Cosmic Corner February 2feb2024

In this conversation, the hosts discuss Irish Astronomy Week, which will take place in March 2024. They mention various events, such as talks, library presentations, and building planet spheres. They also mention the upcoming total solar eclipse in Canada and the possibility of seeing Betelgeuse, a star in the Orion constellation, go supernova. One of the hosts talks about a new telescope called Seastar S50, which can take pictures of celestial objects and is controlled by a smartphone. They express excitement about the convenience and ease of use of this telescope. Observing the night sky is a captivating and enlightening hobby that allows us to connect with the vast universe that surrounds us. Each month brings new opportunities to explore the wonders of the night sky. Hello, I'm Sinead Mannion and welcome to Cosmic Corner, our February edition. I'm joined today with Graeme Sales and Paul Evans, so say hello boys. Hiya. Hello, how are you? Very good. I should have said actually that Paul Evans is from the Irish Astronomical Association in Northern Ireland and Graeme and myself are from Connemara Astronomy Club in Galway. Thank you for joining us today. So we have a lot to talk about, so I'll start if that's okay. So we're going to talk about an event that is coming up, well nearly 100 events that are coming up in March. So from the 9th of March, the 16th of March 2024 will be Irish Astronomy Week. This is the second year that this is happening and last year was a really, really, really successful week. There was events all over Ireland, North and South and this year we hope to even beat that success. So a couple of examples would be, Paul you're giving a talk and I'll ask you about that in a minute, but there's going to be an online Air Search 1 talk and that's Ireland's first satellite. There'll be lots of library talks, there'll be ones on Introduction to Astronomy, somebody's going to be talking about Planets and Asteroids in Galway, you're going to be building your own Planet Spheres in Cork, James Webb Telescope on an online talk from Astronomy Ireland. There's lots of events coming on so if you check out the website, irishastronomyweek.ie that's irishastronomyweek.ie. So Paul, do you want to tell us about your talk quickly, the one you're doing? Yeah, I'm doing two talks at the moment in Irish Astronomy Week. One I'm going to the library up in Valley Castle up on the North Coast and just giving them an overall introduction to amateur astronomy, what you can see and how you go about seeing it starting with a pair of binoculars and a wee telescope perhaps and stuff like that. And I'm doing something a bit bigger at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, AOP, and I'm talking there about the total solar eclipse, nature's finest spectacle. And I've got a bit more news on that actually, but I'm going to see the next total solar eclipse on the 8th of April in Canada. Oh wow! Will we have any view of it here at all, Paul? Only very slightly. If you've got a good western view, there will be a chunk missing from the sun when it sets, but it's only about 10% of the sun will be there. The totality goes up across the whole of America, well in fact from Mexico, Texas, then up through the middle of America and into Canada. I'm going to see it at Niagara Falls. Oh wow! Two reasons really, one is that I've never been to Niagara Falls, so it's a good opportunity to do that as well. The other thing is we looked at going to America before, and the trouble is with America is that all the motels and everything where the totality is, they kind of stick the arm in and put the prices up. Of course, yeah. In Canada, we booked hotels for just the usual price. That's fantastic. And we thought, well that's good, we'll support them. Fantastic. And we have friends and family in Canada as well, and they're joining us, so it's a good little trip. That's awesome. We can't wait to hear all about it when you come back. You might do a podcast when you're there, maybe? Absolutely, yeah. That would be amazing, yeah, brilliant. I'm trying to slim down, i.e. to make smaller my camera stuff, because I'm not into lugging 10-inch telescopes around anymore. Oh goodness, no. No, definitely not. So I've got a little camera with quite a long lens on it, and a solar filter for it, and that will do for the eclipse. Fantastic. Brilliant. So yeah, that's Irish Astronomy Week. Our event brain will be Declan Holmes from Science Ireland, and he's going to do a talk on the tour of the solar system, and we're also going to be hosting the AirSat talk from UCD on Zoom, so we're really looking forward to that. So check out the website, irishastronomyweek.ie. It's going to be brilliant. There is events all over Ireland, and anybody listening out there who would like to give an event, or like to do a talk, or do a serving night with their local club, or their local primary school, or secondary school, or whatever groups you're in, email on the Irish Astronomy website, and I'm sure they'll be happy to accommodate your event and put it on the website. So that's what's happening down on Earth. So what's going on up above, lads? Well, now this is a great time of year. If you get clear skies this time of year, and we haven't been too lucky with that. No. But once you do, when you do, they're great. And the biggest part of it for me is Orion. When I first got into space and everything in 1968, it was Christmas, and that was Apollo 8 happening then over Christmas, and I was given by Santa Patrick Moore's observer's book of astronomy, and I went out, and there was Orion. That's what you see at that time of year. Oh, wow. And it's still here now. As soon as really it gets dark in the southeast, there is Orion. It's belt, it's shoulders, it's two bright stars at its two corners. There's Betelgeuse, which is red, Rigel, which is blue. Keep an eye on the two of them, because Betelgeuse is a variable star, and some say it's on the verge of exploding, i.e. going supernova. That's that thing that happens where there is no more fuel, and so there's no more energy pushing it outwards, but there's lots of gravity pulling it back inwards, and it all just collapses and goes big bang. They say that's fairly imminent, but unfortunately we are talking cosmic timescales here. Okay. So that really means sometime in the next million years, but it could be tomorrow. Some people worry a bit about whether that would do us any harm. Yeah. If it does happen, Paul, I assume we'd see an extremely bright light for a while. We would. It would be roughly the same brightness as the full moon, so visible in daytime as well as night, casting shadows at night. Do you know how long that might go on for? Several weeks, we think. Okay. We don't see many of these things, so we don't really know, but supernovas go on for a few weeks, and then they fizzle out. So that would be an exciting thing to see. It is just about far enough away that we'll be all right. Okay. It's about 600 odd light years away, Betelgeuse. It's still a bit of an argument about exactly how far away it is, but if it was, say, Sirius, which is eight light years away, and that blew up, we could lose our atmosphere. Oh, my goodness. Okay. And consequently, game over, you know? Yeah. Yeah, completely, yeah. But Betelgeuse is far enough away that it would merely be very spectacular, so it may happen. Sorry, Paul. After Betelgeuse explodes, and we have the bright light for a while, then I assume what's left of Betelgeuse will reduce to something quite small. Oh, yes, it'll collapse down, yeah. Collapse down into a pulsar, probably. So we'll be able to see the kind of parallelogram of Orion that we see now. Will we still have the four stars? No, it'll have a bit missing. It'll have a bit missing, but there will be a nebula there. So if you take, for example, the Crab Nebula, which is not that far away from Orion, actually, up at the top end of Taurus, that is a supernova remnant of a star that exploded in 1054 A.D. and was recorded by Chinese astronomers at the time, and that was a bright star visible in the daytime for weeks. And Betelgeuse would be kind of like that. And you do need quite a good scope to see the Crab Nebula now. So a supernova just disintegrates when it's there? Yeah, yeah. There's a remnant there that glows for a long time. Yeah, so, yeah. We'll see it when it happens. Okay. One of the things, actually, I am just talking about Orion, really, which has been my focus for the moment. I bought myself a little present at Christmas. It's one of those things where sometimes technology just makes a big step forward. And it's not that anything dramatic happens, but just that somebody clever takes lots and lots of ideas and puts them all in one box. Oh, brilliant. And this is what I got now for not really a huge amount of money. I mean, I know it would be a lot of money for some people, but I bought a Seastar S50. And a Seastar S50 is a little box about a foot tall and a few inches round, like the size of a shoebox, say. Okay. And you put it down, and what it's got in it, it's got a GPS, a compass, a spirit level, a computer with a map of all the stars in it, and a little telescope and the camera. Wow. You control this whole thing by Wi-Fi from your phone, and it knows where it is, so it knows what time it is, it knows which way to point to find certain things, and it will actually recommend certain things for you to look at. It does the sun, the moon, the planets. It's not so good at the planets because the telescope doesn't magnify a lot, but it's good at sort of galaxies and nebulas and things like that. And you just put it down for 10 or 20 minutes, and it takes pictures of anything in the night sky. It syncs itself up to the Earth's rotation, so it's following them in the lens and just takes pictures. Now, I've done all this the hard way, you know, for about 20 years, and boy, it's hard. Yeah. Some of the guys are sort of saying, well, guys, this is too easy, you know, this is for kids. Yes. There are a lot of people like me that just can't pick up a 10-inch telescope and put it out into the garden anymore and all that sort of thing, and I haven't got time, you know. I just take this thing outside, I put it outside, I can go inside if I like, because the Wi-Fi still works on the phone, and it starts taking pictures for me, and they're great. I want one. I know. I want one. What's it called? A Seastar S50. A Seastar S50. And there's a few other models, but that seems to be the one that's got it right, you know. There are other ones that are thousands of pounds, and they are better, of course they are, but, you know, this is a few hundred pounds, and so it's not... Well, it sounds amazing for a few hundred pounds. Oh, my God. It is, yeah. People spend that on a phone easily, you know. That's so true. Oh, my God. Graeme, you know now what to get me. How versatile is the camera, Paul? Well, it's one of those things that it does what it does. Now, you can actually use it terrestrially as a telephoto lens, and I've actually seen great pictures of birds in trees and stuff. Oh, wow. You know. So, it's versatile. Its exposure range is magnificent. Okay. Because it will do the sun with a filter. It will do the full moon, and it will just get it right, and it will do stars, and it will do nebulas, and it just works it all out for itself. So, it's totally automatic, is it? Yep. Wow. You can influence it. You can, you know, you can refine it, make adjustments to it from your phone, and they keep adding more and more. That's another good thing about it. Most things, you buy them and that's it, and this one keeps getting better because they upgrade the firmware every couple of weeks, you know. Wow. Wow. Oh, my God. Wow. I'm having a lot of fun with it. Couple of other things going on in sort of space. Artemis. You know that I came to talk to you guys in November about Artemis? Yeah. You forget all that now because it's all changed. Oh, really? Oh, no. Well, the general, you know, the general plan is the same, but they've really sort of rejigged the whole timetable. So, we were hoping Artemis 2 would go sometime this year, but it's actually going to go sometime next year, which means that Artemis 3 that will actually land, we're now looking into 2026 for that, not next year. So, it's one of those things, this is not the 1960s where you just did cavalier stuff with health and safety that, you know, that is actually terrifying to consider now. Yeah, yeah. No, this has got to be exactly right, guys, because, you know, we want it to work first time. So, the timetables are slipping quite... And is this common in big projects, obviously? Oh, yeah. This is the very cutting edge of... Yeah. I know we've been to the Moon before, but this is going to the South Pole of the Moon, which is much harder than later, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because you have to go through hoops to actually go to the Moon and then get into a different orbit around the Moon so that you can land on the South Pole. So, it is hard and so that's, you know... I suppose it's a good time to just remind ourselves. Graeme, do you want to mention this, that this particular week traditionally hasn't been a good one for NASA? Oh, you mean historically? Historically, yes, indeed. Yeah. I mean, going back to, you know, 1967 and the Apollo 1 fire, you know, that was... Yeah, sure. That was this week. No way! Wow! Space is generally very tricky, though, isn't it? It is. It's always dangerous. Many planes have had accidents over the years. I guess, really, NASA... It's terrible for NASA if they have an accident that is a fatality. With humans, maybe machines aren't particularly important, but it's a human fatality. It's terrible. That's it. And then also this week, in 1986, we lost the Challenger space shuttle. Yes, yes. Oh, yeah. 73 seconds in, the whole thing leaked. Yes. Fire. Set fire to the fuel tank and bang. That was that. Do you... Obviously, I was only a child, but do you two remember Challenger? Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. Challenger is very well. Yeah. It must have been devastating to see it live on telly, just people dying. My God. Yeah. Probably not many people saw it live because... Oh, thank God. Because 1986, there was not 24-hour news TV that we take for granted now. But I actually was... I remember vividly, I was listening to Steve Wright in the afternoon, believe it or not, when he was on Radio 1. Radio 1, yeah. And I had driven up to London from my parents' house in Woking, sorry, to put the deposit on my first flat. Oh, my goodness. And I did that and I came home and my mum said to me, the space shuttle's blown up. And I go, oh, right. And they... I've still got on a videotape somewhere the Newsnight special that they did at very short notice. And it was, you know, it was top quality journalism for like now. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, that was a tragedy. And they had an inquiry and they learned a lot of lessons from that and they built another space shuttle, Endeavour. Yeah. Parts and stuff. And they carried on. Yeah. That's great. And this week, again, in 2003, they lost the space shuttle Columbia on re-entry. It broke up. Yes. Oh, my God. They better change their launch weeks from now on. Well, that's right. They do. I don't think they do much in that week anymore. No, certainly not. And they nearly... Now, what the inquiry said then was that the space shuttle was intrinsically dangerous and it must be stopped. But both... Was it Columbia and Fallinger? Yeah. It was Columbia. Right. President George W. Bush commissioned an inquiry and they said, this is dangerous, stop doing it. And George W. Bush, now, you can take or leave the man, but he did something fairly brave, I think, in that he said, now, is there a way that we can keep the space shuttle going under conditions of extreme safety, which is what they should have been doing in the first place? Of course, yeah. So that we can get the International Space Station finished. Yeah. Because otherwise, we lost the space station at that point. Yeah, that's true. And that's what they did. They had these missions. And you remember that they... When the space shuttle arrived at the space station, they made it do a backflip so they could photograph all of the bottom of it to make sure that tiles hadn't fallen off and stuff. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. That's what went wrong with, you know, with Columbia. Oh, my God. Bits were damaged on the way up. Oh, God. And when it came to land, it just burnt off one wing. Of course. And, Graeme, do you remember these... I mean, obviously, I remember Columbia, but do you remember Challenger? Do you remember that happening? I do, I do. And kind of Apollo. The detail gets a bit vague for me over the years. Of course, yeah. But I do. And I just recall hearing that the mission's been aborted or it's failed and you just think... Or whatever the vernacular is that NASA use. Yes, yes. That's a strange terminology they use. Yeah. You probably remember some of the words yourself, Paul. Yeah. To describe a disastrous mission. Terrible, terrible. But all I remember of Columbia was they kept sort of, you know, they were going UHF comm check, UHF comm check and nothing came back until gone. Oh, God, it's so, so sad. It just goes to show the dangers people put themselves through and, you know, it is amazing. These people are so incredibly brave. But this project that you put together, yeah, and everything relies on these few minutes. I know. Oh, yeah. And it's gone. It's gone. It's seconds. Oh, my God. It was such a shame. I know. That's this week in history, anyway. There's one other thing that's happened this week, actually, just the last few days. We've had a, it's a failure of a mission of sorts, but it was a tremendous success, really. And that's the Mars rover. Do you remember the Mars rover took a little drone with it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Helicopter. Helicopter. And they actually started, for the first time, started flying a helicopter around on Mars. Oh, wow. And ingenuity, it was called, the drone. Oh. And it was supposed to do five experimental flights to see if it can be done. And it actually, you know, it went up, and it did 72 successful missions, taking photographs of Mars and the lander from above. But unfortunately, this week, it broke a rotor. Oh. It broke here, as well, you know, and after 72 successful missions out of five intended. Wow. It's no longer a goer, so you can't knock that, really, can you? R.I.P. ingenuity. Very great. Paul, do you know how dense the atmosphere is on Mars, compared to that of... Oh, it's very, very undense. It's about 1%, or something like that. So this rotor must be really flying around, in order to give it that... Yeah. Yeah. Higher revs to grab the air and... Huge force, yeah. Yes. And it's not very heavy, no. It does help that Mars' gravity is one-third of ours. That's true, yeah. I guess, so, you know. But it still has mass, the same. Yeah. You know, the force pulling it down is less. Yeah. How big of a jaw is it? Would it be like a 1.2? I'm not sure, actually, no. I've just seen pictures of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's obviously quite big, because it needs to grab that air as best it can. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Hmm. OK. Very good. So what else is going on up there? What else is going on? Now, just a couple of things. First of all, you know, there's a lot going on up there, Very good. So what else is going on up there? What else is going on? Now, just a couple of things I'm going to talk about very briefly that leads into something else. That is, there's a bit of a dance of the planets going on in the morning, in that Venus, Mars, and Mercury are all a little bit away from the Sun. But, this is not a good place to be looking for it. It's one of those things, the angle of the ecliptic. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that the angle of the plane of the solar system, starting with the Sun, means that these planets are all a little bit away from the Sun. OK. And that is to say that we don't see Saturn now, but it's quite close to sunset. Yeah. And likewise, Neptune disappears into the same thing. And likewise, Neptune disappears into the same thing. And likewise, Neptune disappears into the same thing. So the only two planets you can really see, Jupiter, which is obvious, and it's just quite high in the sky, and to the left of it, you'll need a telescope at least, maybe binoculars will do it, and to the left of it, you'll need a telescope at least, maybe binoculars will do it, you can, with the help of a star chart, you can find Uranus as well, that's not very far from Jupiter. that's not very far from Jupiter. Oh, wow. OK. So there's sort of an upside to it, So there's sort of an upside to it, So there's sort of an upside to it, that if the angle of the ecliptic in the morning is very shallow, that if the angle of the ecliptic in the morning is very shallow, then it follows that the angle of the ecliptic in the evening is very steep. in the evening is very steep. So you increase visibility. So you increase visibility. So you increase visibility. Yeah, so what that means, now the moon phases this month, now the moon phases this month, the full moon is the snow moon on the 24th. on the 24th. Some people just say it's the full moon, Some people just say it's the full moon, they're all full moons. they're all full moons. Yeah, yeah. But North American Indian mythology But North American Indian mythology calls it the snow moon. calls it the snow moon. Yeah, the one just gone is the wolf moon, Yeah, the one just gone is the wolf moon, but the one coming up is the snow moon. but the one coming up is the snow moon. And that means, And that means, now when you look, the new moon is the 8th, the new moon is the 8th, but so on the 9th, but so on the 9th, you've got a fairly good opportunity you've got a fairly good opportunity to see a very thin moon. to see a very thin moon. Just as soon as the sun has set, Just as soon as the sun has set, if you look, don't even look at this if the sun is in the sky. Yeah, of course. But if you start scouting around with a pair of binoculars, with a pair of binoculars, you might see a very thin moon on the 9th you might see a very thin moon on the 9th and a less thin moon on the 10th. and a less thin moon on the 10th. and a less thin moon on the 10th. Because that comes up quite steeply, Because that comes up quite steeply, so it's easy to see. so it's easy to see. I managed to photograph I managed to photograph a very thin moon, a very thin moon, 18 hours and 32 minutes old, 18 hours and 32 minutes old, 18 hours and 32 minutes old, in February, in February, a few years ago, and I didn't even see it. and I didn't even see it. It's that thin. Wow. But I just took photos with a bridge camera with a bridge camera where I thought it would be where I thought it would be and, of course, you'd move it around a bit and, of course, you'd move it around a bit and, eventually, when I examined them afterwards, and, eventually, when I examined them afterwards, I'd go, yeah, there's a really thin moon. I'd go, yeah, there's a really thin moon. Wow. Oh, wow, that's fine. Oh, wow, that's fine. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, 18 hours and 32, So, yeah. So, 18 hours and 32, as good as it gets, and the 9th of February is an opportunity. is an opportunity. I'm not sure what the timing is. I'm not sure what the timing is. I haven't looked it up, but as soon as the sun has gone down, but as soon as the sun has gone down, but as soon as the sun has gone down, scout around with binoculars, you might see a thin moon. you might see a thin moon. Very good. Very good. 10th, it should be easy. 10th, it should be easy. Okay. So, there you are. So, there you are. That's about all I have to really say about what's going on. So, thank you for listening to Cosmic Corner. to Cosmic Corner. Stay safe and keep looking up. Stay safe and keep looking up. Yay! Yay! Thank you for listening to Cosmic Corner, Thank you for listening to Cosmic Corner, the monthly What's in the Night Sky podcast. the monthly What's in the Night Sky podcast. This podcast was produced, written and presented by Paul Evans, Graham Sales and Sinead Mannion. and Sinead Mannion. and Sinead Mannion.