We certainly hope you had the opportunity to keep an eye on our remote telescope! Despite the weather changes in the southern hemisphere causing a little rain delay, we’ve been looking forward to a clear night and firing the telescope back up. I know it’s certainly fascinating to watch and don’t be disappointed if you log on and get an error message. (That just means the scope is not operating at the moment or you need to refresh.) If you didn’t get a chance to watch the IYA telescope “live” on Galactic TV today, don’t worry. We took a video capture for you. Step inside to enjoy today’s view of Messier Object 10. We do it all for you…
The following information is a direct quotation from Wikipedia:
M10 Globular Cluster: Constellation – OPHIUCHUS
Messier 10 or M10 (also designated NGC 6254) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
The object was discovered by Charles Messier on May 29, 1764, who cataloged it as number 10 in his list. He described it as a “nebula without stars”, but later study revealed it as a globular cluster of thousands of stars.
M10 has an apparent diameter of some 20 arcminutes, about two-thirds of the apparent diameter of the Moon. Viewed through medium-sized telescopes it appears about half that size (8′ to 9′), as its bright core is only 35 light-years across. M10 has a spatial diameter of 83 light-years and is estimated to be 14,300 light-years away from Earth.
Four variable stars have been discovered in this cluster.
As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
Factual information is copied from: Wikipedia. Thank you so much!
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we hope UT reader Didi had a chance to follow the Small Magellanic Cloud for several hours in the remote telescope on April 12! (I was still down and out, but it was still there despite the moonlight!) Come on inside… Your request has been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
The following is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
Object: Small Magellanic Cloud – Constellation: TUCANA
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy. It contains several hundred million stars. Some speculate that the SMC was once a barred spiral galaxy that was disrupted by the Milky Way to become somewhat irregular. It still contains a central bar structure. At a distance of about 200,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors. It is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.
With a mean declination of approximately -73 degrees, it can only be viewed from the Southern Hemisphere and the lower latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. It is located in the constellation of Tucana and appears as a hazy, light patch in the night sky about 3 degrees across. It looks like a detached piece of the Milky Way. Since it has a very low surface brightness, it is best viewed from a dark site away from city lights. It forms a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which lies a further 20 degrees to the east. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a member of the Local Group.
In the southern hemisphere, the Magellanic clouds have long been included in the lore of native inhabitants, including south sea islanders and indigenous Australians. Persian astronomer Al Sufi labelled the larger of the two clouds as Al Bakr, the White Ox. European sailors may have first noticed the clouds during the Middle Ages when they were used for navigation. Portuguese and Dutch sailors called them the Cape Clouds, a name that was retained for several centuries. During the circumnavigation of the Earth by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519–22, they were described by Antonio Pigafetta as dim clusters of stars.[6] In Johann Bayer’s celestial atlas Uranometria, published in 1603, he named the smaller cloud, Nubecula Minor. In Latin, Nubecula means a little cloud.
Between 1834 and 1838, John Frederick William Herschel made observations of the southern skies with his 20-foot (6.1 m) reflector from the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. While observing the Nubecula Minor, he described it as a cloudy mass of light with an oval shape and a bright center. Within the area of this cloud he catalogued a concentration of 37 nebulae and clusters.
In 1891, Harvard College Observatory opened an observing station at Arequipa, Peru. From 1893 and 1906, under the direction of Solon Bailey, the 24-inch (610 mm) telescope at this site was used to survey photographically both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory, used the plates from Arequipa to study the variations in relative luminosity of stars in the SMC. In 1908, the results of her study were published, which showed that a type of variable star called a “cluster variable”, later called a Cepheid variable after the prototype star Delta Cephei, showed a definite relationship between the variability period and the star’s luminosity. This important period-luminosity relation allowed the distance to any other cepheid variable to be estimated in terms of the distance to the SMC. Hence, once the distance to the SMC was known with greater accuracy, Cepheid variables could be used as a standard candle for measuring the distances to other galaxies.
Using this period-luminosity relation, in 1913 the distance to the SMC was first estimated by Ejnar Hertzsprung. First he measured thirteen nearby cepheid variables to find the absolute magnitude of a variable with a period of one day. By comparing this to the periodicity of the variables as measured by Leavitt, he was able to estimate a distance of 10,000 parsecs (30,000 light years) between the Sun and the SMC. This later proved to be a gross underestimate of the true distance, but it did demonstrate the potential usefulness of this technique.
Small Magellanic Cloud for Didi
We would like to once again thank Didi for the request and remind you that you can always watch our IYA telescope “live” whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria by simply clicking on the logo “Live Remote Cam” to your right. Enjoy!
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we hope Johnathan Kade had a chance to follow 47 Tucana (NGC 104) for several hours in the remote telescope on April 11! (I was down and out – but the scope wasn’t.) Come on inside… Your request has been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
47 Tucanae (NGC 104) or just 47 Tuc is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about 16,700 light years away from Earth, and 120 light years across. It can be seen with the naked eye, and it is bright enough to earn a Flamsteed designation with a visual magnitude of 4.0.
It is one of only a small number of features in the southern sky with such a designation. 47 Tucanae was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751, its southern location having hidden it from European observers until then. The cluster appears roughly the size of the full moon in the sky under ideal conditions.
It is the second brightest globular cluster in the sky (after Omega Centauri), and is noted for having a very bright and dense core. It has 22 known millisecond pulsars, and at least 21 blue stragglers near the core. 47 Tucanae is included in Sir Patrick Moore’s Caldwell catalogue as C106.
NGC 104 competes with NGC 5139 for the title: Most splendid Globular Cluster in the sky. NGC 104 has two features in its favour. It is rounder and has a more compact core. However due to location more observers go for NGC 5139.
47 Tucana for Johnathan Kade
We would like to once again thank Johnathan Kade for his request and remind you that you can always watch our IYA telescope “live” whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria by simply clicking on the logo “Live Remote Cam” to your right. Enjoy!
On April 9, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then attention Astrofiend… Your request of Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) has gone live!
The following information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
Omega Centauri – NGC 5139 is a globular cluster seen in the constellation of Centaurus, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1677 who listed it as a Nebula. Omega Centauri had been listed in Ptolemy’s catalog 2000 years ago as a star. Lacaille included it in his catalog as number I.5. The English astronomer John William Herschel recognized it first as a globular cluster in the 1830s. It orbits our galaxy, the Milky Way. One of the few that can be seen with the naked eye, it is both the brightest and the largest known globular cluster associated with the Milky Way. Omega Centauri is located about 18,300 light-years (5,600 pc) from Earth and contains several million Population II stars. The stars in its center are so crowded that they are believed to be only 0.1 light years away from each other. It is about 12 billion years old.
Though it is not a star, Omega Centauri was given a Bayer designation. Unlike other globular clusters, it contains several generations of stars. It has been speculated that Omega Centauri may be the core of a dwarf galaxy several hundred times its present size, which was ripped apart and absorbed by our Milky Way galaxy. Omega Centauri’s chemistry and motion in the galaxy is also consistent with this picture.
Reporting in the April 1, 2008 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, astronomers claimed to have found evidence of a intermediate-mass black hole at the center of Omega Centauri. The observations were made with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini Observatory on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys showed how the stars are bunching up near the center of Omega Centauri, as seen in the gradual increase in starlight near the center. Measuring the speed of the stars swirling near the cluster’s center with the Gemini Observatory, the astronomers found that the stars closer to the core are moving faster than the stars farther away. The measurement implies that some unseen matter at the core is tugging on stars near it. By comparing these results with standard models, the astronomers determined that the most likely cause is the gravitational pull of a massive, dense object. They also used models to calculate the black hole’s mass.
Like Mayall II, Omega Centauri has a range of metallicities and stellar ages which hints that it did not all form at once (as globular clusters are thought to form) and may in fact be the remainder of the core of a smaller galaxy long since incorporated into the Milky Way.
We would very much like to thank Astrofiend for the suggestion of NGC 5139 and we hope you like the view! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
On April 8, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then come along as we view Alpha Centauri for Astrochick and Eta Carinae for Vino…
The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
Alpha Centauri – Constellation: CENTAURUS
Alpha Centauri, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, Rigil Kent, or Toliman, is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus and an established binary star system, Alpha Centauri AB. To the unaided eye it appears as a single star, whose total visual magnitude identifies it as the third brightest star in the night sky.
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to the Solar System, being only 1.34 parsecs, or 4.37 light years away from our Sun. “Alpha Centauri” (“Rigil Kentaurus”) is the name given to what appears as a single star to the unaided eye (and to our small telescope), the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus. With the aid of a larger telescope, Alpha Centauri can be resolved into a binary star system in close orbit. This is known as “Alpha Centauri AB” system.
Eta Carinae: CARINA
Eta Carinae is a hypergiant luminous blue variable star in the Carina constellation. Its luminosity is about four million times that of the Sun and, with an estimated mass of between 100 and 150 solar masses, it is one of the most massive stars yet discovered. Because of its mass and the stage of life, it is expected to explode in a supernova in the astronomically near future.
This object is currently the most massive nearby star that can be studied in great detail. While it is possible that other known stars might be more luminous and more massive, Eta Carinae has the highest confirmed luminosity based on data across a broad range of wavelengths; former prospective rivals such as the Pistol Star have been demoted by improved data.
Stars in the mass class of Eta Carinae, with more than 100 times the mass of the Sun, produce more than a million times as much light as the Sun. They are quite rare — only a few dozen in a galaxy as big as the Milky Way. They are assumed to approach (or potentially exceed) the Eddington limit, i.e., the outward pressure of their radiation is almost strong enough to counteract gravity. Stars that are more than 120 solar masses exceed the theoretical Eddington limit, and their gravity is barely strong enough to hold in their radiation and gas.
We would very much like to thank Astrochick and Vino for their suggestions and we hope you like the view! There’s still plenty of time to place more requests, so just add them on at our IYA Remote Telescope Request Page and we’ll get ‘er done! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we’re ready to bring your first photos up on-line for you. We hope you had a chance to follow your object for several hours in the remote telescope today! For Universe Today readers Astrochick and Vino? Come on inside… Your requests have been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
Alpha Centauri for Astrochick
Eta Carinae for Vino
There’s still plenty of time to place more requests, so just add them on at our IYA Remote Telescope Request Page and we’ll get ‘er done! Enjoy!
On April 6, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then tell Jamie in Edinburgh that Aunty Ren said to wake up as we view Ana Tomsa of Croatia’s suggestion of NGC 2516…
The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
NGC 2516: Constellation – CARINA
Southern open cluster NGC 2516 – The Diamond Cluster – was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751-1752.
Called The Diamond Cluster because of its stellar clarity. The cluster itself is easily visible with the naked eye from dark skies but binoculars will yield a much better view. The Diamond Cluster contains two beautiful 5th magnitude red giants and three double stars. A small telescope would be required to split the double stars. It contains about 100 stars that appear about the same size as a full moon.
NGC 2516 and the recently discovered nearby star cluster Mamajek 2 in Ophiuchus have similar age and metallicity. Recently, kinematic evidence was presented by E. Jilinksi and coauthors that suggests that these two stellar groups may have formed in the same star-forming complex some 135 million years ago
We would very much like to thank Ana M. Tomsa of Croatia (for Jamie in Edinburgh, from Aunty Ren) for her suggestion of NGC 2516 and we hope you like the view! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
On April 6, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then come along as we view Denny and Robby Bauer’s suggestion of NGC 4833…
The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
NGC 4833: Constellation – MUSCA
NGC 4833 is a globular cluster discovered by Abbe Lacaille during his 1751-1752 journey to South Africa, and catalogued in 1755. It was subsequently observed and catalogued by James Dunlop and Sir John Herschel whose instruments could resolve it into individual stars.
The globular cluster is situated in the very southerly constellation Musca at a distance of 21,200 light years from earth. It is partially obscured by a dusty region of the galactic plane. After corrections for the reddening by dust, evidence was obtained that it is in the order of 2 billion years older than globular clusters M5 or M92.
We would very much like to thank Denny and Robby Bauer for their suggestion of NGC 4833 and we hope you like the view! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
Over the last few days the IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we’re ready to bring your first photos up on-line for you. We hope you had a chance to follow your object for several hours in the remote telescope! For Universe Today readers Jon Hanford, Ana Tomsa and Denny and Robby Bauer? Come on inside… Your requests have been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
IC 2602 or Southern Pleiades for Jon Hanford
NGC 2516 for Ana Tomsa
NGC 4833 for Denny and Robby Bauer
We hope you enjoy your image requests and they will become a part of the “IYA Live Telescope Library” link in the categories section to your right should you wish to recover them again in the future. Thank you so much for taking the time to become a part of our “100 Hours of Astronomy” celebration!!
Wow… If you had a chance to watch our live remote telescope today, then you were in for an awesome view. This was my first opportunity to call the shot as to where the telescope was aimed and I’ve always wanted to see NGC 2516 with my own eyes. Needless to say, despite small aperture and viewing with a remote camera, I wasn’t disappointed – I was blown away. Did we save a replay for you? Darn right we did…
The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
NGC 2516 – “The Diamond Cluster”: Constellation – CARINA
Southern open cluster NGC 2516, The Diamond Cluster, was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751-1752.
Called “The Diamond Cluster” because of its stellar clarity, the cluster itself is easily visible with the naked eye from dark skies but binoculars will yield a much better view.
The Diamond Cluster contains two beautiful 5th magnitude red giants and three double stars. A small telescope would be required to split the double stars. It contains about 100 stars that appear about the same size as a full moon.
NGC 2516 and the recently discovered nearby star cluster Mamajek 2 in Ophiuchus have similar age and metallicity. Recently, kinematic evidence was presented by E. Jilinksi and coauthors that suggests that these two stellar groups may have formed in the same star-forming complex some 135 million years ago.
Now that we’ve seen NGC 2516, did you happen to notice a little “artifact” that cruised through the picture right before the end? It would appear the southern hemisphere has its share of satellites, too! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
