IMAGING Setting up a remote DEEP SKY Get to know some ECLIPSES Solar and lunar

control observatory P64 nearby dwarf galaxies P56 eclipses to see out the year P36

THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY

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 November | December 2021 ISSUE 134, VOL. 18 NO. 6

Contents
REGULARS p.14
Space exploration in the
coming decades
5 Spectrum
6 News notes
9 AS&T bookshelf
13 Discoveries
45 Vistas
55 New product showcase
69 Cosmic relief

FEATURES
14 Into the time machine
There are amazing things on the
horizon that will fundamentally
change astronomy and space science.
By Camille M. Carlisle, Jack O. Burns,
Javier Barbuzano & Monica Bobra

24 Future forecast
We asked astronomers to predict
OBSERVING & EXPLORING
the discoveries and activities we
can expect between now and 2030. 36 Celestial calendar
By Camille M. Carlisle & Lauren Sgro Two eclipses and two oppositions.
By Bob King
26 Building the James Webb
Space Telescope 42 Binocular highlight
A generation in the making, the The fuzzy ball that is Messier 15.
James Webb Space Telescope is By Mathew Wedel See what’s left of a
p.56
the result of vision, technological torn-apart galaxy
44 Evenings with the stars
advances and engineering expertise.
Come on a caper into Capricornus.
By Paul H. Geithner
By Fred Schaaf
56 Meet the neighbours
46 Sun, Moon and planets 49 Variable stars
Our Milky Way has torn a nearby
Three planets in a row for summer. Stars in the heart of the Orion Nebula.
galaxy to shreds. Find out how you
By Jonathan Nally By Alan Plummer
can see its remnants.
By Steve Gottlieb 47 Meteors 50 Exploring the Moon
No less than six showers to see. Getting groovy with lunar rilles.
64 A remote experience
By Jonathan Nally By Charles A. Wood
Astrophotography with remotely
operated telescopes is easier than 48 Comets 52 Going deep
you might think. A bright comet for Christmas? The odd world of peculiar galaxies.
By Ted Wolfe By David Seargent By Ivan Maly

4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021


How to set up a remotely
p.64
operated telescope
THE ASTRONOMY SCENE
70 Test report
We test the Meade Series 5000 UHD
eyepieces and ask, do they hit the
sweet spot between performance and
affordability?
By Dennis di Cicco
72 Astronomer’s workbench
How to make your own Ronchi tester.
By Jerry Oltion
74 Night life
Events, activities and what’s
happening in the astronomy world.
75 Pro-Am collaboration
A coordinated global effort is
dedicated to documenting flashes on
the lunar surface.
By Diana Hannikainen
76 Gallery
The latest images from our readers
81 Marketplace
81 Index to advertisers
82 Focal point
If they exist, intelligent aliens on
planets circling nearby stars could see
Earth cross the face of the Sun.
By Lisa Kaltenegger
ON THE COVER
The long-awaited launch of the James
Webb Space Telescope has been
scheduled for December 18. To learn how
the telescope was made, turn to page 26.
by Jonathan Nally SPECTRUM
Next-generation
space observatory
AS IT WRITE THIS, all is on track for a December 18 launch of the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, named after an early head of
NASA), the space observatory that will enable us to look back in time
through the cosmos to earliest eras following the Big Bang. Optimised
to detect infrared wavelengths, it should be able to spot the very first
generation of galaxies and thereby give us insight in the formation and
evolution of the first generation of stars.
JWST is a ground-breaking machine, not just in what it hopes to
accomplish in scientific investigation but also in its design and the
technologies it uses. Our article in this issue (turn to page 26) explains
the many amazing technological achievements that have been needed to
produce a telescope that can do what JWST aims to do.
It takes a long time to bring a mission like this to fruition. The Hubble
Space Telescope was first proposed at the beginning of the 1970s but
wasn’t launched until 1990. And the JWST was proposed even before
Hubble was sent into orbit. Many people dedicate their entire careers to
these amazing ventures, and the whole human race is the beneficiary — a
universe explored, cosmic visions shared and countless discoveries made.
Jonathan Nally, Editor
editor@skyandtelescope.com.au
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO ASTRONOMY
Check out the Australian Sky & Telescope
website for the latest astronomy news
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from Australia and around the cosmos.
skyandtelescope.com.au by Network Services. New Zealand
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Distribution Australia. © 2021 AAS
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EDITOR Jonathan Nally PUBLISHER Kevin Marvel Media. No part of this publication
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ADVERTISING licence from AAS Sky Publishing,
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LLC as the Australian edition of
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is a registered trademark of AAS
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www.skyandtelescope.com.au 5
 NEWS NOTES
NASA’s Insight reveals first look inside Mars
NASA’S INSIGHT MISSION has reported
the first direct observations of another
rocky planet’s interior structure. The
results — a surprisingly thin crust, a
one-layer mantle and a large core —
will help scientists understand how
Mars formed and evolved.
Measuring marsquakes wasn’t just
a matter of sending a seismometer to
Mars; in a sense, the scientists also
had to wait for the planet to come
to them. While Insight recorded 733
marsquakes since early 2019, the vast
majority were weak, surface tremors.
“Of course, when you’re in the middle
of the situation, it can feel as if ‘Oh
my god, it’s not working!’” says Simon
Stähler (ETH Zurich, Switzerland).
The team waited several months
after the seismometer’s deployment
before a shake occurred deep enough
 This illustration shows shear seismic waves reflecting off Mars’ iron-nickel core, which provide
an estimate of the core’s size. The strength of the reflected waves revealed the core to be in a
liquid state, through which shear waves cannot propagate.
6 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
to probe the planet’s interior, says
seismometer co-investigator Brigitte
Knapmeyer-Endrun (University of
Cologne, Germany).
That quake already showed what
additional deep ones would confirm:
The Martian crust is thinner than
expected. At first, analysis suggested
that the crust has two layers and was
only 20 kilometres thick beneath the
Insight lander. “This was thinner
than any models had predicted,”
Knapmeyer-Endrun says. Additional
events and analysis revealed that the
crust could have an additional layer,
making it twice as thick (39 km) and
somewhat closer to expectations.
A thinner crust would be “very
surprising indeed,” says Doris Breuer
(German Aerospace Center), who
was not involved in the study. “A thin
crust would raise many questions
about how it was formed and what this
means overall for the thermochemical
evolution of Mars.”
Insight data can’t distinguish
between the two possibilities yet,
though Knapmeyer-Endrun hopes
additional data and analyses will help
resolve the ambiguity.
Meanwhile, Amir Khan (ETH
Zurich, Switzerland) and colleagues
found that the mantle of Mars is
simple and deep, extending 400 to
600 km down. Compared with Earth’s
two-layer mantle, Mars’ single-layer
version is less insulating, so the core
loses heat more quickly.
Nevertheless, Insight data confirm
that the core is fully liquid. With the
analysis of six marsquakes coming
in at just the right angles toward
Insight, Stähler and colleagues found
that the core is on the larger end of
what previous indirect measurements
had suggested, between 3,580 and
3,740 km across. Its seismic shadow
blocks quakes from the active Tharsis
Rise on the other side of the planet.
Such a large core probably contains
a high proportion of lighter elements.
It also probably doesn’t have the solid
inner part that Earth’s core does.
On Earth, the cooling inner core is
the power source of the magnetic
dynamo: As it crystallises, it releases
heat that churns up the outer core.
Without an inner core, the global
magnetic field on Mars most likely
came from the release of the intense
heat of the planet’s formation, which
is why it only lasted a few hundred
million years.
NASA recently extended the Insight
mission through to the end of next
year, past the current Martian winter,
when marsquakes are difficult to
detect due to high winds. During that
C HR IS B ICK E L / SCIEN CE
time, the scientists expect Insight to
double the number of high-quality,
low-frequency quakes that enable
them to probe the planet’s interior.
¢ MONICA YOUNG
 ‘Liquid water’ spots below Martian surface might be clay
RESEARCHERS HAVE IDENTIFIED
dozens of radar-bright spots within
the layers of ice and sediment deposits
at Mars’ south pole. These discoveries
follow the 2018 announcement of a
large radar-bright area beneath those
deposits that researchers said might
indicate a subglacial lake. However,
the additional finds, as well as further
experiments and analysis, suggest that
the spots might be ancient clay deposits
instead of liquid water.
In a study published in the July
Geophysical Research Letters, Aditya
Khuller (Arizona State University)
and Jeffrey Plaut (Jet Propulsion
Laboratory) used the Mars Advanced
Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere
Sounding (MARSIS) instrument aboard
the European Space Agency’s Mars
Express orbiter to chart the subsurface
boundary where the polar deposits
end and the Martian interior begins.
Their investigation revealed dozens
of new smaller radar-bright regions
at this interface, which appear to be
widespread beneath the south pole’s ice-
and-dust deposits.
If these bright areas are indeed lakes,
they must be very salty. Even though the
subsurface temperatures on Mars drop
below the freezing point of pure water,
dissolved salts can keep water liquid at
lower temperatures.
However, a new study from a team
led by Carver Bierson (Arizona State
University), also in the July Geophysical
Research Letters, suggests that super-
salty water isn’t the only option. His
team shows that highly conductive
materials, like saline ice and hydrated
clays, can strongly reflect radar.
Another study in the August issue
of the same journal, led by Isaac Smith
(York University, Canada), supports the
case for clays. Smith’s team investigated
S Left: An artist’s illustration shows the ice-
and-dust deposits at Mars’ south pole.
Right: This image shows radar measurements
of smectite clays, conducted under Mars-like
conditions in the lab. The results reproduce the
radar signatures detected by MARSIS.
a type of clay called smectites, which
are common on the Red Planet’s
surface and found near the edge of the
south polar cap. The scientists studied
smectites in a laboratory under frigid
conditions that mimic the Martian
subsurface. They found that hydrated
smectites make a brittle paste when
frozen, one that could reproduce the
radar signatures detected by MARSIS.
Liquid water might have hydrated
smectites more than 100 million
years ago, before layers of ice and dust
preserved the clays. But Bierson says
that salty ice and other clays are still
radar-reflective contenders.
„ LAUREN SGRO

Resolving the Mars methane mystery

New measurements from NASA’s Curiosity rover show that
methane concentrations near the Martian surface vary on a daily
cycle, a finding that could help reconcile conflicting data. Curiosity
at night, when the atmosphere is cool and calm, while ExoMars
looks at the atmosphere at sunset after a day of Sun-driven mixing.
The Curiosity team tested this idea by bracketing a nighttime
IN BRIEF
LEF T: ESA / DRL / FU BERLIN; RIG H T: N ASA

first sniffed the gas on June 15, 2013, and has since found
background methane levels between 0.2 and 0.7 parts per billion in
volume (ppbv). But in 2019, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars
Trace Gas Orbiter failed to find methane after several months of
operation. ExoMars examines sunlight that has travelled through
the atmosphere’s upper layers and should be able to detect
particle concentrations as low as 0.05 ppbv. Then John Moores
(York University, Canada) realised that the discrepancy could boil
down to the time of day: Curiosity takes methane measurements
measurement, which yielded 0.5 ppbv, with two daytime ones,
which didn’t pick up any methane at all. The data take a step
toward reconciling the Curiosity and ExoMars results, but work
remains to understand why methane doesn’t build up in the
atmosphere over time. Christopher Webster (Jet Propuulsion
Laboratory), Moores, and colleagues reported the results in the
June Astronomy & Astrophysics.
„ JAVIER BARBUZANO
Read more at https://is.gd/Marsmethane.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 7
 NEWS NOTES

Kepler finds possible outcast Earths
ASTRONOMERS HAVE UNCOVERED
four candidate Earth-mass rogue
planets by searching for microlensing
events observed with NASA’s Kepler
satellite. Rogue planets drift aimlessly
through space after ejection from their
stellar system during the early stages of
planet formation.
When a star or planet passes in
front of a distant star, it acts like
a magnifying lens to temporarily
brighten the background star, an effect
known as microlensing. Rogue planets
are best spotted via microlensing
because they’re too faint to detect
directly. However, the smaller the
‘lens,’ the shorter the microlensing
event; Earth-mass planets magnify
background stars for only a couple
of hours, making them difficult to
differentiate from stellar flares.
A team lead by Iain McDonald
(now at Open University, UK pored
through data from the rejuvenated
Kepler mission, dubbed K2, to recover
IN BRIEF
An artist’s impression
shows a free-floating
Earth-mass planet.
previously detected microlensing
events and find new ones, too. Four
of the new events lasted only a couple
hours at most, implying rogue-
planet masses comparable to Earth’s.
Previously, astronomers had detected
only a handful of such short-lived
microlensing episodes, making the new
events a valuable addition.
But Przemek Mróz (Caltech), a
fellow rogue-planet hunter, cautions
that these planet candidates might not
be true drifters. “Figuring out whether
these objects are indeed free-floating
or not is trickier,” he says. Some of
these planets might be orbiting far
from their host star, he explains, so
their microlensing signature would be
nearly identical to that of free-floating
planets.
If outcast Earths are truly typical in
our galaxy, future facilities such as the
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
should easily detect their signals.
„ LAUREN SGRO
Amateur tracks
down new moon
of Jupiter
An amateur astronomer has
pinpointed a new moon of Jupiter,
first spotted in 2003 but whose orbit
was never determined. If approved
by the International Astronomical
Union’s Minor Planet Center, the
find would bring the tally of known
Jovian satellites to 80.
Kai Ly, the amateur who last
year recovered four lost Jovian
moons, examined images that David
Jewitt, Scott Sheppard (both then
at University of Hawaii) and their
colleagues had recorded almost
two decades ago with the 3.6-metre
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
(CFHT). In 2003, that group
announced the discovery of 23 tiny
Jovian moons, and the images they
used remained available online to
the public.
Recently, Ly found another
potential moon in images from the
past survey, one so faint that it’s
probably just 1 km across. That led
to its recovery in additional survey
images obtained throughout the
spring of 2003. “From there on, the
orbit and ephemeris quality were
decent enough for me to search
observations beyond 2003,” Ly
explains.
Ultimately, Ly tracked the
moon — provisionally designated
S/2003 J 24 — through
76 observations taken over
15.26 years (5,575 days). That’s the
equivalent of nearly eight orbits,

Witnessing gravitational instability

W says David Tholen (University of
A
Astronomers have reported a gravitationally unstable disk circling the young star Elias 2-27. Hawai‘i), more than enough to
Gravitational instability is one path to planet formation: When disks become massive show it’s bound to Jupiter and to
enough, they may collapse directly into planets or form spiral arms that trap material for consider the trajectory well-secured
future planet formation. A team led by Teresa Paneque-Carreño (now at Leiden University, for decades. Ly reported the orbit
The Netherlands) used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to spot a
T they determined to the Minor Planet
hallmark wiggle, a signature of gravitational collapse, in the spiral arms of the disk around Mailing List on June 30.
Elias 2-27. The wiggle is a disturbance in the disk’s rotation on scales coinciding with The moon is a typical member
instability-induced spiral arms. Paneque-Carreño’s team saw the wiggle by observing the of the Carme group, which includes
motions of carbon monoxide in the disk, which traces the harder-to-observe hydrogen gas. 22 other small retrograde satellites
Furthermore, a companion study concluded that Elias 2-27’s disk has 17% the mass of with periods of around two years.
its star, creating conditions ripe for gravitational instabilities to occur. Together, the spiral, They are probably all fragments of
wiggle and mass all indicate the disk is gravitationally unstable, providing convincing
w Carme, the first of the group to be
evidence of this planet-formation mechanism in action.
e discovered and by far the largest.
„ LAUREN SGRO „ JEFF HECHT

8 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 Essential
astronomy
reading
ASTRONOMY 2022 YEARBOOK
Every astronomer needs the
Astronomy 2022 yearbook. Packed
full of essential information to plan
your observing sessions, it is a
complete guide to what’s visible
in the night sky, including Moon
phases, planets, comets, eclipses,
meteor showers and occultations,
plus star maps and detailed monthly
viewing guides.
ESO
$29.95 + postage & handling
To order, use the form on page 73 or call 02 9439 1955.
2022 AUSTRALASIAN SKY GUIDE
The easy-to-read 2022 Australasian
Sky Guide provides a month-by-month
guide to what can be seen with the
naked eye, along with lots
of interesting facts and figures,
detailed descriptions of special
astronomical events, and planetary
data. This is an ideal gift for novice
astronomers and kids.
$16.95 + postage & handling
Australian-produced
astronomy guides that are
must-haves for all amateur
astronomers. Order yours
today — they make great
gifts for your family and
friends too!
ASTRONOMY 2022 CALENDAR
Featuring amazing photography from
the annual David Malin Awards, the
Astronomy 2022 Calendar provides a
guide to the night sky, including lunar
phases, planetary positions, eclipses
and meteor showers, plus monthly
star maps. Size is 23x33cm, opening
to 46x33cm. An ideal gift for budding
stargazers and friends overseas.
$19.95 + postage & handling
 NEWS NOTES
Lost & found:
Milky Way-size
‘orphan cloud’
p The ‘orphan cloud’ is the blue Klingon battle
cruiser–shape part of this image. X-rays are
shown in blue, hydrogen-alpha emission is red
and visible light is white.
Event Horizon Telescope reveals curious black hole jet
THE EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE
collaboration has peered deeply into the
heart of the radio galaxy Centaurus A,
revealing details of its long, powerful jets.
Cen A lies only about 12 million light-
years from us and hosts a supermassive
black hole that’s actively swallowing
gas and shooting out a narrow jet from
This reconstructed image shows the
bright edges of Cen A’s jets, one of which points
toward us (left) and the other that points away
(right). The circle marks the black hole’s location.
10 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
TEN BILLION SUNS’ WORTH of hot gas
are hanging in space in a fog almost
6 million light-years across. Bigger than
the Milky Way, this “orphan cloud” was
probably torn long ago from the galaxy
it once called home.
Astronomers found the cloud by
its hydrogen’s deep-red glow, roughly
310 million light-years away in the
Leo Cluster (Abell 1367). Follow-up
observations revealed X-rays coming
from the cloud, making it unique
among lonely clouds that astronomers
have previously spotted.
When a galaxy falls into a cluster,
it passes through hot gas that fills the
in-between space. This material rams
into the galaxy’s cooler, denser gas,
pushing it out. Even bereft of its stellar
nurseries, the galaxy will sail on through
the cluster with its older stars and dark
matter still bound to it. Astronomers
have nicknamed gas-streaming galaxies
‘jellyfish’ for their appearance.
In this case, though, Chong Ge
(University of Alabama, Huntsville)
top and bottom. The team used seven
facilities across half the globe to image
the jet at radio wavelengths.
Based on years of detailed simulations,
astronomers think that the centre of a
black hole’s jet (its ‘spine’) is largely empty
— it’s essentially a giant, corkscrew-like
magnetic field with a few electrons and
other particles zooming through, explains
team member Michael Janssen (Max
Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy,
Germany). An immense number of
and colleagues couldn’t find an
obvious parent galaxy. Based on this
and observations of motions within
the cloud, the researchers estimate
that it’s half a billion years old. Yet,
the orphaned gas ought to mix into
the hotter and sparser surrounding
medium, evaporating within 30
million years. The team suggests a weak
magnetic field (6 microgauss, typical of
that between stars in the Milky Way)
might have helped the cloud survive.
“The fun thing to me about the
‘orphan’ is how unusual it is,” says
Rhys Taylor (Astronomical Institute of
the Czech Academy of Sciences), who
was not involved in the study. “Clearly,
whatever process formed it can’t be all
that common, or we’d find such features
everywhere.”
Team leader Ming Sun (also at
University of Alabama, Huntsville) says
the team is obtaining more information
about the cloud’s cooler gas to help
unravel its mysteries.
¢ MONICA YOUNG
particles, blown off the black hole’s big
fluffy gas disk, sheath this spine. Because
the jet doesn’t point directly at us, the
light from its fast-moving spine largely
ORPH A N CLOUD: ESA / X M M-NE W TON; CEN A JE T: M. JA NSSEN E T A L. / E V EN T HORIZON TELESCOPE
misses our line of sight. But the electrons
spiraling around in the sheath emit
photons at all sorts of angles, so we can
see the edges quite well.
“What should be emphasizsed is how
incredibly rare it is to have images on this
scale, so close to the black hole,” says
Eileen Meyer (University of Maryland,
Baltimore County), who wasn’t involved
with the study. “There are basically four
or five. So any new data on this scale is
important.”
Especially interesting, both the team
and Meyer point out, is that an edge-
brightened jet structure also appears in
the active galaxies M87, Markarian 501
and 3C 84. These galaxies’ black holes all
consume gas at fairly low rates, like Cen
A’s, so there may be something universal
going on in such systems.
¢ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
 Evidence for ancient volcanoes on asteroid psyche
ASTEROID 16 PSYCHE is the largest
metallic object in the main belt and
the destination of NASA’s eponymous
mission, set to launch in 2022. But what
the spacecraft will see when it arrives
remains an open question. Evidence
is mounting that it will discover a
world that once oozed iron lava, a
phenomenon known as ferrovolcanism.
The apparent presence of iron
on Psyche’s surface initially led
astronomers to propose that the
asteroid is a planetary core, exposed
long ago via violent collisions. However,
subsequent measurements revealed
that the asteroid’s overall density
is surprisingly low, so it might be a
porous rubble pile instead. Then,
in 2020, Brandon Johnson (Purdue
University) and colleagues suggested
that ferrovolcanism on a differentiated
body could have resulted in a metallic
surface despite its low density.
In a new study, Michael Shepard
(Bloomsburg University) and his
collaborators report evidence for that
PSYCHE ASTEROID: M A X A R / ASU / P. RUBIN / N ASA / JPL- CA LTECH; T WISTING FIL A MEN T: AIP / A . K H A L AT YA N / J. FOHLMEISTER
Tornados in the cosmic web
FILAMENTS OF THE COSMIC WEB
contain galaxies, gas and dark matter,
and measure up to hundreds of millions
of light-years long. And they are now
the largest structures in the universe
observed to rotate, according to a team
led by Peng Wang (Leibniz Institute for
Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany).
Much of the universe spins — stars,
galaxies and clusters. But astronomers
still don’t understand if and how spins
on smaller scales connect to those
on (much) larger scales. “The spin of
intergalactic filaments is a key piece of
the puzzle,” comments theorist Miguel
Aragon-Calvo (National Autonomous
University of Mexico).
Wang and his colleagues used an
algorithm to identify curvilinear
structures, or filaments, in the
distribution of more than 200,000
galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey. By stacking data on more than
scenario in the form of the first composite
albedo map of Psyche, which charts how
much visible light and radar the surface
reflects.
Shepard’s team first used radio
and visible-light observations to help
compose a 3D model of the asteroid’s
shape. The group then took these featur
into account when assessing the surface
radar albedo, as measured by the Arecib
Observatory prior to its collapse and
visible-light albedo measured by others.
They found that areas that reflect lots of
radar also tend to reflect lots of visible
light.
While impacts could have produced
localised areas of high radar albedo, it’s
unclear why the rearranged rubble would
be shiny. Also, only one of the high-albedo
regions coincides with a possible crater.
In contrast, products of ferrovolcanic
activity, such as fine-grain silicates or iron
slabs, would reflect both visible light and
radar. It’s possible that these high-albedo
sites were once centres of iron-lava
eruptions.
17,000 of these structures, they found
evidence that (after correcting for the
expansion of the universe) galaxies
on one side of filament spines tend to
move toward us while galaxies on the
 An artist’s impression shows a spinning
cosmic filament feeding a galaxy cluster.
p The metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, pictured
here in an artist’s illustration, may once have
had iron lava flows on its surface.
Johnson agrees that Shepard’s
data further the case for ancient iron
volcanoes, and he adds, “I fully expect to
be surprised by what Psyche reveals.”
¢ LAUREN SGRO
other side are more likely to move away
from us. These motion asymmetries
suggest that galaxies may rotate around
filament axes with velocities up to
100 kilometres per second. (That may
sound fast, but it’s generally much too
slow to complete one orbit around the
filament within the present age of the
universe.)
Aragon-Calvo was part of a team
that recently found indications of
filament spin in the Millennium
Simulation — a dark-matter-only model
of cosmic structure growth. “Wang and
his colleagues did a great job uncovering
a signal that has been hiding in
plain sight,” he says. “This is a direct
confirmation of our prediction.”
The study also finds evidence that
the observed spin is stronger in those
filaments that connect to more massive
galaxy clusters. But much work remains
before we can determine how these
giant cosmic twisters influence the
rotation and growth of galaxy clusters.
¢GOVERT SCHILLING
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 11
 NEWS NOTES

This artist’s concept
compares the white
dwarf’s size to the Moon.
Moon-size white dwarf
Is smallest ever found
MOST WHITE DWARFS are collapsed
stellar cores. But in the July 1st Nature,
Ilaria Caiazzo, Kevin Burdge (both at
Caltech), and colleagues report evidence
of a white dwarf born from the union
of two smaller versions — and this one
might be about to collapse.
Squeezed-together electrons support
white dwarfs against gravity, so the
more massive it is, the more compact
it becomes. But when a pair of white
dwarfs merges, the total mass may tip
the scale over the Chandrasekhar limit,
beyond which runaway nuclear reac-
tions detonate the stellar cinder. But if
both white dwarfs are small enough,
their union might not trigger ignition.
Burdge found such a survivor while
sifting through Zwicky Transient Facil-
ity data for minutes-long brightness
variations. Follow-up observations con-
firmed this white dwarf rotates every 7
minutes (rather than hours).
A fast spin is expected for a merger
product and should generate a strong
magnetic field. Using the W. M. Keck
I Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i,
Caiazzo and colleagues found that the
white dwarf’s magnetism is on the
extreme end — more than a billion
times stronger than Earth’s.
Caiazzo’s team then used the white
dwarf’s brightness and distance to
estimate its size: At 4,300 kilometers
(2,700 miles) across, it’s just bigger
than the Moon. That diameter cor-
responds to a mass between 1.327 and
1.365 Suns’ worth, depending on its
composition.
It remains unclear if, when, and how
the white dwarf might collapse further.
The exact mass limit depends on its
composition, which is likely chang-
ing as heavy nuclei in the core capture
electrons and remove their outward
pressure. Electron capture itself accel-
erates as heavy atoms settle into the
core over time. Eventually, fusion could
restart, exploding or further collapsing
the white dwarf.
However, the star’s core is also cool-
ing. It will crystallize anywhere between
10 to 100 million years from now,
preventing heavy elements from settling
and perhaps staving off collapse.
Whatever its ultimate fate, the
detection of this young object just 134
light-years away suggests there may be
many more merger-born white dwarfs
out there awaiting discovery.
„ MONICA YOUNG

WHITE DWA RF A ND M OON: GIUSEPPE PA RISI; FACE- ON SPIR A LS: A LM A (ESO / N AOJ / NR AO ) / PH A NGS / S. DAG NELLO (NR AO)
IN BRIEF

The giant that ‘blinked’ A menagerie of stellar nurseries

A red giant star nearly disappeared from
the sky for about 200 days in 2012. In April
that year, only 3% of its light was arriving
at Earth, but by July its brightness was
back to normal. The huge dip, cataloged as
VVV-WIT-08, only happened once over the
17 years that two surveys, VISTA Variables
in the Via Lactea and Optical Gravitational
Lensing Experiment, monitored that portion
of the sky. The star’s smooth dimming and
recovery contrasts with the flat-bottom dips
that occur when exoplanets cross in front
of their stars. This object was big, with a
radius of at least 0.25 a.u., and elliptical
in projection. Leigh Smith (University of
Cambridge, UK) and colleagues suggest in
the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astro-
nomical Society that the star might have a
companion, either a planet or another star,
surrounded by a disk. Such a disk could be
both large enough and of the right shape to
block the giant star’s light — and it may do
so again one day.
„ MONICA YOUNG
Astronomers with the Physics at High Angular Resolution
in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) group have created the
first high-resolution maps of the big, dense gas clouds
that form stars inside galaxies. The collaboration used
the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA) in Chile to study some 40,000 molecular clouds
within 90 nearby, star-forming galaxies.
ALMA mapped carbon monoxide (orange), a tracer
of hard-to-see hydrogen gas, enabling astronomers to
observe gaseous structures on the scale of about 300
light-years, which happens to be around the size of an
individual cloud. Within these regions of dense gas and
dust, up to tens of thousands of stars form over a few
million years.
While astronomers previously thought that all stellar
nurseries were essentially the same, the new maps,
shown at the June virtual meeting of the American
Astronomical Society, illustrate that the clouds’
characteristics vary with their location within their host,
with those near a galaxy’s center being more massive,
dense, and turbulent. The results will also appear in the
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
„ LAUREN SGRO

12 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021


The lunar crater Hipparchus
(the wide flat area in this
image) is named after the
famed Greek astronomer.
The prominent crater in
its upper right corner is
Horrocks.
Hipparchus
and the equinoxes
Oft overlooked, Hipparchus was a pioneer of astronomy
in the ancient world.
A
s with so many of the Greek
astronomers who got the science
going more than 2,000 years
ago, we know little more than the basics
about the life of Hipparchus. Evidence
suggests he was born in Nicaea in
modern Turkey around 190 BCE and
died in Rhodes some 70 years later, but
that is about all.
Likewise we have almost no accounts
of his discoveries in his own hand. He
reputedly wrote 14 books but only one
has survived. The rest are long lost,
together with so much the science and
literature of the ancient Greeks. But the
writings of later astronomers contain
many references to his achievements,
showing how productive and well-
regarded he was. Much of what the
highly influential Ptolemy wrote in his
famous Almagest a few centuries later
N ASA
was based on and extended upon the
work of Hipparchus.
Hipparchus was a mathematician as
well as an astronomer, who basically
invented trigonometry, which allows
for calculations involving triangles.
Those triangles can be on the surface
of a sphere, which helps astronomical
calculations in particular.
He was also a pioneer in geography,
showing that measuring the positions
of stars relative to the horizon could
determine the latitude of a location,
and proposing that simultaneous
observations of a lunar eclipse at widely
separated locations could determine
the separation of those locations in
longitude (although not practical at the
time because suitable clocks did not yet
exist).
But Hipparchus was mostly an
astronomer, arguably the greatest in
ancient times. He did vital observations
by David Ellyard DISCOVERIES
and calculations on the sizes, distances
and complex motions of the Moon
and the Sun. From that work, he may
have been the first to devise a way of
predicting lunar eclipses. He improved,
and may have invented, the key
observing instrument of the time, the
astrolabe, as well as the armillary sphere.
For a time, Hipparchus favoured
the idea that the Earth went round the
Sun, as Aristarchus had done. But he
found that, in such a system, the orbits
of the planets could not be the perfect
circles which the science of the times,
following Aristotle, decreed they should
be. So he rejected the model, helping
ensure that the Sun-centred universe
remained the conventional wisdom for
the next 1,500 years until Copernicus.
He is best known for discovering the
millennia-long rhythm in the motions
of the heavens known as the precession
of the equinoxes. And late in life, he drew
the first known star map, marking the
positions of more than eight hundred
stars. He may have been stimulated to
do this by the sudden appearance of a
‘new star’ (a nova or supernova) whose
position he wanted to record.
When he compared the positions of
stars on his map (measured relative to
the celestial equator and the ecliptic)
with earlier observations by Greek and
even Babylonian astronomers, he found
significant discrepancies. Bright stars
like Spica or Regulus had moved by
about two degrees closer to the autumn
equinox, one of the two points on the
celestial sphere where the ecliptic and
the celestial equator cross.
He also compared the time taken for
the Sun to go once around the ecliptic
and return to an equinox (the ‘tropical
year’) with that time taken for the Sun
to return to the same position relative to
the fixed stars (the ‘sidereal year). They
were not quite the same. It seemed that
the equinox was not a fixed point relative
the stars but was moving (‘precessing’)
westward through the zodiac at not less
than one degree a century.
■ DAVID ELLYARD pioneered astronomy
on Australian TV with the Skywatch
program in the 1980s.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 13
 LOOKING AHEAD by Camille M. Carlisle

TIME
E D UA R D M UZ H E VS K Y I / S H UT TE R S TO C K .CO M

14 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

Welcome to the future
In the following pages, we take a look at where astronomy research
and exploration are (potentially) going. Prediction is a dangerous
game, and AS&T doesn’t often engage in speculation. But there are
amazing things on the horizon — technology and projects that will
fundamentally change the landscape of astronomy and, ultimately,
what we know about the universe.
First, we highlight four tech and mission concepts actively being
explored. In choosing these examples, we’ve sought to show variety,
not favoritism: While there are many great ideas under investiga-
tion, these four span a range of developments that will revolution-
ise the core technology we use in astronomy or change the scale on
which we do it.
Then we step back for the long view. We polled several dozen
astronomers in fields from planetary science to cosmology and
asked them what advances they see coming down the road, and
when those advances might arrive. We then combined their
responses with ideas we’ve heard at science conferences and
assessed them for likelihood and variety. The resulting timeline
provides a forecast for what’s coming between now and 2050.
Some of these predictions will likely be wrong. Back in January
2013, for example, a physicist said, “The discovery of dark matter
seems almost imminent… I would be surprised if another 5 or 10
years pass without the appearance of signals from WIMPs.” We’re
nearly nine years into that prediction, and scientists are wondering
if weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) — once the favoured
candidate for dark matter — are a dead end.
And, of course, we can’t predict the surprises, either. Will we find
signs of microbes elsewhere in the Solar System? Will we discover
something new about how the universe works? And (we almost
plead) will another supernova soon light up the Milky Way? We’re
long overdue: In a galaxy like ours, we should see a star go bang
every 100 to 200 years, but it’s been more than 400 years since one
graced our skies. Will the next one blaze by 2050?
The biggest news in the next generation may well be something
we can’t even imagine yet. But that’s no reason not to try.
Camille M. Carlisle

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 15
 LOOKING AHEAD by Camille M. Carlisle
Beam the data
down, Scotty
Lasers will replace radio antennae as the
interplanetary communications system.
CASSINI. NEW HORIZONS. The Hubble Space Telescope.
These spacecraft and so many others have given us
mesmerising views of the cosmos, expanding our knowledge
and piquing our curiosity.
But it’s no use sending instruments to space if we can’t get
the data back. Without a communications link, there is no
exploration.
Throughout the Space Age, we’ve used radio wavelengths
to transmit data to and from our space emissaries. Radio has
major perks: It cuts through clouds above ground stations,
and its wavelengths are so long that you don’t have to aim too
carefully in order to hit your antenna back on Earth.
But radio is also slow. Those same long wavelengths limit
how much information a signal can carry. Take, for instance,
the New Horizons spacecraft, which due to distance,
bandwidth and network sharing needed more than a year
to send its 6.25 GB of Pluto flyby data back to anxious team
scientists. That’s similar to the file size of a single HD movie.
NASA and other spacefarers are thus developing an
alternative: infrared laser communications.
16 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
LASERS IN SPACE
NASA’s Laser Communications Relay
Demonstration will transmit data
from the International Space Station
to Earth using infrared lasers.
Radio and laser communications operate on the same
principle: Encode information by modulating a wavelength’s
properties, then transmit the signal to a receiver that can
decode the modified stream. It’s the same idea behind your
Wi-Fi router, which uses microwaves to send information
from the internet to devices around your home.
But infrared wavelengths are roughly 10,000 times shorter
than the radio ones used to communicate with spacecraft,
so lasers pack information into tighter waves. They can thus
deliver more data in the same period of time than a radio
signal can. Switching to infrared lasers — which go by the
misnomer optical communications — would increase data
transmission rates by a factor of 10 or more. That would
boost the downlink rate from Mars — which is about 2
megabits per second (Mbps) when the planet is at its closest
— to some 25 Mbps.
There are downsides, however. First, infrared lasers
can’t pass through clouds, so ground stations need to be
in clear-sky locations. Second, the signal beam is narrow.
Electromagnetic waves spread out as they travel from their
source; a radio beam transmitted from Mars is larger than
Earth’s diameter by the time it reaches our planet, making
catching it easy. But a laser beam shot from that same
distance would only be the size of Victoria when it reached
Earth, says Abhijit Biswas (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
DAV E RYA N / N ASA
Successfully hitting the ground station is like holding a
metre-long drinking straw so steady that the far end doesn’t
dip by a micron. “If we miss,” he says, “there will be no one
to catch the bits.”
 NASA successfully demonstrated laser communications
from lunar orbit in 2013, achieving a downlink speed of
622 Mbps. Other experiments have followed. The European
Space Agency now uses optical links to connect some of its
low-orbit satellites with two geostationary relays (which
then send the data down to Earth via radio), and the Starlink
project has begun using inter-satellite lasers, too.
NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration
(LCRD) aims to be the first relay system based entirely on
optical. From geosynchronous orbit, it will transmit data sent
from the International Space Station at a rate of 1.2 Gbps,
about double that of the 2013 lunar experiment. LCRD’s June
2021 launch was delayed due to rocket concerns, however,
and no revised launch date had been announced when this
S TO DEEP SPACE Team members test the Deep Space Optical
article went to press.
Communications experiment in a JPL clean room. The 22-cm primary
But explorers want to push beyond near-Earth space. Slated mirror (centre, pointed at camera) will transmit and receive infrared lasers
to launch in 2022, the Deep Space Optical Communications to and from ground stations on Earth. The aluminium base plate will bolt
(DSOC) experiment will piggyback on NASA’s Psyche asteroid to the Psyche spacecraft.
mission to test how well laser links work beyond Mars. Using
a setup similar to an off-axis telescope, DSOC will point The aging Hubble Space Telescope collects an average of 18 GB
a micron-wavelength laser at a 22-cm mirror and shoot it of science data each week. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey
back to Earth, transmitting canned data that team members Satellite (TESS), launched in 2018, downloads 94 GB of
will check for accuracy. (They’ll lock onto Earth thanks to a compressed data on a 2-week cycle, and the new James Webb
beacon beamed at a slightly different wavelength.) Space Telescope is expected to send about 30 GB over 4 hours,
DSOC’s ground station will be the 5.1-metre Hale twice per day. But future flagship missions will likely collect
Telescope at Palomar Observatory in California — “which terabytes of data each day, says astrophysics chief technologist
is on the skinny side for what we’d like for these distances,” Mario Perez (NASA). Radio networks cannot handle the data
admits Biswas, who serves as DSOC project technologist. deluge.
Ideally, he says, laser communications will utilise 8- to Lasers can. In the future, laser communications may
10-metre telescopes in the future. enable astronauts to send high-def videos from the Moon.
The DSOC team’s goal is to downlink at 100 Mbps from We’ll receive streaming imagery from Mars. A fleet of laser-
a quarter of an astronomical unit away and about 2 Mbps enabled, TESS-like satellites could take exoplanet observations
from 2 a.u., which would be well into the asteroid belt. (For to a new level. And maybe we’ll position our receivers in
comparison, Psyche’s main telecommunications system will space, avoiding the cloud and daylight problems entirely.
probably achieve a rate one-tenth as fast.) Beyond 2 a.u., the
COMMUNICATIONS INFOGR APHIC: LE AH TISCIONE / S&T, SOURCE: N ASA; L A B: N ASA / JPL- CA LTECH

spacecraft will be in the daytime sky and thus unobservable. „ CAMILLE M. CARLISLE learned more about Wi-Fi and
It may be 20 years before laser communications are downlink speeds during the pandemic than she ever thought
routine on space missions, but routine they must become. she’d need to know.

Radio communications beam

Laser communications beam

M AR S
EARTH
2 Mbps
25 Mbps

S DOWNLINK Laser beams arrive at Earth much narrower than radio beams do, making precise pointing crucial. But lasers also transmit data 10
times more efficiently than radio does.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 17
 LOOKING AHEAD by Javier Barbuzano
Through a lens, brightly
Will giant refractors make a comeback as space-based telescopes?
IF LENSES COULD BE BUILT as large as utes and thinner
than their windshields, then we would probably still find
them in many big telescopes, including those in space. Lenses
are more resilient to misalignment and small defects than
mirrors are, making lens-based devices potentially simpler,
sturdier and more reliable — as well as cheaper to launch.
But astronomers largely abandoned refractor designs for large
telescopes early in the 20th century, mainly because of the
lenses’ massive weights.
However, a group of astronomers and engineers at the
University of Arizona might have found the key to making
large, lens-based space telescopes a reality. Led by Daniel Apai
and Tom Milster, they have come up with a lens design that
combines refractive and diffractive elements and can reach
several metres in diameter — with a thickness of just three
millimetres. Compare that to the Yerkes Great Refractor, the
world’s largest refractor, whose 1-metre convex lens is about
6.4 cm thick at its centre.
The team is developing ways of mass-producing these
lenses cheaply and quickly with moulds. In fact, researchers
are already making plans for a space array with dozens
of telescopes, which might cost less than the soon-to-be-
launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
18 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
“This is potentially game-changing optics technology,”
says space telescope expert Garth Illingworth (University of
California, Santa Cruz). Illingworth recently reviewed the
array’s progress for the Moore Foundation, which has granted
the project US$1.1 million. “Really lightweight optics will
make a major difference in the size [of space telescopes] that
can be built for a given cost.”
A fresh look at lenses
Called multi-order diffractive engineered (MODE) lenses,
the new lenses are inspired by Fresnel lenses, like those
typically found in lighthouses. Instead of being a thick,
convex monolith, the surface of Fresnel lenses has a series of
concentric circles. The pattern preserves the curvature of the
lens while removing excess material from its back.
This flattened lens surface, however, produces terrible
chromatic aberration — a shift in the focus of different
wavelengths that distorts images. To fix it, the team adds a
diffractive layer on the back of the lens, similar to gratings
 À LA MODE A prototype glass MODE lens. Unlike conventional,
fully refractive lenses, MODE lenses combine diffractive and refractive
properties to achieve high optical performance — one largely
independent of the lens’s thickness.
DA NIEL A PAI / UNIV. OF A RIZON A
 used to disperse light in some optical applications. “The
chromatic aberration is literally opposite between these two
types of surfaces, so they cancel [each other] out,” says team
member Daewook Kim (University of Arizona), who leads the
fabrication and testing of the lenses. “Overall, if you apply this
technique, you can achieve a very thin, lightweight, compact Container 15

lens while having good chromatic aberration control.” Container 14

MODE lenses have an optical performance on par with ...

apochromatic lens systems, Apai says, and “can come very,

very close” to a perfect parabolic mirror over a broad range of
Launch

8.9 m
wavelengths.

18 m
contai

A thousand exoplanets
Exoplanets provide an excellent science case for MODE
lenses. As detections of rocky planets in the habitable ...

zones of their host stars pile up, astronomers are eager to Container 2 MODE lens
search for chemical signatures of biological activity in their Container 1
1m
atmospheres. But JWST will only be able to characterise the
9m Container contents
atmospheres of a handful of these planets, likely not enough
to understand exoplanets as a population. 15 collapsed telescopes,
stacked for launch
“If you have a very small sample
it is going to be very difficult to
understand really what you are
looking at,” Apai says. “What are
really the trends, patterns, groups?”
The only way of knowing is by
Solar cell film
looking at many more examples.
To do so, Apai and his team are Thrusters
developing a mission concept called Lock-in struts
Nautilus, an array of 35 space telescopes Spectrograph
each equipped with an 8.5-metre MODE lens. Their goal is focal plane
to achieve a combined light-collecting surface equivalent to a ght baffle
mirror 50 metres in diameter, or almost 10 times larger than
that of JWST — all without exceeding JWST’s $8.8 billion Instr

8.5 m

14 m
pack
price tag. Such an array could characterise the atmospheres of
exoplanets in their stars’ habitable zones within 1,000 light-
years of Earth. The telescopes could pick up faint changes
in the stars’ light as it filters through the atmospheres of
planets crossing in front of them — a technique called transit f/1.0 MODE lens
spectroscopy. “We wanted to come up with a system that is for spectroscopy

capable of really making a leap,” Apai says. “Not just a little Mylar balloon
bit better, but truly a significant leap.”
Currently, Apai and his team are focused on building Deployed configuration
a moulded 24-cm lens — the largest MODE lens to date —
that will be installed on a telescope at the Mount Lemmon
Observatory, near Tucson. Demonstrating the technology
is a crucial step to securing more funding. If the tests are S NAUTILUS In the proposed array, a fleet of space telescopes
successful, the team plans to send a proposal to NASA to would launch together (top), then inflate in space to become
DA NIEL A PAI / UNIV. OF A RIZON A (2)

develop a probe-class mission (with a budget of around
US$800 million) in the second half of this decade. “It may
take about eight to 12 years to then build a telescope,” Apai
says. “Right now, I’m quite optimistic.”
„ JAVIER BARBUZANO is a freelance science writer based in
Barcelona, Spain.
ball-shaped craft (bottom). The prototype lenses are flat, but
Nautilus may use curved ones — unlike with conventional
lenses, a MODE lens’ shape is relatively unimportant: The
diffraction patterns on the lens’ front and back surfaces are
what focus the light. Thus the shape can be adapted to what’s
most practical. A spherical surface has greater structural
strength, making it a good choice for space deployment.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 19
 LOOKING AHEAD by Jack O. Burns
The lunar frontier
By the late 2020s, we may have deployed multiple radio astronomy
instruments on Earth’s natural satellite.
RADIO WAVELENGTHS give astronomers access to an
unseen universe, from stellar flares to jets launched from
supermassive black holes. But arguably, we have yet to take
advantage of the best place in the inner Solar System for low-
frequency radio astronomy: the Moon.
The lunar farside always faces away from Earth and is thus
radio-quiet, shielded by the Moon itself from radio-frequency
interference coming from powerful Earth-based transmitters.
The Moon also lacks a substantial ionosphere, whereas
Earth’s ionosphere absorbs and refracts cosmic radio sources.
Furthermore, the lunar environment is dry and stable,
leading to steadier radio observations.
Radio astronomy from the Moon is not a new idea
— astronomers proposed a lunar radio observatory at a
science symposium in 1965, before Apollo 11. In a separate
endeavour, NASA’s Radio Astronomy Explorer 2 orbited
the Moon from 1973 to 1975, the first mission to gather
radio data above the farside. It confirmed the radio-quiet
environment and made low-frequency measurements of
Jovian radio bursts and sources in the Milky Way.
But lack of access to the Moon meant that the next lunar
20 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
COSMIC EXPLORER
From the Moon’s farside,
NASA’s DAPPER will look for faint radio
signals from the early universe.
radio mission didn’t occur until 2018, when China launched
its Chang’e 4 mission. After touching down on the lunar
farside, the lander unfolded three 5-metre radio booms;
another three 5-metre antennas, part of the Netherlands-
China Low-frequency Explorer, orbit the Moon aboard the
Queqiao satellite, which acts as a communications relay for
the lander and rover.
As nations reestablish access, the Moon is open again to
science and exploration. Using new rockets and technologies,
spacecraft from China, the US, India and Japan are surveying
the Moon for water and other resources and assessing its
potential as a platform for astrophysics. NASA’s Commercial
UNIV ERSIT Y OF COLOR A DO A ND TEND ST UDIOS
Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is to begin delivering
science instruments on robotic landers starting in 2022.
The public-private partnerships behind these missions have
dramatically reduced their costs.
In recent years, several exciting science cases for farside
radio telescopes have emerged. For example, low-frequency
(below the FM band) observations of nearby exoplanet
systems enable us to investigate stellar winds and planetary
magnetic fields, which affect potential habitability.
 Meanwhile in cosmology, emission from neutral
hydrogen in the early universe shifts into the low-frequency
range as the photons traverse the expanding universe.
These signals probe the dark ages of the universe’s first few
hundred million years, as well as the cosmic dawn when
the first stars were born. Early-universe investigations will
rigorously test the standard model of cosmology and may
uncover new exotic physics involving dark matter, dark
energy and cosmic inflation.
Several US missions to the Moon — both nearside and
farside — are in the works. Intuitive Machines plans to
place its NOVA-C lander on the lunar nearside in early
2022. This CLPS mission includes the ROLSES (Radio Wave MISSION
Observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photoelectron TIMELINE
Sheath) instrument, using simple single antennas. LUSEE LUSEE + FARSIDE
(Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment) will follow in ROLSES DAPPER around FarView
2022 2025 2028 mid-2030s
2025 and will land in Schrӧdinger Basin on the farside. Both
radio instruments will investigate the thin, ionised plasma
2020 2030 2040
created when the solar wind slams into the lunar surface,
as well as the charged dust and radio waves that come from
solar eruptions.
I myself am involved with several endeavours. Stuart
Bale (University of California, Berkeley), Richard Bradley insights into the nature of the cosmic web, dark matter and
(National Radio Astronomy Observatory) and I recently primordial gravitational waves. Ronald Polidan and Alex
proposed that the Dark Ages Polarimeter Pathfinder Ignatiev (Lunar Resources, Inc.) and I are proposing to place
(DAPPER) could fly with LUSEE to the lunar farside. The FarView on the Moon in the 2030s.
additional antennas and receiver on DAPPER would enable This ambitious road map for lunar radio astronomy,
investigations of the low-frequency radio spectrum up to combined with renewed access to the Moon, will open a new
110 MHz. Absorption troughs in this frequency range will window to the low-frequency cosmos.
reveal not only when the first stars and galaxies ‘turned on’
but also what they looked like, including their typical masses ¢ JACK BURNS is a professor of astrophysics at the University
and luminosities. of Colorado, Boulder. He served on the Presidential Transition
Together with Gregg Hallinan (Caltech) and my colleagues Team for NASA in 2016–17, helping to define NASA’s new
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I have also proposed FARSIDE missions to the Moon — including low-frequency astrophysics
TIMELINE: TERRI DUBÉ / S&T; M OON: N ASA GSFC / A RIZON A STATE UNIV ERSIT Y; L A NDER: BLUE ORIGIN

(Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark from the lunar farside as well as what is now Project Artemis.
Ages and Exoplanets), which would
consist of 256 dipole antennas
working together to act as a single,
large radio antenna on the lunar
surface. The mission could be
ready for flight later this decade.
The NASA Innovative
Advanced Concepts Program also
recently funded the study of a
100,000-antenna array called
FarView. These antennas, which
would be manufactured onsite
from lunar regolith, would map
fluctuations in neutral hydrogen
in the early universe, providing

 THE FARSIDE The FARSIDE lander

would carry more than 200 radio
antennas, strung together and deployed
using four small, wheeled rovers.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 21
 LOOKING AHEAD by Monica Bobra
To boldly go
By mid-century, we may have sent a craft to look
back at ourselves from beyond the Solar System.
IN THE LAST DECADE , the notion of interstellar travel
went from fiction to reality. In 2012, after 35 years of
interplanetary travel across 122 astronomical units, Voyager
1 left the Ssolar System and crossed into interstellar space. In
2018, Voyager 2 did the same.
But the only other transmitting spacecraft on a trajectory
to interstellar space, New Horizons, is not even halfway
there. The scientific community’s tenuous connection to
this unexplored region therefore depends on the 44-year-old
Voyagers staying alive or the New Horizons craft surviving
another couple decades.
Unless we send a dedicated mission to interstellar space.
US astronomers have proposed interstellar missions since
1960; since then, NASA and the European Space Agency
(ESA) have entertained a couple of dozen mission concepts,
none of which have come to fruition. But a few ideas persist
today. Interstellar Probe, a mission proposed by the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and funded by
NASA as a concept study, is one of them. Interstellar Probe
could travel to 200 a.u. in 30 to 40 years — beyond where
the Voyagers are now — and answer some of the biggest open
questions about our star’s relationship with the galaxy.
THE HELIOSPHERE
The Voyager spacecraft have passed HELIOSPHERE
the heliosphere’s boundary, but
proposed missions could reach much
farther — even perhaps to the Alpha
Centauri star system.
E ARTH
1 a .u .
*Not to scale (8.3 li gh t- min u te s)
22 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
Seeing the heliosphere
The Sun produces a wind, full of particles and magnetic
fields, that carves out a magnetic bubble in space. This
heliosphere envelops the Solar System and protects us from
high-energy galactic particles. But data from the Voyager
spacecraft as they left the heliosphere raised more questions
than answers. What does the heliosphere look like? What
is the material composition of interstellar space? And what
happens at the boundary where these two meet?
Interstellar Probe could answer these questions by turning
around and taking a picture of our home star’s heliosphere,
like the dusty Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken by
Voyager 1. In fact, it could take three.
The first picture would show the heliosphere’s shape.
Astronomers know that the heliosphere shelters us from
harmful, high-energy particles, and similarly protected
environments may harbour life elsewhere. But what it
actually looks like remains unclear.
To solve this mystery, astronomers can use energetic
neutral atoms, particles that arise when the solar wind bumps
into the interstellar medium, to map the boundary of the
heliosphere. While the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)
is making these maps from vantage points near Earth, it
measures atoms at energies too low to probe the entire
heliosphere. The future Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration
JOHNS HOPKINS APL
Probe (IMAP) will make similar maps with an even larger
energy range and thus reach farther distances.
However, both these missions only measure energetic
neutral atoms that travel within the heliosphere, not
K UIP E R BE LT
TE RM IN AT IO N S HOC K
H EL IOPAA U S E
B OW
WAVE
1 0 a.u . 1 0 2 a . u.
(8 3 l ig h t- minu t es ) ( 83 1 ligh t -m inut e s )
 the ones from interstellar space. Mapping
the heliosphere with these data is akin to
determining the shape of a house by tracing
the inside walls. Interstellar Probe could obtain
the first complete view of the heliosphere from
a vantage point in interstellar space. Together
with IBEX and IMAP, these three probes will provide a
definitive picture of the shape of the heliosphere.
The second picture would show how interstellar material
piles up at the Solar System’s boundary. By measuring sunlight
scattered off interstellar hydrogen, the Voyager and New
Horizons craft detected a wall of hydrogen surrounding
the heliosphere. Images from multiple space telescopes
show similar walls surrounding the magnetic bubbles, or
astrospheres, of other Sun-like stars. But we don’t know how
similar the heliosphere is to these astrospheres. Interstellar
Probe could make the first map of the hydrogen wall
surrounding the heliosphere as seen from the outside. Then
astronomers could compare this to other astrospheres to
identify Sun-like stars that may, in turn, host habitable planets.
N ASA / HUBBLE HERITAG E TE A M (STSCI / AUR A)
The third picture would show interstellar dust from the
outside. Almost 30 years ago, the Ulysses satellite detected
interstellar dust inside the heliosphere. Since then, the Cassini
mission detected 36 grains, Stardust detected seven and
upcoming missions DESTINY+ and IMAP will detect some
more. Along with the debris from interstellar visitors like
Comet Borisov, these scant grains are the only particulate
matter from other stars that astronomers can measure
directly inside the Solar System. By directly measuring
INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM
O ORT CL OU D
1 0 3 a.u. 1 0 4 a .u .
(5. 77 light - days ) ( 57 .8 l ig ht- da ys)
W LL ORIONIS This young star in the Great Nebula in
Orion is creating a bow shock around itself as it plows
through the interstellar medium. The bow shock forms
where the star’s vigorous stellar wind hits the slower-
moving gas in the nebula.
and imaging dust outside the Solar System,
Interstellar Probe could illuminate where these particles come
from and how they seep into the heliosphere.
Daring adventures
Interstellar Probe is not the only mission concept on the table.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences is discussing Interstellar
Heliosphere Probes, twin spacecraft that could travel to 100
a.u. by 2049. And the privately funded Breakthrough Initiative
is proposing Breakthrough Starshot, which plans to go 3,000
times farther — to Alpha Centauri — in 20 years.
Regardless of which idea makes it to launch, a craft must
travel quickly to get to interstellar space in our lifetime.
One possible plan would employ the Sun as a gravitational
slingshot to accelerate Interstellar Probe to about 110,000
kilometres per hour (70,000 miles an hour) — nearly twice as
fast as the Voyagers. The Breakthrough Starshot team, on the
other hand, plans to use a ground-based laser beam to propel
an army of tiny spacecraft to more than 160 million kph.
These plans are both risky and expensive. But the reward,
the teams argue, is worth it.
„ MONICA BOBRA is a solar physicist and Australian
Sky & Telescope contributor.
A L PH A C EN TA UR I
1 0 5 a.u . 10 6 a . u.
(1 .5 8 l igh t -ye ars ) ( 15 . 8 li ght -ye a r s )
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 23
 LOOKING AHEAD by Camille M. Carlisle, Terri Dubé, and Lauren Sgro

Apophis: Largest asteroid to pass Earth in

1,000 years flies closer than geosynchronous
satellites (on Friday the 13th)

First 30-metre-class telescope We make a 3D map of 30 million galaxies (10×

sees first light (ELT) current surveys) across one-third of the sky,
revealing galaxy growth and cosmic structure
Lucy arrives at first Trojan
development over the past 11 billion years
asteroid target
We identify near-Earth asteroids accessible to
human crews or space mining
Rubin Observatory will discover
~100,000 Kuiper Belt objects Next-generation Event Horizon Telescope produces
time-lapse movies of black hole shadows
Rubin Observatory will discover
1,000s of gravitationally lensed We detect brown dwarfs in another galaxy
quasars, 100s of gravitationally
lensed supernovae
We discover whether big
planets exist in the Kuiper Belt

James Webb Psyche arrives at Revamped Large Hadron Collider

Space Telescope potentially ferrovolcanic recreates conditions from first trillionth
launches asteroid of a second after the Big Bang

Detailed maps constructed of

Successful private missions reach the Moon early universe during formation
We construct a detailed map of the Milky Way of first stars and galaxies
Sources of ultra-high-energy
cosmic rays discovered

2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035

We observe a new interstellar

Pulsar-timing JUICE arrives in object about once per month
array detects Jupiter system Precise measurement of the
gravitational- cosmic expansion rate made
wave background with gravitational waves
from universe’s
supermassive black Roman Space
hole binaries Telescope launches Orbiters and probe reach Venus
We map large-scale 90% of hazardous asteroids
cosmic structure with We have the first larger than 140m identified
supernovae using good estimate of how

worldwide array of
modest telescopes
JAXA / NASA mission
arrives at Martian moons
E D UA R D M UZ H E VS K Y I / S H UT TE R S TO C K .CO M
common freefloating
‘rogue’ exoplanets are
within 1,000 light- First samples from
years Mars returned
JWST detects signs of
life in the atmosphere
of an exoplanet within
150 light-years

24 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021


We directly image
surfaces of Earth-like
planets orbiting Sun-
type stars
Dragonfly helicopter arrives at Titan
Future forecast
What developments can we expect in
astronomy between now and 2050?
We’ve arranged astronomers’ predictions into a rough
timeline, with probability rankings and approximate
fulfillment dates. Many are safe bets; a few aren’t.
Things become more uncertain after 2030.
Science Editor Camille M. Carlisle and editorial intern Lauren Sgro pestered dozens
of astronomers to amass this list. Designer Terri Dubé reined everything in.

Possible Highly likely (Almost) certain

Close-ups of Europa reveal potential
connections between subsurface
ocean and surface, spurs sample
lander planning
Spacecraft
enters orbit
around Uranus
Sources of high-energy neutrinos identified

We measure the
acceleration of
cosmic expansion in
real time

2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 2041 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048 2049 2050

Spacecraft employ nuclear electric

propulsion to explore solar system

Space-based LISA detects gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes

Ground-based detectors measure gravitational waves from

binary black holes in the universe’s first 500 million years
We verify whether some of the fundamental physical
constants are really constant or actually vary throughout
space and time

We determine how the first supermassive black holes formed We observe the universe’s first
quasar (>13.3 billion years ago?)
Earliest supernovae in the universe detected

First crewed mission heads to Mars

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 25
 SPACE OBSERVATORY by Paul H. Geithner
A generation in the making, the James Webb
Space Telescope is the synthesis of scientific
vision, technological advancement and
engineering achievement.
TELESCOPES ARE POWERFUL TOOLS of exploration,
enabling humans to probe far beyond where we can go
ourselves or with robots. And arguably no instrument better
embodies the advances spurred by our cosmic curiosity
thus far than the James Webb Space Telescope. Scheduled
to be ready for launch by October 31 when this article went
to press, Webb is the long-awaited scientific successor to
the Hubble Space Telescope and promises to be the world’s
premier space observatory.
Even before the Hubble Space Telescope launched in
1990, scientists were considering what machine ought to
follow it. Hubble ‘sees’ primarily ultraviolet and visible
light, with some capability to observe at the shortest near-
infrared wavelengths. Scientists understood even then
that, as mighty as Hubble would be, its 2.4-metre primary
mirror and suite of instruments likely lacked the capability
to explore the era when the first luminous objects formed.
That era, called the cosmic dark ages, occurred in between
the condensation of the primordial plasma into neutral
hydrogen and helium (roughly 400,000 years after the
Big Bang) and the ionisation of those atoms by the first
objects to emit visible and ultraviolet light (a few hundred
million years later). This is the time when ‘the lights
26 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
turned on’ in the universe. But what exactly happened
then? What were the first stars like, and how did they form
in an environment so different from the one we think
contemporary star formation requires? How did galaxies,
which are the universe’s large collections of ordinary
matter and unseeable dark matter, assemble and evolve?
How and when did the supermassive black holes that we
observe at the hearts of most galaxies form? What came
first: stars, black holes, galaxies… or something else?
Hubble can’t answer these questions. Instead, to observe
the end of the cosmic dark ages, we need a telescope
exquisitely sensitive to infrared light. This is because
the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.8
billion years ago, which means that everything is moving
away from everything else. The farther away something is,
the faster it is receding. Light travels at a finite speed, so
this expansion stretches light’s wavelengths as the photons
travel toward us, such that the farther away an object is,
the redder it appears. The very first luminous objects to
C HR IS GU N N / N ASA
form after the Big Bang, whatever they were, are so distant
that the ultraviolet and visible light they emitted more
than 13 billion years ago reaches us today redshifted into
the infrared spectrum.
 OPTICS READY
The completed telescope looms
above technicians at Northrop
Grumman in this 2019 photo
while awaiting integration with its
spacecraft and sunshield.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 27
 SPACE OBSERVATORY

So the goal was not only to gather enough Thus, engineers developed foldable optics
light to reach back to the cosmic dark ages, and structures so that the telescope could
but also to achieve a resolution at longer WEBB’S fold up to fit into a rocket fairing and
infrared wavelengths comparable to what MISSION GOALS withstand the rigours of launch, then
Hubble provides at visible ones. To do deploy in space into a different,
Search for the universe’s
this, Webb needed a primary mirror operational configuration. Instead of
first galaxies
of at least 6 to 7 metres in diameter, one big primary mirror, we built a
and preferably a symmetrical Study galaxies’ evolution over cosmic time segmented one of 18 hexagonal
one to reduce unnecessary image Observe the formation of stars mirrors, each 1.3 metres across
distortion. Such a mirror would and planetary systems and about 40 kg. Together, they
also enable it to peer deeply at much make a 6.5-metre-wide honeycomb.
Measure properties of the sSolar
closer targets, such as newborn stars Nor is unfolding the only
System and other planetary
and exoplanets sheathed in dusty gas transformation the telescope will undergo
systems and investigate
clouds. The targeted wavelength and the potential for life once in space. The challenge of operating
sensitivity ranges meant the telescope had at cryogenic temperatures is a daunting one
to be space-based, above the interference that affects every aspect of design and testing.
from water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere. And Materials change dimensions with temperature,
the telescope needed to be cold — below 60 kelvin (−213°C) typically expanding when warm and shrinking when cold.
— so that its own thermal emission didn’t blind it to the What’s more, different materials behave in different ways,
infrared light coming from celestial sources. and we had to use more than one kind of material to build
This is how mission planners settled on creating a large, Webb, so we had to account for each part changing in its own
infrared telescope stationed in space and far from Earth’s way. This meant developing new processes to shape and polish
room-temperature glow — some 1.5 million kilometres optical surfaces ‘perfectly wrong’ at room temperature, such
from Earth’s nightside, at a gravitational balancing point that they become ‘precisely correct’ at cryogenic operating
in the Sun-Earth system called L 2. Building the envisioned temperature. The surfaces also had to attain that shape
telescope has been a feat of invention, ingenuity and predictably, over and over again through repeated testing, and
perseverance that makes it a milestone in the creation of finally once launched and cooled down.
space observatories. Beryllium became the mirror material of choice.
Beryllium is light and stiff, and it virtually stops changing
Engineering challenges dimensions at temperatures below 100K. Ordinary beryllium
Several inventions and technological advances were is unpredictable, however, so technologists developed a new
necessary to make Webb feasible. Size, combined with the beryllium microsphere powder that the team then fused
need to operate at cryogenic temperatures, conspired to using intense pressure and heat into mirror blanks. Once
present the greatest challenges. Webb’s aperture exceeds the blanks were machined, ground and polished, technicians
the 5-metre diameter of standard, commercially available coated each mirror in gold, which is excellent at reflecting
launcher fairings — in other words, there was no nose cone infrared wavelengths.
wide enough to carry the telescope to space if we built it The segmented mirror, along with the other optics and
with a symmetrical, one-piece mirror. Moreover, using the scientific instruments, are mounted on structures made
technology behind Hubble’s lightweight, monolithic glass of a special formulation of carbon graphite-epoxy that is
mirror would have required an impractically massive support very stiff, strong and relatively stable over a wide range of
structure. temperatures, all the way from
Assembling the telescope in space wasn’t an option, above room temperature
either: It would have added too much expense and risk. down to cryogenic.

X BIGGER IS BETTER The larger a

telescope’s mirror, the more resolving
power and sensitivity it can have: At a given
wavelength, a telescope with an aperture
twice as wide will resolve detail twice as
fine and collect four times as much light. All
of these telescopes had (or have) infrared
LE AH TISCIONE / S&T

capabilities: Hubble can detect near-infrared

wavelengths as well as visible and ultraviolet,
while Spitzer covered only infrared. Europe’s
Herschel observed far-infrared wavelengths, Hubble Spitzer Herschel Webb
much longer than those Webb will detect. (2.4 metres) (0.85 metre) (3.5 metres) (6.5 metres)

28 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 The origami observatory
The sting of Hubble’s spherical aberration was fresh in
people’s minds during Webb’s early conceptual development,
and naturally when thinking about a new space telescope
one thinks of optics and how to make and test them. But
there’s more to Webb than its optics. Webb is a giant — and
frigid — origami observatory, and the difficulties presented
by a folding space observatory that will deploy in space by
remote command and operate at cryogenic temperatures add
to the challenge.
Virtually every modern spacecraft unfurls, deploys or
releases in some fashion, such as extending a solar array for
power generation. By necessity, Webb takes on-orbit releases
and deployments to the extreme:
• The telescope primary mirror backplane structure has to
S GOING FOR GOLD An optical engineer examines two test mirror
fold up for launch and then deploy precisely. segments, one coated in gold. The frame is a composite material
• Primary mirror segments have to be movable in any designed to handle Webb’s space environment.
direction so that they can correctly align to a few
millionths of a millimetre and act as one. The sunshield posed the grandest stowage and deployment
• The secondary mirror must deploy on a hinged tripod and engineering challenge of them all. The sunshield’s job is to
also move in any direction. be an umbrella, shielding the telescope from the heat of the
• The telescope structure is attached to the spacecraft bus Sun as well as stray light from Earth and the Moon. This
when stowed for launch, but a telescoping tower must protection allows the telescope and instruments to radiate
extend to separate the structure and bus, so that the their own heat away and stay cool in the 7K deep space at L 2.
telescope is isolated from any mechanical vibrations or The shield needs to let through a mere millionth of the total
heat from the spacecraft and sunshield. heat hitting it, attenuating more than 200 kilowatts of solar
• The star tracker, used to monitor the telescope’s position insolation down to a fraction of a watt. It also needs to span
in space, is attached to this extendable tower and must a much larger area than the telescope itself — roughly that
release from launch locks on the bus once in space. of a tennis court — so that it provides adequate shadow for
• Various radiators must also release from launch locks and the telescope to access as much of the sky as possible. Lastly,
deploy to provide thermal and mechanical isolation. it must weigh extremely little, stow compactly for launch

T INFRARED EYE Unlike Hubble’s instruments, which focus primarily on ultraviolet and visible wavelengths, Webb’s will observe the near-infrared
and mid-infrared parts of the spectrum. Each instrument is a specific combination of observing modes, wavelength range, field of view and resolution,
combining multiple instruments within themselves. NIRCam, NIRISS and MIRI can do both imaging and spectroscopy, but the NIRCam and NIRISS
spectrographs cover a smaller wavelength range than their cameras.

Imaging NIRCam MIRI

MIRRORS: CHRIS GUNN / N ASA; INFR A RED: LE A H TISCIONE / S&T, SOURCE: STSCI

(Near-Infrared Camera) (Mid-Infrared Instrument)

NIRISS
(Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph)

Hubble

Spectroscopy NIRSpec
MIRI
(Near-Infrared Spectrograph)

NIRISS

Hubble NIRCam

Ultraviolet Visible Near-infrared Mid-infrared

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30

Wavelength (microns)

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 29
 SPACE OBSERVATORY
S SUNSHIELD Top: This photo from 2014 shows the first time
engineers stacked and unfurled a full-size test sunshield. Above: A
technician carefully folds the real sunshield in 2020, in preparation for
stowing the telescope into its launch configuration.
Minimum temperature (telescope side):
−235°C (−390°F)
Sunlight
Maximum temperature (Sun side):
125°C (260°F)
S PARASOL The five-layer design of Webb’s sunshield protects
its mirror and instruments from unwanted infrared radiation from
the Sun, Earth, and Moon. Because none of the layers touch, heat
doesn’t conduct from one layer to another and instead flows to the
layers’ edges and into space.
30 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
and deploy reliably, both on the ground multiple times for
testing and in space for the one time it really counts.
These requirements are met by a design consisting of
five kite-shaped, gossamer membranes stacked in layers.
Each membrane is about 165 square metres in area and
coated with vapour-deposited aluminium. When deployed,
the space between each membrane gets progressively wider
from the centre to the edges. This allows heat that isn’t
reflected away and manages to pass to the next layer to
then bounce its way out to the edges and overboard to
space. Even the membrane edges are aligned to millimetre
tolerances, to ensure no infrared photons from edges
heated by the Sun will have a line of sight to telescope
optics and become a source of stray light.
As the largest element of Webb, the sunshield will
unfold in grand fashion. A graphite-epoxy frame will
cradle the Z-folded membranes for launch and then extend
to deploy the membranes in space. An elaborate system
of motors, stem drives, pulleys and cables will deploy
the sunshield skeleton and pull the membranes taut.
Because membranes and cables are non-rigid floppy things,
hundreds of simple, ingenious straps and elastic clips must
restrain them as they’re deployed in the weightlessness of
space to preclude snagging and entanglement.
In all, deployment of flight hardware involves 178 non-
explosive release devices, more than 40 major deployments
of 30 different types, 155 motors, more than 600 pulley
assemblies and nearly 100 cables totalling about 400
metres in length.
Beyond the state of the art
DEPLOY ED SUNSHIELD: CHRIS GUNN / N ASA; SUNSHIELD FOLDING: NORTHROP G RU M M A N; SUNSHIELD DIAG R A M: STSCI
Then there are the advances spurred by Webb’s
instruments. To accomplish the science goals, infrared
detectors had to become better than those that existed
when we began planning. Engineers had to adapt
electronics so that the combination of any ‘noise’ from the
detectors with heat from the mirror itself would be less
than the signal from the zodiacal light, the background
glow from diffuse dust in the inner Solar System. This is
where the 60K requirement comes from.
But to observe mid-infrared wavelengths takes even
more extreme measures. The mid-infrared instrument’s
detectors have to be colder than 7K to operate, which they
won’t achieve by simply sitting out in space at L 2. Instead,
Webb needs its own cryocooler, which required more
development.
From the invention of a new slit mask for the main
spectrometer to advances in cryogenic testing, many
technologies had to lurch forward to make Webb possible.
Of course, we had to leap over various engineering hurdles
throughout the long development, but tackling challenges
is part of what makes this work rewarding.
Then there are the international hurdles. Science is
a worldwide community, and contributors the world
over wanted in on the mission from the beginning. The
 European and Canadian space agencies are both providing
instruments and operations support, and the European Space
Agency (ESA) is also handling the launch. But there are laws
regulating the sharing of information, even with friendly
allies. Finding ways to collaborate with our partners and their
contractors added a degree of difficulty to this process, but
the return in scientific capability has been worth it.

Proving it works
A major difference from some other spacecraft is that the
entire Webb observatory cannot be tested faithfully as
one fully assembled unit before launch: It’s simply too big
and complex. That may be nerve-wracking to readers who
remember the blurred images Hubble returned when it
first looked at the cosmos. To be clear, we’ve tested Webb’s
optical system in one piece end-to-end. What’s impractical
is creating on the ground the environment that Webb S MEGASIZE INSTRUMENTS Engineers prepare the Near-Infrared
will unfurl in. We can’t easily emulate weightlessness and Spectrograph for acoustic tests.
perform deployments while in a vacuum chamber, nor is it
feasible to replicate Webb’s thermal condition — with intense We learned a crucial lesson from the Hubble spherical
sunlight heating one side and extreme cold chilling the other aberration experience: Don’t rely on the same tools used to
— and simultaneously run end-to-end optical tests on the make the optics when you test them. This meant we had to
complete, deployed observatory in the vacuum. build different devices to verify, crosscheck and optically test
This led engineers to test the observatory in halves — the the entire telescope and instrument assembly end-to-end.
telescope and instruments as one unit, and the combined The testing required a vacuum chamber capable of cooling
spacecraft bus and sunshield as the other. Each was the entire telescope and instrument assembly to about 40K,
shaken and blasted with sound and subsequently tested for suppressing background mechanical vibrations and housing
performance in temperature-controlled vacuum chambers. sophisticated testing equipment.
Then once put together, the observatory was shaken some A relic of the Apollo era, the enormous Chamber A at
more to verify workmanship of the final assembly. NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was refurbished and upgraded
INSTRU MEN T: CHRIS GUNN / N ASA; L AG R A NGIA N POIN TS: LE A H TISCIONE / S&T; TELESCOPE FIELD OF REG A RD: STSCI

North ecliptic pole

L4
5°
50°

e
op
Sunlight

ect g
ion
esc
dir intin
Tel
po
60°
To Sun Hot side Cold side
L3 L1 L2
60° 360° rotation
about Sun line Anti-Sun

L5

S LAGRANGIAN POINTS In a system of two massive bodies

orbiting each other (such as the Sun and Earth), five gravitational
‘balance points’ exist where a third, much smaller object can orbit
in a constant pattern. A craft at L2 can always keep the Sun, Earth,
and Moon behind itself, making it a frequent choice for space
missions. Previous denizens of L2 include the Planck and Herschel
missions; the sky-scanning Gaia spacecraft is currently there.
S THE VIEW Webb’s mirror is perpendicular to its sunshield,
and the spacecraft can tilt to point the telescope within a 50°
arc while still keeping the mirror and instruments safely in
shadow. It can also rotate full circle. Over time, Webb will see
the entire sky as it orbits the Sun.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 31
 SPACE OBSERVATORY

planning meant that even when Hurricane Harvey hit right

 CHAMBER A Webb emerges from months of cryogenic vacuum
testing in 2017.
into the world’s finest large cryo-vacuum optical test facility
for the work. This chamber is about nine stories tall — so
large that the air inside it weighs 12 tonnes (before all but
2 grams gets pumped out for testing). Engineers placed
the deployed flight hardware on a truss structure platform
and rolled it into the bottom of the chamber on rails, then
connected it to long steel rods suspended from the ceiling.
Using a combination of mirrors, cameras and other carefully
tested instruments positioned inside the chamber, we
successfully aligned all 18 segments to act as one. We also
verified the primary mirror’s shape and tested everything
in the middle of this 100-day-long cryo-vacuum test in 2017,
we completed it without interruption.
Meanwhile, to prove that the observatory could properly
manage heat not only from the Sun but also from its own
electronics, we had to combine results from multiple tests. To
check the sunshield design, we tested a 1third-scale model of
the deployed sunshield in a temperature-controlled vacuum
chamber. To verify that the telescope and instruments would
stay cool despite the heat the electronics give off, we built
and tested a full-scale version of Webb’s core section — the
thermal Grand Central Station of the observatory — to
confirm that heat moves around the way it needs to. Such
tests required milliwatt-level precision. We then combined
these results with those from the thermal-vacuum test of the
bus-plus-sunshield assembly and the cryo-vacuum test of the
assembled telescope and instrument package.
On top of all that, we’ve done exhaustive, iterative checks
of the unfolding processes. All flight-deployable items have
been unfolded multiple times; the flight sunshield, for
example, has been stowed four times and deployed three
times before flight. So much of the observatory can fold out
that every stow operation was like reassembly, with a regimen
of extra checks and precautions.
And after more than a decade of testing flight hardware,
we’ll soon be ready for the next step: launch.
800,000 kilometres

CH A MBER A TESTING: CHRIS GUNN / N ASA; TR A JECTORY A ND CO M MISSIONING TIMELINE: G REGG DINDER M A N / S&T, SOURCE: N ASA
from the secondary mirror’s positioning to the ability of
the telescope to acquire and track targets. Years of careful
t
i
rb

600,000
nal o

 A LONG JOURNEY Webb will spend about 29 days traveling to L2

before it enters orbit there. Along the way, it will deploy its sunshield
Operatio

and power up instruments. Around day 96, it will have cooled to the
temperatures necessary to enable mid-infrared observations. Telescope 400,000
alignment will finish around day 118. If all goes as planned, the telescope
will be ready for business 6 months after launch.

200,000

1,600,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 kilometres 200,000 400,000

Earth L2 point
Trans
fer
Launch traj
ect
ory
200,000
b it
or

on
’s

Enter L2 orbit
Mo L+29 days
400,000
Course correction Sunshield and Cools to Commissioning
0.5 to +1 day observatory temperature complete
deployments sufficient for L+6 months
L+3.0 to L+20 days near-infrared 600,000
observations,
instruments finish
powering on
L+20 to L+40 days 800,000 kilometres

32 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 SPACE OBSERVATORY

Opening Webb’s eye on the cosmos

Once it lifts off from French Guiana, Webb will undergo an
action-packed six-month commissioning period. Moments
after completing a 26-minute ride aboard ESA’s Ariane 5
rocket, the spacecraft will separate and deploy its solar array
automatically per a stored command. After that, we’ll initiate
all subsequent deployments over the next few weeks from the
ground. This is in stark contrast to the “7 minutes of terror”
for projects landing on distant Mars, for example. For them,
every step of entry, descent and landing is pre-programmed
and autonomous because of Mars’ distance — it’s all over
before engineers on Earth receive a signal that it has even
begun. Webb, however, will be mere light-seconds away, so we
will be able to control deployments carefully.
Webb will take one month to fly to L2, slowly unfolding as
it goes. Sunshield deployment starts at day 2.7 and will finish
a few days later. Once the shield starts to deploy, the telescope
and instruments will enter shade and cool rapidly. Over the
 SEMI-DEPLOYED The sunshield lies furled below the unfolded
ensuing weeks, the mission team will closely monitor the primary mirror. For launch, the shield will fold up and sandwich the mirror.
observatory’s cooldown, managing it with heaters to prevent
escaping moisture from freezing onto sensitive surfaces. In  FOLDED FOR LAUNCH TEST The telescope successfully endured
deafening noise and jarring vibrations tuned to simulate conditions
the meantime, the secondary mirror tripod will unfold, the
aboard the Ariane 5 rocket during launch. These 2020 tests were the last
primary mirror will unfold, instruments will slowly power up, environmental tests before launch.
and midcourse maneuvers will insert Webb into a prescribed
orbit around L2 on day 29.
Once the observatory has cooled to the necessary low,
stable temperature, it’ll take several months to align the
optics and calibrate the scientific instruments. Assuming
commissioning goes as planned, scientific operations
will commence about six months after launch. Webb’s
mission lifetime is designed to be at least five years, but the
observatory could last more than a decade depending on how
much fuel we use to achieve and maintain orbit around L 2
and how quickly the telescope’s components degrade in space.
Flagship missions like Webb are generational. They take a
long time because they are difficult, and they are expensive
because they take a long time. Webb has built on both the
legacy and the lessons of missions before it, such as the
Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. It will in turn provide
the foundation upon which future large astronomical space
observatories may one day be developed.
Webb is a marvelous machine. It is a remarkable
engineering achievement full of scientific potential and
promise. It has been built to explore the frontiers of
cosmology and astronomy, from observing the end of the
cosmic dark ages to ‘sniffing’ the atmospheres of exoplanets
around nearby stars to perhaps detecting the chemistry that
makes life as we know it possible.
But its greatest discoveries will likely be answers to
questions that we have yet to ask or imagine.
NORTHROP G RU M M A N (2)

¢ Deputy Project Manager PAUL H. GEITHNER has held

several jobs on Webb since 1997 after coming to NASA in
1991 to help fix and upgrade Hubble. On the side, he rebuilds
cars and houses and is borderline obsessed with golf.

34 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 CELESTIAL CALENDAR by Bob King
Two end-of-year eclipses
November and December will bring a lunar and solar eclipse, respectively.
e’re going to be treated to two
W eclipses across November and
December, but your viewing
location will heavily determine what
you get to see.
First up is a deep partial lunar eclipse
on November 19, visible across Australia,
the Pacific, eastern Asia, the Americas
and northern Europe. The partial phase
— when the Moon enters Earth’s umbral
shadow — will begin at 7:18 UT and
greatest eclipse will be at 9:03 UT.
At maximum, 97% of the lunar disk
will squeeze into the umbra, leaving just
a narrow sliver of the southern limb
poking out. The Moon will be just 1.7
days shy of apogee, so its apparent size
will be slightly smaller than usual. This
helps increase both the depth of the
eclipse and its duration. The Moon will
exits the umbra at 10:47 UT, nearly 3½
hours after it entered.
Depending on volcanic activity and
other atmospheric factors, the lunar
disk’s colour may range from yellow-
orange to coppery red or even ruddy
brown. Whatever the hue, the near-
M
oo
nr
ise
nr
ise
sw
th
mb
br
No eclipse
ra
visible
36 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
total aspect of the eclipse guarantees
a colourful and beautiful sight, with
the Moon floating some 5½° south-
southwest of the Pleiades cluster
around the time of maximum eclipse.
You might try your hand at carefully
noting the Moon’s appearance so that
you can compare one eclipse with
another. The Danjon scale is typically
used to estimate the Moon’s brightness
and color during a total eclipse. But
there’s no reason you can’t put it to use
during this near-total event by hiding
the Moon’s uneclipsed edge behind a
building. The scale ranges from L=0 for
a very dark eclipse to L=4 for a bright,
copper-red or orange eclipse
December’s total solar eclipse will be
seen best by the millions of penguins
and seals, and hundreds of humans,
that make Antarctica their permanent
or temporary home. On December 4
the path of totality will begin in the
southern Pacific Ocean before sweeping
over the frozen continent and ending
in the Atlantic Ocean. A bunch of
cruise ships full of eclipse chasers
Mid-ecli
at zenith
sw
hile
ente
Entire
i
lea v
r ing
eclipse
visible
hile
the
whi
pen
ets
ts
se
ns
u
m
on
ra
Mo
intending to position themselves for
the best possible viewing opportunities,
although at the time of going to
press it was uncertain if the global
COVID situation would upset any of
these plans.
The maximum interval of totality
of 1 minute and 54 seconds will be
experienced from the ocean just off
the Ronne Ice Shelf. If you’re not a
penguin but you live in Tasmania or
the very southern parts of the south-
eastern Australian mainland, you’ll see
this event as a partial solar eclipse…
although the Sun will be low in the sky.
For those in Hobart, the eclipse will
begin at 6:34pm and end at 7:37pm.
For Melbourne it will be 6:53pm and
7:30pm. (These are in standard time;
allow for daylight saving if necessary.)
If you want to observe or image this
eclipse, ensure you take the standard
solar safety precautions — no looking
directly at the Sun (with or without
optical) aid and no homemade solar
lters. Use o l rofessio al solar filters
methods.
br
um
Eclipse at
t he
ECLIPSE M A P: LE A H TISICONE / S&T; SOURCE: USNO
ile
wh
ets
ns
n
oo
No eclipse
oo
visible
 Two November oppositions

Star magnitudes
2 α
3 β
4 ARIES +20°

B
5 γ
oth Uranus and Ceres reach Compared to Uranus, finding the 6
opposition in November. Uranus dwarf planet Ceres will prove relatively Path of
Uranus
does so on the 5th (0h UT), and easy. On the night of November
Ceres on the 27th (4h UT). 2–3, it shines at magnitude 7.6 as it
On opposition night, Uranus shines passes just 7′ south of 1st-magnitude
at magnitude 5.7 in southern Aries, 5.1° Aldebaran in Taurus. For much of the
+10°
north-northwest of 4.3-magnitude Mu rest of the month, Ceres crosses the μ ξ2 ξ1
λ PSC ο
(µ) Ceti. Typical of outer planets around familiar Hyades cluster as it brightens
opposition, Uranus spends the month to a maximum of magnitude 7.0 at
moving westward in retrograde motion. opposition on the 27th. From the outer γ CETUS
The nearly full Moon will pass less than suburbs or the countryside, a pair of α α
2° south of the planet on the 17th. 10×50 binoculars should suffice to spot
3h 00m δ 2h 30m 2h 00m
Uranus is slowly brightening as it Ceres and track its passage across Taurus. M77 0°
approaches its August 2050 perihelion.
Dimly visible to the naked eye under π
2h 55m 2h 50m 2h 45m 2h 40m 2h 35m 2h 30m
moonless rural skies, it will reach
+17°
magnitude 5.4 at oppositions from 2048
to 2052. If light pollution and satellites
haven’t overrun the sky by then, more
people than ever might see the distant Sept 1
2021 +16°
planet without optical aid. Pat
Oct 1 h of
Uranus is a pretty sight through Ura
Apr 1 nus
a telescope. A 75-mm refractor
σ ο
magnifying at 75× will reveal its tiny, Nov 1 Mar 1 29 +15°
aqua disk. However, even through Feb 1
larger instruments the planet remains Dec 1
5 ARIES
Star magnitudes

Jan 1
stubbornly small. With an apparent 2022
6
diameter of 3.8″ this month, discerning +14°
7
any detail requires excellent seeing
8
and careful scrutiny. Some amateurs
9
have occasionally sighted faint bands
with 35-cm and larger instruments at
magnifications of 400× and greater. 4h 30m 4h 20m 4h 10m 4h 00m +20°
If you have a 20-cm or larger scope,
you can hunt for the two brightest
Uranian moons, Titania and Oberon. ε
Titania, at magnitude 13.9, is very slightly
brighter than Oberon at 14.1, but it’s
+18°
also closer to the planet. At maximum δ3 δ1
northern and southern elongations,
Oct
Titania is a faint speck about 30″ from 31
Aldebaran 12
15 18 21
α 9 12
Uranus’s limb compared to Oberon’s 40″. 30 Dec 6
θ 15 18 21 24 27
eres
Nov 6
Path of C
Use the highest magnification seeing will 9 3 +16°
3 γ
allow and position Uranus just outside
the field of view to reduce glare from the 3
Star magnitudes

planet’s disk. 4
To check the positions of the these 5
satellites on any given night, visit 6 +14°
DEBR A CER AVOLO

7
the Tools page of skyandtelescope. 8 TAURUS
org for the handy ‘Moons of Uranus’ 9
interactive observing aid. λ

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 37
 AUSTRALIA

Porro Prism

Moon Filter 1.25” 40”(101cm) Protective Bag

94025

RRP

$19.95
X

X
Australia
AUSTRALIA
 AUSTRALIA

SttarSense
S Explorer
E l DX 102AZ
 AUSTRALIA

INCLUDES A
SMARTPHONE
ADAPTE R
 BINOCULAR HIGHLIGHT by Mathew Wedel

USING THE
STAR CHART

WHEN
Late October 11 pm
M15 Early November 10 pm

g
NE
Late November 9 pm
These are daylight savings times.
γ Subtract one hour if daylight
ε δ
savings is not applicable.
PEGASUS Enif

EQUUL EUS HOW Go outside within an

hour or so of a time listed

ε
above. Hold the map above

A
α

UR
your head with the bottom of

θ
Ald

US
the page facing south. The

eba
ran
α chart now matches the stars in
your sky, with the curved edge

π3
representing the horizon and
the centre of the chart being

Fuzzy ball of light

γ
the point directly over your
head (known as the zenith).

δ
Fa c i n g E a s t

η
FOR EXAMPLE Look at

β
B
inoculars offer a wonderful, wide window into the cosmos.

M42
ε

β
the chart, and you’ll see that

OR IO N
Their expansive views are perfect for capturing big open

ι
the bright star Canopus in the

Rigel
star clusters, and for scanning rich, Milky Way star fields. constellation Carina is about
But no single tool is perfect for every application. A spoon makes
6

µ
a third of the way between the
h

κ
a lousy knife, and a knife makes a lousy spoon. And so it is with south-eastern horizon and the

LEPUS

α
binoculars and telescopes. Targets that call for a lot of magnification middle of the chart. So if you

β
are especially challenging for binos. Globular clusters fall into this look into the south-eastern
category — some are absolutely stunning through a telescope at high sky, you’ll find Canopus about
magnification but can be tricky with binoculars. Nonetheless, some

β
halfway between the horizon
are pretty easy through binos, and M15 in westernmost Pegasus is a and the zenith.

CA
shining example.

NIS
A number of factors work in M15’s favour. First, at magnitude

ζ
NOTE The chart is plotted

MA
6.2, it’s one of the brightest Messier globulars — it’s less than half a for latitude 35oS (for example,

JO
magnitude fainter than M13. Even better, M15 shares its binocular

R
Sydney, Buenos Aires, Cape

ε
field with the lovely, 2.4-magnitude yellow star Enif, Epsilon (ε) Town). If you’re much further
Pegasi. If you can find Enif, you can find M15. Since most globulars north of there, stars in the
look like stars with little, fuzzy halos through binos, it’s handy to northern part of the sky will be
have a similarly bright star nearby for comparison. Here again M15 higher and those in the south
obliges: Just a hair to its east is a nearly identically bright field star. lower. If you’re further south,
M15 is one of the most densely packed globular clusters in the
Fa

the reverse is true.

ci

Milky Way. While it spans some 180 light-years edge to edge, more
n

than half of its 100,000 sparkling stars are crammed into a space a –1
mere 10 light-years across. As you contemplate this stellar metropolis, 0
reflect upon the fact that the light you’re now seeing embarked on its ONLINE You can get a real- 1
interstellar journey around 34,000 years ago, when modern humans time sky chart for your location at
2
hunted mammoths in desolate, Ice Age landscapes while sabre- skychart.skyandtelescope.com/
3 Star
toothed cats prowled alongside. skychart.php
4 magnitudes
¢ Globular clusters like M15 make MATT WEDEL feel all warm and fuzzy.

42 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 Fa c i n g N o r t h

R TA
LACE
ANDR 0h
OMED
γ A
M31
+40°
Fa β
NW
ci S
3h β TR U 21h
IA N g
YG

in
NG

c
UL M33 C ε

Fa
UM α δ α β
η
ζ

A
AR α

UL
S
IES PEGASU µ

EC
β

M2
PI +20°

P
SC

UL
ES
α

V
A
γ

TT
γ
γ
5
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S
M1

I
AG
NU
ε

S
I
θ

PH
S

L
EU
λ

DE

ir

γ
Alta
L
UU
0°

M2
α γ

EQ

α
US
M

β
ira

η
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(C AU D A )
T O

SERPENS
U

δ
A
TU
δ

AQ
U
E Q
S β

ILA
τ
ER ID AN US

INUS

–20°
δ

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α
SC

PISCIS

AQ
ut
C
25

UL

Fomalha

AU S T R

Fa c i n g W e s t
M11
β

λ
3

S
α
PT

I CO R N U E
γ

M30
O

C
α
R

L
FORNAX

SCU TUM

η
PH Zenith I
P
O α
EN –40°
CAPR

T
IX
γ

I
γ

C
US

M16
RIU
GR

β
β
θ

ν
I T TA
ε

τ
α

M22
σ

M17
ε

h
α
18
HO

ST NA

Ac
LIS
S AG

he
ζ

α –60° S
RO

r
AU O R O

na
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α D
β
TUCANA
LO
CA

IN

M23
α

ξ
C
GI
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δ
CO

UM

HYD α
M8
RE
α

RUS δ
TIC
LU

DO α UL 47 Tuc
MB

UM
β

Small
VO
UM

β
RA PA
M7

α Magellanic
A
ζ

PI

DO
M6

PI Cloud
O

CT β
SC

O γ –80°
LE

R
λ

30 La
Do
TE

Canop β r Mag rge

US
υ

us ella
θ

ν
Clou nic
PI

α d OCTA NS α
OR

γ
SC
η

VO L A β
AR
τ α ANS α
ε
µ
ζ

π ζ
APUS LU M
σ
NGC
N GU LE
–80° A
2516 TRI STRA A
χ AU β
RM
SW

CHAMA
ELEON
g ε γ US NO
in
IN η
g

γ VE Galaxy
n

SE LA β C IRC c
Fa
ω α
δ Double star
MUSCA α S
ι
υ
CARI α Rigil t ζ PU Variable star
LU
15 h

NA β Ken
ar Open cluster
9

θ Had
12h
h

α β
Diffuse nebula
η Car λ CRUX US
4755 N TAU R Globular cluster
C E
–60° β Planetary nebula

Fa c i n g S o u t h
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 43
 EVENINGS WITH THE STARS by Fred Schaaf
Capricious
Capricornus
This strange zodiacal constellation offers more
than first meets the eye.
A
constellation doesn’t have to
be bright to be interesting. For
instance, there’s Capricornus,
the Sea Goat or Goat-Fish — the
mythological creature’s front half is
goat and its back half is fish. Interesting
indeed! And yet, this mix-and-match
figure’s brightest stars are only of 3rd
magnitude.
Along the zodiac, Capricornus
follows showier Sagittarius, the Archer.
Sagittarius not only has brighter
stars, but it’s also richly endowed
with the glorious central region of
the Milky Way and a host of deep sky
treasures, including 15 Messier objects.
Capricornus, by comparison has just
one Messier — globular cluster M30.
If your sky is light polluted, you
might struggle to locate Capricornus.
However, in November and December
both Jupiter and Saturn visit the
constellation. The bright duo should
make finding it a bit easier.
44 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
The two most prominent star
systems in Capricornus are Alpha
(α) Capricorni (Algiedi) and Beta (β)
Capricorni (Dabih). I say star systems
because both Alpha and Beta Capricorni
are remarkable, wide double stars. Alpha
comprises α1 (magnitude 4.3) and α 2
(magnitude 3.7) about 6½′ apart. Its
stars are similar in brightness and thus
fairly easy to split without optical aid if
you have good vision. Its also a line-of-
sight double, with α 2 at a distance of
109 light-years and α1 about 700 light-
years away.
A little less than 2½° south-
southeast from Alpha is Beta
Capricorni, whose component suns
are just under 3½′ apart. That should
be wide enough for a naked-eye split,
but because one component shines at
magnitude 3.2 and the other at only
magnitude 6.1, you’ll need binoculars to
see both. Unlike Alpha, however, Beta
is a true double, with both stars moving
 CURIOUS CREATURE Shown here is the
zodiacal constellation Capricornus, the Sea
Goat, as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of 32
star-chart cards published in 1824.
through space in tandem. A small
telescope shows the brighter member of
the Beta system as yellow, contrasting
nicely with its blue companion.
The eastern end of Capricornus
is also marked by a pair of stars a
few degrees apart. There you’ll find
magnitude-2.9 Delta (δ) Capricorni
(Deneb Algiedi) and magnitude-3.7
Gamma (γ) Capricorni (Nashira). It was
near Delta that German astronomer
Johann Galle discovered the planet
Neptune in September 1846. At the
time, Neptune was about 5° northeast
of the star. Sadly for the Sea Goat,
if we apply modern constellation
boundaries, Neptune lay just over the
border in neighbouring Aquarius at
the time. But Delta retains a bit of
glory for Capricornus as the brightest
star near where that distant world
was discovered.
What shape does the main pattern
of Capricornus resemble to the modern
eye? Astronomy writer Guy Ottewell
says that of a boat. I’ve thought of a
misshapen half-sandwich, a slightly
twisted origami bird or a bandit’s
bandana. What do you see?
You may not be aware of
Capricornus’s connection with a variety
of English words. To caper is to make
a frolicsome leap like young goats do.
People can be involved in a caper — a
capricious (impulsive, unpredictable)
adventure. In ancient times, the famous
island of Capri was indeed ‘the isle
of goats’. As for the second half of
Capricornus, we all know that unicorn
means ‘one horn,’ but as we move into
LIBR A RY OF CONGRESS / PUBLIC D OM AIN
summer, consider that a cornucopia is a
‘horn of plenty’ (copious being plenty).
All things considered, for such a
faint constellation, Capricornus has
plenty to offer.
¢ FRED SCHAAF welcomes your letters
and comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
 VISTAS

FIERY FORNAX
The Fornax Cluster is a large group of
galaxies about 62 million light-years from
Earth, located mainly in the direction of the
southern constellation Fornax, the Furnace. In
this image of the central portion of the cluster
— made using the VLT Survey Telescope —
the larger of the yellowish-looking elliptical
galaxies at the bottom is NGC 1399, which
lies at the heart of the cluster. The barred-
spiral galaxy at top right is NGC 1365.
ESO/A NIELLO G R A D O/ LUCA LIM ATOL A

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 45
 SUN, MOON & PLANETS by Jonathan Nally
Three planets in a row
Jupiter, Saturn and Venus line up in the evening sky.
A
s we move from spring into
summer, the warmer weather
will make for far more
comfortable stargazing. So there’s
really no excuse for not getting out
and looking up, whether that’s with a
telescope, binoculars or just the unaided
eye. There’s plenty to see, including the
regular goings on of the planets.
The innermost planet, Mercury
(mag. –1.0, dia. 4.7″, Nov. 15) is often
a hard target for observation, usually
to be found close to the horizon and
therefore at the mercy of obstructions
such as hills, trees or buildings. But
obstacles notwithstanding, November
would be a wipe-out for the tiny world
anyway, as Mercury starts the month
only a few degrees above the pre-sunrise
eastern horizon. Very soon lost in
the solar glare as it heads for superior
conjunction (ie. on the other side of the
Sun) on November 29, it will reappear
low on the western horizon after
p Catch Venus before it goes.
46 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
sunset in the second half of December.
Look for Venus just over 4° away on
December 29.
Speaking of Venus (–4.7, 30.6″),
Earth’s sibling has been dominating
the western sky for the last seven
months, but that’s about to change.
Beginning November around 40°
in altitude, it’ll climb a few degrees
higher before starting its slide back
down toward the horizon. By the end
of December it will have become lost in
the sunset glare as it aims for inferior
conjunction (between Earth and the
Sun) on January 8. Look for a couple
of nice conjunctions with the Moon
on November 8 (2° separation) and
December 7 (5°).
Mars (1.6, 3.7″) has been missing in
action for the past few months, having
been around on the other side of the
Sun. In early November it will reappear
extremely low above the eastern horizon
just before sunrise, very slowly climbing
p Three bright planets together.
higher as the days pass. On January 1,
2022, there’ll be a fantastic viewing
opportunity as the Moon occults (ie.
passes in front of) the Red Planet. The
event will be visible for those in far
southern NSW, Victoria, far south-
eastern South Australia and all of
Tasmania. Observers elsewhere will see
a very close conjunction (we’re talking
single-figure arcminutes here) between
the planet and the northern edge of the
Moon. We’ll have more about this event
in our next issue.
Jupiter (–2.4, 40.3″) begins
November very high in the north-
west after sunset, unmistakable in its
brilliance. As the weeks pass, the giant
planet will slowly sink lower in the sky.
Now several months past opposition,
Jupiter is diminishing in size too — at
opposition it was 49 arcseconds but by
the end of December it will have shrunk
to 36. The Moon and Jupiter will appear
close together on November 11 and
p Mars and the Moon meet on January 1.

December 9, and if you take a look on
December 4, you’ll see Jupiter, Saturn
and Venus in a straight line with equal
distance between them.
Like Jupiter, Saturn (0.7, 16.4″) is
in the north-west but somewhat lower
down. The ringed world is a fantastic
sight through even the smallest of
telescopes. Having reached quadrature
not long ago (September 30), there’ll
still be a fine view of the planet’s
shadow cast upon its rings. It gives it a
real 3D effect.
Uranus (5.7, 3.8″) reaches opposition
on November 5, rising in the east as the
Sun is setting in the west, and therefore
visible all night long. You can easily spot
it with binoculars, although it’ll look
just like another ‘star’. But a telescope
at high magnification will reveal its pale
disk. See page 37 for a finder chart and
more details.
Neptune (7.9, 2.3″) is located high in
the north-western sky after sunset, and
on December 2 will end five months of
retrograde motion.
Finally, the Earth will reach
the southern summer solstice on
December 22. On this day, the Sun is at
its most southerly declination (-23.5°)
and the hours of daylight are longest.
SKY PHENOMENA
NOVEMBER
1 2 Pallas stationary
5 Uranus at opposition
6 Moon 7° north-west of Antares
8 Venus 2° south-west of the Moon
10 Saturn 5° north-east of the Moon
11 Jupiter 6° north-east of the Moon
18 8P/Tuttle 1.5° north-east of ω Cen
20 Moon 7° north of Aldebaran
22 Mars 0.4° west of Spica
27 Moon 7° north-west of Regulus
27 Ceres at opposition
29 Mercury in superior conjunction
Six showers to see
There’s no excuse to not see some meteors
M
eteor watchers are spoiled in
November and December, with
six showers to choose from.
Let’s start with the Northern
Taurids, which is the companion half of
the Southern Taurids seen in October.
The northern part of the duo is active
from October 20 to December 10, with
a peak on November 12. This shower
produces slow-moving but often bright
meteors, sometimes with fireballs. This
year the night of maximum will be
somewhat affected by light from the
crescent Moon.
Next is the Leonids, which famously
peaks every 33 years with a meteor
storm (the last such year was 2001).
This shower, associated with comet 55P/
Tempel-Tuttle, is active from November
6 to 30 with maximum occurring on
the morning of the 18th. Normally you
might expect to see perhaps 20 meteors
per hour from a dark site, but light from
the full Moon will degrade that to about
10 per hour this year.
Also in November is a small shower
called the Alpha Monocerotids, which
is briefly active from the 15th to 25th
with a maximum on the 21st. The
International Meteor Organisation
(imo.net) notes that rates are
DECEMBER
1 Moon 8° north of Spica
2 Neptune stationary
3 Mars 4° south-east of the Moon
7 Venus 5° west of the Moon
8 Saturn 5° north-west of the Moon
9 Jupiter 4° north-west of the Moon
17 Moon 7° north-west of Aldebaran
22 Solstice
25 Moon 7° north-east Regulus
27 Mars 5° north of Antares
29 Moon 7° north-east of Spica
29 Venus 4° north of Mercury
METEORS
‘variable,’ with the Moon to affect
viewing this year.
Moving into December, the
Phoenicids is a minor and unpredictable
shower active from November 28
to December 9 with maximum on
December 2. Again, the IMO lists the
rates as variable. This shower is best
viewed in the hours after dusk, as the
radiant is highest not long after sunset.
The Puppid-Velids are one of the best
southern showers of the year, deep in
the southern part of the sky. Active from
December 1 to 15, this shower is actually
composed of multiple radiants spread
across a fairly large area of sky. You can
expect to see perhaps 10 meteors per
hour from a dark site on the morning
of peak activity, December 8. The Moon
will not be a hindrance this year.
Last but not least is the Geminids, a
very reliable shower that often produces
rates of up to 150 meteors per hour.
Although Gemini is in the northern
sky, we can still usually see many fine
meteors here at southern latitudes. The
shower is active from December 4 to 20
with a peak overnight on the 13–14th.
The Moon’s light will initially interfere
with viewing, but from around 2:00am
onwards it will be gone.
LUNAR PHENOMENA
NOVEMBER
New Moon …… 4th, 21:15 UT
First Quarter …… 11th, 12:46 UT
Full Moon …… 19th, 08:57 UT
Last Quarter …… 27th, 12:28 UT
Perigee …… 5th, 22h UT, 358,844 km
Apogee …… 21st, 02h UT, 406,279 km
DECEMBER
New Moon …… 4th, 07:43 UT
First Quarter …… 11th, 01:36 UT
Full Moon …… 19th, 04:35 UT
Last Quarter …… 27th, 02:24 UT
Perigee …… 4th, 10h UT, 356,794 km
Apogee …… 18th, 02h UT, 406,320 km
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 47
 COMETS by David Seargent
A bright comet
for Christmas?
C/2021 A1 Leonard could reach magnitude 6 as the year closes.
A
s mentioned in the previous
issue, the ‘Rosetta comet’ 67P/
Churyumov-Gerasimenko
will reach perihelion on November
2 at 1.21 a.u. (180 million km) from
the Sun. This year’s apparition is a
rather favourable one, with the comet
beginning November in Gemini at a
predicted magnitude of 9 or thereabouts
— well within the range of large
binoculars. By the end of the second
week of the month, it will enter the
faint constellation Cancer where it will
remain throughout the period, slowly
fading to around magnitude 10 by the
close of the year.
This comet will be joined by another
well-known object of short period in
December. Comet 19P/Borrelly will
reach perihelion on February 1, 2022,
at a distance of 1.31 a.u. (196 million
km) from the Sun. This will be a near
48 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
The Rosetta mission gave
us amazing close-up
views of 67P.
repeat of the favourable apparition of
1981, during which the comet became
brighter than magnitude 9 and was
accidentally ‘discovered’ by veteran
comet hunter, Bill Bradfield of Adelaide.
Early December will see 19P at the
boundary of Grus and Sculptor at a
predicted brightness of approximately
magnitude 10. During most of
December the comet crosses Sculptor,
entering Cetus on the 23rd as it slowly
brightens to around magnitude 9 by the
end of the year.
In December we can also expect to
see two long-period comets come within
the visual range of small telescopes.
The first of these is the rather remote
object C/2019 L3 (ATLAS). Discovered
by the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Alert
System, Hawaii, on June 10, 2019, at
magnitude 18, this comet will reach
perihelion at 3.55 a.u. (530 million
km) from the Sun on January 9, 2022.
Beginning December in Lynx, it will
pass into Gemini mid-month when it
will be located in the vicinity of the
star Castor. It is expected to brighten
only slowly, from around 10.5 at the
beginning of December to 10.3 by
month’s end.
The second long-period comet that
is expected to glide into view for small
telescopes during December is C/2021
A1 (Leonard). This object was found by
Gregory Leonard at the Mount Lemmon
Observatory, Arizona, on January
3, 2021, as a diffuse object of 19th
magnitude, sporting a short, broad tail.
Pre-discovery images were subsequently
found dating back to April 2020. At the
time of its ‘official’ discovery, the comet
was exactly one year from its perihelion
passage at 0.62 a.u. (93 million km)
from the Sun on January 3, 2022.
C/2021 A1 will pass our planet at a
distance of just 0.23 a.u. (34 million
km) on December 12, although at that
time it will not be visible from mid-
southern latitudes. Observers at the
very top end of Australia may be able
to spot it deep in the morning twilight
early in the month. For those at the
latitudes of Sydney and Canberra, the
first real opportunity will be just after
mid-month when it will emerge very
low in the evening twilight. On the
evening of December 18 it will appear
close to Venus. This is not just a line of
sight effect as on that date the comet
will indeed pass a mere 0.023 a.u. (3.5
million km) from our sister planet!
Crossing from Sagittarius into
Microscopium on December 20, C/2021
A1 will become higher in the sky and
will also benefit from the exit of the
 Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will be
at magnitude 9 in Gemini as November opens.

S C/2021 A1 was a small fuzzball with a tiny
tail when photographed in June. It could reach
magnitude 6 in December.
Moon from the early evening. What its
actual brightness will be is very difficult
to predict, but based on available
estimates and assuming an ‘average’
light curve slope for comets of this
type, a magnitude of 6 to 7 seems likely
on the 18th, fading to about 8 by the
year’s end. That’s because although the
comet is still approaching perihelion,
the expected intrinsic rise in brightness
is over-compensated by its movement
away from Earth. It should, however,
become more compact and condensed
as it draws closer to the Sun.
There is, nevertheless, a possible
wildcard in the evolution of its
brightness. Throughout mid-December,
C/2021 A1 will be at high phase angles
(i.e. the Earth-Comet-Sun angle will
be large). At large phase angles, dust
particles are known to forward scatter
sunlight (the same effect enables us to
see airborne thistle down and spider
webs passing in front of the Sun on a
clear day). So, should the comet be a
‘dusty’ one, this will result in a noticeable
increase in its brightness at that time.
The maximum phase angle will be
67P & C/2021 A1: M. JAG ER / ROSE T TA 67P: ESA /ROSE T TA / N AVCA M
160° on December 14 when, however,
the comet will be deep in twilight. By
the 18th the phase angle will be 137°
but will decrease to 105° by Christmas
night. So the effect (if it occurs) will
therefore be relatively brief. And if the
comet is predominantly a gaseous one,
any such brightening effect will be too
slight to be noticeable.
■ DAVID SEARGENT’S book Weird
Comets and Asteroids is available in
paperback and as an e-book.
Into the heart of Orion
Here are just a few of the hundreds of variables in this region.
t’s sometimes said that astronomical
I seeing can be judged by how many
stars can be seen in the Trapezium
Cluster in the heart of the Orion
Nebula. But as we will see, this is not a
good idea.
The Trapezium, aka Theta1 Orionis,
is the powerhouse that lights much of
the surrounding nebula. All four of the
brightest components of Theta1 Ori
— A, B, C and D — along with Theta2
Ori A, B and C, are both multiple and
variable. In fact, on the chart on this
page, every star bar two is variable. Even
with the limiting magnitude of 11.5
there are hundreds of variables omitted
from this chart.
The Theta stars have given rise to
their own class, type IN, the Orion
variables. For example, V361 Ori
(Theta2 Ori C) is classified INSA. IN
refers to irregular, eruptive young
objects, connected with bright or dark
nebulosity. INS means the star has rapid
light variations up to one magnitude
by Alan Plummer VARIABLE STARS
W Theta1 Orionis
is located 05h
35m 16.15s, –05°
23′ 06.5″. This
chart (courtesy of
the AAVSO) is 20
arcminutes square
and shows stars
down to magnitude
11.5. Empty circles
are variables that
can brighten to
that level or more.
Many hundreds
of variables are
omitted for clarity.
North is up, east
is left.
over 1 to 10 days. And INSA means
observed in nebulosity. V361 Ori is
of spectral type B5V and ranges from
magnitude 8.16 to 8.29, with no regular
period. Almost all of the stars shown
here are of similar type.
If I were to choose one target to
observe visually (if any excuse were
needed to study this most famous
field), I would select T Ori. This star is
an UXOR, a subgroup of young stellar
objects currently mixed in with the IN
class, with a range of amplitudes from
barely detectable to more than four
magnitudes. Most are also Herbig Ae/Be
stars (look it up).
T Ori varies from magnitude 9.5
to 12.6 in an irregular fashion and is
eminently suited for larger binoculars
or small telescopes. You can generate
and download a detailed chart from the
AAVSO website (aavso.org).
■ ALAN PLUMMER can be contacted
at Alan123604@live.com.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 49
 EXPLORING THE MOON by Charles A. Wood
Getting groovy on the Moon
Understanding the origins of these fine lunar features can enhance your observing experience.
L
unar rilles, or rimae, are long,
narrow trenches that often go
unnoticed at the telescope. In the
late 1680s, Dutch astronomer Christiaan
Huygens detected the features later
named Schröter’s Valley and Rima
Hyginus. About 120 years later, German
observer Johann Schröter rediscovered
the valley that bears his name today and
included it in his catalogue of 11 linear
depressions that he called ‘rilles,’ the
German word for grooves.
Understanding their origins starts by
noting that rilles have three different
morphologies and distributions. In
general, the biggest and easiest to see
are linear rilles. The widest and deepest
on the Moon is Rima Ariadaeus,
found west of Mare Serenitatis. This
rille measures 4.5 kilometres wide, 425
metres deep and 245 km long. Apollo 10
astronauts photographed an oblique view
of the Ariadaeus Rille (see above), which
beautifully illustrates that hills are
down-dropped when pierced by a rille —
the rille floor must have subsided. The
parallel sides of the rille have smooth,
sloping surfaces — characteristics
geologists recognise as belonging to
fault scarps. Linear rilles are graben
— a German term meaning ‘ditch’ or
50 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
‘trench,’ which refers to fault-bounded
trenches that cut pre-existing terrain.
Rima Sirsalis, is 3.5 km wide, 300
metres deep and about 450 km long and
cuts through highlands and Orientale
ejecta east and south of its patronymic
crater. Rima Hesiodus, along the
southern edge of Mare Nubium, is
also 350 m wide, but only 100 m
deep and 260 km long. Rima Sirsalis
extends roughly north to south and is
conspicuous when the terminator is
nearby due to the long, dark shadow
cast by the rille’s eastern wall. Rima
Hesiodus runs more east to west, so
sunlight often shines along it, revealing
its flat, depressed floor.
The Parry Rilles (Rimae Parry)
south of Copernicus provide clues
to the origin of linear rilles. These
linear features are the remnants of
five or more rilles that intrude into
the old craters Parry, Bonpland and
Fra Mauro. One rille that cuts the rim
between Bonpland and Frau Mauro has
a line of minute volcanic cones along
its western edge. The cones support the
interpretation that linear rilles are the
surface manifestation of dikes — near
vertical sheets of magma that rose
through the lunar crust and erupted
Rima Ariadaeus as seen from
the Apollo 10 spacecraft
the lavas that formed maria. Those
dikes that didn’t erupt onto the surface
produced great stress that exerted an
extensional force in the rocks above
them. This in turn created parallel
faults and collapsed the ribbon of land
between to form a rille.
A number of long linear rilles cross
the highlands facing the western shore
of Oceanus Procellarum. Rima Sirsalis
and the rilles west of Gassendi, near
Grimaldi, and east of Galvani, are all
approximately radial to the Imbrium
Basin, indicating that they’re linked to
the tectonic forces associated with the
basin.
A second type of rille looks very
much like the linear version but is
concentric to impact basins. Among
the most conspicuous and beautiful
examples is Rimae Hippalus — three
rilles near the eastern edge of Mare
Humorum. These didn’t form over
dikes but by the flexure created when
the stable Humorum lavas near the
basin’s edge fractured as the centre of
the mare subsided due to the weight
of its thick pile of lavas. A similar but
smaller concentric pattern of rilles is
found around the southern and eastern
N ASA
margins of the Serenitatis Basin. A
 much less conspicuous concentric rille 3,400-km-wide Procellarum Basin you can consider whether or not a
system along the western shore of Mare that covers the area between Oceanus particular one formed hot or cold.
Tranquillitatis marks the region of Procellarum and Mare Serenitatis. The Sinuous rilles formed entirely by
maximum bending/fracturing where PKT also contains the Moon’s highest volcanic processes — hot lava flowing
the Tranquillitatis lavas subsided. concentration of radioactive thorium, downhill in channels or lava tubes.
The third and most common type of which may explain why so much Upward pressure of magma in dikes
narrow depression is the sinuous rille. volcanism occurs in the region. causing parallel faulting and the collapse
These have meandering, curving shapes The meandering curves of sinuous of cold, near-surface rocks created linear
not unlike many terrestrial rivers. rilles reveal that they were formed by rilles. Concentric rilles formed without
Sinuous rilles occur on mare lavas, flowing fluid. Thermal erosion from any volcanic input when cold surface
though some, like Rima Hadley, start flowing lava deepens a surface lava rocks fractured due to bending at the
in small, deep pits in the mountainous channel and plucks out chunks of edges of subsiding maria.
terrains bordering maria. The Hadley underlying lava layers.
Rille is 144 km long, 1.2 km wide and Now that you’re familiar with all ¢ Contributing Editor CHUCK WOOD
220 m deep, and is the only rille visited three types of rilles, as you examine witnessed the formation of a rille during
by Apollo astronauts. these features through your telescope a volcanic eruption in Hawai‘i.
Debra Hurwitz (then Brown
University) and colleagues assembled
a comprehensive survey of sinuous
rilles using data from NASA’s Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter and JAXA’s
Kaguya spacecraft. She tabulated 194
sinuous mare rilles and determined the
median dimensions for these features
as 33 km long, 480 m wide and 49 m
deep. The fact that the median values
are so tiny indicates that many sinuous
rilles are smaller than can be detected
telescopically. Hurwitz’s invaluable rille
atlas is available at https://is.gd/rilles.
The biggest sinuous rille is Schröter’s
Valley. It starts at the informally
named Cobra Head, a 2-km-tall conical
volcano topped with an 11-km-wide,
1.6-km-deep pit. The first third of the
valley consists of two fairly straight Rimae Hippalus
segments but then continues on with
sinuous bends for a total length of 145
km. Over its length, the rille’s width
Rima Hadley Schröter’s Valley
decreases from 11 km at the Cobra
Head to 2.5 km at its end. A very thin,
sinuous, inner rille extends a further 40
km, reaching the surrounding mare.
Hurwitz also found that nearly
half of all sinuous rilles occur in
Oceanus Procellarum, concentrated
around the Aristarchus Plateau and the
N ASA / A RIZON A STATE UNIV ERSIT Y (3)

Marius Hills — two major centres of

volcanism. In fact, nearly all sinuous
rilles are within the geologically distinct
Procellarum-KREEP Terrain (known
as PKT with K standing for Potassium,
REE being rare earth elements and P
representing phosphorus). This terrain
geographically coincides with a proposed

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 51
 GOING DEEP by Ivan Maly

The odd world

of peculiar galaxies
Galaxies with singular features present intriguing views through the eyepiece.

“E
very galaxy is peculiar.” So there. This is where Arp’s catalogue Take the plunge
wrote Halton Arp in the can come to the rescue. With the Start in eastern Pisces and slew a
introduction to his pioneering advent of more affordable, large- little more than 4° southeast of
work, Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1966), aperture telescopes, amateurs began Epsilon (ε) Piscium to find Arp 164
specifying, “when looked at closely to observe these often-faint Arp (NGC 455). Arp listed this object in
enough.” At the time, Arp was working galaxies systematically. As with other his Atlas as an example of a galaxy
at the largest telescope in the world — challenging deep sky objects, dark “with diffuse filaments.” Images reveal
the 200-inch at Palomar. skies can be at least as important, if a highly perturbed galactic structure
Arp’s mentor, Edwin Hubble, had not more so, than telescope aperture dominated by an elongated core and
famously classified galaxies into when striving to see all i intersecting strands
various subsets, depending on their objects in the Atlas. -forming material.
Arp 121
elongation and how tightly their arms High magnification is (10′, 360×) e of these strands is
(if present) wound around the core. An essential for discerning articularly bright,
ever-increasing body of data, however, the details of the and I saw it through
suggested that galaxies not conforming peculiarities of these my 50-cm telescope
to this classification system abounded galaxies, as are finder (which I used for
in the universe. Moreover, deep charts for guiding all the observations
photographs showed unexpected — and you to their locations. detailed here) from
odd — details in familiar and seemingly Let’s take a look at
orderly galaxies. a sample of targets from  SKETCHES
AT THE EYEPIECE The
Arp obtained hours-long the Atlas — hopefully ngs (all north up) represent
photographic exposures of these distant this selection will whet e view as seen through the
“island universes” (as 18th-century appetite for these space oddities. author’s 50-cm scope.
philosopher Immanuel Kant described
galaxies) that revealed subtle structural
features in many of them. He used
these details to expand upon his The peculiar set
mentor’s original classification scheme.
Arp subsequently compiled a list of Surface
galaxies with unusual morphologies, Arp No. Object Brightness Mag(v) Size RA Dec.
in what eventually became the Atlas 164 NGC 455 13.4 12.7 1.9′ × 1.2′ 01h 16.0m +05° 11′
of Peculiar Galaxies. The astrophysical
121 MCG-1-3-51 13.8 13.7 2.1′ × 0.6′ 00h 59.4m –04° 48′
interpretation of these peculiarities
has changed — in many cases quite 121 MCG-1-3-52 12.8 14.1 0.6′ × 0.6′ 00h 59.4m –04° 48′
dramatically — since the time of that 100 IC 18 14.0 14.6 1.1′ × 0.6′ 00h 28.6m –11° 35′
seminal publication, but nevertheless 100 IC 19 13.8 14.1 1.0′ × 0.7′ 00h 28.7m –11° 38′
galaxies from Arp’s catalogue continue 133 NGC 541 13.2 12.1 1.8′ × 1.7′ 01h 25.7m –01° 23′
to attract the attention of professional
308 NGC 545 13.5 12.2 2.4′ × 1.6′ 01h 26.0m –01° 20′
astronomers.
Seeing any level of detail in a galaxy 308 NGC 547 12.7 12.2 1.3′ × 1.3′ 01h 26.0m –01° 21′
visually using amateur telescopes can 230 IC 51 13.2 12.8 1.5′ × 1.1′ 00h 46.4m –13° 26′
be a challenge. However, any observer 126 UGC 1449 12.5 13.3 1.1′ × 0.5′ 01h 58.1m +03° 05′
who has mastered the art might soon Visually, an object’s size is often smaller than the catalogued value and varies according to the aperture
begin to wonder if so-called grand- and magnification of the viewing instrument. Right ascension and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
design spirals are the only ones out

52 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 a dark location. The segment lying
north of the nucleus is especially
pronounced and could be an excellent
target for telescopes in the 40-cm
class under good conditions. Use high
magnification of around 300× to tease
out this luminous finger from the glow
of the galactic nucleus. Gravitational
interactions with other members of the
galaxy group Mahtessian 16 might be
responsible for NGC 455’s disturbed
structure. The closest galaxy in the field
of view is PGC 4583, which lies a bit
more than 3½′ east of NGC 455, but I
couldn’t detect it through my 50-cm.
Snagging Arp 121, a pair of galaxies
in Cetus, is a challenge — not surprising
given that its original designation is
MCG-1-3-51/52. However, should you
be able to catch it, you’ll see
the beautiful details it
Arp 126
presents through the (10′, 570×)
eyepiece. Look for the
field a little less than
6° north-northwest
of Eta (η) Ceti. The
more compact galaxy
(PGC 3553) appears
to distort the larger
of the pair (PGC 3547)
— the latter’s core is at
an angle to the major axiis,
and the equatorial dust lane
undulates across the twisted disc. Under
excellent conditions, I saw the large
galaxy as a sharp edge-on with a distinct
core. Warping wasn’t noticeable as such,
but an enormous flare extends from
the southern end. This flaring feature
corresponds to the farthest extension of
the warped disk. I needed a magnification and the much fainter Minkowski’s
of 360× to detect this peripheral region,
SK E TCHES: IVA N M A LY (3); A RP 10 0: JUDY SCHMIDT / CC BY 2.0
of how the brain interpreets
Arp 164
what the eye sees, (7′, 360×)
especially when gauging
the dimensions of a
fainter feature next
to a brighter one. In
fact, images show
that the tail is fairly
uniform as it stretches
northeast from IC 18.
At magnitude 12.1, on ne
of the easier objects to baag
in Arp’s Atlas is Arp 133 ((N C
541). Look for it 6¾° almost due north
of Theta (θ) Ceti. It’s classified as a
transitional object between an elliptical
and a lenticular and is also a member of
the galaxy cluster Abell 194, which lies
at a distance of some 240 million light-
years.
years Arp described NGC 541
as an “elliptical with nearby
fraggments”. In fact,
im
mages reveal several
ssmall smudges lying
on the northeastern SS ARP 164 Also known as NGC 455, this
Arp specimen in Pisces is a prime example of
outskirts of the a peculiar galaxy. Like many objects in Arp’s
galaxy’s halo. We Atlas, NGC 455’s messy look is likely due to a
now know that two close encounter with another galaxy.
of
o these are galaxies
inn the line of sight, but ARP 100 This Hubble Space Telescope
image captured the northern of the two
nestled between them is
tails of IC 18. Its companion, IC 19, is
a third d one that’s physically outside the field of view. The spiral at
associated with NGC 541. the bottom is a 2MASS object.
Astronomers suggest that Minkowski’s
Object, as it’s known, is a region of
starbursts triggered by a radio jet
emanating from NGC 541. Through
my scope I could see the brighter of the
line-of-sight galaxies immediately east
of the core of NGC 541, PGC 86298,
Object. The latter appeared similar in

which looks almost separated from the size to PGC 86298 but in comparison
main disk in that view. lacked concentration,
Around 3½° southeast of Iota (ι) while its edges were Arp 100
Ceti, you’ll find Arp 100 (IC 18/19). The tolerably well-defined. (10′, 360×)
northern galaxy (IC 18) consists of a At magnifications
small, elongated core and two very long exceeding 500×, a
tails. One of the tails extends in the wide gap separates
general direction of nearby IC 19, the this pair of “dust
component to the south. I could only motes” from
see the brighter, northern tail, which NGC 541, and a
appeared hanging by a thread but which 17th-magnitude star is
widened as it extended farther from the situated a bit farther to
galaxy’s core. However, this is a trick the northeast.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 53
 GOING DEEP
A duo of pairs
Staying in Cetus, just 4.3′ northeast
of NGC 541, we come to the close pair
of Arp 308 (NGC 545/547). They’re
listed in the Atlas as an example of a
double galaxy. NGC 545, an unbarred
lenticular galaxy, appears to cradle
NGC 547, a nearly spherical elliptical.
At first, I took the ‘cradling’ to be
another eye-brain response, but deep
survey images show this effect as well.
William Herschel discovered the duo in
October 1785, and they’re easy to see
through a modern amateur telescope.
Arp 230 (IC 51) is a near-twin of
NGC 545/547: a semicircular form
embracing a nebulous knot. In reality,
however, this object is a single, isolated
galaxy in which we are observing a ring
of star formation orientated almost
edge-on with the galaxy’s nucleus
peeking over the rim. Images (such as
the one at right) show an extensive halo
terminating in a series of segments. This
galaxy is located a little more than 4½°
north of Beta (β) Ceti and is listed in
the Atlas as a representative of the group
with the peculiarity of “concentric
rings”. The outer rings remained
invisible through my telescope, although
X ARP 230 A long-ago collision with another galaxy likely gave Arp 230 its
irregular shape. Its outer ring — the site of ongoing star formation — rotates
over the poles of the galaxy.
54 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
W ARP 133 NGC 541 has a curious clustering of galaxies to its upper left,
seemingly just beyond its halo. While the outermost two are likely line-of-sight
coincidences, the middle of the trio is called Minkowski’s Object. It’s a young galaxy,
A RP 133: SOLO M ON / CC BY 2.0; SK E TCHES: IVA N M A LY (2); A RP 230: ESA / HUBBLE / N ASA / ACK NOWLEDG EMEN T: FLICK R USER DE T58
and researchers believe that the observed star formation was triggered by a radio jet
emanating from NGC 541.
(magnitudes 15 and 18) flank the main
agglomeration of knots.
Chasing the whole collection of
targets listed in the Atlas of Peculiar
Galaxies is a wonderfully engrossing
way to pass time under the stars.
You’re sure to come across some of the
stranger sights in the universe, ranging
from odd, little-known features in some
of the brighter galaxies to truly elusive
targets. Don’t let the challenges that
mark many of the objects listed in the
Atlas deter you — dare, instead, to set
Arp 133 and 308
(10′, 570×) out with your telescope to explore the
realm of peculiar galaxies.
„ IVAN MALY’S observations can be
at high magnification the central found at www.deepskyblog.net.
structure is quite robust.
FURTHER MATERIAL For an online
Finishing in the fish version of Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar
Returning to Pisces — the easternmost Galaxies, go to https://is.gd/ArpCat .
part of the constellation, about Finder charts and images for the targets
halfway between Alpha (α) and Xi discussed here are at https://is.gd/
(ξ) Piscium — we find the strongly ArpCharts.
interacting galaxy pair Arp 126 (UGC
1449). Using my scope at very high
magnification from a dark, elevated
location reveals a wealth of fine detail,
making it a fitting object with which
to conclude our survey. The compact
western component, PGC 7415, exhibits
a broken ring of star-forming regions
around its nucleus, but this feature is
far too small to be seen visually. The
larger, low surface brightness eastern
component (Mrk 582) consists of little
more than scattered knots of
star formation. I couldd see
four of these knots, Arp 230
including what passes (10′, 360× and 570×)
for a core, through
my scope at 570×,
each showing a
different brightness
and shape.
Two field stars
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www.skyandtelescope.com.au 55
 FORENSIC OBSERVING by Steve Gottlieb

Meet the
Neighbours The Sagittarius
Dwarf Spheroidal
Family

ESA / H U B B LE / N ASA

56 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 Our Milky Way has torn a nearby galaxy to shreds. Find out how you can observe its remnants.
WE’VE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME that big galaxies grow
by cannibalising little galaxies, and their eating habits are
quite messy. As they feast, they fling their scraps across the
sky, forming immense stellar streams. In 1994, the team of
Rodrigo Ibata, Mike Irwin and Gerry Gilmore (Institute of
Astronomy at Cambridge University in the UK) discovered
a vivid example of life at the galactic dinner table. During a
spectroscopic study of the Milky Way’s central bulge, they
noticed a group of stars moving together at a uniform velocity
in a field of random motions. They had stumbled across our
nearest neighbour, the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.
The Milky Way’s strong gravitational grip is a relentless
force of demolition. The shredded debris of the dwarf
spheroidal is strung across the sky in two tidal tails that
form a prominent substructure in the galactic halo called
the Sagittarius Stream. Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
photometry first revealed this feature in 2002, and a study
of M-giant halo stars in the Two Micron All-Sky Survey
(2MASS) catalogue confirmed it. The leading and trailing
tails of the stream wrap over 360° in looping rosettes around
the Milky Way in a nearly vertical polar orbit, as shown in
the diagram below. Astronomers refer to the primary wraps as
L (leading) and T (trailing), while M represents the remnant
core and its associated objects.
The Milky Way has grown via mergers with several dwarf
galaxies, accreting stars, dark matter and globular clusters
in the process. Each dwarf stellar population has a unique
W SNATCHED AWAY The Milky Way ripped globular cluster Palomar
12 from its former host galaxy some 1.7 billion years ago. The cluster
nevertheless still resides at a distance of around 60,000 light-years from
the Solar System in the direction of the constellation Capricornus.
SHREDS OF A FORMER
GALAXY The Sagittarius
Stream wraps itself around
our own Milky Way and
consists of tidally stripped
stars from our nearest
neighbour. Multiple close
encounters in the past few
billion years formed this
structure. The diagram
shows the locations of
globular and open clusters
in the starry trails, as well Berkeley 29
Saurer 1
as the position of the T
remnant core.
DAVID L AW
chemical signature, helping astronomers trace their streams
across the sky. After the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
stream, the largest are the Gaia-Enceladus, Sequoia, Koala
and Helmi Streams — and a newly identified High-Energy
Group. A 2019 study (lead author Davide Massari, University
of Groningen) concluded that 35% of all Milky Way globulars
may be associated with these merger events.
The discovery of these streams, along with data from the
astrometric mission Gaia, has opened up a new research field
in galactic archaeology that provides valuable information
for astronomers piecing together the assembly history of our
Milky Way Galaxy. This difficult job requires precise stellar
measurements of location, age, kinematics and chemistry.
The Sagittarius Dwarf provides a unique laboratory to study a
galactic merger in detail.
At the beginning of its life, the youthful Sagittarius Dwarf
was the most massive of numerous spheroidal dwarf satellites
of the Milky Way. It has orbited our galaxy with periods
ranging from 550 to 950 million years perhaps as many as
10 times during its billions of years as our hostage. During
these orbits the Sagittarius Dwarf elbowed its way through
the Milky Way, guided largely by its own massive body of
dark matter. For the past 1.8 billion years it looped over the
galactic north and south poles, and last punched through the
disk 500 to 800 million years ago when it lost the last of its
remaining gas.
A 2011 computer simulation suggests the last collision
dramatically impacted the Milky Way, triggering the
emergence of spiral arms and outer arcs or rings. More recent
simulations show that that crossing also rocked our galaxy,
initiating vertical oscillations with stellar velocities that
L
NGC 5634
Milky Way
Sun disk
Direction of motion
M
Sgr. core
Palomar 12
Whiting 1
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 57
 FORENSIC OBSERVING

 NOT ONE OF OUR OWN Charles Messier discovered M54 in 1778,

but it wasn’t until 1994 that astronomers realised that the globular cluster
didn’t originate in the Milky Way but was in fact formerly a member of
another galaxy. At 85,000 to 90,000 light-years distant, M54 is more than
three times farther away than our Sun is from the centre of the Milky Way.

 BY THE HANDLE Begin your perusal of targets in the Sagittarius

Stream below the familiar figure of the Teapot.

σ
SAGITTARIUS φ
2 τ

Star magnitudes
3
4
5 Arp 2 M54
ζ
6 M55 –30°
Wray 16-423
7
8 HD 181109 M70 M69

Terzan 8
Hen 2-436
HD 180420
HD 183997
Terzan 7 –35°
6723
γ
19h 30m α 19h 00m CRA

CORE GROUP Use this image

HD 182681
56 as a guide to the general
Arp 2 location of the clutch of objects
HD 183925 associated with the Sagittarius
67 Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy’s
remnant core. Detailed finders
M55 HD 183216 are at https://is.gd/SgrFinders.
HD 183799 71
67

Wray 16-423

M54: ESA / HUBBLE / N ASA; WIDE-FIELD FINDER: POSS-II / STSCI / CA LTECH / PA LO M A R OBSERVATORY
HD 181109

HD 183997
69
HD 180420
83
Terzan 8
Hen 2-436
HD 180336
85

Terzan 7

58 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 correlate with motion along the galactic plane. This created
a snail-shell pattern known as a ‘phase spiral’ seen in Gaia
data (Data Release 2). The Sagittarius Dwarf is on course to
plunge through the disk again in another 50 million years.
Today the dwarf’s tidally distended remnant core is
60,000 light-years from the Milky Way’s centre and 80,000
light-years from Earth. This gas-stripped region is still more
or less intact and forms an ill-defined oval patch spreading
15° by 7° in south-central Sagittarius. The well-known
globular cluster M54 sits squarely at the oval’s centre,
and researchers suggest the globular might be the dwarf’s
disjointed nucleus.
But why did our next-door neighbour stay hidden until
1994? For one, the Sagittarius Dwarf lies behind the galactic
bulge on the far side of the plane of the disk (22,000 light-
years below it, in fact). Light from the dwarf’s core has to
cross the dust of five spiral arms and the galactic bar before
reaching us. Making matters worse, as the remnant galaxy’s
starlight angles upward in our direction, it threads its way
past more and more stars along its path. The combined
light from these stars confuses all but the highest-precision
instruments.
The family crew
TER Z A N 7: N ASA / ESA / A . SA R A JEDINI (UNIV ERSIT Y OF FLORIDA); ACK NOWLEDG EMEN T: GILLES CH A PDEL AINE; TER Z A N 8: FA BIA N RRRR / CC BY-SA 3.0
Although you can’t directly observe or image the Sagittarius
Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and its filamentary streams, you
can explore several of its current and former residents. Soon
after the Stream’s discovery, Ibata and colleagues linked four
globular clusters to it: M54 (as mentioned earlier), Terzan 7,
Terzan 8 and Arp 2. Also, the planetary nebulae Hen 2-436
 THE YOUNG AND THE OLD Left: At around 8 billion years, Terzan 7 is unusually young for a globular cluster — most of the Milky Way’s halo
globulars clock in at an average of 12 billion years, making them some of the oldest objects in the universe. Right: Like most of the other globular
clusters associated with the Sagittarius Stream, Terzan 8 is very old and very distant.
and Wray 16-423 are still under its gravitational influence
and are considered bona fide members. Except for M54, these
are scattered around the eastern outskirts of the distended
core and will eventually disperse due to the fluctuating
gravitational tides of the Milky Way’s spiral arms.
You’ll need a dark, transparent sky and at least a 30-cm
telescope to successfully observe these objects. I used
an 47-cm reflector from high-elevation sites. Deep sky
enthusiasts will enjoy the challenge of tracking down these
tough targets, but the thrill is their extragalactic pedigree.
Globular clusters
Let’s visit the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy’s globular
cluster family in order of difficulty. M54 is the second most
massive globular after Omega Centauri, and by far the most
luminous of the dwarf’s quartet. Deep photometry reveals
at least three stellar populations with different ages and
metallicities, indicating a complex star-formation history.
Based on its location and radial velocity, astronomers
once assumed M54 was the core of the stripped dwarf. More
recent studies show the globular is embedded in a separate
stellar nucleus of metal-rich stars with chemistries that differ
slightly from the dwarf’s core stars. The current hypothesis
is that M54 formed before the ancient galaxy’s core and
gravitated into the dwarf’s centre as its orbit decayed through
dynamical friction. Repeated galactic crossings then nudged
the cluster to its current location.
You can easily spy M54 through 10×50 binoculars as
a chubby 7.7-magnitude spot. Look for it just 1¾° west-
southwest of 2.6-magnitude Zeta (ζ) Sagittarii. But even
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 59
 FORENSIC OBSERVING

halo, and two or three threshold stars twinkled over the

cluster’s face.
Terzan 8 is an ancient and metal-poor cluster, though
of low mass. Although larger than Terzan 7, it has a
diaphanous Class X concentration, which gives it a pale,
anemic look. Spotting it requires a careful search 3° south
of the large and loose globular M55 (itself a Class XI
cluster). I noticed a brighter knot near the centre of Terzan 8
that occasionally resolved into a pair of dim sparkles within
a weak, amorphous halo.
If you successfully nab Terzan 8, continue to Arp 2 —
another daunting target. This unusual cluster is 3 to 4 billion
years younger than the oldest globulars yet has a relatively
low metallicity. Arm yourself with a detailed finder chart
and search 2.5° west-northwest of M55. You’re looking for a
2′-wide gossamer stain in a rich field peppered with 12th- to
14th-magnitude stars. I saw no sign of resolution, only a
barely brighter nucleus.

Planetary nebulae
Astronomer-turned-astronaut Karl Henize discovered
Hen 2-436 in 1954 during an Hα survey of emission stars
 ELONGATED CLUSTER American astronomer Halton Arp didn’t only and nebulae in the southern Milky Way. Henize published his
discover galaxies — he also identified objects such as Arp 2, this tough- 150 discoveries in his 1966 paper “Observations of Southern
to-nab globular situated some 94,000 light-years away. Planetary Nebulae”. Later that year, James D. Wray (then at
Dearborn Observatory) reexamined the Henize Hα plates as
with a large telescope, this luminous cluster is a challenge part of his PhD dissertation, A Study of Hα-emission Objects
to resolve due to its remote distance and dense (Class in the Southern Milky Way. Wray’s investigation led to the
III) concentration. A smatter of brighter stars around the discovery of two dozen planetaries, including Wray 16-423 in
globular’s periphery lies in the foreground. The brightest the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy’s debris ring.
cluster members glow weakly at magnitude 15 to 15.5. You’ll Hen 2-436 is immersed in a dense star field 3.7°
need steady seeing, high power and more than 25 cm of south-southwest of M55 and 20′ west of 7th-magnitude
aperture to coax these out. HD 183997. Despite a distance of 80,000 light-years, it
In the 1960s, French-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan shines at 14.6-magnitude and should be visible through
discovered 11 ultrafaint globular clusters on red-sensitive a 30-cm scope. Its ½″ diameter looks stellar in most
photographic plates. Terzan 7, the brightest in his challenging telescopes, so use the ‘blinking’ technique — rapidly
list, is metal-rich and unusually young, having formed 4 alternating the view with and without a narrowband or
billion years after most globular clusters. Late-onset globulars O III filter to see the planetary brighten and dim.
like this usually arise from the chaos of the rearranged gas of Working with a photographic finder chart, I tracked down
galaxies that the Milky Way has ripped Hen 2-436 as a 14.5-magnitude ‘star’.
to shreds. A 13th-magnitude star 1′ southeast is a
22h 00m 21h 40m 21h 20m
Terzan 7 lies 4° northeast of the convenient reference. Unfiltered, Hen
–15°
attractive globular cluster NGC δ 2-436 was fainter than the star, but the
γ
6723. A wide pair of 8.5-magnitude 3 ι filtered view reversed the relationship
Star magnitudes

POSS-II / STSCI / CA LTECH / PA LO M A R OBSERVATORY

stars (HD 180336 and HD 180420)
8′ to the cluster’s north are key to
pinpointing its location. Through
my 47-cm, I saw it as a very faint,
textured glow spreading across 1.5′.
A few 14th- to 15th-magnitude stars
were visible around the edges of the
 POINTER GLOBULAR Use the bright
globular cluster M30 to guide your way to
much more challenging Palomar 12.
4 — the planetary appeared a magnitude
5 brighter.
6 At 14th magnitude, Wray 16-423
7
ε –20°
should be in reach of a 20- to 25-cm
8
scope. To find it, slide 3.8° west-
Pal 12
southwest of M55 and ½° northeast
CAPRICORNUS of 6.6-magnitude HD 181109. I
M30 ζ found a strong response with an O III
filter, which dimmed several nearby
13th-magnitude stars well below the
–25°
brightness of Wray 16-423.

60 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy Dwarf orphan, consistent in its distance
Stream DIFFERENT OBJECTS (85,000 light-years) and radial velocity
Three Milky Way globular clusters, two The Sagittarius Dwarf with the downstream tail. It contains
open clusters and a planetary nebula are Spheroidal Galaxy — often a metal-poor population similar to
one-time members of the dwarf galaxy abbreviated SagDEG or M54, Arp 2 and Terzan 8. An orange
Sgr dSph — is not to be
and are now sailing along its stream. Let’s 8th-magnitude star (HD 127119) lights
confused with the Sagittarius
take a closer look at them. up the cluster’s eastern edge and creates a
Dwarf Irregular Galaxy —
abbreviated SagDIG. The latter distraction, while a 10th-magnitude star
Stream Globulars is a satellite of the Milky Way is just 3.5′ southwest.
Palomar 12 is one of 15 faint globular that lies some 3.4 million light- Using 220× through my 47-cm,
clusters identified in the early 1950s on years away, as opposed to the NGC 5634 was a bright, compressed
Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) 90,000 light-years or so of the ball between 3′ and 4′ diameter and
plates. Early colour-magnitude diagram Sagittarius Stream objects. concentrated to a granulated core. I
studies hinted it was unusual; it lives in resolved only a few faint stars around the
the outer halo 60,000 light-years away, cluster’s periphery, but the halo glittered
but it’s only 70% as old as other halo clusters. with tiny stars when I bumped up the magnification to 325×.
A proper motion study in 2000 calculated Palomar 12’s In 2002, astronomers Alan Whiting, George Hau and
orbit using distant background galaxies for reference. The Mike Irwin discovered Whiting 1 while hunting for low
kinematic data indicate the Milky Way snatched the globular surface brightness Local Group dwarfs (chart on page 63).
during a close passage 1.7 billion years ago. A 2004 analysis They tentatively labelled their find as an open cluster of blue
showed its element ratios matched stellar signatures in the stars. Later colour-magnitude diagram analyses revealed an
dwarf. It’s uncertain, though, whether it lies within the unusually young globular between 5.7 and 6.5 billion years
leading or trailing tails, as the arms overlap here along our old — the youngest known thus far.
line of sight. The diagram on page 57 shows the approximate Its radial velocity, angular position and heliocentric
locations of Palomar 12 and the two other globular clusters distance (100,000 light-years) match the T1 stream. One
covered in this section. model suggests the Milky Way accreted Whiting 1 during the
Palomar 12 is easy to track down starting at M30. Head last close passage to the Sagittarius Dwarf 500 to 600 million
2.4° northeast and look for a distinctive, compact triangle years ago. The globular’s youthful age demonstrates that the
of 12th-magnitude stars. The globular is a misty, 2′-diameter dwarf galaxy retained enough gas to build star clusters for at
haze immediately northwest of the triangle. Using 282×, least 6 billion years after it first formed 13 billion years ago.
I noted only a hint of mottling, and I resolved three Star formation dropped sharply soon afterward as the ill-
15th-magnitude stars, oriented northwest to southeast. fated object began to disintegrate.
NGC 5634 seems misplaced in eastern Virgo — midway Whiting 1 is located 4° due west of Mira, also known
between 4th-magnitude Mu (μ) and Iota (ι) Virginis — and as Omicron (ο) Ceti, and 40′ east of 7th-magnitude HD
located far above the galactic disk. Yet, it’s another Sagittarius 12262. This ghostly globular is small, sparse and anemic

14h 40m 14h 20m

0°
VIRGO

3
Star magnitudes

4
HD 127119
5 μ –5°
6 5634 ι
POSS-II / STSCI / CA LTECH / PA LO M A R OBSERVATORY

7 NGC 5634
8

–10°
LIBRA κ HD 127119 10th-magnitude star
104 Vir

 LIT BY A STAR Orange stars can be pretty,

but the 8th-magnitude giant HD 127119
intrudes on the view of the globular cluster
NGC 5634 in Virgo. Catch this sight during the
evenings of late autumn.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 61
 FORENSIC OBSERVING

(total magnitude of 15.0). I’ve only δ ζ
ν
viewed it through a 1.2-m reflector… +20°
and even through this enormous scope
Berkeley
it was a faint, splotchy glow just 30″ 2 29
 OPEN CLUSTERS You’ll have to stay up
until the wee hours of the morning to spot
Berkeley 29 and Saurer 1 — or wait until late
winter to observe them in the evening.

Star magnitudes
λ
in diameter. Whiting 1’s brightest 3 its formation and has since orbited
γ
members are a paltry 18th-magnitude 4
GEMINI at least three times around the Milky
and only two sparkled into view at 5 Way.
488×. 6 ξ Visually the cluster is a small
7
collection of dim stars 3.7° east-
+10°
Stream Open Clusters γ northeast of 2nd-magnitude Alhena,
Arthur Setteducati and Harold Weaver β or Gamma (γ) Geminorum, the
(University of California, Berkeley) southern foot of Gemini. A short
α
discovered Berkeley 29 in 1962 during line of three 11th-magnitude stars
a systematic search for faint open Procyon CMI orientated north-south is 3′ west of
MON
HD 56989
clusters on POSS plates. Berkeley 29 is the cluster, and a 10th-magnitude
an ancient 3.5-to-4 billion years old luminary is off the east side. At
Saurer 1
and holds the distinction as the most 175× I spotted a fairly faint 2′-long
7h 30m 7h 00m 0°
distant known cluster, lying 70,000 δ patch with just two resolved stars.
light-years from the galactic centre. Increasing the power to 285×, a half
A 2009 investigation found Berkeley 29’s location falls dozen stars between magnitude 14 and 15.5 emerged from
within the L arm as it passes through the outer disk towards the background haze.
the galactic anticentre, a region directly opposite the galactic Later searches of POSS and European Southern
centre from the Sun. As this cluster is wrapped so far from Observatory survey plates picked up several clusters
the Sagittarius Dwarf, it was likely torn off shortly following missed by Setteducati and Weaver. In 1994, Walter Saurer

FARAWAY TWINKLES
Berkeley 29 currently holds
the record for the most distant
open cluster known.

DA N CROWSON

62 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

(University of Innsbruck) and his colleagues announced γ
δ 2h 1h
the identification of six meager clusters, including Saurer M77 0°
Whiting 1
1, a 2′ sprinkling of 17th-magnitude and fainter stars. Its ο HD 12262
distance of 63,000 light-years and location are compatible 2

with the trailing tail.
Saurer 1 hides in the southwest corner of Canis Minor,
1° south-southeast of 5.9-magnitude HD 56989. I found it
a tough sighting and only detected a dim 20″ smudge — the
combined glow of the brightest four or five red giants.
In conclusion
In 1975 Howard Bond (Pennsylvania State University)
discovered BoBn 1 during an objective-prism survey at the
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile.
At the eyepiece of the 1.5-m reflector, he reported a “slightly
soft appearance in good seeing,” suggesting a diameter of
1″ to 2″. Further analysis in 2006 found a high-excitation
spectrum and a distance of 65,000 light-years within the
leading wing of L.
Look for BoBn 1 in western Cetus, 50′ west-northwest of
the 11th-magnitude galaxy NGC 210. A 10th-magnitude star
8′ due east provides a handy marker as the planetary is stellar
and shines feebly at magnitude 15.7. I used a narrowband
filter to quickly ‘blink’ and confirm the identification.
A final census of Milky Way globulars stolen from the
Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy (and other former dwarfs) is
incomplete. NGC 5634 lies in a region shared by stellar
debris from other progenitors including the Helmi Stream,
so it may have a different origin. Several recent studies show
the kinematics of the Intergalactic Wanderer, NGC 2419, is
consistent with the Sagittarius Stream, so it may be added to
the list. Future improved data and models of the tidal streams
should help sort out a complete inventory.
Star magnitudes
3
4 θ
5 ζ ι
6 –10°
7 η
BoBn 1
π
C E T U S 210
τ
ERI
τ1 β
υ –20°
 FINAL CHALLENGE Wrap up your survey of the Sagittarius Stream
with the challenging planetary nebula BoBn 1.
The Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal’s traces are huge indeed.
Every time the galaxy orbits the Milky Way, several million
solar masses of material are yanked away from our hapless
neighbour. But although its star streams and globular
clusters will ultimately disperse across the Milky Way
halo and into the disk, they’ll never completely lose their
ancestral roots.
¢ STEVE GOTTLIEB has been exploring galaxies, both near
and far, for more than 40 years.
EXTRA MATERIAL For an animation of the Milky Way’s ‘phase
spiral’ see https://is.gd/galactic_whack. Also, to better
understand the movements of stars in the galaxy, see this post by
Ronald Drimmel: https://is.gd/drimmel. For finder charts/images,
go to https://is.gd/SgrFinders.

Riders on the Stream

Object Type Mag(v) Size RA Dec. Arm Dist. (k l-y) Age (My)
M54 Globular cluster 7.7 9.1′ 18h 55.0m –30° 29′ M 90 13.5
Terzan 7 Globular cluster 12.0 2.6′ 19h 17.7m –34° 39′ M 80 8.0
Terzan 8 Globular cluster 12.4 5.0′ 19h 41.7m –34° 00′ M/T 90 13.0
Arp 2 Globular cluster 12.3 2.5′ 19h 28.7m –30° 21′ M/T 94 13.5
Hen 2-436 Planetary nebula 14.2 0.5″ 19h 32.1m –34° 13′ M — —
Wray 16-423 Planetary nebula 13.8 1″ 19h 22.2m –31° 31′ M — —
Palomar 12 Globular cluster 11.7 2.9′ 21h 46.6m –21° 15′ T/L? 60 —
NGC 5634 Globular cluster 9.4 4.9′ 14h 29.6m –05° 59′ T 85 —
Whiting 1 Globular cluster 15 0.5′ 02h 02.9m –03° 15′ T 95 5.7
Berkeley 29 Open cluster — 3.7′ 06h 53.1m +16° 56′ L 43 —
Saurer 1 Open cluster — 2.6′ 07h 20.9m +01° 48′ L? 43 —
BoBn 1 Planetary nebula 15.7 2″ 00h 37.3m –13° 43′ L — —
Distances are from the Solar System. Sizes are from recent catalogues. Visually, an object’s size is often smaller than the catalogued value and varies according to
the aperture and magnification of the viewing instrument. Right ascension and declination are for equinox 2000.0.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 63
 ROBOTIC IMAGING by Ted Wolfe
A remote experience
Astrophotography with remotely
operated telescopes is easier
than you might think.
DEEP SKY ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY has many challenges,
particularly when practiced under less-than-ideal skies. The
difficulty of imaging through light pollution and poor seeing
limits the targets you can capture to bright objects often
recorded at low resolution. Additionally, long spans of cloudy
weather can further reduce your output.
Fortunately, astrophotographers no longer have to
remain tethered to equipment in the backyard, nor be
forced to travel far afield for clear, steady, dark skies. The
availability of high-speed internet even in remote locations
has fostered the growth of remote-imaging facilities, where
astrophotographers willing to invest in the support and
maintenance of their equipment can capture deep sky
wonders under some of the most pristine skies on Earth. Here
are my suggestions for getting great results delivered to your
computer each clear night.
64 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
READY TO SHOOT
Several remotely operated telescopes
stand ready to capture the splendors of
the night sky from the Atacama Desert.
Moving away from the scope
I began shooting the night sky when I retired, and I quickly
began to experiment with ways I could remain comfortable
indoors while my scope was dutifully recording targets
outside. Over the course of several years, and with frequent
telescope and camera upgrades, I managed to cobble together
a system that could perform remotely, about 50 metres away.
But the humid, often cloudy skies of my home, especially
during the warm season, meant I had few opportunities
to capture images. Additionally, the steady increase in the
population brought with it the problem of brighter skies due
to increased light pollution. Eventually, I wanted more usable
and dark nights for imaging fainter targets. That’s when I
came across a story on remote imaging by Tom Polakis. It
immediately inspired me to find a new home for my scope.
Tom’s article highlighted the benefits of locating one’s
scope in the facilities of San Pedro de Atacama Celestial
Explorations, or SPACE (spaceobs.com), owned and operated
by Alain Maury and his wife, Alejandra. SPACE offers a
A L AIN M AURY
wide range of services to the amateur astronomer of any
experience level, including nightly sky tours and observing
with a large array of permanently installed telescopes. They
 also offer onsite and online rental of several imaging setups,
as well as host remote-imaging telescopes.
I approached Maury about hosting my gear. Unfortunately,
there were no spots available then, so I bided my time on an
informal waiting list. In 2015, a spot opened up, and I began
the transition to truly remote astrophotography.

More than just a telescope

While I had acquired a lot of experience imaging from my
backyard, truly remote-controlled astrophotography required
several upgrades to my equipment for it to function semi-  DARKER SKIES The author relocated his telescope from the light
autonomously from thousands of kilometres away. If you pollution of his home town (left) to the extremely dark skies of San Pedro
de Atacama (right). The colours indicate the intensity of light pollution at
decide to take the plunge, it’s likely you’ll have to consider
both locations, red indicating the high intensity.
new gear, too.
A reliable, heavy-duty telescope mount is without a doubt complex collimation adjustments. Keeping it simple will limit
the number-one priority. Under a frequently clear sky, you’re the problems that’ll prevent you from taking advantage of
going to use your telescope far more than you ever did at clear nights. I currently use a PlaneWave CDK12.5 (31.8-cm)
home. As a result, you want to be sure your mount is very corrected Dall-Kirkham optical tube as my primary imaging
well built and can reliably point to your desired targets. instrument. It holds its collimation reliably and rarely
Although I had a pretty good mount already (a Takahashi requires adjustments.
EM400), it didn’t include encoders that read out exactly Another must-have piece in the remote-imaging puzzle is a
what coordinates the telescope is aiming at. Some mounts computer-controlled, electronic focuser. If your scope doesn’t
don’t need encoders to do this, but with or without, the have one, several manufacturers offer add-on units, including
mount needs to include a ‘home’ or ‘park’ position. This is a MoonLite Telescope Accessories (focuser.com) and Starlight
repeatable starting position that the telescope returns to at Instruments (starlightinstruments.com).
the end of an imaging session. A horizontal home position is The telescope, camera and mount are the main pieces of a
especially helpful when housing your instrument in a roll- remote-imaging setup, but there are additional components
off-roof observatory so that the roof doesn’t collide with your that also need consideration. For example, while some
telescope when shutting down for the night (or in the event
of a weather emergency). Some mounts let you set the home
position yourself.
Unless your mount is a fork version that can track across
the entire sky unimpeded, or an alt-azimuth model with an
integrated field de-rotator, it will need to be able to perform a
meridian flip. This action is required when tracking objects as
they cross the meridian — the imaginary line that divides the
eastern and western halves of the sky. Your mount needs to
rotate its payload to avoid crashing into the telescope pier or
tripod while continuing to track your target.
LIG H T POLLU TION: LIG H TPOLLU TIONM A P.INFO; SPACE WEBSITE: SPACEOBS.CO M

I upgraded my mount to an AstroSysteme Austria (ASA)

DDM-85 direct-drive mount with high-resolution encoders,
guaranteeing my control software always knows where my
telescope is pointing with arcsecond accuracy. Other great
alternatives are available from Astro-Physics (astro-physics.
com), PlaneWave Instruments (planewave.com), Software
Bisque (bisque.com), 10Micron (10micron.eu) and several
others.
The next requirement is an optical tube assembly that
needs minimal maintenance. That could mean a reflector
or catadioptric that holds its collimation well and is easy
to collimate in the field, or, even better, a refractor. While
remote imaging facilities typically employ site operators
who can help you with equipment problems and minor  TELESCOPES The San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations
maintenance tasks, they are responsible for a good number of (SPACE) facility offers nightly sky tours, onsite and remote telescope
telescopes and may not have the time to perform frequent or rental, and hosting services for your own imaging rig.

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 65
 ROBOTIC IMAGING
telescope mounts (like the ASA DDM-
85) are accurate enough to produce
well-tracked, unguided, long exposures,
I found that I get my best results with
the assistance of an autoguiding setup.
You can choose between an external
guidescope or off-axis unit for this. I’ve
tried both with my PlaneWave/ASA
mount combination and get consistently
good results with an off-axis guiding
(OAG) system. While an OAG unit that
can be rotated independently from the
main imaging camera will allow you
many more choices when it comes to
choosing guide stars, in practice I haven’t had any problems
finding suitable guide stars without this option.
Computing considerations
Another remote-imaging necessity is a robust computer
loaded with the required camera- and telescope-control
software. Since the computer will reside onsite, there are
two options depending on whether you’ll be remotely
connecting to the computer and reducing (calibrating,
stacking, etc.) your images, or if you’ll just be downloading
your data through a file transfer service. If the former, then
the computer needs to have a fairly powerful processor and
lots of RAM, so that it performs like your home processing
 OPEN SKIES Conditions at the SPACE facility in the Atacama Desert are so dry that telescopes are typically stored outdoors and only covered
in the rare threat of rain. Several domes and the large roll-off-roof observatory housing remote-imaging telescopes (where the author’s telescope is
located) are visible in the background.
66 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
 ROBOTIC SCOPE The author visiting his
telescope in mid-2019. It consisted at the time
of a 31.8-cm PlaneWave CDK telescope, an
SBIG STL11000M CCD camera with LRGB
and Hα filters, and a guidescope with a ZWO
guide camera. The instrument is mounted on
an ASA DDM-85 direct drive German equatorial
mount and controlled over the internet using the
software AnyDesk and Prism.
station. However, if you decide to choose
the latter option, you can get by with a
computer just powerful enough to run
your control software.
No matter which direction you take
with the control computer, it will need to have a large hard
drive to store your data each night. Plan on investing in a
2-terabyte hard drive at the minimum — frequent clear skies
mean you’ll be accumulating a lot of images compared to what
you’re used to.
As for the telescope/camera control software, choose a
program (or suite of programs) that permits you to plan
and execute at least one full night of imaging and be able to
control everything. After shopping around, I decided on Prism
(hyperion-astronomy.com) as my one-stop control centre.
The professional version of the software is fairly inexpensive
(US$349) and includes everything I need to point the telescope,
focus the camera, calibrate the autoguider and execute
AU THOR A ND SCOPE: A L AIN M AURY; SPACE ONSITE: SE A N WA LK ER / S&T
 multiple imaging sessions from power up to shutdown. The
software also has an automatic flat-fielding routine to record
crucial calibration frames in the early evening or at dawn. It
even includes a built-in planetarium to help me choose and
point at targets. Once the data is acquired, I use Prism as a
full-featured astro-image processing suite to calibrate all my
images before I download them from the control computer.
Other remote-imaging hardware-control programs include
ACP (acpx.dc3.com), MaxIm DL Pro Suite (diffractionlimited.
com), Sequence Generator Pro (sequencegeneratorpro.com),
TheSkyX Imaging Edition (bisque.com) and Voyager (software.
starkeeper.it). In some cases, you may need two of these
programs operating simultaneously.
Finally, you’ll need some way to connect with your control
computer, whether it’s to simply download your images  BARRED SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 1365 in Fornax culminates at about
or, as in my case, to fire everything up for an evening of 76° as seen from San Pedro de Atacama, making it an ideal target for
astrophotography. I subscribe to AnyDesk Remote Desktop the author’s remote telescope. This image consists of almost 9 hours of
Software (anydesk.com), which I use for this task, just as if exposure shot through LRGB filters.
I was there onsite. TeamViewer (teamviewer.com) is another,
 SINUOUS OPACITY Dark molecular clouds of the Aquila Rift fill
similar option. Some imagers instead prefer having their the field in this deep image recorded with the PlaneWave telescope
images delivered directly to a subscription-based file transfer operating at f/5 using a focal reducer. Total exposure was 12 hours
service like Dropbox (dropbox.com). through LRGB filters.
TED WOLFE (2)

www.skyandtelescope.com.au 67
 ROBOTIC IMAGING
Once you’ve gathered all the required pieces, be sure to
test it all together at home before shipping the equipment
to your remote hosting facility. That way, you can identify
and address any weak links in your system. Test your cable
management to ensure nothing can get yanked out during
a meridian flip, and that all adapters hold tight with your
equipment pointed at any angle. When you’re ready to ship
it to its final destination, keep in mind that if you choose a
hosting facility in a foreign country, you’ll be charged import
duties and fees. These can be as high as 40% of the cost of the
equipment shipped.
Putting it all to use
After everything arrives onsite and is set up, you’ll need to
work out any bugs that may have cropped up. It’s a good idea
to keep an operational journal to record any problems and
their solutions to avoid having to re-learn how to solve the
issue a year or two later. Sometimes an adapter loosens up or
a cable becomes faulty. Fortunately, the hosting facility has at
least one technician onsite who can help fix these problems as
they crop up during the night.
Once everything is operating smoothly, imaging with a
remote setup is a dream come true. The Atacama Desert,
where San Pedro de Atacama is located, is one of the driest
places on Earth. One client of SPACE who concentrates on
variable star research recorded usable data on 345 nights in a
single year.
Here’s what a typical evening with my remote telescope
looks like.
I begin by booting up my home computer to check the
local weather forecast for the site. If it’s clear, I log on to my
control computer using AnyDesk. An internet protocol camera
provided by SPACE monitors the interior of each observatory
and displays constantly updated still pictures showing the
68 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
 GALACTIC PRAWN Located in southern Scorpius, IC 4628 passes
directly overhead from Chile. It stands out well in this 6-hour exposure
made with the telescope operating at f/5.
 SILVER COIN NGC 253, in Sculptor, is a nearby galaxy best seen from
the Southern Hemisphere. Total exposure is 9 hours through LRGB filters.
roof open and my scope in its park position.
If all is as planned, I start up the mount and camera
in Prism and begin cooling the camera. Next, I open the
Automatic Observation form in Prism and enter my imaging
script for the night. This is where I input my target, when
to start the sequence, which filters to use and how often to
perform the autofocus command. I also adjust the autoguider
parameters (if necessary) and designate a location to store
the resulting files. I then do a short ‘Homefind’ operation
with the mount to ensure it’s pointing accurately.
The entire startup process takes about 15 minutes. Once
it’s completed, I hit Go and watch as the telescope slews to
my chosen target, acquires a guide star and begins operations.
I can then log out of AnyDesk, close my computer, and go on
with the rest of my evening.
The next morning, I reconnect to the control system and
confirm that the scope is parked and the camera’s cooling
system is turned off. If all is well, I activate Prism’s automatic
data-reduction routine, which calibrates all the night’s
images with a single click. Once the reduced images have
been downloaded onto my home computer, I power down
the mount and camera, and log off AnyDesk. I then stack
and process the results using MaxIm DL, RegiStar, and Adobe
Photoshop.
Remote imaging can expand your astrophotography
output by leaps and bounds. Although the initial costs for
the necessary equipment and software can be substantial
depending on the gear you choose, for me the investment was
worth it. I get far more use out of my equipment than I could
here at home.
TED WOLFE (2)
¢ TED WOLFE controls his imaging system in Chile from the
comfort of his home. Visit tedwolfe.com to see more of his
astrophotography.

Eavesdropping
on Mars
The most compelling audio the Perseverance rover will
record might well be the sounds it generates itself.
I WAS STOKED WHEN I heard
they were putting microphones on
the Perseverance rover. Of all the
instrument data we use to understand
other planets, visual images are always
the most compelling because they
connect directly to our senses, with
no interpretation needed to grasp a lot
about each new place. Sound recordings
ought to do this as well: provide
something we can relate to directly and
feel what it would be like to be there.
Shortly after the thrill of the rover’s
landing at Jezero Crater in February,
we were treated to the first release of
audio from Mars. What we heard, of
N ASA / JPL- CA LTECH
course, was wind. We already knew that
the Red Planet has wind, but when we
finally heard it, we learned that wind on
Mars sounds… like wind.
At first it was haunting to hear those
distant zephyrs and realise they truly
were recorded on another world. They
were strangely gentle and quiet, because
Mars’ carbon-dioxide atmosphere is
just 1% as dense as Earth’s. Plus, there’s
scientific value in sounds the rover
records. With the very first zap of the
robot’s SuperCam laser on rock, for
instance, the mission team measured
the speed of sound on Mars for the
first time ever. As SuperCam Principal
Investigator Roger Wiens told NPR, it’s
just a little over two-thirds as fast as it
is on Earth.
I have to admit, though, that after
listening several times to that Martian
breeze, I found it anticlimactic and
dissatisfying for a couple of reasons.
First, what we heard was not really
by David Grinspoon COSMIC RELIEF
 The Perseverance rover took this selfie on
March 7, 2021, during sol 16 of the mission.
sound, but the wind noise that is made
when a breeze strikes the diaphragm of
a microphone, converting the motion
into an audio signal. That rumbling,
popping sound is familiar to us from
recordings made here on windy days,
but it’s not what you’d really hear if
you were standing outside on Mars at
the time (even if you could be listening
without a helmet).
Since the Perseverance team released
those first sounds of wind and laser
zaps, we’ve heard the rover’s metal
wheels crunching over stony terrain and
its various instruments in operation
(hear these recordings at https://is.gd/
marssounds). These sounds, too, have
value — to engineers operating the rover
and to scientists determining which
rock samples to cache for later return to
Earth (a major mission objective).
Beyond the audio of wind and
rover, though, we don’t expect to hear
anything. Those two types of sounds
represent Mars’ greatest sonic hits.
Alas, compared to Earth, with its
chirruping birds, rustling leaves, and
cracking thunder, to say nothing of the
music, traffic and laughter that human
beings generate, Mars is bound to be a
pretty boring place, sonically. Perhaps
we’ll find places where breezes whistle
as they reverberate through wind-
sculpted canyons. There may be storms
so ferocious that the wind will howl
past Perseverance, and we may hear
the hiss of wind-carried dust particles
pelting the rover. But by and large I’m
not hopeful, beyond that initial novelty,
of being greatly surprised or delighted
by fresh sounds from Mars.
In the end, Jezero Crater is
profoundly interesting not for what we
hear there today but for what happened
there billions of years ago, when free-
flowing streams were gurgling and —
just maybe — something was swimming
or even singing.
¢ Astrobiologist DAVID GRINSPOON is
Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science
Institute.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 69
 AS&T TEST REPORT by Dennis di Cicco
Meade Series 5000 UHD eyepieces
Do these eyepieces hit the sweet spot between performance and affordability?
Meade Series 5000
UHD Eyepieces
US price: from $120
Meade.com
What we like
Excellent optical and
mechanical construction
Nice star images across
the entire field of view
Extremely low distortion
What we don’t like
Bottom of 24-mm eyepiece can
interfere with thumbscrew lock
on some 1¼-inch focusers and
star diagonals
THE AVAILABILITY OF MODERATELY
priced, quality eyepieces continues to
grow with the new Meade Instruments
Series 5000 UHD eyepieces. Currently
the line includes four models that
fit 1¼-inch focusers and have focal
lengths of 10 mm (priced at US$120),
15 and 18 mm (US$140 each) and 24
mm (US$200). There’s also a 30-mm
model (US$245) that’s made for 2-inch
focusers. The latter eyepiece wasn’t
available at the time we borrowed the
other four for testing.
70 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
The UHD series features ‘flat field’
performance, which is a somewhat
vague description for eyepieces, but
most of us will translate that as an
eyepiece showing quality star images
across its entire field of view. And the
UHDs do indeed deliver well on that
front. But there’s more to this flat field
performance that I’ll get to in a bit.
The 10-mm model is listed as having
a 60° apparent field, while others have
65° fields. Personal preferences vary,
and while I certainly enjoy today’s
extraordinary wide-field eyepieces for
some types of observing, I find apparent
fields of around 65° extremely pleasant
for general observing. The field is wide
enough to avoid feeling restrictive but
still shows a defined edge that you don’t
have to roll your eye around to see. I
always know where I’m looking in the
field and where the central sweet spot is.
On the test bench I measured the
10-mm as having an apparent field
of 58°. The 15-mm has an exact 65°
field, while the 18-mm was about 1°
smaller. The 24-mm, on the other
hand, has an apparent field of just 61°.
Nevertheless, when I was at the telescope
and switching rapidly between the 15-
and 24-mm eyepieces, I perceived no
appreciable difference in the diameters
t The Meade Series 5000 UHD eyepieces
are very well made both optically and
mechanically. The author used a variety of
telescopes to test this set that fits 1¼-inch
focusers and includes focal lengths of 24, 18,
15 and 10 mm (left to right).
of their apparent fields. What’s far more
noteworthy, however, is the true field of
view (the amount of sky actually seen)
with the 24-mm eyepiece. It is virtually
the same as that visible through my
Tele Vue 24-mm Panoptic and 32-mm
Plössl eyepieces — two eyepieces often
highlighted for showing the maximum
possible amount of sky visible with an
eyepiece having a 1¼-inch barrel. (For
further information on the apparent and
true fields of eyepieces, see the article
“Some thoughts about today’s Eyepieces”
on page 36 of our May/Jun 2021 issue.)
Those who observe without wearing
eyeglasses should find the eye relief of
these eyepieces more than adequate
since it’s 16 mm for the 10- and 15-mm
eyepieces and 20 mm for the 18-mm
model. And with 29 mm of eye relief,
the 24-mm eyepiece should easily
accommodate eyeglass wearers.
The UHD eyepieces are made with
first-class construction that’s right
up there with the best I’ve seen. The
precision-machined aluminium bodies
are black anodised and have cranberry-
red anodising on the aluminium accent
rings. Even the wide, textured rubber
grip is a substantial 2½-mm-thick collar
that will clearly stand up to years of
use. The pliable rubber eye guard is also
substantial but easily folds down when
needed. Internally, the metal retaining
rings for the lenses are precision
machined and carefully blackened.
A LL PHOTOS BY THE AU THOR
The multi-coated lenses are blackened
on their edges to reduce scattered
light. And the eyepieces are said to
be waterproof, which will certainly
help prevent dust from getting onto
internal lens surfaces even if you have
no intention of dunking your eyepieces
in water.
The only downside to the mechanical
design I noted is that the wide base
of the 24-mm eyepiece can interfere
with the locking thumbscrew on some
1¼-inch focusers (see the images
below). Since the maximum diameter of
an eyepiece body defines the minimum
interpupillary distance for a pair of
eyepieces used in a binoviewer, only the
24-mm model (with a maximum body
diameter of 66 mm) will possibly exceed
the interpupillary spacing required by
some adults (typically 55 to 74 mm).
During the first half of 2021, the
four UHDs were my go-to set for general
observing. I used them most of the time
with a 150-mm f/10 refractor, but I also
tested them on a Tele Vue-NP101 (100-
mm f/5.4) refractor, an Orion 15-cm f/6
Maksutov-Newtonian, a Meade 30-cm
f/5 Dobsonian, and a Celestron 12.5-cm
f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain.
As mentioned above, the eyepieces
delivered nice, round star images across
the entire field of view. The very flat
focal plane of the 100-mm refractor
provided a critical test of the eyepieces’
performance and showed that there is a
small shift in the focus point between
the centre and edge of the field. Stars
sharply focused at the centre of the field
appeared a touch soft when moved to
the edge. The only time it was obvious
 The wide base of the 24-mm eyepiece can interfere with the locking thumbscrew on some 1¼-inch focusers and star diagonals. While awkward to
reach, the thumbscrew on this Meade star diagonal (left) just clears the eyepiece base and enables the eyepiece to sit squarely in its holder. That’s not
the case for another diagonal (centre) with a larger thumbscrew. The eyepiece base will not, however, interfere with the locking thumbscrews on most
2-to-1¼-inch adapters (right).
 The UHD eyepieces are all threaded to
accept standard eyepiece filters.
was when I was specifically looking
for a difference. Furthermore, off-axis
distortions due to aberrations inherent
in the optics of many telescopes (and
especially in the Dobsonian and SCT)
degraded star images at the edge of the
field much more than the slight focus
shift of the eyepieces themselves.
Lateral colour (the eyepiece
aberration that turns stars into tiny
colourful spectra at the edge of the
field) is very well controlled in the
UHD eyepieces. Only the 10-mm model
showed a hint of colour fringing due to
lateral colour as I swept brilliant Venus
across the field of view in a daytime sky.
The four UHD models I tested are said
to be parfocal and thus needing “little-
to-no focus change when switching
between eyepieces”. The 15- and 18-mm
eyepieces did have exactly the same focus
point, while the 24-mm needed to have
the focuser racked in about 2 mm, and
the 10-mm needed to be racked out
about 1½ mm. This is well within the
limits of other eyepiece lines I’ve used
that are marketed as parfocal.
Earlier I mentioned there was more to
the flat field aspect of the UHD eyepieces
than just having a flat field with sharp
star images. These eyepieces are notable
for having no discernible distortion as
objects are swept across the field of view.
Planets remain round, and the shape of
the lunar landscape is unchanged as you
move it around the field. Other eyepieces
I’ve used that have similar apparent
fields as the UHDs display a significant
amount of pincushion distortion. And
while I’m not as troubled by this type
of distortion as some observers, it’s still
nice not to be even aware of it when
observing with the UHDs.
The Meade Series 5000 UHD
eyepieces are very good. They provided
sharp, contrasty views of the Sun
(properly filtered), Moon, Venus (in
the daytime), double stars and deep-
sky objects with a variety of telescopes.
I can certainly recommend them for
novice and experienced observers alike.
¢ DENNIS DI CICCO was surprised by
how few times he found himself reaching
for some other eyepiece during the
months he observed with the UHDs.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 71
 ASTRONOMER’S WORKBENCH by Jerry Oltion
A better Ronchi tester
An even light source and ease of use make all the difference.
MANY MIRROR MAKERS use the
Ronchi test to evaluate their mirrors
during the parabolisation phase.
With the Ronchi test, over- or under-
parabolisation, zonal deviations and
turned edges are easy to detect and
quantify. The test is simple: Shine a light
at the mirror through a grid of evenly
spaced lines and look at the reflected
image of those lines through that same
grid. The result will be a series of bars
that bend in ways that are specific to the
shape of your mirror. A spherical mirror
will display straight bars; a parabolised
mirror will show curved bars.
I’ve seen many mirror makers
struggling to get a decent image out of
their Ronchi tester, and the problem
is almost always the light source.
Somehow, a number of people have
become convinced that they should use
an LED or a pinhole or slit. The problem
with that approach is that it doesn’t
fully illuminate the mirror until you’re
very close to the centre of curvature,
and the Ronchi test is useful at a far
greater range of distances than that.
The ideal light source for a Ronchi
test is a wide, evenly illuminated white
flat-field about 2.5 cm across. I’ve seen
people put light bulbs inside ping-pong
72 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
balls, and that works pretty well except
that the light falls off toward the edges.
A better solution is to repurpose one of
those ubiquitous, cheap 9-LED torches.
You can’t just stick the torch up
against the grid. If you do that, you’re
back to staring at individual LEDs;
you’ll just have nine of them to choose
from. You need to put a diffuser
between the LEDs and the Ronchi grid.
Experimenting with various
materials, I’ve discovered that the best
diffuser, one that evens out the light
without dimming it very much, is a
two-stage unit that holds two layers of
white plastic bag material about 12 mm
apart. The first layer goes right over the
torch head and the second layer goes
next to the Ronchi screen. I use a thin
bag for the one closest to the light and a
thicker, whiter one for the outer stage.
I take the LED pack out of the torch.
Some models can be removed down to
the circuit board, like the one pictured
here; others are most easily used by
cutting off the barrel of the torch just
behind the light element.
I use a length of plastic tubing for
my diffuser, but you could also simply
make a cardboard ring. Lay your first
sheet of plastic bag over the torch head,
p Left: The pattern produced by this tester
is evenly lit throughout. Right: A single LED
doesn’t provide an even light source, making
the Ronchi pattern harder to read.
 The LED head from a mini torch and two
diffusers provide a nice, even light source.
p The light source is uniform across a wide
swath of the Ronchi grid.
shove the ring over it and drape the
second sheet of plastic over the front of
the ring. Hold the second layer neatly in
place with a second ring over the first.
The rest is easy. Make a framework
to hold the light, the grating, the battery
pack, a switch and a potentiometer to
adjust the light’s intensity.
To do a matching Ronchi test, where
you compare your view to a computer-
generated image, make a platform with
evenly spaced lines that match your
A LL IM AG ES COURTESY OF THE AU THOR
pattern spacing. I attach the platform to
a photo tripod, making setup a snap.
An excellent resource for Ronchi
testing is Mel Bartels’s website,
bbastrodesigns.com/ronchi.html.
¢ JERRY OLTION has used a pocket
comb and a torch in a pinch.
 L
RIBER
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 NIGHT LIFE

Astrophotography
winners
See the winning shots in two imaging competitions. 4

T
he winning images in two premiere astrophotography
competitions have been announced, and they include
some amazing and impressive shots of the night sky.
First up is the David Malin Awards, organised every year
by the Central West Astronomical Society based at Parkes
in NSW. The overall winner this year is Marley Butler for
his image entitled ‘Between a Rock and Outer Space,’ which
depicts the Milky Way stretching above a piece of rocky
coastline in Western Australia. The judges described the
image as “… a lovely montage. What makes it work is the
overall colour balance, the evident but not dominant rocky 5
foreground and the softened, time-exposed sea. The stars
are pin-sharp, and the Milky Way embraces the whole thing, 1. Shuchang Dong’s ‘The Golden Ring’. 2. Marley Butler’s ‘Between
a Rock and Outer Space’. 3. Martin Pugh and Nicolas Rolland’s ‘A
including the zodiacal light. Beautiful!”
Smiley in Space’. 4. Stefan Buda’s ‘Iridum to Imbrium’. 5. Larryn Rae’s
There are also specific winners and highly commended ‘Goðafoss Flow’.
runners-up in wide-field, deep sky, Solar System and video
categories. You can see all of them at https://www.parkes. the complementary of the yellow ring. A true masterpiece”.
atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/awards/. Two Aussies were given highly commended awards for
The second contest is the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s their images — Martin Pugh (together with Nicolas Rolland
international Astronomy Photographer of the Year of France) for the image ‘A Smiley in Space,’ and Stefan
competition. This year’s overall winner is Shuchang Dong Buda with his shot ‘Iridum to Imbrium’ — as was one New
for his image of the June 2021 annular solar eclipse, entitled Zealander, Larryn Rae, for the image ‘Goðafoss Flow’.
‘The Golden Ring’. The judges described it “Perfection and You can see all the winning and highly commended
simplicity, that can lead to a winner image. The square crop images at https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-
has a tension with the mystic ring, and the misty bluish sky is photographer-year/galleries/2021-overall-winners.

74 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021


FAVOURABLE DATES
2021
Nov 19 Lunar eclipse
Dec 14 Geminids
2022
Apr 21 Lyrids
May 6 Eta Aquariids
May 16 Lunar eclipse
Oct 21 Orionids
Nov 8 Lunar eclipse
Dec 14 Geminids
CATCH A FLASH Tom Nord
captured this lunar impact flash
during the total lunar eclipse in January
2019. There’ll be plenty of opportunities
in the coming 12 months for similar observations.
Dings on the Moon
A coordinated global effort is dedicated to documenting
flashes on the lunar surface.
W
e’ve all seen bits of comet dust
self-immolate as they plow
into Earth’s atmosphere during
meteor showers. But did you know that
bits of dust ping the Moon as well?
Meteoroids — to give them their official
name — that hit the Moon have no
medium in which to burn up and instead
slam full-throttle into the lunar surface.
In so doing, they carve out a small crater
while emitting a very brief flash of light.
The Moon gets walloped. In
November 1999, David Dunham (doyen
of the International Occultation Timing
Association) anticipated a particularly
active Leonid meteor shower. He
coordinated a network of observers
armed with scopes and video cameras
and instructed them to point at the
Moon. Dunham himself observed at
fellow astronomer George Varros’s
home. Brian Cudnik (of the Association
of Lunar & Planetary Observers), sans
recording equipment, participated
by viewing through a 35-cm scope.
During one of his stints at the eyepiece,
he noticed a very brief, orange-yellow
pointlike flash near the earthlit limb
by Diana Hannikainen PRO-AM COLLABORATION
of the Moon. Cudnik relayed this info
to Dunham who then carefully played
back his tape. And there it was: an
unmistakable pinpoint of light at the
location and within one second of the
time Cudnik reported.
Reports of lunar transient phenomena,
as all manner of fleeting visual to-do’s
on the Moon are collectively known,
go back centuries. But skepticism as
to their existence prevailed… until
that fateful night in November 1999.
“This event spurred people to review
their own tapes,” Cudnik says, “and
an additional five impact events were
confirmed soon thereafter.” And voilà, a
new field of science flickered into being.
NASA gets in on the fun. Spurred
on by amateur success, NASA (as well
as other organizations around the
world) established lunar impact flash
monitoring programs to perform real-
time observing of collisions in the Solar
System (e.g. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
plunging into Jupiter in 1994). They also
strive to better understand the lunar
environment for possible future bases.
To this aim, NASA operates several
telescopes at the Marshall Space Flight
Center (https://is.gd/nasa_lunar).
But, due to inclement weather and
occasionally uncooperative mechanical
bits and bobs, coverage isn’t complete —
and amateur contributions are essential
for filling in the gaps.
How to look. You’ll need a tracking
telescope and a low-light astronomical
video camera (the crucial element in
the 1999 discovery). Use a scope with a
field of view that can cover as much of
the Moon’s nightside as possible, while
at the same time limiting glare from
the dayside, recommends the British
Astronomical Association’s Tony Cook.
(His lunar flash observation of January
2017 was the first confirmed event
from the UK.) “Big aperture, small f/
number,” he advises. But you needn’t go
overboard: Cook himself uses a 20-cm
Newtonian. You can find reasonably
priced video equipment online, but
avoid one-shot colour cameras. A low-
noise CMOS astrophotography camera,
for example, would work well.
When to look. You’ll want to see as
much of the unlit Moon as possible. The
waxing and waning crescent phases are
optimal — specifically, from three days
after the new Moon until two days after
first quarter and two days before last
quarter until three days before the new
Moon. Heightened meteor activity will
increase your chances of spotting a flash
(see the table above). Lunar eclipses also
make for favourable ding-watching, and
this November’s partial lunar eclipse on
the 19th (see page 36) occurs just after
the peak of the Leonid meteor shower.
Even with a zenithal hourly rate of 10
(Cudnik normally recommends a ZHR
of 20 for regular observations), it’s worth
pointing at the Moon.
Once you’ve recorded your lunar
impact flash, head over to the ALPO
(https://is.gd/alpo_lunar) or BAA
(https://is.gd/baa_lunar) websites and
follow their protocols for submitting
your data. Cudnik, Cook and a whole
cohort of lunar impact flash enthusiasts
are eager to hear from you!
¢ DIANA HANNIKAINEN loves picturing
meteoroids pinging the Moon.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 75
 GALLERY

Astrophotos from our readers

PAW PICTURE
Steve Messiter
NGC 6334, nicknamed the Cat’s Paw Nebula for obvious
reasons, is located more than 5,000 light-years away in the
Milky Way’s Carina–Sagittarius Arm. Steve used a William
Optics FLT 132 telescope, QHY600m camera, LRGB filters
and a total exposure of 8 hours.

76 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

 SOLAR SOUTH John Wilkinson
On August 28, 2021, our nearest star’s southern hemisphere
sported an M4.7 flare (the white area) along with some
prominences visible on the limb. For this magnificent shot John
used a Lunt 100 solar scope, Canon EOS 550D camera and a
single exposure of 1/80th-second.
 SKY SHOWER Jamie Cooper
The Perseids is a high-activity, very dependable meteor shower,
but we don’t normally see many of its meteors here in the south as
the radiant is far in the northern sky. This composite image of the
shower’s most recent peak on August 12 shows what it looks like
from the UK.
www.skyandtelescope.com.au 77
 GALLERY

78 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

t WISH UPON A STAR
Fernando de Menezes
NGC 3532, sometimes called
the Wishing Well Cluster,
is a magnificent sight in
the southern constellation
Carina. It was also the first
imaging target for the Hubble
Space Telescope after it was
launched in 1990. Fernando
used a Sky-Watcher 150-mm
Esprit telescope and ZWO
ASI6200MC Pro cooled
camera.

 NIGHTSCAPE
Phil Jones
This is the sort of sight for which
you need dark country skies
— who gets to see the Milky
Way like this from the city? Phil
made the composite image from
shots taken at the famous Lara
Station wetlands in Queensland.
He used a Canon EOS RP and
Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.

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.

 LOBSTER NEBULA
Shaun Robertson
It’s easy to see how NGC 6357
got its informal name — it really
does resemble a lobster. You
can fish for it about 5,500 light-
years from Earth in the direction
of Scorpius. Shaun used a
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
scope and ZWO ASI1600GT
camera for a total exposure time
of 11 hours.
 GALLERY

NORTHERN NEBULA Patrick Winkler

We don’t get to see this nebula from down south, but Patrick’s shot of IC 5146
(Cocoon Nebula) in Cygnus is too good to not share. It sort of looks like a cross
between the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae. Patrick used an ASA RC400 scope, ZWO
ASI6200MM Pro camera and LRGB filters. Total exposure time was 327 minutes.

80 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021

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www.skyandtelescope.com.au 81
 FOCAL POINT by Lisa Kaltenegger
Who could be
watching us?
If they exist, intelligent aliens on planets circling
nearby stars could see Earth cross the face of the Sun.
WE LIVE IN AN AMAZING TIME. For
the first time ever, we have developed
the means to potentially spot life in our
galaxy, if it is out there. The upcoming
James Webb Space Telescope and
ground-based 30-metre-class telescopes
will open our eyes to thousands of new
worlds in our celestial neighbourhood,
burnishing our hope of finding other
Pale Blue Dots.
In our search, transiting exoplanets
feature prominently. Such worlds block
a tiny part of their host star from our
view when they pass between us and the
star. That’s when we notice them. We
can’t see most of the exoplanets directly,
but we know they’re there, because we
can detect that slight dimming with a
precision like clockwork.
Some of these worlds are at just the
right distance from their star to possibly
make them warm Pale Blue Dots. They
orbit not too close and not too far away
and thus may have surface conditions
82 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2021
that allow liquid water to flow above-
ground. Water, of course, is one of the
key ingredients for life on Earth.
But our line-of-sight vantage point
is not unique. When we change the
perspective from Earth to other stars,
we discover about 1,000 suns less than
350 light-years away that could detect
our planet the same way. Anything or
anybody that could observe from near
those stars could see Earth block a
minute portion of our Sun’s light.
All 1,004 of these main-sequence
stars inhabit a small strip on the sky,
a geometry that puts Earth between
those stars and the Sun once a year.
Thirty-eight of these stars are no more
than 100 light-years away from us. That
means radio waves from our world have
already reached them. You can even
figure out when each one of those stars
‘sees’ Earth transit and wave back at the
right time!
When our planet passes through a
star’s line of sight to the Sun, part of
the sunlight gets filtered through our
atmosphere. That filtered light tells the
story of a planet teeming with life — if
you know how to read it.
Because light carries energy that’s
proportional to its wavelength, it
interacts with molecules it encounters
on its path, making them swing and
rotate. And because every molecule has
a unique structure, it will only move if
it gets hit with just the right energy.
All that information is encoded in
the light astronomers collect in their
telescopes. The missing light tells the
story of which chemicals the photons
encountered on their way to us, just
as passport stamps indicate which
countries you visited before you arrived.
It allows us to read the chemical
makeup of the air on transiting planets
over vast cosmic distances.
Earth’s vibrant biosphere has
changed the chemical makeup of our
own air for billions of years. In that
time, it left telltale signs for anyone
looking. We don’t know yet if any
of those 1,000-plus stars host small
planets — NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite, or TESS, mission is
searching for them now.
But imagine a planet near one of
those stars that bears astronomers with
our level of technology or better. They
might well have spotted Earth already.
What would they think of our world?
„ LISA KALTENEGGER is Director
of the Carl Sagan Institute and an
associate professor of astronomy at
Cornell University. See her full paper
DAVID CURTIS
on this topic, coauthored with Joshua
Pepper (Lehigh University), at arxiv.org/
abs/2010.09766.