IMAGING Goodbye CCDs, TELESCOPES Breathing new DEEP SKY Your guide to

hello CMOS chip cameras P60 life into a 1970s Dobsonian P36 tracking down ring galaxies P52

NEW WORLDS
Rethinking how
planets are made P20
LIQUID MIRRORS
Making telescopes
from mercury P28
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY

ASTEROID
ENIGMAS Revealing two
rugged, rubble
worlds P12
TEST REPORT

Canon’s
Mirrorless
EOS Ra
MAY | JUNE 2020
camera P66 ISSUE 125
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 May | June 2020 ISSUE 125, VOL. 16 NO. 4

Contents
REGULARS
Observing eclipses
5 Spectrum p.56
from other planets
6 News notes
11 Discoveries
26 Cosmic relief
41 AS&T bookshop
45 Vistas
64 New products
65 Book review

FEATURES
12 Rugged worlds
The two spacecraft sent to Ryugu
and Bennu have unveiled asteroids
with formidable surfaces and
mysterious histories.
By Camille M. Carlisle

20 Revising the story of planet

formation
New tech has given astronomers
access to the regions where planets
are born — and has complicated
our picture of planet birth.
By Megan Ansdell
28 Quicksilver astronomy
Forget lenses and silvering — some
astronomers are turning to dishes
of mercury to study the universe.
By Govert Schilling
56 Solar eclipses throughout
the Solar System
Can total solar eclipses be seen
from planets other than the Earth?
By Rod J. Hill
60 Changing of the guard
CMOS is set to become the
dominant scientific-imaging
medium — but is it up to the task?
By Richard S. Wright, Jr
OBSERVING & EXPLORING
42 Binocular highlight
Deep sky stargazing in Puppis.
By Mathew Wedel
44 Under the stars
Fabled females in the constellations.
By Fred Schaaf
Can you spot the
46 Sun, Moon and planets p.50
Mountains of Mitchel?
Jupiter and Saturn’s double act.
By Jonathan Nally
47 Meteors 50 Exploring the Solar System
Eta Aquariids are a crowd pleaser. The Mountains of Mitchel on Mars.
By Con Stoitsis By Thomas A. Dobbins
48 Comets 52 Going deep
Two enigmatic ‘dark horse’ comets. Track down these ring galaxies.
By David Seargent By Dave Tosteson
49 Variable stars 55 Celestial calendar
Expecting an explosion from T CrB. Jupiter, Venus and upcoming eclipses.
By Alan Plummer By Jonathan Nally & Bob King

4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 by Jonathan Nally SPECTRUM

Mr Dobson and
his radical idea
WAY BACK IN THE 1970s, one man set off a revolution in telescope
design that has not only lasted until the present time, but is still
flourishing. His idea was simple – get a basic telescope tube, stick it
in a basic wooden box and make it tilt and swivel. Use the cheapest
components you can find, even (or preferably) recycled materials, and
voila! — you would have an inexpensive instrument that even the most
inexperienced of beginners could easily use.
That man was John Dobson, of course. Although he didn’t really
like having his telescope design, the Dobsonian, named after him, the
Completing a project moniker has stuck and today is universally recognised. Dobsonians have
p.36
begun in the 1970s gone from being mostly amateur-built scopes, some of them very rough, to
mainstream instruments produced at one time or another by all the major
manufacturers. One of those rough scopes — begun under the tutelage
of Dobson himself, but not completed at the time — has finally seen first
THE ASTRONOMY SCENE
light thanks to the efforts of Jerry Oltion (see page 36).
36 Telescope making I had the privilege of meeting John Dobson more than 30 years ago,
A Dobsonian relic of the 1970s and he certainly made an impression on me. He came across as a humble
finally sees the light. but incisive man, very smart and with a cheeky sense of humour. There
By Jerry Oltion
are few people about whom it can be said that they changed amateur
66 Test report astronomy forever. We should all be grateful for the legacy of someone
We take a good look at Canon’s whose simple concept did just that.
mirrorless EOS Ra. Jonathan Nally, Editor
By Alan Dyer editor@skyandtelescope.com.au

72 Astronomer’s workbench
Building a carbon-fibre telescope.
By Jerry Oltion
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO ASTRONOMY
74 Night life and Astro calendar
Check out the Australian Sky & Telescope website for the latest astronomy
Events, activities and what’s news from Australia and around the cosmos: skyandtelescope.com.au
happening in the astronomy world.

75 In profile Printed by IVE

EDITORIAL
EDITOR Jonathan Nally
76 Gallery ART DIRECTOR Lee McLachlan
The latest images from our readers CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
John Drummond, David Ellyard,
Alan Plummer, David Seargent,
80 Marketplace Con Stoitsis
EMAIL info@skyandtelescope.com.au
81 Index to advertisers ADVERTISING
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82 Focal point EMAIL jonathan@skyandtelescope.com.au
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 NEWS NOTES
Plane of the Milky Way
Magellanic Stream
ASTRONOMERS HAVE DISCOVERED a
collection of young stars in a surprising
location: the Milky Way’s halo.
Adrian Price-Whelan (Flatiron
Institute) discovered the stars while
digging through data collected by the
European Gaia mission. The newfound
stars are 117 million years old and move
together as a set. They’re similar to open
clusters like the Pleiades in both age and
mass. But at 94,000 light-years away, the
new stars are 200 times farther away
than the Seven Sisters. They’re also more
spread out, spanning some 2,500 light-
years, and are not gravitationally bound.
By rights, the stars shouldn’t be out
there at all. There’s not much star-
Lensed quasars shed light on dark matter, dark energy
Gravitationally lensed quasars imaged by
the Hubble Space Telescope are helping
astronomers measure fundamental
properties of the universe. Two research
teams reported results from these cosmic
mirages at a recent meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Honolulu.
In one case, Anna Nierenberg (JPL /
Caltech), Daniel Gilman (University of
California, Los Angeles) and colleagues
studied eight such gravitationally
lensed quasars, where the gravity of a
massive foreground galaxy bends light
from a background quasar. Most of the
6 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Price-Whelan 1
Leading arm of
the Magellanic
Stream
Large
Magellanic
Small Cloud
Magellanic
Cloud
making gas in the Milky Way’s halo, as
most of the gas is too hot and diffuse to
collapse into new suns. What little cool
gas there is resides in the Magellanic
Stream, a long gaseous ribbon that
travels with the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds through our galaxy’s
outer regions.
And the new stars appear to be sailing
right in front of that ribbon of gas.
To investigate the stars’ properties,
David Nidever (Montana State
University), Price-Whelan and
colleagues took spectra of 28 of the
brightest stars in the group. The
measurements showed that the stars
have a fairly pristine composition.
lensing mass is actually in the galaxy’s
dark matter halo. So astronomers can
use the relative brightness within each
set of quasar images to determine the
distribution of mass in the foreground
halo.
The researchers found that dark
matter clumps up in blobs just 1/100,000
times the mass of the Milky Way. If dark
matter consisted of ‘warm,’ or fast-
moving, particles, it wouldn’t be able to
form such low-mass chunks. Dark matter
must instead consist of ‘cold,’ or slow-
moving, particles. The results appear
t A newfound group of young stars, the Price-
Whelan cluster sits on the periphery of the Milky
D. NIDE V ER E T A L. / NR AO / AUI / NSF / MELLING ER / LEIDEN / A RG EN TINE / BONN SURV E Y / PA RK ES OBSERVATORY / WESTERBORK OBSERVATORY / A RECIBO OBSERVATORY;
Way. These stars probably formed from material
originating from the Magellanic Clouds.
Both their composition and velocities
match that of the leading arm of the
Magellanic Stream. In two papers in
the Astrophysical Journal, the team
concludes that these stars likely
formed from the gas at the head of the
Magellanic Stream.
R A DCLIFFE WAV E: WORLDWIDE TELESCOPE, COURTESY OF A LYSSA GOODM A N; Q UASA RS: N ASA / ESA / S. H. SU Y U / K . C. WONG
Murmurs of excitement from fellow
astronomers met Price-Whelan and
Nidever when they reported these
results at a meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Honolulu.
Observers have been looking for stars
associated with the Magellanic Stream
for decades, explains Jeremy Bailin
(University of Alabama), in part to help
pin down its distance. It’s difficult to
determine the distance to hydrogen
gas, but based on the stars’ distances,
the astronomers estimate that the
Magellanic Stream is roughly half as far
away as previously thought.
The stars lie in front of the stream,
not in it. The team thinks this offset
occurs because the halo’s hot gas drags
on the gaseous stream but not on the
stars. Over time, the gas slows down
and falls behind the stars. In fact, the
stars’ ages match when the stream last
passed through our galaxy’s outer disk.
That passage could have compressed the
stream’s gas, spurring starbirth.
■ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
in two companion studies published
in the Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society.
Meanwhile, another group of
astronomers, led by Sherry Suyu (Max
Planck Institute for Astrophysics,
Germany), also used Hubble images of
lensed quasars, this time focusing on
how their light flickers. This study will
also appear in the Monthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society.
Each quasar image represents a
different path the light takes to the
observer. When the quasar flickers, light
Nearby stellar nurseries ride a giant wave
A NEW MAP OF THE MILKY WAY shows
a gigantic ‘wave’ of stellar nurseries
riding just outside the Sun’s orbit within
the spiral disk of our galaxy.
The Milky Way isn’t flat like a
pancake: Its stars, and the gas clouds
they form in, all move in a large gas
disk that has warps and crinkles.
Astronomers have now discovered a new
warp that’s only about 500 light-years
away at its closest point to the Sun. And
it’s huge — so far, its mapped expanse
stretches some 9,000 light-years.
João Alves (University of Vienna),
Catherine Zucker (Harvard) and
colleagues suspected that a connection
existed between nearby star-forming
clouds as they were mapping out
the clouds’ precise locations. But it
wasn’t until Alves, Zucker and Alyssa
Goodman (also at Harvard) plotted the
clouds using the WorldWide Telescope,
an open-source visualisation software,
In this illustration, the locations
of star-forming clouds (red dots) are
overlaid on an image of the Milky Way Galaxy.
travelling a longer path will arrive later,
so astronomers will see the same flicker
multiple times. They can then measure
the time delays to paint a 3D picture of
the gravitational lens.
From this picture, astronomers
can estimate the distances to the
quasar and the lensing galaxy in a way
that they saw the shape and extent of
the structure.
Many nearby stellar nurseries
trace a giant wave that lines up with
the Local Arm, the section of spiral
that our Sun inhabits in the Milky
Way, Goodman explained at a recent
American Astronomical Society meeting
in Honolulu. The team’s study also
appeared January 7 in Nature.
The wave looks like a straight line
from above; it’s only when seen from
the side that the crests and troughs
appear, rising some 500 light-years
above and below the disk’s midplane.
The wave includes major star-forming
clouds familiar to skygazers — Orion,
Perseus and the North America Nebula.
Astronomers don’t yet know how
old this structure is or how it formed.
However, the stars that formed in the
gas clouds are just a few million years
old, and the team can use them to track
the structure’s movements,
Zucker explains. Based on
these data, the researchers
think the wave is oscillating,
circling the galaxy like a sea
monster on an orbit that
intersected with the Sun’s
some 13 million years ago.
■ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
Interact with visuals showing
the discovery at https://is.gd/
stellarwave.
completely independent from other
distance measurements. Based on these
distances, the team estimated that the
universe is currently expanding at a rate
between 71.5 and 75 km/s/megaparsec.
This finding confirms other results
based on relatively nearby objects,
which show a similarly fast expansion
IN BRIEF
Second planet orbiting
Proxima Centauri
Astronomers announced the
discovery of Proxima Centauri c in
the January 15 Science Advances. It’s
the second planet circling the cool,
red star 4.2 light-years away; the first,
Proxima Cen b, was found in 2016. The
new super-Earth has at least six times
Earth’s mass. To find it, Mario Damasso
(Astrophysical Observatory of Torino,
Italy) and colleagues analysed data
collected between 2000 and 2017 by
the UVES and HARPS spectrographs
at the Very Large Telescope and the
La Silla Observatory, respectively. The
astronomers found a periodic, 5.2-
year ‘wobble’ in Proxima Centauri’s
spectrum indicating a planet, but they
caution that follow-up observations are
needed to confirm the planetary nature
of the signal. Since Proxima Cen c
orbits about 1.5 astronomical units
from its cool star — about 30 times
farther out than b — the planet would
be too cold to host life as we know
it. Moreover, Proxima Cen c appears
to orbit far beyond the system’s
snowlines, the regions where gaseous
compounds such as water or carbon
monoxide solidify into ices. Its orbit
would thus challenge planet-formation
theories, which suggest that these
regions should be sweetspots where
super-Earths come together.
■ JULIE FREYDLIN
t A selection of
gravitationally
lensed quasars
rate. But calculations based on the
cosmic microwave background emitted
shortly after the Big Bang suggest that
the current expansion rate ought to
be slower. The gravitational-lensing
study therefore deepens the ongoing
controversy.
■ GOVERT SCHILLING
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 7
 NEWS NOTES

IN BRIEF
A star-forming region in a spiral galaxy hosts FRB 180916.
Most planets lost in
globular clusters
At most one-fifth of planetary systems
around stars in globular clusters may
survive, student astronomer Melissa
Cashion (Texas A&M University) has
reported. Globulars are dense, long-lived
clusters of many thousands of stars, and
it’s unclear how planets fare in such an
environment. Cashion and her colleagues
simulated clusters with 800,000 stars,
with some fraction of them beginning
with a Jupiter-mass planet circling at the
same distance that Jupiter circles the Sun.
The astronomers then followed the stars
and their planets over 12 billion years,
watching things unfold. Most planetary
systems were destroyed in the first billion

WHITE DWA RF A ND NEU TRON STA R: M A RK M Y ERS / A RC CEN TRE OF E XCELLENCE FOR G R AVITATION A L WAV E DISCOV ERY (OZG R AV ); THUBA N BIN A RY: N ASA GODDA RD SPACE FLIG H T
years, they found, with planets jumping
to different stars — or in rare cases,
black holes. Some planets wound up
permanently circling another companion,
but most went rogue, wandering the
cluster starless or even ejected from the
cluster entirely. A 5% to 20% survival rate
is “not too bad, considering all the chaos,”
Cashion says.
■ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
New radio flash ‘repeater’ pinned down
RECENT OBSERVATIONS have This environment is similar to
New Horizons still pinpointed the location of a fifth fast the star-forming region hosting the
exploring the Kuiper Belt radio burst (FRB), shedding light on the first repeater, but it contrasts with

Ever since the New Horizons spacecraft
passed Pluto and set its sights on
Arrokoth (formerly 2014 MU69), its team
has been taking pictures of other, faraway
worlds in the Kuiper Belt. Although
these small bodies have been nothing
but blurry blobs as the craft passed
them — at distances from one-tenth
to 1 astronomical unit — scientists are
still able to learn about their shapes.
The team watches how the worlds
change in brightness over time as
they’re seen from different angles, then
combines that information with Earth-
based observations. This work indicates
that Kuiper Belt objects have a variety
of shapes, Simon Porter (Southwest
Research Institute) and colleagues
reported at the meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Honolulu. One,
called 2011 JY31, is probably spherical;
two others appear to be conjoined twins,
like Arrokoth. A third looks like a binary
system. The results add to growing
evidence that binaries and contact
binaries might be common in the outer
solar system.
■ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
environments that create these brief but
powerful radio-wave flashes.
Benito Marcote (Joint Institute for
VLBI, The Netherlands) announced at
the American Astronomical Society
meeting in Honolulu that he and his
colleagues have pinned down another
radio flash, the second repeating FRB
to have a known location. The result
appears in the January 9 issue of Nature.
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity
Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
telescope discovered the radio flash,
referred to as FRB 180916, in 2018. As
the source continued to emit flashes,
eight radio dishes of the European
VLBI Network pinpointed the source to
the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, whose
light travelled almost half a billion
years to Earth. The astronomers used
the 8.1-metre Gemini North telescope
on Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i, to image the
region: Whatever was producing the
radio flashes had a nursery of newborn
stars for company.
CEN TER / CHRIS SMITH (USR A); G EMINI OBSERVATORY / NSF’S N ATION A L OIR ASTRONO M Y RESE A RCH L A BOR ATORY / AUR A
the locations of single FRB flashes,
Marcote says. All those have been
localised to massive galaxies with low
star-formation rates. The find suggests
that repeating and non-repeating FRBs
might have different origins.
Yet astronomers are still far from
understanding what those origins
are. New results from the CHIME
collaboration, to appear in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters, will
help: The unique telescope discovered
nine additional repeaters in 2019
observations, but what’s more, the
collaboration is also still analysing some
700 additional FRB detections, to be
published in a forthcoming catalogue.
“By the end of 2020, we will have
more than 1,000 FRBs, at least a few
dozen that will be precisely localised,
and we can answer some questions,”
predicts study coauthor Jason Hessels
(ASTRON, The Netherlands). “Or at
least we’ll have some new questions.”
■ MONICA YOUNG

8 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

White dwarf’s whirlwind spin drags spacetime
ASTRONOMERS OBSERVING a white
dwarf–neutron star pair have confirmed
another aspect of Einstein’s general
theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein predicted that
massive rotating bodies drag spacetime
around them, like a spinning bowling
ball would warp a sheet underneath it.
In a binary system, a fast-spinning body
will thus change the system’s orbital
inclination as seen from Earth in an
effect called Lense-Thirring precession. As
a result the orbit itself will wobble like a
spinning coin. Satellites have measured
this effect several times in Earth’s
weak gravitational field. But
Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan
(Swinburne University of
Technology, Australia) and
colleagues have announced
the first detection of
spacetime dragging in a strong
gravitational field.
u A rapidly spinning white dwarf drags
spacetime, affecting the orbit of its
pulsar companion via Lense-Thirring
precession.
The detection comes from a binary
system containing a radio pulsar,
designated PSR J1141-6545, and its
white dwarf companion. The duo is
coupled in a 4.74-hour oval orbit that
would almost fit inside our Sun.
The white dwarf appears to be older
than its neutron star companion, which
may explain its fast spin. Since the
neutron star was a massive star before
it went supernova, theorists think it
transferred its outer layers to the white
dwarf, spinning it up in the process.
Now, the rapidly rotating white dwarf
drags on spacetime, which should
slowly shift the pulsar’s orbit.
Krishnan and colleagues analysed
the pulse arrival times over a period of
almost 20 years using data collected
by the Parkes and UTMOST radio
telescopes in Australia. In the process,
they reconstructed the slow change
in the pulsar’s orbit, finding that the
spacetime-dragging effect had shifted
the orbit by some 150 kilometres over
two decades. The new result provides the
first firm detection of Lense-Thirring
precession beyond Earth’s orbit.
The result also sheds light on
the history of the stellar pair. The
researchers estimate that the
white dwarf takes less than
3 minutes to spin around.
Most isolated white dwarfs
take hours rather than mere
minutes to rotate, so this
result aligns with the idea
that the white dwarf achieved
its fast spin thanks to mass
siphoned from the pulsar
progenitor before it went
supernova.
■ GOVERT SCHILLING

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www.skyandtelescope.com.au 9
 NEWS NOTES
Computing boost for Australian
radio telescopes
A NEW $2 MILLION computing facility
based at the Pawsey Supercomputing
Centre in Perth will crunch the huge
amounts of data produced by the
Murchison Widefield Array (MWA)
radio telescope.
The MWA comprises a large group
of radio antennae spread across parts
of the Western Australia desert, and is
a stepping-stone or ‘precursor’ of the
future much-larger Square Kilometre
Array.
Both the MWA and the Australian
SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) are located
at the Murchison Radio-astronomy
Observatory in WA, which is owned and
operated by the CSIRO. The number of
antennae in the MWA has recently been
doubled, and ASKAP will soon begin
undertaking full surveys of the sky.
10 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Modern observatories such as these
produce copious quantities of data that
needs to be crunched at high speed. The
new computer — a cluster of 78 ‘nodes’
that comprise the latest in computing
technology — will do just that.
The cluster will provide improved
capabilities to undertake artificial
intelligence, computational work,
machine learning workflows and data
analytics.
Until now, MWA and ASKAP
researchers have used the Pawsey
Supercomputing Centre’s special
purpose Galaxy supercomputer, which
itself is to be upgraded at a cost of
$70 million, funded by the federal
government.
“The new MWA cluster at Pawsey
will feature 156 of the latest generation
t A handful of the more-than 4,000 antennas of
the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope in
Western Australia.
of Intel CPUs and 78 cutting-edge GPUs
with more high-bandwidth memory,
internal high-speed storage and more
memory per node,” said Mark Stickells,
Pawsey’s Executive Director.
“Procurement of the new MWA
cluster was the result of a thorough
consultation process with key stake-
holders and will provide the best system
possible to respond to the specific needs
of MWA telescope users,” he added.
Professor Melanie Johnston-
Hollitt, MWA Director, said that the
procurement process is an “outstanding
example of collaboration between
Pawsey and MWA”.
“As a researcher, I am excited that
this new infrastructure will give us the
chance to accelerate our workflows,
leading to faster scientific discoveries
and for providing the opportunity to
continue to use the MWA as a scientific,
technical, and operational testbed for
the future Square Kilometre Array,” she
added.
For the technically minded, the new
546-TeraFlop MWA cluster will have 78
nodes, each with two Intel Xeon Gold
6230 processors operating at 2.1 GHz
providing a total of forty compute cores,
plus a single NVIDIA V100 with 32 GB
of high-bandwidth memory, 960 GB
of local NVMe storage and 384 GB of
main memory.
High-performance computing
supplier HPE has been awarded the
contract. The firm not only met the
technical requirements, but also brings
an ability to apply local and global
resources to provide the best level of
support for the lifetime of the system.
Commissioning of the MWA
computing cluster is expected to be
completed by the second quarter of
2020.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre
is a joint venture of the CSIRO, Curtin
University, Edith Cowan University,
Murdoch University and the University
of Western Australia.
■ JONATHAN NALLY

Baily and his beads
Francis Baily is remembered for a sole phenomenon, while his
other achievements have been somewhat eclipsed.
A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN , which
occurs when the Moon passes in front
of it as seen from the Earth, is a very
special event. Enthusiasts will travel
thousands of kilometres to observe
one. The spectacle is enhanced by the
effect known as Baily’s Beads. As the
eclipse nears totality, bright flashes of
light come and go around the rim of the
Moon, lasting only a few seconds, and
commonly culminating in one brilliant
flash known as the Diamond Ring effect.
The phenomenon is evidence of the
rugged topography of the Moon. With
the Sun’s light mostly blocked by the
bulk of the Moon, hills and valleys
along the lunar limb sometimes let light
from the edge of the Sun through and
sometimes not.
Galileo had been first to propose that
the Moon was not the perfectly smooth
sphere the ancients had believed,
drawing on his pioneering observations
with his telescope. Total solar eclipses
provide further evidence. Englishman
Francis Baily, observing an eclipse on
P. HOR Á LEK /ESO
May 15, 1836, reported so vividly on
what he saw that he awakened a wide
general interest in solar eclipses and
astronomers began to travel to observe
them. Baily put forward the explanation
we have just set out, and before long,
his name was attached to those flashes
of light; thus they became Baily’s Beads.
So who was Francis Baily? Was he
a ‘one-hit wonder’? Not really. Baily
was one of many who contributed to
astronomy at the time for love of it, not
to make a living from it. (There were, in
fact, few paid positions for astronomers,
or even for scientists more generally).
These ‘amateurs’ made significant
contributions to knowledge in the field,
having first made enough money to live
on from some separate, earlier career.
In Baily’s case he had been a successful
stockbroker in London, and was able
to retire to the country at the age of 50
and devote himself to astronomy.
Baily took his astronomy seriously,
as witness his involvement in the Royal
Astronomical Society. He helped to
found it, served as its president four
times for a total of eight years and
won its Gold Medal twice. And he
helped spark reform of the Nautical
Almanac, a vital source of astronomical
information, published every year and
by David Ellyard DISCOVERIES
t This multi-image composite of the July 2019
solar eclipse shows Baily’s Beads around the
lunar limb, cause by sunlight sneaking through
valleys on the Moon’s surface.
essential for navigation at sea.
And his scientific interests extended
beyond astronomy. It was already well
known that the ‘period’ of a pendulum
of a given length (the time taken to
complete one beat) was not the same
at all places on the Earth’s surface. The
variation was controlled by the varying
strength of gravity and that in turn
was determined by the distance of each
location from the centre of the Earth;
that is, on the shape of the Earth. Baily
was able to confirm that the Earth was
an ellipsoid, not a sphere, and found
just how much it deviated from being
spherical.
He also repeated the experiments of
Henry Cavendish half a century earlier
to measure the mass, and therefore
the density, of the Earth, and obtained
was what judged the definitive value at
the time. So there was rather more to
Francis Baily than just his beads.
By the way, Baily was not the first
to observe ‘his’ beads, nor to propose
the same explanation. More than a
century before, the multi-talented
Edmond Halley had seen the effect
during a total eclipse in 1715. Reporting
to the Royal Society, he attributed
it to “the inequalities of the Moon’s
surface,” with the light from the last
visible thread of the Sun’s face being
intercepted here and there by “some
elevated parts” of the surface and
elsewhere being allowed through.
Though Halley had seen and
explained the effect first, posterity
has given it Baily’s name. But Halley
had the most famous comet in history
named after him, so he did not really
miss out on recognition. And the
most casual student of the history of
astronomy knows about Halley and his
achievements, while Baily, except for
his Beads, is (perhaps unjustly) all but
unknown.
■ DAVID ELLYARD is the author of Who
Discovered What When.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 11
 ASTEROID RECON by Camille M. Carlisle
The two spacecraft sent to Ryugu and Bennu have unveiled asteroids
with formidable surfaces and mysterious histories.
CARL HERGENROTHER’S BRAIN was fried. He’d been awake
all night, writing up results for a morning presentation at the
science team meeting for NASA’s OSIRIS-REX mission, which
had arrived at asteroid 101955 Bennu just a month prior.
Running on maybe half an hour of sleep, he decided the
only thing his mind was good for was to blink through the
week’s backlog of navigation images and check for anything
interesting.
He watched in a daze as Vega and Lyra went by, then
Orion, then distant Earth and its Moon. Suddenly, he hit
upon an image of what looked like a dense star cluster sitting
just off the asteroid’s limb. Enough of a backyard astronomer
to quickly tell one cluster from another, Hergenrother
(University of Arizona) knew at a glance that he wasn’t
looking at one of the well-known celestial groupings such as
the Coma or Hyades clusters. In fact, he didn’t know of any
cluster at the coordinates captured in the image.
A LOT IN A NAME
Bennu takes its name from an ancient Egyptian deity
connected to the Sun, creation and rebirth, and its
surface features are named for birds or bird-like
creatures in mythology. Ryugu (or ‘Ryugo-jo’) is a
dragon palace in a Japanese fairy tale; the asteroid’s
feature names come from children’s stories.
BENNU AND RYUGU The targets of the NASA (left) and
JAXA sample-return missions look bizarrely alike, even
down to the gigantic boulder in the southern hemisphere.
Asteroids are shown to scale.
12 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Puzzled, he pulled up the free software Stellarium and
plugged in the coordinates. The background stars matched
up, but there was no sign of the cluster’s 20 orr so pinpricks.
After processing the image and others taken arround the same
time, he made a startling discovery: The ‘stars’’ had trails
that all traced back to a single point on the astteroid’s surface.
These weren’t stars — they were particles.
Bennu was firing rock bullets.
The particles put Hergenrother in a pickle. His
presentation that morning was supposed to bee about how
OSIRIS-REX hadn’t seen any signs of activity ffrom the
asteroid. This wasn’t the moment to break the news to the
whole team. So he hedged. Later, when everyon ne broke for
lunch, he grabbed some of the mission leaders, including
principal investigator (PI) Dante Lauretta (also University of
Arizona), and showed them the images on his screen.
“Dante just kind of turned white,” Hergenrrother says.
The PI’s jaw dropped. “Here we are, we had just arrived at the
asteroid, and the thing’s shooting at us!”
Bennu’s intermittent coughs of centimetre--size pebbles
are one of several surprising results from OSIR RIS-REX
“Here we are, we had just arrived
at the asteroid, and the thing’s
shooting at us!”
KO C HI U N I V. / R IK K YO U N I V. / N AGOYA U N I V.
A R IZO N A ; RY UGU: JA X A / U N I V. O F TOK YO /
B E N N U: N ASA / GO D DA R D / U N I V E R S IT Y O F
/ C HIBA IN ST. O F TEC H N O LOGY / M EIJI
U N I V. / U N I V. O F A IZU / A IST
 Rugged
NIGHTINGALE
This 55-image mosaic shows
the worn-looking crater on
Bennu (centre left) where
OSIRIS-REX’s primary
sample site lies. The large
boulder at centre is about
the size of a truck.

Worlds
N ASA / GO D DA R D
/ U N I V E R S IT Y O F
A R IZO N A

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 13
 ASTEROID RECON
Bennu
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Ryugu
Mars
S NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS Both Bennu and Ryugu cross Earth’s orbit
as they go around the Sun, making them potentially hazardous asteroids.
The two have probably been in the inner Solar System for several million
years. Jupiter and Saturn’s gravitational effects on the main belt drive
asteroids inward, where they may survive for 10 million years or so before
hitting something or being kicked out. Positions are for May 1, 2020.
and its Japanese counterpart, Hayabusa 2, which recently left
asteroid 162173 Ryugu after more than a year of exploration.
Both projects are sample-return missions, designed to briefly
touch down on the asteroids’ surfaces, nab handfuls of
debris, and bring the bits back to Earth for study. And both
have revealed wondrously rubbly and perplexing worlds.
Formidable terrain
Asteroids are not glamorous spacecraft targets. They don’t
have swirling cyclones like Jupiter or ancient, dried-up deltas
like Mars. But these unassuming space rocks are precious
to planetary scientists, because they’re time capsules. Their
TX ITOKAWA Below: The target of the first
Hayabusa mission, 25143 Itokawa is a near-
Earth asteroid with few craters and patches of
smooth-looking terrain. Its longest dimension
is 540 metres, about the same size as Bennu.
Right: This close-up shows the smooth region
around part of Itokawa’s neck. Most boulders
shown are a few metres wide.
14 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
chemical, structural, and geological makeups record a play-
by-play of the Solar System’s early years. Therefore, in order
to understand the origins of our planet and the compounds
that make up our bodies, scientists turn to these chunks of
planetary detritus.
Spacecraft have visited several asteroids, and we also have
meteorites fallen to Earth that, based on their composition,
we think come from different kinds of asteroids. We’ve even
brought back samples from one: 25143 Itokawa, visited by the
first Hayabusa spacecraft some 15 years ago. Itokawa proved
a dead ringer for the most common type of stony meteorite,
called ordinary chondrites.
But ordinary chondrites aren’t the most pristine planetary
crumbs out there. For that, we need carbonaceous chondrites.
Scarce on Earth, these meteorites are the closest chemical
matches to the Sun and look like the majority of the asteroids
we observe. So to acquire the least tainted bits of the Solar
System’s building blocks, scientists decided to snatch rocks
from two carbonaceous asteroids whose orbits cross that of
Earth: Ryugu and Bennu.
Small asteroids such as these — Bennu is about 500 metres
wide, Ryugu 1 km — are rubble piles, conglomerations of
debris from larger asteroids that broke up. Astronomers
didn’t know much about these two particular worlds when
they picked them, only what they could infer from ground-
and space-based telescopes. Because the surfaces of Ryugu
and Bennu heat and cool quickly as they spin from daylight
to darkness, scientists expected the two asteroids to have
relatively smooth, beach-like regions like those found on
Itokawa, and not to be covered in large rocks, which should
take longer to warm and chill. OSIRIS-REX in particular was
designed with a beach landscape in mind.
Nature had other ideas.
The spacecrafts’ cameras revealed that both asteroids’
surfaces are a sea of shards. Boulders ranging from about a
metre to 100 metres wide dominate the landscape, with more
big boulders near the poles than
at the equator. It’s as though
someone took meteorites and
strewed them everywhere —
there’s not a smooth region to
be found. Upon seeing Bennu’s
surface, “My impression was
ORBITS: LE A H TISCIONE / S&T; ITOK AWA A ND CLOSE-UP: JA X A
‘Yikes! Where are we going to
go on this asteroid?’” Lauretta
said last September at a
planetary science conference in
Geneva, Switzerland.
A range of rock types
populates the asteroids, which
are about as dark as fresh
asphalt. Many rocks appear
to be rubble piles themselves,
mosaics of fragments fused
together. There are boulders
 X A BEACH OF ROCKS Hayabusa 2 deployed we got there, to Ryugu, we were like, ‘Did,
two of its Minerva-II rovers to Ryugu’s surface in did we get to the right asteroid?’” Sugita
September 2018. Rover-1B took these shots on jokes. “It was kind of a weird atmosphere.”
September 23.
Craters mottle both of the asteroids’
surfaces, with large ones on the ridges
with a crumbly, cauliflower texture and that girth their equators. The pockmarks
others that look smooth and sharp-edged. look soft-edged, not sharp like many on
Some are distinctly brighter than others. the Moon or Mars. Ryugu’s big craters are
It’s unclear how many of the differences about as densely packed as those on Bennu,
are due to composition, as opposed to but both appear to be short on craters
different degrees of exposure to space smaller than 50 metres or so, implying
weathering and other processes. something has erased them.
Scientists on both teams suspect the
rocks were able to masquerade as smoother
surfaces when seen from afar because
they’re extremely porous — so porous MISSION TIMELINE
that Hayabusa 2 scientists can’t see the
Hayabusa 2 OSIRIS-REX
difference between Ryugu’s fine-grained 2018

regolith and its boulders when they look at the surface in JUN 27: ARRIVAL AT
ASTEROID RYUGU
infrared, says the navigation cameras’ science team leader
SEPT 21: MINERVA-II1 ROVERS
Seiji Sugita (University of Tokyo). On both Ryugu and Bennu, DEPLOYED TO SURFACE
the whole surface heats up at more or less the same rate.
OCT 3: MASCOT ROVER DEPLOYED
“That’s the surprising discovery,” he says. “We are really DEC 3: ARRIVAL AT BENNU
DEC 31: ENTERED ORBIT
scratching our heads.” FEB 22: TOUCHDOWN 1
2019 AROUND BENNU
Another Hayabusa 2 experiment also suggests the asteroids APR 4: BLASTED ARTIFICIAL FEB 28: DETAILED
CRATER USING EXPLOSIVE SMALL SURVEYING BEGAN
are extraordinarily porous. Before its second and final CARRY-ON IMPACTOR (SCI)
touchdown on Ryugu, the spacecraft launched an explosive JUL 11: TOUCHDOWN 2,
ABOUT 20 M FROM SCI CRATER
projectile to blast a hole in the surface, digging up material
RY UGU’S SURFACE: JA X A (2); CAULIFLOWER ROCK: N ASA / GODDA RD / UNIV ERSIT Y OF A RIZON A; MISSION TIMELINE: TERRI DUBÉ / S&T

OCT 3: MINERVA-II2
previously protected from space weathering. The scientists ROVER DEPLOYED
expected the resulting crater would be a few metres wide. 2020
NOV 13: DEPARTURE
JAN 21: SITE RECON
Instead, the explosion dug a 13-metre-wide pit. Probably the FROM RYUGU
FLYOVERS BEGAN
COMPLETED
rocks’ low porosity, paired with the asteroid’s weak gravity,
explains the peculiarly large hole, mission manager Makoto PLANNED
Yoshikawa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) said at the AUG 25: TOUCHDOWN

Geneva conference. DEC: SAMPLE DROP

IN AUSTRALIA
2021
Hiding their ages (for now) MAR: DEPART BENNU
Bennu and Ryugu are eerily
similar. Both have the same
diamond shape, the same
density, same albedo. That’s
not what scientists expected: 2022
The two teams intended to
go to different asteroids and
then compare them. “When

X CAULIFLOWER This strange,

hummocky rock near Bennu’s 2023
equator is one of the darkest
boulders on the asteroid. The
small, light-coloured rock perched
on it is 1.9 metres long, about
SEPT: SAMPLE DROP IN UTAH
the size of a person. The backup
touchdown site, called Osprey, lies
directly behind the boulder from 2024

this perspective.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 15
 ASTEROID RECON

Bennu rotates every 4.3 hours, which must have formed at least several million years ago, back
when both worlds were still in the main asteroid belt between
means that every 4.3 hours its airless Mars and Jupiter and vulnerable to big crashes. That implies
surface experiences a temperature the ridges are old, perhaps even as old as the asteroids
rollercoaster. themselves. Simulations by Patrick Michel (Côte d’Azur
Observatory, France) and others also indicate that a body

Such resurfacing might be connected to the strange die
shape, Sugita suggests. Ryugu’s equatorial ridge draws a
symmetric circle around the asteroid’s middle when viewed
from above the poles, like a skirt whirled out by a rapid spin.
The overall slope of the ground is also low and gentle, close
to the critical angle for landslides if the
asteroid had once been spinning about
twice as fast as it is now, project scientist
Seiichiro Watanabe (Nagoya University,
Japan), Sugita, and their colleagues
calculated last year. Perhaps Ryugu spun
itself into its odd shape, generating
landslides and erasing craters.
Lauretta is hesitant to favour a
scenario for how the asteroids came
by these shapes. At first, he was “fully
onboard” with the rapid spin solution.
But the large, ancient craters on the
equatorial ridges give him pause. Those
SH A DOW OF H AYA BUSA 2: JA X A / UNIV. OF TOK YO / KOCHI UNIV. / RIK K YO UNIV. / N AGOYA UNIV. / CHIBA INST. OF TECHNOLOGY / MEIJI UNIV. / UNIV. OF AIZU / AIST; SURFACE M A P OF RY UGU: JA X A A ND S. SUGITA E T A L. / SCIENCE 2019
built up from the shattered remains of an earlier asteroid can
end up with a die shape, no landslides required.
That there are craters at all on Bennu and Ryugu “really
shocked me,” says asteroid scientist Bill Bottke (Southwest
Research Institute, Boulder). Many small asteroids shed
material, for various reasons. He thus
expected the spacecrafts’ targets to be
essentially blank slates, wiped clean by all
the goings-on. Perhaps it’s easier to make
craters on these bodies’ surfaces than we
thought, he says — a solution supported
by Hayabusa 2’s impact experiment. Or,
he speculates, maybe asteroid surfaces
don’t erase themselves easily. That would
imply that regions covered with large
W LEFT A MARK Hayabusa 2’s shadow sails
over the first touchdown site on February 22,
2019, just after completing the maneuver.

T RYUGU Hayabusa 2 dropped rovers at two known locations (yellow, hazy spots) on Ryugu, touched down twice and mapped dozens of craters
(white circles) as well as two large trenches, called fossae. The largest boulder, Otohime Saxum, appears stretched out here because of the severe
projection distortions near the map’s poles. The team has not yet identified where the final rover, Minerva-II2, landed.

90°N

60°N

Minerva-II1
30°N landin
ng site
i Cendrillon
Crater

Touchdown 2
Touchdown 1
Brabo Ryujin Dorsum
Ryujin Dorsum Kintaro Crater
0° Crater
Urashima Kolobok
l
Crater Crater
Momotaro
Crater

–30°S MASCOT
M
landing site
e
Ejima Horai
Kibidango Saxum Fossa
Crater

–60°S
Tokoyo
Fossa
Otohime
Saxum

–90S°
0° 30° 60° 90° 120° 150° 180° 210° 240° 270° 300° 330° 360°

16 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 craters, such as the equatorial ridges, are
ancient, whereas those with few small
craters are young, such as ones near the
poles.
For now, scientists can’t tell how old
Bennu and Ryugu are. Both are near-Earth
asteroids, strays that were kicked out of
the main belt and into the inner Solar
System by the gravitational influences of
Jupiter and Saturn. Asteroids only survive
in near-Earth orbits for about 10 million
years before hitting a planet or the Sun, or
being evicted from the system altogether.
Based on where their orbits trace back to
in the asteroid belt, Ryugu and Bennu
are probably roughly a billion years old,
Lauretta says.
The samples that OSIRIS-REX and
BENNU’S SURFACE: N ASA / GODDA RD / UNIV ERSIT Y OF A RIZON A (3); SURFACE M A P OF BENNU: N ASA / GODDA RD / UNIV ERSIT Y OF A RIZON A , D. S. L AURE T TA E T A L. / SCIENCE 2019
Hayabusa 2 will bring home could tell us
the little worlds’ ages. The catastrophic
impact that created the rubble the
asteroids formed from would have reset
certain chemical clocks, Lauretta explains.
One useful clock is the ratio of potassium
to argon. Potassium is a rock-loving
T BENNU The OSIRIS-REX team has chosen two
potential landing sites on Bennu: Nightingale and
Osprey. Also shown are the origins for the three
largest particle ejection events (the Jan. 6 event
launched from near the south pole). The various
smaller ones come from all over the asteroid. The
team hasn’t assigned official feature names yet.
60°N
Nightingale
30°N
Feb. 11
0°
Osprey
–30°S
–60°S Jan. 6
0° 30° 60° 90°
element, incorporating itself into things
like salts and feldspars. But it decays into
argon, a noble gas — which doesn’t like to
bond with anything. Once the potassium
atom decays, the now-argon atom will sit
unhappily in the crystal structure until it
receives the energy needed to kick it out.
An impact can deliver that energy. The
impact doesn’t necessarily destroy the
rock, he says, but it’s enough to drive the
argon out and reset the radioactive clock.
From that point on, any argon in the rock
dates back to the impact that made the
pieces that formed the asteroid.
Water, water everywhere
One dramatic difference between Bennu
and Ryugu is water. Prior spectroscopic
observations had hinted that Ryugu’s
surface bore hydrated minerals, while
Bennu looked relatively dry. Scientists
found the reverse. Ryugu has much less
water caught up in its rocks’ crystalline
structure than what’s typically seen in a
carbonaceous chondrite meteorite.
W UP CLOSE Shots of Bennu reveal an imposing
surface replete with boulders. These rocks look
deceptively small: The one in the top image’s
upper left is 14.5 metres wide; the little rock on
the flat one in the middle image is the size of a
horse; and the bottom image’s boulder is as tall
as a 747 aircraft’s tail.
Jan. 19
120° 150° 180° 210° 240° 270° 300° 330° 360°
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 17
 ASTEROID RECON
And Bennu? Bennu is practically
soaked.
“We saw this signal from way out, from
thousands of kilometres away from the
asteroid,” Lauretta says — as soon as the
team turned on the visible and infrared
spectrometer, which detects water’s
absorption signal. Those data show that
water has altered practically all the rocks
that make up Bennu’s surface. The rocks
must be fragments from a large asteroid
that had massive amounts of hot water
percolating through it, altering its rocks,
changing their chemistry and building the clay minerals that
dominate Bennu’s surface today. “Think of a Yellowstone
kind of environment,” he says. “We went there to go find
hydrated minerals — which generally are very rare in the Solar
System and in meteorites — and we got a whole asteroid full.”
The difference between Ryugu and Bennu is puzzling
because, based on the asteroids’ orbits, scientists think the two
worlds come from the same parent body. Perhaps something
about the way in which the two rubble piles agglutinated
affected how much water they held on to. Or perhaps Ryugu
has been in the inner Solar System much longer and been dried
out by sunlight. Or maybe the asteroids aren’t siblings after all.
q ACTIVE ASTEROID This enhanced, two-image composite shows
some of the 93 particles observed launching from Bennu on January 19,
2019. The event was one of the three largest seen thus far.
18 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
t TARGET PRACTICE This continuous image
sequence taken from an altitude of 1 km tracks a
descending target marker, dropped on September
17, 2019, in preparation for the Minerva-II2
deployment on October 3rd.
Of all the discoveries so far, why Ryugu
is so dry is the question Sugita most wants
answered. “I think this really tells us what
controls the water amount in the asteroid
belt,” he says. If scientists can determine
why some asteroids retain water and others
don’t, it could help us understand how
much water the planetary building blocks carried and why
Earth and the other inner Solar System planets formed with
the amounts of water that they did. In 10 or 20 years, he
predicts, we will look back on the discovery of Ryugu’s dryness
and say, “That moment, we learned something important.”
Asteroid spittle
And then there’s Bennu’s particle coughing fits. OSIRIS-
REX has detected a few dozen outbursts, ranging from tiny
explosions of 70 or more pebbles down to individual escapees.
Many particles escape forever; others orbit for days before
TA RG E T DESCEN T: JA X A / UNIV. OF TOK YO / KOCHI UNIV. / RIK K YO UNIV. / N AGOYA UNIV. / CHIBA INST. OF TECHNOLOGY / MEIJI UNIV. / UNIV. OF AIZU / AIST
landing again. The sum effect is like a constant swarm of
bees, Hergenrother says.
The Hayabusa 2 team can’t tell whether Ryugu also spews
shards — the spacecraft only darted close to Ryugu’s surface
to drop its rovers and take samples, and it also doesn’t have
as sensitive a camera. OSIRIS-REX, on the other hand, stayed
within a couple of kilometres of Bennu’s surface for months.
No spacecraft has done that before. “It’s very possible this
happens on all asteroids, and it just hasn’t been seen yet,”
Hergenrother says.
The team favours three possible causes for the ejections:
the sublimation of water molecules liberated from minerals
by grinding, cracking and heating, which then propels grains
off the surface; meteoroid impacts; and thermal fracturing.
Bennu rotates every 4.3 hours, which means that every
4.3 hours its airless surface experiences a temperature
rollercoaster, plunging to 250 kelvin at night and surging to
400 K just after local noon. This dramatic cycling can cause
rocks to crack and crumble — in fact, Hayabusa 2 images
show that more than half of the cracks on Ryugu’s surface
line up north-south, as expected if the rocks cracked because
they repeatedly rotate into darkness and light. Researchers see
hints of a similar alignment on Bennu.
The three largest swarms of particles seen from Bennu
thus far all launched during local afternoon. This makes
sense if the cause is thermal fracturing, because it takes
roughly three hours for heat to penetrate the rock’s upper
couple of centimetres, creating a difference in temperature
that would stress the rock. But the other events happened at
random times, even at night.
The range in timing suggests that more than one
 p TOUCHDOWN Hayabusa 2 executed its second touchdown on July 11, 2019, near Ryugu’s equator. The images capture 4 seconds before, the
moment of, and 4 seconds after touchdown.
mechanism is at work, or perhaps they work together.
Thermal stress could weaken the surface, “and then if a
micrometeorite comes in and hits it, it’s going to respond in a
spectacular way,” Lauretta speculates. If thermal fracturing is
the root cause, then all near-Earth asteroids should be doing
this, he adds. But if water is the key factor, then only Bennu
and other hydrated asteroids will launch particles.
Since space agencies aren’t likely to send a fleet of
spacecraft to check dozens of near-Earth asteroids for this
activity, the OSIRIS-REX team has found a clever alternative:
The researchers partnered with SETI scientists to look for
meteors that might be from Bennu’s debris. So far, nothing.
But after a couple of years, they hope to have enough
observations to identify any potential links between meteor
populations and near-Earth asteroids.
Landward, ho
Hayabusa 2 has already finished its investigation of Ryugu,
leaving the asteroid last November with two samples safely
stowed. It will drop these in Australia during an Earth flyby
at the end of 2020. With the extra propellant onboard, the
SPE WING PA RTICLES: N ASA / GODDA RD / UNIV ERSIT Y OF A RIZON A / LOCK HEED M A RTIN ; JA X A (3)
spacecraft might continue on to whizz by another asteroid.
OSIRIS-REX, which arrived at its asteroid about five
months after Hayabusa 2 did, intended from the beginning to
take more of a tortoise pace with its sampling. But the jagged
surface hasn’t done the team any favours, either. The original
plan to monitor the spacecraft’s descent with lidar doesn’t
offer the guidance accuracy necessary to avoid potential
ASTEROID PROSPECTING?
Both scientists and starry-eyed entrepreneurs speak of
mining asteroids for water and metals. But although these
space rocks may someday provide valuable resources,
we have a long way to go before that day comes. “We’re
talking about the space economy of the 22nd century,” says
asteroid expert Richard Binzel (MIT).
Water will likely be the first resource utilised, he says.
But first we have to learn how to recognise which asteroids
hazards. Instead, the researchers will track features using a
catalogue they’ll upload to the craft in advance.
OSIRIS-REX has a primary and a backup sample site, both
announced in December 2019. The first, Nightingale, is a
relatively smooth spot in a 70-metre-wide crater high in the
northern hemisphere. Scientists think the crater and the
debris it unearthed are fairly fresh. The backup site, dubbed
Osprey, sits in a much smaller, equatorial crater surrounded
by several types of rocks.
The spacecraft will do multiple recon passes of both sites
in the first half of 2020 before touching down, hopefully in
late August. It has until early 2021 to snatch its sample, then
the craft will start the trip back to Earth. The cargo should
drop in Utah in September 2023.
The retrieved rocks won’t be in perfect condition. Both
missions’ grab-and-go strategies involve some rather violent
jostling, and then there’s the atmospheric entry. “It’s coming
in at 12.4 km/s, so it’s going to shake up a bit on that ride,”
Lauretta says. “No getting around that. I tried.”
Still, scientists expect to learn much from Hayabusa 2 and
OSIRIS-REX’s samples. The asteroid pieces, shaken up though
they may be, will be treasures of chemical and geological
insight, providing glimpses of how everything we see in the
Solar System — including the delightful array of carbon-based
life around us — came to be.
¢ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE gasped when she first saw Ryugu’s
rugged landscape in a rover surface image.
have mineable water — something that, given the surprise
of a wet Bennu and dry Ryugu, we clearly need to work
on. The samples OSIRIS-REX and Hayabusa 2 bring back
will tell us how much water the asteroids’ minerals contain
and potentially indicate how much future spacefarers could
extract globally.
“But I don’t predict it for this century,” Binzel says. “I would
love to be wrong.”
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 19
 TO MAKE A PLANET by Megan Ansdell

Revising the

story of
New technology has given astronomers
access to the dusty regions where
planets are born — and has complicated
our picture of planet formation.

A LM A (ESO / N AO J / N R AO), S . A N D R E WS E T A L ., N R AO / AU I / N S F, S . DAG N E LLO

THE QUESTION OF HOW PLANETARY systems form,
and how those processes relate to what we see in our own
Solar System, is one of the most fundamental problems in
astrophysics and a key piece in the puzzle of figuring out our
place in the universe. With the recent success of exoplanet-
hunting missions such as Kepler, we sometimes take for

planet
granted that, just a few decades ago, we were unsure whether
worlds outside our Solar System even existed. At that time,
astronomers used the single known planetary system — our
own — to shape our understanding of planet formation.
Our Solar System features an orderly setup, with all the
planets moving together in a nice flat plane and with plenty
of space between orbits. There is also a dichotomy between
the inner rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars)
and the outer gas and ice giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Neptune). Based on this, we concluded that small, terrestrial
worlds will always huddle close to their stars, whereas large,

formation
20 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
 gaseous worlds will invariably circle farther out. The processes
of planet formation must be tuned to create this setup, we
thought.
But we now know that a model based only on our Solar
System is misleading. From systems where planets orbit two
stars instead of just one (Kepler-16b) to those with Jupiter-
mass planets on orbits of just a few days (Kepler-435b), our
observations since the first exoplanet discoveries in the
mid-1990s have continuously surprised us with a puzzling
diversity of system architectures. Our Solar System is not the
blueprint we once assumed it was.
To understand how planets form, we cannot depend on
our Solar System alone to guide us. Instead, astronomers go
back in time by observing planet formation in action around
other stars much younger than our Sun. But even there, with
H U B B LE IM AG ES: M A R K M CCAUG HR E A N (M A X- PL A N CK- IN STIT U TE FO R ASTRO N O M Y ) / C. RO B E R T O’D E LL (R ICE U N I V E R S IT Y ) / N ASA
few exceptions, we cannot directly observe forming planets:
The light they emit is far too faint compared to that from
their host star and the bright disks of dust and gas from
which they are coalescing. So as an alternative, astronomers
search for indirect signatures of forming planets in these
protoplanetary disks.
Similar to exoplanets, observations of protoplanetary disks
have experienced a boom in recent years as new state-of-the-
art observatories have come online. While the details are still
being worked out, it is becoming increasingly clear that the
diversity of exoplanets is likely rooted in the diversity of the
protoplanetary disks from which they came.
A traditional take on planet formation
The orderly setup of our Solar System led scholars in the
1700s such as Kant and Laplace to conclude that planets
likely form in flattened disks around young stars. These
aptly named protoplanetary disks are natural consequences of
the star-formation process, created due to the conservation
of angular momentum as large molecular clouds of gas and
t DSHARP Astronomers used ALMA to image the dust in these
protoplanetary disks as part of the Disk Substructures at High Angular
Resolution Project (DSHARP). Gaps and rings are common and may
indicate ongoing planet formation. AS 205 (top right) is a multiple-star
system, with each star sporting its own dusty disk.
q DARK BIRTH Protoplanetary disks appear dark in these Hubble
images, silhouetted by light from brilliant starbirth in the Orion Nebula.
dust collapse to form protostars.
By the end of the 1900s, the generally accepted theory
was that the dust grains orbiting in these disks would collide,
stick together, and build up into rocky bodies known as
planetesimals, eventually growing into planet cores. The
planet cores that grew quickly enough and were sufficiently
massive to grab gas from what remained of the surrounding
disk would become giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn;
those with less mass would remain as smaller, rocky worlds
like Earth.
In this picture, the split between the small inner and
giant outer planets in our Solar System could be naturally
explained by the fact that the outer regions of protoplanetary
disks should contain more planet-building material, and
also that this material should more easily coagulate. That’s
because these outer regions are much colder due to their
larger distances from their host stars, and so their dust
grains are icy and thus more likely to stick together when
they collide. The extra stickiness accelerates the growth of
dust grains into large planetary cores that can quickly accrete
the surrounding gas to become giant planets.
Although we have since uncovered some roadblocks in this
theory’s specifics, the overarching picture holds: Planets are
assembled in disks of gas and dust surrounding young stars
that form as a natural consequence of the star formation
process. Indeed, we see these protoplanetary disks around
nearly all young stars in nearby star-forming regions, just as
nearly all mature stars in our galaxy likely host at least one
exoplanet.
However, as our observations of protoplanetary disks
improve, we are finding that, as with exoplanets, the disks
exhibit a surprising diversity that has challenged key parts of
our traditional ideas of planet formation.
A better view
In recent years two facilities in particular, the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Spectro-
Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE)
instrument, have been providing the most detailed views
of protoplanetary disks that we have ever seen. These two
facilities take very different observations, but the data sets
complement each other to improve our understanding of
planet formation.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 21
 TO MAKE A PLANET
ALMA is what we call an interferometer, consisting
of more than 60 antennas spread up to 16 km across the
Atacama Desert in Chile. These individual dishes work
together to act as a single, much larger telescope to obtain
sensitive, high-resolution images at radio wavelengths.
In contrast, SPHERE is an extreme adaptive optics system
used with one of the four 8.2-m Very Large Telescope (VLT)
mirrors located on Chile’s Cerro Paranal. This instrument
produces high-resolution and high-contrast images at optical
and near-infrared wavelengths.
SPHERE is tuned to detect the starlight that scatters
off small, micron-size dust grains near the surfaces of
protoplanetary disks. These dust grains are comparable in
size to smoke particles, and like smoke they float easily,
interspersed in the disk’s gas. This behaviour makes them
good tracers of where the gas lies, which is useful since it’s
often much harder to observe the gas than the dust grains due
to gas’s weaker emission.
ALMA’s longer radio wavelengths, on the other hand, are
best suited for probing the glow radiating from larger, pebble-
size solids heated by the starlight. These pebbles contain most
of the mass that will eventually form planets. As they grow,
they settle toward the midplane of the disk, which means that
ALMA can see below the surface of the disk to detect what’s
happening inside it. ALMA can also directly observe the gas
by measuring the faint emission from simple molecules such
as carbon monoxide.
ALMA can resolve structures as small as 5 astronomical
units across in protoplanetary disks located in the nearest
star-forming regions — a 10-fold improvement over the
previous generation of radio observatories. With ALMA’s
higher resolution, we now see that these disks are not smooth
like frisbees but rather often have multiple concentric gaps
and rings in their dust distributions. We think growing
T DISK COMPOSITION In the centre of a protoplanetary disk, starlight sublimates dust, leaving a gas-filled hole around the star. This gas accretes
onto the star. Farther out, the dust coagulates and settles toward the disk midplane. Beyond the snow lines, ices make grains stickier, fostering giant
planet growth. Different wavelengths probe different parts of the disk. Distances are approximate.
Giant planet formation?
Dust settling
I Submillimetre and millimetre
Gas only
Snow line
Grain growth
100
22 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
planets may create at least some of these structures as they
carve their way through the dust that lies along their orbit.
We can use detailed computer simulations to infer the masses
of the planets based on the properties of the disk features.
In addition to these prolific concentric gaps and rings,
ALMA has also revealed vortices, spiral arms, and large inner
cavities in the dust distribution — all of which can also
be explained by planets with a variety of sizes and orbits.
However, actually observing these forming planets has proven
extremely difficult. SPHERE has detected only one convincing
case, PDS 70b. (Astronomers also recently discovered a
second potential planet with another VLT instrument, using
a technique that looks for effects the planet may have on the
motions of gas in the disk.)
Indeed, the structures in protoplanetary disks may not be
due solely to planets; other processes could also create similar
patterns. In fact, the gaps and rings in the dust distribution
could actually help the planets form by solving the radial
drift problem. Pebbles should feel a stronger headwind from
surrounding gas as they grow, making them fall rapidly
into the central star and depleting the reservoir of planet-
forming material before planets can actually form. The gaps
and rings in protoplanetary disks that we now commonly
see with ALMA may show places where this inward drift has
stopped, providing a sheltered place for pebbles to grow into
planetesimals and eventually planet cores.
Still, despite the unprecedentedly high resolution of ALMA
and SPHERE, we cannot probe closer to the star than the
equivalent of the orbit of Jupiter in nearly all protoplanetary
systems. This is a problem if we want to understand how
planets like Earth form. We also want to compare our
observations of protoplanetary disks to those of exoplanets,
which are much easier to detect close to their host stars.
One innovative way of studying the inner disk regions
Near-infrared
Scattered visible/
near-infrared
Mid-infrared
G REGG DINDER M A N / S&T
Magnetospheric
accretion flows
(ultraviolet)
10 1
Distance (a.u.)
 is indirectly: by looking for the shadows that the inner disk
casts on the outer disk. These shadows occur if the inner disk
is warped or tilted compared to the outer disk. SPHERE has
imaged many of these shadows, once again upending our
view of a smooth protoplanetary disk.
Astronomers have also used light curves from the Kepler
spacecraft to identify so-called ‘dipper’ systems, which
display drops in starlight that are much larger than expected
if a planet were crossing in front of the star. These deep dips
likewise point to large dusty structures of planet-building
material that closely orbit the young stars and regularly block
our view. Such findings hint at a dynamic planet-forming
environment, which might help explain some of the unusual
exoplanet systems we’ve discovered, such as those with highly
elongated or tilted orbits.

The new astrochemistry

Protoplanetary disks are not just physically dynamic but also
chemically dynamic. Astronomers study the chemistry of
protoplanetary disks by observing emission from different
types of gas molecules. Although we have so far focused
on the dust component of protoplanetary disks because it
is easier to observe, the gas component makes up 99% of
the disk’s mass, governs many of the key physical processes
involved in planet formation, sets the chemical compositions
of exoplanet cores and atmospheres, and has implications for
the origins of life and habitability.
However, the main constituent of the gas, molecular
hydrogen (H2), is largely invisible to us because most of the
protoplanetary disk is too cold to excite emission from this
molecule. The remaining molecular gas species that are easier
to excite are rare, making their emission faint and therefore
difficult to observe. It wasn’t until ALMA came online
that we were able to begin studying the chemical nature of
S IN THE GAP PDS 70b is the only system so far in which SPHERE has
imaged a planet orbiting within an opening in the protoplanetary disk.
Using gas motions, astronomers have found signs of a potential second
planet, c (not shown).
protoplanetary disks in detail.
One of the main focuses in the ALMA era has been on
snow lines. These are the locations in the disk where the
temperature becomes cool enough for a given chemical
species (water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, etc.) to
condense from the gas phase into the solid phase. Each
molecule ‘freezes out’ at a different temperature than the
others, so each will have its own distinct snow line at a
specific distance from the star.

How protoplanetary disks form Approx.

1 light-year
PDS 70 B: ESO / A . M ÜLLER E T A L.; DISK FOR M ATION: G REGG DINDER M A N / S&T

Rotation retards
Stars form when large molecular clouds of gas and dust in collapse in
interstellar space collapse under their own gravity. These large disk plane
clouds contain many particles that move in random ways. But
they will always have an overall ‘spin’ to their collective motion,
as it is difficult for all the particle motions to exactly cancel
each other out.
The overall spin of the system, or its angular momentum,
must remain constant under the laws of physics (if there are no
external torques operating on the system). This conservation Slowly spinning As cloud collapses,
Approx.
law means that as the cloud collapses, it must spin faster if the interstellar cloud it spins faster, 100 a.u.
collapes due to gravity and flattens
collapse is purely toward the axis of rotation. This is the same
reason why a spinning ice skater pulling their arms towards
them will begin to spin faster. momentum still allows the particles to collapse parallel to the
Continually increasing the spin would eventually cause the axis of rotation. As the particles bump into each other, their
cloud to fly apart, so a balance must be established to allow motions in this direction will cancel each other out, resulting in
the star to form. Fortunately, the conservation of angular the formation of a flat disk.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 23
 TO MAKE A PLANET

Snow lines can also determine the compositions of planet

cores and atmospheres. For example, a gas giant formed in
the cold outer regions of the disk should have an atmosphere
poor in easily vaporised compounds such as H2O and CO, as
those volatiles should have condensed into ice and thus been
locked into planet cores along with the solids. Therefore, we
can use the chemical signatures in exoplanet atmospheres to
infer where a planet formed, and thus whether it migrated
into its current position. For example, analysis of the
HR 8799 system, which hosts four super-Jupiter planets,

MWC 758: NR AO / AUI / NSF; DISKS IM AG ED BY SPHERE: ESO / H. AV ENH AUS E T A L. / E. SISSA E T A L. / DA RT T-S A ND SHINE COLL A BOR ATIONS
revealed differences in the ratio of carbon to oxygen in the
planets’ atmospheres, consistent with the outer two planets
having formed outside the water snow line and the inner two
planets having formed inside of it.

When do planets start to form?

ONE-STOP SHOP The MWC 758 system shows not only a large
(and slightly off-centre) gap but also a faint spiral arm and two
bright clumps within its disk.
Snow lines are important because they affect the types of
planets that can form at different locations in the disk. For
example, when water molecules condense as ice onto dust
grains beyond the H2O snow line, they not only provide more
solid material to form planet cores, but as described above
they also accelerate growth by making grains stickier. The
implications are potentially seen in our own Solar System,
where the water snow line marks the transition between the
giant and terrestrial planets.
A big question that astronomers are now reviving based
on these new observations is how quickly planets form.
Traditionally, we estimated how long it takes a disk to dissipate
and used that as a proxy. The reasoning is simple: Material
must still exist around the star in order to make planets.
Astronomers can fairly easily determine whether or not
there is any dusty material orbiting a star by searching
for extra infrared emission. Dust grains warmed by their
proximity to the star glow brightly at these wavelengths.
Large-scale infrared surveys conducted by the Spitzer
spacecraft in the 2000s confirmed that nearly all stars host
protoplanetary disks when they are very young, roughly 1
million years old. But only 20% of stars still host disks by
5 million years of age, and by 10 million years all but 5%
of stars have lost their disks. Therefore, astronomers have
typically concluded that planets must form within the first 5
million years or so.
This timeframe set what we thought was a very strict limit,
because our theoretical models struggled to make planets so
quickly. But the infrared measurements from Spitzer didn’t
tell us much about the structure and amount of material
around young stars, which can provide important clues to the
planet formation process.

DISKS IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT

The Spectro-Polarimetric High-
contrast Exoplanet Research
(SPHERE) instrument on the
Very Large Telescope in Chile
blocks light from the central star
while directly imaging starlight
reflected off dust grains in the
surrounding disk. Images have
revealed disks with a wide
variety of sizes and shapes. RU Lup V4046 Sgr PDS 66 MY Lup

24 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 The recent results from ALMA and SPHERE now suggest
that planet formation may occur even more rapidly than we
thought based on Spitzer data. One of the starkest examples
is the iconic HL Tau disk, which was the first to be imaged
with the full resolving power of ALMA. The HL Tau system
is just 1 million years old; it is still deeply embedded in its
natal cloud, which is dumping material onto the forming star
and disk. However, ALMA can see through this cloud and
has revealed a disk with many concentric gaps and rings. If
forming planets carved these gaps, then they would indicate
T W H Y DR A E: S. A NDRE WS (CEN TER FOR ASTROPH YSICS, H A RVA RD & SMITHSONIA N), B. SA X TON (NR AO / AUI / NSF ), A LM A (ESO / N AOJ / NR AO)

that planets come together when the star and disk themselves
are still forming, on the order of hundreds of thousands of
years rather than millions of years.
Evidence from our own Solar System also supports such
rapid planet formation. The age of Jupiter’s core, inferred from
dating different meteorite populations, indicates that it had
already assembled by 1 million years after the start of the Solar
System. Scientists also think that on the order of 10 Earth
masses of ice, rock and metals went into forming Jupiter’s
early core, implying that the growth of planetesimals and
planet cores occurs even earlier than 1 million years. If planets
assemble at the same time as the star and disk, then we would
have to fundamentally change our models of planet formation.
To chase down the answers to these mysteries,
astronomers will soon add to their arsenal the next
generation of 30-metre telescopes, which will give us an
unprecedented ability to probe the structure and motions
in young protoplanetary disks. ALMA recently detected the
first signatures of planet-building material flowing into a gap
in a protoplanetary disk, where a young planet is thought
S TW HYDRAE In the protoplanetary system nearest Earth, ALMA
to be orbiting. The observation provides an exciting preview images reveal a gap in the disk at 1 astronomical unit from the star.
of what is yet to come. We’ll combine with these ground- The TW Hydrae system is about 10 million years old and may provide a
based instruments the upcoming space-based missions like window to our own Solar System’s infancy.
the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in
2021. Its sensitivity at infrared wavelengths will enable „ MEGAN ANSDELL is a Research Fellow at the Flatiron
the first demographic chemistry studies of planet-forming Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics and Center
environments. Together, these facilities promise to enable us for Computational Mathematics. Her research focuses on
to place our Solar System within its larger galactic context, observing planet formation and applying machine learning to
rather than the other way around. astrophysical problems.

GSC 07396-00759 DoAr 44 RXJ 1615 AS 209 IM Lup

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 25
 COSMIC RELIEF by David Grinspoon
Venus is dead.
Long live Venus.
In which I attempt a contrarian argument against my own contrarian argument.
FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES
I’ve been arguing that Venus — so
often voted ‘least likely to succeed’
by astrobiologists — might possibly
harbour life. Not on the scorching
surface but high up in the clouds,
where temperatures are mild,
nutrients and energy abound, and
droplets consist of water that, while
steeped in sulfuric acid, are less acidic
than some environments where life is
found on Earth.
S A false-colour image of Venus’s nightside
taken by the Akatsuki spacecraft in 2016.
26 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
This contrarian position has
produced some eye-rolling at
conferences, but nobody has come up
with a good reason why it’s wrong. And
now a funny thing has happened: An
international workshop on Venusian
cloud life held in Moscow in October
2019, along with several recent
publications, appear to have moved
the idea from the fringe to near-
respectability.
Several results contribute to this
shift. Observations from the Venus
Express and Akatsuki missions have
deepened some of the Venusian
mysteries that cloud life might
explain, such as unidentified airborne
material that absorbs more than half
the solar energy falling on the planet.
Exoplanets in the ‘Venus zone’ have
renewed astronomers’ interest in
the possible habitability of close-in
planets. And new calculations point
toward Venus having had water oceans
for much of its lifetime.
So now let me tell you everything
that’s wrong with the idea. Here’s why
Venus is most likely a dead world:
Maybe life can’t live in clouds.
Although microbes thrive in clouds
on Earth, no known species lives its
entire life cycle in this environment.
Maybe the chemistry of Venus’
clouds is just too harsh. While Earth
does have acid-loving microbes, we
don’t know the detailed composition
of the Venusian cloud particles or
whether they would be compatible
with any form of life.
Maybe life couldn’t migrate
to the clouds when the oceans
disappeared, or maybe the clouds
haven’t been continuously habitable.
Evolution on Earth shows that life is
extremely good at finding habitable
niches and evolving when conditions
change. But we don’t know if Venus
has been continuously cloudy since the
surface became uninhabitable, so a
cloud niche may not have been stable
over long time scales.
Maybe an ocean never had the
right conditions. Some scientists think
that for life to start you need oceans
and continents. If early Venus had
too much water and no land/water
interface, life might not have arisen.
Or a specific necessary environment,
such as seafloor hot springs, might
have been absent or chemically
different enough to preclude life’s
origin.
Maybe an ocean didn’t last long.
Calculations showing that an ocean
could have lasted for billions of years
depend on several assumptions about
early Venus. They require that the
planet always rotated slowly, as it does
now; a fast-rotating Venus would have
quickly lost its oceans. But we have no
idea what the early rotation rate was.
Venus may never have had an
ocean. The young Sun may have
vaporised any water, with the solar
wind blowing away a steam atmosphere
before it condensed on the surface.
Maybe Earth just lucked out. Life
could be improbable, dependent as
much on some absurd twist of fate
as on specific planetary conditions,
stages, or events.
So what do you think? I’ve made
my best attempt to tell you why Venus
should be dead — though I haven’t
© PL A N E T- C PRO JECT TE A M
really convinced myself. In any case, I
think it’s worth a look!
■ DAVID GRINSPOON is the author of
Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the
Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet.
28 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

ast
A STRIP OF SKY The International
LE AH TISCIONE / S&T
Liquid Mirror Telescope will observe the
thin declination strip that passes through
its zenith-pointing field of view.
by Govert Schilling LIQUID MIRRORS
Forget lenses and aluminising — some
astronomers are turning to whirling dishes
of mercury to study the universe.
ver
omy
IT’S NOT THE LARGEST TELESCOPE in the world. It’s not at
the best possible site. And it can only look straight up, towards
the zenith. But at just over US$2 million, the nearly completed
4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) in
northern India is cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it may usher
in a new era of observational astronomy. As the very first
liquid mirror telescope that will actually be used for regular
astronomical research, the ILMT could pave the way for a slate
of successors — maybe even on the farside of the Moon.
The principle is simple. Fill a basin with mercury (also
known as quicksilver) and set it spinning. Due to the
combination of gravity and the centrifugal pseudo force, the
shiny liquid metal will adopt a paraboloidal surface — the
ideal shape to focus the light of distant stars. Place a camera
at the focal point, and there’s your zenith-pointing telescope.
However, building the ILMT has turned out to be anything
but simple. The project has a chequered history, with endless
delays. “We just never wanted to give up,” says principal
investigator Jean Surdej (University of Liège, Belgium).
Fits and starts
People have been thinking about liquid mirror telescopes
for more than 150 years (see sidebar, page 30), but Surdej
hadn’t paid any attention to the concept until 1996. At that
time, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute
in Baltimore, studying quasars and gravitational lenses.
One day, astrophysicist Ermanno Borra (Laval University,
Canada) approached him. “Ermanno was developing mercury
mirrors and asked me if research on gravitational lenses
might benefit from the construction of a large liquid mirror
telescope,” he recounts. “I said no. After all, we only knew
of a handful of lensed quasars back then, so a non-steerable
telescope seemed pretty useless.”
In the 1980s, Borra — the pioneer of the field — had already
developed the necessary technologies to build small liquid
mirrors. These included the use of a pressurised air bearing
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 29
 LIQUID MIRRORS

What came 1850 Concept only

E. CAPOCCI / ITALY (NAPLES)
t A HISTORY OF LIQUID MIRROR TELESCOPES LMTs have
experienced three periods of activity in the last 170 years, the current

before
Isaac Newton realised
1850s
that the surface of a
spinning liquid forms
a paraboloid — the
ideal shape to focus
parallel rays of light
into one single point.
In 1850, well over a
pre-
1857
Concept only
BUCHAN (FULL NAME UNKNOWN) / U.S.
one beginning with Borra’s paper in 1982. Developments in grey have
limited or anecdotal evidence. Dates and focal lengths are approximate.
Except for the ILMT, all telescopes built in the 1990s or 2000s were
late Unspecified size
H. SKEY / ENGLAND
dedicated to space debris (NODO) or lidar and atmospheric studies.
1868 Unspecified size below the mercury container to prevent unwanted vibrations,
R. C. CARRINGTON /
ENGLAND (FRENSHAM) and precise control of the rotational speed (eventually with
1872 0.35 m (lab)
0.00001% accuracy) to maintain the perfect paraboloidal
First published account shape. In the late 1980s, Borra teamed up with astrophysicist
of a working LMT
Paul Hickson (University of British Columbia, Canada),
H. SKEY / NEW ZEALAND (DUNEDIN)

century after Newton’s
death, Ernesto Capocci
(Naples Observatory,
Italy) was the first to
suggest the use of a
spinning liquid-mercury
mirror to construct
telescopes. However,
there is no evidence
that he built one. In
1868, English amateur
astronomer Richard
Carrington (famous
who had more experience in building telescopes and who
1908 0.18 m (lab) subsequently designed and engineered larger mercury mirrors.
R. W. WOOD / U.S. (BALTIMORE)
“In 1994, my students and I had built a prototype
1908 0.51 m, f/1.7 to f/3 (lab)
instrument with a 2.7-metre mirror,” says Hickson. “I set it
0.51 m, f/9 (field)
First astronomical up for testing in my own backyard in White Rock,” a small
observations coastal community just south of Vancouver. Just a few weeks
R. W. WOOD / U.S. (EAST HAMPTON)
after regular observations began, he presented the design
1922 15.2 m, f/5.6 to f/12 and performance results at a conference on astronomical
(concept)
B. A. MCA. (FULL NAME UNKNOWN) / telescopes and instrumentation in Hawai‘i. Science magazine
CHILE (CHANARAL)
reported on it, the dean of his university read the story, and
1982 Concept only before long, Hickson got money to build a permanent home
Landmark paper for the instrument in Maple Ridge, some 60 kilometres east
E. F. BORRA / CANADA (QUEBEC CITY)

for his observations of of Vancouver.

1983
spots and flares on the
Sun) also dabbled with
1983–
the idea, but again, it’s 1986
unclear whether or not
he put it into practice.
1 m, f/0.72 (lab) The UBC/Laval 2.7-metre Liquid Mirror Telescope, as it
V. P. VASIL’EV / USSR (KHAR’KOV)
was officially known, was really a technology demonstrator —
1 m, f/1.6 (lab) it has never been used for regular observing. But Hickson also
1 m, f/4.7 (field)
E. F. BORRA / CANADA (QUEBEC CITY) built a 3-metre mirror for NASA’s Orbital Debris Observatory
(NODO) near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. NODO, largely

TERRI DUBÉ / S&T, SOURCES: B. K . GIBSON / JOUR NAL OF THE R OYAL ASTR ONOMICAL SOCIE T Y OF CANADA 19 91, PAUL HICKSON
1983– 1.7 m, f/0.89 (lab)
The first documented 1984 E. F. BORRA / CANADA (QUEBEC CITY) developed under the leadership of project scientist Mark
liquid mirror was a Mulrooney, operated from 1995 to 2002 and looked for small
1987 1.2 m, f/4.58 (field)
35-centimetre one, pieces of space junk passing overhead.
First scientific paper based
made in 1872 by solely on LMT observations So by the time Borra sought collaborators for a really big
astronomer Henry Skey E. F. BORRA / CANADA (QUEBEC CITY)
mercury telescope in 1996, he and others already had quite
in New Zealand. In 1909, 1987– 1.5 m, f/2 (lab) a bit of experience with the new technology. Too bad that
Robert Wood (Johns 1989 E. F. BORRA / CANADA (QUEBEC CITY)
Surdej didn’t seem to be interested.
Hopkins University) built
a larger, 51-centimetre
1989– 2.7 m, f/1.89 (field) That all changed in 1997, at an astronomy conference
1994 P. HICKSON / CANADA (VANCOUVER)
mercury mirror. in Marseille, France, says Surdej. A liquid mirror telescope
However, after Skey’s 1991– 2.7 m, f/1.89 (field) can only observe a narrow strip of the sky, but Surdej and
present PURPLE CROW / CANADA (ILDERTON)
and Wood’s early work, his colleagues realised that a deep survey in such a narrow
astronomers didn’t 1992– 3.0 m, f/1.7 (lab) strip might detect some 50,000 new quasars. “About one
1994 NODO / U.S. (HOUSTON)
pursue the technology in every 1,000 quasars should show multiple images due to
again until the 1980s, 1994– 2.7 m, f/1.89 (field) gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy,” he says, “so
when pioneer Ermanno 1995 P. HICKSON / CANADA (MAPLE RIDGE)
this could yield 50 new multiply imaged quasars.” That would
Borra (Laval University, 1995– 3.0 m, f/1.7 (field) constitute a treasure trove for cosmologists, who can use
Canada) revived the 2002 NODO / U.S. (CLOUDCROFT)
these systems to study the distribution of dark matter and the
topic. After he wrote geometry and expansion history of the universe. Observing
1995– 2.7 m, f/1.89 (field)
a landmark paper on 2009 HIPAS / U.S. (FAIRBANKS)
time on a ‘conventional’ large optical telescope is much too
the technique in 1982,
2003– 6.0 m, f/1.50 (field) precious to carry out such a time-consuming survey, but a
Borra kept developing
the technology for
2014 LZT / CANADA (MAPLE RIDGE) cheap, dedicated instrument would be ideal.
many years, eventually At the Marseille conference, French and British
2006– 4.0 m, f/2 (field)
together with Paul present First to be dedicated to astronomers also expressed interest, and together with Borra
astrophysical observations and Liège colleague Jean-Pierre Swings, Surdej developed the
Hickson (University ILMT / INDIA (DEVASTHAL)
of British Columbia, first plans for what would become the 4-metre International
Canada). 2008 20 m to 100 m (concept only) Liquid Mirror Telescope. However, securing the necessary
R. ANGEL / THE MOON (NORTH POLE)

30 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 LIQUID MIRRORS

funds wasn’t easy. “In my naïveté, I thought that wealthy
industrialists might want to sponsor the project,” he says.
Surdej and Swings even approached the foundation of King
Baudouin I of Belgium for money. Alas, royal money failed to
materialise.
Of course, building a large, unconventional telescope
presented many technological hurdles, too. Right from the
start, it was clear that the Belgian company AMOS (Advanced
Mechanical & Optical Systems), also based in Liège, would
be the main contractor for the ILMT. AMOS knew all about
constructing professional telescopes (it built the four 1.8-
metre auxiliary telescopes for the Very Large Telescope
Interferometer in Chile), but the company had no experience
with liquid mirror technology. Luckily, while visiting the
NODO facility in New Mexico in 2000, Surdej ran into
Hickson and convinced him to join the project. “The man is
a genius,” Surdej says. “Without him, the ILMT would never
have been possible.”
One complicated component of the future telescope
was the corrector in front of the CCD camera. Because a
quicksilver telescope has a fixed orientation, stellar images
move across the CCD as a result of Earth’s rotation. They
do so in slightly curved paths, dependent on the telescope’s
geographic latitude. Apart from compensating for off-axis
optical aberrations, the corrector — an intricate set of special-
purpose lenses — also needs to rectify these curved tracks
into straight lines. As a result, each stellar image moves
across a straight row of pixels at a constant pace, enabling
longer exposures by reading out the CCD in a ‘co-moving’
way — a process known as time-delayed integration.
Initially, Surdej and his team were eyeing the European La
Silla Observatory in Chile as the site for the new telescope.
After all, back in the 1960s Belgium had been one of the
founding members of the European Southern Observatory
(ESO). Moreover, Riccardo Giacconi, ESO’s director general
from 1993 to 1999, was enthusiastic about the project. By
the late 1990s, following a design proposed by Hickson and
optical engineer Harvey Richardson, a British company was
already constructing the ILMT corrector for La Silla’s latitude
of 29° south. But it never panned out, says Surdej. “We didn’t
develop a good personal relationship with La Silla’s director,
Jorge Melnick, and he wasn’t very supportive. We would have
had to pay €70,000 [about US$78,000] per year, just for the
site, water and electricity.”
Another setback came in 2002, when the United Kingdom
joined ESO. Just a few years earlier, the British research
council PPARC had ranked UK participation in the ILMT
project as one of their top priorities, but now they decided
that all their astronomy funding should go to ESO. Around
the same time, the French funding agency CNRS gave priority
to the 378-megapixel MegaCam instrument on the Canada-
France-Hawai‘i Telescope on Mauna Kea. Suddenly, the
ILMT’s future started to look bleak.
Himalayan home
Meanwhile, back in Vancouver, Hickson had secured funds
for the construction and operation of a larger, 6-metre liquid
mirror telescope. Building on the experience with the earlier
2.7-metre prototype and using parts of the decommissioned
NODO instrument, this Large Zenith Telescope (LZT) was
erected between 2003 and 2005 for less than $1 million.
“It took us about a year to get it working properly,” says
Hickson. “The main problem was that the fast rotation of the
mirror — one metre per second at the rim — was causing air
flows that resulted in tiny ripples on the mercury surface.”
Eventually, the researchers solved the problem by suspending
an ultra-thin, transparent sheet of Mylar just above the
mirror’s surface to damp any unwanted turbulence.
However, the Maple Ridge site suffered from light
pollution and bad weather. “It proved to be a good place to
develop the technology, but not such a good location for
astronomy,” says Hickson. Instead, starting in 2008 the
LZT was mainly used in combination with a lidar facility to
precisely study the variable properties of the sodium layer in
Earth’s mesosphere. Large telescopes fire laser beams into the
sky to excite sodium atoms in this 90-kilometre-high layer;
the resulting laser guide stars enable the use of adaptive optics
to compensate for the effects of atmospheric turbulence.

q TEAM EFFORT (From left to right) Jean
Surdej, Paul Hickson, Stefan Denis and
Tatyana Sadibekowa prepare for the basin’s
spin casting.
q SPIN CASTING (From left to right) Team
members Denis Defrère, Paul Hickson, Arnaud
Magette and Stefan Denis pour polyurethane
over the spinning mirror basin, which is made
of sheets of carbon fibre.
q SMOOTHER THAN SILK Surdej checks
the smoothness of the mirror basin’s
polyurethane surface during the first spin
casting in 2010.
A NN A A ND JE A N SURDEJ (3)

32 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 LIQUID MIRRORS
“We had the most powerful lidar facility
AFGHANISTAN
in the world,” says Hickson, who is also
the project scientist for the adaptive optics
system of the future Thirty Meter Telescope. PAKI STA N
“Our results are of great value for the next
generation of extremely large telescopes.”
The LZT funding ended in 2014, and the
telescope was taken apart. “We removed
everything,” says Hickson. “The building
is now empty. Yes, it’s a bit sad, but the
LZT served its purpose. The experience we
gained can now be used for the ILMT.”
During the LZT’s construction phase,
Surdej and Swings had approached many
other potential funders, such as the
Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), the
University of Liège, the Royal Observatory of Belgium and the
regional Wallonian government. Slowly but surely, the project
got back on track. “It went slice by slice,” says Swings, who,
together with his colleague Serge Habraken, had become an
ILMT project manager.
Then, in 2006, when the Belgian company AMOS had
already started preliminary construction work, the decision
was made to move the new telescope to India. As it happened,
AMOS was also building a ‘conventional’ 3.6-metre telescope
for the Devasthal Observatory of the Aryabhatta Research
Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital, in
the northern state of Uttarakhand. The institute’s director at
the time, astrophysicist Ram Sagar, was visiting the plant in
Liège, and AMOS arranged a meeting with Surdej and Swings. speed (approximately 8 rpm), the mercury would distribute
Before long, an enthusiastic Sagar offered the Devasthal site
free of charge, in return for a share of ILMT observing time.
Devasthal Observatory is located at an altitude of 2,450
metres (8,040 ft) in the foothills of the Himalaya. It is home India to witness this milestone, there was another setback.
to a small 1.3-metre telescope and, since March 2016, to the
new 3.6-metre Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT) — the
largest one in India. “The view of the Himalayan peaks is
just incredible,” says Surdej. Moreover, as luck would have
X ARRIVAL A transporter team lifts
the ILMT basin off its truck upon its
arrival at Devasthal Observatory in
March 2012.
XX ALIGNMENT ARIES electronic
technical engineer Khushal Singh
aligns the asymmetric optical
corrector in the north-south direction
at local noon. The line he’s using for
reference is the projected shadow of
a pendulum (hanging at right).
XXX NEARLY DONE The ILMT
appears here fully assembled,
except for its mercury and the Mylar
cover.
34 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
W DEVASTHAL The ILMT perches at 2,450
CHI NA
metres (8,040 ft) in the northern Indian state of
Uttarakhand, just south of the Himalaya Mountains.
New NE
PA L
Delhi it, the site is almost exactly as far north
Devasthal of the equator as La Silla is south, at a
Observatory
latitude of 29°. Says Surdej: “We were able
I ND I A
to use the same corrector that had been
developed for La Silla — we just had to flip
it by 180°.”
B ay of
B en ga l So was this the end for the many
troubles the project had been facing so far?
Unfortunately, no. “We have experienced
so many delays,” laments Surdej. “I could
write a book about it. I could write two.”
At ARIES, construction of the 3.6-metre DOT took
precedence over work on the ILMT, especially when Sagar’s
M A P: G REGG DINDER M A N / S&T; BASIN ON CR A NE: R A M SAG A R; A LIG NMEN T: A NN A A ND JE A N SURDEJ
tenure ended in January 2014. One of his successors,
astrophysicist Anil Pandey, never showed much interest in the
ILMT, despite being the project’s local principal investigator.
Because of all the delays, the large, box-like enclosure for the
ILMT wasn’t completed until the spring of 2017, a full five
years after AMOS had shipped the parts of the telescope to
the site.
It took until early 2019 before everything appeared to be
ready. With the telescope (basically a simple vertical tower to
hold the corrector and the CCD camera) finally completed, it
was now time to fill the 4-metre-diameter bowl with 35 litres
of mercury. Upon rotating the mirror at the appropriate
itself over the surface in a perfect paraboloidal film of some
3.5 millimetres.
Alas, says Hickson, who travelled all the way to northern
Apparently, AMOS had underestimated the amount of
mercury needed to ‘close the surface,’ as it’s called — 35 litres
turned out not to be enough to form a perfect mirror. In
mid-January, when this article was finalised, Surdej was still
 unable to say when the problem would be solved.
“Because of health risks, mercury may not be imported or
exported from Europe,” he says. “The additional mercury will
now have to be imported from Ukraine, but right now I have
no idea when it may arrive.”
In the best-case scenario, the ILMT may see first light in
the second half of April.
Mercurial prospects
Even though it can only observe a narrow strip of sky at
a fixed declination, the ILMT is the ideal instrument for
two types of research. Astronomers can co-add the images
taken on different nights in order to detect and study the
faintest possible galaxies and quasars and to learn about the
evolution and large-scale structure of the universe. They
can also subtract subsequent images to search for transient
phenomena such as distant supernovae, asteroids, Kuiper Belt
objects and space debris.
In fact, these are broadly the same scientific goals of the
future 8.4-metre Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
—now named the National Science Foundation Vera C.
Rubin Observatory. Of course, compared with the Rubin
Observatory, the ILMT has a much smaller (16-megapixel)
camera, a much smaller field of view (27 arcminutes across),
and thus a more limited view of the night sky. But it is also
roughly 300 times less expensive.
However, despite the bright prospects, the immediate
future of mercury astronomy is uncertain. Years ago, together
with astronomers from three other universities, Hickson’s
team developed the design of a large 8-metre liquid mirror
telescope for the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
in Chile. That would have been a pathfinder for an
envisioned Large Aperture Mirror Array (LAMA) — an optical
A NN A A ND JE A N SURDEJ (2)
u OBSERVATORY This aerial view shows the liquid
mirror’s ‘dome’ (lower left) as well as the 3.6-metre
Devasthal Optical Telescope (background) and the
1.3-metre Fast Optical Telescope (foreground, right).
The Himalayan foothills are behind the camera.
interferometer consisting of 18 similar instruments.
Such an array would yield a huge sensitivity and an
unprecedented angular resolution for a reasonable price.
“However, we were unable to raise funding to continue the
project,” he says.
Other ambitious plans also failed to materialise. Both the
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program — an
initiative to explore controversial ideas and risky endeavours
— and the Canadian Space Agency have funded feasibility
studies for a large liquid mirror telescope on the surface
of the Moon. Because of the lack of atmosphere, a liquid
mirror telescope on the Moon could not use mercury: It
would immediately evaporate. Instead, engineers considered
molten salts, a type of compound known as ionic liquids.
The NIAC study, led by famous telescope pioneer Roger Angel
(University of Arizona), focused on a 20-metre instrument,
but thanks to the Moon’s low gravity, even a gigantic 100-
metre successor might be a serious possibility. Unfortunately,
these studies have never been followed up.
Hopefully, when the ILMT starts to yield its first scientific
results, the tide may turn again in favour of quicksilver
astronomy. “We have found solutions to all of the potential
problems in the construction of large liquid mirror
telescopes,” says Hickson. “From now on, it just requires
willpower to realise them.”
As for Surdej, he says he’s “too pragmatic” to consider
futuristic projects like a large liquid mirror telescope on the
Moon. “Right now, I’m happy enough that the ILMT has
finally been completed.”
¢ GOVERT SCHILLING is an astronomy writer in the
Netherlands. When he first read about liquid mirror telescopes
some 30 years ago, he thought it was an April Fools’ Day joke.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 35
 TELESCOPE MAKING by Jerry Oltion

The classic

telescope A relic of the 1970s

finally sees the light.

IN 1969, JOHN DOBSON sent an article query to Charles

Federer, founder and editor of the US edition of this
magazine. Dobson had come up with a new way to build
large-aperture telescopes cheaply and effectively. But Federer
famously rejected Dobson’s submission, saying, “While your
shortcuts undoubtedly help to demonstrate large amateur
telescopes, they can hardly lead to satisfactory instruments
of the kind most amateurs want in these large sizes.”
To say that Dobson had the last laugh is an
understatement. Dobsonian telescopes revolutionised
amateur astronomy. The majority of large-aperture amateur
telescopes today ride upon Dobsonian mounts. I recently
wrote a brief article on how to build a modern Dobsonian
mount for a hobby killer (AS&T: Feb/Mar. 2020, p. 36). But
we haven’t yet published an article on how Dobson did it
back in his heyday.
I recently got the opportunity to examine a genuine
Dobsonian telescope that had never been finished, and to

A LL PHOTOS BY JERRY OLTION; FLOWER ILLUSTR ATIONS: THO M AS PA JOT / SHU T TERSTOCK .CO M
complete its construction using the original materials of the
day. Of course I documented the process. So here, at long
last, is the article that should have been published in 1969.
Dobson spent over two decades as a Vedantan monk, and
the austere monastic lifestyle stuck with him even after he
left the monastery. To make ends meet, and to continue his
ongoing goal of promoting amateur astronomy, he taught
classes throughout the US on how to build telescopes.
During those classes, he would teach students how to grind
a primary mirror and how to build the telescope to house it.

Visit https://is.gd/Dobson to watch a video of John

Dobson describing how his telescopes are built.

t This 20-cm f/6 Dobsonian reflector was built under the personal
tutelage of John Dobson during a six-week telescope-making class.
After passing from its original owner to telescope maker Jerry Oltion in
2018, it regularly shares the night sky at star parties.

36 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

Students successfully completing the class would take home a
finished, functional telescope.
Jump to 2018. While I was helping put on a star party, a
man approached me to ask if I would be interested in having
a telescope that he’d started in Dobson’s class but had never
finished.
I fell in love at first sight. This scope was an absolute
classic, built exactly to Dobson’s specifications in every
detail. So I set out to finish it, keeping the design as pure as
I could make it.

Back to basics
What makes a classic Dobsonian design? Many elements, but
they all revolve around a basic theme: cheap. Dobson’s goal
was to make telescopes out of scrap materials, items that you
u The telescope
could often get for free. Free is the great equaliser, and that
came to the author in
was Dobson’s primary focus: to put telescopes in the hands this rough condition
of anybody who wanted one. — nearly finished, but
To start with, attendees ground the mirror out of not quite.
whatever glass they could find. Dobson used porthole glass
for many of his primary mirrors. When he taught classes, the was on the outside. So I did as Dobson would have done — I
students often bought mirror kits when there was no other peeled off a layer of the cardboard spiral, exposing a rough
source of cheap, thick glass, but John would happily teach paper surface that would readily accept paint.
people how to grind a chunk of storefront door into a mirror
if one was available. Primary support
The one in my scope used a Pyrex blank from a kit. It did The mirror mount was already built, and I’m glad it was
have one characteristic Dobson-class feature, though: Since because I would have had a very hard time believing that it
the classes typically ran for only six weeks, students rushed would work otherwise. It’s just a plywood square the same
from one grit to the next, often not sufficiently grinding width as the mirror diameter, with the corners cut off so it
out the pits from the previous grit before moving on. This will fit snugly inside the tube. Three bolts screwed through
mirror was like that. Even though it had been polished and tight holes in the plywood push against the mirror to provide
parabolised, the outer couple of centimetres were so frosted
with pits that it was unusable. The maker had in fact masked q The flowers and ladybugs were painted by hand. Wearing tie-dye is
it off, turning a 20-cm blank into a 17.5-cm mirror. essential at this stage.
I decided that I needn’t slavishly accept every aspect of the
classic Dobsonian, and in fact most of Dobson’s own mirrors
(and many, many mirrors from his classes) were excellent, so
I took this mirror back to 30-micron grit and ground out the
pits, then fine-ground, polished and re-parabolised it. At f/6,
that was a pretty simple job, and that’s another aspect of the
classic Dobsonian telescope: fairly long focal ratios. No f/4
rich-field scopes here; Dobson and his students made ‘planet-
killers,’ galaxy-nabbing backyard cannons.
When I was done with the mirror, I sent it off for
aluminising and got back a beautifully finished 20-cm f/6
mirror.
The optical tube was a cardboard concrete form.
‘Sonotubes,’ as they’re typically called even when made by
another company, fulfill the goal of being cheap, they come
in sizes that complement most standard mirror diameters,
and they’re stiff enough to hold their shape from horizon to
zenith. They’re also heavy. And coated with wax. Wax keeps
concrete from sticking to the tube, but it also prevents paint
from sticking to it. This one must have been an inside form,
intended to leave a hole in a foundation, because the wax

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 37
 TELESCOPE MAKING
p Peel away the waxed outer layer of the tube to allow paint to adhere
to its surface. Unwrapping the spiral onto a dowel works like a charm.
collimation adjustment. To prevent having metal on glass, the
Dobsonian design calls for three squares of 3.2-mm Masonite
between the bolts and the mirror back. What holds these
small hardboard squares in place? Why, a triangle cut out of
a cereal box, of course, and glued to the front of the plywood
square.
To centre the mirror in the tube, Dobson used blocks made
of that selfsame 19-mm plywood screwed to the inside of the
tube. Cut the plywood to the right thickness and mount it
edge-on, and it makes a remarkably good mirror support. To
q Left: The mirror is centred in the tube with small blocks of plywood. Nylon sleeves screwed into the plywood keep the mirror from falling forward.
Middle: Once the mirror is installed, the plywood tailgate is tipped into place and screwed down. Right: The spider assembly that holds the secondary
mirror in place is made from cedar shingles.
38 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
provide good side support for the mirror, Dobson mounted
four of these plywood blocks at 45° and 135° from the top on
either side, achieving the same 90° support separation that
we still use today. If the thickness of the blocks wasn’t just
right, he shimmed them with pieces of cereal box.
To keep the mirror from falling forward when the scope is
tilted low to the horizon, Dobson used furring nails driven
into the plywood blocks. The designer of my scope got fancy
and used nylon sleeves around screws. Whatever you use, give
these mirror stops 4 mm or so of space so you can collimate
the mirror upward that much, and that’s that. To install the
mirror, slide it into place between the blocks, bump it up
against the stops, then put the plywood square (called the
‘tailgate’) backing plate up against it and screw it into place.
You can screw through the outside of the tube into the edge
of the tailgate, or screw upward through the tailgate into
the plywood blocks. Tilt the tube upward and you’ll hear the
mirror go ‘clunk’ against the hardboard collimation pads.
A simple secondary
On the other end of the scope, the secondary mirror is held in
place by a spider made of narrow slats of cedar shingles simply
wedged into place.
No, really.
This was the moment when I truly began to appreciate
the genius of Dobson’s design. Talk about simple, cheap, and
effective!
To make the secondary mount, cut a piece of wide wooden
dowel about 75 mm long. Cut one end at a 45° angle. Then
cut three 3-mm wide grooves along the length of it, spaced
120° apart, and about 6 mm deep. t An old record
Then cut three shingles to size so they’ll wedge into the on Teflon
pads provides
grooves you just cut, and the three-vane propeller you make
an excellent
when you do so will wedge tightly into the front of the tube. azimuth
Glue the secondary mirror to the angled face, aim it at the bearing. Alas,
focuser hole, and adjust the collimation by pushing and it’s not Holst’s
pulling on the shingles where they meet the tube. The Planets, but
it is a classic.
I’m really not kidding — it works like a charm!
The focuser is equally simple. It’s just a cardboard tube
sticking out the side of the main telescope tube. You glue it to
a rectangle of hardboard that’s screwed into place so you can
adjust its aim with shims. Your eyepiece goes in another tube
that fits inside the first one, which you push inward and pull
outward to focus.
As for eyepieces: You don’t buy them. Well, you do, but
not the way you think. What you buy is an old pair of cheap
binoculars at a thrift store or garage sale and take them apart.
Instant eyepieces! They’ll probably be too small in diameter
to fit snugly inside the focuser tube, so wrap some cereal box
cardboard around the barrel until it’s just right.
The ends of the Sonotube get pretty badly beaten up just
from resting the scope on the ground before setting it up,
and from banging it into door frames on the way in and out
of the house. I don’t know what, if anything, Dobson did to People love it.
protect the ends of the tube, but I discovered that 6-mm gas
hose split lengthwise makes a dandy protective trim. Once I This scope gets the longest line
was sure of its fit, I glued it into place.
A lot of early Dobsonians didn’t have finders. Users simply of any of them, first to look at
sighted down the tube or along the edge of the tube box. But
I built a simple peep-sight finder for mine, reasoning that it it, then to look through it, again
was consistent with the simple-and-cheap theme of Dobson’s
design. A shower cap for a dust cover also fits that theme. and again.
Constructing the rocker box
At this point you have a functioning telescope, but you
t The rocker
haven’t yet built the actual Dobsonian mount. box and
The OTA mounts inside the rocker box by way of a plywood ground board
‘tube box’ that fits snugly around the cardboard tube. Dobson are made of
was a fan of scrap plywood, and this scope was built to spec: seven identical
rectangular
19-mm thick and fairly smooth on one side, but rough as a
slabs of
cob on the other. That helped immensely with gripping the plywood, plus
tube and holding it firmly in place. two upright
The altitude bearings are sewer pipe end caps resting on felt cradle boards.
pads. No form-fit circular cutouts here, just a V-shaped notch.
The rest of the mount is built of the same rough plywood.
Lots of it. And its design is as brilliant as the OTA. For one
thing, seven of the nine plywood slabs that comprise the
mount are the same size, making cut-out and construction
as simple as you could ask for. Two of those slabs glued and
screwed together make up the ground board, while two more
make up the bottom of the rocker box. (Can you say ‘rigid’?)
Two more make up the side boards and another makes the
front board. Add two more narrower, tall ‘cradle boards’ with
V-shaped notches for the altitude bearings to rest in, and
you’re done with the rocker box.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 39
 TELESCOPE MAKING
One major advantage of this design is that you can
customise the cradle boards all day long without having to
rebuild the rocker box. If you need more room for the bottom
of the scope to clear the bottom of the box, simply raise the
cradle boards. If you didn’t get the V-shaped notches precisely
even and your tube box scrapes the rocker box, adjust one or
the other of the cradle boards to compensate.
And then there’s the pièce de résistance: the azimuth
bearing. It’s a phonograph record! It’s nailed to the underside
of the rocker box, and Teflon pads on the ground board face
upward to glide smoothly on it.
And I do mean smoothly. This scope slews as gracefully
as any I’ve ever used. I can move it diagonally with just the
push of a single finger, with no lurching and no preferential
direction to its motion.
When I finished the scope, I was insanely happy with how
it worked, but I needed to paint it something appropriate.
Fellow ATM Robert Asumendi (of 3D-printed binoscope
fame, AS&T: July 2019, p. 72) pointed out that the original
Dobsonians were built in the late ’60s and early ’70s, a time
when wild colours were the fashion of the day.
So I used some fluorescent paint and painted the tube tie-
dye, and hand-painted hippy-dippy flowers on the rocker box.
Now it truly looks like a scope designed in the ’70s.
New life under the stars
Today the scope belongs to my local astronomy club. We
take it to star parties and use it as a jumping-off point to tell
people about the genius of John Dobson, who realised that a
cannon mount could be used for telescopes, and how he used
that design to revolutionise amateur astronomy.
People love it. This scope gets the longest line of any of
them, first to look at it, then to look through it, again and
again. Because despite its funky appearance and simple
p Left: The finder is a simple peep sight. An equally simple cardboard tube slipped inside another cardboard tube serves as the focuser. The OTA end
protector is a length of 6-mm gas hose split lengthwise and glued into place. Right: In keeping with the simplicity of the overall design, the dust cover
is a shower cap.
40 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
The Dobsonian Mount
John Dobson didn’t want his design to be named after
him. He simply called it a cannon mount, or an altitude-
azimuth mount. But the astronomy community called
them ‘Dobsonians’ and continues to do so to this day. It’s
a fitting tribute to the man who brought large-aperture
scopes to the masses and forever changed the way we
do amateur astronomy.
materials, this classic Dobsonian scope knocks the socks off
anything else on the field. And that, dear reader, was John
Dobson’s entire point. Cheap can still be excellent.
I got the chance to meet Dobson in the mid-2000s. I had
just come up with my own mount design (a ‘trackball’) and
I happily described it to him, ending with, “I’m really hoping
it will catch on like your design did.” To which he replied
with characteristic bluntness, “Good luck with that. It took
20 years before anybody paid any attention to me.”
Indeed, it took awhile. But you can’t keep a great design
down. And John Dobson’s contribution to astronomy, now
and forever, is looking up.
¢ JERRY OLTION loves classics of every type, including the
azimuth bearing.
For detailed instructions on building your own
classic Dobsonian scope, visit Ray Cash’s site at
https://is.gd/dobplans.
 GET YOUR
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To order, use the form on page 73 or call 02 9439 1955

 BINOCULAR HIGHLIGHT by Mathew Wedel

USING THE
α
STAR CHART
PUPPIS
β WHEN
r view
c u la Late April 11pm
no r Early May 10pm
bi

NE
5°

OS Late May 9pm

q
Early June 8pm
2546
Late June 7pm
These are standard times.
VELA
HOW

S
ζ
Go outside within an hour or so
of a time listed above. Hold the
map out in front of you and turn

α
α
it around so the label for the
direction you’re facing (such as
west or northeast) is right-side up.
The curved edge represents the

β
horizon, and the stars above it on

( C AU DN S
SER
the map now match the stars in

Blind spot stargazing

P
front of you in the sky. The centre

E
A)
of the map is the zenith, the point

Fa c i n g E a s t

η
in the sky directly overhead.

S
omething that concerns me as an observer is just how much

ν
FOR EXAMPLE

SCUTUM
sky I haven’t looked at carefully yet. There are so many

M17
wonderful things to see in the deep south, it’s sometimes hard Turn the map so the label

M11
19
h
to know where to start. Plus there’s the temptation to keep revisiting “Facing SW” is right-side up.
old favourites. Sometimes this leads to a tendency to overlook even About a third of the way from

M25
some of the more obvious of astronomical delights, whether they are there to the map’s centre is the
individual objects or entire regions. brilliant star Canopus. Go out

M
The constellation Puppis, the stern of the celestial ship Argo and look southwest nearly a

σ
Navis (see our April 2020 issue for a discussion about this now-

π
third of the way from horizontal

SA
obsolete stellar grouping), is an especially rewarding hunting ground to straight up. There’s Canopus!

GI
T
for binocular observers. One of my favourite Puppis objects is the
open cluster NGC 2546, which lies 3° northeast of Zeta (ζ) Puppis, NOTE
squarely along the centreline of the Milky Way. At sixth magnitude, The map is plotted for 35° south
NGC 2546 is fairly bright, although it may be a challenge to figure latitude (for example, Sydney,
out where the cluster ends and the rich background star field Buenos Aires, Cape Town). If
begins. The cluster sprawls over a full degree of sky, so even through you’re far north of there, stars
binoculars it shows plenty of detail, with a band of brighter stars in the northern part of the sky
running from southeast to northwest. will be higher and stars in the
Another degree to the northeast you’ll find a gaggle of bright stars, south lower. Far south of 35°
Fa
ci
including q and r Puppis and the double star OS Puppis. These are the reverse is true.
all foreground objects compared to NGC 2546, lying between 90 and
1,000 light-years away, compared to 3,000 light-years for the cluster. –1
And as long as you’re in the area, have a look back at Zeta Puppis and ONLINE 0
see if you can detect any colour. The star is a 2.2-magnitude O-type You can get a real-time sky chart
1
blue supergiant, vastly brighter and more massive than our own Sun. for your location at
2
skychart.skyandtelescope.com/
3 Star
¢ MATT WEDEL will be mining his celestial blind spots for observing skychart.php
4 magnitudes
targets for years to come.

42 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 Fa c i n g N o r t h

13h
M51
V E N AT I C I R
CANES JO
β M AR S A
+40°
U
Fa γ
10h
n
ci 16h ES
ÖT
BO α
NW
g

in
δ ν

c
BERENICES OR

Fa
I NE 0
ζ

COMA
BO M L
CO RE α M3

R
le
H

CE
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ER

N IS Arct ζ Si

N
CU

A us ur δ

CA
η +20° ε
α
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τ O γ

M44
( β LE
S EC A θ
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α
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M67
α M
5 0°
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ζ
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ε
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MINOR
CANIS
A
IUC

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A
M12

α
β

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Procyon
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δ

Spica V
COR

SE

D R
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ε

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HUS

δ
M10

T O
C
LIBR

α
γ ν
R

α
–20°
α

ard

Y
ζ

γ
A

Alph

H
β
π

Fa c i n g W e s t
M48
β

ROS
ANTLIA
η

σ
δ

MONOCE
π

θ Zenith
σ
M4
α
ξ

ν –40°
M23

Antares

M46
τ

δ κ
M19

τ ω Cen
SCOR
M20

γ 7h
γ

M47
α
ρ
M21

M62

ε CEN δ
η

PYXIS
ε

M93
µ κ TAU
RUS
LU
µ
M6

A
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ξ
PIUS

CRUX γ
P
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λ
υ

Sirius
R

ar
λ

β
λ

–60°
E
γ

Kent δ
M

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α
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M7

Hadar β
A
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κ

α λ
δ

IS

CIR δ

M41
CIN α
φ

ζ
θ

PP
ζ

α US α
κ

β
ε

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γ

TRI MA NIS
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PU
θ

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τ

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OP STR LUM
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α
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ε
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TA

M
R A

β
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α 16
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NA
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25 I
A S
US

CHAMAELEON VOLAN
S
C AR
ν
BA

α pus
OR no
M

PA T Ca
VO O C TA N S IC α
LU

or P
30 D
CO

α β
β
β ge
Lar llanic
–80° γ g e DO
α Ma loud RA
β DO
SW

C
IN
g DU HYDRUS
in
in

M α
SE S 47 Tuc C ULU c
RETI Fa
α

Small Galaxy
α Magellanic
4h

Cloud Double star

22

TUC
ANA
h

Variable star
1h
α UM Open cluster
OL OGI
–60°
HOR Diffuse nebula
Achernar
Globular cluster
Fa c i n g S o u t h Planetary nebula

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 43
 UNDER THE STARS by Fred Schaaf
Fabled females
and a first transit
Constellations that invoke mythological women are found
in May’s night sky.
I
f you look to the west at sunset in
early May, you’ll see Venus — the
Roman goddess of love — very low
on the horizon. Already gone from our
autumn skies are summertime star
cluster favourites the Pleiades (the
Seven Sisters of Greek mythology) and
the Hyades sisters.
These three are just a few of the
female characters that can be seen in
the sky. Let’s look at some more, and
then finish with a different kind of
astronomical phenomenon.
Females in the evening sky. Our
May Southern Hemisphere all-sky map
is just one page-turn back from this
44 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
NORTHERN CROWN You can find the curve
of Corona Borealis east of Boötes, which
is dominated by the zero-magnitude red
giant Arcturus (at top left). During May, both
constellations are at their highest for late-
evening observing from Australasia.
column. Elevated to its highest in the
north on that map is the only woman
of the zodiac: Virgo, the Virgin. It’s also
the longest constellation of the zodiac
and the second largest in area of the 88
constellations. Very near the meridian
at this time is Virgo’s brightest star,
1st-magnitude Spica.
But what other female characters
are represented in this sky? One is the
historic Queen Berenice II, queen of
Cyrene and Egypt, whose amber tresses
are part of the constellation Coma
Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) and the big,
scattered Coma Star Cluster. Another
is Ariadne, the Cretan princess who
helped Athenian king Theseus escape
from the Labyrinth after he killed the
dreadful Minotaur, but whom Theseus
abandoned on an island. Ariadne
was rescued by the god Dionysius,
who made her his queen and wife.
And when Ariadne died, Dionysius
placed her crown among the stars as
the conspicuous semicircle known as
Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown.
Interestingly, Coma Berenices and
Corona Borealis are located on either
side of Boötes, the Herdsman, home
of the bright star, Arcturus. The Coma
constellation precedes Boötes and lies
directly north of the western half of
Virgo — the part that portrays the head
and upper body of the reclining virgin.
Corona Borealis follows Boötes and is
found directly north of the eastern end
of Virgo, her feet. The big Coma Star
Cluster (Melotte 111) is about 5° in
diameter, with at least five stars brighter
than magnitude 5.5 and about a dozen
brighter than 6.5. The somewhat wider
semicircle of the Northern Crown
features a magnitude-2.2 gem: Gemma,
also known as Alphecca.
My first transit. I’ve previously
described the life-changing views I
got of my first total solar eclipse of
the Sun (March 7, 1970) and my first
great comet (Bennett, at its best in
April 1970). Now I want to mention a
lesser but still exciting third wonder
from 50 years ago: May 9th’s transit
of Mercury. This and my next transit
(on November 10, 1973) shared one
strange similarity. In both events,
Mercury had just exited the Sun’s disk
on my telescope’s projection screen
when a motorist stopped on our
quiet country road to ask what I was
observing. The driver from the 1973
transit wondered if I was observing —
in broad daylight — the still quite faint
Comet Kohoutek. I wasn’t.
All five of my Mercury transits and
both of my Venus transits were amazing
and gratifying visions of worlds
snatched from out of the stupendous
furnace of the Sun.
A K IR A FUJII
¢ FRED SCHAAF welcomes your letters
and comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
 VISTAS
ESA /HUBBLE & N ASA , D. ROSA RIO (CE A , DURH A M UNIV ERSIT Y )

High in the southern sky during May and June is the

faint constellation Ara, the altar. Located within it and
80 million light-years from Earth is this spiral galaxy,
the 12th-magnitude IC 4653. The blue areas within its
arms are regions of young, bright stars, which contrast
with the interspersed regions of dark dust.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 45
 SUN, MOON & PLANETS by Jonathan Nally
Jupiter and Saturn’s
close double act
While Venus vanishes from the evening sky, the two gas giants snuggle up.
M
ercury (mag. –1.2, dia. 5.5″,
May 15) begins May at superior
conjunction (ie. on the other
side of the Sun) on the 5th, then slowly
returns to the post-sunset western sky.
Reaching greatest eastern elongation
of 24° on June 4, it will remain an
evening planet all the way through until
late June, whereupon it will descend
toward the horizon again and inferior
conjunction on July 1. Mercury will pair
up with Venus very low on the horizon
after sunset on May 22, with the two
planets just 1° apart. But they’ll be hard
to see — you’ll need a clear horizon and
maybe even optical aid in the form of
binoculars. Two days later the very thin
crescent Moon will join the duo, with
all three bodies being within a 4° field
of view… but again, this grouping will
be quite difficult to see.
Venus (–4.6, 48.5″), having
p Left: Jupiter and Saturn do a dance. Middle: Venus and Mercury, low after sunset. Right: Venus visits Taurus in June.
46 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
dominated the evening sky for months,
is now accelerating its downward slide
toward the horizon as it heads toward
inferior conjunction on June 4. The
planet will reappear in the eastern,
pre-dawn sky in the second half of June,
when it will be in the constellation
Taurus — quite near the Hyades star
cluster in fact. The waning crescent
Moon will be nearby on June 19.
Mars (0.2, 8.3″), still slowly increasing
in apparent size, rises just after midnight
at the beginning of May (and just before
midnight by the end of June). The Red
Planet will reach western quadrature
(where the Sun, Earth, Mars angle is
90°) on June 7, and through a telescope
the planet will look a bit like the gibbous
Moon. A suitably sized telescope will
also show the southern polar ice cap
beginning to shrink as the weeks pass.
Jupiter (–2.4, 42.5″), heading
for opposition in July, will reach the
apparent stationary point in its orbit
on May 15, and will then go into four
months retrograde (ie. east to west)
motion, caused by the Earth overtaking
it on our planet’s ‘inside orbit’. Jupiter
will rise just after 10:00pm at the
beginning of May, but getting earlier
each night — it will climb above the
eastern horizon by just after 6:00pm
by the end of June. Come the July
opposition it will have increased in
apparent size to 47.6″.
Saturn (0.5, 17.3″), too, is heading
for opposition in July. During May and
June the Ringed Planet rises only about
half an hour after Jupiter; with the
two remaining within 5° of each other
all through May, it’ll be the closest
they’ve been for about 20 years. And
like its larger sibling, Saturn will begin
retrograde motion (for 4.5 months) on
XXXX

May 11. The planet’s rings are tilted at a
nice angle of 21°… slightly less than the
maximum 27° they reached in 2017.
That angle will continue to decrease
through until 2025, at which point the
rings will be edge-on from our point of
view. Look for Saturn, Jupiter and the
Moon forming a nice trio on May 12
and again on June 8/9.
Uranus (5.9, 3.4″) was in
conjunction with the Sun in April, and
therefore out of view. But it will return
to our eastern dawn sky in May, rising
about an hour before the Sun at the
beginning of the month and by just
before 3:00am by the end of June.
Neptune (7.9, 2.3″) rises around
1:30am in mid-May and by just before
midnight in mid-June. The distant
world is slowly making its way through
Aquarius and will reach its apparent
stationary point on June 24; after that,
it will be in retrograde motion all the
way through until late November.
Between June 12 and 16, Neptune will
appear quite close to Mars — you’ll need
binoculars to see them, with the Red
Planet and the blue ice giant contrasting
nicely in the same field of view.
Finally, Earth will reach the
southern winter solstice on June 21.
On this day the Sun will be at its most
northerly declination, and the hours
of daylight are shortest for us in the
south. Indeed, we consider this to be the
approximate mid-point of winter.
SKY PHENOMENA
MAY
2 Moon 4° north of Regulus
5 Mercury at superior conjunction
6 Moon 7° north of Spica
9 Moon 6° north of Antares
11 Venus 1.4° southwest of Beta Tauri
11 Saturn stationary
12 Jupiter 2° north of the Moon
13 Saturn 3° north of the Moon
13 Venus stationary
15 Jupiter stationary
15 Mars 3° north of the Moon
17 Mercury 7° north of Aldebaran
22 Venus 1° north of Mercury
24 Venus 4° north of the Moon
24 Mercury 3° north of the Moon
27 Moon 5° south of Pollux
XXXX
29 Moon 4° north of Regulus
by Con Stoitsis METEORS
The Etas for early risers
This shower is usually a crowd-pleaser.
I
t’s May, so that means it’s Eta
Aquariids time. This shower is one
of the best for the year for southern
observers, with the radiant in Aquarius
located nicely in the pre-dawn northern
sky for most observers in Australasia.
Its meteors are often swift and bright
(some exceeding magnitude 1), with
a few leaving trains that can last for
minutes. There is also the occasional Eta Aquariids
fireball. Colours tend to be on the May 6, 3:00am
yellowish side.
Most Moon-free years, I observe
from a dark sky location (rated 3 on the
Bortle scale) and usually see more than
30 meteors per hour around the time
of the peak on May 6–7. In 2014, while
observing with fellow meteor shower
enthusiasts from Nagambie in Victoria,
we recorded 54 meteors in one hour on
the morning of the 7th, about an hour
before astronomical twilight. Similarly
in 2011, we saw 40 meteors in just over darker rural skies, you might see as
an hour on the morning of May 6. many as 15 to 18 per hour.
This year, the near-full Moon will
reduce the number of meteors you ■ CON STOITSIS is director of the
might see — perhaps 5 to 8 per hour Astronomical Society of Victoria’s comet
around the time of maximum, May 6, and meteor sections. Follow him on
under city skies. If you observe from Twitter @vivstoitsis
LUNAR PHENOMENA
JUNE MAY
2 Moon 7° north of Spica First Quarter …… April 30th, 20:38 UT
4 Venus at inferior conjunction Full Moon …… 7th, 10:45 UT
4 Mercury greatest elong. east (23.6°) Last Quarter …… 14th, 14:03 UT
5 Moon 7° north of Antares New Moon …… 22nd, 17:39 UT
9 Jupiter 2° north of the Moon First Quarter …… 30th, 03:30 UT
9 Saturn 3° north of the Moon Perigee …… 6th, 03h UT, 359,654 km
13 Mars 3° north of the Moon Apogee …… 18th, 08h UT, 405,583 km
18 Mercury stationary
19 Venus 0.5° south of the Moon JUNE
20 Moon 4° north of Aldebaran
21 Southern winter solstice Full Moon …… 5th, 19:12 UT
22 Mercury 4° south of the Moon Last Quarter …… 13th, 06:24 UT
23 Moon 5° south of Pollux New Moon …… 21st, 06:41 UT
24 Neptune stationary First Quarter …… 28th, 08:16 UT
25 Venus stationary Perigee …… 3rd, 04h UT, 364,366 km
26 Moon 4° north of Regulus Apogee …… 15th, 01h UT, 404,595 km
29 Moon 8° north of Spica Perigee …… 30th, 02h UT, 368,958 km
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 47
 COMETS by David Seargent

Two enigmatic comets

These ‘dark horse’ comets are surprising astronomers.

L
ate autumn and early winter this
year will bring two ‘dark horse’
comets of interest to southern
observers. Details of the discovery and
early history of the first of these, C/2019
Y4 (ATLAS), were given in our April
issue, where the relationship between
this comet and the Great Comet of
1844 was also noted.
I wrote that C/2019 Y4 is intrinsically
very faint and that it was, for that
reason, likely to fade out and disappear
as it approached perihelion. Yet, I also
noted that there is circumstantial
evidence that the great comet C/1844
Y2 may have followed an atypical light-
curve and that, if the current comet
behaves similarly, its early faintness
may not necessarily be indicative of
small size. I wrote that “Needless to
say, it does not necessarily follow that
C/2019 Y4 will show similar behaviour,
although this is an interesting thought
as it suggests that the present intrinsic
faintness of this comet may be due to a
semi-dormant state rather than simply
its small size. If so, perhaps there is some
hope of it becoming visible in June from
southern latitudes, although I would not
place any bets on this happening!”
Remarkably, observations during
February suggest that this may indeed
be true and, although I would still not
place any bets, the chance of it surviving
perihelion certainly looks better than it
did last year or during January.
Observations through the second
half of February revealed a condensed
inner coma and a large and diffuse
outer coma of low surface brightness.
Although there was a wide scatter
of brightness estimates, the rise in
brightness that month was certainly
unexpected. According to the
ephemeris, the comet should have
brightened by, at most, a factor of four
during February. However, considering
the brighter estimates late in the
month and comparing these with the
early observations, suggests an actual
brightness increase by a factor of about
100! In part, this was due to the outer
coma becoming observable; however
that was not the whole story as the
inner coma also displayed a rapid (albeit
less extreme) brightening.
Some reports referred to this as an
‘outburst,’ however that term is best
reserved for temporary increases in a
comet’s brightness followed by a return
to what may be called a ‘base level’.
What happened to Y4 appears to have
been a sudden surge in brightness…
a short interval of rapid brightening,
ending in the establishment of a new
level of intrinsic brightness which is
then maintained.
Assuming it survives, this comet
should emerge for southern observers
very low in the morning twilight from
early June. Initially located in Taurus,
it will enter Orion in the middle of the
month but will always be poorly placed
as it retreats from the Sun and Earth.
Because of the uncertainties in
this comet’s behaviour, it is next to
impossible to make any meaningful
predictions as to its brightness. It could
appear anywhere on a spectrum from a
naked-eye comet to a very faint debris
cloud! One thing of which we can be
pretty sure, however, is that it will not
be a repeat of the spectacle that graced
our skies long ago in late 1844 and
early 1845. That comet was the leading
fragment of a split which presumably
happened at its previous return several

Y4: G ER A LD RHEM A NN; T2: SE A N WA LK ER / S&T

p JUST PASSING #1 Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), seen here passing in p JUST PASSING #2 In January, Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017 T2)
front of some distant deep sky objects on February 25, will be visible low shared the field of view with the Double Cluster, in the northern
in the morning twilight in late June. constellation Perseus. The comet will become visible for southern
observers around the beginning of July.

48 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020


thousand years ago and, as such, was
almost certainly the major component
of the parent comet. Nevertheless, even
if Y4 did become as intrinsically bright
as the earlier one (which nobody expects
will happen), the poorer observational
geometry this time would still make it
less of a spectacle as seen from Earth.
Comet or asteroid?
The other potential ‘dark horse’ is the
peculiar object initially designated as
A/2019 U6. The ‘A’ implies ‘asteroid’
as that is what it appeared to be when
discovered as a magnitude 20.5, star-like
point of light by the Mount Lemmon
Survey on October 31 last year. However,
this ‘asteroid’ was on a long-period
elliptical orbit with a period of just over
9,600 years! Perihelion will be reached
on June 18 at 0.91 a.u. and the object is
predicted to make its closest approach to
our planet (0.83 a.u.) eleven days later.
Expect an explosion
T Coronae Borealis is a supernova waiting to happen.
I
n our April issue we looked at
Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant
star and a core-collapse supernova
candidate. This month we’ll introduce
T Coronae Borealis, an expected
candidate of a different type of
supernova — the thermonuclear, or Type
1a. T CrB is classified as a recurrent
nova; that is, a classical nova that’s been
seen to recur. Such a system comprises
a white dwarf primary and a red giant
secondary within a common envelope.
It’s also called a symbiotic nova.
Symbiotic novae are one of several
theorised progenitors of Type 1a
supernovae. In this scenario, the white
dwarf draws gas from the red giant into
a tightly held shell. When the bottom of
X T Coronae Borealis is located at 15h 59m
30.16s, +25° 55′ 12.6″. This chart (courtesy of
the AAVSO) is approximately 5 degrees wide
and has visual magnitudes shown with decimal
points omitted to avoid confusion with faint
stars — so 84 denotes a magnitude 8.4 star.
In common with an increasing
number of bodies being discovered in
recent years, this object was not clearly
an asteroid nor a comet and accordingly
was given a ‘mixed’ designation. It
was numbered as a comet, but the ‘A’
implies a lack of visible activity. Similar
objects in recent years have been a mixed
bag. Some have remained asteroidal in
appearance while others have displayed
varying degrees of cometary activity
closer to perihelion. The inactive ones
may be dormant comets or they may be
genuine rocky asteroids that have been
pushed into comet-like orbits. Others
are possibly similar to the very long-
period but low-activity ‘Manx comets,’
named after the tailless cats of the Isle of
Man. These appear to be ‘missing links’
between completely inactive asteroids
and fully active comets.
As for A/2019 U6, several observers
early this year noted positive signs of
the shell reaches a certain temperature
and pressure, a runaway thermonuclear
explosion occurs. This explosion ejects
the entire shell structure into space,
forming huge shells of gas… and these
old nova shells are indeed observable.
The question now is: after every such
nova event, has the white dwarf lost a
little mass or gained some? It is thought
that T CrB has been accumulating mass
and is approaching the limit at which
the entire white dwarf — not just a gas
by Alan Plummer VARIABLE STARS
cometary activity, although the ‘A’
designation remained and the object
was not officially listed as a comet until
late March, when the designation was
changed to C/2019 U6 (Lemmon). As
an asteroidal body, U6 would remain
fainter than magnitude 15 and not
be of interest to the average visual
observer. However, if the observed
activity continues and intensifies as the
object approaches perihelion, it should
be several magnitudes brighter than
this — the actual magnitude depending,
of course, on the degree to which it
activates. The start of June will find it
in Canis Major, crossing the northern
part of Puppis during the first half of
the month before entering Hydra. If it
behaves like a ‘regular comet’ it may
reach at least magnitude 9 in late June.
■ DAVID SEARGENT is the discoverer
of comet 1978 XV.
shell — will be completely destroyed in a
thermonuclear supernova. Estimates of
the T CrB white dwarf’s mass range from
1.2 to 1.37 solar masses. The theoretical
maximum, or Chandrasekhar limit,
before exploding, is 1.4 solar masses.
T CrB has been observed in outburst
in 1866 and 1946, and if that represents
a period, 2026 may be next. Its visual
magnitude range is 2.0 to 10.8, but in
recent years it has brightened a little
and become bluer, a phenomenon noted
before the 1946 event. So I’d suggest
starting your observations now!
■ ALAN PLUMMER observes from the
Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and can
be contacted at alan123604@live.com
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 49
 EXPLORING THE SOLAR SYSTEM by Thomas A. Dobbins
On August 26, 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope
captured this image of Mars with the Mountains
of Mitchel as they detached from the periphery of
The
Mountains of Mitchel
How to glimpse these enigmatic features on the surface
of the Red Planet.
T
his year’s favourable apparition
of Mars presents an excellent
opportunity to witness the
development of a transient but
recurring Martian feature known as
the Mountains of Mitchel, discovered
175 years ago by the founder of the first
major observatory established in the
United States.
Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel was
born in 1809 in Kentucky, then a rural
outpost on America’s western frontier.
In 1825 he secured an appointment
to the United States Military Academy
at West Point, where the curriculum
included surveying, civil engineering
50 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Mitchel was a captivating orator
who spoke without notes or visual aids.
His series of public lectures about the
the south polar cap.
Solar System attracted audiences of as
many as 2,000 Cincinnati residents,
who packed into one of the city’s
largest churches. At the conclusion of
the final lecture, Mitchel announced
that he would devote his energies to
establishing a major observatory in
Cincinnati to be funded by the sale
of 300 shares of stock at the price
of US$25 apiece. Shareholders in the
Cincinnati Astronomical Society
would be granted the privilege of
viewing the heavens through the future
observatory’s powerful telescope.
Despite the price of a single share
being equal to the monthly wages of
a typical labourer, Mitchel generated
such popular enthusiasm that all the
shares were sold in less than a month.
With the necessary funds in hand, he
sailed off to visit Europe’s pre-eminent
observatories and telescope makers. He
wisely selected the renowned Munich
firm of Merz and Mahler to construct
a refractor using a recently completed
objective lens of 11.2 inches (28.5 cm)
aperture.
In April 1845 the great telescope
finally entered service. Unrivalled
by any instrument in the Western
Hemisphere, at the time it was the
M A RS: N ASA / STSCI / J. BELL (COR NELL U.) / M. WOLFF (SSI); TELESCOPE: M A RY STRUBBE
and practical astronomy in addition
to military subjects. After graduating,
Mitchel remained at West Point as a
mathematics instructor for three years.
He resigned his commission in 1832
and moved to the thriving metropolis
of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied
law and was admitted to the bar. He
was hired four years later by the newly
established Cincinnati College to
teach mathematics, engineering, and
astronomy.
u The Cincinnati Observatory’s 11.2-inch
(28.5-cm) Merz and Mahler refractor is a
painstakingly preserved masterpiece that
continues to serve the public.
 fourth largest refractor in the world.
While Mitchel was obliged to
patiently endure frequent interruptions
by shareholders wanting to look
through the telescope, he proved to
be an energetic and capable observer.
He spent many hours at the eyepiece
studying Mars, which in 1845
was approaching a close perihelic
opposition similar to the one that will
occur this October.
During perihelic apparitions the
south polar region of Mars is tilted
toward the Sun, enabling observers to
monitor the rapid retreat of the polar
cap during late Martian spring and
early summer. Mitchel reported that on
the evening of August 30 he observed
“… a small bright spot … projecting out
of the lower side of the polar spot”. He
went on to say:
… After the lapse of an hour or more
… I was astonished to find a manifest
change in the position of this small
bright spot. It had apparently separated
itself from the large spot and the edges
of the two were now in contact, whereas
when first seen they overlapped. …
On the following evening I found a
recurrence of the same phenomena. In
the course of a few days the small spot
gradually faded … and was not seen at
any subsequent observation.
Dubbed the ‘Mountains of
Mitchel’ in 1862 by the British artist
and astronomer Nathaniel Green,
SK E TCH: CINCINN ATI OBSERVATORY CEN TER; M A RS: DA MIA N PE ACH / CHILESCOPE
as Novissima Thyle (Newest Thule)
in Giovanni Schiaparelli’s Latinised
Martian nomenclature of ancient
lands and mythologies introduced in
1877. Astronomer Eugène Antoniadi
christened it Novus Mons (New
Mountain) when it is completely
detached from the retreating cap. He
dubbed the dark rift that separates
Novus Mons from the main body of
the polar cap Rima Australis (Southern
Fissure).
Mars expert Jeff Beish of the
Association of Lunar and Planetary
Observers (ALPO) predicts that
Novissima Thyle will begin to protrude
from the border of the polar cap early
this June. About a month later the cap’s
retreat will leave the outlying ‘island’
of Novus Mons. This, in turn, will
contract into small patches early in
August and may disappear completely
by September, when summer solstice
occurs on Mars.
A magnification of 200× or more and
a telescope of at least 15 cm aperture is
required to follow these developments.
Use a red (Wratten 25 or 23A) or
orange (Wratten 21) filter to penetrate
any hazes that may be present over the
polar region and sharpen the outlines
pp This sketch by Mitchel depicts a striking
of surface snows. Be on the lookout
projection on the edge of the retreating south
for the appearance of other dark polar cap of Mars on August 30, 1845.
rifts, notably Rima Angusta (Narrow
Fissure), which may extend from 60° to p The Mountains of Mitchel seen while Mars
270° by mid-September. was in a gibbous phase on September 17,
2018, during the planet’s last apparition.
Close-up inspection of the
Mountains of Mitchel by orbiting

this feature appears whenever the
dwindling southern polar cap is
favourably presented for observation.
Occupying a swath of longitude from
300° to 330° at a latitude of 70°
(almost 400 kilometres from the true
pole), it follows a regular pattern of
seasonal development, breaking up into
discrete white dots before eventually
vanishing. Green reasonably inferred
that the lingering remnants were
isolated snowfields on the summits of
mountains that thawed long after snow
at lower elevations.
When it appears as a brighter region
within the polar cap or as a bulge or
peninsula on its periphery, It is known
spacecraft yields surprising results
— even the very name has proven to
be a misnomer. Two decades ago, the
laser altimeter aboard NASA’s Mars
Global Surveyor revealed that the
region’s heavily cratered terrain is only
moderately elevated.
Curiously, nearby areas at
comparable elevations with similar
topography do not retain frost.
Although a portion of the Mountains
of Mitchel includes an escarpment that
may shade some frost from sunlight
during late winter and early spring,
the persistence of frost through late
spring remains puzzling. For some still
unknown reason, the frost covering
the Mountains of Mitchel tends to be
brighter and smaller in particle size
than the frost on most other areas of
the polar cap. Finer grains of frozen
carbon dioxide reflect sunlight more
efficiently and sublimate more slowly
than the coarser frost, which may also
contain more sunlight-absorbing dust.
The Mountains of Mitchel remain
one of the Red Planet’s few enduring
mysteries accessible to backyard
astronomers.
¢ TOM DOBBINS looks forward to
observing the coming apparition of
Mars with several instruments from his
backyard.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 51
 GOING DEEP by Dave Tosteson
N named for its discoverer, is the prototype
Hoag’s legacy
Ring galaxies are among some of the quirkiest objects in the sky —
and one in particular piqued the author’s curiosity.
I
f beauty is symmetry laced with
mystery, then a discovery by a young
doctoral student back in 1950 could
be one of the most beautiful ever.
His discovery has inspired not only
generations of professional astronomers
but has also intrigued amateurs drawn
to arcana of the sky.
Arthur Hoag was born in 1921 and
spent his early years in the New York
City area. His childhood was marred
by the tragic death of his mother and
younger sister in a barge accident on
the Hudson River when he was five. His
father died when Arthur was 15, but
the lad had the fortunate support of an
extended family. Teachers, both in high
school and at Brown University, where
52 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
he graduated in 1942 with a degree in
physics, stoked his interest in astronomy.
After World War II, Hoag attended
Harvard University, where he was
mentored by Bart Bok. He received
his PhD in 1952, and then went on
to become the first
director of the US Naval
Observatory division in Hoag’s Objects
Flagstaff, Arizona. In the
mid-1960s he headed the Object
stellar division at Kitt Peak Hoag’s Object
National Observatory Hoag 1 (Quasar)
in Tucson, and later
NGC 4650A
returned to Flagstaff to
serve as director of Lowell Cartwheel Galaxy
Observatory from 1977 Right ascension and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
until he retired in 1986.
t RINGED SPLENDOUR Hoag’s Object,
of a class of galaxies that display unusual
morphologies involving ringlike structures.
Incredibly, another ring galaxy (much farther
away) peeks cheekily through the gap between
the yellow core and the blue ring. Many
consider this Hubble Space Telescope image to
be one of its most iconic.
Throughout his career, Hoag was
particularly interested in developing
and testing instrumentation. He
performed early experiments with
cooled photographic emulsions, and he
also worked on versions of the grating
prism, or grism, which he used to
identify quasars in the 1970s.
Hoag’s contributions to the amateur
astronomy community include the
discovery of a cluster of three quasars
near M82, and an object that first
featured in a brief, 21-line Astronomical
Journal report in October 1950 entitled
‘A Peculiar Object in Serpens’. He
discovered this unique object on a
photographic plate, initially taking it to
be a “perfectly symmetrical” planetary
nebula. But the size and nucleus
weren’t characteristic of planetary
nebulae. Hoag also tentatively suggested
gravitational lensing (which displayed
remarkable forward thinking, for the
first observation of a gravitational lens
didn’t happen until 1979). In the end,
his most likely explanation — that it was
a “new species among the ‘pathological’
galaxies” — gradually took hold, and the
object would eventually bear his name.
Star party memories
As I write this on the first day of a star
party, I am reminded of my early interest
in the deep sky. Star party attendees
N ASA / ESA / THE HUBBLE HERITAG E TE A M
Mag(v) RA Dec.
15.1 15h 17.2m +21° 35′
19.5 09h 57.0m +69° 39′
13.6 12h 44.8m –40° 43′
15.2 00h 37.7m –33° 43′
 are drawn to such events to share their
fascination for remarkable celestial
objects with fellow observers. In the
early 1990s I was still new to serious N
deep sky observing and brought a large,
heavy, and boxy 45-cm reflector to a star
party. I quickly learned of higher quality
optical and mechanical options. So the
following year I picked up a 62.5-cm f/5 COSMIC CARTWHEEL The Cartwheel
Tectron reflector housing a fine Galaxy Galaxy, lying some 500 million light-years
Optics mirror. Then I was introduced to away in Sculptor, likely formed after a smaller
the fine art of visual sleuthing and to a galaxy plunged into a larger spiral around 200
million years ago. These events trigger spurts
host of intriguing objects, thanks to one
of star formation that can be seen in the
of the best observers I’ve ever met. ringlike structure surrounding the core.
Larry Mitchell has been an avid
observer of the deep sky for more than
three decades. In the late 1980s he
spent almost every clear night viewing Hoag’s objects circumference of the ring spans 45″,
with his 60-cm reflector, during which Also known as PGC 54559, Hoag’s which corresponds to a diameter of
time, among many feats, he bagged Object is located in northwestern some 130,000 light-years at a distance
all 2,400-plus objects observed by Serpens Caput, about 6.5° southwest of a little more than 600 million light-
CA RT WHEEL G A L A X Y: CURT STRUCK / PHILIP A PPLE TON / K IRK BOR NE / R AY LUCAS / N ASA / ESA; ZOO M IM AG E: POSS-II / STSCI / CA LTECH / PA LO M A R OBSERVATORY

William Herschel. Now best known for of Alphecca, or Alpha (α) Coronae years. The core spans 6″ in diameter.
his challenging Advanced Observing Borealis. The nearest ‘bright’ star — at Most of the visible light from the
Program, a quarter of a century ago magnitude 5.6 — is 1° south-southeast galaxy is concentrated in this inner
he and his observing partner Barbara of the galaxy. It’s relatively isolated core, which appears 2 to 3 magnitudes
Wilson were ‘sirens of the sky,’ calling from nearby deep sky objects, as the brighter than the ring — this is
out the names of unusual and seldom- closest is 14th-magnitude NGC 5910 especially evident in red photographic
observed (or never-observed) objects (one of two Hickson Compact Group plates.
back and forth, drawing unsuspecting galaxies) about 1° to the southeast. Coincidentally, another ring galaxy
initiates into their lair. My incipient Hoag’s Object as a whole has a B (SDSS J151713.93+213516.8) peeks
interest in obscure and esoteric magnitude of 15.8 and a V magnitude through the dark gap between the core
things in the sky was ignited by their of 15.1. Since the core is yellow and the and the ring of Hoag’s Object. This
contagious passion. I recall one object fainter ring very blue, colour must be may be a ‘cartwheel’-type galaxy, as
in particular that piqued my curiosity: taken into account when describing the Hubble Space Telescope images hint
a perfectly round galaxy with a gap galaxy. Observations indicate that this at faint spokes inside its ring. What a
between the core and outer ring. I had face-on ring galaxy is likely inclined remarkable tableau!
glimpsed Hoag’s Object. to our line of sight by 19°. The outer When I started observing this galaxy
in 1993, it was one of the most exciting
q BRIGHTER CORE, FAINTER RING At 15th-magnitude, Hoag’s Object can be a challenging things I’d ever seen and sparked an
target, and the fainter ring even more so. This 10′ × 10′ POSS-II blue-plate image enhances the
abiding interest in unusual objects. I
ring. Magnitudes of nearby stars are marked.
viewed it half a dozen times with the
62.5-cm throughout the following
16h 00m 15h 30m 15h 00m 14h 30m
θ δ decade, noting the brighter centre and
+30° COR. ρ 137 hazy, outer ring. In 2004, the dark ‘gap’
ι BOR.
109
β ε separating the ring from the core eluded
ε
α me even at 908× the galaxy positioned
δ γ
near the zenith. It took the increased
SERPENS
CAPUT
127 power of my 80-cm f/4 scope to be
+20° ι Hoag's Object certain of seeing that feature. Despite
κ Arcturus
the larger aperture, the background
BOÖTES
‘Baby Hoag’ ring galaxy at the one
γ β
ζ o’clock position within the gap remains
Star magnitudes elusive. I plan to keep trying.
102
+10° δ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Arthur Hoag researched many
things, but his other eponymous finds,

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 53
 GOING DEEP by Dave Tosteson
N summarise the four main categories of
M82
Hoag 1
p CHALLENGING TRIPLET Hoag 1 appears
as a faint dot southeast of M82 in this 7′ × 10′
blue POSS-II image. The arrows indicate the
positions of Hoag 2 and Hoag 3.
as noted, were three closely clustered
quasars southeast of M82 in Ursa
Major. The brightest is Hoag 1 with a
V magnitude of 19.5 and a redshift of
2.05. I viewed this object’s ten-and-
a-half-billion-year-old light on the
night of May 13, 2017, with an 80-cm
reflector at 650× in seeing of 4/10 and
transparency of 6–7/10. It was stellar, of
course, and difficult in those conditions.
At the eyepiece there was no hint of the
two fainter, nearby Hoag quasars.
Several kinds of rings
After the National Geographic Society —
Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS)
was completed in 1958, astronomers
trawled this jewel of a resource for
previously unknown objects. The
Russian astronomer Boris Vorontsov-
Vel’yaminov searched systematically for
interacting and unusual galaxies. His
Atlas and Catalog of Interacting Galaxies,
published in 1959 and later expanded
in the 1970s to 852 items, listed many
ring-type galaxies, including a category
of detached-ring” objects similar to
Hoag’s find. Three of Halton Arp’s
peculiar galaxies (numbers 146, 147
and 148) have ring structures. During
the past seven decades reports of new
ring galaxy discoveries have trickled
in. Proliferation can foster confusion
until organising principles of formation
and evolution are established. The field
appears to be without consensus, but
agreement is simmering in some areas.
In a paper published in 2017, Burçin
Mutlu Pakdil of the University of
54 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Minnesota and her collaborators nicely
galaxy rings: polar, collisional, accretion
and those arising from secular evolution.
Polar-ring galaxies are likely formed
when a smaller galaxy is gravitationally
captured by a larger lenticular or
elliptical galaxy, and waves of star
formation ensue. I’ve observed NGC
4650A , NGC 660 and NGC 2685,
which are examples from this category.
NGC 5128 is arguably the most famous
galaxy in this group.
Galaxies sporting collisional rings
are perhaps best exemplified by the
Cartwheel Galaxy (ESO 350-40) in
Sculptor. In this case, an interloper has
collided head-on with another galaxy,
giving rise to nearly symmetric density
waves of gravitational disruption that
trigger star formation. I have viewed
the 15th-magnitude Cartwheel with
N which include star formation induced
pRING AROUND A GALAXY A prime example
of a polar-ring galaxy, NGC 4650A lies around
130 million light-years away in Centaurus. As
the category name implies, the ring rotates
around the poles of the central galaxy.
my 80-cm reflector. On the POSS plates
and through the eyepiece, the Cartwheel
appears reverse to Hoag’s Object: The
ring is brighter than the core.
IC 2006 in Eridanus is a good
example of a galaxy with a ring that
formed through accretion processes.
In these cases, an early-type galaxy
accreted external matter — possibly
through interactions at a distance
with other galaxies — that went
into structuring the ring. IC 2006 is
ephemeral at best on the red POSS
plates, and on the blue plates it’s large
(4′ in diameter), circular, and ghostly
faint.
The most common ring galaxies
are likely forged via secular evolution
through slow, steady interaction with
their environment. This class is largely
composed of barred spirals, although
non-barred spirals have also been
observed to sport rings. These galaxies
morph over time via internal processes,
by spiral density waves and bulge
growth through the funneling of gas
into the core in barred spirals (which
could also contribute to starburst
activity).
So, into which of these ring-
HOAG 1: POSS-II / STSCI / CA LTECH / PA LO M A R OBSERVATORY; NGC 4650A: THE HUBBLE HERITAG E TE A M / N ASA / ESA
forming scenarios does Hoag’s Object
fit? Although consensus hasn’t been
reached, observational clues largely
point to a major accretion event some
2 to 3 billion years ago onto the core
of the central elliptical galaxy, likely
triggered by interaction with another
galaxy.
Epilogue
The prolific science and sci-fi writer
Isaac Asimov is credited with the phrase
“That’s odd!” in reference to a moment
of discovery. The legacy of Arthur
Hoag’s finds will live on if we pursue
our personal and collective dreams of
exploring outliers in the sky. Beauty —
even when it’s “odd”— is in the eyepiece
of the beholder.
¢ DAVE TOSTESON enjoys searching
the literature and news outlets for
unusual and yet-to-be-explained
objects to observe.
 CELESTIAL CALENDAR

Eclipses W
e’re going to be treated to two penumbral eclipses this year. The third
eclipses over the next couple will occur in July but won’t be visible
of months — one each of the from Australia. But the fourth, on

coming up lunar and solar variety. But don’t get

too excited; neither will be particularly
spectacular.
The first will be a penumbral lunar
eclipse in the early morning hours of
May 6. A penumbral eclipse occurs
when the Moon moves through the
outer part of Earths’ shadow, the
penumbra. These kinds of eclipses are
often barely noticeable, with only a
faint fading of the lit lunar surface.
That will be the case with this eclipse.
The event will begin at 3:43am
Australian Eastern Standard Time
(adjust as normal for your own time
zone), with mid-eclipse at 5:25am and
the Moon setting before the eclipse is
A penumbral lunar
eclipse will happen on May 6.
finished.
This will be the second of four
November 30, will be visible, and it’ll
be slightly better than May’s eclipse in
terms of darkening of the Moon.
Our second event is an annular
eclipse of the Sun on June 21. An
annular eclipse is where the Moon is
not quite big enough to fully cover the
solar disk, but instead leaves a thin ring
of sunlight around the edge. They’re
often called ‘ring of fire’ eclipses.
We won’t get to see annularity,
however; for that you’d need to
be somewhere in central Africa or
southern Asia. Instead, people in
Darwin and the tip of Cape York will
see a brief partial solar eclipse shortly
before sunset. Mid-eclipse as seen from
Darwin will occur at 6:05pm, or 6:14pm
from Cape York. ■ JONATHAN NALLY

Action at Jupiter A Venusian challenge

AS MAY BEGINS, Jupiter rises at about 10:30pm local time
and is high in north by dawn. By the end of the month it
transits the meridian around 3:00am. On May 1, the planet
will shine brightly at magnitude –2.3 and present a disk 41″
diameter.
Any telescope will show the four big Galilean moons,
and binoculars usually show at least two or three. They orbit
Jupiter at different rates, changing positions along an almost
straight line from our point of view on Earth.
Here are the times, in Universal Time, when the Great Red
Spot should cross Jupiter’s central meridian. The dates, also in
UT, are in bold. (Australian Eastern Standard Time is UT plus
10 hours.)
May 1: 6:35; 16:31; 2: 2:27; 12:22; 22:18; 3: 8:14; 18:09;
4: 4:05; 14:00; 23:56; 5: 9:52; 19:47; 6: 5:43; 15:39; 7: 1:34;
11:30; 21:26; 8: 7:21; 17:17; 9: 3:13; 13:08; 23:04; 10: 8:59;
18:55; 11: 4:51; 14:46; 12: 0:42; 10:38; 20:33; 13: 6:29; 16:25;
14: 2:20; 12:16; 22:11; 15: 8:07; 18:03; 16: 3:58; 13:54; 23:50;
17: 9:45; 19:41; 18: 5:36; 15:32; 19: 1:28; 11:23; 21:19; 20:
7:15; 17:10; 21: 3:06; 13:01; 22:57; 22: 8:53; 18:48; 23: 4:44;
14:39; 24: 0:35; 10:31; 20:26; 25: 6:22; 16:18; 26: 2:13; 12:09;
22:04; 27: 8:00; 17:56; 28: 3:51; 13:47; 23:42; 29: 9:38; 19:34;
30: 5:29; 15:25; 31: 1:20; 11:16; 21:12
R. ZIO MBER / WIK IMEDIA
THROUGHOUT MAY, binoculars or a small telescope will
easily show Venus as a miniature version of the crescent
Moon, as the planet thins dramatically from 24% illuminated
on May 1 to a filament-thin 0.3% on the 31. At the same time,
its diameter will swell from 40″ to 57″. This rapid increase
in apparent size presents observers with an opportunity to
discern the Venusian crescent without optical aid.
If you have 20/20 vision, your eyes have an angular
resolution of roughly 60″. Theoretically, you should be able
to resolve a crescent Venus when it’s near its maximum
apparent size. Is it really possible? Despite several attempts,
I’ve never been able to do so, but I’ve read numerous reports
of crescent sightings online and elsewhere. Some sound
credible, others less so.
I’ve yet to see anything approaching a definitive study
of the question, so let’s see if we can get some answers.
How about a Venus viewing party during the second half of
May? Invite your astronomy mates, neighbours and family
members. To avoid glare — which tends to expand the planet
into a brilliant disk and render its shape more difficult to
perceive — observe from early- to mid-twilight. And be sure
to view with your unaided eyes before confirming your
observation with binoculars.

These times assume that the spot will be centred at
System II longitude 332° on May 1. If the Red Spot has moved
elsewhere, it will transit 12/3 minutes earlier for each degree
less than 332° and 12/3 minutes later for each degree more
than 332°. ■ BOB KING
You may not be able to perceive a distinct crescent. Even
when Venus is at its biggest during May, it remains slightly
below the 60″ threshold mentioned earlier. Instead, look for
an elongated shape or an indentation on the top edge of the
planet. ■ BOB KING

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 55
 ECLIPSES by Rod J. Hill
Solar eclipses
throughout the
Solar System
Total solar eclipses are amazing
spectacles, but can they be seen
from planets other than the Earth?
TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSES, as seen
from the Earth, occur because the ratio
of the real diameters (400.6) and the
average centre-to-centre distances from
the Earth (389.2) of the Sun and Moon
compensate for each other almost
exactly. In other words, the Sun and
the Moon appear to be almost the same
size in our sky, making it possible for
the Moon to completely cover the solar
disk. It also gives us the chance to see
the Sun’s awesome corona surrounding
the silhouette of the Moon.
It has often been claimed that
nowhere else in the Solar System is the
apparent size of a natural satellite close
enough to that of the Sun to produce an
eclipse spectacle similar to that which
we experience on Earth. This claim
has been discussed a number of times
but mostly in general terms, without
56 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
providing comprehensive numerical
data or direct quantitative comparisons.
At the time of writing, 184 natural
satellites (‘moons’) have been identified
orbiting six planets and four dwarf
planets in the Solar System, plus there are
334 minor planets (including 76 asteroids
and 84 trans-Neptunian objects) known
to have satellites. But for the purposes of
this article, only the 156 named satellites
are considered as they are the ones whose
orbital and size parameters have been
characterised the best.
The key parameter that defines the
potential similarity with eclipses on
Earth is the ratio (R) of the apparent
sizes of the satellite and Sun at the
observer’s location. Values of R greater
than or equal to 1 indicate a total
eclipse, less than 1 indicates an annular
eclipse, and values near 1 represent
a situation close to that which we
experience on Earth. For this article,
R has been calculated using the size,
eccentricity and inclination to the
ecliptic of the satellite and its parent
body’s orbits, the irregular dimensions
of the satellite, and the position of the
observer on the surface of the parent
body.
Figure 1 plots the diameter of each
of these satellites versus the average
apparent sizes of the satellite and the
Sun at the points of closest (periapsis)
and farthest (apoapsis) separation
from the parent body and the Sun,
respectively. The satellite’s apparent size
is calculated with respect to an observer
positioned on the planet’s surface
ESO/P. HOR Á LEK
(consistent with its nominated radius)
directly under the eclipse when it is
occuring overhead.
 The section of Figure 1 between
R=0.4 and R=2.0 is designated here
as the total/annular ‘eclipse region,’
where the eclipses bear a reasonable
similarity to those observed on Earth;
there are only 12 satellites (8%) in this
group. R values greater than 2.0 provide
‘super total’ eclipses, or more properly
‘occultations’ of the Sun; 38 of the
satellites (24%) fall into this category.
Satellites with R less than 0.4 are ‘super
annular’ eclipses or, more properly,
transits of the Sun; 106 of the satellites
(68%) fall into this category.
Total eclipses
Figure 2 (next page) shows simulations
of three total eclipses in the eclipse
region and one ‘super’ eclipse, scaled
with respect to the size of the corona
photographed at the 2017 total eclipse.
In each of the four simulations in
the centre and right hand panels, the
silhouette of the satellite has been
depicted as a circle, or an ellipse with
 FIGURE 1 A plot of the ratio of average
Total solar eclipses, such as this one apparent sizes of natural satellites (‘moons’)
on July 2, 2019 above ESO’s La Silla relative to the apparent size of the Sun,
Observatory in Chile, happen because showing which satellites can completely cover
the Moon and the Sun are usually the up the Sun. Those in the left-hand half do not
produce total solar eclipses as seen from the
same apparent size in our sky.
surface of the parent planet or dwarf planet;
those in the right-hand half do.
RATIO OF SATELLITE TO SUN APPARENT SIZE
10000.000
Callisto
Earth The Moon
Mars
Iapetus
Actual size of satellite (km)
1000.000 Jupiter
Saturn
Nereid
Uranus
Neptune Amalthea
100.000 Pluto
Haumea Epimetheus
Eris
10.000
Phobos &
Annular eclipses
Cupid
1.000
Valeudo
Transits
ROD HILL
0.100
0.0000 0.0001 0.0010 0.0100 0.1000
axis lengths corresponding to its
minimum and maximum dimensions.
The eclipse which has the closest
overall resemblance to a total eclipse
of the Sun by the Moon, is produced
by Callisto. This eclipse would show
the glittering corona, diamond ring,
Baily’s beads, pink chromosphere and
prominences, and would last for 5 to
7 minutes… similar to an eclipse on
Earth. However, more of the Sun’s
corona is obscured because the R value
is larger, the angular diameter in
Jupiter’s sky is five times smaller than
an eclipse on Earth, and no annular
eclipses are produced by this satellite.
Saturn’s moon Epimetheus, Uranus’
Perdita a and Pluto’s Styx also produce
total eclipses similar to those on Earth,
but the apparent size of the Sun/satellite
pair is less than 1/15th of the Moon/
Sun pair, and the eclipses would last
only for a few seconds. Nevertheless,
eclipses by Styx and Perdita are
interesting since they transition
between total and annular at different
points in their orbits. Furthermore, the
satellites’ irregular dimensions provide
a uniquely shaped (and variable)
silhouette against the solar corona.
For ‘super’ eclipses like that of
Ganymede, the corona is completely
obscured at mid-totality, and ‘edge
Charon
Dysnomia
Prometheus & Pandora
Perdita
Styx & Kerberos
Total eclipses
Occulations
1.0000 10.0000 100.0000 1000.0000
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 57
 ECLIPSES

TOTAL ECLIPSES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Moon and Sun (R=1.01) – from Earth at Callisto and Sun (R=1.49) Epimetheus and Sun (R=1.1-1.6)
mid-totality August 21, 2017 – from Jupiter at mid-totality – from Saturn

Annular at periapsis Total at apoapsis

Ganymede and Jupiter at apoapsis Perdita and Uranus at periapsis Perdita and Uranus at apoapsis
and periapsis (R=2.8), resp. (R=0.93/1.40) (R=1.02/1.52)

Similar to Europa from Jupiter; Janus & Similar to Styx from Pluto
Enceladus from Saturn; Ophelia & Bianca
from Uranus; Hydra from Pluto

ANNULAR ECLIPSES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Moon and Sun (R=0.95) – from Earth at Cupid at apoapsis and Uranus at Cupid at periapsis and Uranus at aphelion
mid-totality on May 10, 2013 perihelion (R=0.72) – at mid-totality (R=0.79) at mid-totality

Traaansit of Phobos across the Sun,

photographed by NASA’s Curiosity rover Phobos and Mars at periapsis Phobos and Mars at apoapsis
from the surface of Mars on August 20, 2013 (R=0.48/0.69) (R=0.56/0.79)

Similar to Iapetus from Saturn (r=0.38-0.47)

58 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 t FIGURE 2 A real photo of the total solar
eclipse of 21 July, 2017 (top left) is compared
with simulations of Earth-like total eclipses as
seen from other planets. In the bottom centre
and bottom right panels, it can be seen that the
moon Perdita does not completely cover the
Sun as seen from Uranus when it is at periapsis.
phenomena’ such as Baily’s beads,
prominences or a diamond ring would
be fleetingly visible only at second and
third contacts.
Annular eclipses
Annular eclipses in this analysis come
in two types, dubbed ‘pure’ and ‘split’.
In split annular eclipses, only one
dimension of an irregular satellite is
ever large enough to fully cover the
Sun’s disk.
Simulations of three ‘pure annular’
eclipses are shown in Figure 3, where
they have been scaled to the size of the
2013 annular eclipse seen from Earth.
As confirmation of the accuracy of these
and other simulations, the bottom left-
hand panel of Figure 3 shows one of the
images of the real annular solar eclipse
by Phobos taken by NASA’s Curiosity
rover from the surface of Mars in 2013;
this Phobos case is the only time an
eclipse has been seen from the surface
of a planet other than Earth.
Uranus’ moon Cupid provides R
values that are similar to the Moon/Sun
system, but the eclipses last for only 2
seconds at best, and are so small in the
sky that they would require optical aid
to be examined in detail. On the other
hand, Phobos provides an impressive
eclipse spectacle, with a size in the
Martian sky of about two-thirds of the
eclipses seen from Earth… but it would
last for less than 16 seconds.
Four satellites produce ‘split’ annular
eclipses, although Perdita’s ‘split’ occurs
only around periapsis; at other times in
its orbit, its smallest dimension is large
enough to produce a total eclipse. These
eclipses would be short and very small
t FIGURE 3 Simulations of eclipses by Cupid
and Phobos, scaled to photos of the annular
solar eclipse of 10 May, 2013 (top left), and the
annular eclipse of the Sun by Phobos (bottom
ROD HILL
left), the latter imaged by NASA’s Curiosity rover
from the surface of Mars on 20 August, 2013.
in the sky, but would be interesting RELATIVE SIZES OF ECLIPSES
because the Sun’s photosphere would
not be continuous around the non- FIGURE 4 The apparent angular size
spherical silhouette of the satellite.
of a total eclipse as seen from Earth,
Depending on the particular orbital compared with the sizes of total and
geometry, it would be possible to see a annular eclipses that can be seen
spectacular, and simultaneous, ‘double from other planets.
diamond ring’ during these eclipses,
something we don’t see with eclipses
on Earth (as shown in Figure 1, lower
centre panel).
The relative sizes in the sky of eclipses
on each of the planets are shown to
scale in Figure 4. The apparent sizes
range from 32 arcminutes on Earth to
0.6 arcminutes for Pluto at aphelion.
Without prior warning, it would be hard
for an observer on Pluto to even notice
that an eclipse was taking place, and a
telescope would certainly be required to
study it in any detail.
Conclusion
The oft-stated ‘special’ relationship Total eclipse on Earth 32 arc minutes wide
between the apparent sizes of the Sun
and Moon during eclipses on Earth is
not unique in the Solar System. Indeed,
12 of the satellites of Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Pluto occasionally Annular eclipse on Mars
(Phobos) 21.2’ wide
(mostly very occasionally) produce
total and annular solar eclipses that
have characteristics broadly similar to
eclipses on Earth.
Total eclipses by Callisto and annular
eclipses by Phobos are impressive
in their own right, but no satellite Total eclipse on Jupiter
can boast an eclipse that is quite as (Callisto) 6.2’ wide
spectacular as the ones that we enjoy on
Earth. Furthermore, all of the eclipses
except for those of Callisto and Perdita
last for only a few seconds, and all have
a smaller, sometimes much smaller,
apparent size in the sky and, for the Total eclipse on Saturn
(Epimetheus) 3.4’ wide
outer planets, would require a telescope
in order to see and enjoy them in detail.
■ ROD HILL is a retired CSIRO chief
research scientist and group executive.
Total eclipse on Uranus
He has built two 15-cm Newtonian (Perdita) 1.7’ wide
telescopes and currently uses a 20-cm
Schmidt-Cassegrain. To date, he has
seen eight total solar eclipses and one
annular, and considers that this probably
Total eclipse on Pluto
qualifies him as a genuine ‘eclipse at aphelion (Styx) 0.6’ wide
chaser’.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 59
 IMAGING by Richard S. Wright, Jr.

Changing of the guard

CMOS is set to become the dominant scientific-imaging medium — but is it up to the task?

IT WASN’T THAT LONG AGO that photography went
through the major transition from chemical film-based
emulsion to digital cameras. I remember well an editor of a
computer magazine who would regularly pontificate about
how ridiculous it was that anyone thought digital cameras
would ever match the quality of film. He’d quote numbers
that compared the sizes of pixels to film grains, highlighting
the various shortcomings of digital cameras at the time, and
to some degree he was right. What he didn’t foresee is how
quickly these shortcomings would be overcome. This is a
cautionary tale, of course, to anyone watching the current
transition from CCD-based image sensors to CMOS, a
transition that’s in full bloom for the astronomical imaging
community.
Every technological advancement experiences growing
pains, and the current transition in digital imaging from
CCD to CMOS technology is no exception. Both charge-
coupled devices (CCDs), and complementary metal oxide
semiconductors (CMOS) sensors work on the same basic
principles of physics. Specially treated silicon is laid out in a

A LL PH OTOS CO U R TESY O F THE AU TH O R U N LES S OTHE RWIS E N OTE D; C HIP R E A D O U TS: LE A H TISCIO N E / S&T
CMOS CCD

Light p HARD TO TELL It’s virtually impossible to see the Light

difference between a CCD and CMOS camera. At left is a
ZWO ASI071 CMOS camera, while the camera at right is a
Starlight Xpress Trius 26C CCD.
and readout
Amplifier

Pixels
Pixels

tu UNDER THE BONNET Although CCD and CMOS

detectors function in largely the same way, one important
difference is how they read out signal. A CCD (right) moves
electrons (green arrows) off the detector in rows. The electrons
are then sent off-chip to the amplifier and analogue-to-digital Amplifier,
A-to-D conversion A-to-D
(per column) converter. By contrast, the CMOS detector (left) has an amplifier conversion
behind every pixel and an A-to-D converter for each column. Column readout

60 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

rectangular or square grid of ‘pixels’. t PRETTY PICTURES CMOS astronomical
When light hits one of these pixels, it and DSLR cameras are perfectly capable of
producing gorgeous deep sky images. This
receives a small electrical charge. The
image of M45, the Pleiades, was recorded with
more light, the higher the charge. At a CMOS-based modified Canon EOS 5D DLSR
the end of an exposure the pixels are camera and Officina Stellare Veloce 200.
read out, and each pixel is assigned
a numeric value that increases with
the amount of charge collected. This of integrated circuits) allows for
produces a two-dimensional record of a tremendous increase in readout
the various light intensities across a speed. CMOS sensors are also smaller
plane in a format that a computer can and consume far less power than
display as an image. In this way (and CCDs — fewer supporting electronic
only this way), both CCD and CMOS components means smaller packaging.
are essentially doing the exact same All these differences contribute to
thing. a manufacturing process for CMOS
technologies that costs much less than
The other shoe drops it does to make CCDs.
The vast majority of image sensors used So, CMOS is smaller, costs less to
in our astronomical cameras are made by only two vendors, make, works faster and consumes less power — a paramount
On Semiconductor (originally Kodak) and Sony. These two factor for today’s battery-driven world. With these kinds of
companies make the sensors used in many industries besides advantages, you might well wonder why we are bothering
astronomy. In fact, astronomy is a tiny niche market for with CCDs at all anymore. You would not be the only one.
these manufacturers — automated manufacturing, security
and traffic monitoring are all multi-billion-dollar industries The road ahead
by themselves (some modern cars have as many as 20 image Although CCD technology is older, it has some advantages
sensors!). The largest demand for imaging sensors is, of course, over CMOS-based cameras when it comes to low-light
smartphones. One recent report stated that there would photography. These advantages are shrinking quickly, though,
be over 6 billion smartphones in operation in 2020, with a and one industry insider recently stated that even Sony was
market worth at least $500 billion. Astronomy is only a flea on surprised with how quickly the security-camera market
the back of a very large cash cow. abandoned CCDs in favour of their newer CMOS offerings.
In a surprise move late last year, On Semiconductor One way that CMOS is already completely on a par with
announced it is suspending production this year at its CCDs is in quantum efficiency. QE is a measure of how
only remaining plant capable of making CCD sensors. The efficient a sensor’s pixels are at converting individual photons
former Kodak CCD facility in Rochester, New York, will
then cease operations in June 2020. Only a few years ago,
Sony announced the discontinuation of CCD sensors but
extended the life of its current chip offerings up until 2025.
And while Sony is continuing to produce CCDs, it’s no longer
developing any new chip designs.
CMOS is the future of digital imaging, but why?
Although both technologies do essentially the same thing
with pixels and photons, the similarities end there. For
starters, manufacturing technology for semiconductors
has improved to the point where it’s easy to integrate
more circuitry onboard the image sensor. More of the
supporting electronics can be bundled right on the same
chip, making CMOS sensors much more flexible in terms
of electronic design and capabilities. This extra integration
makes the surrounding electronics design simpler as well,
and more room for gates (the fundamental building blocks

u SIGNAL OVERFLOW CCD detectors used for astronomical research

are almost without exception linear detectors, meaning they record light
in a predictable, linear manner. Linear detectors often display ‘blooming
spikes’. Such overflow of signal from saturated pixels can be seen in this
exposure of M57, the Ring Nebula, in Lyra.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 61
 IMAGING
into electrical charge. A sensor that registers
half the light falling on it has a QE of 50%,
while one that records ¾ of the light has
75% QE. The higher the QE, the better
the sensor is for low-light applications.
Early CMOS sensors had relatively poor
QE compared to CCDs at the wavelengths
astronomers are interested in and were
generally poor choices for any kind of
low-light imaging. Today, the top CCD and
CMOS sensors are now flirting with QE’s
in the 90% range, meaning that there is no
inherent QE advantage to either technology.
Another technical limitation of CMOS that has vanished
in recent years is read noise. Read noise is a slight random
fluctuation in data values that occurs as an image is read
off a detector. Both CCD and CMOS started life with very
poor read-noise performance, and CCDs were well ahead of
CMOS for many years. Today, CMOS read-noise performance
has caught up with and even surpassed most CCD designs.
This tiny bit of noise has a very big impact on low-light
applications in which the faintest signal is being sought, and
so it’s no small consideration for the astronomical market.
One weakness for low-light imaging with CMOS that
is seeing rapid improvement is amp glow. A CCD detector
requires an output amplifier in its supporting electronics
that is part of the analogue-to-digital conversion necessary
COUNTING PHOTONS Both CCD
and CMOS detectors convert light
into a digital signal that is then
read out as varying levels of grey.
The higher the signal, the brighter
the pixel value. This detail of the
Horsehead Nebula shows how
each pixel is assigned a numerical
value, producing a smooth, black-
and-white image.
62 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
t ALREADY BEST CMOS detectors are vastly
superior to CCD technology when it comes to
readout speed. CMOS active-pixel designs are
inherently useful for the ‘lucky imaging’ technique
of planetary astrophotography, in which hundreds
of frames per second are recorded to capture
the sharpest frames during the best moments of
steady seeing. This detailed image of Mars was
captured with a ZWO ASI120MM CMOS planetary
camera and 31.7-cm Newtonian reflector recording
133 frames per second.
to convert the collected photons to a
digital signal. CMOS incorporates a single
amplifier behind every pixel, meaning
there are millions of amplifiers on every CMOS detector. It
turns out that all those extra integrated electronics get warm
and produce a lot more heat when the sensor is in operation.
This heat shows up as a glowing pattern radiating out from
the edges of the chip during long exposures — amp glow.
Subtracting a dark frame during calibration can mitigate
this, as it does with CCD calibration to some degree. But it
is not 100% repeatable with CMOS images, and dark-frame
subtraction will often leave some residual thermal signal
that must be removed manually during post-processing. In
addition, this accumulated thermal signal robs the chip of its
ability to detect extremely faint objects, because these pixels
are filling up too fast with polluted signal and noise.
Amp glow is strong even in some very recent CMOS
53,456
11,308
38,550
M A RS: SE A N WA LK ER / S&T
p Left: Problems with CMOS sensors only become apparent during long exposures. This dark frame is stretched to display the amplifier glow
at bottom right. Right: Another problem with CMOS detectors used for scientific imaging is that they produce non-repeating fixed-pattern noise.
Note how the dark pattern noise has shifted between frames. High-quality and newer CMOS cameras are doing much better at reducing this issue
to near-imperceptible levels.
designs, but many newer sensors exhibit amp glow that is
quite low, and some camera vendors are doing ‘tricks’ with
the electronics to keep it to a minimum. One scientist who
is searching for ultra-faint targets tells me there is currently
no CMOS sensor on the market that performs adequately for
his very exacting work. I’ll have to check in with him again in
five years and see if this is still the case.
The last significant issue that CMOS has yet to overcome
is the non-linear sensitivity to light. When we talk about
linearity of a sensor, we are talking about the ratio of the
signal recorded to the signal that was received. If you dump in
twice the amount of light, you should get twice the amount
of signal. CCDs that are intended for scientific use are 100%
linear (non-antiblooming), so that when the signal is so high
that they saturate, they spill the excess charge into adjacent
pixels, called blooming spikes. Many CCD detectors used for
astrophotography include an anti-blooming gate to redirect
overflow charge and lose their linearity only at the upper end
of their exposure range. CMOS sensors, on the other hand,
are non-linear throughout much of their range. This varies
from sensor to sensor. How this affects astronomy is that flat-
field calibration, which corrects for pixel-to-pixel sensitivity
differences, among other things, does not always work well
with CMOS sensors; the maths just doesn’t work. Also, if
your intended use is photometry (accurately measuring the
brightness of a target), your calculated values may be suspect.
They are likely close, but not as rigorous as if determined
from a truly linear sensor.
If your goal is simply aesthetic astrophotography, sensor
non-linearity is often negligible or can be mitigated in post-
processing. Often, it’s very slight (CMOS is still far superior
to film). Of course, it requires more work than having a
properly calibrated image in the first place, but it’s not a
showstopper. I’ve seen some academic work recently in which
this is the subject of intense research, and I wouldn’t be
surprised if technological advancements solve this problem
within a generation or two.
Finally, another commonly discussed issue with CMOS
sensors is fixed-pattern noise. Both CCD and CMOS sensors
have fixed-pattern noise, often noticeable during longer
exposure shots when particular pixels are susceptible to giving
brighter intensities above the general background noise. This
is easily removed by calibration with a bias or dark frame
on a CCD sensor. With some CMOS cameras, the pattern
noise often varies from frame to frame, and since it’s not
repeatable, it can’t be simply subtracted. However, a lot of
this pattern noise has more to do with the surrounding
electronics implementation than it does with the sensor itself,
and camera vendors are gaining more experience in taming
this beast for our market. For example, the issue is already a
nonfactor for most commercial DSLR cameras, as well as the
latest generation of smartphones capable of low-light imaging.
Onward into the future
Technological progress is often fraught with growing pains,
false starts and compromises. There are still and possibly
always will be some applications where CCD-imaging
technology works best, such as in space where radiation
hazards are very harsh on delicate electronics. To be sure,
there will be manufacturers willing to meet that need for
a price. For those of us on Earth without government-sized
budgets, the juggernaut of CMOS is well beyond critical
mass now. Clearly, the Sun is setting on CCDs for amateur
astronomers and most ground-based imaging applications.
But I wouldn’t be in a hurry to toss out your old CCD
cameras. The current generation of CCD cameras is going
to be available for a few more years yet, and it will offer
some important advantages for the discerning imager. While
CMOS sensors are still not quite up to the challenge of many
kinds of scientific imaging, we can say confidently that they
are getting very large in the rear-view mirror.
¢ RICHARD S. WRIGHT, JR. is a software developer by day
and an avid astrophotographer by night.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 63
 NEW PRODUCT SHOWCASE

t CELESTRON STARSENSE EXPLORER SERIES

Celestron has released a new series of easy-to-use scopes that use your
own smartphone to guide to you night sky targets. After you place your
smartphone in the cradle, the StarSense app will take an image of the
sky, figure out where your scope is pointed and then guide you to your
chosen target using arrows on the smartphone screen. The LT series
scopes are alt-az yoke mounted and range in aperture from 70 mm to
127 mm; the DX series have alt-az fork mounts and come in 102 mm and
130 mm apertures. Each comes with 10-mm and 25-mm Kellner eye-
pieces, and some models have 90° image erecting diagonals.
Celestron Australia celestron.com.au

u OFF-AXIS AUTOGUIDER
Diffraction Limited announces the SBIG StarChaser series of Off-Axis Guider
Cameras. These unique guide cameras both feature a 1.3-megapixel CMOS
detector with 4.8-micron-square pixels in a thin off-axis guider housing with
an adjustable pick-off mirror. The StarChaser SC-2 (US$999) attaches to most
SBIG STF or Aluma cameras and filter wheels, while the larger StarChaser
SC-3 (US$1,299) works with the SBIG STX and STXL-series cameras and
compatible filter wheels. Both models operate in conjunction with the
company’s Adaptive Optics high-speed correctors for their respective models.
Each camera is powered with an included 12V power supply and connects to
a computer via a 2-metre USB 2.0 cable. A copy of MaxIm LT is also included
with purchase.
Diffraction Limited diffractionlimited.com

t ENHANCED OBSERVING
At long last, Unistellar Optics unveils the eVscope (US$2,999). This
integrated telescope system promises to change your observing experience.
The system combines a 114-mm f/4 reflector with a permanently
mounted Sony IMC224 colour CMOS detector, an enhanced-vision OLED
screen ‘eyepiece’ and a powerful alt-az Go To mount controlled by your
smartphone. The system’s patent-pending Autonomous Field Detection
feature automatically recognises star fields, self-aligns and is ready to
observe within 10 seconds of powering up. Its track-and-accumulate
imaging with automated intelligent image-processing produces colourful
‘live’ images of 4,800 deep sky targets from its internal database within
minutes of pointing at each subject. The eVscope weighs 9 kg assembled
and comes with a collapsible tripod, an internal rechargeable battery that
powers the unit for up to 10 hours, and a free iOS or Android control app.
Unistellar unistellaroptics.com

New Product Showcase is a reader service featuring innovative equipment and software of interest to amateur astronomers. The descriptions are based largely on
information supplied by the manufacturers or distributors. Australian Sky & Telescope assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of vendors’ statements. For further
information contact the manufacturer or distributor.

64 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020


Magna Carta of modern physics
THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Albert Einstein
SP Books, 2019
80 pages, ISBN 979-10-95457-05-3
“I AM GLAD THAT I GOT RID OF THE
MANUSCRIPT,” Einstein wrote in late
April 1925 to his wife, Elsa, “and thank
you for doing me this favor of love.” Elsa
had solved a problem that her famous
husband, who was then travelling in
South America, had been unable to
solve: what to do with the original
manuscript of his magnum opus, “The
Foundation of the General Theory of
Relativity”. At the time, Einstein was
helping establish the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, and Elsa had given the
document to a university official who
ensured that it later ended up there. The
manuscript has been a treasured part of
the Hebrew University’s collection since
it opened on April 1 of that year.
Einstein ended the sentence quoted
above with a few words that would
trigger heart palpitations in historians
of science: “better than burnt or sold”.
Burnt?! One might as well burn Magna
Carta, to which Hanoch Gutfreund,
director of the university’s Albert
Einstein Archives and author of this
facsimile edition’s foreword, likens
Einstein’s masterwork. For this 46-page
handwritten paper, published on May
11, 1916, in the journal Annalen der
Physik, represents as great a watershed.
One doesn’t have to read German,
much less understand the complicated
mathematics in Einstein’s paper, to
appreciate its beauty. In his foreword,
which also appears in French and
German, Gutfreund gets to the core of
Einstein’s chef d’oeuvre when he writes,
paraphrasing the theoretical physicist
John Wheeler, “An almost poetic
formulation of the essence [of general
relativity] is: matter tells space how to
curve and curved space tells matter how
to move”. Einstein’s theory, Gutfreund
notes, is a hugely complex mathematical
formulation of this simple-sounding
statement. That formulation finds its
climax in the famous equation labeled
“(53)”.
What didn’t this paper transform
in our modern understanding of the
universe and its workings? Many of the
phenomena astrophysicists study today
are natural consequences of GR (as
the theory is often abbreviated): Black
holes, which according to GR will form
whenever the ratio of an object’s mass
to its radius becomes sufficiently large.
Gravitational time dilation, in which
events occur more slowly near a massive
body than they do farther away. The
bending of starlight and associated time
delay as light follows the
curvature of spacetime
that a massive object
creates.
There’s more —
much more. Another
consequence of GR, for
example, is gravitational
lensing. As illustrated
most aptly by Einstein’s
Cross, a strongly lensed
quasar in Pegasus, lensing
enables astronomers to
study distant celestial
objects that intervening
matter (in this case,
a foreground galaxy) multiplies and
magnifies. The theory also augured
gravitational waves. These ripples in
the fabric of spacetime arise from
violent gravitational events such as the
merging of two black holes. Scientists
first detected these waves, which have
ushered in a new era of astronomy, a
century after Einstein’s paper saw print.
As revolutionary as GR has been,
it’s not the be all and end all. Two
significant issues in particular dog
the theory. One is how to reconcile
by Peter Tyson BOOK REVIEW
the smooth geometric description of
spacetime that GR presumes with the
‘grainy’ description that quantum
mechanics calls for. The other concerns
singularities, where our understanding
of physics breaks down. GR posits
singularities at the centre of black holes
and at the start of the Big Bang. But do
they actually exist? Or does GR require
rejigging?
Neither of these open questions
need diminish our wonder at this
priceless manuscript. Few documents
in human history have upended their
field as utterly as GR has physics. One
feels reverential sliding this book out of
its charcoal-gray, nearly 25-by-35-cm
slipcase. You turn the pages slowly, in
part out of respect for how long it took
its author to work out
the theory (eight years).
We merely ordinary
types latch onto signs
that Einstein was as
human as the rest of
us: His cross-outs,
insertions and other
last-minute corrections
before publication speak
to us in ways we can all
sympathise with. One
surprise, considering our
collective mental image
of his famously messy
hair, is his neat, quite
legible handwriting.
We’re extremely fortunate to have
this original document. Einstein
typically tossed his working papers
once pieces appeared in print; no early
drafts, for instance, survive from his
“miracle year” of 1905. So thank you,
Elsa, for ensuring the safekeeping of
this seminal work in Einstein’s own
hand.
¢ PETER TYSON wishes he understood
general relativity as well as Einstein did.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 65
 AS&T TEST REPORT by Alan Dyer
Canon’s mirrorless EOS Ra
Canon EOS R We test Canon’s EOS R mirrorless cameras, including
US price: $1,799
the new ‘Ra’ model made for astrophotography.
Canon EOS Ra IT SEEMS THAT EVERY seven years,
US price: $2,499
astrophotographers have reason to
usa.canon.com
celebrate as Canon issues an astronomical
What we like version of one of their current cameras.
Excellent red sensitivity The new EOS Ra is the third astrophoto
in the Ra model camera offered by Canon, following its
ground-breaking 20Da in 2005 and seven
30× magnification for
precise focusing years later the 60Da.
We already had a test underway
Excellent battery life
of Canon’s mirrorless EOS R
when rumours began flying of the
What we don’t like
astronomical ‘Ra’ model. Using an early
Lacks dark frame buffer
sample of the EOS Ra, we put both
No built-in intervalometer versions of the EOS R through their
4K movies are cropped 1.8× paces under the stars.
Red sensitivity
In the days when film was the dominant
photographic medium, we coveted the
few colour emulsions (remember Kodak
66 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Ektachrome 200 or Fuji Super G 400?)
that recorded reddish hydrogen-alpha
(Hα) nebulosity that permeates the
Milky Way better than other films. In
the digital age, most general-purpose
cameras perform poorly for picking up
emission nebulae.
The reason is that all have a blocking
filter installed in front of the sensor
that cuts out infrared (IR) light that
would otherwise add an unfocused
haze over the image. But filtering out IR
A LL PHOTOG R A PHS A RE BY THE AU THOR.
also filters out most of the deep red Hα
emission at a wavelength of 656.3 nm.
Not so with the EOS Ra. Its factory-
installed IR-cutoff filter transmits a
much higher level of Hα than the stock
EOS R.
I found that the Ra’s ability to record
red emission nebulosity to be on par

with the modified Canon EOS 5D
Mark II that I’ve used for almost
all my deep sky imaging since
2009. My venerable EOS 5D MkII
is an example of a DSLR that was
modified by a third party, in this
case Astro Hutech (hutech.com).
It appears that Canon has given
the new Ra camera a filter with
greater transmission of Hα emission
than on its earlier ‘a’ cameras. The Hα
performance of the Ra proved better
than Canon’s previous 60Da. Whether
it will match the performance of
‘spectrum-enhanced’ cameras modified
by third party vendors will depend on
the filters those cameras use. Some,
dubbed ‘full spectrum’ cameras, use no
IR-blocking filter at all.
The EOS Ra is certainly not a full-
spectrum camera, but then again it
doesn’t require the addition of costly
clip-in filters to cut infrared for normal
daytime use.
Daytime use
The advantage of purchasing Canon’s
enhanced-red Ra camera is that the
manufacturer has calibrated the camera’s
white balance to produce a nearly
normal colour rendition even when
using Auto or Daylight White Balance.
Custom White Balance, a necessity
when using third-party modified
cameras by day, isn’t required with the
Ra. Where the Ra’s added red sensitivity
did become apparent in ‘normal’ use
was during twilight and sunset shots,
which recorded with rich reds.
While it can be used by day ‘as is,’
the EOS Ra is definitely not for subjects
in which colour accuracy is critical. I
wouldn’t shoot weddings or portraits
with it!
Framing and focusing
Both EOS R cameras offer a Live View
screen sensitive enough to allow
framing dark nightscapes, and to show
enough stars through a telescope to
identify your field, perhaps even your
target, all on its comfortably tilted
rear LCD screen. That improvement
alone makes the upgrade to an EOS
W Left: The EOS Ra differs from the stock
EOS R in its greater red sensitivity and 30x
Live View magnification. Its compact body
weighs 725 grams, but with the optional
EF-EOS R lens adapter the weight goes up
to 900 grams. Opposite page: Red emission
nebulae such as the North America Nebula,
NGC 7000, are prime targets for Canon’s
EOS Ra camera. This is a processed stack of
four 6-minute exposures, with the camera set
to ISO 1600 and shooting through an Astro-
Physics 105mm refractor at f/6.
mirrorless camera very attractive for nor discoloured stars that plague some
astrophotography. manufacturers’ cameras. There were
The EOS Ra has one welcome no edge-glows or light-leaks and, as
firmware upgrade over the standard expected for a mirrorless camera, no
EOS R that benefits astrophotography. edge shadows cast by upraised mirrors
Instead of Canon’s standard 10× or sensor masks. The frame was clean to
magnification in its Live View focusing the edge. That’s a significant advantage
feature, the EOS Ra offers 30×, great for over most full-frame DSLRs.
precisely focusing on stars. I found this Another advantage to purchasing
especially useful when focusing wide- a factory-modified camera is that
angle lenses with their tiny star images. the sensor dust cleaning function is
retained in the EOS Ra, a feature that
Image and Edge Artifacts is often removed by some third-party
The long exposures and extreme modifications.
contrast-stretching applied when
processing deep sky images can reveal Noise levels and ISO
image flaws that go unnoticed in invariancy
conventional photography. However, The noise levels in images taken with
I found no issues with ‘star eating,’ the EOS Ra proved identical to the stock
T The EOS Ra (far left) picked up the North America Nebula with richer red nebulosity than
Canon’s 60Da camera (far right), and with a level similar to the author’s third-party modified
EOS 5D MkII. By comparison, images with the stock EOS R and 6D MkII show what a normal
camera typically records — very little red nebulosity. This comparison set uses single raw images
processed identically to increase contrast and neutralise the sky background, but without any
alteration of the nebula colours.
Canon Canon Canon Canon Canon
EOS Ra EOS R 6D MkII 5D MkII 60Da
(modified)
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 67
 AS&T TEST REPORT
S At night, the EOS R cameras (left) present a much brighter image in Live View (the only way
to preview a scene with a mirrorless camera) than does the Canon 6D MkII (right), which barely
shows a few stars.
EOS R. Both cameras’ 30-megapixel
sensors have a pixel pitch of 5.36
microns versus the 5.76-micron pixels
of Canon’s 26-megapixel EOS Rp
mirrorless and 6D MkII DSLR. Not
having an Rp on hand, I compared the R
models to the 6D MkII.
I was pleased to see that the EOS R
cameras exhibited noise levels that are
as good as, if not slightly lower than,
the Canon 6D MkII despite the latter’s
larger pixels. Noise appeared to be no
more than half a stop worse than in
the 24-megapixel Sony α7III we tested
(AS&T: May/Jun. 2019, p. 66), with its
6-micron pixels.
Where the EOS R models really
excel over Canon’s 6D MkII is in ‘ISO
invariancy’. Underexposing at a lower
ISO, then boosting the exposure later
during RAW processing should, with an
ISO invariant sensor, produce identical
results to shooting at a high ISO in the
field. That’s the case with Sony cameras
and many Nikons.
By contrast, the Canon 6D MkII is
terribly unforgiving of underexposure.
When boosted later to extract details,
dark shadows in its nightscapes exhibit
68 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
high noise levels, poor contrast, and
artifacts such as discolouration and
banding.
Happily, both EOS R cameras
exhibited minimal additional noise and
artifacts in shadows when brightened
in post-processing. This makes them
superb for nightscape stills and time-
lapse photography. They are perhaps
Canon’s best cameras for this purpose.
Battery life
A single battery in the EOS Ra
lasted seven hours on cold nights at
near-freezing temperatures (just as
advertised by Canon), recording 1,500
consecutive 15-second exposures. That
was with Wi-Fi turned off and the
power-saving ‘Eco Mode’ disabled.
Canon also supplied us with the
BG-E22 dual battery grip — a US$250
accessory. Powering the camera with
it in very cold temperatures extended
the life to 16 hours and 3,600 shots,
more than enough for night-long time-
lapses during the winter. The worry
that mirrorless cameras quickly exhaust
their batteries is a concern of the past —
at least with these Canon cameras.
W Canon’s mirrorless cameras include a flip-out
LCD screen that’s comfortable to use when the
camera is aimed up. Its touch screen ability
let you access most camera settings. A top-
mounted OLED screen provides an ongoing
readout of battery life and exposure time.
X The EOS Ra’s unique 30× magnification
when in Live View mode makes it easy to
precisely focus on stars, as seen here with
a Bahtinov mask added over the telescope
aperture to aid in focusing.
Compatibility concerns
Oddly, as of version 1.6 of the firmware,
both EOS R cameras lack a built-in
intervalometer, useful for shooting
time-lapses, a feature present in all
recent Canon DSLRs and even the
EOS Rp. You must use an external
intervalometer to run the cameras.
The EOS R cameras use Canon’s E3
sub-mini jack for their shutter release port,
not the more robust three-pronged N3
port used on Canon’s full-frame DSLRs.
Using an intervalometer with a type N3
plug requires the Canon RA-E3 adapter
cable. But with the right connector, any
time-lapse controller that operates the
camera through the shutter release port
will work with the EOS R cameras.
However, for devices or software
that operate the camera through its
USB port, compatibility will be an issue.
For example, as of this writing the
popular control program BackyardEOS
(v3.1) would not connect to an EOS
R, but AstroPhotography Tool (v3.82)
would and operated the Ra just fine. As
you would expect, Canon’s own EOS
Utility desktop program controls both R
models, either tethered or wirelessly via
the camera’s Wi-Fi connections.
With its mirrorless cameras,
Canon introduces a new CR3 format
for its RAW files. Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Lightroom and competitor
programs from ACDSee, Affinity,
DxO and ON1 can open these CR3
files, as can PixInsight as of v1.8.8. But
AstroPixelProcessor (v1.075) and Raw
Therapee (v5.7), two programs popular
with astrophotographers, could not.
With all mirrorless cameras the
‘flange distance’ from the lens mount
to the sensor is very short; there is no
Canon’s premium
RF lenses
Along with the R cameras, we
received samples of two of Canon’s
premium RF lenses made for the
EOS R cameras and ideal for
astrophotography. RF 15-to-
35-mm lens
at 15 mm,
f/2.8.

The RF 15-to-35 mm f/2.8 L

This new zoom lens has a focal length
range and speed perfect for nightscape
RF 15-to-
photography. At 15 mm and wide-open 35-mm lens
at f/2.8, the lens was clean across at 35 mm,
the frame with low aberrations at the f/2.8.
corners. Off-axis aberrations became
more pronounced at the longer focal
lengths but were still well-controlled at
35 mm. While vignetting was significant,
that can be fixed in RAW processing
with Lens Correction functions.

The RF 85 mm f/1.2 L
Razor-sharp on-axis, even wide open,
this short telephoto
h
hoto showed very
low off-axis abbe
errations even at
f/1.2, enabling it to grab lots of
nebulosity in short
h exposures
and at low ISO O speeds.
This test shot is with the RF 85-mm
stock EOS R camera.
a lens at f/1.4.
This is one of the
h best
85-mm lenses
on the market,
providing a fine
focal lengthå
for Milky Way
star fields.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 69
 AS&T TEST REPORT

W Blow-ups of the North America Nebula taken

Canon Canon Canon Canon
at ISO 1600 show the EOS Ra with lower noise
EOS Ra 5D MkII 6D MkII 60Da
ISO 1600 ISO 1600 ISO 1600 ISO 1600 than the decade-old Canon 5D MkII, despite
the latter’s larger pixels, and similar or slightly
lower noise than the Canon 6D MkII and 60Da.

mirror to flip in and out of the light
path as there is in a DSLR. In Canon’s
case their EOS R cameras have a flange
distance 24 mm less than in their
DSLRs. Plus, with their mirrorless
R cameras Canon introduces a new
wider-format RF lens mount. Adapting
older EF and EF-S Canon lenses is
possible with one of Canon’s EF-EOS
R lens adapters. One is also needed to
attach an EOS R to a telescope via your
existing camera adapter/field flattener
and its Canon T-ring.
The version of the EF-EOS R lens
adapter that accepts drop-in filters
provides the opportunity to insert
light-pollution filters into the light path
well ahead of the sensor. They will work
better with wide-angle lenses than do
clip-in filters, which can vignette the
image on the sensor.
the case, much like when shooting with
APS-format cameras.
When using Long Exposure Noise
Reduction (LENR) to reduce thermal
noise, Canon’s full-frame DSLRs have
a unique buffer that allows you to take
three to five images in quick succession
(the number varies with the model),
before the dark frame kicks in with
LENR turned on. One internal dark
frame gets applied to several images,
speeding up image acquisition.
However, this feature does not work
if you control the camera through its
USB port with software on a computer.
Nor does it work with a DSLR if you
have Live View activated. Unfortunately,
due to the nature of mirrorless cameras,
the EOS R and Ra have Live View always
on and lack this dark frame buffer. Pity!
Recommendations
If you are looking to upgrade to a
full-frame camera and stay within the
Canon lens ecosystem, then an EOS R
camera gets you the image quality of a
5D Mark IV at lower cost, and with a
brighter Live View screen.
The stock EOS R will also work very
well for general-purpose nightscape and
time-lapse shooting, and for deep sky
imaging of constellations, star clusters
and galaxies, as well as solar and lunar
eclipses.
But if it’s rich emission nebulosity
you’re after, consider the EOS Ra for
its extended red sensitivity. Keep in
mind it will be slightly compromised for
daytime photography.
I was impressed with the EOS R,
and even more so with its astronomical
variant, the Ra. Kudos to Canon for
recognising our niche use and for
providing us with a superb camera for
capturing the cosmos. I just might have
to retire my decade-old modified EOS
5D Mark II!
■ ALAN DYER maintains his blog at
amazingsky.net with tales of image-
taking, time-lapse videos, tutorials,
and test reports.

On the down side

The EOS R cameras offer HD and 4K
movie recording at ISO speeds up to
102,400 and with shutter speeds as slow
as 1/8-second. Those specs allow either
EOS R to record movies of night scenes.
However, when recording in 4K the
frame is cropped by factor of 1.8×. The
severe crop will make it difficult to
capture real-time 4K movies of sky-
spanning aurorae, even with wide-angle
lenses. On the other hand, the crop
S Left: An EF-EOS R lens adapter provides the required spacing that enables the camera sensor
factor has a benefit when shooting
to sit at the correct distance from field-flattener lenses often used with telescopes. This ensures
eclipses in 4K. The Sun can fill the they perform properly, as most of these optics are designed for the longer flange distance of a
frame with a shorter focal length lens DSLR. Right: The EOS R cameras use Canon’s E3 sub-mini jack for the remote shutter (top). Also
or telescope than would otherwise be included are headphone and microphone jacks, plus USB-C and HDMI ports.

70 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 Image courtesy Dr. John Carver (50 megapixel MicroLine ML50100 camera)

Kepler CMOS: Paradigm Shift

It is no surprise that the CCD’s best performance is with a single long exposure. What may be surprising is the Kepler KL4040 CMOS
camera has a better signal-to-noise ratio than the PL16803 even with a single long exposure. The signal-to-noise ratio of the KL4040
is better than the PL16803 even when using short exposures that are stacked!

The benefit of taking multiple short exposures is the option to discard a bad exposure ruined by satellite trails, tracking errors, or bad
seeing (etc.). Incredible low-noise images are now possible with a single long exposure or many stacked short exposures. The
KL4040’s superior performance allows it to be used for a wide range of applications and requirements.

At Finger Lakes Instrumentation, we design and build unrivaled CMOS and

CCD cameras, filter wheels, and focusers to pave your way to
success—whichever path you choose. Designed and manufactured in New
York, USA.

Visit us at flicamera.com for

more information about our
cooled CMOS and CCD
cameras, focusers, and
color filter wheels.

© 2018 Finger Lakes Instrumentation LLC. All rights reserved.

 ASTRONOMER’S WORKBENCH by Jerry Oltion
A ‘painted’ telescope
Here’s how to fabricate a carbon-fibre tube.
LAST YEAR I WROTE about Tom
Bartol’s massive equatorial mount. He
made it to carry his home-built 25-cm
f/5.6 Newtonian telescope, which
has a cardboard tube OTA. After the
mount was finished, the scope seemed
a bit shabby compared to its shiny new
support. So one of Tom’s friends, Cary
Thomas, offered to help him make a
carbon-fibre tube to replace it.
Cary is as accomplished at working
with composite materials as Tom is with
metal. He convinced Tom they could
make a lightweight, rigid tube worthy of
his machined metal masterpiece.
The pair worked out a simple
procedure for wrapping layers of
carbon-fibre fabric around a cardboard
tube that served as an internal form.
They started with a 30-cm-diameter
tube and wrapped two overlapping
The carbon-fibre fabric is wetted with epoxy
(applied with brushes) as it’s slowly wound
onto the form. Pictured left to right are Bryan
Paquette, Kevin Winchell and Tom Bartol.
72 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
layers of duct tape around it to act as a
release agent (epoxy doesn’t bond well
to duct tape). Next, they made plywood
disks that fit snugly inside the tube to
keep it round and ran a length of PVC
pipe through holes in the middle of the
disks to act as a rotisserie spit. They
rested the pipe on two sawhorses so
they could spin it, slowly drawing the
fabric onto the tube a little at a time
while they wet it with epoxy.
To test their methods, the pair first
made a prototype that had the full
30-cm diameter but was only 10 cm
long. They wrapped 12 layers of 3k
carbon fabric (0.25-mm thickness) onto
the tube, using paintbrushes to soak it
with epoxy as they wound it up. By being
careful with the epoxy and winding
slowly and evenly, squeezing out air
bubbles as they went, they got a strong
ring that required neither external form
nor vacuum bagging to finish out. The
prototype wound up with a 3.8-mm wall
thickness, and even though it weighed
only 280 grams it was strong enough to
support Tom’s weight (68 kg) and only
flex a couple of cm.
Buoyed by that success, they went
into full production. The cardboard
tube they purchased at a hardware
store only came in 1.2-m lengths, but
the final tube needed to be 1.3-m, so
they had to splice two pieces together.
They used 10 metres of 1.5-metre-wide
carbon fibre fabric, which gave them
ample extra width plus factory edges to
work with. (Cut edges easily unravel.)
With the help of two friends, Bryan
Paquette and Kevin Winchell, they
rolled up a 9-layer core in about three
hours. While that was still wet, they
applied a layer of polyester peel-ply to
top it off. They used a heat gun to kick-
start the curing process and let it finish
overnight, then stripped off the peel-ply
t The final exterior layer has blue Kevlar woven
into it for a wonderfully attractive finish.
A homemade
carbon-fibre
OTA is a fitting
companion to
this homemade
mount.
to reveal a rough-textured outer surface.
Rough textured? Why didn’t they
want it smooth? Because the original
scope was deep blue and the mount was
named ‘BlueShift’ in its honour, yet
carbon fibre is black. That wouldn’t do.
So the peel-ply’s rough texture created
a good bonding surface for a final layer
of carbon with blue Kevlar in the weave.
They wound this layer onto the tube
using the same technique, then added
several coats of clear epoxy to create a
beautiful, high-gloss finish.
They carefully measured their
finished product and cut the ends
square to 1.5 metres, then soaked the
whole works with a garden hose. The
cardboard tube disintegrated and was
easily pulled out, along with the duct
tape, leaving a beautiful finished tube
that Tom painted on the inside with 3%
reflective flat black theatre paint.
The result is what you see here.
BlueShift is now complete, beautiful
and homemade right down to the core.
For more information, contact Tom
at t.m.bartol@gmail.com.
TO M BA RTOL (3)
■ JERRY OLTION welcomes your
project ideas. Email j.oltion@gmail.com
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 NIGHT LIFE

Cloudy skies as RASNZ Conference

coronavirus bites
POSTPONED
New Zealand’s national amateur
astronomy conference.
rasnz.org.nz

Several astronomy events have had to be cancelled. South Pacific Star Party
CANCELLED
Annual star party of the Astronomical
Society of NSW, at a dark sky site.
asnsw.com/spsp

Asteroid Day
June 30
A global day of education to help protect
Earth from asteroid impacts.
asteroidday.org

Star Stuff III

July 18
Festival of astronomy in Byron Bay, NSW.
starstuff.com.au

CWAS AstroFest 2020

July 18–19
Annual gathering at Parkes, NSW, and
venue for the David Malin Awards.

A
s this issue was going to press
at the end of March, the
coronavirus crisis was hitting the
conference and function sectors hard,
with events being cancelled or postponed
left, right and centre. Unfortunately
this includes the National Australian
Convention of Amateur Astronomers
(NACAA), the annual conference of
the Royal Astronomical Society of New
Zealand (RASNZ), and the South Pacific
Star Party.
NACAA organisers announced
in mid-March that, “Due to the
unprecedented situation with the
COVID-19 virus, the NACAA Inc
Committee has decided, with due
consideration to the safety of all
concerned, that the 2020 NACAA at
Parkes is cancelled. All registration
fees will be refunded in full… The
committee is considering where and
when the next NACAA will be held; this
will be announced in due course.”
The RASNZ, celebrating its 100th
year, has postponed its annual
light of current Government policy and
prevailing health advice regarding novel
coronavirus COVID-19. We do not want
to expose our members or guests to any
unnecessary risk of infection. Council
is working with our venue provider
and guest speakers to find an optimal
alternative date, in the final quarter of
2020.”
And the Astronomical Society of
NSW’s South Pacific Star Party has been
cancelled for this year. The organising
committee said that “Since 1993 we
have held the Star Party through rain,
sleet, snow and some unbelievable clear
night skies. In light of the COVID-19
situation, the committee of the ASNSW
Inc has cancelled this event for the
safety of all our astronomy friends.”
We can only imagine the
disappointment felt by the organisers
and also the sadness of the prospective
attendees.
When contemplating attending any
of the events listed in the Calendar on
this page, it would pay to check first to
cwas.org.au
Queensland Astrofest
August 14–23, 2020
Held since 1993, the dark skies of
Camp Duckadang, Linville, attract lots of
amateur astronomers.
qldastrofest.org.au
SASI Public Open Nights 2020
August 28–29
Public viewing at Greenpoint
Observatory in Sydney.
http://sasi.net.au/public-events/august-
public-open-nights
Stargazers Getaway 2020
September 18–20
Star party to be held at Camp Iona,
North Otago, New Zealand
https://www.facebook.com/
events/943327669369996/
International Observe
the Moon Night
September 26
Annual event to encourage observation
and learning about the Moon.
moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon
WHAT’S UP?
ESO/P. HOR Á LEK

event. In a statement, the society’s see if they, too, have been cancelled or Do you have an event or activity
Council said that “Our society has a postponed in light of the coronavirus coming up? Email us at editor@
skyandtelescope.com.au
responsibility to manage its affairs in situation.

74 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020


Stephen Kerr
S
tephen Kerr has been a leading
light in occultation observing for
many years, and in February 2015
was appointed Director of the Royal
Astronomical Society of New Zealand’s
Occultation Section.
What got you into astronomy?
A Patrick Moore book almost did it
when I was five, but fear of the dark
prevented me from moving much beyond
identifying Orion in the twilight. Then,
when I was about 10, my uncle moved
to Toowoomba about the time he was
getting into astronomy. He became a
regular visitor for a while and I couldn’t
help but take an interest. I suspect
what really tipped me over the edge was
my independent ‘discovery’ of Omega
Centauri while sweeping with binoculars.
What was your first telescope set-up?
I grew up in a house of bird watchers
so there were binoculars everywhere. A
family friend who had an old generic
75-mm Newtonian reflector they
weren’t using offered it to me. I used
that thing heavily for a few years,
replacing the eyepieces with better
ones taken from old broken binoculars.
Then 1986 came along and the owner
wanted the scope back to look at Comet
Halley so I ended up buying all that I
could afford – a 50-mm plastic refractor
which I managed to use for another
four years until I finished my homebuilt
20-cm Newtonian.
What sort of gear do you use now?
I mainly use a 30cm Schmidt-
Cassegrain on a go to German
equatorial mount. Visual observing
has been largely replaced with special
high-sensitivity video cameras for
occultation observing and timing, with
data recorded directly to a laptop. Plus
I do some dabbling at variable star
photometry using a basic CCD camera.
My best bit of equipment, though, is
the dome the scope sits in. Things are
so much easier when you can go from
the back door of the house to observing
in less than 10 minutes, and be back in
bed less than 10 minutes after a 2:00am
occultation. The dome is deliberately
much bigger than the telescope — so
clearly, I have to get a bigger telescope.
What has been your favourite moment?
Standing on the side of the Capricorn
Highway about 90 km west of
Rockhampton at 4:00am — with
nobody else for miles and only flickers
of lightning from the storms I drove
IN PROFILE
t To paraphrase a recent TV advertisement,
Stephen Kerr’s dome is going to need a
bigger telescope.
through on the way to the site — to
then look up and witness the Leonid
storm of 2001 in a perfectly clear sky.
The other occasion was in 2016 when
I was lucky enough to be invited to
the Paris Observatory for a week-long
meeting about occultations by trans-
Neptunian objects. A number of us
were able to observe the Moon and
Jupiter through the 160-year-old Arago
refractor on the roof of the observatory.
I still can’t believe how good the seeing
was in the centre of Paris.
What has been your proudest moment?
I spent a cold predawn in June 2008
recording a possible occultation by
Pluto that was predicted to occur across
southern Australia but would be a near
miss for me. Watching the monitor at
the time, nothing very much happened
– a common theme with occultations.
The emails were flooding in with
all the great results from observers
further south so I went through with
the formality of analysing my video
recording. My jaw dropped when I
reviewed the light curve to see that the
camera had detected a slight dimming
from the atmosphere of Pluto but not
the planet itself. Greg Bolt recorded a
similar result using a CCD camera from
Perth. And it wasn’t a fluke. Others
have made similar detections at other
Pluto occultations. I’m still amazed at
what amateurs can see and measure
with simple equipment.
What’s on your ‘to do’ list?
Living in the tropics, the Zodiacal
lights are so ho-hum but I am still yet
to see an aurora. Obviously, I am going
to have to travel for that. I have one
total solar eclipse under my belt from
two attempts, but another that lasts
a bit longer would be good too. My
other rather more fanciful ambition
is to discover an atmosphere around
another trans-Neptunian object,
with occultations being the obvious
technique with which to do it.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 75
 GALLERY

Astrophotos from our readers

EQUINE REFLECTIONS Michael Sidonio

Another masterpiece from Mike, this time showing
the Blue Horsehead Nebula (also known as IC 4592),
a reflection nebula in Scorpius. He used a Takahashi
FSQ-106EDX4 scope, FLI Proline 16803 camera and
LRGB filters for a total exposure time of 9.4 hours.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR IMAGES Images should be sent electronically and in high-resolution (up to 10MB per email) to contributions@
skyandtelescope.com.au. Please provide full details for each image, eg. date and time taken; telescope and/or lens; mount; imaging equipment type
and model; filter (if used); exposure or integration time; and any software processing employed. If your image is published in this Gallery, you'll receive
a 3-issue subscription or renewal to the magazine.

76 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 BIG SPIRAL Florin Zaharia
The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier
31) and its two satellite galaxies
(Messier 31 and Messier 110)
are show in all their glory in this
shot, which was taken with a
Stellarvue SV70T scope, Atik
460EX camera and LRGB filters;
total exposure time was 2 hours.

t COMETARY VISITOR
Carl Tanner
Comet C/2017 T2
(PANSTARRS) passed by the
Double Cluster (NGC 869
and 884) in Perseus in early
February. Carl took this shot
remotely using the Celestron
11-inch RASA scope and
ZWO ASI071MC camera at
the iTelescope.net site in New
Mexico.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 77
 GALLERY

t COSMIC
CHOOK
Giritharan
Govindasamy
The so-called
Running Chicken
Nebula (formally
known as IC 2944)
lies around 6,000
light-years away
in the direction of
Centaurus. For this
shot, Giritharan
used a William
Optics Star 71
scope, QHY 163M
camera and SHO
narrowband filters.

t FLOWERING
Michael Calvert
The Rosette
Nebula is a large
diffuse nebula
about 5,200 light-
years away in
Monoceros, with
a star cluster (IC
2944) also present.
Michael used a
Tele Vue-NP101is
scope, SBIG
Aluma 8300m
camera and SHO
filters for this
image, which has
a total exposure
time of 4.5 hours.

78 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

p AWESOME ORION
Leigh Hassell
The Orion Nebula has left our evening
skies by the end of May, but it will
be back at the beginning of summer.
Before it left, Leigh grabbed this image
in February using a William Optics
Zenithstar 73 scope, ZWO ASI294MC
Pro camera and UV/IR cut filter. Total
exposure was 3.5 hours.

t DOUBLE-BARRELLED SPIRAL
Ian Gorenstein
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 266
in Pisces displays two distinct spiral
arms containing surprisingly few
star-forming regions. Ian used a
Celestron EdgeHD 14 scope with
Atik 460EX camera. Total exposure
was 13.7 hours through LRGB
filters.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 79
 Market
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80 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020

 Next Issue
Missing a magazine?
Limited copies of the last 12 months’ back issues are available.
Only $7.50 per copy + $3 P&H. Grab yours before they go!
ON SALE
June 4

APRIL 2020 FEB/MAR 2020 JAN 2020 NOV/DEC 2019

Happy birthday Hubble Farthest star you can see Mars’ killer weather Mapping the Milky Way
Deep sky photography Don’t buy a dud scope Australia’s Dark Sky Reserve Image calibration
Test report: Esprit 150-mm Test report: Meade LX85 Test report: GSO 25-cm Cass Test report: Celestron RASA 8

Seventy-nine and counting

OCT 2019
Revealing the X-ray universe
Martian rover’s discoveries
Test report: Nikon’s Z6
AUG/SEP 2019
Parkes Telescope & Apollo 11
Lunar observing guide
Test report: Lumicon OIII filter
JUL 2019
Apollo 11’s 50th birthday
Track images like a pro
Test report: Meade’s DSI-IV
MAY/JUN 2019
Mission to Alpha Centauri
How to collimate telescopes
Test report: Sony α7 camera
The discovery of Jupiter’s moons
changed our understanding of the Solar
System and altered the course of history.

Deep sky: Seeing M87’s jet

To order, use the form on page 73, phone 02 9439 1955 Join the author on his endeavour to
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www.skyandtelescope.com.au 81
 FOCAL POINT by Dan Rinnan
My immense journey
When it comes to distance travelled in my lifetime, I leave even the Voyagers in the dust.
IN MY NEARLY 76 YEARS on this
planet, I’ve travelled a total of 2.8
trillion kilometres. Trillion? Incredible.
But you have, too, or with luck and
good health you will.
Let’s start by counting those 76
voyages around the Sun. Any distance
we might have accumulated on
the surface of our planet is tiny in
comparison. Frequent-flyer kilometres
don’t count here!
Earth’s orbital speed averages about
108,000 km per hour, so in one year
our planet travels 946 million km
around the Sun. Multiply that distance
by your age. For me, that’s a total of 72
billion km.
But there’s more. (Following
estimates vary according to source.)
Our Sun orbits the centre of the Milky
Way Galaxy at 810,000 km/hr, carrying
us along with it. One year adds another
7.1 billion km to our total. And the
Milky Way itself is speeding toward the
82 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE May | June 2020
Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest large
neighbour, at about 360,000 km/hr, or
3.2 billion km/yr.
Then there’s the motion of the Local
Group of galaxies toward the Virgo
Cluster: 792,000 km/hr, or 7 billion
km/yr. Finally, at the largest scale,
there’s the motion of the Laniakea
Supercluster toward the Great Attractor
and beyond it to the Shapley Attractor:
an amazing 2,157,000 km/hr or 18.9
billion km/yr.
So, in my 76 years, all these motions
add up to 2.8 trillion km.
Have you felt it? Neither have I, and
I’ve been only occasionally aware of
the fact. But altogether I’ve travelled a
lot farther than the distance that the
Voyager 1 space probe, launched in
1977, now lies from the Sun. Having
left our Solar System in 2012, Voyager 1
is currently (as of mid-December
2019) about 22.2 billion km from
Earth — less than 0.8% of the distance
I’ve travelled. On the other hand, my
journey has brought me about 7% of
the distance that Earth lies from our
nearest neighbour star system, some
41.8 trillion km away. At this rate, I’ll
match Alpha Centauri’s distance from
us around the year 3090.
But what about other motions I’ve
ignored? Well, there’s distance gained
from the daily turning of our planet.
That’s 40,000 km/day if you live at the
equator, or nil if you’re standing on
either pole. (I live halfway between.)
Doesn’t add much to the total. Then
there’s the ‘wobble’ motion of the Solar
System above and below the galactic
plane. Again, spare change. I’ll stick to
my back-of-the-envelope calculation of
2.8 trillion km.
But hang on, you’ll say if you’re
among the mathematically inclined. All
these motions are not independent of
one another, and they move in different
directions. Obtaining an accurate
combined total requires a complicated
vector field analysis.
Fortunately, that’s arguably been
done. Relative to the Cosmic Microwave
Background, it’s a combined motion of
1.3 million km/hr, or, for a old codger
of my years, it’s 865 billion km — in the
direction of the constellation Crater.
In sum, at this moment you and I
are travelling very fast, at a wide variety
of speeds and in a number of different
directions. What can I say? Bon voyage!
¢ DAN RINNAN, whenever weather
permits, is out under dark skies, hitching
rides and holding onto his hat.
LE A H TISCIONE / S&T
 m
Join us in Perth for the

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Regional International Astronomical Union Meeting (APRIM) at
the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre on July 6-10, 2020.

APRIM 2020 is jointly hosted by CSIRO and the International Centre for Radio
Astronomy Research (ICRAR), and will incorporate the Astronomical Society of
Australia’s Annual Science Meeting into its program.
ˆ ›‘— ™‘—Ž† Ž‹‡ –‘ Œ‘‹ —• ƒ• ƒ ˜ƒŽ—‡† •’‘•‘”‘ˆ–Š‹••‹‰‹ϐ‹…ƒ–‡‡–‹‰’Ž‡ƒ•‡
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desired outcomes of sponsors.
www.aprim2020.org