Among
them was the first detailed study of the
variation of the compass (the difference
between true north and magnetic north) up
and down the Atlantic Ocean, undertaken to
find a method of measuring longitude; his
proposal that we could use the transits of
Venus to determine the distance between the
Earth and the Sun; and his encouragement of
Isaac Newton to prepare for publication his
epoch-making book the Principia, which
Halley also paid for.
But for most people Halleys name is
associated principally with his comet.
Halleys is the best-known of the comets,
uniquely combining brightness (bright
enough at times to be seen in the daytime)
with regular and not too infrequent
appearances (every 76 years or so). So it is
worth remembering that this month
celebrates (on 30 March) the first recorded
closest approach (perihelion passage) of that
comet to the Sun, as observed by Chinese
astronomers in 239 BCE.

That and many other sightings confirm
that the comet was well-known long before
Halley took an interest. His name became
attached (after his death) because he deduced
that the comet was a regular visitor, and that
previous appearances in 1531, 1607 and 1682
were of the same comet. He predicted that it
would come by again in 1759, and it did. His
immortality was assured. We might also note
that in order to calculate the orbit of the
comet at its various appearances (and to
show they all were the same) he relied on
methods Newton had set out in the Principia.
So Halley got his reward for supporting and
sponsoring Newton.
On another March date, a century before
Halley, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe
found a new comet in the constellation
Pisces. That discovery, on 5 March 1590,
allows us to draw the great Tycho into the
story. Like Halley he was a man of many
achievements: Court Astronomer to the
Kings of Denmark and Bohemia; source of
the most accurate data on the positions of the
heavenly bodies in the pre-telescope age;

creator of a model of the Solar System that
challenge both Ptolemy and Copernicus; and
first observer of Tychos Star, the great
supernova of 1572 (which may have been the
star referred to in Hamlet by Shakespeare).
Tycho also wore a false nose, the original
having (reputedly) been sliced off by a rival in
a duel over mathematics.
Tycho had been the most illustrious
observer of the Great Comet of 1577, though
many other people saw it too, including in the
Middle East. Tycho made many
measurements of the position of the comet,
data later used by his assistant and successor
Johannes Kepler to help determine his laws
of planetary motion.
Tychos crucial discovery concerned how
far away the comet was. The great Aristotle,
whose ideas were still influential nearly 2,000
years after his time, believed comets were just
disturbances in our own atmosphere. Tycho
put that idea to flight by comparing the
position of the comet against the background
stars, when compared with that of the Moon,
and as observed simultaneously from
Copenhagen and Prague (where he had a
correspondent). The position of the Moon
was different when observed from the two
locations, but that of the comet was not,
indicating to Tycho that the comet was
further away than the Moon (and therefore
far beyond our atmosphere).
This information had profound
implications. It not only rubbished Aristotles
ideas about comets, but also put the fleeting
appearances of the comet far out in the realm
beyond the Moon where supposedly nothing
ever changed. Furthermore, to move as
observed in that realm, the comet would have
to pass right through the crystalline spheres
which (again according to Aristotle and
Ptolemy) carried the heavenly bodies in their
orbits around the stationary Earth. All of this
nibbled away at the traditional view of the
cosmos, now sanctioned by the Church,
which later gave Galileo such a hard time
over the matter.
It was Halley who finally put comets in
their place, arguing that they were just small
members of the Solar System, orbiting the
Sun and following the rules uncovered by
Newton and Kepler. That is not to demean
their importance. Current studies suggest that
they may have been the source of both water
and biologically-important molecules for the
infant Earth, with which they frequently
collided. But that is another story.
David Ellyard presented SkyWatch on ABC TV in
the 1980s. His StarWatch StarWheel has sold over
100,000 copies.
Cosmic Views
NO LANDING ZONE
Jupiter's icy moon Europa is seen in brilliant

detail in this newly reprocessed picture made
from images taken by the Galileo spacecraft in
the 1990s. Europa featured in Arthur C. Clarke's
2010: Odyssey Two (the sequel to 2001: A Space
Odyssey), in which a message was sent to Earth:
"All these worlds are yours except Europa
attempt no landing there". As the late Clarke
was right about so many other things, perhaps
we should take this warning seriously.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SETI INSTITUTE
Outback Mars
A view of a Martian Valley, taken by

NASA's Curiosity rover.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
Outback Mars
The Australian desert is the ideal place to simulate living on Mars
wo spacesuited figures walk

across a rocky plain surrounded
by steep hills in the orange light
of the late afternoon. Trundling behind
them is an eight-wheeled robot.
Overhead a small quadcopter streams
video back to a field operations centre
in a nearby vehicle, from where the
robot and astronaut operations are
being co-ordinated.
This is not a scene from a science
fiction movie, or even a NASA
conceptualisation of future
interplanetary explorers. Instead, it was
a trial carried out during the Mars
Society Australias Mars Robot
Challenge Expedition near Arkaroola,
700 kilometres north of Adelaide in
South Australia's Flinders Ranges.
The July 2014 expedition comprised
30 people, a mixture of engineering
and geological researchers, science and
engineering graduate and
JONATHAN
CLARKE
undergraduate students from Australia

and India, plus volunteers,
accompanied by seven walking, driving
and flying robots. Supporting them
was a network of people in Mumbai,
Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra,
Adelaide and the US.
Many expeditioners mean many
goals. The robotics teams wanted to
test their robots in terrains that
approximated what you might find on
the Moon and Mars. Operational
researchers planned to evaluate
interactions between astronauts, rovers
and mission control. Astrobiologists
wanted to look for signs of life in
ancient rocks. Field geologists hoped to
evaluate the effectiveness of the robots
and astronauts in collecting data. And
the expedition co-ordinator hoped to
herd all these cats safely and happily
through the two weeks of the
expedition.
Testing Robots
in The Field
Most activities centred around the

capabilities of the robots. Many people
often have quite unrealistic
expectations of robots they imagine
autonomous, perhaps even self-aware,
droids like those of Star Wars. The
reality is quite different Star Wars
droids are a long way off. Autonomous
robots that can roam around planetary
surfaces are extremely difficult to
achieve, have limited capabilities and
are very slow.
Most importantly for researchers like
those on the expedition, they are very
expensive to develop and difficult to
test within limited time frames.
So we focussed on human-centred
robots. These are machines that are
either directly or remotely controlled,
and support human activities. Such
robots are not only easier to build and
test than autonomous machines but

are potentially far more powerful.
The most sophisticated and capable
space robots to date include those
on the International Space Station,
such as the robot arms. It is in their
capacity to enhance human
capabilities that robots show their
greatest potential in space
exploration.
But why test them in the field?
Because field environments are far
more diverse and less controlled
than a laboratory robots that
work well in the lab may not work
in the field, and extensive field trials
are needed not only to ensure
reliability but to confirm the best
designs. This is true whether you are
designing robots for use on Earth of
for even more demanding
applications in space.
Through the field-testing at
Arkaroola, ideas for the next
generation of robots to be deployed
throughout the Solar System are
being shaped. Even more
importantly, the next generation of
engineers are gaining experience in
the messy world beyond the
laboratory.
'Astronauts' in
conversation during
the Mars Society
Australias Mars
Robot Challenge
Expedition.
Lessons Learned
The expectations of the expedition

were fully met, as the capabilities of the
robots and their creators were tested to
the limit and beyond. Circuit boards
that worked in the lab and workshop
shorted out in the dry and dusty
conditions. Wheels were shredded by
the rocky ground. Vibrations and

bumps broken connections. Wind and
rain disrupted operations and
destroyed test equipment.
Expeditioners worked late into the
night repairing equipment, building
whole new circuit boards and devising
work-around procedures. A blizzard of
Outback Mars
A self-portrait of
NASA's Curiosity
rover on Mars.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
Expedition robots. Left to right: Corobot and Mascot

(Murdoch University), Miner and Big Blue (Mars Society
Australia), Mars Society India and UNSW rovers. Overhead
is Mars Society Australias Phantom 2 quadcopter.
emails within the support network

provided essential advice, and there
were emergency deliveries of key
components.
Working in parallel with the
engineers were the scientists. The rocks
at Arkaroola are thought to record
some major events in the history of life
on Earth, including the early evolution
of sponge-like animals. A team from
Macquarie University sampled these
rocks for biomarkers, organic
molecules that might prove or disprove
this hypothesis. They also worked
'Astronauts' launch
the Phantom 2
quadcopter to collect
video data of the
expedition for later
analysis.
The Arkaroola Mars robot challenge expedition

would not have been possible with the cooperation of the entire team and the numerous
organisations that provided financial or in-kind
support: CSIRO, Australia-India Council, Macquarie
University, Murdoch University, UNSW, Saber
Astronautics, Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary,
Victorian Space Science Education Centre and
Mars Society Australia.
alongside the engineers to assess the

scientific validity of the geological data
collected and tested the ability of
people in spacesuits to recognise
stromatolites dome-shaped
fossilised structures formed by the
kind of microbes that some think we
might find also fossilised on Mars.
It is going to take months or years to
fully adsorb the lessons from the
expedition and publish the results. But
some are already evident, such as
practical lessons in the design and
construction of functional field robots.
Other preliminary results are
beginning to emerge. For example,
small ground robots are not able to
keep up with astronauts even over
smooth terrains they would be best
deployed and left to carry out
independent operations, whether
autonomously or by remote control.
Much larger robotic vehicles will be
needed with similar rates of movement
to humans, and cross-country abilities
will be essential.
Small airborne drones, through their
speed and freedom of movement, have
enormous potential to support human
operations such as scouting and
enabling supervision and control of
activities. But matching the capabilities
of terrestrial multi-rotor drones for use
on Mars, say, or Titan, is going to be a
challenge for aerospace and robotics

engineers.
There were other valuable lessons
learned, such as having diverse groups
with different backgrounds and goals
working together on the same project.
Participants developed relationships
and networks whose potential may be
realised only in years to come. And
there were tremendous opportunities
for engaging the public at Arkaroola as
people attended lectures given by the
expeditioners and stopped by to watch
the tests.
The mark of a successful expedition
is the enthusiasm that those who were
involved show for the next one. Mars
Society Australia is exploring the
possibility of a robotics competition to
be held at Arkaroola, as well as further
collaboration with Mars Society India.
We're always looking for further
members and volunteers for key roles
in our expeditions, so please join us
(www. marssociety.org.au) as we build
the capability to expand the human
race's future to Mars and elsewhere in
the Solar System.
Jonathan Clarke is president of the Mars
Society Australia, and a geologist of more
than 30 years experience. The Arkaroola
Mars Robot Challenge was his seventh
expedition, the third as co-ordinator.
Competitive Pricing
&
Professional Service
QUEENSLAND OWNED AND OPERATED
Queenslands only professional astronomy store with expert advisors
LX90 ACF
LX200 ACF
LX850
Series 6000
Apo/Refractor
ETX90
Meade ACF Telescopes improve on normal Schmidt-Cassegrains as the ACF gives a flatter, coma free field of view with sharp, pin point images to the edge of the
field of view. The ACFs offer the serious astronomer the best solution for astroimaging or visual observing.
ACF & SCT OPTICAL TUBE

ASSEMBLIES
TELECOMPRESSORS AND
ADAPTORS
TO SUIT REFRACTORS, NEWTONIANS

AND CASSEGRAINS
REFRACTORS
MAKSUTOV CASSEGRAIN TELESCOPE
PLANETARY CAMERAS
TRUSS TUBE
DOBS
FLEX TUBE DOBS
NEQ 6
EQ 8
CLASSIC DOBS
EQ 6 ALT/AZ
Sirius Optics:
Shop 2, The Underwood Centre,

2898 - 2900 Logan Rd, Underwood QLD 4119
Phone: 07 3423 2355 Fax:- 07 3423 2366
Email:- soptics@bigpond.net.au
Web Site address:- www.sirius-optics.com.au
Comet Landing
Mission
accomplished
E
Philae finds a new home
urope's Philae lander successfully

touched down on 67P/
Churyumov-Gerasimenko on
November 12, 2014, becoming the first
craft ever to soft-land on a comet. And
even though it experienced a couple
of now-famous bounces before finally
coming to rest, and despite ending up in
a less-than-ideal mostly shaded spot, it
managed complete its primary aims of
testing the comet's ice and sending back
images. Unfortunately though, without
enough sunlight to keep it powered,
Philae soon fell silent.
Meanwhile, the mission goes on for
the Rosetta parent craft as it slowly
circles the comet. The pair will travel
side-by-side as they get closer to the
Sun, giving Rosetta a box seat as sunlight
transforms the wanderer's icy surface
into an outpouring of gas and dust.
The view from one of Philae's

cameras while the lander was
still attached to the Rosetta
parent craft in October.
Their target, comet 67P/
Churyumov-Gerasimenko,
is 16 kilometres away in the
distance. ESA / ROSETTA
Philae's target landing site (grey

crosshairs) was chosen for its
smooth surface and life-giving
sunlight.
Philae, seen from Rosetta, on its
own and descending towards the
comet's surface. ESA / ROSETTA / MPS
ESA / ROSETTA / MPS FOR OSIRIS TEAM
FOR OSIRIS TEAM
Rosetta snapped these images of

Philae as it descended, touched down
and bounced back away from the
surface. The bounce saw it sail one
kilometre back up into space before
descending again, bouncing one
more time (not quite so high) before
finally settling. ESA / ROSETTA / MPS FOR
OSIRIS TEAM
Telescopic Toil & Trouble
Flawed
Giants
JONATHAN
FORTNEY
The worlds largest

optical telescopes have
had to overcome serious
hurdles, delaying their
scientific success.
UNDER SCRUTINY Face down (bottom), a secondary mirror for the Large Binocular Telescope is checked in the lab. The 672 tiny magnets spread over its backside
deform the surface to compensate for atmospheric effects. The upper portion (top) holds the devices that control the magnets. R. CERISOLA / LBT
or the last two decades the

worlds astronomers have been
tantalised by the construction
of one new record-breaking, groundbased behemoth telescope after
another. Each was heralded as the
telescope of the future, able to
outperform the Hubble Space
Telescope, peer into the distant past to
solve the mysteries of dark matter and
dark energy, and reveal the puzzles of
stellar evolution and the formation of
planetary systems.
Yet, as each one neared completion,
the publicity and news coverage
would slowly peter out. Years would
pass without any game-changing
scientific discoveries coming from
these leviathans.
What had happened? We decided to
find out, and what we have learned is
that these telescopes are far more
difficult to build than their press
releases have suggested.
These are huge industrial machines,
explains Gerard van Belle (Lowell
Observatory), one of several instrument
architects involved in the effort to
combine the two 10-metre Keck
telescopes in Hawaii into a single giant
interferometer until the
interferometry project was shuttered in
2012. It is like playing Whac-A-Mole.
You fix one problem, and another pops
up somewhere else.
These sobering facts sound a
warning for the much-touted next
generation of even larger telescopes:
things might not turn out as rosy as
their press releases suggest.
Arizona, and in 2008 by the 10.4-metre

Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) in the
Canary Islands.
These five observatories top the list of
the worlds biggest optical telescopes.
Yet, only the Keck telescopes have not
had significant technical and
management issues, and even Keck has
seen failure with its effort to turn its
two telescopes into an interferometer.
The Keck Interferometer sounded
like it had enormous potential,
combining two 10-metre telescopes
into a single telescope with the
resolution of an 85-metre mirror. For
years the press releases from the Keck
Observatory as well as from NASA
raved about the possibilities. As Paul
Swanson, project manager for the Keck
Interferometer at JPL, said in 2001,
This is a major step in the creation of a
whole new class of astronomical
telescopes that will have an enormous
impact on future knowledge.
Ten years later, with the
interferometer still not fully
operational, NASA announced that it
would no longer fund the project, and
Keck I
the observatory quietly shut the entire

operation down.
The failure of this high-profile
project was partly technical but mostly
political. In order for the images from
the two telescopes to be properly
combined, it was necessary to build and
install at least four smaller, 1.8-metresized outrigger telescopes in a
network surrounding the two main
10-metre telescopes.
These additional telescopes, however,
were initially opposed by members of
the native Hawaii population who
consider Mauna Kea site to be sacred.
They were also opposed by
environmentalists, who, even after local
Hawaiians gave a green light to the
outriggers, filed suit against NASA and
the University of Hawaii to demand an
environmental impact assessment
before construction continued.
Then the outrigger funding dried up
in 2006. NASA had paid for the
interferometer, along with similar
research at LBT, as support for two
planned space telescopes aimed at
hunting for exoplanets: the Space
Keck II
Too Much of
a Good Thing
In the last three decades the field of

ground-based astronomy has
undergone a revolution of design and
construction. Beginning with the firstgeneration design of the Multiple
Mirror Telescope (MMT) in 1979,
astronomy has seen a plethora of new
giant telescopes come online. The two
Keck 10-metres in Hawaii, which saw
first light in 1993 and 1996, proved that
large-scale telescopes could be built and
produce good science.
Keck was soon followed in 1996 by
the 9.2-metre Hobby-Eberly Telescope
(HET) in Texas, in 2005 by the
9.8-metre Southern African Large
Telescope (SALT) in South Africa and
the first of the two 8.4-metre mirrors of
the Large Binocular Telescope in
S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN
TWIN EYES Keck I

and II on Mauna Kea
were designed to
work in tandem with
four smaller scopes
as an interferometer
(top). Although NASA
ultimately canceled
the interferometry
project, the two
10-metre telescopes
remain powerhouses
in optical and nearinfrared astronomy,
producing exceptional
science.
NASA / T. WYNNE / JPL

FACE LIFT In
Operation Chrome
Dome, engineers at
the Hobby-Eberly
Telescope resurfaced
the entire dome with
aluminium tape. The
tape reduced the
domes radiative
cooling at night,
improving seeing.
BIG BONES HETs
structure dwarfs most
telescopes and
people. Seated at
HETs base during the
structure's fabrication
are the then-director
and associate
director of McDonald
Observatory.
JOHN GOOD
Interferometry Mission (SIM) and the

Terrestrial Planet Finder. But in 2006
NASA tabled TPF and cut funding for
the outriggers; in 2010 it also decided
not to go ahead with sponsorship of
SIM. With both of these missions
cancelled, and with Keck continuing to
face legal and logistical problems,
NASA decided to cut its support,
essentially ending the project.
Fortunately, this shutdown had little
impact on the overall success of the
Keck Observatory. Its two 10-metre
telescopes remain functional and
among astronomys best success stories.
The worlds other giant telescopes,
however, have not fared so well.
SALT in the Wound
The Southern African Large Telescope

(SALT) was going to put South African
astronomy on the map. In order to
build a world-class telescope on a
limited budget, its builders decided to
emulate the design of the Hobby-Eberly
Telescope (HET) in Texas.
HETs 9.2-metre effective aperture is
the worlds fifth largest, but the
telescope itself cost only US$16 million
to build, a fraction of the cost spent on
the other giants. To save money, the
telescopes mirror of 91 hexagonal
segments was mounted on a rotating
platform at a fixed zenith angle of 35.
Operators could rotate it but not tilt it.
Instead, the instrument package,
mounted on a frame above the mirror
at its focal point, would move, tracking
objects as their reflection traveled
across the mirrors face.
THOMAS A. SEBRING / HET CONSORTIUM
In addition, the mirror segments

were not parabola-shaped but
spherical. The design limits the effective
aperture, meaning that HET doesnt
use its primarys full 11 metres. This
curve also does not produce very sharp
images, but it is far easier to build, as
every segment can be identical.
Because of this, the telescope was
optimised for spectroscopy, which
doesnt need pretty pictures.
Unfortunately, HET experienced
serious focusing and resolution
problems right from the beginning and
which lasted for years. When we came
on sky it was immediately obvious that
we were making terrible images and we
couldnt hold them, explained Gary
Hill (McDonald Observatory,
University of Texas at Austin).
The coatings on the segments
deteriorated more rapidly than
expected. The temperature in the
telescopes dome was too hot, causing
mirror distortions. The 91 segments
were difficult to align, and even once
finally in place they would lose that
alignment quickly.
It took about a decade to fully work
out these bugs. The effort included not
only major upgrades to the dome, but
also to the sensing equipment that
monitored and positioned the mirror
segments, and to the instruments
themselves. Engineers applied new
coatings to the segments and
established a more thorough and
regular cleaning regimen for them.
Even these efforts did not make HET
the instrument its builders had
originally hoped it would be. Thus, in

2009 McDonald Observatory decided
to do a major rebuild of the telescope
and a significant revamping of its
fundamental research effort. Rather
than make HET an all-purpose
spectroscopic observatory, they would
treat it like a NASA astronomical
probe similar to the Kepler discoveryclass mission, with a specific, single
research goal and instruments
designed for that goal.
For reasons that

initially baffled its
builders, the images
the Southern African
Large Telescope
produced would
randomly range from
perfect to horribly
smudged.
The goal chosen is dark energy. By
installing the worlds largest collection
of multi-object spectrographs and
increasing the telescopes field of view
to about half the area of the full
Moon they hope to compile a
gigantic database of the redshifts of a
million galaxies from about 11 billion
years ago. When these data are
compared with other similar surveys
covering different cosmic epochs,
HETs scientists hope they will be able

to better quantify the universes
expansion rate and how dark energy
has caused it to change over time.
This US$40 million overhaul more
than twice the telescopes initial cost
is just wrapping up. The telescope will
begin three years of observations aimed
solely at this single research objective.
Hopefully this approach will allow HET
to finally produce science at the level
dreamed of by its creators.
SALT, meanwhile, was completed in
2005, designed similarly to HET but
with HETs known bugs eliminated.
Unfortunately, there were the unknown
bugs. For reasons that initially baffled
its builders, the images SALT produced
would randomly range from perfect to
horribly smudged. The situation
became so serious that at one point
Darragh ODonoghue, the head of the
effort to fix the telescope, bluntly noted
at a technical conference in 2010 that
unless the problem is solved soon, the

telescope will be seen as a failure.
Fortunately, after several years of
complex detective work the team
pinpointed the focus problem. Because
the curve of the telescopes mirror
segments were like HET (spherical
rather than parabolic), both telescopes
designers needed to correct images for
spherical aberration. To do this, an
instrument called the spherical
aberration corrector (SAC) refocused
the light coming off the mirror and
then sent that light to the scientific
instruments. The two telescopes SACs
had different optical designs (and
therefore gave the scopes different
effective apertures), but had the same
purpose.
SALTs problem was that its SACs
steel frame was bolted to an aluminum
ring, which in turn was glued into the
carbon composite structure of the
instrument payload. These three
materials all expand differently when

heated and contract differently when
cooled. The combination introduced a
gigantic amount of unwanted thermal
and mechanical stress in the SAC,
ruining its mirrors alignment.
These repairs were only completed in
2010. Since then the telescope has been
operating successfully, but time will tell
if it will meet its specifications. For
example, the telescope still lacks a
working active-alignment system for its
mirror segments, requiring operators to
do manual alignment twice per night.
This reduces observation time and also
limits the length and precision of many
of the telescopes observations.
Double Vision
Then there is the Large Binocular

Telescope (LBT). First proposed almost
three decades ago in 1986, the concept
called for combining the light from two
8.4-metre mirrors mounted side-by-
OPEN WIDE Members of SALTs image quality team prepare to test and realign the mirrors of the spherical aberration corrector (big tube). Stresses on the
instrument had shifted the mirrors awry, producing images that were sometimes sharp and sometimes smudged (see next page). LISA CRAUSE

side like a gigantic pair of binoculars to
produce the equivalent light-gathering
power of a 11.8-metre mirror and the
resolution of one more than 22 metres
across.
Construction was delayed almost a
decade because of objections by
environmentalists and the local Apache
Indians. The environmentalists were
worried about the telescopes effect on
As with the other large telescopes, there

were engineering issues. For example,
in order for the telescope to view the
entire sky, the building that houses it,
weighing 2,000 tonnes, rotates on four
multi-wheeled units called bogies that
roll on a circular track. Construction
engineers soon found significant
engineering problems with this system.
The rail the bogies ran on was wearing
out faster than expected. Moreover, one
wheels outer bearing had failed, and all
the other wheels outer bearings were
on the verge of failure, requiring their
complete replacement.
Engineers also learned that one bogie
was slightly offline. (Imagine one of the
rear wheels of your car pointing
sideways slightly, rather than straight
ahead.) To get it realigned required
jacking the entire 2,000-tonne building
up slightly so that they could force it
back into the correct position, silencing
its popping and banging noises.
The telescope itself had other
problems. For example, the its
instruments are moved into position at
the end of deployable swing arms. The
the endangered red squirrel that lives

on the mountaintop of Mount Graham,
while the Apaches said the
mountaintop was sacred and therefore
should have no new construction. It
took a special exemption passed by
Congress and a lot of wrangling to get
the construction finally approved.
Then, once construction began in
1996, it took far longer than expected.
BEFORE AND AFTER Stars imaged before the repair of SALTs spherical aberration
corrector (left) look smudged. After the repair, the stars looked properly pointlike.
JANUS BRINK
BABAK TAFRESHI
STARGAZING GIANTS Left: Seen here in 2005 are SALTs dome and alignment system (tower in foreground). Right: The Large Binocular Telescope houses two
primary mirrors in its boxy structure. Both LBT and SALT faced significant delays, but are now both up and running.
BEARING WOES In order to make LBTs bogies follow a circular track, engineers tilted the
wheels 2.5 from the vertical. But this tilt put too much force on the wheels outer bearings.
Engineers cut the old outer bearings out and replaced them with larger ones (shown in the
left side of the schematic). PHOTO: ROBERT ZIMMERMAN; SCHEMATIC: S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN,
SCHEMATIC SOURCE: JAMES HOWARD / LBTO
BIG BUG Two 8.4-metre primary mirrors combine to create the alien-looking
binocular telescope. ENRICO SACCHETTI / INAF
use of these arms enabled the operators to switch

out different instruments easily during an observing
run. Unfortunately, the arms had difficulty damping
out vibrations caused by wind and other
disturbances.
In addition, the oil and grease used on the giant
track that tilted the telescope would get sprayed
onto the mirrors when the telescopes ventilation
fans turned on. Keeping the fans off eliminated this
spray, but that made it difficult to stabilise the
telescopes temperature for observations.
But all these technical engineering problems were
relatively routine issues: they are the typical
shakeout problems experienced by giant telescopes.
What really delayed LBT from producing the
expected science after first light in 2005 was the late
arrival of almost all of its scientific instruments,
which because LBT is a binocular telescope, come
in pairs.
For example, the second of the telescopes two
optical spectrographs, the Multi-Object Double
Spectrographs (MODS), was only installed on the
telescope in the spring of 2014, almost a half-decade
late. The MODS team had never built anything this
big before, explained Christian Veillet, LBTs
director. I think they underestimated the time and
challenges required.
Similarly, the telescopes two infrared
spectrographic cameras, called LUCI 1 and LUCI 2,
arrived in 2010 and 2013, years behind schedule. I
think the scope of the project and its complexity
was once again underestimated, says Veillet. The
team also did not have much experience building
this kind of cryogenic instrument.
It was only in 2014 that all of the LBTs firstgeneration instruments were finally installed on the
telescope. They are currently in the commissioning
phase and should be available for science users by

mid-2015. Although science has
already been coming out of LBT,
project members now hope that the
telescopes scientific output will finally
ramp up to its expected level.
Part of the reason these instruments
were so late in coming was the chaotic
management structure that formerly
existed at LBT. Financed and built by
partner institutions in the U.S.,
Germany, and Italy, the telescope
project had no strong central
management authority. For example,
the partners were each in charge of
building their own scientific
instruments, with the observatory
having little say in their design. We
dont know anything about them,
explains Veillet of the instruments.
They arrive as black boxes.
Because of all these issues the
telescope partnership decided in 2013

to hire Veillet as director and gave him
the authority to manage the telescope
properly. As one scientist told me at the
first LBT users meeting, organised in
March 2014 by Veillet in Tucson,
Arizona, Things are much better now
with Veillet.
Big Bird
Lastly there is the Gran Telescopio

Canarias (GTC), on La Palma in the
Canary Islands. The worlds largest
parabolic telescope, with an effective
aperture of 10.4 metres, the GTC was
only completed in 2008, making it the
youngest of this generation of giant
telescopes. Thus, it is finishing out the
initial shakeout period expected for all
such big telescopes, lasting on average
four to six years.
In the case of GTC, most of its

problems have centered on maintaining
the proper temperatures for two of the
telescopes main instruments.
Soon after commissioning in 2008,
telescope engineers found that the CCD
of the telescopes main optical camera,
OSIRIS, was much warmer than
planned. In order for the camera to
detect objects with magnitudes as faint
as 28 in a reasonable amount of
observing time, the CCD must be
cooled to 170 kelvin so that its own
heat doesnt drown out the objects
signal.
The problem was that the dewar, the
cryogen flask designed to cool the
CCD, wasnt doing the job. As the
telescopes website notes, the system
required continuous baby-sitting to
ensure that temperature and pressure
BIG BIRD Like its giant brethren, the Gran Telescopio Canarias dwarfs people. With an effective aperture of 10.4 metres, GTC is one of the largest
optical telescopes in the world. BABAK TAFRESHI
ABOVE THE
CLOUDS The Gran
Telescopio Canarias
sits on the island
of La Palma in the
Canary Islands. It
is still in its initial
shakeout phase but
is producing science
results. BABAK TAFRESHI
remained within operational bounds.

To fix the problem, the observatory
first built a temporary dewar to replace
the one that was not working. When
this was installed in 2010, the situation
improved. The original cryostat was
taken apart and inspected, whereupon
it was discovered that heat was being
conducted from the outside world into
the CCD at three contact points. Once
engineers replaced the stainless steel
contacts with insulation, the dewar was
finally able to function correctly.
Then in 2013 a similar problem
occurred with the telescopes infrared
instrument, CanariCam. In this case
the system for cooling the instrument,
called a cold head, was supposed to
have a life expectancy of one year. In
practice the cold head wouldnt survive
in operating conditions more than five
months, sometimes not more than two
months, explains Pedro lvarez
Martn, GTCs director. The provider
has been unable to correct the
problem.
A permanent fix will require
replacing the system entirely. In the
meantime the observatory has obtained
a number of spares and switches them
out when necessary. We live with a
heavy load on our operations team,
adds Martn. Each CanariCam service
requires a week of instrument down
time.
On top of these engineering issues
the telescope has had the typical startup funding problems. Because of 2009
cuts to the science budget in Spain, the
telescopes biggest partner, the
The worst examples

of this kind of cost
overrun have been seen
with space telescopes,
including the Hubble
Space Telescope.
observatory was forced to stretch out
development of the telescopes secondgeneration instruments, producing a
considerable slippage in our initial
plans, according to Martn.
With these initial shakeout problems
now under control or solved, GTCs
scientific output should begin to ramp
up to more expected levels in the next
few years.
The Future
What do these stories tell us about the

next generation of giant ground-based
telescopes like the Giant Magellan
Telescope (GMT), the Thirty Metre
Telescope (TMT), and the European
Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT),
which are now in their initial design or
construction phases? Will their future
be the same, with similar difficulties?
The history here suggests yes. All
these telescopes have faced similar
problems. For example, the present
generation of big telescopes all began
their lives with either very tight or
insufficient budgets, or some form of
budget cuts. None had sufficient
funding to keep instruments builders
on staff during the transition to
operations so that they could train the

operations staff properly. The amount
of funding never quite ensures a long
enough overlap, notes Hill. This is a
lesson that the big future telescopes had
better be careful about.
Sometimes only a little more money
was needed to fix things. For example,
engineers built HET for US$16 million,
but to straighten out its worst problems
only cost another US$4 million.
Other times, however, the
completion costs have been vastly
higher. Even with HET, designers
eventually decided that the US$4
million repairs were insufficient, opting
for a complete US$40 million overhaul.
The worst examples of this kind of cost
overrun have been seen with space
telescopes, including both the Hubble
Space Telescope and the upcoming
James Webb Space Telescope. There,
the overruns were so large that at some
point both projects were threatened
with shutdown.
Thus, no one should be surprised if
the next generation of giant groundbased telescopes the E-ELT, the
TMT, and the GMT have serious
growth pains. Each might take several
years of trial and error before it can
produce sharp images and begin
churning out the really spectacular
astronomical discoveries.
These telescopes, however, will be on
the ground and accessible for redesign
and repair. The one terrifying thought
that kept reappearing in my
conversations with engineers and
astronomers is, what will happen if
Webb requires the same kind of
shakeout? Located more than a million
kilometres from Earth, it might develop
problems engineers havent weeded out
in their zealous tests, and the most
expensive telescope ever built might
end up becoming nothing more than a
hunk of metal, useless to anyone.
But however easy the accessibility to
scopes on the ground, the engineers
and managers of the giants of the future
will likely still find themselves
scrambling about madly, whacking
moles as they struggle to get their
telescopes up and running.
Contributing editor Robert Zimmermans
classic history of the 1960s space race,
Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, is now
available as an eBook. When he isnt
visiting giant telescopes, he writes daily at
http://behindtheblack.com.
Triple Play
On your computer
On your tablet
Delivered to
your door
Now there are three ways to get Australian Sky and

Telescope, including a digital subscription delivered
straight to your computer or tablet. Enjoy the same
authoritative magazine exactly the way you want it.
See more at
skyandtelescope.com.au
Deep Fields
Hubble
GOVERT
SCHILLING
Goes the Distance

Using natures gravitational lenses,
astronomers are pushing the
Space Telescope to its very limits
to reveal primordial galaxies.
Parallel Field
DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY
Frontier Field 1
NASA / ESA / J. LOTZ / M. MOUNTAIN / A. KOEKEMOER / HFF TEAM (STSCI)
he Hubble Space Telescope, which will celebrate its

25th anniversary in April 2015, is the symbol of our
era for every astronomer. Orbiting above the
distorting effects of Earths atmosphere, it has provided
unprecedented views of star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.
Using its suite of sensitive cameras and detectors, and
focusing on blank patches of sky, Hubble has also
revealed the building blocks of galaxies so far away that
their light took many billions of years to reach us.
But cosmologists want to reach even farther. And since
they cant swap Hubbles 2.4-metre mirror for a larger one,
theyre now seeking assistance from natures own zoom
lenses. Using the gravitational-lensing effects of six remote
clusters of galaxies, the new Frontier Fields program aims
to push back Hubbles limits and study the true dawn of
galaxy formation. Were going deeper than ever before,
says principal investigator Jennifer Lotz of the Space
Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
Last March, at a conference in Rome, Lotz presented the
first results of the new program. Her showpiece is a
November 2013 Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) image of
Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandoras Cluster. But a second
cluster, MACS J0416.1-2403, has also been observed by
Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). In the
winter of 2014, WFC3 was aimed at MACS J0416, while
ACS observed Abell 2744. In 2015 Lotzs team will target
FRONTIER FIELD 1 Left: The gravity of the giant galaxy cluster
Abell 2744 (Pandoras Cluster) distorts and magnifies the images
of small, faint background galaxies.
PARALLEL FIELD Right: When astronomers first aimed Hubbles
Wide Field Camera 3 at galaxy cluster Abell 2744 to take
Frontier Field 1, the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys
was pointed nearby to image a parallel field. Later, the roles
were reversed so that both fields were covered by the multiple
wavelengths of both cameras. Scientists use the parallel field as
a basis for comparison. Above right: The size of the ACS camera
field is shown in blue; that of the WFC3 field in red.
Deep Fields
EXTREME DEEP FIELD Astronomers assembled the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) by combining a decade of Hubble
images of a tiny, 2-by-2.3 arcminute patch of the southern constellation Fornax. It contains about 5,500 galaxies at
various distances, mostly small blue young ones. The data come from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide
Field Camera 3. The XDF is the deepest image yet taken, and reveals galaxies that existed as early as 500 million
years after the Big Bang. NASA / ESA / G. ILLINGWORTH, ET AL. / HUDF09
Very distant
galaxy
Pretty Picture to
Treasure Trove
Galaxy cluster
and dark matter
No
t to
sca
le
two other clusters with both cameras,

and in 2016 the program is scheduled
to conclude with observations of a fifth
and sixth cluster. A whopping 140
orbits worth of precious Hubble
observing time will be devoted to each
of the six fields.
By studying remote galaxies that are
gravitationally magnified and
brightened by the foreground clusters
gravity, Lotz and her colleagues can
study objects that are intrinsically
fainter than would otherwise be
possible to see. The team expects to
obtain a more representative view of
the galaxy population in the newborn
universe. We want to carry out a
statistical study of the early formation
history of galaxies, says Lotz. When
did the lights in the universe come on?
How many galaxies were formed
within the first few hundred million
years? Was the formation of the first
galaxies a very gradual process, or did
it happen more suddenly? To answer
these questions, we need to go 10
times deeper than before.
NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope and
Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as
large ground-based telescopes, are
making supporting observations of the
Frontier Fields. In the Abell 2744 data,
one group found that the number of
galaxies drops significantly beyond a
redshift of 8.5 or so (corresponding to
a cosmic age of 600 million years).
And two groups each recently found a
galaxy at a redshift of 9.8,
corresponding to a time only 490
million years after the Big Bang.
Line
of sight
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING The

Frontier Fields program takes advantage
of gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by
Einsteins general theory of relativity that astronomers
have already observed in a variety of contexts. Thanks to
relativity, the gravity of a massive foreground object (in this
case, a galaxy cluster) serves as a lens redirecting toward Earth
some of a background objects light that would otherwise miss us.
Gravitational lensing thus magnifies the background object (though
also distorting it), enabling telescopes to spot distant galaxies that
would otherwise fall below the detectability threshold. S&T: LEAH TISCIONE
Light bent
by gravity
Light
unaected
by gravity
Milky
Way Galaxy
Twenty-five years ago, few could have

imagined that long-exposure
observations of empty fields would
yield exciting new results. In a 1990
Science publication, Princeton
astrophysicist John Bahcall wrote that
he did not expect such deep
observations to reveal a new
population of galaxies, recalls Bob
Williams, who directed the STScI
between 1993 and 1998. In 1995,
when we embarked on the original
Hubble Deep Field program, both
Bahcall and Lyman Spitzer, one of the
fathers of the Hubble Space Telescope,
were strongly opposed to the idea.
They worried about the public
response, since there was no guarantee
of scientific success.
Foreground stars
Weakly lensed galaxies
Foreground galaxies
Strongly lensed galaxies
Cluster galaxies
Extremely distant galaxies
TUNNEL THROUGH TIME All the Hubble deep field images are tunnels
through time, capturing objects from relatively nearby Milky Way stars to
primaeval galaxies whose light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The
labels identify different types of objects appearing in Frontier Field 1.
Deep Fields
16h
14 h
12h
HDF-N
10 h
8h
LEO MINOR
AURI GA
ANDROMEDA
CYGNUS
GEMINI
Regulus
VIRGO
CANIS
MAJOR
EQUULEUS
ORION
FF 6
C E N TA U R U S
CIRCINUS
16h
14 h
FF 2
CAPRICORNUS
HUDF
FF 5
Canopus
10 h
CARINA
8h
GRUS
PHOENIX
DORADO
HOROLOGIUM
12h
30
SCULPTOR
COLUMBA
VELA
Fomalhaut
FF 1
FORNAX
PUPPIS
Gacrux
Acrux
CETUS
ERIDANUS
PYXIS
ANTLIA
AQUARIUS
Rigel
LEPUS
LUPUS
Altair
Sirius
HYDRA
+30
DELPHINUS
PISCES
MONOCEROS
C R AT E R
PEGASUS
TA U R U S
Betelgeuse
Procyon
CORVUS
ARIES
Aldebaran
Spica
L A C E R TA
TRIANGULUM
Pollux
S E X TA N S
Rigil
Kent
+60
CANCER
LEO
LIBRA
22h
Capella
Castor
FF 4
Arcturus
0h
FF 3
COMA BERENICES
SERPENS
CAPUT
2h
PERSEUS
LY N X
CANES
V E N AT I C I
BOOTES
4h
CASSIOPEIA
URSA MAJOR
6h
6h
4h
2h
TUCANA
Achernar
0h
HDF-S
INDUS
60
22h
THE SIX FIELDS The Frontier Fields Team targeted six patches of sky for their program. Unlike previous Hubble deep fields (HDF-N and -S, HUDF), which were
selected for being relatively empty regions, the Frontier Fields all have foreground galaxy clusters that act as gravitational lenses. SOURCE: HFF TEAM (STSCI)
Back then, Hubbles public image

was indeed something to worry about.
The primary mirrors spherical
aberration had just been corrected
3 years after launch and many
people (and politicians) saw Hubble as
a costly, underperforming astronomy
toy. Why would anyone devote 150
orbits worth of observing time to study
an empty region of the sky? But
Williams knew better. Recent longexposure Hubble images taken by Mark
Dickinson (now at the National Optical
Astronomy Observatory) had shown
misshapen train-wreck galaxies at a
redshift of 1.2, corresponding to a look-
and in the end, Williams decided to

spend a huge chunk of his directors
discretionary observing time a total
of 141 hours on observations of a
small, relatively empty patch of Ursa
Major. It had to be done, he recalls,
so we did it.
Hubbles Wide Field and Planetary
Camera 2 (WFPC2) obtained the 342
separate exposures (in four wavelength
bands) between December 18 and 28,
1995, and a mere 17 days later, the fully
reduced data set was made public. The
iconic image revealed more than 2,000
individual galaxies, most of them at
very large distances. In retrospect, it
back time of two-thirds of the age of

the universe. This to me was
transformational, says Williams.
At a morning coffee meeting in the
Institutes library, Williams and his
colleagues first brainstormed the idea of
a Hubble Deep Field. We were really
excited. Everything was up for
discussion, he recalls. Should we do
one field or many? Should it be targeted
at known objects or should it be blank?
Which filters would be the best to use?
When would the data be released to the
astronomical community and to the
public? An outside advisory
committee failed to reach a consensus,
JANUS BRINK
BABAK TAFRESHI
was a huge success, says Williams,

especially when spectra of 130 remote
galaxies were taken over the
subsequent three years by the Keck
telescope. Keck turned the Hubble
Deep Field from a pretty picture into a
scientific treasure trove.
Deeper and Deeper
A galaxys spectrum yields its redshift,

and the redshift reveals how long the
galaxys light has been traveling
through expanding space. In other
words, spectra turn deep-field images
into 3-dimensional core samples of the
early universe. Unfortunately, spectra
They have shown

us the early history
of cosmic processes
that have ultimately
led to the origin of
humanity.
can be obtained only for relatively
bright objects, so the distances of the
faintest galaxies in the Hubble Deep
Field remained unknown. That is, until
Chuck Steidel (Caltech), Piero Madau
(University of California, Santa Cruz),
and others perfected the photometric
redshift technique, in which a galaxys
redshift can be estimated from its
relative brightness in various
wavelength bands.
This 1960s technique was originally
quite inaccurate. But by developing
better model spectra and comparing
the results with the Keck spectra of
Hubble Deep Field galaxies,

astronomers significantly increased
the precision. In fact, the technique
has been extended to 30 or more
bands. Its almost like obtaining a
low-resolution spectrum, says
Williams. To me, the validation of
the concept of photometric redshift is
the single most important result that
emerged from the Hubble Deep Field
and its successors.
Indeed, the new Frontier Fields
program is far from the first campaign
to follow in the footsteps of the
original Hubble Deep Field. In
September and October 1998,
WFPC2 imaged the Deep Field South,
in the constellation Tucana, which
was simultaneously observed by
Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph (STIS) and the Near
Infrared Camera and Multi-Object
Spectrometer (NICMOS). Next came
the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (200304), with its infrared extension in
2012, and the Hubble eXtreme Deep
Field (2012). Meanwhile, projects
such as GOODS and CANDELS
provided astronomers with somewhat
shallower data over wider fields of
view. And of course, the various
Hubble Deep Fields have also been
studied in detail by other space
telescopes such as Chandra and
Spitzer to obtain X-ray and midinfrared images.
These are marvelous programs
yielding fascinating results, says
Williams. For example, the deep-field
programs have shown that half a
billion years after the Big Bang, the
universes star-formation rate was
quite low, but then it ramped up
several orders of magnitude until it
reached a peak when the universe was

some 2.5 billion years old. They also
indicated that there must have been
large numbers of hot but lowluminosity objects in the early universe
probably enough to explain the
reionisation of intergalactic matter at a
time when the universe was less than a
billion years old.
And, of course, they have revealed
the most distant galaxies yet found,
including the current record holders,
known simply as MACS0647-JD and
UDFj-39546284, which are probably
both at a redshift of 10 or 11.
According to Williams, Our current
knowledge of the distant universe is
largely based on the succession of deep
fields. They have shown us the early
history of cosmic processes that have
ultimately led to the origin of
humanity. Understanding these
processes will make humanity much
more comprehensible to all of us.
The Deepest Views
So how can astronomers improve on

what Hubble has done so far? In the
summer of 2012, then STScI director
Matt Mountain found himself
discussing the prospects for yet another
deep-field campaign with Hubble
Mission Head Ken Sembach. After
consulting a Hubble science working
group and various experts within the
scientific community, the concept of
the Frontier Fields program emerged
a name that was coined by Sembach.
The question was: Can we do better
than the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field?
says Lotz. The answer was: yes, if we
use Hubble in tandem with one of
natures own telescopes, and repeat the
feat six times.
Using gravitational lenses will give
astronomers a sneak peek at the JWST
universe, says Lotz, referring to
Hubbles infrared successor, the
6.5-metre James Webb Space Telescope,
scheduled to launch in late 2018.
During each observing run, one of
Hubbles main cameras (ACS and
WFC3) will be trained at a carefully
selected cluster of galaxies, while the
other camera will observe a
neighbouring blank field. Half a year
COMING SOON These images show the
other five planned Frontier Fields. All
feature massive galaxy clusters whose
gravitational lensing will reveal extremely
faint galaxies in the early universe. NASA / ESA
/ J. LOTZ /M. MOUNTAIN / A. KOEKEMOER / HFF TEAM (STSCI)

a
PRIMORDIAL GALAXY Astronomers

found this small, extremely distant
galaxy in Frontier Field 1. Based on its
brightness at different wavelengths,
the galaxy, triply lensed above, appears
to have a redshift of 9.8, making it one
of the most distant objects ever seen.
Its existence proves that small galaxies
were assembling when the universe was
only 490 million years old. NASA / ESA / A.
c
N
30
later, the fields will be swapped, so each

cluster and each blank field will be
imaged at three optical wavelengths
with ACS and at four infrared
wavelengths with WFC3.
Observations of the blank parallel
fields are necessary because
astronomers are concerned about
cosmic variance. On average, the
universe looks the same everywhere,
but not exactly the same, explains Lotz.
The Ultra-Deep Field was just one
pointing, so we will now add six other
blank-field pointings as a control
sample. But the earliest and most
distant galaxies are expected to be
found in the cluster fields, where
gravitational lensing might magnify
their feeble radiation by tenfold or in
very rare cases even a hundredfold.
Ours wont be the deepest images,
says Lotz, but they will provide by far
the deepest view.
The six clusters have been selected on
the basis of the expected magnification
they have to offer, on their apparent
dimensions on the sky (they have to fit
within the field of view of Hubbles
cameras), and on their locations: both
the Keck telescope in Hawaii and the
submillimetre ALMA Observatory in
Chile will be used for follow-up

observations. Five independent groups
have produced magnification maps of
the clusters on the basis of existing
observations, to carefully predict where
lensed images of extremely faint
background galaxies might show up.
In three years, Lotzs team hopes to
complete observations of all six
Frontier Fields. By then, the project will
have devoted a total of 840 orbits worth
of Hubble observing time. At press
time, only observations of the first four
of the six fields have been approved; a
committee will soon review the
program and decide on whether or not
to continue with the final two fields.
Lotz is quite confident: We may even
add more fields in the future, she says.
Hubbles successor, the James Webb
Space Telescope, may target these
clusters in the future as well as better
clusters that were not known when we
selected the Frontier Fields.
Scientific analysis of the first Frontier
Fields observations is already in full
swing. In a November 1st Astrophysical
Journal paper, Wei Zheng (Johns
Hopkins University) and his colleagues
report the detection of 18 galaxies
beyond a redshift of 7 in the Abell 2744
ZITRIN (CALIF. INST. OF TECHNOLOGY), AND J. LOTZ,

M. MOUNTAIN, A. KOEKEMOER, AND THE HFF TEAM (STSCI)
data, but none at a redshift of about 9 or

higher. But they caution that more
Frontier Fields data will be needed
before a definitive claim can be made
regarding a rapid buildup of galaxies by
redshift 8.
But other groups found a triply
lensed galaxy at a redshift of 9.8. This
object is a mere 300 light-years across,
making it 500 times smaller than our
Milky Way. Its basically a small clump
of matter thats just starting to churn
out stars at a rate about one-third that
of our galaxy, and also at a slower rate
than the redshift-8 galaxies. The object
was first discovered by a team led by
Adi Zitrin (Caltech), which published
its results in the September 5 online
edition of The Astrophysical Journal
Letters. It was confirmed independently
by a team led by Pascal Oesch (Yale
University); the results have been
submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.
The discovery might represent the tip of
the iceberg of a large population of
small galaxies that later merged to form
the behemoths we see today.
The Frontier Fields program is really
the best Hubble can do with deep-field
observations. The quarter-century-old
space telescope will not receive any
more upgrades, and so wont be
equipped with any new cameras or
detectors. But by teaming it up with
natures own telescopes, astronomers
can push it to its very limits. Bob
Williams, the father of the original
Hubble Deep Field, is impressed: Its
great stuff. In some other disciplines,
scientists can study remains from the
past. But astronomy is the only science
that really lets you witness the past.
Contributing editor Govert Schilling is
author of the new book Deep Space. He
won the American Astronomical Societys
prestigious David N. Schramm Award
for Science Journalism for The Frozen
Neutrino Catcher.
Ge
$1
NE
ZI !
GA der
MA t or
ST firs
eA r
ot ou
qu ff y
nd 0 o
s a t $1
ll u ge
Ca to
1300 884 763

From
$829.
95
From
$179
DOBSONIAN TELESCOPES
Saxon Dobsonian Telescopes 10 and 12

Skywatcher 8 Go To Computerized Dobsonian Telescope
ASTRONOMY BINOCULARS
Celestron Skymaster 15x70 Astronomy Binoculars

Celestron Skymaster 20x80 Astronomy Binoculars
Saxon 20x80R Astronomy Binoculars
Saxon 30x80 Astronomy Binoculars
SAX-ED80AZ3
From
FF!
0O
SAX-ED120EQ5
CLS-31051
$899
SAX-2001EQ5
SAX-15075EQ3
Free
shipping
From
95
.
9
9
$1
ZWO ASI 1.2mp/colour

Planetary Camera
Celestron Nexstar 4SE, 6SE & 8 SE,

Celestron CPC & CPC Deluxe HD
Celestron CGEM 925 HD, 1100 HD
Celestron CGEM Pro 925HD, 1100 HD, 1400 HD & 1400
FASTAR
Celestron CGEM DX 1100 HD & 1400 HD
Celestron Advanced VX Series
Celestron T-Adapter for NexStar 4SE $59.95

Celesteron T-Adapter for C5-C14 Cassegrain $59.95, Saxon CM02
Laser Collimator $99.95, Celestron 1.25 Eyepiece & Filter Kit $449.95,
T-Rings for Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta DSLRs FROM $24.95,
Saxon Super Wide Angle eyepieces, Celestron Ultima eyepieces, and
many others
ZWO ASI 0.34mp/colour

Planetary Camera
ZWO ASI 1.2mp/mono
Monochrome Planetary Camera
AST Readers: FREE SHIPPING when you purchase of a

ZWO camera. Use code: AST2014
ZWO ASI 120MC Colour Planetary Camera/Auto Guider $389.95, ZWO ASI
120MM Monochrome Planetary Camera $409.95, ZWO ASI 034MC $199.95
& More
Visit Us Now!
Layby Available!
Call 1300 884 763 or email support@opticscentral.com.au to enquire
Address: 8/23 Cook Rd, Mitcham VIC 3132. Ph: 1300 884 763, Email: support@opticscentral.com.au
Astronomy Above the Clouds
he clement cloak of gas that enshrouds

Earth is truly a wonder. The composition of
our planets unique atmosphere arises in
part from a harmony of respiration and
photosynthesis, performed by the organisms it
shields from the deadly radiation and cold of
space. Yet we skywatchers could be forgiven for
harboring mixed feelings about this atmosphere.
For the layers of gas above our heads distort the
path of incoming light from space.
Thats because the atmosphere is far from
uniform. For example, adjacent air pockets can
exhibit markedly different densities and turbulent
motions. The overall consequence is that incoming
light rays get refracted along a multitude of everchanging pathways, as residual heat drives
convection that ceaselessly churns up the
nocturnal atmosphere.
Worse still, highly magnified images only serve
to exaggerate the effects of atmospheric
turbulence. Even on nights of relatively good
seeing, we are usually plagued by the irksome
shimmering of lunar craters and boiling star
discs that jump around the telescopic field of view.
Looking for delicate features in Jupiters cloud
belts can be somewhat akin to trying to glimpse
the scales of a fish beneath a pond surface
disturbed by a breeze.
In the last couple of decades, professional
astronomers have tackled this problem with
adaptive optics (AO), which quickly bend mirrors
surfaces to compensate for the chaotically
changing, churning atmosphere above. But even
with AO systems, observatory planners must still
pursue the tried-and-tested solution: get above as
much of the atmosphere as possible.
Early Risers
In his book Opticks, Isaac Newton insightfully

penned that the only remedy is a most serene
and quiet air, such as may perhaps be found on
the tops of the highest mountains above the
grosser clouds. The higher the viewpoint, the
better the seeing conditions generally become, a
trend conclusively demonstrated during Charles
Piazzi Smyths expedition to Tenerife in 1856.
There, the eccentric Astronomer Royal for
Scotland, using a team of hardy donkeys, lugged a
7-inch telescope and other instruments to an
elevation of 3,260 metres. Delighted by the sharp
views he obtained and soon excited at the
prospect of having a permanent mountain
observatory built, Smyth recorded his
observations in diligent detail in order to petition
skeptical funding bodies back home.
Before Victorian times, there was no street
lighting bleaching out the night sky, and so few
thought to place the earliest astronomy centres
anywhere but within easy reach of towns and
universities. But by the late 19th century, light and
soot spewed out by rapidly expanding industry

soon drove more skywatchers to the mountains.
When American astronomers established the 36inch refractor at Lick Observatory on Californias
Mount Hamilton (1,280 metres) in 1888, the site
became the worlds first permanently occupied
mountaintop observatory.
Ever conscious of the advantages offered by high
elevations, the solar astronomer and observatory
pioneer George Ellery Hale was tempted by
greater heights. He site-tested the lofty summit of
Pikes Peak (4,300 metres) in Colorado as early as
1893 but, on practical grounds, eventually opted
for Mount Wilsons modest elevation of 1,735
metres for the observatory he founded in 1904.
Later to play host to the legendary 100-inch
Hooker Telescope, Mount Wilson was key to
developments in 20th-century astronomy, not
least when Edwin Hubble used the 100-inch to
discover that the Andromeda Galaxy was millions
of light-years away, confirming it was an island
universe separate from our Milky Way Galaxy.
TOM GALE
Rocky Retreat
Following the establishment of the iconic 200-inch

Hale reflector on Palomar Mountain in 1948,
clusters of domes rapidly sprung up atop other
American summits. The 1950s saw the founding
of the National Observatory at Kitt Peak (2,100
metres) in Arizona, while the much higher lava
fields of Mauna Kea (4,190 metres) attracted their
first big telescopes a decade later.
Each site marked an extra step away from
encroaching light pollution and upward into the
stable, moisture-depleted reaches of the upper
atmosphere, a vital consideration for the
increasingly important study of infrared
wavelengths (see page 49).
Today, the Hawaii-based telescopes, including
the leviathan twins of the Keck Observatory and
the submillimetre-studying James Clerk Maxwell
Telescope, are often crowned as the highest
observatories on U.S. soil. But for that superlative
we must instead turn to the Rocky Mountains. For
in Colorado lies what was for several decades the
highest optical telescope in the world: the MeyerWomble Observatory. Named for both its designer
and financier, the facilitys modest windswept
dome houses an impressive binocular telescope
with two 28.5-inch aperture components.
Coordinated by Robert Stencel (University of
Denver), Meyer-Womble sits just below the
summit of Mount Evans which, topping out at a
breathtaking 4,345 metres, is one of the Rockies
highest peaks.
Long before optical telescopes arrived, a sinuous
22-kilometre access road to the summit attracted
particle physicists keen to set up detectors at such
an unprecedented elevation. Nobel laureate
Arthur Comptons extensive cosmic-ray readings
Seen from an aircraft, La Silla

Observatory in Chile looks forlorn
against its cordilleran backdrop. At
an elevation of approximately 2,375
metres, the site is one of many that
astronomers have built in order to
reach higher into the sky. ESO
Into
ThinAir
Astronomers continual quest for optimal seeing conditions has ensured
that leading observatories get built on ever-higher mountaintops.
AN AMERICAN ICON Perched on Mount Hamilton, Lick Observatory was the worlds first permanently occupied
mountaintop observatory. Shown prominently here are the domes of the 36-inch refractor and 36-inch Crossley
reflector, both installed in the late 1800s. Inset: The dome of the 120-inch Shane reflector, under construction in
June 1951. PHOTO UC REGENTS / LICK OBSERVATORY (2)
from the summit in the early 1930s

confirmed that the detected number of
cosmic rays increases with elevation.
His data also helped reveal that the
intensity correlated with geomagnetic
latitude.
It wasnt long before Mount Evans set
the scene for another landmark
experiment. In 1939 the Italian
emigrant physicist Bruno Rossi
recorded the flux of muons, one of
several subatomic byproducts
generated when a cosmic ray collides
with an atomic nucleus at the top of the
HARROWING HAUL During transport up Mount Wilson, the tube for

the 100-inch Hooker scope nearly fell off the road. Such scrapes are
among the challenges of building at high elevation. THE OBSERVATORIES
OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE COLLECTION AT THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, SAN
MARINO, CA
atmosphere. Early measurements of

these unusual particles showed them to
be arriving at relativistic speeds. Since
lab experiments had showed that
muons at rest decay rapidly, the
surprising abundance of muons that
Rossi recorded at ground level proved
that the particles lifetime had
somehow become prolonged. As he
soon realised, this observation was a
consequence and elegant
demonstration of time dilation, a tenet
of Einsteins special theory of relativity.
More recently, data from MeyerWomble proved key to revealing the
dusty, particulate nature of the
mysterious eclipsing object in the
enigmatic binary system Epsilon
Aurigae. Stencel harbours doubts about
the future of small-scale, mid-latitude
stations such as Mount Evans in a
century gearing up for 30-metre
aperture telescopes. But the sites rich
scientific history, together with
upgrading and reinforcement following
storm damage in 2011, will help ensure
that Meyer-Womble provides
professional-grade astronomical data
for years to come.
Asian Hideaways
Although most cosmic rays arriving at

Earth stem from the Sun, a handful
have made a far longer journey.
Astronomers studying these galactic

and intergalactic cosmic rays often seek
out observing locations farthest from
the tightly clustered field lines at Earths
magnetic poles. Installations include
the Pierre Auger Observatory in
Argentina (1,370 metres) and the Major
Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging
Cherenkov (MAGIC) Telescopes on the
Canary Island of La Palma (2,195
metres). Southeast Asia is arguably the
region best placed for cosmic-ray
astronomy, because it lies on Earths
magnetic equator. Here, terrestrial field
lines sweep aside more incoming lowenergy solar particles (up to 17
gigaelectron volts, or GeV) than
anywhere else. This means that
relatively few solar particles make it
through to the atmosphere, enabling
more of those from deep space to reveal
themselves to detectors atop Doi
Inthanon, Thailands highest peak
(2,560 metres).
We dont detect the rays themselves,
explains Alejandro Siz Rivera
(Mahidol University, Thailand). But
the air shower of secondary particles
includes neutrons. These dont make it
down to sea level, but up at Doi
Inthanon we pick up the signals of
around 2 million neutrons every hour.
Doi Inthanon is home to the groups
Princess Sirindhorn station, near
Chiang Mai. Despite the particles

cosmic sources, the neutron readings
allow the team to indirectly detect solar
storms: when the Sun releases a
powerful flare toward Earth, the
magnetic field carried by the flare
deflects cosmic rays that would
otherwise strike the planet. Sudden
drops in the neutron count thus indicate
disturbances in Earths magnetosphere.
Such signals picked up at Doi Inthanon,
with its unusually high geomagnetic
cutoff energy, complement those of the
11 neutron stations set up at polar
latitudes to monitor space weather in an
ongoing international venture named
Spaceship Earth.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Indian Institute
of Astrophysics sought to make the most
of the even higher terrain in its own
backyard the Himalaya Mountains.
Although much of the Indian
subcontinent experiences a prolonged
monsoon, the carefully chosen site on
Mount Saraswati (4,500 metres) in the
Hanle Valley of Ladakh lies in a rain
shadow cast by the highest Himalayan
peaks. Whats more, K2 and the other
peaks of Pakistans mighty Karakoram
range dry out any rogue westerlies
heading Hanles way, which further
reduces the humidity.
We get just a few centimetres of rain
per year and less than 20 cm of snow,
explains Tushar Prabhu (Indian Institute
of Astrophysics). The resulting dry,
settled air at this elevation is a magical
recipe for observational astronomy,
routinely offering 0.8-arcsecond seeing

conditions. Today, Hanle boasts the
2-metre Himalayan Chandra Telescope,
which scours the ultra-dark sky at
optical (about 0.4 to 0.8 microns) and
near-infrared (0.9 to 2.5 microns)
wavelengths, conducting studies that
range from cloud movements in Venus
atmosphere to the behaviour of
cataclysmic variable stars, stellar
evolution in open clusters, and the
monitoring of supernova remnants.
High and Dry
The extreme elevation and arid climate

of the Andes ensured that the worlds
longest mountain range was among the
first to draw the attention of scientists
seeking out the planets optimal
observing sites. Indeed, the first station
at Chacaltaya was founded in the early
1940s, despite sitting at 5,230 metres.
The station has long been remarkably
accessible, requiring only a short
approach road from the nearby Bolivian
capital of La Paz. The highest
observatory in the world for six decades,
the Chacaltaya Astrophysical
Observatory is a centre for cosmic-ray
research and now houses several
experiments, including the Investigation
on Cosmic Anomalies (INCA), which
detects the secondary particles that
gamma rays create when they strike
Earths atmosphere. Because the detector
is at such a high elevation, it typically
picks up a particle count 30 times higher
than an experiment placed at half the
elevation would for secondary particles

generated by 16-GeV photons.
Other nearby parts of South America
are almost perfect for optical and
infrared astronomy, thanks to the icy
Humboldt Current that flows northward
along the continents Pacific shoreline.
Here, atmospheric moisture condenses
out into fog banks that perpetually
enshroud the coast. As a result, the
region inland is one of the driest in the
world the Atacama Desert. There are
towns near the Chilean coastal city of
Arica where it rains less than once every
decade, and a handful of villages where
lifelong locals cannot remember ever
having reached for an umbrella. The
Atacama soil is so bone-dry that even
highly water-soluble saltpeter can be dug
from the ground as huge crystals a
valuable export commodity.
In fact, the infrastructure set up for
mining has in part made the arid
Atacama more accessible, enabling full
exploitation of its dark-sky sites by
establishing astronomical observatories
in otherwise difficult and remote
locations. The domes of Cerro Tololo, La
Silla, and Cerro Paranal (all at 2,195
2,650 metres), the last one home to the
Very Large Telescope, are renowned for
their world-class seeing conditions and
ultra-transparent skies.
Now astronomers are setting up
observatories higher than ever before in
the Atacama.
Despite the health risks of working at
Polarbear (5,190 metres), ACT (also
CATCHING NEUTRONS The Princess Sirindhorn station in Thailand

uses 18 tubes encased in polyethylene to detect neutrons formed
by cosmic rays hitting Earths atmosphere. The tubes are filled with
a gas enriched in boron-10 and surrounded by lead. The lead emits
subatomic particles (mostly neutrons) when atmospheric neutrons
hit it, amplifying the signal. Deep inside, the boron isotope splits
when it captures a neutron, producing a signal. The 18-tube
monitor weighs around 36 tonnes, about 30 of which is the lead.
PIERRE-SIMON MANGEARD (2)
Blocked by Earths atmosphere
Gamma rays
Ultra- Visible
violet
X-rays
Infrared
Microwaves
Radio Waves
100%
Absorbed
frequencies
50%
0%
0.1 nm
1 nm
10 nm
Transmitted
frequencies
100 nm
1 m
10 m
100 m
1 mm
1 cm
10 cm
1m
10 m
100 m
1 km
Wavelength
PEEKING THROUGH THE GAPS Earths atmosphere blocks many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing only certain wavelengths through (grey). Water
absorbs many of the infrared wavelengths, resulting in the 'transmission spectrum' seen above. The spectrum and the transitions between wavelength ranges are
approximate; there isnt a clear division between X-rays and gamma rays.
5,190 metres), and the jungle of ALMAs 66

dishes (5,090 metres) on the Chajnantor Plateau,
Tokyo University is reaching even higher.
Planners boldly chose Cerro Chajnantor, a
summit at a breathtaking 5,640 metres
overlooking ALMA, for the University of Tokyo
Atacama Observatory (TAO). Here, the air
pressure is a mere 495 millibars, less than half
that at sea level. TAO will legitimately boast
being the first operational telescope sited above
half the mass of Earths atmosphere.
The Tokyo project is spearheaded by a
1-metre optical/near-infrared instrument
dubbed mini-TAO. As a consequence of the
extreme elevation, workers visiting Cerro
Chajnantor must remain vigilant for symptoms
of altitude sickness and not linger (see The Silent
Killer, next page). These risks are now greatly
minimised thanks to the recently established

capacity to remotely operate the observatory.
Following its first light in March 2009, miniTAO soon picked up a key emission line in the
spectrum of interstellar hydrogen gas at 1.875
microns, a near-infrared band known as
Paschen alpha (P). This detection,
unprecedented by a ground-based instrument,
would be impossible even from an Alpine
summit due to blockage by the troublesome
water vapour in Earths atmosphere. Unlike
visible light, P is hardly absorbed by interstellar
dust, allowing astronomers to peek inside
obscured parts of the Milky Ways most distant
spiral arms. TAO researchers have since mapped
the distribution of similar stellar nurseries in
several dozen far-flung starburst galaxies.
Understanding their star-forming habits will
help shape new ideas about galactic evolution.

Excitingly, this is just the beginning: miniTAO is merely intended as the observatorys
pilot instrument. It will soon be joined by its
bigger brother, the centerpiece 6.5-metre
telescope already under construction and set for
first light in 2017. Other projects are also in the
works. Even as astronomers dream of larger
mirrors and savvier adaptive optics systems for
projects closer to sea level, its hard to beat the
conditions at these high-elevation sites.
Astronomy the world over really is on the up.
Tom Gale coordinates foundation-level chemistry
teaching for University College London. A lifelong
amateur astronomer, he is no stranger to high
elevations himself and has climbed to 6,000 metres
during snow treks in Nepal and Kyrgyzstan.
BARREN LAND The 2-metre Himalayan Chandra Telescope sits on the arid Mount Saraswati in India. The scope
saw first light in 2000 and is at one of the highest elevation observatories in the world. RAKESH RAO / ASTROPROJECT
Elevation: The Silent Killer
Evade the Water

Infrared astronomy from the ground is hampered by absorption
by compounds in Earths atmosphere, particularly water vapour.
The suitability of an observing site, particularly those tuning to
submillimetre wavelengths, is often gauged from its Precipitable
Water Vapor (PWV) value, the depth of liquid that would be
obtained if all the gaseous water along the line of sight to the
zenith could be condensed. PWV decreases with elevation and is
sometimes less than 1 mm above the summit of Mauna Kea.
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, as seen in 2004. The largest dome
is for the 4-metre Victor M. Blanco scope. DOUGLAS ISBELL AND NOAO / AURA / NSF
The Worlds Highest-Elevation Observatories

University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO)
Elevation: 5,640 m Location: Atacama Desert, Chile
Chacaltaya Astrophysical Observatory
Elevation: 17,160 ft (some gear at 17,600 ft)
Location: Andes, Bolivia
James Ax Observatory Polarbear
Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
Shiquanhe Observatory
Elevation: 5,090 m Location: Ngari Plateau, Tibet
Chajnantor Observatory ALMA, APEX, QUIET, et al.
Chajnantor Observatory ASTE, NANTEN2
Large Millimetre Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT)
Elevation: 4,580 m Location: Sierra Negra, Puebla, Mexico
Indian Astronomical Observatory
Elevation: 4,500 m Location: Mount Saraswati, Ladakh, India
Meyer-Womble Observatory
Elevation: 4,312 m Location: Colorado, United States
Yangbajing International Cosmic-ray Observatory
Elevation: 4,300 m Location: Yangbajain, Tibet
Mauna Kea Observatory Keck, Subaru, IRTF, et al.
Elevation: 4,190 m Location: Hawaii, United States
High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory
Elevation: 4,100 m Location: Mexico
Go hiking in the Rockies or shuffle between its ski lifts and

youll soon have to stop and catch your breath. Air pressure
drops quickly as you ascend into the atmosphere (initially by
33 millibars per 330 metres gained), so that each breath you
draw harvests fewer oxygen molecules for your lungs. You
might not feel the reduction in pressure but, as you climb,
packets of plastic-wrapped food expand to bursting and
bottles hiss when opened as they exhale compacted air.
Rise beyond 3,000 metres and your breathing becomes
markedly faster. Your bloodstreams oxygen level drops
and your rest pulse races as high as 100 beats per minute
in an effort to compensate. Youll likely experience fatigue,
headache, reduced appetite, or perhaps difficulty sleeping
at night due to irregular breathing. These are all mild
symptoms of altitude sickness and pass within a day or
two if you rest and cease further ascent. Keep rising and
ignore your bodys warning signs, and life-threatening
complications, including pulmonary or cerebral edema
the causes of countless mountaineering disasters become
very real threats.
In the construction and maintenance of mountain
observatory sites, basing a core workforce at high elevation
becomes unavoidable. We have about 10 persons looking
after the facilities, says Tushar Prabhu, referring to the
Indian Astronomical Observatory (4,500 metres). Four
engineers, stationed at the lower elevation of Leh (3,380
metres), visit the site to maintain the photovoltaic power
supply, the telescope and its instruments, and the liquid
nitrogen plant, as well as look after the computer network
but only for 2 to 3 weeks at a stretch, he reassuringly
explains. During observing sessions, however, many highelevation observatories are now remotely operated from the
comfort of lowland control rooms. The Indian Astronomical
Observatorys satellite link with its headquarters down on
the steamy plains of Bangalore means that only a minimal
core of hardy, multi-tasking maintenance staff need endure
the sites thin air and bitter winter temperatures that
plummet to 25C.
Employers are all too aware that high elevation also
compromises worker performance, skewing decision making
and increasing the chances of accidents and costly mistakes.
Michael Bcker (European Southern Observatory) reports
that the attention spans and perceptual speed of staff are
among the capacities most affected by high elevation. Even
as early as 1923 the British physiologist Joseph Barcroft
noted a similar finding during his fieldwork at Cerro de
Pasco (4,300 metres) in Peru: Judged by the ordinary
standard of laboratory work, we were in an obviously lower
category at Cerro . . . time was wasted there in trivialities
and bungling which would not occur at sea level.
Following medical research by John B. West (University
of California, San Diego) and others, some high-elevation
sites are now fitting oxygen enrichers to indoor working
environments. By boosting the oxygen content in the air
from its normal level of 21% to, say, 29%, confined work
areas of the ALMA site at 5,090 metres can generate an
oxygen pressure equivalent to an elevation of only 2,740
metres, which most people tolerate easily.
Gary Seronik
Binocular Highlight
Late January
Early February
Late February
Early March
WHEN
1 a.m.
Midnight
11 p.m.
10 p.m.
These are daylight saving

times. Subtract one hour
if daylight saving is not
applicable.
HOW
VIRGO
T
I P
L
C
E
Spica
14
Go outside within an hour or

so of a time listed above. Hold
the map out in front of you
and turn it around so the label
for the direction youre facing
(such as west or northeast) is
right-side up. The curved edge
represents the horizon, and
the stars above it on the map
now match the stars in front
of you in the sky. The centre
of the map is the zenith,
the point in the sky directly
overhead.
Facing East
inocular observers tend to work with the same deep-sky catalogues as

telescope users, so its no surprise that the biggest and brightest Messiers
and NGCs are also the best known binocular targets. Yet there are some
objects that look great through binos, but dont appear on these popular lists. For
example, consider the Alpha Persei Association, also known as Melotte 20.
Although the terms star cluster and stellar association are often used
interchangeably, there is a subtle difference between them. Both are groups of stars
that formed in the same place at the same time, but members of an association
arent gravitationally bound to one another. Or to put it another way, a star cluster
can become an association (thanks to orbital dynamics, stars in older clusters tend
to drift apart), but an association wont evolve into an open cluster.
The Alpha Persei Association lies roughly 600 light-years away, and features some
two dozen stars brighter than 7th magnitude. Most of these lie between Alpha ()
and Delta () Persei, the two brightest members of the group. Together, association
stars fill a binocular field with plenty of sparkle. Indeed, the Alpha Persei group is
one of the few objects that looks interesting only through binoculars. The unaided
eye can perceive only the brightest few stars, whereas the restrictive field of view of
a typical telescope excludes too many members for a satisfying view.
Because the Alpha Persei Association has so many bright stars, its one of the
finest binocular deep-sky targets for light-polluted skies. Ive viewed it under all
kinds of sky conditions and have always enjoyed it. Not bad for an object that didnt
make the cut for the Messier or NGC lists!
USING THE
STAR CHART
NE
The Alpha Persei

Association
B
FOR EXAMPLE: Turn the
NOTE: The map is plotted
ie w
for 35 south latitude (for

example, Sydney, Buenos
Aires, Cape Town). If youre
far north of there, stars in the
northern part of the sky will be
higher and stars in the south
lower. Far south of 35 the
reverse is true.
rv
ONLINE
You can get a sky chart

customised for your
location at any time at
SkyandTelescope.com/
skychart
ul
ci
c
5 bino
Fa
Alpha Persei
Association
PERSEUS
map around so the label

Facing NE is right-side up.
About halfway from there to
the maps centre is the bright
star Procyon. Go out and
look northeast halfway from
horizontal to straight up.
Theres Procyon!
1
0
1
2
3 Star
4 magnitudes
Facing North
SA R
UR JO
A
M
8h
in
M3
Casto
r
M3
M3
Pollu
x
GEM
IN
CA
NC
ER
M44
+20
e
ad
Hy
l
gi
Ri ent
K
U
S
17
TA
Mira
CETUS
FO
RN
AX
ERI
M
IU
G
LO
O
R
N
CA
PAVO
20h
60
Facing South
Facing West
S
NU
DA
UM
uc
47 T
TU
AR
EN
IX
in
80
Mag ud
Clo
c
Fa
A
23 h
LU
US
D R mall
S
ic
ellan
SW
RM
APUS
OCTANS
TRI
A
AU NGUL
STR UM
ALE
NO
HY
CIN
US
1
2
3 Star
4 magnitud
CIR
Ri
PU
CA
EL
L
ICU
RE
ELEON
IO
l
ge
A
UMB
UM
CHAMA
42
M
ius
Sir
1
M4
COL
A
OR
da
Ha
SCA
55
DO
TA
3
e
r
La g nic
la
l
e
g
Ma ud
o
l
80 C
r
0 Do
MU
47
PUPPIS
IC 2602
TO
n
Ce
EN
IS
N O R M46
A
C AJ
M
20
UX
VOLANS
CR
C
PI
2516
LE
M48
M50
M47
M93
OC
MO
N
RO
S
Car
60
rna
CARINA
Ach
e
Procyon
Canopus
eb
Ald
ge
el
et
M67
IS
L
2h
lu
PY
X
ANTLIA
U
UR
gu
R
A
ara
e
us
CANIS
MINOR
LE
Re
ci
iad
Ple
es
M35
0
LE OR
N
MI
c
Fa
5h
Fa
11h
IC
H
D
LYNX
+40
SE
X
SE
NW
GA
CORVUS
40
UR
I
Si
ck
l
TA
S
CRATER
Zenith
E Q
U A
T O
Galaxy
Double star
Variable star
Open cluster
Diuse nebula
Globular cluster
Planetary nebula
Fred Schaaf
Tonight's Sky
Stalking the Hunter

Orions starry splendour is hard to match
The red glow of Betelgeuse marks one of the shoulders of Orion. H. DAHLE/ESO
hen you look up, which

constellation do you think is
the most spectacular in the
sky? Orion, most amateur astronomers
would no doubt say. But Id go even
further. In my opinion, no other
constellation comes close to equaling the
visual impact of Orion.
Why is that? Let me review some of
the reasons Orion virtually brands our
minds with its stunning starfire.
The brightness. Skywatchers often
consider Orion the brightest
constellation, even though Scorpius
stands as winter's brightest for many
observers. Mighty Scorpius does include
an impressive number of stars brighter
than magnitude 2.5, and an even more
impressive number brighter than 3.0.
But it has only one 1st-magnitude star,
Antares, which is always dimmer than

Orions Rigel, and almost always
dimmer than Orions variable
Betelgeuse.
For those of us watching the sky from
the south, you might name Centaurus
and Crux as constellations that, like
Orion, contain two 1st-magnitude stars.
But Orion also features a remarkable
supporting cast: the other five stars of its
main pattern are all 2nd magnitude.
Fainter stars define the less symmetrical,
more rambling pattern of Centaurus.
But what about Crux, with its very
compact, very striking symmetrical
pattern? The missing bright star at its
centre often disappoints first-time
viewers. Cruxs fourth-brightest star
shines at magnitude 2.8, which is
relatively feeble compared to the 2.2 of
Like all good

art, Orions form
deviates a little
from what would
otherwise be a
boringly perfect
symmetry.
Orions 7th-brightest star (the faintest in
Orions main pattern).
The pattern. The brightness of Orions
stars is accentuated by their placement
in one of the skys two most eye-catching
patterns of stars in the mid-size range
(say about 10 to 30 across). The other
such pattern is not a constellation but a
large asterism: the northern sky's Big
Dipper. The Big Dipper has one more
2nd-magnitude star than Orion, but no
1st-magnitude star to compete with
Orions Rigel and Betelgeuse.
Additionally, the least bright star of the
Big Dippers seven, Megrez, is a
surprisingly dim magnitude 3.3.
Orion has the tremendous plus of the
Belt as well. Unless we count the tiny
dipper of the brightest Pleiades stars,
there is no small asterism that can
compare with the row of three bright
stars in Orions Belt. Ive written before
of my amazement when I once saw first
one bright star, then another almost
identically bright, break into view
through a tiny gap in extensive cloud
cover. These were the two more easterly
stars of the Belt. No such arrangement of
just two stars let alone three could
compete with this asterism for catching
the eye.
Artistry beyond analysis. The
symmetries associated with Orions form
are amazing: the Belt is about halfway
between Betelgeuse and Rigel, and
halfway between Sirius and Aldebaran
or the Hyades. Its jauntily aslant in
relation to the north-south orientation
of the larger frame of Orions body. Like
all good art, Orions form deviates a little
from what would otherwise be a
boringly perfect symmetry. And as with
great art, some of what makes Orion
fascinating to our eye seems to go,
wondrously and beautifully, beyond all
analysis.
Fred Schaaf welcomes your comments at
fschaaf@aol.com.
Sun, Moon and Planets Jonathan Nally
Dynamic duo
Venus and Mars are the stars of the evening show
stronomers use the term

'opposition' to describe the
situation where the Sun is on
one side of the Earth while another
celestial body is in the opposite
direction in the sky. The practical
upshot of this is that when the Sun is
setting in the west, the other object is
rising in the east. And this means you
have all night to observe it.
This is what we'll have with Jupiter
during February and March, as it
reaches opposition on February 7.
Shining at a highly respectable
magnitude 2.5, the giant planet will
rise at about 8.30pm (Eastern
Australian Daylight Savings time;
please adjust for your own time zone)
at the beginning of February and get a
little earlier each night, so that by the
end of March it will be well above the
eastern horizon by the time the sky
gets dark.
A small telescope will show Jupiter's
cloud bands, as well as some of its
moons the four Galilean moons at
least. You can use the table on page 57
to work out when the planet's famous
Great Red Spot will be visible smack,
bang in the middle of its disk, which is
the best time to look for it. And keep an
eye out for the Moon, which will appear
close to Jupiter on February 4 and
March 3.
Still in the evening sky but in the
west now, we have Venus and Mars.
Quite low on the horizon after sunset,
the two planets will appear to be close
to each other coming very close on
February 21/22 (see the diagram at
right). A very thin crescent Moon will
be nearby, too. The grouping might be a
little hard to see in the twilight a pair
of binoculars will help. The bright white
of Venus will contrast well with the
ruddy colour of Mars.
The two planets will slowly separate
as February runs into March. Take a
look after sunset again on March 22
Mars will be extremely low on the
horizon, Venus will be above and to its
right, and the very thin crescent Moon
will in between. It'll be a very pretty
sight, but I have to emphasise that Mars
will be really, really low and possibly
Procyon
CANIS MINOR
Feb 1
HYDRA
Feb 2
GEMINI
Feb 3
10
Pollux
Castor
Feb 4
Jupiter
Feb 5
Evening, February 15
90 minutes after sunset
Regulus
LEO
Looking northeast
Jupiter and the Moon will make a pleasant pairing in the northeastern sky on the evening of February 4.
Dusk, Feb 21
CETUS
Feb 23
10
Feb 22
PISCES
Feb 21
Venus
Mars
Looking west
As Paul McCartney and Wings sang, "Venus and Mars are alright tonight" (sorry, Ed.), and they certainly will be on
February 21, low in the western sky after sunset.
Events Of Note
Feb
4
5
7
10
12
13
17
19
21
25
26
Full Moon
Jupiter 5 north of the Moon
Regulus 4.0 north of the Moon
Jupiter at opposition
Spica 3 south of the Moon
Last Quarter Moon
Saturn 2 south of the Moon
Mercury 4 south of the Moon
New Moon
Venus 2 south of the Moon
Mars 0.5 south of the Moon
Mercury at greatest elong: 26.7W
First Quarter Moon
Aldebaran 1.0 south of the Moon
Neptune in conjunction with Sun
Mar
3
5
6
9
12
14
19
20
21
22
23
25
27
30
Jupiter 5 north of the Moon

Regulus 4 north of the Moon
Full Moon
Spica 3.4 south of the Moon
Saturn 2.3 south of the Moon
Last Quarter Moon
Mercury 5 south of the Moon
New Moon
Equinox
Mars 1 north of the Moon
Venus 3 north of the Moon
Aldebaran 0.9 south of the Moon
First Quarter Moon
Jupiter 5.6 north of the Moon
Times are listed in Eastern Australia Daylight Savings Time
It's always a lovely

sight when the
Moon and one or
more planets get
together in the sky.
Shown here is our
natural satellite with
Jupiter and Venus
back in 2012.
ESO / MAX ALEXANDER
Sun, Moon and Planets

hidden in the glow of sunset. Blink
and you'll miss it.
You'll have to wait a little bit longer
into the evening to spot the ringed
planet, Saturn. At the beginning of
February it will rise after 1:00am
(Eastern Australian Daylight Savings
time) and slowly get earlier (about
10:00pm by the end of March) as the
nights go on.
Saturn is a magnificent sight
through even a small telescope, so take
a look if you get the chance. On
February 23, the Sun, Earth and Saturn
will form a 90o angle in space, and this
geometry means that the planet's
shadow falls nicely over its rings,
adding even more to the spectacle.
Like all the outer planets, Saturn
sometimes exhibits 'retrograde
motion'. This is where its normal
night-by-night movement across the
sky reverses, and it seems to go
backwards for a while. (It's just a line
of sight effect caused by Earth
'overtaking' the planet on the 'inside'
lane, as it were.) Saturn will begin
retrograde motion on March 15 and
keep it up for about four and a half
months.
Heading right back into the inner
Solar System now, and this is a great
time to see Mercury in fact,
between early-February and midMarch will be the best viewing time all
year. The innermost planet will be
visible before dawn in the eastern sky
and will be quite high up, reaching 27
degrees above the horizon on February
24. Have a look for the Moon nearby
on February 27. After mid-March,
Mercury will begin to get lower in the
sky as it begins to zip around toward
the other side of the Sun. By the end of
March it will be gone from the sky,
only to reappear in the western sky
after sunset in mid-April.
And let's not forget our own planet.
On March 21, Earth reaches its
autumnal equinox. If you happen to
live on the equator, on this day the Sun
will rise due east and set due west, and
the hours of day and night will be near
enough to equal.
Looking ahead to the following
month, mark April 4 in your calendar
for on this night we will experience
a very short total lunar eclipse. This
will be the only eclipse for us this year
that's right, there will no solar
eclipses visible from our part of the
world in 2015.
Evening, Feb 29 Mar 4

Feb 28
Mar 1
Mar 2
Mar 3
GEMINI
Jupiter
Pollux
Mar 4
Castor
Regulus
10
LEO
LY N X
Looking North-Northeast
Jupiter rides high in the night sky during March, with the almost full Moon nearby on March 3.
ERIDANUS
Evening, March 2224

TAU R U S
Mar 24
CETUS
Mar 23
10
Venus
Mar 22
PISCES
ARIES
Mars
Looking West-Northwest
See if you can spot Mars low on the horizon just after sunset on March 22. The thin crescent Moon
and Venus will be above and to the right.
Jupiters Red Spot Transit,

February/March 2015
(Universal Time)
FEBRUARY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
6:46
16:41
2:37
12:32
22:28
8:24
18:19
4:15
14:10
0:06
10:01
19:57
5:53
15:48
1:44
11:39
21:35
7:31
17:26
3:22
13:17
23:13
9:09
19:04
5:00
14:55
0:51
10:47
20:42
6:38
16:33
2:29
12:25
22:20
8:16
18:11
4:07
14:03
23:58
9:54
19:49
5:45
15:41
1:36
11:32
21:27
7:23
17:19
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Since
1975
3:14
13:10
23:05
9:01
18:57
4:52
14:48
0:44
10:39
20:35
6:30
16:26
2:22
12:17
22:13
8:08
18:04
4:00
13:55
23:51
12
9:46
19:42
5:38
15:33
1:29
11:25
21:20
7:16
17:12
3:07
13:03
22:59
8:54
18:50
4:45
14:41
0:37
10:32
20:28
6:23
16:19
2:15
12:10
22:06
8:02
17:57
21
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
MARCH
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
3:53
13:49
23:44
9:40
19:36
5:32
15:27
1:23
11:18
21:14
7:10
17:05
3:01
12:57
22:52
8:48
18:44
4:39
14:35
0:31
10:26
20:22
6:18
16:13
2:09
12:05
22:00
7:56
17:52
3:48
13:43
23:39
9:35
19:30
5:26
15:22
1:17
11:13
21:09
7:04
17:00
2:56
12:51
22:47
8:43
18:39
4:34
14:30
Everything for the

Amateur Astronomer
DOBSONIANS
W
ANTO
NN
KL
Moon, March 2015

Phases
Full Moon
February 3, 23:09 UT
Last Quarter February 12, 03:50 UT
New Moon February 18, 23:47 UT
First Quarter February 25, 17:14 UT
Distances
Apogee
406,154 km
Perigee
356,991 km
Orion SkyQuest XX16g (406.4mm)

GoTo Truss Tube Dobsonian
#8968
Phases
Full Moon
March 5, 18:06 UT
Last Quarter March 13, 17:48 UT
New Moon March 20, 09:36 UT
First Quarter March 27, 07:43 UT
Distances
Apogee
March 5, 07:36 UT
406,385 km
Perigee
March 19, 19:39 UT
357,583 km
Orion SkyQuest XT12i (304.8mm)

IntelliScope Dobsonian
#10020
Star Charts
price $19.95
A series of 18 maps (nine doublesided A4 pages) + CD covering

the entire sky. The charts have a
water-resistant laminate coat to
make them more durable when
used outside. An additional
reference guide provides an
overall view
of all 18
charts and an
index to the
constellations
and major
stars.
Orion SkyQuest
XT8 (203.2mm) PLUS Dobsonian
#8974
Orion SkyQuest XT4.5 (114.3mm)

Classic Dobsonian
#9804
These predictions assume the Red Spot is at Jovian System II longitude

207. If it has moved elsewhere, it will transit 1.7 minutes late for every
1 of longitude greater than 207, or 1.7 minutes early for every 1 less
than 207. Check SkyandTelescope.com/redspot for updates.
Celestial Calendar
Last chance for Comet Lovejoy

David Seargent
C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) has been a very pretty

comet, as shown in these images taken by
Gerald Rhemann on November 27 (top) and
29, 2014.
The path of comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) during January 2015. In February it will disappear from view for southern
observers, being too far north in the sky.
nless a bright new comet is found

in the meantime, February and
March hold little promise for
comet observers using small telescopes.
At the time of writing in late October,
only two objects hold any prospect at all
of being visible. Even these will not be
easy and, from mid-southern latitudes,
confined to the very start of the period.
The best prospect is C/2014 Q2
(Lovejoy), which may still be found in
evening twilight low in the northwest
for the first few days of February. Having
passed perihelion on January 30 at a

distance of 1.29 au from the Sun, the
comet is moving northward through
Andromeda and will soon be lost to
southern observers.
According to brightness estimates
late last October, it may still be as bright
as magnitude 7 as February begins, so
favourably placed observers - especially
those living closer toward the equator
- should be able to find it using moderatesized binoculars. Even if these brighter
estimates turn out to be too optimistic, the
first days of February should still find it

within range of backyard telescopes.
Also low in the evening twilight,
15P/Finlay may still be as bright as
magnitude 1011 in early February
according to the more optimistic
forecasts. Drifting through the
constellation of Pisces, it will not be
an easy object, but if the optimists are
right, favourably placed observers may
still be able to find it before twilight
claims it completely.
David Seargents ebook Sungrazing
Comets: Snowballs in the Furnace is
available from Amazon.
BL Orionis
he American Association of
Variable Star Observers has
what is called its Binocular
Program - stars that can be observed
throughout a complete brightening and
dimming cycle with just binoculars or
a small telescope. But we go further
than that in our view, observing the
brighter part of a long-period variable
star's cycle while missing the faint part,
is still very useful. Weve thrown in an
extra-galactic challenge or two as well,
and more. Not the least difference is that
most of our readership and interest is
in the southern sky, unlike the North
Americans. They need us southerners!
In Orion, the AAVSO binocular (and
naked-eye) program has only the stars
Betelgeuse, W Ori, BL Ori, and BQ Ori,
covered in the AS&T Nov-Dec 2011
and Feb-Mar 2013 issues, and in this
issue for the latter two, respectively.
Variable Stars South is hosting four
finder charts for you to download,
from variablestarssouth.org/ast/bqblori
Alan Plummer
Since
1975
Included are a wider (A scale) and

smaller (B scale) chart for each target.
(The B scale for BL Ori is custom
generated, rather than using the chartplotting machine.)
I spend a lot of time dealing with the
public on viewing nights, and I've found
that carbon stars are one of the very
few sights that people queuing at the
eyepiece go "Ooh! Ahh!" about. One of
them, BL Orionis, is a semi-regular (SR)
variable carbon star with a brightness
that ranges from 5.9 to 6.6, and an
approximate period of 154 days. This
means that an observation every two
weeks is fine for this star if you want to
watch its brightness slowly rise and fall.
BQ Ori is another SR variable a bit
further to the north, situated virtually
on the galactic equator. While you're in
the area, why not check out the many
nebulae and star clusters here as well?
Youll soon find you'll be looking for
excuses to visit this part of the sky as
often as you can.
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
Orion 8" (203.2mm) f/3.9

Newtonian Astrograph Reflector
#8297
BQ Ori
Orion StarShoot 5 MP
Solar System Color Camera
#52097
53
64
62
73
BL Ori
56
69
66
GE M IN I
MO NOCE R OS
Everything for the

Amateur Astronomer
59
Finder chart for
the semi-regular
variable star BL
Orionis, COURTESY
OF THE AAVSO. North
is up and the scale
is approximately
15 degrees from
west to east. Use
charts from www.
variablestarssouth.
org/ast/bqblori
for estimating
brightness.
60
ORION
Orion StarShoot All-In-One

Astrophotography Camera
#52098
Betelgeuse
Orion
StarShoot AutoGuider
#52064
Two Variable Targets in Orion

Star
RA
Dec
Const
Type
Period
Mag.
BQ Ori
05h 57m 07.39s
+22 50' 20.2"
Ori
SRB
243
7.1 - 9.0 V
BL Ori
06h 25m 28.18s
+14 43' 19.2"
Ori
SRB
153.8
5.9 - 6.6 V
Ross Gould
Double Star Notes
Prowling through Puppis
Hundreds of targets beckon in this southern constellation
his is the third time I've written

about doubles in Puppis, a
constellation with hundreds of
them accessible to mid-size amateur
telescopes (say, 20- to 25-cm). Puppis is
part of the gigantic, now-defunct
constellation Argo Navis; in sky area
Puppis is slightly larger than Orion.
We'll begin with 3rd-magnitude Pi Pup,
a triple star and a useful guide star. This is
a James Dunlop double, DUN 43, very
wide with magnitude 3 and 8 stars, best
seen at low power and showing colour
contrast of orange and blue-white. It's
located in a loose cluster, Cr 135; my best
view was with a 1070 finder, which
showed the cluster nicely as well as
Dunlop's companion to Pi.
Those with larger scopes might like to
attempt HDS 1008, the bright star of Pi,
found by Hipparcos in 1991 to be a very
close and unequal double. At only 0.7"
separation, and 3.6 magnitudes brightness
difference, it will be hard to see even
though the companion is bright
(magnitude 6.5). A 20-cm scope would
put the companion into the Rayleigh gap,
but I'm inclined to think a larger scope,
putting the companion outside the first
diffraction ring, would be better say,
30-cm or more. There's no new measure
since 1991, though I'm expecting a new
measure soon, and we don't know if this
one was picked up when widening after a
long period of being even closer, or if it's
now closing again.
Pi Pup is quite distant, around 800
light-years, and various other stars in the
cluster have similar parallaxes; so this may
be one of the uncommon cases where
with HDS 1008 we might have a
genuine binary showing in a cluster; the
wider Dunlop companion may be just
another cluster member rather than in
orbit with Pi.
Not far from Pi, about 1 degree WNW,
is BU 757, with 6th- and 8th-magnitude
stars some 2.5" apart. A C14 telescope
(35.5-cm) at 120 showed the
companion; smaller scopes might need
higher powers, but 15-cm will show it.
Some 20' north is a broad triple, GLI 56,
with the 8th- to 10th-magnitude stars
within reach of 80-mm.
Some 1 degrees NE from

Pi is HJ 3957, an easy pair
with a 7th-magnitude yellow
primary and 8th-magnitude
companion, visible with 60mm. Southwards from there,
some 1 degrees east of Pi,
is a neat 7th-magnitude pair,
HJ 3966, again easy for small
scopes. The equally bright
stars are neatly apart even at
50, and cream/off-white in
colour.
The doubles I 65 and I 66
are 4 degrees WNW From
Pi. I 65 has a curious history
found by Robert Innes
with a 7-inch (18-cm)
refractor in 1897, it was then
measured by Thomas See the
following year with a 24-inch
refractor at about half Innes's
separation and a fairly
different angle; Innes in 1900
and 1901 with the McClean
18-inch (45-cm) refractor got
measures similar to See's;
then a wider separation in
1902, and back to See's
Apparent orbit of I7
in Puppis
0.8
1998
0.7
1981
2015
0.6
0.5
0.4
2049
2032
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
East
0
0.1
North
0.1
Double star targets for small and large scopes

Star Name
Right
Declination Magnitudes
hh mm
o '
Separation
Position Date of Spectrum
(arcseconds) Angle(o) Measure
I 65
06 57.3 -35 30
6.9, 7.3
0.26" ephem 160
I 66
06 58.3 -35 25
AB 7.8, 9.3
1.9"
"
AC 7.8, 9.7
07 04.0 -43 37
AB 5.6, 6.7
HJ 3905
DUN 38
"
2015e
F8IV-V
ephem
253
1991
ApSi
14.3"
270
1999
20.9"
126
1999
G3V, K0V
HJ 3928
07 05.5 -34 47
6.5, 7.8
2.7"
144
2001
F2V
BU 757
07 12.4 -36 33
6.0, 8.35
2.5"
069
1993
B3V
K3Ib, B9
Pi Pup (DUN 43)
07 17.1
-37 06
2.9, 7.9
66.5"
213
2009
HDS 1008
"
"
2.9, 6.5
0.7"
152
1991
I7
07 17.5
-46 59
7.1, 8.4
0.7"
203
2012
K3V
HJ 3957
07 22.3 -35 55
7.1, 7.9
7.5"
191
2003
F8
HJ 3966
07 24.8 -37 17
6.9, 6.9
6.9"
322
2003
F0V, F0V
HWE 65
07 52.3 -34 42
5.1, 8.6
3.8"
267
2001
F5V
COO 64
07 55.6 -43 47
7.8, 11.3
5.1"
152
1999
K3III
SEE 91
07 55.8 -43 51
6.6, 6.9
0.7"
344
1996
B6V
Data from the Washington Double Star Catalogue.
separation in 1903. The many measures

from 1916 to 2008 are around 0.3" or less
as a consistent pattern. I 65 now has a
calculated orbit of short period, 16.77
years, and a maximum separation near
0.3". So the likely explanation is that the
first observation of I 65 was of another
double, though I could find no likely
candidates nearby. After that, nearly all
the observations fit well enough for the
star now identified as I 65. Given the very
close orbit, observers might try with 30cm or larger scopes. The ephemeris
suggests ~0.26" separation for 2015-17,
with the position angle changing from
160 to 180 (2015.0 to 2017.0).
Nearby is I 66, a simple and
straightforward triple star, part of HJ
3905. The wide Herschel pair is an 1830s
discovery; the Innes close pair 1890s. It
presents a neat combination for 10-cm.
The primary is of magnitude 7.8, with a
fairly close 9th-magnitude companion at
2", and another of magnitude 9.7 at 14".
The primary is white, and 150 shows
the trio well.
Nearly 2 degrees ENE from I 65/66 is
HJ 3928 , a little golden pair of 6th and
8th magnitude, fairly close and flanked
by two fainter companions of 10th and
eleventh magnitude out wide, one to
each side; well seen with the 18-cm
refractor at 100.
South 9 degrees from HJ 3928 is the
easy show-piece DUN 38 , both stars
bright, the deep golden primary having
a well separated orange companion; this
is another fine object accessible to small
telescopes.
From DUN 38, further south again
and a little eastwards, some 10 degrees
south of Pi, is our feature binary, I 7,
which I briefly described in 2010. It's one
of Robert Innes's early doubles found
during his Sydney period in the 1890s.
Previously I mentioned a preliminary
orbit by Heintz (gd 4, from 1995) with a
period of 94 years. More recently, Brian
Mason of the US Naval Observatory has
calculated a new orbit (gd 3, 2011) with a
shorter period of 85 years.
The new orbit gives a maximum
separation of almost 0.9", in the early-tomid 1990s; separation is now decreasing,
and the ephemeris gives 0.68" for 2015.0,
and 0.63" for 2018.0.
I 7 can be found 2 degrees southeast
of L2 [Pup], near a curved line of three
brighter stars. I first observed it in 1996,
around maximum separation, and the
18-cm refractor showed a deep yellow
star, single at 100, elongated at 180,
and at 330 a close but nicely split

uneven pair (the magnitudes are 7.1 and
8.4). These days, slightly tighter, it should
still be a figure 8 pair with 18-cm in
steady seeing, separated with larger
apertures, and slightly elongated
(unevenly) with 13-cm.
Closing to 0.50" by 2025.0, it will reach
a minimum of less than 0.1" in 2044,
then widen again to 0.5" in 2044 and 0.7"
in 2055. The orbital eccentricity is very
high; the big range of separation is not
just a result of our line of sight to the
pair. When Innes discovered it in 1894 it
was approaching maximum separation.
The Hipparcos parallax gives a
distance of 48 light-years, making it a
fairly nearby pair. The apparent orbit
(seen from Earth) has a maximum
separation of 13 AU, a minimum of close
to 1 AU.
The stars are main-sequence dwarfs,
cooler and less massive than the Sun or
the stars of Alpha Centauri. So although
the period is similar to Alpha Cen's, the
size of the orbit is smaller. For
comparison, if I 7 were as near to us as
Alpha Cen, its maximum separation
would be nearly 10", less than half
Alpha Cen's.
From 2nd-magnitude Zeta Pup, some
4 degrees SSW is a field with two doubles
the brighter is the close SEE 91, a
Dawes-limit type double for 15-cm
scopes. Last measured at 0.7" in 1996,
and gradually widening from 0.4" when
discovered in 1897, by 1996 when I first
observed it the appearance was of
elongation, not separation, of the nearequal white stars, using a 15-cm refractor
at 270. By now it might be slightly
wider, but 1996 is the most recent
measure at the time of writing.
In the same field, the 15-cm refractor
showed COO 64 as a double at 75, the
11th magnitude companion a little speck
of light fairly close to the 8th-magnitude
deep yellow primary.
And, to conclude for now 5 deg
NNW from Zeta Pup is HWE 65.
Viewed with the 18-cm refractor at
100, it is a beautiful delicate pair, a
bright 5th-magnitude pale yellowish
star with B a tiny point beside it,
looking dimmer than its magnitude (8.6
in this case). A fine double, and 10-cm
should deal well with it.
Since
1975
Everything for the

Amateur Astronomer
MOUNTS
Orion HDX110 EQ-G GoTo Equatorial

Mount with Tripod Pier
#10011
Orion Atlas EQ-G

Computerized GoTo Mount
#24338
Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G

#10010
Orion Sirius EQ-G

#24336
Ross Gould has been a long-time double

star observer from the suburban skies
of Canberra. He can be reached at
rgould1792@optusnet.com.au
Sue French
Targets
The Fire Down Below

Lacailles furnace glows with winter wonders.
The Furnace burns in a part of

the sky that's familiar to southern
skygazers, and is even visible to
many of our cousins in the
Northern Hemisphere. Its treasures
are assuredly worth no matter
where you live.
Fornax is largely populated with
galaxies, but it also holds one large,
impressive planetary nebula. NGC
1360 bedecks the northeastern
corner of the constellation, and the
stars Alpha () and Beta ()
Star magnitudes
t the November 15, 1754

meeting of the Acadmie
Royale des Sciences, NicolasLouis de Lacaille presented a report of
his scientific expedition to the Cape
of Good Hope and a beautiful map of
the southern skies painted by his
friend Anne-Louise Le Jeuneux. Now
displayed in the Paris Observatorys
Grande Galerie, this chart boasts
several constellations devised by
Lacaille, including Fornax, which
represents a chemists furnace.
3h 40m
5
6
7
8
9
10
IC 335
3h 35m
3h 30m
ESO
358-6
1380A
1380
1374
1381
1399
1427
1427A
1437
1379
1387
1351
1351A
1375
FORNAX
2
3
1389
1404
1386
1336
1365
36
1392
ERIDANUS
35
1326A
1326B
3h 40m
3h 20m
1385
S
Star magnitudes
1187
1395
1371
RZ
1302
1360
3
4
5
6
7
8
3h 00m
25
1201
1097
1425
1344
f Eri
Fornax Dwarf
2 1
3
h Eri
30
Inset shown above
g Eri
1
2
FORNAX
1350
i Eri
1255
1398
Fornacis point toward it. Even at 17

through my 105-mm refractor, the
nebula is easily spotted as an oval
glow tilted north-northeast. The
11.3-magnitude central star is weakly
visible, but it shows up much better at
47, with a dimmer patch nearby. The
variable star RZ Fornacis is an eyecatching, reddish-orange gem
perched 16.8 northwest of NGC 1360.
It has a visual range of about 8th to
9th magnitude and a semi-regular
period of 65 days. A narrowband or
OIII filter helps the nebula stand out
better against the sky, but the central
star appears faint with the former and
disappears altogether with the latter.
NGC 1360 is a superb sight through
my 25-cm reflector at 70. It covers
roughly 6 3 and is brighter in
its northern and western reaches.
At approximately 10,000 years old,
NGC 1360 is elderly for a planetary
nebula. In a 2004 Astronomical
Journal paper, Daniel Goldman and
colleagues argue that the nebula has
an ellipsoidal shell whose density falls
toward the centre, but has no sharp
inner edge. The diffuse outer edge of
the shell suggests that the nebula is
3
1317
1316 = Fornax A
35
The author sketched the extreme barred spiral NGC 1365

as seen through her 25-cm reflector at 90.
NGC 1380
NGC 1399
NGC 1387
NGC 1374
NGC 1404
NGC 1381
NGC 1375
NGC 1389
NGC 1379
The author sketched two Fornax Galaxy Cluster fields as seen through her 25-cm reflector at 90.
starting to blend into the

interstellar medium. The dim
patches in NGC 1360 may
indicate regions of low density
or obscuring material within
the nebula.
Lewis Swift described his
discovery of NGC 1360 in the
March 1885 issue of The
Sidereal Messenger. While
searching Eridanus for comets
with his 4-inch Henry Fitz
refractor in 1859, he
encountered a most
conspicuous nebulous star
visible from this latitude. He
assumed this wonderful
object must be well known,
until he saw that it wasnt
included in John Herschels
1864 General Catalogue of
Nebulae and Clusters of Stars.
The brightest galaxy in the
northern half of Fornax is the
giant barred spiral NGC 1097.
Its located 2.2 northnorthwest of Beta Fornacis
and due east of a 1.7-long
dipper of nine stars. This
small grouping includes Iota1
(1) and Iota 2 Fornacis, and
attracts attention through my
950 finderscope.
Through my 105-mm scope
at 17, NGC 1097 is a small
but easily visible oval of light,
accompanied by a 5 triangle
of stars (magnitudes 8, 9, and
10) 13 to its southsouthwest. At 47 the oval
wears an ashen fringe and a

small bright centre. Its about
4 long and half as wide,
tipped southeast. Through
my 25-cm scope at 90, the
galaxys interacting
companion, NGC 1097A,
makes an appearance as a
petite spot just off NGC
1097s northwestern tip. NGC
1097 is perhaps 5 3, with
a vivid little core and subtle,
starlike nucleus. The
companion is much more
obvious at 118, and NGC
1097 shows spiral arms
unfurling counterclockwise
from each tip of the oval.
NGC 1097s core now seems
slightly oval as well.
NGC 1097 is a Seyfert
galaxy bearing an active
nucleus whose prodigious
energy output is powered by a
voracious, central black hole
with 100 million times the
mass of our Sun. Images show
that NGC 1097 is strikingly
distorted by its elliptical
companion. These
gravitational dance partners
dwell 46 million light-years
away from us.
Another galaxy that reveals
a spiral structure is NGC
1365, prosaically nicknamed
the Great Barred Spiral
Galaxy. Look for it 1.2 eastsoutheast of a prominent
diamond of several stars,
including Chi1 (1), Chi2, and

Chi3 Fornacis.
Through my 105-mm
refractor at 47, NGC 1365 is a
large and modestly bright eastwest glow with a fairly bright
core and subtle projections at
each end that give it a Z shape.
The galaxy is quite beautiful
through my 25-cm reflector at
90, its graceful arms are
admired more readily. From
tip to tip (north-south), they
span about 6 on the sky. A
magnification of 115 further
enhances these fetching
features.
NGC 1365 is generally
thought to be a member of the
Fornax Galaxy Cluster, about
60 million light-years away
from us. Unlike most galaxy
clusters, the Fornax group
embraces many members that
can be enjoyed with small
telescopes.
ASTRO-PHYSICS Inc.
State-of-the-art instruments for
discriminating Astrophotograhers
SBIG CCDs & Autoguiders
Losmandy Mounts
Astro-Physics Mounts
Ceravolo Optical Systems
William Optics
Bisque Paramount MEII & PMX
Sirius Observatories
Lunt Solar Telescopes
CS Photometry Filters
Contact ATS for the

ultimate in CCD &
Astro-Imaging Gear
Ph 02 95411676 Fax 02 9541 4449

Web: www.atscope.com.au
Email: sales@atscope.com.au
Targets
Selected Deep-Sky Objects in Fornax

Object
Type
Mag(v)
Size/Sep
RA
NGC 1360
Planetary nebula
9.4
11.0 7.5
3 33.3
25 52
NGC 1097
Spiral galaxy
9.5
9.3 6.3
2 46.3
30 16
NGC 1365
Spiral galaxy
9.6
11.2 6.5
3h 33.6m
36 08
NGC 1316
Lenticular galaxy
8.5
12.0 8.5
3h 22.7m
37 13
h
h
Dec.
m
Angular sizes and separations are from recent catalogues. Visually, an objects size is often smaller than the
catalogued value and varies according to the aperture and magnification of the viewing instrument. Right
ascension and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
When viewed through my 4.5-inch

tabletop reflector equipped with a
wide-angle eyepiece that gives the
scope a true field of 2.2 and a
magnification of 35, NGC 1365
shares the field with eight fainter
Fornax Cluster galaxies. NGC 1399 is
the second-brightest galaxy in the
field of view. It looks roundish and
about half the size of NGC 1365, with
a brighter core and starlike nucleus.
To the south-southeast of NGC 1399,
NGC 1404 presents a somewhat
smaller, round glow guarded by a
gold, 8th-magnitude star near its

south-southeastern edge. NGC 1380
is the third-brightest resident of the
field. It exhibits an oval profile whose
length is about two-thirds the
apparent diameter of NGC 1399, and
it envelops a relatively large, brighter
core and starlike nucleus.
A zigzag chain of dimmer galaxies
cuts across the triangle formed by the
four galaxies described above.
Working our way from north to
south, I see a single smudge thats
probably just NGC 1374, but it might
The giant barrel

spiral galaxy NGC
1097 is distorted
by the gravity of
small but bright
NGC 1097a. ESO
be the combined glow of this galaxy

and its close neighbor to the south,
NGC 1375. NGC 1381 is a tiny spot,
perhaps elongated. Both looking like
misty globes, NGC 1379 gently
intensifies toward the centre, whereas
NGC 1387 hosts a starlike nucleus.
The final field galaxy is NGC 1386, a
small oval that leans north-northeast.
I sketched NGC 1365 and two
Fornax Cluster fields of view as seen
through my 25-cm reflector at 90.
The sketches are all done at the same
scale. NGC 1386 isnt in either of the
drawn fields, but through the 25-cm
scope its a nicely elongated galaxy,
shaped much like a double-convex
lens about 2 long. At 118 it grows
brighter toward a tiny nucleus.
Farther afield, yet still part of the
Fornax Cluster, NGC 1316 is the
groups brightest galaxy. As one of the
strongest sources of radio waves in
our sky, its also known as Fornax A.
If you place Chi1 Fornacis in the
eastern edge of a low-power field and
scan 1.3 southward, youll come to a
15 right triangle of 7th- to 9thmagnitude stars, one at each corner,
and a fourth along the hypotenuse.
Fornax A is easily spotted to the
triangles west.
Through the 4.5-inch reflector at
14, NGC 1316 is little but bright, and
contains a brilliant centre. At 64 the
galaxy is oval northeast-southwest
and sports a tiny nucleus, while a
neighbour galaxy to the north now
makes an appearance. NGC 1317 is
fainter, considerably smaller, and only
slightly oval. It harbours a brighter
core and an elusive stellar nucleus.
Through my 25-cm scope at 118,
NGC 1316 is about 4 long and
perhaps two-thirds as wide, with a
13th-magnitude star off its
southwestern end. NGC 1317s halo is
about 1 across, engulfing a small,
slightly oval core that runs southsoutheast to north-northwest.
Fornax As two immense radioemitting lobes span more than a
million light-years. Theyre probably
the result of a galactic collision that
rained material onto Fornax As
central black hole, triggering
oppositely directed jets of high-energy
particles that heat the rarefied gas of
intergalactic space.
Sue French welcomes your comments at
scfrench@nycap.rr.com.
Subscription Offer
SPECIAL
SUBSCRIBE
OFFERS
FREE GIFT
WORTH
$19.95
FREE
G
WORTIFT
H
$27.95
IDEAL ASTRONOMY GIFT IDEAS
Subscribe or renew for 1 year and receive a

FREE 2015 Astronomy calendar.
Subscribe or renew for 2 years and receive a
FREE 2015 Yearbook.
One of our most popular gift options, the 2015
Astronomy calendar (valued at $19.95) features some
of Australias finest astrophotography along with
information on whats happening in the night sky each
month.
Astronomy 2015 (valued at $27.95) is the 25th edition
of Quasar Publishings annual yearbook. A handy
guide to the night sky, and packed with information for
beginners, it complements the observing information in
each issue of Australian Sky & Telescope.
The benefits of subscribing to

Australian Sky & Telescope now include:
> FREE HOME DELIVERY throughout the year

> GREAT GIFT IDEA
> SAVE with 2 year subscriptions
> NEVER MISS an issue
> BE AMONG THE FIRST to receive Australian Sky & Telescope
> SAVE 10% on DVD/CD and chart purchases from
Australian Sky & Telescope
Call now
(02) 9439 1955

MAGAZINE
$140: Two years 16 issues. PLUS 2015 Astronomy yearbook $76:
One year 8 issues. PLUS 2015 Astronomy calendar
PRODUCT ORDER SECTION

Qty Description
DETAILS
PAYMENT
Mr/Mrs/Ms: First name:
Please Mastercard
Surname:
___ ___ ___ ___ /___ ___ ___ ___ /___ ___ ___ ___ /___ ___ ___ ___
Address:
Visa Cheque Money Order
Cardholders name:
Expiry:
Postcode:
Phone (
Unit Price Total
State:
Signature:
Email:
Please send your completed form to Australian Sky

& Telescope, PO Box 81, St Leonards, NSW 1590 or
fax on (02) 9439 1977 or telephone on (02) 9439
1955 or email subs@odysseus.com.au or subscribe
online at www.skyandtelescope.com.au
Shipping $3
Subscription
(free postage)
Total
Subscribe online at
www.skyandtelescope.com.au
* Subscription offer closes on March 4, 2015. Open to Australian and New Zealand residents only. All prices are in Australian dollars. Offer only valid for print subscriptions.
10/11
0215
Exploring the Solar System Thomas A. Dobbins
An Observational Mystery
What causes Ios enigmatic brightening?
or telescopic observers, Jupiters

satellite Io is hardly a showpiece
object. Although 5% larger than
the Moon, Io is 2,000 more distant and,
under optimal conditions, can barely
be distinguished as a non-stellar disC
through a 5-inch telescope. Observing
Io is like observing a coin from a
distance of almost 5 kilometres.
For more than a century, Io has been
the subject of a number of observing
conundrums a number that is out of
all proportion to its diminutive apparent
size. In his popular 1954 book Guide to
the Planets, Patrick Moore wrote: Io
sometimes shows peculiar fluctuations
in brilliancy, and I once saw it brighten
up strikingly in the space of a few hours
for no apparent reason.
In 1964 astronomers Alan Binder
and Dale Cruikshank reported that
observations of Io with a photoelectric
photometer revealed that the satellite
brightens temporarily when it emerges
from Jupiters shadow following eclipses.
This post-eclipse anomaly, which
typically amounted to a 10% to 15%
Of the four Galilean

moons, only Io is
volcanically active.
Does this activity
lead to its measured
brightening as the
satellite exits the
shadow of Jupiter?
NASA / JHU / APL / SEAN
WALKER
increase in brightness, usually persisted

for up to 20 minutes. The other Galilean
satellites, Europa, Ganymede, and
Callisto, never displayed this strange
behaviour.
These photometric observations
were very challenging because for
earthbound observers, eclipses of Io
occur when the satellite is less than one
Jupiter radius (about 20 arcseconds)
from its brilliant parent planet. Scattered
light from nearby Jupiter detracts
from the accuracy of the brightness
measurements of Io to a greater degree
than for the other Galilean satellites,
whose eclipse phenomena generally
occur at considerably larger angular
distances from Jupiter. Nevertheless, the
fact that no corresponding brightening
was detected at very similar viewing
geometries just before Io entered
Jupiters shadow lent credence to the
notion that the phenomenon had some
basis in reality.
Cruikshank insightfully proposed that
Io has a tenuous atmosphere containing
an unknown gas that freezes out when
Io plunges into Jupiters icy shadow,
where it remains for just over two hours
during an eclipse. He suggested that as
Io re-emerges into sunlight at the end
of an eclipse, frozen gas in the form
of bright frost deposits blanketing the
moons surface should reflect more
sunlight briefly before sublimating
or evaporating and restoring Io to its
normal brightness.
Despite this plausible explanation,
the phenomenon proved frustratingly
sporadic and unpredictable.
Observations at visible light
wavelengths during the early 1970s
of a dozen eclipses of Io by teams of
astronomers at Mauna Kea (Hawaii)
and Cerro Tololo (Chile) observatories
failed to detect any anomalous posteclipse brightenings, but in 1971
photometric measurements conducted
independently at Kitt Peak and Table
Mountain observatories convincingly
recorded a post-eclipse brightening
that was more pronounced in the nearultraviolet region of the spectrum at
wavelengths of 350 to 400 nanometres
than it was in visible light. Two years

later, Cruikshank and his colleague
Robert Murphy reported that they had
detected Ios post-eclipse brightening
on some occasions during the previous
two years but not on others.
In 1979 the twin Voyager spacecraft
obtained the first high-resolution images
of Io, revealing the presence of a host
of volcanoes erupting with colossal
violence, hurling plumes of ejecta
hundreds of kilometres above an alien
landscape dotted with lakes of molten
sulfur and drifts of sulfur dioxide snow.
The tides raised by the gravitational tug
of war between the enormous mass of
nearby Jupiter and the other Galilean
satellites knead the interior of Io, fueling
volcanic activity so intense that the
surface of the satellite is continually
re-surfaced with new layers of material
vented by eruptions.
The sulfur dioxide gas that powers Ios
volcanoes was immediately recognised
as the mystery component of Ios
atmosphere proposed by Cruikshank to
account for Ios post-eclipse brightening.
The condensation and sublimation of
sulfur dioxide frost provided a very
convincing explanation for the fact
that the phenomenon was not always
observed. The amount of sulfur dioxide
available would depend on the level
of volcanic activity, which can vary
dramatically on a time scale of days or
even hours.
Although spacecraft observations
all but eliminate the effects of scattered
light from Jupiter, careful photometric
monitoring of Io during a few eclipse
events by the Voyager and Galileo
spacecraft failed to detect any posteclipse brightenings. However, during
its flyby of Jupiter while en route
to Saturn late in 2000, the Cassini
spacecraft recorded a 15% increase in
the reflectivity of Io in near-infrared
wavelengths as the satellite emerged
from Jupiters shadow, accompanied
by a 25% increase in the intensity of
the spectral absorption bands of sulfur
dioxide frost.
Despite this confirming spacecraft
observation, doubts persist that the
shadow
Disappearance
+ 0.1
0
0.1
0.2
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
Minutes before eclipse
Jupiters
Deviation from
average magnitude
+ 0.2
Reappearance
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Minutes after eclipse
0.3
Photometric measurements of Io recorded by Dale Cruikshank and Alan Binder in 196263 using a 16-inch telescope recorded a subtle brightening following several
eclipses. Although no brightness fluctuations were recorded before each disappearance (left), measurable brightness increases were recorded in four different
observations immediately following the reappearance of the moon (right).
condensation and sublimation of sulfur

dioxide is entirely responsible for posteclipse brightening. Sulfur dioxide just
doesnt seem to be present in sufficient
quantities to form frost of adequate
optical thickness (several millimetres by
most estimates) except in localised areas.
Emissions triggered by the interaction of
Jupiters magnetosphere and Ios tenuous
but variable atmosphere have been
proposed as an explanation by more
than one investigator.
Io passes behind Jupiter once during

every one of its roughly 42.5-hour orbits
around the planet, so eclipses are not
rare by any means. The best time to
watch for these brightening events is
following opposition, when the moon
exits Jupiters shadow at an increasing
distance from the planets limb.
In recent years, well-equipped
amateur astronomers have made
remarkably accurate photometric
measurements of phenomena far
more delicate than the post-eclipse

brightening of Io, notably the transits
of extrasolar planets. Ios post-eclipse
brightening is a promising subject
to monitor and study, one of those
increasingly rare opportunities
to solve a lingering observational
mystery.
Amateur astronomer Howard Eskildsen
can often be found observing the Sun by
day and Moon by night.
Vernonscope: Brandon Eyepieces and Optical Accessories
Legendary planetary eyepieces

1/20th wave quartz star diagonals
Binoviewers with Zeiss optics
Outstanding lters, including magenta
Available at www.vernonscope.com
Deep-Sky Marvels
The dark Cone Nebula crowns the Christmas Tree open star cluster. ESO
Hopping around the
Backyard Sky
Embrace the clear nights to hunt down these deep sky delights
ROD MOLLISE
harder to see rather than easier. Low

power makes the background sky
appear brighter. The cure is a nebula
filter, which blocks most of the
skyglow while allowing through the
few specific wavelengths that many
nebulae emit.
Following my friends advice,
I screwed an O III filter onto an
eyepiece that yielded 1 of field
through my 30-cm telescope, and
had a look. The emission-line filter
M1
1
2
2174-5
dimmed the stars but brought out

the nebulosity, first as disconnected
patches, then as a big doughnut. The
doughnut hole is occupied by a little
dipper-shaped asterism, which is part
of a larger open cluster, NGC 2239,
involved with the nebula.
Our Monoceros holiday theme
doesnt end with the Rosettes
wreath; theres also a Christmas tree,
NGC 2264, a lovely open cluster
5 northeast of our first stop. This
+20
TAURUS
GEMINI
2169
2264
2261
Betelgeuse
2237-9
ORION
2244
2301
M78
MONOCEROS
6h 30m
M43
6h 00m
V
2232
+10
M42
5h 30m Rigel10
Star magnitudes
hen you walk outside and

look to the northeast on
these fine late summer,
early autumn evenings, the first
constellation that catches your eye is
mighty Orion. If you want to swing
the telescope over to M42 for a quick
look, be my guest. The Great Nebula is
always a marvel, but tonight were after
less familiar quarry.
Lets begin our evenings journey
in Monoceros, the Unicorn, Orions
neighbouring constellation to the
east. A computer-controlled Go To
telescope will stand you in good stead
when touring this constellation for,
despite its evocative name, the Unicorn
is dim, with its most prominent star,
Beta () Monocerotis, shining weakly
in the backyard sky at magnitude 3.8.
If theres a deep-sky object that
spells the warmer months for me
other than the Orion Nebula, its NGC
2237, the Rosette Nebula, an emission
nebula shaped like a huge Christmas
wreath that floats among the dim stars
of Monoceros. I enjoyed this object
for years from dark sites, but never
tried to view it from my light-polluted
backyard until a visiting amateur
astronomer friend clued me in one
cold night.
The Rosette is difficult, but it can
be conquered with 20-cm and larger
scopes if you remember the words
field and filter. The nebula is large,
80' 60', and youll need to put some
dark space around it to provide
contrast. That will require an eyepiece
capable of encompassing over a degree
of sky. Unfortunately, using a lowmagnification, wide-field eyepiece in
light pollution will make the nebula
1
2
3
4
5
6
Deep-Sky Marvels
A false-colour image from Kitt Peak reveals the structural

complexity of the Rosette Nebula. T. A. RECTOR / UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA
ANCHORAGE, WIYN AND NOAO / AURA / NSF
big and bright star cluster shines at

magnitude 4.1 and stretches across
40' of sky. Long-exposure images of
the Christmas Tree Cluster dont do
it justice, since they show hordes of
background stars that obscure its
shape. Through a low-power ocular,
however, the triangular tree, which
extends about 20' from the variable
star S Monocerotis at its base, jumps
right out. This Christmas tree even
has a star at its top, the famous dark
Cone Nebula, but that is a challenge
for the largest scopes under the
darkest skies.
Continuing in Monoceros, turn
and sweep south for one degree to
find a small, bright and interesting
nebula, NGC 2261, also called
Hubbles Variable Nebula. At different
times, this little interstellar cloud
appears slightly dimmer or brighter,
and its shape will change between
observing sessions. Thats because
R Monocerotis, an old, evolved star

within the nebula, is blowing off
its outer gas layers. The interaction
between the material coming from
the star and the dust already in the
area creates shadows that cause the
reflection nebulosity to dim and
brighten. NGC 2261s variable nature
impelled the famous American
astronomer Edwin Hubble to do the
first in-depth study of it.
Through a telescope at a
magnification of 150, Hubbles
Variable Nebula is one of the best
reflection nebulae in the entire sky.
This particular type of nebula, which
glows by the reflected light of nearby
stars rather than by its own emissions,
is often faint, but not NGC 2261. Its
immediately obvious through the
scope, looking remarkably like a small
comet. R Monocerotis, shrouded
in dust, forms the head, and the
triangular 2.2' 1.5' nebula extending
Tips for Backyard

Observers
You cant do anything about sky glow, but you
can do something about ambient light. Light
from nearby sources prevents your eyes from
attaining as much dark adaptation as possible.
Turn off any lights you can and shield your eyes.
I drape a piece of dark cloth over my head when
Im at the eyepiece.
Many deep-sky observers use too little
rather than too much magnification. Most
objects are small to medium-sized targets, and
magnifications of 100 and above will show more
detail and spread out the background sky glow.
Wait for special nights. If youre after a
particularly difficult object, look for it after a
weather front has passed through, when the sky
is at its cleanest and driest.
Wait for special times. If youre having trouble
with a target, allow it to culminate that is, to
rise as high in the sky as it ever will. You will then
be looking at it through the thinnest layer of
atmosphere possible.
Wait for calm nights. Good seeing
atmospheric steadiness can be almost as
important for faint galaxies as for planetary
detail.
Nebula filters can reduce background sky
glow and improve the contrast of emission and
planetary nebulae. Unfortunately, they dont work
on galaxies, star clusters or reflection nebulae.
Keep trying. If you miss an object, keep after it
night after night and you will often be rewarded.
Hubbles Variable Nebula is also known as NGC 2261. NASA / THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (AURA/STSCI)
Backyard Deep-Sky Treats

Const
Type
Mag (v)
Size
RA
Dec
NGC 2237
Mon
Emission nebula
90' 90'
6h 30.9 m
+05 03'
NGC 2239
Mon
Open cluster
24'
6 31.9
+04 57'
NGC 2264
Mon
Open cluster
4.1
20'
6h 41.0 m
+09 54'
NGC 2261
Mon
Reflection nebula
2' 1'
6h 39.2m
+08 45'
NGC 1023
Per
Lenticular galaxy
9.5
8.7' 3.0'
2h 40.4m
+39 04'
NGC 2174/2175
Ori
Nebula with open cluster
40' 30'
6h 09.7m
+20 29'
NGC 2362
CMa
Open cluster
3.8
8'
7 18.7
24 57'
NGC 2359
CMa
Emission nebula
10' 5'
7h 18.5m
13 14'
NGC 2354
CMa
Open cluster
6.5
NGC 1514
Tau
Planetary nebula
10.9
from it makes up the tail. Remarkably,

it doesnt take a large telescope
to see changes in this intriguing
nebula. Even a 20-cm scope at high
magnification is capable of detecting
these variations. Dark streaks and
patches can change shape over the
course of just a few days.
I love nebulae and star clusters, but
I find myself wanting galaxies. This
time of the year, with the obscuring
band of the Milky Way crossing the
sky, isnt thought of as a good time
for hunting galaxies. They are visible,
however, including several in Perseus,
which is low in the northwest after
sunset at this time of the year. The
most prominent of these is NGC
1023, a member of our local galaxy
supercluster.
Not only is this lenticular galaxy
visible from suburban skies, on a good
night it can surprise. At magnitude
9.6, its fairly bright for a galaxy, but
its light is spread out over a relatively
large area (7.6' 2.8'), which dims it
down a little. Under better conditions,
NGC 1023s large lens-shaped disk
may put in an appearance. On a poor
night, all you may see is the galaxys
strongly elongated central region. But
you'll have to be quick, as it sets soon
after sunset.
Now, lets move back southeast
to mighty Orion. Youre probably
aware there are other nebulae in the
constellation besides M42. The Hunter
is near the Milky Way, in a starforming region rich in gas clouds and
star clusters. The constellation is home
to several famous objects, including
the notoriously dim Horsehead
20'
7 14.3
25 42'
2.2' 2.0'
4h 09.3m
+30 47'
Nebula. Tonight, however, were after

a less well known target, one few
amateurs seem to know about NGC
2174, the Monkey Head Nebula.
This large 40' 40' emission nebula
is located away from Orions body in
the area of the Hunter's club in the
northeastern part of the constellation.
This probably explains why it isnt
better known. Its also not an easy
object to spot. My best views of it
from the suburbs have been through
25- to 30-cm telescopes equipped with
nebula filters.
At first, all youll probably see is
the sparse open cluster NGC 2175
embedded in the nebula. Keep
looking, however, and you may begin
to make out a faint haze around the
clusters stars. Through my 30-cm
Newtonian telescope, Old Betsy, the
nebula extends for 20', so use a widefield eyepiece.
Why Monkey Head? In images,
the nebula looks a little like the head of
a simian.
Lets continue our tour with Canis
Major, the Big Dog trotting along at
Orions heels. NGC 2362 is a bright
and attractive 4.1-magnitude open
star cluster spanning a mere 6' 6'.
Depending on your scope and skies,
youll see as many as 30 stars in
this small area. Thats not the main
attraction, however; its the bright
4.4-magnitude star Tau Canis Majoris
near the centre of the cluster.
Tau makes NGC 2362 an easy find,
and also provides an amazing special
effect. Stare at Tau and tap on the
telescopes tube. Naturally, the stars
will jiggle, but Tau will seem to move
1582
M34
+40
1342
4 00
TRIANGULUM
X TAURUS
PERSEUS
1514
1023
3 30
ARIES
h
+30
m
3 00
2 30
1
Star magnitudes
Object
2
3
4
5
6
7
The bright star Tau Canis Majoris resides smack bang in the middle of
the open star cluster NGC 2362. POSS-II / CALTECH/PALOMAR OBSERVATORY
Deep-Sky Marvels
Contributing editor Rod Mollise keeps an

astronomy blog at uncle-rods.blogspot.
com and is author of several books,
including The Urban Astronomers Guide.
This wide-field
view highlights the
nebulous horns of
Thors Helmet (NGC
2359). ESO / DIGITISED
SKY SURVEY 2 / DAVIDE DE
MARTIN
M50
7h 30m
2423
7h 00m
2335
2353
6h 30m
MONOCEROS
2343
2396
15
Sirius
M46
2467
2
3
4
5
6
7
h3945
25
2354
1
20
M41
2384
2362
CANIS MAJOR
PUPPIS
M93
10
2359
M47
2360
Star magnitudes
in a pattern different from the other

stars, undoubtedly due to the contrast
between it and the dimmer cluster stars.
This weird effect gives Tau its nickname,
The Jumping Spider Star.
NGC 2359, Thors Helmet, Canis
Majors premier nebula, has a reputation
for being tough. That was true before
nebula filters came to amateur astronomy,
but this 9' 9' cloud, like many other
formerly challenging nebulae, can now be
seen from the backyard. Through a filterequipped 20-cm telescope, all I can detect
is the oval body of the nebula, the helmet.
With 30 cm inches of aperture, however,
I can begin to see how the nebula got
its name. There are two faint streamers
of nebulosity extending to the west, the
horns of Thors helmet.
Surprisingly, some deep-sky objects
look better from the backyard than from
under country skies. From dark sites,
NGC 2354, a 6.5-magnitude, 18' 18'
open cluster that lies 11 south of Sirius,
is fairly rich but nothing special. From
a poorer location, however, its startling.
With the dimmer stars gone, at 115 I
see a 9.0-magnitude star surrounded by
a ring of medium-bright stars. This ring,
about 4' in diameter, is so perfect as to
look artificial.
Well move northeast to the celestial
Bull to complete our backyard odyssey.
The sky is full of planetary nebulae, but
once you leave the Messier list, most
are small or dim, or both. There are
exceptions, however, including Tauruss
NGC 1514, the Crystal Ball Nebula.
This 10th-magnitude, 2.8'-diameter
gas ball is a marvel through a mediumpower eyepiece equipped with an O III
filter. The Crystal Balls 9.4-magnitude
central star is easy to see; its surrounded
by tenuous but obvious nebulosity.
Through large telescopes the nebula is
elongated, but through my 30-cm it just
looks round.
The night is now old and my bones
are getting cold. Theres always the
temptation to observe just one more
object on particularly good nights, but
Ive learned when to say when, to stop
when I am still feeling good and wanting
more. The beauties of the deep sky will be
there waiting for me tomorrow, or next
month, or next year over a lifetime of
backyard nights.
Cr 132
2439
Cr 140
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
Oltions Awesome Binoscope

This fine instrument provides an amazing 3-D effect with the Moon and planets.
inocular telescopes are one of

those ideas that sound great,
yet rarely seem to work out in
practice. Everyone appreciates the
rewards of astronomy with regular
binoculars, so its easy to imagine how
amazing it would be to scale up the
aperture and magnification. And yet,
binocular telescopes remain rare
novelties. Thats because theyre not
easy to make, and the difficulty runs
deeper than the work involved in
making twin optical tube assemblies.
But telescope-maker Jerry Oltion
was up for the challenge. I decided
early on to go for simple and strong,
he says. That approach led him to
think inside the box. The optics reside
in two boxes, one housing two
12.5-inch-diameter, f/4.7 primary
mirrors, the other supporting dual
upper-cage assemblies.
One of the most challenging aspects
of a binocular telescope is coming up
with a mechanism that enables you to
have a range of interpupillary spacings.
Jerrys simple and yet strong system

consists of twin rotating secondary
cages. As the assemblies rotate in
tandem, the spacing between the
focusers (and therefore, the eyepieces)
changes. I made the cages with 1/2inch plywood rings and doorskin for
the panels, he explains.
Four sets of bolts and washers
capture the bottom ring of each cage,
allowing for rotation. The challenge was
to precisely control that motion. But a
trip to the hardware store yielded an
ingenious solution. As Jerry explains,
The adjustment mechanism is a
repurposed cargo-strap tightener that
has a coarse-thread (8 threads per inch)
screw that pulls and pushes a carriage
along its length.
Careful readers will note that the
gotcha in this scheme is the need to
tweak the interpupillary spacing each
time the scope is focused. But this
turned out to be a minor issue. The
focusers sit between the secondary and
the tertiary mirrors and move the
Jerry Oltions binoscope is well built and delivers awe-inspiring views. A stool and adjustable
chair provide a range of observing positions. KATHY OLTION (2)
The spacing between eyepieces is governed

by a mechanism built largely from a
cargo-strap tightener purchased at a local
hardware store.
eyepieces sideways, so focusing does

change the spacing, but not by much,
Jerry says. I use parfocalising rings to
make all my eyepieces focus within a
fraction of an inch of each other, so the
amount of adjustment is minimal.
Theres no denying that building a
binoscope is a lot more work than
making a regular Dobsonian. Is the
extra effort worth it? In a word,
absolutely, Jerry reports. Id looked
through other binocular scopes up
to 8-inches aperture and knew the
views could be really nice, but I wasnt
prepared for how visually arresting the
images delivered by two 12.5-inch
mirrors turned out to be.
The binoscope works as well as a
conventional 18-inch scope when it
comes to detecting faint galaxies, but
what really surprises Jerry is how it
performs on solar-system targets such
as the Moon. Talk about a 3-D effect!
I dont know about you, but that
whets my appetite for a binoscope
project. For more about Jerrys latest
creation, visit www.sff.net/people/j.
oltion/binoscope.htm.
Contributing Editor Gary Seronik is an
experienced telescope maker and binocular
observer. You can contact him via his
website, www.garyseronik.com.
Imaging Aesthetics
Composing
the Universe
Planning your
composition
can raise your
imaging to a
whole new level.
ROBERT GENDLER
A little planning can

often go a long way.
While photographs
of the Orion Nebula
complex are
usually presented
with North at the
top, rotating the
composition 180
combined with the
tight framing of this
composition places
the bright nebula
at top left while
other supporting
structures draw the
viewers eye around
the entire image. All
photos are courtesy
of the author.
he art of deep-sky
astrophotography differs from
most other types of picturemaking. Astro-imagers learn the
fundamental techniques of
combining many long exposures to
suppress noise while simultaneously
increasing the signal to reveal everfainter objects in their images. Tools
such as calibration frames, pixel
rejection methods, and tri-colour
technique are mostly unheard of in
other types of photography.
But many fundamentals of
photography remain the same
whether your subject is a distant
galaxy or a picturesque landscape.
Colour balance, contrast, and
composition come into play in every
great image, no matter the subject. As
imagers strive to raise their work
beyond the point of simple picturetaking, composition and visual
aesthetics become important
considerations in the journey to create
a truly memorable photograph. Here
are some ways to consider your next
target before opening the shutter
that can add drama and power to
your compositions and set them apart
from the crowd.
Zeroing in on the
Focal Point
In order to push our images to that

higher level, its important to ask
ourselves the question that artists
throughout history have asked
themselves: What do we want the
viewer to concentrate on? This is the
focal point of the picture, the main
subject that inevitably draws the eye
and commands the most attention.
When planning a composition, I
often mentally divide the picture into
three components the focal point,
supportive structures, and
background. These elements may be
obvious, such as a galaxy (the subject)

surrounded by a few bright stars
(supportive structures), and the
background of dimmer stars in a sea of
black. But they might also include less
obvious divisions, particularly when
shooting sprawling nebulae. We might
designate the subject by increased
brightness and contrast, for example,
or by highly defined structures or
colour emphasis.
Subtle structures in the image have
importance, too, but they play a
supportive role in directing the viewers
journey to the natural focal point by
way of visual or directional cues. By
doing so the viewing experience
becomes an orderly passage in which
the elements within the image function
like coordinates in a GPS, guiding the
viewer in a logical and satisfying
journey through the image.
Happily, most astronomical subjects
have a natural focal point. Examples
include the bright nuclei of galaxies or
the brilliant young stars within bright
nebulae such as the Trapezium within
M42, the Orion Nebula. But interesting
targets exist that lack a natural focal
point, such as a nebulous field that
stretches beyond your cameras field of
view. In this situation it becomes your
task to establish the focal point through
creative framing of the scene, using the
supporting structures to create the
illusion of a natural focal point.
The focal point doesnt have to
occupy the centre of an image. Many
fine examples exist of asymmetric focal
points in successful astro-images. One
caveat: if the focal point is off centre,
then a supporting structure needs to
occupy the area opposite the focal
point. This could be a smaller, more
distant galaxy juxtaposed against the
brighter and larger galaxy subject, or a
fainter open cluster of stars. The key is
to allow the main focal point
dominance in the image through
positioning, brightness, or selective
sharpening.
Creating Visual Flow
When viewers examine an image for

the first time, they need visual cues to
lead them through it, as alluded to
above. This process is known as flow
the subtle directing of a viewers eye
through an image.
Offering engaging flow is essential
because as astrophotographers we work
with static subjects. Were forced to
utilise the existing elements of our

chosen scene while working with the
variables we do have control over,
including light, colour, scale, depth, and
symmetry. We can use all these
elements to enhance flow. Framing is
also critical. Astronomical scenes often
have supporting structures such as dust
clouds, stars, or distant background
galaxies, for example, that the
photographer can frame in such a way
as to create a sense of flow in an
otherwise static image.
One challenge
in astronomical
image-processing
is creating the
perception of three
dimensions in a
two-dimensional
image.
Striking a Balance
Proper balance is one of the most

crucial compositional elements. As a
rule, pleasing balance results from
appropriate contrast between the focal
point, supporting structures, and the
background. A group of bright stars
framed along one side of an image, for
example, can serve as an important
directional cue, leading the eye to the
focal point and helping to establish a
dramatic composition.
On the other hand, while colourful
star fields can be striking, if stellar
intensities are too strong they can
detract from an images focal point and
supporting structures. Imagers
sometimes use several tools to suppress
the intensity of stars in an image,
including the minimum filter and the
spherise tool in Adobe Photoshop.
These tools are best applied selectively
and sparingly to only those stars that
detract from the focal point.
Above: The Trapezium star cluster in the

center of M42 is the natural focal point
in this photo captured by NASAs Hubble
Space Telescope. The original composition
was rotated 90 clockwise so that the blue
giant stars along the left side as well as the
sharp bow shock at left produce a visual
flow that leads to the central focal point in
the image.
Below: A pleasing composition was achieved
in this image of M17, the Swan Nebula, by
taking advantage of the natural flow of the
brighter areas of the nebula when the field
is presented south-up to draw the viewers
eye from the lower left to upper right. Often
astronomical images achieve their strongest
visual impact when the image is composed
with the subject in mind rather than the
cardinal points of the compass.
Depth of Field
One challenge in astronomical imageprocessing is creating the perception of

three dimensions in a two-dimensional
image. Often the highest praise for a
stunning astrophoto is that it conveys a
sense of depth and perspective.
Imaging Aesthetics
The original landscape framing (left) of the star-forming region NGC 6188 in Ara lacks drama. Rotating the composition 90 counterclockwise and cropping to a
square format creates a more appealing scene with a clear focal point that takes advantage of the natural axis of the dominant structures in the image.
If the focal point of an image has

greater detail, colour intensity, or
contrast compared with the supporting
structures, the viewer is given the
perception of depth. Some targets,
particularly when shooting a tight closeup within a large nebula or dense starfield, may require additional processing
to impose that coveted sense of depth.
Selective sharpening of key areas in
an image full of bright and dark
nebulae can often add a vivid sense of
depth to an image. To enable the
viewers eye to zero in on the subject
quickly, you can leave regions within
your photo softer than the area youve
designated as the focal point. A similar
approach works well when imaging
galaxy clusters or star clouds within the
Milky Way.
This mosaic was

composed using
the rule of thirds
by positioning
NGC 2070 at the
intersection point
of a grid dividing
the image into 9
sections. Smaller
nebulae serving
as supporting
structures
throughout
the field help
to balance the
composition.
Complementary Colours
Colour composition can also be

integral to the success of an astrophoto.
When shot in natural colour,
astronomical objects tend to display a
limited palette of blues, reds, yellows,
and blacks. A glance at a colour wheel
will reveal that certain colours have
greater appeal when they appear
opposite their complementary colour.
The bluish reflection nebulae that often
appear adjacent to reddish emission
nebulosity within the plane of the
Milky Way, for instance, can contribute
to a pleasing composition. Knowing

the hues of objects in advance can
often help you to create stimulating
colour contrast.
Astrophotographers working with
narrowband filters have more leeway to
take advantage of complementary
colour schemes, because they can
assign each narrowband image to a
different colour channel to achieve
dramatically different results than
imagers working in RGB colour.
Format Decisions
One of the simplest but most important

processing decisions is how to manage
the aspect ratio of your image. Should
you present the image in landscape or
portrait mode, or as a square? This
choice can have profound effects on the
visual impact of an image.
Youll want to ask yourself: what is
the dominant axis of the structures in
the image? If objects tend to run along
the horizontal axis, then a landscape
format will likely be in harmony with

those structures and offer a more
appealing viewing experience. A
composition with mostly vertical
structures will benefit most from a
portrait composition. And fields in
which the long axis runs diagonally or
targets a well-centred, round focal point
will likely present best in either square or
nearly square format. Whatever
orientation you choose, try not to fight
the natural dominant axis of the object.
When I complete an image, I often
experiment liberally with cropping
shrinking a field of view around a small
galaxy, say, or getting rid of distracting
secondary structures as well as
rotating the image to find the most
appealing presentation. In astronomical
imaging, one cannot change his or her
viewpoint to the object, but managing
the scene by way of framing, cropping,
and rotating can produce some
spectacular results.
Rules, Rules, Rules
In traditional photography the wellknown rule of thirds and its variations

are helpful guidelines for composing a
picture. The rule of thirds suggests that
when planning a composition, the
photographer should divide the image
into a grid of nine equal parts by
mentally placing two equally spaced
horizontal and vertical lines over the
field. The photographer should then
position salient compositional elements
at the four points of intersection.
This compositional strategy produces a
visual storyline with energy, direction,
and flow accentuated by a more
intriguing off-centred focal point.
Significant structures need not fall
precisely on the points of intersection to
take advantage of this rule. Astronomical Top: In this image of NGC 5033, the long axis of the galaxy is composed as a vertical axis,
which robs this horizontal composition of any tension. Above: By rotating the image 45
objects that benefit most from the rule of counterclockwise and cropping to a nearly square format, the axes of the galaxy, along with
the bright star at bottom left, engage viewers by allowing them to read the image along the
thirds are C- or U-shaped nebulae,
natural flow beginning at the lower left.
galaxy clusters, and complex starforming regions with juxtaposed star
clusters and nebulae.
limitations of photographing static
compositional rules. The rule of thirds
celestial objects from our fixed
or a single focal point mainstays for
viewpoint. But taking time to carefully
non-panoramic images do not
Composing Panoramas
plan the composition before beginning
always work with positioning vital
One of the most daunting tasks in
the first exposure can make the
objects and structures within an
astrophotography is producing effective
difference between an adequate image
astronomical panorama. You might
wide-field panoramas. By their nature
and a timeless treasure.
they are exclusively mosaics, so you have position key objects or main focal
points of the vista within the center
greater opportunities to plan the
third of the image, for instance, with
composition and position key objects
Learn more imaging techniques in author
supporting structures and background
and focal points in advance.
Robert Gendlers latest book Lessons
Because of the extreme aspect ratio of elements filling the outer thirds.
from the Masters: Current Concepts in
In sum, composing astronomical
panoramas, they often require some
Astronomical Image Processing, from
which this article was adapted.
scenes can be challenging due to the
deviation from the standard
Astrobiology
A Universe of
Dark
Oceans
The icy bodies of the

outer Solar System might
be teeming with life
CALEB SCHARF
here arent many fields like

astrobiology. In the past Ive
even heard it called the science
without anything to study. But the
future has always been its strength;
success in astrobiology would
revolutionise our perspective on the
nature of the cosmos, making
Copernicus decentralisation of Earth
seem like a prehistoric rite of passage.
A critical task for astrobiology is not
just finding life elsewhere, its finding
life thats truly independent of
terrestrial life. For example, if we find
extant or extinct organisms on Mars,
theres a good chance theyll be related
to life on Earth part of a genetic
diaspora from microbe-laden planetary
material thrown around the Solar
System by 4 billion years of asteroid
impacts. Either the Martians will be
Earthlings or the Earthlings will be
Martians. This remarkable discovery
still would not help us determine the
rate at which life emerges across the
universe and the nature of its origins.
This is one reason why its so
important to use spectroscopy to
measure chemical biosignatures in
exoplanet atmospheres. But is there a
chance to study in detail a truly
separate strand of life much closer to
home? There could be, deep within
some of our most alien neighbours.
Dark, Fluid Realms
THE GEYSERS OF ENCELADUS Artist Walter

Myers portrays the powerful geysers erupting
from the south polar region of Saturns small
moon Enceladus. The geysers contain water,
salts and hydrocarbons, strongly suggesting an
ocean not far beneath the surface.
The icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn

represent just the tip of the proverbial
iceberg. Europa is the poster child. Its
surface is frozen water at temperatures
ranging from 50 to 110 Kelvin, with
minimal cratering, suggesting an age of
barely 50 million years. Its also
crisscrossed by a tapestry of geographic
features. Shallow ripples and cracks
stretch for hundreds or even thousands
of kilometres. Images from the Galileo
spacecraft revealed plate-like zones and
highly jumbled areas, and curious
blushes of brownish reds and oranges.
Galileo even detected an induced
magnetic field around Europa, a clear
signature of a conductive interior layer
reacting to Jupiters intense

electromagnetic environment.
In late 2013, a team led by Lorenz
Roth (Southwest Research Institute)
announced that it had pushed the
Hubble Space Telescopes STIS
instrument to its limits and discovered
a remarkable plume of water vapour
emanating from Europas southern
polar region. Its a very tricky
observation, but there seems little
doubt that when the moon is at the far
point in its elliptical orbit, it spews
water into space. All evidence points to
Europa having a global ocean of liquid
water hidden below its icy crust.
And Europa is not alone. Its Jovian
neighbour Ganymede also likely
harbours deep liquid water, perhaps in
multiple layers. At Saturn, geyserspouting Enceladus just 504
kilometres across may contain a
subsurface sea in its southern polar
region. Titan, with its thick atmosphere
and seas of liquid hydrocarbons, is also
a prime candidate for a deeper layer
containing a vast water-dominated
ocean. And trans-Neptunian bodies
such as Pluto and Eris likely host their
own dark, fluid realms.
What produces and maintains these
oceans? Europa has an iron centre
surrounded by a thick rock core, with
its water layer on the outside. The heat
of its initial formation has largely
dissipated, but billions of years later the
internal temperature is maintained by
the radioactive decay of uranium,
thorium and potassium in the rock. In
this way, Europas warm core drives
close to 200 gigawatts of power into the
waters base raising temperatures to
around 250 Kelvin.
Like volcanically active Io, Europa
also revolves around Jupiter in a mildly
elliptical orbit maintained by the
pull of the other Galilean satellites.
Changing gravitational-field gradients,
or tides, work these moons like pieces
of putty, and friction generates
additional heat. For Europa, these
forces may also generate internal,
resonating Rossby waves that carry a
Astrobiology
CRACKED ICY CRUST NASAs Galileo orbiter returned this enhanced-colour image of
Europas Conamara Chaos region. The broken cracks and ice blocks strongly suggest a
constantly shifting crust akin to plate tectonics on Earth, indicating that the surface ice
is overlying a water ocean. Spectra have revealed salts and organics on the surface, an
encouraging sign for life. NASA / JPL / UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
BENEATH THE ICE This illustration depicts an ocean lurking not far below
Europas icy surface. Observations suggest that chloride salts from this
ocean rise up through cracks and eventually make their way to the surface.
Io and Jupiter are depicted in the background. NASA / JPL-CALTECH
thousand times the energy of frictional

dissipation. Altogether, tides pump at
least a trillion watts of additional
power into this moon, raising the
internal temperatures to the levels
needed for liquid water. In places such
as the Pluto-Charon system, a history
of tidal exchange and evolution could
similarly promote the formation of an
internal ocean.
Critically, a dose of ammonia and
other compounds significantly
increases the range of pressures and
temperatures where dark oceans can
occur. For example, add 30% ammonia
by mass to a body of water and itll
freeze at around 175 Kelvin instead of
273 Kelvin (depending on the
pressure), greatly reducing the energy
budget needed to keep a subsurface
ocean in its liquid state.
In 2013 astronomers Mike Brown
(Caltech) and Kevin Hand (JPL)
published Keck spectroscopic data of
Europa with 40 times the resolution of
Galileos instruments. On Europas
trailing face (the side permanently
downwind of the orbital motion), they
discovered a coating of magnesium
sulfate, along with sodium and
potassium sulfates. The sulfur comes
from Ios volcanoes, spewed into a torus
of plasma surrounding Jupiter, and
transferred to Europa. But the
magnesium, sodium and potassium
once resided in a salty internal ocean
a briny mix that would taste (yes,
literally) a lot like Earths oceans.
Enceladuss plumes include sodium
salts and small amounts of methane,
carbon dioxide, ammonia and
acetylene. And other icy bodies show
methane and nitrogen, could create a

total dark ocean volume more than
that of all other liquid water in the
Solar System.
Splendid Isolation
Shortly after the Voyager 1 flyby in

1979, scientists realised that Europas
interior could harbour life. Not only is
liquid water a critical agent in all
known biochemistry, oceanographers
had also begun finding complex
ecosystems in the abyssal depths of
Earths oceans. Rich communities of
chemosynthetic microbial life cluster
around hydrothermal vents at midocean ridges living directly off the
vents mineral-rich spoils. These in
turn support a startling number of
tubeworms, shrimp, snails, crabs and
many other species. At ocean depths
extending to more than four
kilometres, where water pressure
reaches hundreds of atmospheres, these
organisms never see sunlight. Theyre
entirely powered by the planets
geophysical and geochemical energy.
A dark ocean benearth the surface of a
distant world might offer an analogous
habitat. If we find living organisms at
Europa or Enceladus, then life in
general could inhabit a vast swathe of
the outer Solar System.
But would life in these places be
truly independent and isolated?
Careful simulation of the
If we find living
organisms at Europa or
Enceladus, then life in
general could inhabit a
vast swathe of the outer
Solar System.
interplanetary dispersal of impactejected material suggests the answer is
yes. Barely 1 in 10 million pieces of
Earth or Mars material ends up
impacting outer worlds such as
Europa. The deep Jovian gravity well
also means that any crumbs that make
it to Europa will impact its surface
faster than 70,000 kilometres per hour
(20 km/second) more than enough
to vaporise a rock and its contents into
constituent atoms an exceedingly
efficient sterilisation process.
On Europas trailing orbital face,
high-energy electrons also dump well
over 100 rad of radiation per second
enough to give an exposed human a
lethal dose in about 10 seconds. Even
the hardiest, most radiation-resistant
organisms on Earth will have their
DNA denatured and broken up by this
onslaught.
That radiation is bad news for human
explorers, but good news for the deep
oceans biological isolation and
BURSTING AT THE SEAMS Above: This Cassini image shows geysers shooting water-ice
particles dozens of kilometres into space from Enceladuss south polar region.
ENIGMATIC ENCELADUS Left: NASAs Cassini orbiter returned this portrait of Enceladus.
The moon is at or near the top of the list of potential abodes for extraterrestrial life. The
geysers have been imaged near the south pole, around the region of the tiger stripes.
NASA / JPL / SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE (2)
surface evidence for impure water.

To better understand the
configuration of dark oceans,
researchers have built virtual planetary
worlds that balance gravity, pressure
and internal heat to mimic conditions
inside these icy bodies. Ganymede may
be like a multilayered cake of different
phases of ice and liquid. Titan may have
a complex ocean that resides between a
layer of water-dominated ice with its
outermost hydrocarbon crust, and a
deeper high-pressure water-ice zone.
Recent Cassini spacecraft data,
including measurement of 10-metre
tidal deformations and gravity
variations, indicate that Titans outer
shell consists of icy material floating
above a highly salty inner ocean. The
ocean may decouple Titans entire
surface from the spin of its core an
extraordinary phenomenon seen in
Cassinis Doppler ranging, where
surface features have appeared to drift
in their expected location over the
years, not moving in synch with the
moons expected rotation.
The potential capacity of dark oceans
in our Solar System is astonishing.
Adding up the estimates for known
satellites yields a volume that could be
sixteen times that of all Earths oceans.
And if we also consider transNeptunian worlds, then radiogenic
heating, tides from moons, plus
insulating outer shells of frozen water,
NOAA
WIKIPEDIA
Astrobiology
DARK EARTH ECOSYSTEMS Left: Single-celled bacteria belonging to the species

Desulforudis audaxviator survive more than a kilometre below Earths surface in the
complete absence of sunlight, oxygen and organic compounds. The species has survived for
millions of years by feeding on chemical food sources in the surrounding rock. Right: In the
late 1970s, scientists discovered that the energy and minerals pouring out of hydrothermal
vents on the ocean floor can sustain a wide variety of life forms despite a complete lack of
sunlight. This image shows tubeworms surrounding a black smoker.
EUROPA
GANYMEDE
Ice layers
Ocean layers
Ocean
ENCELADUS
Icy shell
Ocean
TITAN
MOON INTERIORS These cutaway diagrams depict
scientists best current understanding of the interior
structure of four moons of the outer Solar System.
All four exhibit strong evidence for liquid layers
below their icy surfaces. Future missions might
someday reveal whether these worlds harbour life.
S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN
Moon sizes not to scale.
Icy shell
Accessing the Oceans
Ocean
Putative Oceans Compared

Mean Ocean
Thickness (km)
Crust Thickness
Above Ocean (km)
Ocean Volume
(billions of cubic km)
1.3
90
70
2.3
Ganymede
800 total
Multilayer
> 1.0
Enceladus
10
40
0.000012
Titan
230
200
14.5
Triton
160
170
2.4
Pluto
150
210
1.5
Eris
200
180
2.6
Object
Earth
Europa
chemistry. An ocean without oxygen

might be a tough place for anything but
the simplest and most slow-living
organisms. But this same intense
radiation at Europas surface should
generate a plethora of oxidants,
including hydrogen peroxide and other
compounds. Mixing these into the
liquid interior can help drive the
chemistry of a more complex biosphere.
Recently weve discovered more
examples of terrestrial life forms that
exhibit extraordinary survival skills
suited to lonely conditions devoid of
resources. For example, in 2008
scientists found a species of bacteria
Desulforudis audaxviator (or bold
traveller, after a quote in Jules Vernes
Journey to the Centre of the Earth)
eking out an existence in water pockets
that have been isolated for millions of
years some 2.8 kilometres down in the
rock of a South African gold mine. This
single-celled organism not only exists
in splendid isolation, it effectively lives
off radioactive decay and rocks. When
particle radiation from uranium and
thorium in the surrounding
environment splits water molecules, it
produces free hydrogen for the
bacterium to breathe, and sulfate
compounds for consumption.
This remarkable biochemical trick
doesnt prove that D. audaxviator
started out in these water pockets, since
its genetic makeup still comes from the
same ancestral stock as the rest of Earth
life. But some scientists have proposed
that terrestrial life originated around
hydrothermal vents or other parts of a
deep biosphere an option that would
bode well for life starting up in dark
oceans elsewhere.
Studying icy worlds and their watery
depths in-situ is a tricky business
though. In 2022 ESA hopes to launch
its JUpiter ICy moons Explorer
(JUICE), targeting Ganymede, Europa
and Callisto particularly Ganymede,
the only moon with a magnetic field.
NASAs Europa Clipper is still at a
concept stage for a 2025 launch; it
would make at least 32 flybys of
Europa, mapping it and applying an
ice-penetrating radar, as well as trying
to fly through and sample the water
plume. Both missions are multi-billiondollar affairs that will have to contend
with hardware-damaging particle
radiation and Jupiters deep gravity well.
A Subsurface Antarctic
Lake Teeming with Life
Weddell
Sea
A N T A R C T I C A
South
Pole
Lake
Whillans
Ross
Sea
McMurdo
Station
NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
But aside from perhaps testing the

contents of geysers, these missions
wont venture into a dark ocean itself.
For that well have to wait for ideas that
are barely off the drawing board: molelike burrowing thermal drills and
inchworm robots to penetrate rocklike crusts of water perhaps lobbed
into the same cracks that are venting
water into space. These concepts are
being tested in relatively benign polar
ice here on Earth, as engineers learn
what it takes to operate in such extreme
conditions.
This same technology could also be
applied to descend into transNeptunian worlds such as Pluto or Eris.
Despite their distance (and even lower
surface temperatures), without the
intense radiation environment around
Jupiter to damage hardware, these
worlds might be equally attractive
biologically isolated targets. Much like
Europa, surface features and
compositions can provide clues to the
interiors. When NASAs New Horizons
buzzes Pluto in July 2015, well perhaps
learn more about its putative interior
ocean.
Like the icy worlds of the outer Solar System, Antarctica also
has isolated subsurface bodies of liquid water completely cut
off from sunlight. Since these lakes were first identified in the
1990s, scientists wondered if they harbored life. As reported
in the August 21 issue of Nature, the answer is a definite yes.
After careful preparations to avoid contamination,
an international, multidisciplinary team including Brent
Christner (Louisiana State University) and John Priscu
(Montana State University) used a hot-water drill to bore
down into Lake Whillans, a small body of water about 800
metres below the surface. The team brought up 30 litres of
water. Early analysis reveals 130,000 living cells per millilitre
of lake water, a density roughly equivalent to that of deep
oceans. Amazingly, the team has identified at least 3,931
distinct species of bacteria and archaea, meaning this cold,
dark, nutrient-starved body supports a teeming ecosystem
of life forms. Many of the species are related to previously
known marine microbes that derive energy by breaking down
minerals in rocks and sediment.
The subglacial lake we studied is very different than the
sub-ice oceans that presumably exist on the ice moons, says
Christner. But studies like ours have expanded the known
boundaries of life on Earth, which are the conditions used to
extrapolate the likelihood of life surviving elsewhere.
Robert Naeye
The challenge to exploring such

places is paralleled by the hurdle of
acknowledging that stellar radiation
may not be the only way to power living
environments across the universe.
Radiogenic heating and latent heat of
formation represent key components of
this energy budget, but tidal dissipation
may be a critical factor in the long term.
And thats where things get interesting,
because tides are common, and are
linked to the fundamental structures of
planetary systems.
The tidal power warming Europas
interior is ultimately being drained
from Jupiters angular momentum, a
flywheel carrying about 1033 joules.
Thats about the same as the total
energy of photons emitted by the Sun
in 100 days, or by a low-mass M-dwarf
star in a couple of centuries. But
Europas drain is unlikely to ever
exceed 1013 joules per second (ten
trillion watts worth of power), so in
principle Jupiters angular momentum
could power a dark ocean for at least a
trillion years far outlasting the Suns
main-sequence lifetime. This is
contingent on other factors, such as
maintaining the mean-motion orbital

resonance between the Galilean
moons, and whether or not any icy
moon survives the aging Suns inflated
luminosity 5 billion years hence.
But if dark oceans exist in our Solar
System, they must exist across the
cosmos. The enormous diversity of
planetary-system architectures can give
rise to all manner of situations where
icy bodies are tidally flexed and
warmed. If life can get started in
Europa or Enceladus, it can surely get
started in similar environments. Our
galaxy could be full of isolated
ecosystems inside icy moons and
planets, many of which are kept liquid
by radioactive isotopes, and tidal
friction driven by nothing more than
orbits and spins truly the children of
celestial mechanics.
Caleb Scharf is an astrophysicist and the
Director of Astrobiology at Columbia
University in New York. His latest book
is The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic
Significance in a Universe of Planets
and Probabilities. He also authored
Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology and
Gravitys Engines.
Public Astronomy
Open Skies
Sydney Observatory's new dome and telescope offer access for all
BY TONER STEVENSON
visionary project to build a

third telescope dome at
Sydney Observatory is almost
complete. Funded by the NSW
Department of Family and Community
Services, Ageing, Disability and Home
Care and the Museum of Applied Arts
and Sciences (MAAS), and approved
by the NSW Department of Heritage, it
will provide access for all to
astronomical telescopes to view the
stars and planets. The projects
particular target audience is people
living with disabilities and their carers,
which means that accessibility is core
to every part of the project.
The project sees a return to Sydney
Observatory of a historic metal dome
and a spectacular astrographic
telescope removed from the site in
1986. The Melbourne astrograph,
designed by Sir Howard Grubb & Sons
in Dublin for the Astrographic
Catalogue and Carte du Ciel ('chart of
the sky') projects, was delivered to
Melbourne Observatory in 1890. In
1948 it was purchased by the NSW
Government Astronomer, Harley
Wood, for Sydney Observatory to use
to complete the Melbourne and Sydney
zones of the Astrographic Catalogue, as
recommended by the International
Astronomical Union.
The Astrographic Catalogue and
Carte du Ciel were projects to
photograph and catalogue the entire
celestial sphere, stimulated by the
revolution in astronomy caused by the
application of photography in the mid19th century. When the project was
initiated in 1887, there were numerous
observatories in the Northern
Hemisphere, but Sydney and
Melbourne observatories were two of
only a small number of wellestablished observatories in the
Southern Hemisphere able to do the
work. By 1900 Perth Observatory had
enthusiastically joined in. Pietro
Baracchi, who succeeded Robert Ellery
The restored dome

being lowered onto
the new building at
Sydney Observatory.
T. STEVENSON
Harley Wood
using the
astrograph
in 1952. SMH
/ MAAS SYDNEY
Mary Allen and Ethel Willcocks, who were

employed to measure star positions on the
glass plate photographs taken with the
astrograph, seen at work in 1941.
OBSERVATORY
PIX / MAAS SYDNEY OBSERVATORY
as Government Astronomer of
Victoria, wrote to William Ernest
Cooke, Government Astronomer of
Western Australia:
I fully expected you would be allotted
a zone of the astrophotographic work
and I am glad of it. Australia will thus
contribute about 1/7th part of the whole
undertaking which is extremely
creditable to the colonies. (Baracchi, 7
October 1898)
With assistance from Adelaide
Observatory, which provided
reference stars, the three Australian
observatories photographed and

measured a large proportion of the
night sky. As it turned out the Sydney
zone was one of the richest sections of
the sky because it included a large
section of the Milky Way near the
Southern Cross.
From 1964 the telescope was used to
take photographs for the Southern
Sydney Star Catalogue and, when the
Observatory ceased astronomical
research, amateur astronomers used it
to photograph comets and other
celestial objects, including Comet
The restored Melbourne astrograph in the MAAS Conservation

workshop, ready to be installed in the new building. MAAS
The DFM workshop in Colorado showing the new telescope being

built for Sydney Observatory. K. MELSHEIMER / DFM
Halley. In 1986 the telescope was

transported to Macquarie University
and stored until 2008.
Over the past 12 months, MAAS
conservators Tim Morris and Carey
Ward, with the assistance of expert
volunteers, have restored the telescope.
By the time you read this, the building
will be complete, the telescope tubes
will have been installed, and the lenses
and photographic apparatus will be
attached.
The Astrographic Catalogue was
also important socially in that it
introduced women into astronomy, at
a time when there were few paid
positions in the newly federated
colonies open to women, except as
domestics or barmaids. A significant
number of educated women were
employed as astrographic measurers
and computers at Sydney Observatory.

The new building will house an
exhibition that tells this story and
features a measuring machine used
from 1916 by the first NSW star
measurers, Ida Digby and Irene
McDonald.
During construction there have
been many major events when my
excitement was hard to contain. One
of these was the delivery of the mount
for the astrographic telescope; the
other was the delivery and installation
of the dome.
The heritage dome was originally
constructed by local company, Morts
Dock Engineering in 1951, under
instruction from NSW Government
Astronomer, Harley Wood. In 1986 it
was sent to Macquarie University
where it sat in a field for over 20 years.
The university had originally planned
to use it as part of its own observatory
in which the telescope would be used
for further research. Nick Lomb, then
curator of astronomy at Sydney
Observatory, worked closely with
Macquarie's Professor Alan Vaughan to
ensure the instruments, dome,
photographic negatives and associated
log books were all preserved.
The copper amalgam dome has been
restored by the NSW Government
Architects Office, and on November 6,
2014, it was craned onto the new
building in the presence of various
dignitaries including the Minister for
the Arts and Deputy Premier, Troy
Grant; Minister for Disability and
A cut-away artist's impression of the new

building, showing the astrograph on display
and the new telescope in the dome. The
building will feature disabled access and a
special eyepiece on the dome that facilities
easy viewing. NSW GOVERNMENT ARCHITECTS
Ageing, John Akara; MAAS Director,

Rose Hiscock; and Jim Longley, Chief
Executive of Ageing Disability and
Home Care, NSW Department of
Family and Community Services. The
dome now sits atop a new cylindrical
building, constructed of rendered
brick, metal and glass, with a metal
pier separated from the building to
isolate the telescope from vibration.
The original concept for the
building was developed by the NSW
Government Architects Office. It is
located on the eastern side of the
entry to Sydney Observatory, in the
same location where the astrographic
buildings of the nineteenth and
twentieth century stood. To fulfill its
main purpose of providing an
accessible telescope experience, the
structure includes a lift right up into
the dome.
Selecting the best telescope for the
public to use was a major piece of work
for Geoff Wyatt, education program
officer, and Andrew Jacob, curator of
astronomy. Comparisons were made
between many available instruments,
to find the one that would give the best
viewing from a city environment.
Andrew James, well respected amateur
astronomer and astronomy history
expert, advised on the selection, as well
as its placement in the dome from the
viewpoint of a wheelchair user.
The final decision was to purchase a
telescope from a company in Colorado,
USA, called DFM Engineering, which
has a unique design for a purpose-built
attachment, called an Articulated Relay
Eyepiece. This extended eyepiece
enables a person in a wheelchair to use
the telescope by moving the eyepiece
closer to them, rather than trying to
get the person in the wheelchair into a
viewing position. It is unique to DFM
Engineering.
The project is part of a larger master
plan to increase access to astronomy
and bring Sydney Observatorys
collection home. It is a major
enhancement of access to the Sydney
Observatory site, and will provide a
first-class astronomical experience for
all visitors.
Toner Stevenson is Manager Sydney
Observatory, MAAS. She is a Doctoral
Candidate at The University of Sydney
where she is completing her thesis
about the involvement of women in the
Astrographic Catalogue in Australia.
AS&T Test Report Rod Mollise
Celestron Package:
A Lot
for a
Little
An ensemble of
Celestron equipment
provides excellent
visual and photographic
performance.
VX Mount
WHAT WE LIKE:
Excellent Go To accuracy
Tracking good enough for unguided
30-second exposures
Stable with an 8-inch SCT and
accessories
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
Hand-control cable is too short
The included counterweight is too
light for use with the telescope and
heavy cameras or accessories
s Robert Heinlein used to say.

There aint no such thing as a free
lunch. Thats usually true, but I
almost feel like I got a free meal with
Celestrons Edge 800 Schmidt-Cassegrain
Telescope and VX mount. I found the
combination of the advanced 20-cm SCT
and inexpensive German equatorial mount
(GEM) surprisingly capable, especially
The authors Celestron 20-cm Edge SCT sits atop a
VX German equatorial mount. The standard 9x50mm finderscope is attached. A 5-kg counterweight
is included in the package.
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
when equipped with Celestrons Edge

f/7 reducer, off-axis guider, and
StarSense auto-alignment system.
I have dreamed of an enormous
SCT on a fork mount to ease me into
my golden years. Unfortunately, I have
to carry my scope to dark sites to do
my best observing, and I really didnt
want to haul a 35- or 40-cm telescope
around. The more I thought about it,
the more convinced I became that an
20-cm SCT was still the scope for me.
Maybe my retirement scope should be
a C8 of a new type, though, Celestrons
Edge 800.
Different from other SchmidtCassegrains, the Edge includes a builtin corrector-lens system that both
flattens the SCTs normally curved
field and reduces coma, the blurring of
stars at the field edge. The Edge 800 is
a scaled-down version of its innovative
big sister, the Edge 1400.
I thought Id purchase a new mount
too one that Celestron is pairing
with the Edge 800, the Advanced
VX. The VXs payload capacity is 14
kilograms, making it the companys
smallest computer-equipped GEM.
But its well matched for a C8.
I purchased the telescope and
mount last year, and they arrived in
pristine condition. The tube came
equipped with a 50-mm finder and
a Vixen-format dovetail bar to fit
the VX. AS&T recently borrowed a
StarSense and an off-axis guider from
Celestron and shipped them to me to
complete the package so I could write
this review.
The box that contained the VX
mount included the GEM head, a
5-cm steel-legged tripod, a single
5-kg counterweight, the NexStar
Plus computer hand control, a cable
for updating the mounts firmware,
an instruction manual, the basic
version of Software Bisques TheSkyX
planetarium software, and a DC
power cord with a cigarette-lighterstyle plug.
The Edge 800 is a striking pale
green and the mount is impressively
well finished for a GEM in this price
class. I particularly appreciated the
VXs large adjustment knobs, welllaid-out control panel, and big power
switch thats easy to manipulate with
gloved hands.
Visual Use
On my first clear night, I hustled
the new scope out to my clubs dark

site. I didnt run into any problems
assembling the mount or attaching
it to the scope. After a little practice,
most people wont need more than 10
to 15 minutes to set up the Edge/VX
combo for visual use.
The big deal, though, was not how
easy the scope and mount were to
assemble, but how easy they were to
transport. The package breaks down
into easily manageable components
that encourage me to use it frequently.
At 6.4 kilograms for the telescope, 7.7
kilograms for the mount head, and
8.2 kilograms for the tripod, I never
had to strain. The telescope was quite
stable on the mount with vibrations
dying out in a couple of seconds.
Before the VX can locate objects,
it must be Go To aligned. The first
step is entering the time, date, time
A DSLR is attached to the Celestron off-axis

guider. The auto-guider camera is not part
of the reviewed Celestron package.
metre-long hand-control cable, which

is a bit short.
The Edge f/7 Reducer
Even at 100,
anything I requested
from horizon to
horizon was in the
eyepiece when the
mount stopped.
zone, daylight-savings time status, and
location into the hand control. Most
of these entries will be a one-time job
because the mount is equipped with a
battery-powered, real-time clock that
keeps the date and time current.
There are several alignment options,
but the most accurate is the two-star
alignment. When you select that
option, the VX will point at two stars
it chooses from its database. After you
centre them in the finder and main
scope, the hand control will ask if
you want to add calibration stars. You
may add as many as four, but I found
three sufficient for excellent pointing
accuracy.
Even at a magnification of 100,
anything I requested from horizon
to horizon was in the eyepiece when
the mount stopped. In the year that
Ive had the VX, it amazingly has
never missed an object when Ive been
careful to do the alignment as outlined
in the manual. The only problem I
have encountered has been the one-
The addition of Celestrons Edge focal

reducer converts the f/10, 2,000-mmfocal-length Edge 800 to an f/7,
1,400-mm-focal-length telescope that
delivers lower powers and wider fields
of view. The reducer is specifically
designed to work with the Edges builtin corrective lenses to preserve the
scopes flat field. Although intended for
astrophotography, I found the reducer
very effective for visual use as well.
For prime-focus deep-sky imaging,
a focal reducer is highly desirable. The
Edge reducer, which is optimised for
small imaging chips, almost doubles
the size of a telescopes field and cuts
required exposure times in half. With
my Canon DSLR, stars were sharp all
across the frame.
Unguided Imaging
Since astrophotography was in my

plan on a recent field trip, I kept things
simple. I shot through the SCT and
reducer with my DSLR, but I didnt
Edge Focal Reducer

WHAT WE LIKE:
Sharp stars to the field edge
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
Using larger imaging chips
could pose a problem
AS&T Test Report
guide any exposures.

I mounted my Canon 60D camera
to the scope with a standard primefocus adapter threaded onto the
Edge Reducer, which replicates
the normal SCT threads. The only
problem I ran into was balance. The
VXs single counterweight was not
heavy enough to balance the telescope
in right ascension with the camera
onboard. Fortunately, I had brought an
additional 5-kg counterweight.
Because good tracking is critical for
imaging, once the Go To alignment
was complete, I performed the VXs
All-Star Polar Alignment procedure.
After centring a star I chose from the
hand controls database, I completed
the process by re-centring it again

using the mounts altitude and azimuth
adjusters rather than the hand control.
Preliminaries over, I sent the scope
to M15 and began firing 30-second
exposures. I shot twenty 30-second
subframes of the globular. My stars
were not quite round in all frames, but
stacking these short exposures into
a finished picture yielded pleasing
images. Whats amazing is that a
beginner could have achieved similar
results. I didnt do anything special; I
just snapped away.
The Off-Axis Guider
If you want to go much beyond

30-second exposures, youll need to
The author imaged the Dumbbell Nebula

(M27) through the Edge 800 setup. The
picture is a stack of twenty 30-second
unguided, prime-focus exposures using the
Edge f/7 focal-length reducer.
guide the VX. Today, thats done with

an autoguider camera that plugs into
the VXs autoguide port. You could use
a separate small telescope to provide
guide stars for the camera to monitor,
but flexure between the main scope
and guide scope can cause trailed
stars. Enter the Celestron off-axis
guider (OAG).
When I opened the box containing
the guider, my heart sank. There
appeared to be a million adapter rings
and spacers. Luckily, the instructions
for configuring the OAG for my setup

were clear. Three setscrews attached
the camera to the guider body. I
prefer a more secure connection,
but it caused no problems and I was
impressed by the OAGs otherwise
hefty construction and quality finish.
My pictures with the guider werent
award winners because I was imaging
from my light-polluted backyard
under a full Moon. And I did have one
scare when I began autoguiding
at first, the guide camera didnt pick
up a single star. It turned out that
my autoguider wouldnt reach focus
without an extension tube due to the
presence of the Edge reducer. With
the guider inserted into the tube from
an old Barlow, the OAG worked well,
keeping stars respectably round.
The StarSense
AutoAlign Camera
Celestrons StarSense accessory

mounts to the Edges tube in place
of the telescopes 50-mm finder and
automates the Go To alignment
process. The box contained a small
camera and a replacement NexStar
hand control. Connect the StarSense
controller in place of the original,
hook the camera to one of the mounts
auxiliary ports, and youre ready to go.
I was skeptical that such a seemingly
simple gadget would enable the VX to
align itself. Nevertheless, it worked.
I turned on the mount, entered the
date, time and city, and selected Auto
Alignment. StarSense directed the
mount to take images of star fields on
both sides of the meridian. Despite a
bright Moon, the camera was sensitive
enough to acquire 40 to 100 stars
every time. In only three minutes the
StarSense indicated that the VX was
aligned. Wed see about that.
The authors image of globular cluster M15

consists of twenty 30-second, stacked,
unguided, prime-focus f/7 exposures.
Off-Axis Guider
WHAT WE LIKE:
Good construction quality with
large, clear aperture
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
Camera and T-ring attach to
off-axis guider with less-thansecure setscrews
StarSense Auto-Align
Camera
WHAT WE LIKE:
Completes a good Go To
alignment in 3 minutes
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
The All-Star polar-alignment
feature did not function
The Celestron StarSense

camera takes the place of the
standard 9x50-mm finder when
used. This camera automates
the Go To alignment process.
I punched in M13. There it was

near the centre of the field of a 20mm eyepiece at 100. M57? Same.
M3? Yep. Every single object I chose
from horizon to horizon was in the
eyepiece. Go To accuracy seemed just
as good as with alignments done the
old-fashioned way.
Not that the StarSense was
perfect. My eyes had difficulty
with the displays small fonts. More
significantly, the StarSenses All-Star
polar-alignment routine didnt work.
The results it yielded were inaccurate
it put the telescope degrees away
from the celestial pole. I contacted
Celestron technical support, who
assured me they were working to make
All-Star functional by the end of 2014.
Even without All-Star, however, the
StarSense was amazing. Not only did it
align the VX as well as I could, it was
just so cool.
The VX mount is not a caviarclass GEM, but it makes up for that
with its low price, portability, and
solid performance. Throw in the
optically impressive Edge 800, the
Edge Reducer, the off-axis guider, and
the StarSense, and a novice or an
old hand will be equipped with a
system ready to take on almost any
task for a price lower than I would
have thought possible.
Contributing editor Rod Mollise writes an
entertaining astronomical blog at www.
uncle-rods.blogspot.com.
Gallery
Astrophotos from our readers
BATTLING BEACONS
Alun Davies
Venus competes with the lighthouse

at Cape Schank in Victoria. Alun used
a Nikon D600 on a tripod with a 18-35
Nikkor lens at 18mm. Manual exposure at
f/4 ISO 250 for 30 seconds. Processing
in Lightroom and Elements.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR IMAGES
Images should be sent electronically. Please first send a low-res JPG version to
contributions@skyandtelescope.com.au, and well get back to you with information
on how to send your hi-res versions if selected. Please provide full details of all
images, eg. date and time taken; telescope and/or lens used; mount; imaging
equipment type and model; film (if used); filter (if used); exposure or integration
time; and any software processing employed. Readers who have a contributed
image published in Australian Sky & Telescope will receive a 3-issue subscription to
the magazine.
RED MOON
Cecilia Watters
The Moon moved

through the Earth's
shadow on October 8,
2014, with an eerie red
result. Camera used was
a Nikon Coolpix P510
on a tripod. Exposure
was 1/100th-sec, f/3 at
ISO 800.
GLOBULAR GLOW
Dylan O'Donnell
Globular star cluster Messier 22 is just over 10,000

light-years from Earth. Dylan used a Celestron 9.25"
SCT on a CG-5 mount, focal reducer, Canon 70D
with BackyardEOS software. Exposure was 10x 30s
at ISO 1600, unguided, and stacked in Nebulosity.
Gallery
EDGY GALAXY
John Dolby
Known variously as the Silver Coin galaxy,

Silver Dollar galaxy, Sculptor Galaxy and
NGC253, this galaxy is a little over 11 million
light-years from Earth. The image is a
combination of 102 images for a total exposure
time of 2.8 hours using a QSI 583 camera and
Maxim DL Pro V5 software. Processed with
Pixinsight, GradientXterminator, Neat Image
and Adobe CS5. Telescope was a Celestron
11" SCT with Celestron CGE Pro mount on a
Southern Cross Pier.
SOLAR FLAIR
Paul Martinaitis
Taken with a Lunt 60 (Single Stack) solar telescope

using a 2.5x Barlow and DMK51 camera. For this
nine-panel mosaic, Paul chose the best 100 of 600
frames for the solar prominences, and the best 100
of 1,200 frames for the disc. Software processing
using AS!2 and Photoshop 6.
ORION NEBULA
Roger Gifkins
The famous Messier 42 is a perennial favourite

with astrophotographers. Roger used a TSA
102 refractor, Moravian G2-4000 CCD at
-20C, Paramount PMX+, LRGB exposures of
43:24:24:24 minutes (4 min subs all unguided),
and processed the image in Nebulosity and
Photoshop.
DISAPPEARING ACT
Will Vrbasso
Saturn slipped behind the Moon on August 4,

2014. Will captured the scene using a Canon
EOS6D camera through a 6mm eyepiece on
a 15cm Newtonian telescope. Exposures at
ISO12800 were 1/160th sec for the Moon and
1/60th sec for Saturn. Processed in Photoshop.
Market
Place
REPAIRS TO ALL NEW

OR ANTIQUE
OPTICAL EQUIPMENT
.COM.AU
Australias Favourite Optics Retailer
Telescopes - Binoculars Microscopes - Accessories
Waterproof 2.3m, 3.5m, 5.0m & 6.7m

Complete Observatories.
www.siriusobservatories.com
Free DVD (while stocks last) info@siriusobservatories.com
Designed & Manufactured in Australia and
shipped to anywhere in the world!!
Including:
Binoculars, Microscopes,
Telescopes, Magnifiers,
Spottingscopes, Eyepieces, Alidades,
Range Finders, etc
ROGER DAVIS
Ph: 0425 709 508
4/128-130 Meredith St, Bankstown NSW 2200
www.rogersopticsrestoration.com.au
ABN 36 139 116 568
Brands we represent: Celestron, Saxon,

Skywatcher, Steiner, Bushnell, Carl Zeiss, ZWO
Camera, Optex, Vixen, Kson, Nikon, Yukon, Pulsar,
Byfield Optics, Simmons, Alpen, Burris, Motic.
Address: 8/23 Cook Rd, Mitcham VIC 3132.
Ph: 1300 884 763,
Email: support@opticscentral.com.au
Lighter!
Faster!
MicroLine ML16803
Colder!
If youd like to reach

thousands of astronomers
email us at advertising@
skyandtelescope.com.au
Small & Lightweight (3.5 lbs.)

Fastest Downloads (full-frame @ 3.8sec.)
Deeper Cooling Than Alta U16 (-50c)
Legendary Frame Quality
April 2015
Booking close: 23 January
Material close: 30 January
flicamera.com

s&tAussie_ML16803.indd 1
BOOK
NOW
11/25/11 3:55 PM
Next Issue
ON SALE
5th March
NASA
Happy birthday Hubble

The world's most famous
telescope is celebrating its 25th
birthday. We take a look back to a
quarter of a century of discovery.
Seeing Minor Moons

Ever wanted to spot some of the
small moons of the Solar System?
We share tips on how to observe
these challenging planetary
satellites.
21st-Century
Astrophotography
We look at recent trends in deep
sky imaging by the world's best
amateur astrophotographers.
Design Your Own Custom Adapter at!

www.preciseparts.com
Create and order online your astronomical adapter
with Build-An-Adapter
in just a few clicks or taps
Build-An-Adapter knows how to interconnect most

commercial astronomical devices including
Focusers, Rotators, Correctors, Off-Axis Guiders,
Filter Wheels, Cameras, and more
info@preciseparts.com
Save as PDF after changing this text color to WHITE

then print with a scale factor of 46% making sure that the new size

is reected in the print preview window before clicking Print.

Actual size should be 4.6 x 2.3 inch or 117 x 59 mm

to show what the nal ad will look like but the artwork can be emailed
to S&T Australia in high resolution.

THE MILLENNIUM SIMULATION PROJECT
Cosmic Voids
The emptiest parts of the universe
may hold secrets to understanding
the mysteries of dark matter and
dark energy
FIND US ON
FACEBOOK
Shop at
Australian
Sky&Telescope!
Attention
Club
Members
Did you know you can

get a subscription
to AS&T by being
a member of an
astronomy club?
Subscribers also
get 10% off charts,
DVDs etc from AS&T.
Contact your club
or subscribe direct
to Australian Sky &
Telescope.
Tel: (02) 9439 1955
subs@odysseus.com.au
Solar System
News DVD
This DVD features

images from
Messenger at
Mercury, Venus
Express, Cassini
at Saturn, and
Mars as revealed
by orbiters and
rovers. It contains
programs on each
of the planets plus
comets, asteroids, and dwarf planets.
A 2-hour visual feast. $11.95
Spaceflight
DVD
Immerse
yourself in
stunning images
of spaceflight.
See the majestic
curved Earth
glide quietly by
under you and
bear witness to
that one small
step that forever
changed human history. Spaceflight
DVD is two hours of visual wonder.
$11.95
Eyes On The
Sky DVD
This 60-minute
produced by the
European Southern
Observatory (ESO)
covers the history
of the telescope,
its importance,
and some of the
technological
breakthroughs.
$11.95
The Universe
DVD
Star Charts
A series of 18 maps (nine doublesided A4 pages) + CD covering

the entire sky. The charts have a
water-resistant laminate coat to
make them more durable when
used outside. An additional
reference guide provides an
overall view of all 18 charts and
an index to the constellations and
major stars. $19.95
See more at
For more information or for stockist details, please
email celestron@sheldonandhammond.com.au or
phone 1800 209 999
Order today by ringing (02) 9439 1955 with your credit card details handy,
or you can fill in the order form on page 67 and post or fax it back to us.

AS&T_The Market Place 2013.indd 1
12/09/13 11:48 AM
This 128-minute
DVD features
discoveries
from the Hubble
Space Telescope
about star
clusters, nebulae,
extrasolar planets,
galaxies, dark
matter, the Big
Bang and cosmology, and more. There
is also a special section featuring the
best of Hubble. A must have. $11.95
Inside This Issue

Manufacturers Dealer Directory Bringing together Manufacturers and Dealers
CELESTRON
MEADE
SAXON
www.celestron.com
www.meade.com
www.saxon.com.au
Optics Central
Vic Ph 1300 884 763
Binocular & Telescope Shop

www.bintel.com.au
NSW Ph (02) 9518 7255
Vic Ph (03) 9822 0033
Optics Central
Vic Ph 1300 884 763
OZScopes
www.ozscopes.com.au
Vic Ph 1800 726 737
Sirius Optics
Qld Ph (07) 3423 2355
Telescopes Direct
www.telescopesdirect.com.au/ast
WA 1800 669 608
FINGER LAKES
INSTRUMENTATION
www.flicamera.com
www.bintel.com.au
NSW Ph (02) 9518 7255
Vic Ph (03) 9822 0033
Sirius Optics
Qld Ph (07) 3423 2355
ORION TELESCOPES &

BINOCULARS
www.telescope.com
www.bintel.com.au
NSW Ph (02) 9518 7255
Vic Ph (03) 9822 0033
Sirius Optics
Qld Ph (07) 3423 2355
OZScopes
www.ozscopes.com.au
Vic Ph 1800 726 737
SIRIUS OBSERVATORIES
www.siriusobservatories.com
Advanced Telescope Supplies
www.atscope.com.au
NSW Ph (02) 9541 1676
www.bintel.com.au
NSW Ph (02) 9518 7255
Vic Ph (03) 9822 0033
Sirius Optics
Qld Ph (07) 3423 2355
To appear on this page, please contact the editor via e-mail at editor@skyandtelescope.com.au
Advertisers Index Australian Sky & Telescope magazine acknowledges and thanks the advertisers
who appear in this issue. Speciality astronomy equipment manufacturers and dealers are an important resource for
astronomers. We encourage you to visit the advertisers in this issue and benefit from their experience.
Advanced Telescope Supplies ........................ 63
Astronomical Society of Australia ................. 35
AstroShop ........................................................ 53, 95
Australian Sky & Telescope ........................ 65, 96
Finger Lakes Instrumentation .....................3, 94
Journeys Worldwide ........................................... 67
Meade Instruments Corp ................................2,99

Optics Central................................................. 43, 94
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars ... 6-7,57,59,61
OZScopes ..................................................29, 31, 33
PreciseParts............................................................ 95
Saxon ................................................................. 17, 95
Sheldon & Hammond ............................9, 96, 100

Sirius Observatories ............................................ 94
Sirius Optics ........................................................... 21
VernonScope ......................................................... 67
Focal Point Damian G. Allis
Stus Last Lesson
In case of the unexpected, make it easier to distribute your astronomy possessions.
tuart Forster (known to friends

as Stu) was a mentor, educator,
and a highly regarded amateur
astronomer. It came as a great shock
in January 2011 when we learned of
his sudden passing at age 55, having
just retired from his medical practice
to spend more time with his family,
telescopes and imaging software.
Although Stus family appreciated
his celestial activities, his familiarity
with his equipment was his own.
He had more than a dozen scopes,
dozens of eyepieces and filters, six
CCD rigs, two domes, 400 books,
S&T back to 1964 . . . you get the
idea. Stu was unique for the size of his
collection, but the problem of dealing
with specialised equipment when
the unexpected occurs is one that all
amateur astronomers risk sharing.
Ryan Goodson and I have helped
Stus family sell his collection. As we
have gone through this process, weve
learned that you can make the lives of
your family and fellow astronomers
much easier by taking stock of what
you own. If you werent here tomorrow
but your gear was, how much work
would it be for someone else to deal
with it? We recommend you consider
the following:
1. Keep a list of everything and let
someone know that this list exists and
where he or she can find it.
2. If its valuable, say so. If it can be
thrown away, say that, too.
3. If you cant keep the original boxes,
use containers to keep grouped items
together. Stu kept Tupperware in
business by placing complete sets of
tools and components into labeled
containers.
4. As you organise or modify your
collection, take a picture of complete
sets of similar objects, then add
image labels and descriptions to your
inventory. You instantaneously make a
mountain a molehill.
5. Stus collection was excessive in
some respects, but he wasnt just an
observer. He was the closest thing our
region had to an equipment library
where people could pick up a piece
of astronomy equipment on loan,
DAMIAN G. ALLIS
Astronomy
club members
from far around
are putting Stus
gear to good use.
try it out and bring it back (usually).
Consider the possible future of your
equipment.
6. Join a club! Your local astronomical
society is a support group for others
who share your passion. Its also the
first place your family can go to when
they start selling stuff. Were happy
to say that astronomy club members
from far around are putting Stus gear
to good use.
7. Be aware that proper distribution
will not be easy. I posted
announcements on several astronomy
websites when I started selling Stus

equipment. I was sent take-down
notices within hours because I wasnt
selling my own stuff and didnt
have seniority enough to post my
announcement in the classifieds
section. Two years later, and were still
sorting out items and finding ways to
sell them.
8. Keep books and magazines in
the local area. See if your local
public library or high school accepts
donations.
If you have other helpful ideas,
please find a way to add them to this
list and let others know!
Damian G. Allis is a research professor
of chemistry at Syracuse University and
a fellow with the Forensic and National
Security Sciences Institute. He is director
and co-organiser for CNY Observers &
Observing (www.cnyo.org) and a 2014
NASA Solar System Ambassador.
LX200 ACF SERIES

2014 Meade Instruments Corp. All rights reserved. Patents pending. Speciications and prices subject to change without notice. 30-13081
PROFESSIONAL CLASS TELESCOPES
14 LX200 ACF
12 LX200 ACF
10 LX200 ACF
8 LX200 ACF
THE BENCHMARK
benchmark \bench-mrk\: something that serves as a
standard by which others may be measured or judged.
Every endeavor has a benchmark from which all others are
judged. From its introduction in 1992, the LX200 has always
been a product for which all others compared to. In 2015,
the LX200 ACF still meets this criterion. Superb optical
performance coupled with time proven computerized
pointing and tracking has made the LX200 ACF series a
best-seller in the high-performance telescope class.
BINOCULAR & TELESCOPE SHOP
BINOCULAR
& TELESCOPE SHOP
02.9518.7255
02.9518.7255
ADELAIDE OPTICAL CENTRE

08.8232.1050
ADELAIDE OPTICAL CENTRE
ASTRO OPTICAL SUPPLIES

PTY. LIMITED
08.8232.1050
02.9436.4360
SIRIUS OPTICS
07.3423.2355 SIRIUS OPTICS
07.3423.2355
www.meade.com
30-13081_LX200PrfsnlClssTlscp_May_June2014_AST.indd 1
3/26/2014 2:01:39 PM
Much More Than The
TELESCOPES
CGE Pro 1400HD - The immense lightgathering of 14 aplanatic EdgeHD high
definition/high contrast optics on an
observatory-class go-to German equatorial
mount to give you a high performance
telescope that can fulfil your every visual
and imaging desire.
WORLDS #1
Telescope Manufacturer
BINOCULARS
Granite ED Series Roof Prism Binoculars
are the pinnacle of optical and mechanical
design. Whether you need binoculars for
birding, sports or hunting, the Celestron
Granite binoculars line has something for
you.
SPOTTING SCOPES
Regal M2 uses Celestrons proprietary XLT
coatings to provide sharp images, while the
extra-low-dispersion (ED) glass enhances
the resolution, colour, and contrast of
your view. The body is constructed from
a lightweight, yet strong, magnesium
alloy, and the optics are protected with
waterproofing and fog proofing.
ASTROIMAGING
Nightscape CCD - a one shot, easy to
use 10.7MP color CCD camera designed
for astro-imaging. The regulated ThermoElectric Cooling (TEC) system completely
removes vibration from the laminar air
flow, resulting in crystal clear, unobscured
astronomical images. With the Nightscape
and included AstroFX software, youll
always get a perfectly stretched, framed,
brightened, and saturated master image.
Celestron Complete Ad.indd 1
MICROSCOPES
Micro Fi - Stream real-time video from the
handheld illuminating microscope directly to
smartphone and tablet devices. Zoom in up
to 80X to detect tiny details and stream live
video to up to three devices simultaneously.
You can even use the Micro Fi as a
regular video camera by adjusting the lens
configuration.
Australian Geographic | shop.australiangeographic.com.au

OzScopes | www.ozscopes.com.au
Telescopes Direct | www.telescopesdirect.com.au
Optics Central | www.opticscentral.com.au
For more information or for a complete list of Celestron retailers

call 1800 808 971 or email celestron@sheldonandhammond.com.au
19/09/2014 10:27 am

Australian Sky & Telescope - 2015

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Australian Sky & Telescope - 2015

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Raise your astro imaging to a new

level with our expert tips p.74

Deep Sky treats for backyard

Mars explorers train in the

LX90 ACF SERIES

ASTRONOMYS TRIPLE CROWN

OWN THE LEGEND

ADELAIDE OPTICAL CENTRE SIRIUS OPTICS

Widest Field and Highest Resolution: Introducing our 50 Megapixel ML50100

KAF-50100 with microlens

KAF-50100 without Microlens

Significant Increase in Sensitivity

For more information, visit

2015 Finger Lakes Instrumentation, Inc. All rights reserved.

Finger Lakes Instrumentation

Technical challenges of giant scopes

NEWS & FEATURES

13 10 & 5 Years Ago

Hubble's deepest views

Into Thin Air

AS&T TEST REPORT

A Lot for a Little

4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015

OBSERVING & EXPLORING

Sydney's historic observatory

Take better astrophotos

THE ASTRONOMY SCENE

Training for Mars in the Aussie desert

Like its bigscope brethren, the Gran Telescopio Canarias

AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE (ISSN 1832-0457) is published 8 times per

(binoculars not included)

Orion Mini Deluxe Pro

Orion SteadyPix Universal

Proven reputation for innovation,

High quality products at

Orion Giant View 25x100

Extensive assortment of award

Orion products are only available

Orion StarShoot G3 Deep Space

Orion SteadyPix Deluxe

The Binocular & Telescope Shop

Astro Optical Supplies

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

Orion Dual Finder Scope

Orion SteadyPix Pro Univ.

Orion StarShoot Solar

Orion 9.25" ID Full

Orion Resolux 15x70 WP

Orion GoScope II 70mm

Orion Shorty 1.25" (31mm)

Shopping has never been easier.

THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE

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

8 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015

11 inch f/2.2 optical design with rare-earth glass for

Comet Siding Spring Skims Mars