Big Binos vs. Small Scopes: Which to Buy for What Use p.

34
THE ESSENTIAL MAGAZINE OF ASTRONOMY

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Bring Back the

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Can we reverse light pollution? p.28

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 May 2010
V O L . 119, N O . 5

On the cover: THI S M O N TH ’ S S K Y AL S O IN THI S I S S U E

Light pollution
is a serious 40 Northern Hemisphere’s Sky 6 Spectrum
© ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ NIKADA

impediment By Fred Schaaf By Robert Naeye

for deep-sky
observers in
43 May’s Sky at a Glance 8 Letters
Hong Kong
and other
major cities.
45 Binocular Highlight 10 50 & 25 Years Ago
By Gary Seronik By Leif J. Robinson

FE ATURE S 46 Planetary Almanac 12 News Notes

18 Amateurs Catch 48 Sun, Moon, and Planets 58 New Product Showcase

a Crucial Nova By Fred Schaaf
Two dedicated backyard 70 Telescope Workshop
astronomers alerted professional 51 Exploring the Moon By Gary Seronik
telescopes worldwide and in By Charles A. Wood
space to U Scorpii’s eruption. 76 Gallery
By Mike Simonsen 61 Celestial Calendar
& Alan MacRobert By Alan MacRobert 86 Focal Point
By Constance E. Walker
65 Deep-Sky Wonders
22 The Quest for the By Sue French
Most Massive Star 22
Astronomers are conducting a 68 Going Deep
frenetic search for our galaxy’s By Ken Hewitt-White

NASA / ESA / F. PARESCE (INAF-IASF) / R. O’CONNELL (UNIV. OF VIRGINIA) / WFC3 SCIENCE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE
most massive star.
By Yaël Nazé S &T TE S T R E P O R T

55 Lunar Discoverer
28 Saving the Night Sky Mac and PC users alike can use
COVER Li
Light pollution is worse than ever, this program to aid their telescopic
STORY but a new mindset and new
bu explorations of the Moon.
technology are poised to slow
te
— and perhaps reverse —
this bane of astronomy.
By J. Kelly Beatty
18

34 Big Binos Versus

Small Scopes
These instruments have different
but overlapping capabilities.
By Tony Flanders
BARBARA HARRIS

72 Digging Out the Details

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Robert Naeye
Spectrum
The Fight Against Light
Pollution: A Call to Arms
As i wrote a few months ago, amateur astronomy has
entered a Golden Age. Manufacturers keep churning out better equipment and
at more affordable prices. The internet, CCD cameras, and various electronic
gizmos are making it easier than ever for amateurs to shoot astrophotos, con-
duct scientific research, share their successes with others, and enjoy the hobby.
But the specter of light pollution looms over astronomy like a sword of
Damocles. The problem continues to worsen, and in future decades the glare of
artificial lighting might wipe out visual deep-sky observing for large stretches
of the world’s landmasses. In the U.S., for example, light beamed into the sky is
increasing 6% annually, four times the rate of population growth.
Kelly Beatty (page 28) and Connie Walker
(page 86) describe how people are waging a
valiant battle against light pollution, often in
conjunction with organizations such as the
International Dark-Sky Association (IDA).
Despite a growing awareness, an improv-
ing understanding of the problem, and new
technologies, it’s not a battle we’re guaran-
teed to win. But it’s a battle that we must win
if we want to preserve the grandeur of the
heavens for later generations.
The future of amateur astronomy is at
stake. Light pollution takes away the same
S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN
night sky we share with one another around
the world, and that connects us to our ances-
tors. Heavily light-polluted skies fail to spark
a sense of awe and wonder, making it less
likely that people (especially children) will
develop an interest in astronomy.
There’s a lot that concerned astronomers can do about light pollution. First,
remember that the problem is not light in general, it’s unnecessary light. Educate
yourself about the issues and become knowledgeable about light fi xtures. Tell
friends and neighbors that their night sky is disappearing, and that local govern-
ments are wasting huge sums of taxpayer money lighting up the sky. Tell them
about how excessive glare can contribute to auto accidents and harm nocturnal
wildlife. Join or support the IDA (www.darksky.org). Contact your local, state, or
provincial government officials. We can’t afford to sit around and wish the prob-
lem away. Only sustained, concerted action will save our precious night sky.
Editor in Chief
6 May 2010 sky & telescope
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Founded in 1941
by Charles A. Federer, Jr.
and Helen Spence Federer
The Essential Magazine
of Astronomy
EDITORIAL
Editor in Chief Robert Naeye
Senior Editors Dennis di Cicco, Alan M. MacRobert
Associate Editor Tony Flanders
Imaging Editor Sean Walker
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Editors Emeritus Richard T. Fienberg, Leif J. Robinson
Senior Contributing Editors J. Kelly Beatty, Roger W. Sinnott
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McDowell, Fred Schaaf, Govert Schilling, Ivan Semeniuk, Gary Seronik,
William Sheehan, Mike Simmons, Charles A. Wood, Robert Zimmerman
Contributing Photographers P. K. Chen, Akira Fujii, Robert Gendler,
Tony & Daphne Hallas
ART & DESIGN
Design Director Patricia Gillis-Coppola
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Illustrator Casey Reed
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 Letters
The Alien Paradox
Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth D. Baum’s
article (“Where Have All the Aliens
Gone?” March issue, page 86) introduces a
new and interesting idea about the Fermi
Paradox, which says that if advanced
aliens exist at all they should have reached
Earth by now. The problem of sustainabil-
ity may indeed explain why they haven’t.
Here is another possible reason. The
authors remind us of the commonly
accepted equation: “A civilization that
deploys colonists to 10 planets, each of
which expands to another 10 planets, will
quickly colonize the entire galaxy.” In my
opinion this makes it look far too easy.
Let’s suppose that, in a few centuries,
mankind will be capable of reaching other
stars. After a journey of, say, 1,000 years
(which itself raises a few questions), where
will we find 10 planets fully suitable for
human life — with convenient gravity and
pressure, temperature, breathable atmo-
sphere, liquid water, natural cosmic-ray
shielding, etc.? Probably nowhere! The
chances to find strictly Earth-like planets
are close to zero.
Most likely our colonists will have to live
indefinitely in their spacecrafts, near plan-
ets or asteroids where they would collect
what they need as raw materials. Perhaps
other intelligent civilizations in the Milky
Way face the same problems, and therefore
have little reason to travel very far.
We may also find that intelligent life
rarely develops technology, and therefore
does not conquer and colonize far away
— a typically human trait!
Philippe Barraud
Cully, Switzerland
The Fermi Paradox is neither a paradox
nor a problem. Since the universe is not
infinitely old, the question of whether
Write to Letters to the Editor, Sky & Telescope,
90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264,
or send e-mail to letters@SkyandTelescope.com.
Please limit your comments to 250 words.
8 May 2010 sky & telescope
a civilization should have long since
expanded to fill the galaxy depends criti-
cally on how likely it is for other intelli-
gence to evolve before us. Civilization
evolved on Earth in just short of the pres-
ent age of the Sun, about 1/3 the age of the
universe. There is no reason to conclude
that another intelligent civilization in our
galaxy — especially since it is likely that
such life will only evolve around young,
Population I stars — has had much more
time to develop on a planet possessing the
necessary mix of heavy elements.
Dan Purrington
New Orleans, Louisiana
Editor’s note: Surprisingly, stars with heavy
elements — and therefore, probably, rocky
planets — formed at a high rate long before
the solar system. One analysis found that the
average rocky world in the Milky Way should
be 6 or 7 billion years old, compared to
Earth’s “mere” 4.6 billion. See “Most Earths
Are Old,” S&T: August 2001, page 24.
Astro Club: Alive & Well
When I finished Robert Naeye’s Spec-
trum in the March issue, “Bringing in
More Women” (page 6), my first feeling
was, “We’re doing well!” I co-founded the
Camden County Library Astronomy Club
(in Camdenton, Missouri) three years
worldmags & avaxhome
ago.
ago I scanned our club roster and found
31 women,
w 45 men, 7 young people, and 5
regular
regu speakers.
There
T are several reasons why I believe
our club is so diverse. We always ask the
people
peo attending for topics they would like
to h
hear more about. One of the latest came
from a five-year-old girl, and at our Janu-
ary meeting, Jim (the other co-founder of
our group) spoke on the history of how the
planets
plan got their names.
As
A a retired teacher, I saw a need for
something
som to keep the younger ones’
minds
min busy during more advanced talks.
So wwe have activities to keep them busy:
word
wor puzzles, coloring pages, childrens’
books,
boo all astronomy-related, of course.
Another
A recent meeting was on a sub-
ject that our members have strongly sug-
gested.
ges So many of our budding amateur
astronomers buy a telescope and find they
do not know how to use it. We asked every-
one who needs help to bring their scopes.
After every meeting, weather permit-
ting, we have a star party. Those who
have never looked through a telescope get
ample opportunity to do so. One of our
greatest rewards is to see the looks on
peoples’ faces, and hear the amazement
in their voices, when they look through a
telescope and see wonders that are hidden
from the naked eye.
Ginny Strogen
Camdenton, Missouri
Beyond Hubble
“Is the James Webb Space Telescope a
Good Thing?” Robert Naeye asks in the
January issue (page 8). The James Webb
Space Telescope represents NASA’s next
major step beyond the Hubble Space
Telescope. While Webb is indeed a major
facility, it is important to remember that,
like Hubble, small investigator teams from
universities across the United States and
abroad will accomplish the vast majority
of its science through individual proposals
for observing time. Nearly 8,000 individ-
ual astronomers now use Hubble and its
data products, and we expect the Webb to
be used in the same way.
 Power Pairs!
























 





















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worldmags & avaxhome
 Letters
When the Great Observatories (Hub-
ble, Chandra, and Spitzer) were being
constructed serially through the 1980s to
2003, the Astrophysics Division at NASA
spent, on average, 60-70% of its annual
budget on those missions. Today, Webb
funding represents about 40%. NASA
will be operating or funding 15 satel-
lites returning data across nearly the full
electromagnetic spectrum throughout
2010. Contrast this with the Great Obser-
vatories construction period when NASA
was operating only between four and nine
astronomy satellites.
Webb was recommended as the highest
priority facility in the 2000 National Acad-
emy of Sciences decadal survey for astron-
omy and astrophysics. This is the science
community-driven prioritization process
that NASA follows. NASA does not “pit
one group of scientists against another as
they battle for precious resources.”
Today, more satellites than ever are
75, 50 & 25 Years Ago
May/June 1935
Where the Stars Are
“One of the funda-
mental problems of
modern astronomy is
the determination of the
distances of stars.”
That problem began
to go away with the
publication in 1997 of the
Hipparcos satellite’s high-precision parallax cata-
log, which contains accurate distances for tens of
thousands of stars. Around 2020 we should see the
results from the Gaia mission, with 100 times bet-
ter accuracy and 10,000 times more stars.
May 1960
Birth of U. S.
National Observatory
“Questions for the
astronomy of the future
were discussed by the
chief speaker at the
dedication exercises on
March 15th of Kitt Peak
National Observatory,
10 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
returning data from space, including Hub-
ble, Chandra, and Spitzer, as well as five
Explorer and five international missions;
and other projects being developed, such
as SOFIA, NuSTAR, Astro-H, and GEMS.
Even if there is some frustration with not
being able to do everything the community
would like, this seems like a pretty good
starting point for the next 400 years of gaz-
ing at the sky through telescopes.
Eric P. Smith
JWST Program Scientist
NASA, Washington, DC
For the Record
✹ The labels A and B for the craters
Aristarchus and Ptolemaeus were reversed
on the Moon photo on page 51 of the March
2010 issue.
✹ In the February 2010 issue (page 67),
Deep-Sky Wonders described a bright patch
in the nebula Sharpless 2-219. In fact, the
bright patch is in Sh 2-217.
Leif J. Robinson
the new 10-million-dollar
optical observatory that
is now being built on a
mountaintop in southern
Arizona. Already a 36-
inch reflector (front-
cover picture) is in opera-
tion, and an 84-inch
telescope of advanced
design is being built.”
Although Kitt Peak National Observatory is no
longer the optical powerhouse it was during much
of the second half of the last century, it remains a
national center for the development of state-of-
the-art instruments and telescopes.
MAY 1985
Planetary colors “Typical planetary colors run
from brownish gray (for rocky surfaces) through
yellowish gray, to yellowish white (for icy surfaces).
Color is an essential piece of data in deter-
mining the true nature of a planet. It tells us
something about the planet’s composition.”
Andrew Young described the true color of
solar-system objects, in contrast to the enhanced,
processed images we often see.
worldmags & avaxhome
 News Notes
The First Asteroid Collision?
NASA / ESA / DAVID JEWITT (UCLA) (2)
What is the thing pictured here? It’s like
no astronomical object ever seen.
The automated LINEAR sky patrol
picked it up on January 6th. It seemed
like a very small, but long-tailed, 20th-
magnitude comet moving across Gemini.
It received the name Comet P/2010 A2
accordingly. But it was following a nearly
circular orbit in the main asteroid belt.
And its tail seemed to be streaming not
from a comet head, but from a thread
of debris extending away from a point-
like bare object. Astronomers turned the
Hubble Space Telescope to it on January
25th and 29th. The images above are from
the latter date.
The “head” seems to be an X-shaped
feature with a tiny solid body at one
endpoint of the X, about 1,000 miles
(1,600 km) from its center. “This is quite
different from the smooth dust envelopes
of normal comets,” says David Jewitt
(UCLA), who led the Hubble effort.
Asteroids have been known to flare
up with surprise cometary activity; four
previous cases are on record. But P/2010
12 May 2010 sky & telescope
A2 looks like none of these. Moreover, it
lacks the gas usually seen in a comet’s
coma and tail. What we’re looking at here
is only dust.
The best theory, thinks Jewitt, is that
two small asteroids collided a few weeks or
months earlier. That might seem astro-
nomically unlikely, given the vast amount
of empty space in even the richest part of
the asteroid belt. But there are tens of mil-
lions of asteroids as small as the pointlike
thing in the image, which is estimated to
be 140 meters (460 feet) wide.
Would a collision aftermath look like
this? Maybe. Perhaps the two lines of
the X are separate rubble streams from
the two bodies. Another possibility is
that we’re seeing a single asteroid that
has been gradually spun up by interac-
tions with sunlight to the point that it has
started throwing off loose material.
In either case, fine dust appears to
be streaming off the rubbly X due to the
Sun’s radiation pressure, to form the long,
cometary tail. More Hubble observations
are planned through July.
worldmags & avaxhome
The Smaller the Galaxy,
the More Dark Matter
Dwarf galaxies may not look like much,
but don’t be fooled. They offer the purest
pools of dark matter available anywhere.
The smaller a galaxy, the larger its pro-
portion of dark matter, finds a research
group led by Stacy McGaugh (University
of Maryland).
In the cosmos as a whole, the mysteri-
ous dark matter outweighs all normal
(“baryonic”) matter by 5 to 1. The same
is true inside the largest galaxy clusters.
But the ratio goes up in smaller cosmic
structures — to the point that in dwarf
galaxies, such as NGC 4163 pictured
below, the ratio of dark matter to bary-
onic matter (stars, gas, and everything
else) can exceed 100 to 1.
Why? One theory is that small galax-
ies were less able to hold onto their gas
when, early in cosmic history, super-
novae were more common. In this view,
supernova blasts cleared out most of the
normal matter, putting an end to most
star formation. Dark matter doesn’t inter-
act with normal matter and therefore
doesn’t feel supernova blast waves. So it
was left behind.
NASA / ESA / K. MCQUINN / I. KARACHENTSEV
For astronomy news as it breaks,
SkyandTelescope.com/newsblog.
S ky
worldmags & avaxhome
 News Notes
Double Supermassive
Black Holes
Astronomers have found that nearly every
large galaxy has a supermassive black
hole at its center, holding about 1 million
to 20 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Astronomers also know that galaxies often
collide and merge. So lots of galaxies today
should have two or more supermassive
black holes. But it’s been hard to find clear
examples.
JULIA COMERFORD
Now the numbers are filling in. A
group led by Julie Comerford (University
of California, Berkeley) has announced
33 galaxies with two holes. “This result is
significant because it shows us that they
are much more common than previously
known,” she says. An example is in the
Hubble image above.
GRB-Supernova Link
In recent years, astronomers have con-
nected several long-duration gamma-ray
bursts to distant, relatively normal-looking
Type Ib/c supernovae. These discoveries
suggest that the superfast (“relativistic”)
jets powering GRBs play a big role in at
least one type of ordinary exploding star.
But if so, who don’t we see signs of
relativistic jets in more of these superno-
vae? We witness a GRB only when the jet
happens to be aimed right at us. Radio
observations should reveal relativistic jets
no matter which way they’re aimed. But
despite examining more than 100 super-
novae, radio astronomers saw no such jets.
Until now. In the January 28th Nature,
separate teams reported radio obser-
vations of two supernovae that show
relativistic jets. Neither produced a GRB.
One possibility, says Alicia Soderberg
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-
14 May 2010 sky & telescope
physics), is that “perhaps the gamma rays
were ‘smothered’ as they tried to escape
the star. This is perhaps the more exciting
possibility,” she says; it implies that we
can identify supernovae that are driven by
spinning black holes in their cores “even
if they lack detectable gamma rays and go
unseen by gamma-ray satellites.”
Hot Spot for Cosmic Rays
Future astronauts who make long trips
beyond Earth’s magnetosphere will face
serious trouble from galactic cosmic rays:
high-energy protons and heavier atomic
nuclei. But would-be Mars colonizers can
at least be glad our galaxy isn’t like M82.
Most cosmic-ray particles near Earth
come from the expanding shock fronts
of supernova remnants in our galaxy, as
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Tele-
scope is confirming. The shock waves
entrain magnetic fields that accelerate
charged particles to extreme energies.
It happens more elsewhere. M82, 12
million light-years away in Ursa Major, is
birthing so many massive stars that one
goes supernova every few years. Gamma-
ray astronomers have found a signature
from M82 indicating that cosmic-ray pro-
duction is 500 times more intense there
than in the Milky Way.
In the composite view of M82 below,
visible light is shown as orange and green,
infrared as red, and X-rays as blue.
worldmags & avaxhome
CASSINI IMAGING TEAM / SSI / JPL / ESA / NASA
Mission Updates
• NASA’s spectacularly productive Cas-
sini mission has been awarded $60 million
per year to continue through 2017. Cassini
arrived at Saturn in 2004 for a planned
4-year mission, but its hits just keep on
coming. Above is a recent new closeup of
Saturn’s moon Calypso, 19 kilometers wide.
It appears to be covered with fresh flows of
bright white ice dust from Saturn’s E ring.
• NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory,
featured in the January issue (page 22), got
off to a fine launch February 11th on its 5-
year mission to study the Sun.
• Less happy news comes from Mars.
NASA controllers announced on January
26th that they’ve given up trying to free the
Spirit rover from the sand wallow where it
bogged down in May 2009. After explor-
ing across 4.8 miles in 5 years, Spirit now
becomes a stationary science platform.
NASA / ESA / CXC / JPL / CALTECH
worldmags & avaxhome
 News Notes

Close Encounters Turn 0º 60º New Plan for NASA

Asteroids Pale In February the Obama administration
Small asteroids, such as 25143 Itokawa unveiled a $19 billion NASA budget for
(imaged below by Japan’s Hayabusa fiscal year 2011 that would alter the future
spacecraft), seem to be loose rubble piles of human spaceflight. The plan, if enacted
that can be severely shaken up by close by Congress, would end shuttle flights by
encounters with Earth. early 2011 and cancel the Constellation
The evidence is in their surface colors. program for returning astronauts to the
120º 180º
Dark, reddish-gray “S-type” asteroids are Moon. But it would increase funding to
common, and their color is thought to develop “game-changing technologies”
result from space weathering. Solar-wind that could speed up future human mis-
particles and other radiation discolor rock sions to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids,
surfaces exposed to space in less than a and Mars. The plan would also place
million years, giving them a sunburned greater reliance on private firms and Rus-
appearance. sia for ferrying humans to low-Earth orbit,
240º 330º
Other, “Q-type” asteroids seem to lack while extending U.S. participation in the
space weathering. What freshens them International Space Station to 2020.
NASA / ESA / MARK BUIE (6)

up? At first, researchers thought impacts Despite canceling a program in which

and collisions might do the job. But Q-
type asteroids are not found in the main
asteroid belt, where collisions should be
the most frequent.
A research group led by Richard Binzel
(MIT) ran the orbits of 95 small asteroids
— 75 of them type S, 20 of them Q — back-
ward in time. Every one of the fresh-look-
ing, Q-type asteroids was following an
orbit that makes past close encounters with
Earth very likely.
This supports a suggestion by David
Nesvorny (Southwest Research Institute)
that a close encounter with a planet can
change an asteroid from dark brown to
lighter gray by tidally jostling it enough to
expose fresh rubble.
ISAS / JAXA
Faces of Pluto
On February 4th, the 104th birthday of
the late Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh,
Marc Buie of the Southwest Research
Institute unveiled maps of Pluto’s surface
derived from Hubble Space Telescope
images taken in 2002 and 2003. Massive
computer processing went into eking out
the highest possible resolution. When
compared to a similar set from 1994, it’s
clear that Pluto’s icy surface went through
radical changes in less than a decade.
The new views reveal a surface with
three distinct coatings. The brightest areas
are likely to be fresh frosts of methane and
nitrogen. The darker orange and charcoal-
black terrains are probably covered with
old, complex carbon compounds created
by long exposure of methane ice to space
radiation. By contrast, no surface changes
$9 billion has already been invested, the
plan increases NASA’s overall funding
by $6 billion over the next five years, to
about $100 billion total. By developing
new propulsion technologies, in-orbit fuel
depots, and robotic precursor missions,
the administration and NASA seem to
be betting that they can lower costs for
deep-space exploration in the long run.
The plan also calls for more international
cooperation.
The proposed budget follows many
recommendations set forth in a report last
year by an independent committee chaired
by former Lockheed Martin executive Nor-
man Augustine. The “Augustine Report”
spelled out what many have been saying
for years: the Constellation Moon program
was vastly underfunded for achieving its
stated goal of returning astronauts to the
Moon by 2020. But critics charge that the
new plan fails to establish specific mission
objectives and timetables.
The new budget increases funding for
Earth-science missions.

were seen on Pluto’s moon Charon. Planetary science

Apparently, thin traces of atmosphere and solar phys-
This research also helps tie up are freezing out on Pluto’s surface as ics receive slight
another problem. Most meteorites have it edges away from the Sun in its long increases, while
Q-type spectra, though such asteroids orbit, and nitrogen frosts are migrating astrophysics is
are unusual. The discrepancy is easy to as Pluto’s northern hemisphere becomes slightly decreased. ✦
A

AS
N
explain in terms of fresh versus space- exposed to sunlight for the first time in
weathered surfaces. During a meteoroid’s more than a century.
fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere These images are the best look at Pluto All News Note stories are presented in
its old surface is stripped off, exposing we’ll probably have until NASA’s New more depth at SkyandTelescope.com;
fresh material beneath. Horizons probe flies by in 2015. search for the keyword SkyTelMay10.

16 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
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 Recurrent Nova Erupts

U SCORPII:

Amateurs
BARBARA HARRIS

Catch a
Crucial
Nova
Above: Barbara Harris, the first to discover that U Scorpii had
erupted to 8th magnitude, shows off her 16-inch scope in her
Florida home observatory. Every clear morning before January
28th she had been measuring U Sco at around magnitude 18.
Left: Co-discoverer Shawn Dvorak observes variable stars with a 10-
DEB DVORAK

inch scope in his backyard roll-off-roof observatory. In 10 years he

has logged more than 557,000 images and 8.1 million photometric
measurements. Read more at his website, www.rollinghillsobs.org.

18 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
 mike simonsen & alan macrobert
Barbara G. Harris, a retired ob-gyn physician in New
Smyrna Beach, Florida, went to bed late on the night of
January 27th and really didn’t feel like getting up before
the first light of dawn. But her dog Arctic had other ideas.
He barked to go out. So she reluctantly got up and let him
out the door. And once on her feet, as she had done every
other clear morning in January, she went out on her third-
floor deck, fired up the 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain tele-
scope and its CCD camera in her observatory, and pointed
it toward U Scorpii low in the southeastern sky.
When the first image appeared on Harris’s computer,
blazing in its center was a huge, overexposed star. Her
first thought was that something was wrong with her
gear. Just 24 hours earlier she had measured U Scorpii at
photoelectric V magnitude 18.2. She quickly took a much
shorter exposure, double-checked the position, and, she
recalls, “That’s when I started to get excited.”
Harris had been monitoring the recurrent nova U
Scorpii for months, in hopes of catching a rare erup-
tion that Louisiana State University astronomer Bradley
Schaefer had predicted almost a year earlier (S&T: August
2009, page 56). She and many other amateurs had joined
a campaign by the American Association of Variable Star
Observers (AAVSO) to keep the star under steady watch,
in hopes that an early alert could make this the best-stud-
ied nova outburst in history.
Astrophysicists were eager for the event. Stars like U
Sco are likely to be the objects that finally explode as Type
Ia supernovae. These supernovae are crucial to measur-
ing the changing expansion rate of the universe and the
“dark energy” that is speeding up the expansion. But the
progenitors of Type Ia supernovae remain poorly known.
“Back in December I got an email from Brad Schaefer,
because I had obtained the first image of U Sco as it came
out from behind the Sun” into morning visibility, says
Harris. That image helped reassure astronomers that U
Sco had not blown up while it was in conjunction with the
Sun. “He said, ‘Keep submitting your data to AAVSO, but
here’s my home phone number.’”
On the morning of January 28th she rang him out of
bed. “He let out a scream and said, ‘Thank you, thank
you! I’ll start notifying everyone right away!’” Barbara
recalls. Just to be sure, Schaefer toted his own 6-inch
scope to his front yard and confirmed that U Sco was
bright, then began to spread the news worldwide.
Meanwhile, in Clermont, Florida, Shawn Dvorak
had gotten up early to go to the gym. Years ago he had
intended to become a professional astronomer, but he
wound up with a job working on computer systems for
FedEx. That’s during the day. On most clear nights for
the last decade, Dvorak has used his “semi-automated”
worldmags & avaxhome
10-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain scope and CCD camera to
measure eclipsing binaries, RR Lyraes, and cataclysmic
variable stars for the AAVSO.
On the morning of January 28th his setup had been
running all night. He too had been checking U Sco
before dawn once it emerged from behind the Sun. It was
usually his last observation before shutting down.
“I almost didn’t observe it this morning since I was
planning to go to the gym,” says Dvorak. He still wasn’t
quite awake when the first image came up, and he
thought to himself, “Whoa, I’m pointing at the wrong
field, there’s no star that bright here.” But he quickly real-
ized he was on target and sent off the news to the AAVSO.
Harris and Dvorak made their discoveries before either
knew of the other. Within minutes, alerts were going out
to observatories and spacecraft controllers worldwide: U
Sco had finally blown.
The Nova Watch
U Sco is one of only 10 recurrent novae known. Recurrent
novae are those that have exploded more than once in
observational history. Classical novae are also presumed
to explode repeatedly, but only about 1,000 to 100,000
years apart. In both cases, the underlying star is a close
binary in which a white dwarf is accreting hydrogen from
a relatively normal companion. Eventually, a deep enough
layer builds up on the white dwarf’s hot surface — and is
compressed tightly enough by the dwarf’s intense gravity
— to ignite a runaway hydrogen-fusion reaction. The bot-
tom of the hydrogen layer explodes globally as a thin-shell
hydrogen bomb, blowing off a shell of ejecta and bright-
ening the system by roughly 10,000 times. The
stars remain in place, everything settles
back down, and the process starts over
(S&T: October 2009, page 26).
Brad Schaefer tracked down everything
he could find about all 37 recorded out-
bursts of the 10 recurrent novae, including
three previously unknown eruptions of U Brad Schaefer
Sco that he found by searching archives of
photographic sky-patrol plates going back to 1900.
Based on this work, and on the apparent rate at which mass
was currently flowing onto U Sco’s white dwarf, Schaefer
made a bold prediction: The star, which last blew up in
1999, would erupt at 2009.3 plus or minus one year. He was
0.8 year off, within his margin of error.
After Schaefer announced his prediction, astronomers
planned observing campaigns for when and if the blowup
occurred. But U Scorpii is an exceptionally fast nova, ris-
ing and starting to fade in just hours. Its rise was, unfor-
tunately, missed completely; the last observation before
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 19
 Recurrent Nova Erupts

Weblinks News updates from Current AAVSO Background on U Sco Brad Schaefer’s paper
AAVSO’s U Scorpii Campaign: magnitude measurements: and recurrent novae: on all recurrent novae:
www.aavso.org/news/ tinyurl.com/yfv2fzn www.aavso.org/vstar/ tinyurl.com/ybfl9pn
usco.shtml vsots/usco.html
BARBARA HARRIS (2)

Left: When Harris took a deep CCD image through her 16-inch on January 27th, it barely recorded U Scorpii. Right: A day later the star was an overex-
posed blaze even on a much shorter exposure. For skywatchers worldwide responding to the early alert, the recurrent nova was visible in binoculars.

Harris’s discovery turned out to be her own measurement
of the star 24 hours earlier.
True to form, U Sco lost more than a magnitude in
the first 24 hours after discovery and continued declin-
ing in a way that closely mirrored its 1999 eruption (see
the light curve below). A day after eruption, spectra
showed that the edges of its debris shell were expanding
by a remarkable 11,000 kilometers per second, 3% of the
speed of light. Several days later, X-ray emission turned
on; no one knows why novae wait to do this. As the debris
6 amateur astronomers for detecting transient events like
8
U Scorpii
2010
Visual (eye)
10
Magnitude
shell thinned and cleared, some 7 days into the show,
the characteristic “nova flickering” began — a sign that
mass transfer had resumed and a new accretion disk had
formed around the white dwarf. Soon the light curve
was again showing the eclipses of the white dwarf and
its accretion disk by the companion star every 30 hours.
Luckily for researchers seeking to untangle the system’s
details, U Sco is a totally eclipsing binary. Many studies
are continuing on the ground and from space.
So chalk up another amateur triumph. “This again
shows the real advantage of the worldwide distribution of
this,” says AAVSO director Arne Henden. Astronomers
would not have had their early alert if Shawn had decided
to go to the gym, and if Arctic hadn’t barked. Hours after
the find, Harris commented, “My dog has been getting

12 cookies and anything he wants all day.” ✦

AAVSO / MATTHEW TEMPLETON

14 Visual (CCD)
Mike Simonsen, one of the world’s leading variable star
16 Fainter than Blue (CCD) observers, is development director for the AAVSO and heads
its Cataclysmic Variable Section, Chart Team, and Mentor
18
Program. He writes the astronomy and variable-star blog
20 Simostronomy and is a cast member of the Slacker Astron-
Jan Feb Feb Feb Feb omy podcast.
25 1 8 15 22

As this issue went to press in late February, U Sco was fading Sky & Telescope senior editor Alan MacRobert has his own
with the standard characteristics of a very fast nova. fond memories of Nova Delphini 1967.

20 May 2010 sky & telescope

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 Our Galaxy’s Biggest, Brightest Brutes

The
Quest
for the
Most
Massive Star
Astronomers
are conducting
a frenetic search

NASA / ESA / F. PARESCE (INAF-IASF) / R. O’CONNELL (UNIV. OF VIRGINIA) / WFC3 SCIENCE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE; AUTHOR PHOTO: YVES NEVENS
for our galaxy’s
most massive star.

yaël nazé

SUPER STAR CLUSTER R136 resides near the center of

the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070) in the Large Magellanic
Cloud. Astronomers once thought that R136 was a single
super star of several thousand solar masses. But Hubble
Space Telescope images such as this clearly resolve it into
a cluster populated by thousands of luminous stars.

22 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
Stars are not born equal. Those
with large masses dominate their surroundings; only they
can simultaneously make gas shine to create beautiful
nebulae, push around nearby material, and form a rich
stew of heavy chemical elements. With masses tens of
times that of the Sun and with light outputs millions of
times solar, these stellar masters hold the power of life
and death. They destroy fragile objects such as proto-
planetary disks and trigger the birth of other stars. And
after their brief but flamboyant lives, they die in titanic
supernova
sup explosions.
So if you want to understand the universe, you need
to understand
u these massive objects. Moreover, because
the most massive stars produce the greatest impact, the
record
rec holders constitute an astronomical “holy grail.”
Astronomers have other reasons to study the most
massive
ma stars. Every stellar model needs to be tested, and
what’s
wh a better laboratory than extremely massive stars?
Indeed,
Ind the lowest mass for a star is a well-known limit:
8% of the Sun’s mass. Below that, stellar cores lack the
necessary
ne pressures and temperatures to sustain nuclear
fusion.
fus But theories are less clear-cut on the upper bound-
ary.
ary For the moment, astronomers can only surmise that
a li
limit exists. Above a certain mass, nuclear reactions in a
stellar core become so powerful that they destroy the star.
Calculating this exact mass depends on our knowledge
of nuclear and stellar physics, but is thought to be around
100 to 120 solar masses for stars that have formed recently
in our Milky Way Galaxy. It remains to be tested if our
educated guesses are correct.
Weighing Without a Scale
Measuring a star’s mass is no easy job. After all, astrono-
mers cannot visit a star and put it on a scale. Weighing
must be done from afar. How can this be done?
One strategy is to model stellar spectra. When astrono-
mers obtain a star’s spectrum, they are measuring chemi-
cals and conditions in the star’s photosphere. The atmo-
sphere’s physical state depends crucially on its temperature
and its pressure, which in turn are linked to the star’s
gravity, which in turn depends on its radius and mass.
Astronomers can use basic physics to model stellar
atmospheres. For a given set of parameters (temperature,
radius, mass), scientists can calculate the state of each
chemical element in the atmosphere, thereby deriving
its potential signature in a stellar spectrum. Astrono-
mers can then compare a real spectrum to the modeled
one, find the best fit, and then indirectly infer the stellar
parameters, including the mass. To find the record holder,
one can simply imagine modeling many different stars,
until the most massive object is found.
But models are always calibrated by observations.
Searching for the most massive objects — by nature
outside the tested limits of the model — implies extrapo-
worldmags & avaxhome
THE ME TAL– MA S S CONNE C TI ON
In astronomy parlance, elements heavier than hydrogen
and helium are called “metals.” Low-metallicity stars
produce very weak stellar outflows during their forma-
tion, since the few electrons in hydrogen and helium
means the infalling material is less easily driven off by
radiation pressure. These stars can thus accumulate
much higher mass than stars that form today in our gal-
axy, whose interstellar nurseries are laden with metals
produced and ejected by previous generations of stars.
lation, which is never precise, nor always correct. The
modeling of stellar spectra can thus only provide an
approximate mass.
Another possibility is to measure a star’s luminosity.
For adult (main-sequence) stars, basic stellar physics dic-
tates that their luminosities are strongly correlated with
their masses. For example, a 40-solar-mass star is five
times more luminous than a 20-solar-mass star. Estimat-
ing masses now appears trivial: observe many different
luminous stars, preferentially in several fi lters, measure
their luminosities, and then compute their masses. But
simplicity is often deceptive and many details render the
task much more complicated than first thought.
For example, this mass-luminosity relation is only
valid for the absolute luminosity, while a direct measure-
ment yields only an apparent brightness. To determine
the former from the latter, astronomers must correct for
distance, reddening by dust, and the short energy range
sampled by the observations — three parameters that are
not always known with precision.
Astronomers also need to be certain that the measured
luminosity applies to only one star. Errors can be frequent
where stars are packed closely together in a cluster. One
famous example is R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Based on its high luminosity, it was once considered to
be a single “superstar” with a whopping 1,000 to 2,500
DATA: LAURENT MAHY (UNIVERSITÉ DE LIÈGE) ET AL.
1.4
Relative brightness
1.2
HD 48099
0 spectrum
0.8 Model spectrum
0.6
4000 4050 4100 4150 4200
Wavelength (angstroms)
THE SPECTRUM METHOD Astronomers compare the actual
spectrum (red line) of the HD 48099 system with a model spec-
trum (blue line) to infer the star’s mass. This method, however,
lacks precision and can only provide approximate masses.
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 23
 Our Galaxy’s Biggest, Brightest Brutes

NASA / ESA / J. MAÍZ APELLÁNIZ (INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE ANDALUCÍA) (2)

SINGLE TO DOUBLE A Hubble

Space Telescope image splits the
extremely luminous star Pismis
24-1 into its two binary compo-
nents. Instead of being one star of
200 to 300 solar masses, the two
components contain about 100
solar masses each.

solar masses. But in 1991, the Hubble Space Telescope
confirmed earlier results from speckle imaging that R136
was a tight cluster composed of hundreds of stars. Sure,
it contained some very massive stars, but they were not as
massive as previously claimed.
The same error was made on a smaller scale for Pismis
24-1, when recent Hubble observations showed that it
consists of two stars. The mass of the famous Pistol Star,
often mentioned as the record-holder with an original
mass of 200 Suns, is thus to be taken with caution: it
could be off by a factor of two.
If observing one star doesn’t give precise information,
measuring several can yield reliable statistics. Astrono-
mers have known for decades that the mass distribution
of stars is not random: massive stars are less common
that low-mass stars. When expressed mathematically, this
distribution is called Salpeter’s law, after the late Cornell
University astronomer Edwin Salpeter. For each star in
our galaxy with a mass between 60 and 120 solar masses,
there are 250 objects with 1 to 2 solar masses, and 5,600
stars with one-fifth to one-tenth of the Sun’s mass.
Astronomers can observe a group of stars, estimate the

500 4
Theoretical range
in early universe
Stellar mass (solar masses)

Upper limit
150 from cluster 1 3
statistics
100 2

1 2 3 4 1
Brightness

S&T: CASEY REED

S&T: CASEY REED

10
Number of stars
SALPETER’S LAW Astronomer Edwin Salpeter (1924–2008)
devised a famous law showing that low-mass stars are much
more numerous in our galaxy than high-mass stars. Low-mass
stars form more easily, and they live longer lives.
Time
ECLIPSING BINARIES The most direct method for “weighing”
massive stars is to study binary systems in which the two stars
periodically eclipse each other. A detailed analysis can yield reli-
able mass determinations. The two stars here have unequal sizes.

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 140
120 ARCHES CLUSTER
(solar masses)
Initial mass

100 Right: The Hubble Space

80 Telescope images the Arches

DATA: DONALD FIGER (ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY) (2)

60 Cluster, a rich collection of
40 massive stars near the galactic
20 center. A detailed study of the
0 cluster reveals the relationship
10 12 14 16 18 20 22
Magnitude (infrared K-band) between the initial masses and
infrared luminosities of Arches
100 members (upper left) and the
Number of stars

number of stars per unit mass

(lower left). The total lack of

NASA / ESA / DONALD FIGER

10
stars above 130 solar masses
indicates that stars of this
mass rarely or never form in
0
10 100 1,000 our galaxy today, since Hubble
Initial mass (solar masses) could have spotted them.

stellar masses through the mass-luminosity relation (how- these values depends mainly on the quality of the spectra.
ever imprecise that might be), and then check if Salpeter’s Today, it can reach 1 kilometer per second, or about 2,200
law correctly applies. To understand the population of the miles per hour. (Compare this to the 1-meter-per-second
rare massive stars, one needs a very large stellar group precision achieved in exoplanet searches of low-mass stars
— such as the Arches cluster, a grouping of about 100 observed with very-high-resolution spectrographs.)
hot, luminous stars (and thousands of cooler ones) near But the velocity curve alone doesn’t yield the actual
the galactic center. The statistical analysis clearly shows a stellar distances and masses. These parameters have
shortage of extremely high-mass stars: 20 to 30 stars with to be multiplied by a factor depending on the orbit’s
more than 130 solar masses should be present that are not
detected. This result implies that stars with more than
about 130 solar masses cannot form.
Similar studies based on the simultaneous analysis of
several clusters have derived comparable upper limits of
150 solar masses. But if astronomers have proven that the
limit exists, they do not have a precise value yet. Statisti-
cally, 130 or 170 solar masses are as acceptable as the
mean value of 150.

The Solution
In fact, there is only one proven method for precisely
determining the mass of a star: studying eclipsing spec-
troscopic binaries.
GAPHE / JEAN MANFROID / ERIC GOSSET (UNIVERSITÉ DE LIÈGE)

About half of stars reside in binaries, in which two

stars revolve around a common center of gravity. The
spectra of such systems combine the spectrum of each
star. Spectral lines, which are the signatures of chemical
elements, therefore appear double. The positions of these
lines change over time. This movement, linked to the
Doppler effect, reflects the orbital motion. The lines of
the approaching star are shifted toward the blue, whereas
those of its receding companion are shifted toward the
red. The shifts are reversed after half a cycle.
Astronomers can then apply Kepler’s and Newton’s laws
to measure the velocities and thus determine the orbital WOLF-RAYET STAR A European 2.2-meter telescope in Chile
parameters: the distances of the stars to their common took this optical image of WR22 (the bright star in the center), an
center of mass, the orbital eccentricity, the period, and each unusual eclipsing binary Wolf-Rayet star whose primary compo-
star’s mass. For massive stars, the precision achieved for nent has a mass of 55 to 72 Suns.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 25

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 Our Galaxy’s Biggest, Brightest Brutes

400 CLUSTER IN X-RAYS

(km per second)
Radial velocity
200 Right: NASA’s Chandra X-ray
Observatory turned its big eye
0 toward another rich cluster
–200 near the galactic center, West-
erlund 2. The brightest X-ray

DATA: GREGOR RAUW (UNIV. DE LIÈGE) ET AL (2)

–400 source in the field is WR20a
(arrowed). Top left: Radial-

NASA / ESA / UNIV. DE LIÈGE / Y. NAZÉ ET AL.

Visual magnitude

13.4 velocity measurements in 2004

revealed the star to be a mas-
13.6 sive binary. Lower left: Eclipses
detected in optical observa-
13.8 tions, when combined with the
velocity data, show that the
0 0.5 1 two stars have a whopping 82
Cycle (period = 3.675 days) and 83 solar masses.

inclination to our line-of-sight. The orbital plane could In fact, the most massive known stars came from an
be tipped in any direction, so the masses determined unexpected direction: Wolf-Rayet stars. In principle, these
by this method are thus only lower limits. To eliminate objects correspond to evolved O stars that have exhausted
that uncertainty, astronomers study eclipsing binaries. their hydrogen fuel and are now burning helium and
The stars in these systems periodically occult each other, heavier elements in their cores. Since hot stars possess
which means that the orbital plane is nearly perfectly strong stellar winds (a scaled-up version of the solar
aligned with our line-of-sight. wind), they eject tens of solar masses — perhaps half
The most promising targets are the rare stars of their initial mass — during their lives. Indeed, WR stars
spectral type O2 and O3, which are the hottest and most are generally much less massive than O stars.
luminous known. But studies of these objects have not The classification of WR stars relies only on the
fulfi lled our hopes. Astronomers have measured O3 stars peculiar appearance of their spectra, which results from
with 50 to 60 solar masses, but this is quite far from the the presence of a very dense outflow. But in the past few
mean value of 150 estimated by cluster statistics. years, astronomers have detected “false” WR stars. These

The Birth of Massive Stars

Theorists can get around the problem in one of two ways.
Astronomers have known for decades that low-mass stars First, they have developed models in which a star accretes
form and grow by accreting nearby gas. Such a process gas at its equator and emits most of its light from its poles.
has problems forming massive stars, however. Before they Second, they can invoke the merger of two or more low-
are completely formed, these objects begin to shine so mass stars into a very massive star near the centers of
brightly that the sheer pressure of their radiation pushes dense clusters. These formation scenarios lack clear-cut
away infalling material — prohibiting further growth. This limits, and there are no observations yet that could help
threshold occurs at about 10 solar masses. constrain them since we have never witnessed the birth of a
But stars much more massive than that clearly exist. truly massive star. — Y. N.
MARK KRUMHOLZ (UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ)

3,000 a.u.

17,500 years 25,000 years 34,000 years 41,700 years 55,900 years

SIMULATED STARBIRTH Frames from a computer simulation show how massive stars might form. Inwardly spiraling mate-
rial in a disk feeds material to the growing star. But when it reaches about 17 solar masses (third frame), the outpouring of radia-
tion can counteract gravity, pushing away inflowing gas and carving out large cavities. Disk instabilities lead to the formation of
several smaller protostars and filaments, leading to sporadic accretion that allows the biggest star to continue growing in mass.

26 May 2010 sky & telescope

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 What About Eta Carinae?
Eta Carinae is certainly one of the most
luminous and massive stars in our galaxy.
Based on its extraordinarily high luminosity
of about 6 million Suns, astronomers inferred
that it may contain about 120 solar masses.
But this guesstimate could be way off because
the star is shrouded in mystery…literally.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows
Eta Carinae embedded in the Homunculus
Nebula, which contains many solar masses of
gas and dust ejected by the star. This material
makes direct observations of the star virtually
impossible. There’s strong evidence for a
binary companion, but astronomers have
yet to ascertain its exact properties. Current
estimates suggest the two stars contain about
90 and 30 solar masses. — Robert Naeye
deviant objects are still burning hydrogen in their cores:
they are thus super-O stars rather than their evolved
descendants. They just happen to eject large amounts
of material, much more than “normal” O stars, thereby
mimicking the characteristics of genuine WR stars.
In 1996 a Belgian team led by Gregor Rauw studied
the very massive Wolf-Rayet star WR22 and measured a
minimum mass of 72 Suns. This surprising result was
confirmed by a team led by Jörg Schweickhardt, but with
a downward revision to 55 solar masses. This conclusion
is still to be secured — the second team had more spectra
but of a lesser quality.
In 2004 the same Belgian team unveiled the incred-
ible properties of the truly astonishing binary WR20a, a
system little studied until then. It’s now known to contain
two stars of 82 and 83 solar masses — with an uncer-
tainty of only 7%. Each one of these objects beats the
previous record by a large amount.
Since then, the quest has intensified, thanks to the com-
bined efforts of Belgian, Canadian, and Argentinean teams.
The results for various eclipsing binaries are generally less
precise than for WR20a, but they are all very encouraging:
HD 15558 contains two objects of 152±51 and 46±11 solar
masses; NGC 3603-A1 possesses two stars of 114±30 and
84±15 solar masses; WR25 consists of two stars of 75±7
and 27±3 solar masses; and R145 has two components of
140±37 and 59±26 solar masses. These values need to be
confirmed, but they show that astronomers are inching
closer to the symbolic figure of 100 solar masses.
Theoretical work is needed to check if these observa-
tions fit the current stellar models. It’s possible that a
more massive star than the ones mentioned above could
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NATHAN SMITH / JON MORSE / NASA
exist and have no binary companion at all. In this case,
there’s no possibility to ascertain its mass precisely and so
astronomers must accept defeat.
Even More?
Is 100 solar masses the final record? Maybe not. Over the
past decade, a new type of star has emerged at the fore-
front of stellar astrophysics: Population III. These were
the first stars born in the universe, when the cosmos was
only a few hundred million years old (S&T: May 2006, page
30). Because they formed from gas clouds consisting of
pure hydrogen and helium, computer simulations strongly
suggest that these objects did not follow Salpeter’s law.
They could have been very massive
— “very” meaning several hundred
For more information about the
solar masses, maybe up to a few
author’s research group, visit
thousand! Other researchers have www.gaphe.ulg.ac.be/index_e.html.
also speculated about the early exis-
tence of dark-matter-powered stars that could have had up
to 10,000 solar masses (March issue, page 26).
Population III stars could be the sources of distant
gamma-ray bursts. Our present telescopes cannot see far
enough back in time to study such objects, but astrono-
mers are confident that the next generation of instru-
ments, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the
Thirty Meter Telescope, and the Extremely Large Tele-
scope, will help confirm or deny this bold hypothesis. ✦
Yaël Nazé is an astronomer at the FNRS/Université de Liège,
Belgium, who studies massive stars. As a writer and public
lecturer in her free time, she tries to share her passion for
these intriguing objects — and other marvels of the sky.
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 27
 Your Light-Pollution Guide
j. kelly beatty
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when
outdoor lighting began to spoil our view of the night sky.
Electric streetlights made their debut in the 1880s and
quickly spread to major cities. By the 1930s the already-
deteriorating sky above Mount Wilson, which overlooks
the Los Angeles Basin, caused George Ellery Hale to go
elsewhere for what would become Palomar Observatory.
During the 1950s, General Electric and Westinghouse
helped line America’s roadways with millions of “cobra-
head” streetlights that remain today. Then, around 1970,
light bulbs filled with high-pressure sodium gas began to
blanket the landscape with their peach-colored glare.
More certain is where and when astronomers took
their first stands against the spread of artificial light. Offi-
cials in Flagstaff, Arizona, passed an ordinance in 1958
that banned searchlights from spoiling the skies above
Lowell Observatory. Farther south, outdoor lighting in
Tucson became regulated in 1972, the first of many enact-
ments to protect Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO).
In 1988, KPNO astronomer David L. Crawford teamed
with local amateur Tim Hunter to found the International
28 May 2010 sky & telescope
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Light pollution is worse than ever, but
a new mindset and new technology
are poised to slow — and perhaps
reverse — this bane of astronomy.
Dark-Sky Association (IDA), which today boasts sections
in 24 states and 14 countries. The common-sense tenets of
good nighttime lighting that Crawford and Hunter cham-
pioned remain unchanged today: use light only where it’s
needed, only when it’s needed, and no more of it than is
necessary for safety and security.
In the meantime, however, our 24/7 society has
become ever more intent on lighting up the nighttime
environment. For example, throughout the 1990s the U.S.
population grew at less than 1.5% per year — yet the flood
of lumens cast into the night rose annually by about 6%.
This trend has made light pollution worse where it already
existed and now threatens many areas that had previously
been considered pristine. It’s estimated that virtually
everyone living in the U.S. and Europe experiences some
degree of light pollution and that two-thirds of us can no
longer see the Milky Way from our homes.
Even our national parks are no longer safe havens for
starry skies. During the past several years a small team
of astronomers has carefully documented the extent of
light’s encroachment in more than 60 U.S. national parks

Late 1950s Middle 1970s
How bad can it get? Italian researcher Pierantonio Cinzano and
others have used computer modeling to extrapolate 1997 night-
time satellite imagery of North America backward and forward
and other key settings. Their results are unsettling: even
remote sites have been affected by the glow of towns and
cities up to 100 miles away. “The superintendents are usu-
ally surprised by the amount of light pollution we find,”
notes Chad Moore, who heads the National Park Service’s
night-sky team. Many have undertaken aggressive steps
within their parks’ boundaries and with surrounding
communities to restore the natural darkness.
While early efforts to control nighttime lighting
focused on preserving the starry skies for professional
worldmags & avaxhome
The spectacular night sky above Arches National Park is dimin-
ished by the bright glow from nearby Moab, Utah. Park officials
are now working with townspeople to reduce the skyglow. TYLER NORDGREN
1997 2025
in time, assuming light pollution grows annually 6%. Dark blue
indicates areas where artificial skyglow exceeds natural skyglow
by 11%, white areas by 2,700%.
and amateur astronomers, a growing cadre of illumina-
tion specialists, environmental groups, and biomedical
professionals has come to realize that light pollution can
have far-reaching consequences in other aspects of mod-
ern society. Biologists have known for decades that bright
outdoor beacons can disrupt the migrating, eating, and
mating of nocturnal animals — but there’s new, urgent
attention on how disrupted darkness might impair the
circadian (day-night) cycles of humans as well.
The big questions are whether light at night suppresses
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 29
 Your Light Pollution Guide

J. KELLY BEATTY (4)

Most cities and towns in North America use streetlights with
incomplete shielding (example at left) that allow a some of their
light to beam above horizontal and directly into the sky. When
properly installed, fully-shielded fixtures (example at right) emit
no light above horizontal and also create much less glare at
ground level.

lish a light-cancer link. For example, good circadian func-

Chicago makes a bold statement about its outdoor lighting
when seen from orbit at night. Dan Tani captured the view
in 2008 while aboard the International Space Station.
NASA
tion also requires exposure to bright light during daylight
hours (S&T: December 2006, page 48). Shift workers might
rely more on unhealthy meals high in fats and sugars. As
Thomas Kantermann and Till Roenneberg (University of
Munich, Germany) comment in last September’s Chro-
nobiology International, “Light-at-night may even turn out

to be a good predictor for a lifestyle that supports cancer

the body’s production of melatonin, and in turn whether
a chronic melatonin shortfall leads to health problems. In
1987, Richard Stevens (University of Connecticut) posited
that female shift workers, those typically exposed to strong are exquisitely sensitive to light, and that very dim light
light at night, are more likely to develop breast cancer. The is capable of eliciting measurable effects on human
research trail continues to implicate melatonin production
(or the lack of it) for this increased risk, and in 2007 the
International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded,
“Shiftwork that involves circadian disruption is probably
carcinogenic to humans.”
But many researchers urge caution in trying to estab-
U.S. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
development without itself being part of the causal chain.”
Even so, notes sleep specialist Steven Lockley (Harvard
Medical School), “Over the past 20 years our and others’
research has shown that the sleep and circadian systems
physiology.” But how dim is dim? There’s a big differ-
ence between working in a brightly lit hospital ward and
having some stray streetlight filter into your bedroom.
We might know the answer soon: a clinical study is under
way that exposes sleeping subjects to varying levels and
wavelengths of light.
There’s also new emphasis on how harsh glare from
poorly shielded lighting affects our ability to see at
night. Scattering of bright light (especially blue
wavelengths) within the eye causes loss of contrast
and leads to unsafe driving conditions — much like
struggling to see the road when sunlight streams
through a dirty windshield. It’s particularly bad
for older drivers. This concern led the American

Gila National Death Valley Great Smoky Mtns.

Medical Association to adopt, last summer, a resolution
Forest National Park National Park calling for reduced glare and light pollution through the
NIGHT SKY TEAM

widespread use of fully shielded lighting. Mario Motta, a

Brighter
False-color fisheye views show the night sky’s appearance over
selected U.S. national parks. At the very darkest parks, the visual
limiting magnitude is 7.0 or slightly better. In contrast, in some
locales the Milky Way can be glimpsed at the zenith but gets over-
whelmed around the horizon by the “light domes” of distant cities.
Boston-area cardiologist and lifelong amateur astronomer,
led the AMA effort (S&T: May 2009 issue, page 8).
Meanwhile, work begun by British amateur Chris
Baddiley and expanded more recently by Chris Lugin-
buhl (U.S. Naval Observatory) could have a major impact
on the design of future streetlight systems. They have
carefully modeled how light scatters around in the

30 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
 lower atmosphere and come to a dramatic and pos-
sibly game-changing conclusion. Waste light that gets
beamed straight up is not doing much harm to dark skies
— essentially, it escapes to space before much scattering
can occur. Rather, the greatest degradation comes from
light that streams out to the sides, at angles just above
horizontal. As Luginbuhl and two coauthors detail in the
December 2009 issue of Physics Today, even a seemingly
insignificant 3% uplight directed sideways can triple the

TODD CARLSON (2)

skyglow (versus a fully shielded fi xture with the same
output) above an observatory more than 100 miles away.
Conventional wisdom has long argued that a little
uplight was a small price to pay for wider light distribu-
tion on the ground, which permits lighting poles to be Left: When a regional power failure plunged Toronto into darkness on August 14,
spaced farther apart than if fully shielded fi xtures are 2003, Todd Carlson of Goodwood, Ontario, hurried to capture the summer Milky
Way directly above the city. (Lights in the house are from candles and flashlights.)
used. But the work of Baddiley and Luginbuhl shows full
Right: By the next night, with power restored, his sky was again hopelessly awash
shielding is the better bet for creating less skyglow.
with the pall of artificial skyglow.

The Promise of LEDs

Beyond concerns about saving the stars or averting health that outdoor fi xtures account for only 8% of the electricity
issues, dark-sky proponents think their most persuasive used for lighting in the U.S. But this still amounts to an
argument to curb light pollution is the energy savings astounding 72,000 gigawatt-hours annually. Almost all of
possible from well-designed fi xtures that put light on that, 93%, goes to illuminating streets and parking lots.
the ground instead of sending it into the sky. The timing (By one estimate, 60 million cobrahead streetlights line
to make this case couldn’t be better: the combination of American roadways.)
“going green” and recession-induced budget shortfalls has So it’s hardly surprising that many municipal man-
everyone — from homeowners to world leaders — look- agers have opted to turn off unnecessary streetlights as
ing for ways to reduce energy consumption. a means to cut costs. More good news: many utilities
Recent statistics from the Department of Energy show now install fully shielded fi xtures as a matter of course.
Lumec, a major area and streetlight manufacturer based
in Canada, reports that fully shielded fi xtures now
Spectra of the most
Low-pressure sodium account for 70% of its outdoor-lighting sales.
common outdoor-light-
High-pressure sodium ing sources. Note how
The choice of bulb type makes a big difference too.
low- and high-pressure Incandescents, which squander 90% of their electricity
Metal halide
as heat, deliver only about 18 lumens of light per watt.
CHRIS LUGINBUHL

sodium lamps leave

Light-emitting diode much of the visual spec- Mercury-vapor lighting is more efficient, 40 to 50 lumens
Incandescent
trum unaffected. per watt, but these sources are rapidly disappearing due to
contamination concerns and a 2005 federal law curtailing
400 500 600 their use. The current gold standard for streetlights, high-
pressure sodium (HPS), can top 100 lumens per watt.
Circadian What’s got everyone abuzz is the potential for solid-
sensitivity
state lighting — particularly light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
Relative sensitivity

Scotopic
sensitivity — to take energy efficiency to a new level. So-called
“power” (high-output) LEDs can already crank out 100
DATA: PETE STRASSER / IDA

Photopic
sensitivity lumens per watt and soon might top 200. Moreover,
Blue-rich they’re compact, can last 10 years or more, and (unlike
LED HPS and other typical streetlight bulbs) can be dimmed
or turned off/on at will. Best of all, LEDs are inherently
400 500 600 700 800 directional — they must be pointed downward at their
Wavelength (nanometers) target. “LED lighting has the potential to revolutionize
Unfiltered, LED-powered outdoor lighting creates a blue-rich outdoor lighting in a profoundly positive way,” observes
light that might prove harmful to the circadian function of ani- Robert Parks, IDA’s interim executive director.
mals and humans. Much of the LED emission also falls outside Fueled by federal stimulus money, officials at the U.S.
the scotopic (nighttime) sensitivity of human vision. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 31

worldmags & avaxhome
 Your Light Pollution Guide
Poor, Better, and Best Streetlamps
The ubiquitous but glary fixtures dubbed “yard blasters” (far
left) by amateur astronomers use relatively inefficient and
environmentally dangerous mercury-vapor bulbs. Recent
and proposed U.S. federal regulations could make their
manufacture illegal by 2016.
Most cities and towns in North America use streetlights
with incomplete shielding (center left) that allows a fraction
of their light to beam above horizontal and directly up into
Agency have initiated a hard-charging campaign to roll out
a wide range of commercially viable products as soon as
practicable. Right now these agencies are putting the fin-
ishing touches on the criteria that will qualify an LED fi x-
ture for an Energy Star label. For example, a pole-mounted
outdoor installation won’t be allowed to emit any of its
lumens above horizontal (except for incidental reflections
off the housing). Especially encouraging is the introduc-
tion of a new performance metric, fitted target efficacy, that
puts a premium on illuminating a target area as efficiently
and uniformly as possible without “overspill” beyond the
intended boundaries.
Although still relatively expensive, LEDs are likely
coming to a streetlight near you. The first large-scale
installations are already being tested and installed in
China, North America, and Europe. Last summer Los
Angeles officials inked a deal, brokered by the Clinton
Climate Initiative, to install 140,000 LED streetlights over
the next five years.
If there’s a downside to this technology, it’s that the
BETALED (2)
As seen in this before and after comparison from a retrofit in Walnut Creek, California, properly installed LED streetlighting can dra-
matically reduce uplight and improve illumination uniformity. However, the most efficient LED sources create a much stronger bluish
cast (right) than the high-pressure-sodium fixtures (left) they’re designed to replace.
32 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
S&T: GREGG DINDERMAN
the sky. When properly installed, fully-shielded fixtures
(center right) emit no light above horizontal and also create
much less glare at ground level.
Unlike typical high-intensity-discharge (HID) luminaires,
which produce light from a single dazzlingly bright bulb,
solid-state lighting (SSL) uses banks of individual light-
emitting diodes (far right) whose output is strongly
directional.
most-efficient LEDs have a distinctly blue cast, with a
strong peak at 460 nanometers. Some photobiologists and
eye doctors have expressed concern about unleashing so
much blue light, however well directed, into the nighttime
environment. To get “warmer” light, an LED’s output can
be passed through a phosphor that reradiates it at longer
wavelengths — losing up to 25% of its lumens in the pro-
cess. This lumen gap is narrowing, however, as manufac-
turers strive to balance optimum efficiency with aesthetic
appeal and environmental sensitivity.
“The Flea That Roared”
As all of this research and development rises to a fever
pitch, IDA’s staff and volunteers strive to gain recogni-
tion as “the light-pollution authority.” The organization’s
website (www.darksky.org) boasts that 19 U.S. states and
four countries have enacted outdoor-lighting regulations,
with California, Connecticut, and New Mexico’s among
the strictest.
The IDA has come a long way since its humble begin-
 Someday this consumer-friendly
label, developed by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy for LED fixtures,
may be affixed to all lighting prod-
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Star criteria for LED illumination. As Astronomy made “dark-skies awareness”
lighting expert (and board member) James one of their global cornerstone projects
Benya quips, “IDA is the flea that roared.” (see page 86).
Arguably IDA’s most successful initia- A few (but too few) professional
tive has been the Fixture Seal of Approval astronomers have been active in the fight
program. Manufacturers submit their to keep their observatories safe from the Explore Scientific
lighting products for certification, and advance of artificial skyglow. The Inter- 127mm f/7.5 ED
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But not all of its efforts have borne The “hook” of energy savings has
fruit. Nearly a decade ago, the association given the light-pollution debate traction Astro-Tech 10" f/8
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mixed reviews, a consensus document will of National Geographic, whose cover boldly
take more time to achieve. declared “The End of Night” across the
Meanwhile, other national and inter- sickly orange pall of downtown Chicago.
national groups have mounted offensives Perhaps because of that notoriety, Mayor
to combat light pollution. Among them Daley’s staff is planning a wholesale over-
are the British Astronomical Association’s haul of the city’s streetlighting system. Meade LS 8” ACF
Campaign for Dark Skies, which has made After decades of struggling to be heard, f/10 Computerized
some headway in getting local govern- do dark-sky proponents finally find them- Telescope
ments to switch selves in a position to effect real change? $1,999
off unnecessary Will their efforts eventually be rewarded FREE SHIPPING
streetlights, and the with a return to modestly darker skies?
Starlight Initiative, Backyard skygazers around the world hope
the answer is “yes.” ✦
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

Light-pollution aware-
ness took a big step Senior contributing editor J. Kelly Beatty
forward when it became moved to a new home four years ago and can
the cover story of now see the Milky Way on a good night. He
National Geographic’s has served on the IDA’s Board of Directors
November 2008 issue. since 2006.

Montague, New Jersey (800) 266.9590

worldmags & avaxhome
 Two Eyes or One?
Big Binos Tony Flanders
These instruments have different but overlapping capabilities.
When I was a child, my father bought me a very nice pair
of 7×35 binoculars, which soon became one of my most
cherished possessions. I used the binoculars to scan the
New York City skyline from my 17th-floor window, to
identify birds, to watch ballgames — and to find my first
star clusters and galaxies.
I dabbled in astronomy for several decades, occasionally
learning a new constellation or viewing a new object with
my 7x35s. Then, quite suddenly, I realized that I was long
overdue to buy my first serious telescope. After consider-
able research and one false start, I ended up with a 70-mm
refractor — a decision I’ve never regretted. I plunged into
astronomy with abandon, observing for hours on every
clear night. My little scope gave me my first really good
views of the planets, and I used it to track down all 109
Messier objects (great galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae),
and much more.
I also bought a pair of 10×50 binoculars, the size most
often recommended as the best compromise for hand-held
astronomical binoculars. The specifications mean that
they magnify 10 times and their aperture — the diameter
of their main lenses — is 50 mm, or 2 inches. At powers
34 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
much higher than that, most people find that the images
through casually hand-held binoculars become too wob-
bly, and some kind of supplemental support is needed.
Although the 10×50s were a significant step up from
my 7×35s, I still wasn’t satisfied. Ever since my child-
hood I’d been yearning for really big binoculars — ones
with at least 70 mm of aperture. However, I found it hard
to justify buying them when I already owned a 70-mm
telescope. Could the benefits of using two 70-mm lenses
rather than one really justify owning two instruments
with almost identical specifications?
Eventually, curiosity got the better of me; I just had to
find out. Fortunately, the marketplace had changed greatly
since I first contemplated such a purchase in the 1960s.
Cheap was no longer synonymous with shoddy; many
beginners were reporting complete satisfaction with 15×70
binoculars costing less than $100. I opted instead for the
low middle range, spending $150 for a pair of lightweight
15×70 binoculars from Oberwerk. (Very similar units are
available from several other vendors.)
S&T photo taken by Dennis di Cicco.
 Small
versus
Scopes
S&T: DENNIS DI CICCO (2)
To see really fine details at 15×, you need to attach your instru-
ment to a solid mount. But tripod-mounted binoculars require
you to bend your neck painfully when viewing objects that are
high in the sky. Most small scopes, by contrast, are equipped
with star diagonals that let you view the zenith with ease. The flip
side is that you lose the direct connection to the sky provided by
binoculars’ straight-through viewing angle.
Meet the Contenders
What does $150 buy? Quite a lot, it turns out; the Ober-
werk 15×70s, are certainly worth what I paid — and then
some. I have compared them to a borrowed pair of Fuji-
non 16×70s, which are often cited as the best binoculars
in this class. There’s no question that the Fujinons are
superior in many ways, as well they should be, consider-
ing that they weigh 50% more and cost four times as
much. But the Oberwerks are quite sharp in the center
of the field of view, they’re fairly well baffled against stray
light, and their focuser is smooth and accurate — all the
essentials.
Most important of all, the Oberwerk 15×70s happen to
fit me well. The distance between the centers of my eyes
(my interpupillary distance) is 57 mm, unusually small for
an adult male. Unlike many binoculars, the Oberwerks
fold up just tight enough to suit me. And they have 16
mm of true eye relief (the distance between the binoculars
and your eyes when properly placed), allowing me to see
almost the whole field of view with glasses on.
The Fujinons, by contrast, have short eye relief and
unusually large eyepieces. When I fold them up tight
worldmags & avaxhome
enough to fit my eyes, take my glasses off, and bring the
binoculars close enough to see more than half the field of
view, my nose jams painfully between the eyepieces. So
despite the fact that the Fujinons are significantly sharper
toward the edge of the field of view, and show brighter
images against a darker sky background, I much prefer
using the Oberwerks. However, people who don’t wear
glasses and have wide-set eyes rave about the Fujinons,
and wouldn’t trade them for anything else at any price.
As for my telescope, it’s a Tele Vue Ranger, reviewed
in the November 1995 issue (page 48). The Ranger is a
70-mm f/6.8 refractor, meaning that the focal length (the
distance from the front lens to the eyepiece) is roughly 70
× 6.8 = 480 mm. The relatively short focal length makes
the scope quite compact, and also allows it to operate at
low magnifications, with a wide field of view. In fact the
Pronto, the Ranger’s big brother, has identical optics and
a 2-inch focuser, allowing it to use eyepieces that give
a significant wider field of view than 15x70 binoculars.
Yet the mechanical and optical quality also support high
magnifications well. I routinely use my Ranger at 120×,
and occasionally push it far higher. Both the Ranger and
the Pronto have been discontinued, replaced by Tele Vue’s
TV-76, which offers the same wide-field potential as the
Pronto, has larger aperture, and is an apochromat, mean-
ing that it shows essentially no colored fringes around
bright objects, even at the highest magnifications.
The Ranger cost me about $750 including accessories,
which was a bargain in its day, considering the scope’s
high quality and short focal length. (It’s harder to build
a good, short refractor than a good, long one with equal
aperture.) Today that kind of money can buy a scope of
comparable quality with a 2-inch focuser, bigger aperture,
and similar focal length.
Bear in mind that most of my comparisons pit this
fairly high-end telescope against an inexpensive pair of
binoculars. In fact, like many if not most binoculars in
their price range, the 15×70 Oberwerks don’t make full
use of their main lenses. They have internal baffles that
reduce their effective aperture to roughly 63 mm. None-
theless, the binoculars clearly outperform the telescope
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 35
 Two Eyes or One?

Left: A simple parallelogram

mount like the Paragon-Plus
(sold by Orion Telescopes &
Binoculars) puts some dis-
tance between you and the
tripod, and lets you fine-tune
the binoculars’ height with
the touch of your hand. This
design is relatively simple,
inexpensive, and light, but
only works well when you’re
standing. Right: The Uni-
Mount Light, from Universal
Astronomics, is jointed so
that it can suspend bin-
oculars over a lounge chair,
S&T: TONY FLANDERS (2)

allowing you to observe in

complete comfort. And it’s
counterbalanced on every
axis, so it stays wherever you
push it, like a dentist’s light.

in certain regards, as we shall see below. When I repeated faint stars will disappear. When you use both eyes, your
the same comparisons using the 16×70 Fujinons, the ben- brain merges two faint images into a single, brighter one.
efits of binocular vision proved to be even greater. Using two eyes also enhances colors. The stars of the
Beehive cluster (Messier 44) are nearly monochrome in
Advantage: Binoculars my refractor, but the binoculars show several with a rich
I first compared my 15×70 binoculars and my 70-mm reddish tint. In addition, there’s a quality to binocular
scope on a clear March night at my country home. I views that’s easily seen, widely shared, but hard to put
stayed up from dusk long past midnight, observing first into words. Some describe it as a 3-dimensional appear-
the nebulae and open star clusters of winter, then the gal- ance. To me, it’s a matter of vividness or immediacy. With
axies of spring, and ending with the globular clusters of a telescope, I feel as though I’m studying my subject from
early summer. Since then, I have observed all 109 objects a distance. Binoculars bring me into the action, making it
in the Messier catalog, and many other celestial show- feel as though the night sky is all around me.
pieces, using both instruments side-by-side at my country This sense of connection to the night sky is also aided
home. I have also done extensive comparisons at parks
near my city home, battling heavy light pollution.
For each comparison, I start out by viewing my target
through the telescope at 16× and then increase the magni-
fication until I obtain the best possible view, which is typi-
cally anywhere from 40× to 70×, depending on the object.
The view through the telescope at 16× is surprisingly
different from the view through the binoculars, despite
the fact that the magnification and field of view are nearly
the same. Everything appears much brighter in the binoc-
ulars — both my target objects and the sky background.
You can see the same effect by going outside on a dark
night, looking for the faintest stars you can see, and then
covering one eye with your hand. In all probability, the
SHELDON FAWORSKI / SEAN WALKER

Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, has an apparent size bigger

than the full Moon. But its low surface brightness and lack of a
bright core make it a challenging target for beginners, especially
in bright suburban surroundings. Many people find this galaxy
easier to see in binoculars — even quite small ones — than in
any telescope, no matter how big.

36 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
 by the fact that binoculars show things right-side up,
whereas telescopic views are usually mirror-imaged or
inverted. Also, with conventional binoculars, you look
straight through the instrument, as opposed to looking
downward at right angles to the way a telescope is pointing.
This cuts both ways, because looking straight at objects
that are nearly overhead creates logistical problems, as
shown on page 35. But it also means that you can switch
back and forth between the binocular and naked-eye views
just by moving your head (or the binoculars) a few inches.

Advantage: Telescope
I can see all of the Messier objects with my 15×70
binoculars at my country home, though a few are fairly
difficult. Several of the faintest Messier galaxies, includ-
ing M91 and M98 (see page 45), are completely invis-

ADAM BLOCK / NOAO / AURA / NSF

ible through my telescope at 16×. But when I raise the
telescope’s magnification to 40×, I can see these galaxies
easily — together with many others that I can’t see at all
through the binoculars.
Conventional binoculars operate at very low magnifica-
tions relative to their apertures. Although using two eyes
helps a great deal in seeing faint objects, higher magnifi- Clusters of tightly packed faint stars need plenty of magnifica-
cation usually helps even more — though there are some tion to do them justice. M11, shown here, is a bright blur through
exceptions. For instance, the notoriously faint globular 15×70 binoculars, but resolves into dozens of individual stars
when viewed under dark skies at 60× with a 70-mm telescope.
cluster NGC 5053 (in Coma Berenices, just 1° from bright
Messier 53) is invisible in the Ranger at any magnifica-
tion, but I can see it (barely) with my 15×70s. telescopes. But the great majority of deep-sky objects look
Some objects, such as the Beehive and Pleiades star best at magnifications higher than any normal binoculars
clusters, are very large, and require wide fields of view to provide. For instance, the open cluster M37 is just a bright
frame them well. Though few in number, such objects blur at 15× or 16×, but it’s breathtaking stardust through
appear high on any list of celestial showpieces, and most my 70-mm scope at 70×, with dozens of faint stars shim-
people find them more attractive through binoculars than mering through a luminous haze.

What about Bigger Scopes?

It’s not really fair to compare 70-
mm binoculars to a 70-mm scope;
after all, the binoculars gather
twice as much light. A 100-mm
lens has the same area as two 70-
mm lenses, so would a 100-mm
scope be able to match 70-mm
binoculars in every regard?
My tests indicate that at equal
magnifications, scopes are indeed
S&T ILLUSTRATION: CASEY REED
telescope at 15×, because the
exit pupil produced by such a
combination is 100 ÷ 15 = 6.7 mm
across. My pupils only open to
5.5 mm, so some of that light is
blocked by my iris, as shown at
lower left. Up to a point, you can
increase the brightness of a 15×
image by using a larger aperture.
But once the exit pupil equals your

a pretty close match to binoculars
with the same total lens area — a
little better in some ways, maybe
worse in others. However, I can’t
take full advantage of a 100-mm
eye’s pupil (upper left), the only
way to get more light is to use two
eyes. That’s why binoculars reign
supreme for bright, wide-field
low-power viewing.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 37

worldmags & avaxhome
 Two Eyes or One?

The planets crave high telescopic mag-

nification. My little refractor shows Jupi-
ter’s main cloud belts easily, and reveals
substantial extra detail at 120× when the
conditions are good. It’s fairly easy to see
Jupiter’s moons through well-mounted
binoculars, but the planet itself is just a
tiny, featureless, oblate disk at 15×.

NASA / HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM / STSCI / AURA

So there’s no question that the ability
to vary the magnification by changing
eyepieces makes short-focal-length 70- or
80-mm scopes much more versatile than
15×70 binoculars. Almost everything the
binoculars can do, the telescopes can do
too — though not always as well. But the
reverse isn’t true. For viewing planets or
splitting tight double stars, all decent tele- Saturn is beautiful beyond words through the
scopes are far superior to any conventional author’s 70-mm scope at 120× . His 15×70 binocu-
binoculars, even 40×150 behemoths. lars, by contrast, show barely a hint of the rings.

Why 15×70 Binoculars?

So far, I’ve skirted the question of why I
bought 15×70 binoculars rather than some
significantly different size. In fact, bin-
ocular size involves some tricky tradeoffs,
which is why I still use my 7×35s as well
as my 10×50s and 15×70s — and would
choose the 10×50s if I were allowed to keep
just one of those. Bigger binoculars reveal
fainter objects, but they’re also less conve-
nient and have narrower fields of view.
On the other hand, 15×70s offer much
more spectacular views than 10×50s.
Objects that are merely visible in 10×50s
are impressive in 15×70s; objects that are
impressive in 10×50s are jaw-dropping
in 15×70s. That’s not such a huge deal to
me, because I’m accustomed to squeezing
every last drop of detail from things I can
barely see. But many novices, especially
ones who live in bright suburbs, find the
views through 15×70s to be genuinely
engaging, while 10×50s leave them cold.
In fact, 15×70 binoculars might just
be the very best possible tool for break-
ing into deep-sky observing. They have
enough power to show many deep-sky
objects with ease, yet a wide enough field
of view so that you can locate those objects
just by scanning the right area of the sky.
At the opposite end of the spectrum,
big binoculars are ideal for experienced
stargazers who want to study the Milky
Way under pristine dark skies. Many
Milky Way features (star clouds, bright
and dark nebulae) are huge; they cry out
for wide fields of view. And that’s the one
arena where binoculars have a big advan-
tage over telescopes.
If 15×70 binoculars are great, aren’t
bigger ones greater still? Yes, really big
binoculars such as 22×85s or 25x100s,
and binocular telescopes that accept inter-
changeable eyepieces, certainly have their
For more ruminations on binoculars, see
www.SkyandTelescope.com/bino_blogs.
devoted adherents — and rightly so. How-
ever, there’s a substantial jump in bulk,
weight, and cost once binocular objectives
exceed 70 mm. And there’s a significant
loss in field of view with magnifications
much higher than 15×. Hand-holding
15×70s isn’t ideal, but at least it’s an
option, which isn’t true in bigger sizes.
Many experienced stargazers find that
15×70 hits a sweet spot, the best possible
compromise between power, convenience,
and field of view. There are good reasons
why this size is popular among novice and
veteran stargazers alike. ✦
Associate editor Tony Flanders currently
owns six telescopes, six pairs of binoculars,
and one pair of special stargazing eyeglasses.

worldmags & avaxhome

 #564101/;/#&'5+/2.'

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worldmags & avaxhome

Fred Schaaf
Northern Hemisphere’s Sky
Speeding Up for Spica
The evening sky changes rapidly at this time of year.
In our previous issue, I noted that the
north-south meridian on the April all-sky map coincides
with the 10-hour line of right ascension. That line passes
just west of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion,
so I suggested that we call that time and “state of the sky”
the Leo Hour.
The Heavens by Hours system created by Guy Ottewell
has 24 names for such states of sky — one for each of the
sidereal hours. But the issues of our monthly magazine
have room for only 12 of these. You might think that each
new issue would advance the sidereal time by 2 hours.
But if you look down near the south horizon of the all-sky
chart on page 44, you will see that the central RA line
is labeled as 13h, which is 3 hours ahead of last month’s
sidereal time. What’s going on here?
Spring forward to the Spica Hour. Has Earth radi-
cally sped up during its Northern Hemisphere’s spring?
AN
IND ER M
S&T: GREGG D
40 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
No, but those of us at mid-northern latitudes see the Sun
setting later and later. So the sky (really Earth, of course)
has more time to turn before the stars come out. Our sky
map must reflect this, so we advance it three hours from
last month. And it brings us to a state of the sky we can
call the Spica Hour.
Spica is the 1st-magnitude star (magnitude 0.98, to
be precise) that’s closest to the meridian at this sidereal
time. As the map’s instructions tell you, the Spica Hour
occurs at different clock times as the weeks and months
of spring go by. If you want to experience it in late March,
when this issue is received by most subscribers, you have
to stay up until 2 a.m. (daylight-saving time). The Spica
Hour occurs at 1 a.m. in early April, midnight in late
April, 11 p.m. in early May, and at dusk in late May.
The Sky at the Spica Hour. Spica is not the only star
or star pattern near the meridian at this time. Sail-shaped
Corvus, the Crow, is just to the west of the meridian, to
the lower right of Spica. Well up to Spica’s upper left is an
even brighter and somewhat orange — some say cham-
pagne-colored — star: Arcturus. And if you turn and face
north rather than south, you’ll find that the handle of the
Big Dipper — from which you can extend a curve out to
Arcturus — is now at its highest.
In May 2010, Spica is the last (leftmost or easternmost)
in a long string of similarly bright gems. The line consists
of Pollux, Mars, Regulus, Saturn, and Spica. The posi-
tions of the two planets are plotted on our sky map for
mid-May.
By the Spica Hour, Sirius and Orion, Taurus with the
Hyades and Pleiades, have all set. Procyon is low in the
west, Capella is somewhat higher in the northwest, and
Gemini stands upright between those stars. The feet of
the Twins are just above the horizon, their much higher
heads marked by bright Castor and Pollux.
Turning to the east, where the summer stars
are rising, zero-magnitude Vega is about one-third of
the way up the east-northeast sky while 1st-magnitude
Deneb is much lower in the northeast. And the fire of
1st-magnitude Antares is quite low in the southeast. ✦
Fred Schaaf welcomes your comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
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 Sky at a Glance

May 2010
MOON PHASES
1 DUSK: Use binoculars to spot 4th-magnitude
SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
Kappa1 Tauri about ¼° lower left of Venus (in
1 North America). And look 5′ lower left of
Kappa1 for 5th-magnitude Kappa2.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
4 DUSK: The 4th-magnitude star Tau Tauri is
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 less than ½° left of Venus. Telescopes and
solidly mounted binoculars show that this
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 star is a wide double, with a 7th-magnitude
23 24 companion 63″ southwest of the primary.
30 31
25 26 27 28 29
6 LAST-QUARTER MOON (12:15 a.m. EDT).

9, 10 DAWN: The waning crescent Moon is above

PLANET VISIBILITY Jupiter on the 9th and left of Jupiter on the
10th, as shown on page 49.
◀ SUNSET MIDNIGHT SUNRISE ▶
13 NEW MOON (9:04 p.m. EDT).
Mercury Invisible to the naked eye all month
14 DAWN: Use a telescope or tripod-mounted
Venus W NW binoculars to look for 20 Piscium about ¼°
lower right of Jupiter (in North America).
Mars SW NW This star is magnitude 5.5, about as bright
as Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, only three
of which are visible until Io emerges from
Jupiter E SE
behind Jupiter at 5:14 a.m. CDT.

Saturn S W 15, 16 DUSK: The thin crescent Moon is lower right

PLANET VISIBILITY SHOWN FOR LATITUDE 40o NORTH AT MID-MONTH.
of Venus on the 15th and upper left of Venus
on the 16th (see page 48). The Moon occults
(hides) Venus around 10h UT on the 16th in
northern Africa and southern Asia.

19 EVENING: The Moon is about 6° below Mars.

I M A G E B Y G I M M I R AT T O
20 EVENING: The Moon is about 5° lower left of
Regulus and 12° left of Mars.

20 FIRST-QUARTER MOON (7:43 p.m. EDT).

21 DUSK: Use binoculars or a telescope to view

the star cluster Messier 35 less than 1° lower
left of Venus.

22 EVENING: Look for Saturn about 8° above

the Moon.

24 EVENING: Look for Spica about 6° upper

right of the Moon.

27 FULL MOON occurs at 7:07 p.m. EDT. This

evening and night, in North America, look
for ruddy Antares 1° to 2° below or lower
right of the Moon, as shown on page 48.
The view is best in binoculars.

See SkyandTelescope.com/ataglance for

details on each week’s celestial events.

For telescope owners, May is galaxy time. And the grandest

galaxy field of all is Markarian’s Chain, at the heart of the Virgo Cluster. Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 43
worldmags & avaxhome
 Facing North
Northern Hemisphere Sky Chart
1h
A

+60°
B D ster G
G Clu ble A
CASSIOPEIA Dou US
SE

4h
19 h
R
M52 E PE
D
Fa E
in c Z

M
g

39
M
N
CEPH
E
EUS

lla
pe
A

Ca
E A

A
G
LIS

De
+80°
B
DA

ne
M

AR
b
29

P
C LO
Cr rthe

ME
N

K
os rn
o

Y
CA
s

A
A
G

B
Polaris

IG
N

D
M2

MINOR
U

R
C
S
7

U
VU

URSA

A
D
LP

R
SA

B A Dipper +80°
E

C Little
G

CU

O
Al
ITT

X
ire

M82
LA

Ve

N
M81
o

G B
A

ga

Y
LY

H
M5

or
Th
A
RA

t
ub
7

Cas
an
A
AQUIL

A I

A
Dipper
M92

lux
+60° Big

Pol
B
& Alcor
P
A

G
HERCU

Mizar D
MAJOR
H

E
Z
M
19 S E R P E N

H URSA
h
Facing East

M13
E

A
M51
BOREALIS
CORONA

B
Z

M44
B
D

LES

MI NO R

G
CANES
G

Zenith

LEO

D
A

s
VENATICI

ar
A
IC4665

BO

M67
S

kle
70

M3
G

Sic
E

ÖT A

B
(CA

A
s
G

COMA

ulu
O
B

ola

Reg
ES

LE
BERENICES
B

neb
SE AP
UDA

Z
+20°
(C D

A
De
RP UT

A
OP

Arc
EN )

turu

IC n
B

Virgo
)

M10
HI

E U
S
A

Galaxy T o
o 0
Cluster I P M ay 2 E Q
M12

M5
UC

L M
rn C

ard
VIRG

A
O tu E

h
Sa
HU

Alp
S
0°

AN
G

A
H

XT
S

B SE

A
L
IB

R
H

D
A A

Y
G

H
Spica D
M

US
N

CORV
B

A G
D A
Moon Moo 24
n ER
May 27 AT
S

a y –20° R
D

M C
C

G E
O

B
A

A
P
M
An

P
4
Fa

ta

IU

P
res
c

g
in

A
S

–1 SE 16h 10h
CE
0 LU NT
AU IA
PU RU I
B
TL
1 S N
S Q A
2 –40°
3 Star
4 magnitudes
13h

44 May 2010 sky & telescope Facing South

worldmags & avaxhome
 Using the Map Binocular Highlight:
WHEN Diving Into Virgo
Late March 2 a.m. *
W
N Early April 1 a.m.* The densest concentr ation of Messier objects lies at
g the intersection of Leo, Coma Berenices, and Virgo. Here
in

Late April Midnight*

we find vistas littered with small, faint galaxies. Truly,
c
Fa

Early May 11 p.m.*

however, this is a case of quantity over quality, since all
Late May Dusk
38

these Messiers are challenging binocular targets even

M

36

*Daylight-saving time. under good skies. Yet it’s within this mass of galaxies that
M

we’re able to glimpse the vastness of our universe, as we

HOW gaze directly into the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.
s
7

u
Q

M3

It’s easy to be confused by galaxies in this region, so

Ven

Go outside within an hour or so

we must work methodically and carefully. Let’s begin part
of a time listed above. Hold the
one of our exploration by jumping east from Denebola,
5
M3

map out in front of you and turn it

Beta (β) Leonis. About two binocular fields away, you’ll
around so the yellow label for the
M

find a grouping of 6th- and 7th-magnitude stars that I call

direction you’re facing (such as
the Little Pleiades. This asterism is key to locating M99
west or southeast) is at the bottom,
E

and M100, both of which I’m able to see in 10×50s. The

right-side up. The curved edge is
nearby galaxy M98 is tougher though, requiring the extra
G

the horizon, and the stars above it

I

power of my 15×45 image-stabilized binos.

D

I N

on the map now match the stars in

X

Things get easier (but not easy) when we skip north a

front of you in the sky. The map’s
Ma oon

E M

7h
7

short distance to M85, the most prominent of all the gal-

y1

center is the zenith, the point

M

axies in the region. South of M85 lie M84, M86, and M87,
G

overhead.
Facing West

the last being the most conspicuous. The difficult pair of

CANIS MINOR

Example: Hold up the map so the

M90 and tiny M89 is just to the east of this trio. I can see
“Facing South” is at the bottom.
CANCER

all six in 10×50s.

Procyon

About halfway from there to the

Moving a little farther north brings us to the final gal-
A

map’s center is the bright star

axies in this month’s Messier haul: M88 and M91. M88
B

Spica. Go out, face south, and look

is visible in 10×50s, but even my 15× 70s have so far failed
halfway from horizontal to straight
to show M91. It may be possible to see this galaxy under
E

up. There’s Spica!

better skies though — can you ferret it out? ✦
Note: The map is plotted for 40° — Gary Seronik
R
T O north latitude (for example, Denver,
U A
M48

New York, Madrid). If you’re far

south of there, stars in the southern
d

COMA BERENICES
part of the sky will be higher and
stars in the north lower. Far north
of 40° the reverse is true. The M85
planets are positioned for mid-May.
cular view LEO
in o
°b
5

M100
You can make a sky chart
M98
customized for your location M91 M88 L ittle B
at any time at SkyandTelescope Ple iade s
.com/skychart. M99
M90
SW

M86
Galaxy M87
g

n M89 M84
ci Double star
Fa Variable star M58
Open cluster
Diffuse nebula
Globular cluster
VIRGO
Planetary nebula

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 45

worldmags & avaxhome
 Planetary Almanac

Mercury Sun and Planets, May 2010

May Right Ascension Declination Elongation Magnitude Diameter Illumination Distance
h m
Sun 1 2 31.9 +14° 56′ –– –26.8 31′ 45″ –– 1.007
May 1 11 21 31
h m
31 4 30.5 +21° 51′ –– –26.8 31′ 33″ –– 1.014
Venus
h m
Mercury 1 2 16.8 +14° 02′ 4° Mo –– 12.0″ 1% 0.562

11 2h 04.6m +10° 14′ 18° Mo +2.3 11.0″ 12% 0.611

21 2h 17.8m +10° 07′ 24° Mo +0.8 9.1″ 30% 0.737

1 16 31
h m
31 2 54.2 +13° 15′ 24° Mo +0.1 7.4″ 48% 0.906
Mars
h m
Venus 1 4 19.6 +22° 15′ 27° Ev –3.9 11.4″ 89% 1.462

11 5h 11.6m +24° 12′ 29° Ev –3.9 11.8″ 87% 1.410

1 16 31
21 6h 04.4m +25° 01′ 31° Ev –3.9 12.3″ 84% 1.354
Jupiter
h m
31 6 56.9 +24° 39′ 34° Ev –3.9 12.9″ 81% 1.292
h m
Mars 1 9 01.7 +19° 04′ 92° Ev +0.7 7.3″ 90% 1.287

16 9h 27.4m +16° 48′ 84° Ev +0.9 6.6″ 90% 1.421

31 9h 55.5m +14° 09′ 77° Ev +1.1 6.0″ 90% 1.550

h m
Jupiter 1 23 38.3 –3° 29′ 47° Mo –2.1 35.1″ 99% 5.614
h m
31 23 58.0 –1° 28′ 70° Mo –2.3 37.8″ 99% 5.221
16
Saturn 1 11h 58.2m +2° 57′ 138° Ev +0.8 19.0″ 100% 8.739

31 11h 55.4m +3° 09′ 108° Ev +1.0 18.2″ 100% 9.152

Saturn
h m
Uranus 16 23 59.1 –0° 54′ 55° Mo +5.9 3.4″ 100% 20.651
h m
Neptune 16 22 03.2 –12° 25′ 86° Mo +7.9 2.3″ 100% 30.067

Pluto 16 18h 20.5m –18° 12′ 140° Mo +14.0 0.1″ 100% 31.055
16
The table above gives each object’s right ascension and declination (equinox 2000.0) at 0 h Universal Time on selected
dates, and its elongation from the Sun in the morning (Mo) or evening (Ev) sky. Next are the visual magnitude and
Uranus equatorial diameter. (Saturn’s ring extent is 2.27 times its equatorial diameter.) Last are the percentage of a planet’s disk
illuminated by the Sun and the distance from Earth in astronomical units. (Based on the mean Earth–Sun distance, 1 a.u.
Neptune is 149,597,871 kilometers, or 92,955,807 international miles.) For other dates, see SkyandTelescope.com/almanac.
Planet disks at left have south up, to match the view in many telescopes. Blue ticks indicate the pole currently tilted
Pluto 10"
toward Earth.

+40° 2h 0h 22h 20 h 18h 16 h 14 h 12h 10 h 8h 6h 4h

RIGHT ASCENSION AURIGA
Vega Castor
+30° BOÖTES Pollux +30°
CYGNUS Venus
GEMINI Pleiades
ARIES Arcturus LEO
PEGASUS HERCULES Mars
PISCES TA U R U S
17
CANCER
+10° Regulus +10°
Mercury 9 OPHIUCHUS VIRGO Saturn Betelgeuse
0° AQU ARIU S 20 Procyon
0°
Uranus E Q U AT O R ORION
ERIDANUS Jupiter AQU ILA
Rigel –10°
Neptune
DECLINATION

–10° 6 LIBRA 23 Sirius

CETUS Pluto Spica
–20°
3 TIC CORVUS –20°
E CLIP H Y D R A
CANIS
CAPRICORNU S May MAJOR
–30° Fomalhaut 27–28 –30°
SAGITTARIUS SC O RPIU S LOCAL TIME OF TRANSIT
–40° 10 am 8 am 6 am 2 am Midnight 10 pm 8 pm 6 pm 4 pm 2 pm –40°
4 am

The Sun and planets are positioned for mid-May; the colored arrows show the motion of each during the month. The Moon is plotted for evening dates in the Americas when it’s waxing (right side
illuminated) or full, and for morning dates when it’s waning (left side). “Local time of transit” tells when (in Local Mean Time) objects cross the meridian — that is, when they appear due south and
at their highest — at mid-month. Transits occur an hour later on the 1st, and an hour earlier at month’s end.

46 May 2010 sky & telescope

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Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 47

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Fred Schaaf
Sun, Moon, and Planets

Encounters with Venus

The brightest planet traverses a starry panorama in May.

At dusk this May, Venus
shines in the west-northwest, Mars is
high in the southwest, and Saturn is high
in the south. Jupiter doesn’t rise until an
hour or less before the first light of dawn.
Late in the month, Mercury is visible
through binoculars very low in the east-
northeast before sunrise.
EVENING
Venus hangs at practically the same
height moderately low in the west-north-
west during twilight all May. It shines at a
dazzling magnitude –3.9 but isn’t espe-
cially interesting through a telescope. It’s
small and gibbous, just 12″ wide and 85%
illuminated at mid-month.
What’s more fascinating is the planet’s
trek past stars and star clusters. On May
1st Venus blazes about ¼° from Kappa
Tauri (you may need binoculars to glimpse
the star so near to the planet’s mighty
glow). On May 14th Venus shines directly
between the two stars that mark the ends
of Taurus the Bull’s horns. Optical aid will
be required to see the big Messier 35 star
cluster less than 1° southwest of Venus on
May 21st. On May 27th and 28th, Venus
is less than ¾° from Epsilon (ε) Gemino-
rum, also known as Mebsuta. The closest
approach (17′ around 12h UT on May 28th)
is visible from eastern Asia.
Mars reaches eastern quadrature (90°
east of the Sun) on May 4th, glowing in
the south around sunset. Quadrature is
when we see the largest phase effect — a
shadowed edge — on an outer planet’s
disk. But Mars’s 90%-illuminated disk is
only 7.1″ wide then, so it may not be easy
to make out that Mars is out of round. The
summer solstice in Mars’s northern hemi-
sphere occurs on May 12th, so the north
polar ice cap will presumably be too small
to see in most amateur telescopes.
To see what the sky looks like at any
given time and date, go to
SkyandTelescope.com/skychart.
Naked-eye observers can have more
fun with Mars, which is moving eastward
through the “fi xed stars” at almost ½°
per day. On May 1st the planet shines at
magnitude +0.7, distinctly brighter than
Pollux 20° to its west or Regulus 17° to its
east. But by May 31st Mars dims to +1.1
and moves to within 4° of +1.4-magnitude
Regulus.
Saturn is the fourth in a long string
of five 1st-magnitude objects stretch-
ing eastward along the ecliptic, from
Pollux to Mars to Regulus to Saturn to
Spica. Steady-shining Saturn glows about
midway between twinkling Regulus
and Spica. The planet barely moves with
respect to the stars in May, since it’s near-

These scenes are

Dusk, May 14–16 May 27 and 28 drawn for near the mid-
45 minutes after sunset Around 11 pm dle of North America
(latitude 40° north,
longitude 90° west);
Capella European observers
Moon
May 16 should move each
Moon symbol a quarter
of the way toward the
Venus ` Tauri one for the previ-
Moon
May 27 Antares ous date. In the Far
East, move the Moon
Moon
May 15 halfway. For clarity, the
Betelgeuse Moon Moon is shown three
May 28 times its actual appar-
SCORPIUS ent size. The visibility
of objects in bright
Moon
May 14 twilight is exaggerated.
Aldebaran The 10° scale is about
the width of your fist
Looking West-Northwest Looking Southeast
at arm’s length.

48 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome

Mars
ing the end of its retrograde (westward)
motion in the head of Virgo. On May 31st
Saturn halts and begins direct (eastward)
motion through the stars.
Saturn dims this month to magnitude
+1.0, equal to Spica and nearly as faint as
the planet can ever be. This is due largely
to the narrowing of its rings, which reach a
minimum tilt of just 1.7° from edgewise to
Earth in late May. This is the last opportu-
nity for a decade and a half to see the rings
as such thin spikes, with dim moons shut-
tling along them as the satellites pass from
one side of Saturn to the other.
Planets usually appear sharpest in a
telescope when they’re highest in the sky.
In early May, Saturn is highest about 2½
hours after sunset, but by month’s end it’s
highest at sunset and best viewed as soon
as the sky is dark.
Dawn, May 9 –11
1 hour before sunrise
Great
Square
of
PEGASUS
Moon
May 9
Moon
May 10
Jupiter
Moon
May 11
Looking East
December solstice
Venus
March
equinox Sun
Mercury
Earth
June solstice
Saturn
Jupiter
FPO Pluto
ORBIT S OF THE PL ANE T S
The curved arrows show each planet’s movement during May. The outer planets
don’t change position enough in a month to notice at this scale.
PRE DAWN AND DAWN
Jupiter, in Pisces, rises around the time
Saturn sets (for viewers at mid-northern
latitudes). In early May that’s around the
start of morning twilight, but by month’s
end it’s about 2 or 3 a.m. (daylight-saving
time). The giant planet brightens slightly
during May, from magnitude –2.1 to –2.3,
and its disk grows from 35″ to 38″ wide.
By month’s end, Jupiter pulls within
1° of 5.9-magnitude Uranus. Jupiter had
three close conjunctions with Neptune last
year, and it will have three with Uranus
during this apparition. The first will occur
on June 8th.
Neptune, near the Capricornus-Aquar-
ius border, is fairly low in the southeast
before dawn’s first light. Finder charts for
the two outermost major planets can be
downloaded at SkyandTelescope.com/
uranusneptune.
Pluto enters M24, the Small Sagit-
tarius Star Cloud, this month. The 14th-
magnitude world is highest in the south
The waning crescent Moon makes a pretty pair
with Jupiter in the predawn sky on May 9th and
10th. And look for the 8%-illuminated Moon well
to Jupiter’s lower left on May 11th.
worldmags & avaxhome
Sept.
equinox
Uranus
Neptune
around 3 a.m.. See SkyandTelescope.com/
pluto for more information.
Mercury has a poor apparition very
low in bright dawn in late May and early
June. It was at inferior conjunction on
April 28th, and it glides out to a greatest
elongation of 25° from the Sun on May
26th. But Mercury then shines only at
magnitude +0.4, about as dim as it can
ever appear at maximum elongation,
because its 8.2″-wide disk is only 39% lit.
Even worse, the ecliptic lies at a very
shallow angle to the dawn horizon in
spring. This means that Mercury is less
than 5° high a half hour before sunrise
on the 26th for observers at mid-northern
latitudes. Mercury may be visible to the
unaided eye when it brightens in early
June, but you will probably need binocu-
lars to see it in late May.
MOON PA SSAGES
The Moon waxes to first quarter while
passing Venus, Pollux, Mars, and Regulus
from May 15th to 20th — but it gives all
of them a wide berth. On the American
night of May 27–28, the full Moon rises
less than 2° above Antares and passes only
1° north of the star later in the night. ✦
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 49
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50 May 2010 sky & telescope

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 Charles A. Wood
Exploring the Moon

Lunar Missions & Amateurs

New lunar data reveals the Moon as never seen before.

The most recent five lunar missions have
returned more data about the Moon than collected by all
previous spacecraft. This continuing onslaught of infor-
mation is providing many new insights about our nearest
neighbor. But unlike the Apollo era, when spacecraft data
were available only to scientists, professionals aren’t the
only ones who can explore the new information. Today,
the internet brings gigabytes of data to everyone.
Five spacecraft have orbited the Moon in the past seven
years. The first was SMART-1, launched by the European
Space Agency in 2003 to test new technologies. Sadly, only
a tiny fraction of its images have been publicly released.
Similarly, only a few of the thousands of images from
the Chinese mission Chang’e 1 and the Indian orbiter
Chandrayaan-1 have been distributed. But some data from
JAXA’s Kaguya mission (February issue, page 20) and
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) are now
available, and ultimately all of it will be.
One of the most useful datasets currently available is
a digital terrain model (DTM) of lunar topography from
Kaguya’s laser altimeter. Based on 6 million elevation
measurements, the DTM is a computer fi le that you can
manipulate with software such as the Lunar Terminator
Visualization Tool (http://ltvt.wikispaces.com/ltvt), created
by amateur astronomer Jim Mosher to display lifelike
views of the lunar surface. You can use this program to
display how the Moon will look for future (or past) observ-
ing sessions. The DTM is the fi rst accurate topographical
map of the lunar surface ever produced.
In addition to recreating views of the Moon as we
commonly see it, you can also re-project the DTM to see
the Moon as we never can, such as with illumination from
the north or the south poles. Doing this allowed Maurice
Collins in New Zealand to discover a ridge that appears
to radiate from the Imbrium impact basin that had never
been noticed before. This ridge extends from the crater
Eudoxus, past Plana and Mason near Lacus Mortis,
and continues to the remnant crater Williams. This
ridge is probably related to the formation of Imbrium, but
for now, we aren’t quite sure how. Examining the lunar
farside using the DTM also reveals an older, unknown
basin partially covered by the Moscoviense basin. There
are probably many more surprises awaiting detection in
the Kaguya DTM.
Lacus Mortis
Mason Williams
R I D G E
Eudoxus
Plana
Eudoxus
Mason Williams
R I D G E
Plana

Top right: Using Jim Mosher’s Lunar Terminator Visualization

Tool (LTVT), New Zealand amateur Maurice Collins discovered a
ridge radiating away from the Imbrium impact basin. These two
simulations produced by Collins using LTVT show lunar topog-
raphy as it would appear if the Sun were illuminating it from the
north (top) and the south (bottom).

Bottom right: An interactive Java applet on JAXA’s Kaguya web-

site (http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/3dmoon_e/index_e.html) allows
you to explore images and data recorded by the orbiter, including
the Digital Terrain Map (DTM) shown above.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 51

worldmags & avaxhome
 Exploring the Moon

You can also examine the DTM by
using an interactive program available
on the Kaguya website: http://wms.
selene.jaxa.jp/3dmoon_e/index_e.html.
Launch the Java applet Kaguya 3D GIS
and the program displays a color-coded
topographic map that you can rotate to
examine any part of the Moon, including
the far side never seen from Earth. Select-
ing the bottom option in the control panel
provides a yellow line that crosses the
Moon, and below that a light-hued profi le
of the terrain under the line. A graphic
example, centered on the Orientale impact
basin (shown on page 51), shows an eleva-
tion profile from the farside highlands to
Oceanus Procellarum.
You immediately notice that the high-
lands are 8 to 9 kilometers (5 to 6 miles)
higher than the mare. The Orientale basin
formed on the slope between the two
types of terrain, making its western rim
4 or 5 km higher than the more familiar
Cordillera Mountains on the eastern rim.
Look closely to see the local elevation
peaks of the inner rings, too. It should be
noted that due to Kaguya’s polar orbit, the
DTM is less accurate at the lunar equator
than near the poles.
Spend five minutes with the Kaguya 3D
GIS comparing the surface color map with
the elevation profi le, and you’ll begin to
understand relationships of lunar topogra-
phy that have been previously unknown in
such detail. Observers shouldn’t abandon
their telescopes in favor of these simula-
tions, but they will help us to become
more knowledgeable interpreters of the
lunar surface before stepping out to the
eyepiece. ✦
To get a daily lunar fix, visit contributing edi-
tor Charles Wood’s Lunar Photo of the Day
website at lpod.wikispaces.com.

The Moon • May 2010

Highlighted feature Diameter Description Notes
(shown on page 51)

Eudoxus 41 miles Crater Terraced walls, no central peak

Plana 27 miles Crater Nearly featureless floor
Mason 26 miles Crater Heavily eroded, irregular shape
Lacus Mortis 91 miles Flooded plain Crater Bürg located inside
Williams 22 miles Remnant crater Only low curving ridge remains

23
Phases
Last quarter May 6, 4:15 UT
New Moon May 14, 1:04 UT 28
First quarter May 20, 23:43 UT
Full Moon May 27, 23:07 UT

Distances
Apogee May 6, 22h UT
251,180 miles diam. 29′ 15″
Perigee May 20, 9h UT
229,741 miles diam. 32′ 5″

Librations
11
Drygalski (crater) May 8
May 8
S&T: DENNIS DI CICCO

Arrhenius (crater) May 11

Petermann (crater) May 23
For key dates, yellow dots indicate what part of the Moon’s limb is tipped
Beals (crater) May 28 the most toward Earth by libration under favorable illumination.

52 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
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 Cosmic Trails
December 13th–23rd, 2010
W W W . I N S I G H T C R U I S E S . C O M / S K Y

Speakers
Southern Caribbean & Andrew Chaikin
The Panama Canal Susan French
Walter Pacholka
Gary Seronik
David Stevenson, Ph.D.

FT. LAUDERDALE Half Moon Cay

Curaçao
Aruba

Cristobal, Panama
Puerto Limón Cruise prices start at $999, per
(San José) PAN AMA C AN AL person, for an Inside Stateroom.
For those attending our
seminars, there is a $1,275 fee.
Taxes are $244.23 per person.
Port Charges and an InSight
Cruises service fee are $245.
During Our Trip: For more info contact
Geminid Meteor Shower Neil at 650-787-5665 or
neil@InSightCruises.com
and TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE

CST# 2065380-40
©Walter Pacholka

During Our Trip:

TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

For a full listing visit

www.InSightCruises.com/Sky-talks

worldmags & avaxhome

S & T Test Report Paul Deans

Lunar Discoverer
Mac and PC users alike can use this program to aid their telescopic
explorations of the Moon

Lunar Discoverer
US price: $59.95 for the Deluxe Edition (the
Standard Edition, with smaller databases and
fewer program features, costs $44.95)

AstroHawk Corp.
P.O. Box 646
Chiefland, FL 32644
astrohawk.com

“Hello, i’m a Mac.”

“And i’m a PC.”

Most readers probably recognize these opening lines
from a long-running series of television ads for Apple
computers. Well, I’m a Mac and happily so — most of the
time. The rare occasions I have PC envy occur when I
see the vast array of Windows-based software versus the
minuscule number of titles in the Apple line. In particu-
lar, there’s a dearth of Mac-based astronomy software.
So imagine my delight when I found AstroHawk’s
Lunar Discoverer. The Deluxe Edition contains an exten-
sive database of lunar features (including physical details
and images), several types of lunar maps, an audio-format
pronunciation guide, and numerous options for custom-
izing the program for your observing
WHAT WE LIKE: sessions. Best of all, the software lets
you create a custom, interactive map
Runs on a Mac
as well as a PC of the Moon for any date and time
between 1904 and 2040 — on a Mac!
Easy to customize
(I hasten to add that it works identi-
WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: cally on a PC.) Another nice feature
is that you can generate views that
Handles time poorly
match the field and orientation of the
Doesn’t include the Moon as it appears in your telescope.
effects of libration
I was particularly interested
in seeing how accurately Lunar Discoverer’s map and its
display of the terminator marking the division between
lunar day and night compared with the real thing in the
sky. There are two basic ways to use Lunar Discoverer’s
Moon map. One is to show the Moon as it looks in real
time, which is useful for identifying lunar surface fea-
tures that appear in your telescope’s eyepiece. The other
is to plan future observing sessions so you can catch fea-
tures of interest when they’re optimally placed for obser-
vation near the terminator. I used the Deluxe Edition,
which has more options and a larger database of named
lunar features (4,600+ vs. 1,300+) than the Standard Edi-
tion. Both come with a detailed PDF manual that covers
the program’s operation on both computer platforms.
I tried the program on numerous nights covering most
of the lunar phases, and the software performed admi-
rably when it came to identifying features seen through
my telescope. Click on a crater and its name pops up.
Double-clicking brings up more information, including
physical details, information about who it’s named after, a
page reference to Antonín Rükl’s Atlas of the Moon, and a
close-up photo (if available).
Using the lunar map to plot future observing sessions

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 55

worldmags & avaxhome
 S&T Test Report

Lunar Discoverer can generate charts based
on several views of the Moon, including actual
photographs (top) and a “synthetic” surface that
emphasizes relief features (bottom).
also worked well, but with a caveat. The
software didn’t do a good job of handling
the effects of libration. This subtle “rock-
ing” motion of the Moon varies the lunar
face presented to observers and is espe-
cially critical when viewing features near
the Moon’s limb. Since the charts don’t
show libration effects, I had no expecta-
tion that the program would tell me the
best dates to peek over the Moon’s edge
— and it doesn’t.
But I was disappointed to find that the
libration issue also affects the displayed
location of the terminator, when it is more
than 45° away from the midpoint of the
lunar disk. At times it was off by as much
as two or three hours from its actual
appearance. For observers, this usually
isn’t a big deal when the Moon is waxing,
since any feature in darkness will soon
experience sunrise. But it can be a prob-
lem when observing features in a waning
phase if sunset has already occurred for a
feature that the program indicates is still
on the sunlit side of the terminator.
One of the program’s nice touches is
the thin, light-gray band separating the
terminator (indicated as a red line) and the
black of the lunar night. The band indi-
cates a region where mountain peaks and
crater rims may catch rays of sunlight,
even though the surrounding moonscape
lies in darkness.
But beyond the libration problem, the
software contains several vexing issues. In
particular, time is not handled well. Local
time (as read from your computer’s inter-
nal clock) is mostly used, though you have
to manually adjust the program to account
for daylight time. But Universal Time
crops up here and there and is incorrectly
formatted as a 12-hour clock.
Even worse, when I entered a date/time
in the Preferences window, the resulting
chart would sometimes show the lunar
phase for exactly 24 hours later. I con-
firmed by direct observation that the chart
is correct for the date and time shown, but
is for one day later than I requested. The
problem is related to how the software
handles local time and UT. It seems to add
the user-defined GMT offset (in my case, 7
hours for Mountain Time) to the requested
local time entered in Preferences. If that
causes the time to advance past midnight,
a chart is created for the correct time but
for the following day. With my 7-hour off-
set, this “day-advance” happens at 5 p.m.,
so if I want a chart for a date and time
in the future, I have to double check the
chart’s date if my requested time is 5 p.m.
or later. It’s an odd problem, but I’m sur-
prised it hasn’t been noticed and corrected.
Other problems lurk. For example,
the lunar eclipse listing is peppered with
incorrect details about the eclipse type;
totality times are sometimes given for
eclipses that aren’t total; the standard/day-
light time issues mentioned above also
crop up here; and there’s no indication of
where on Earth a particular eclipse is vis-
ible. Click on a New Moon in the Calendar
window and numerous, supposedly visible
features around the lunar limb are listed
and shown on the chart. And you can’t
cancel an accidental command to quit.
I tested Version 1.25 of Lunar Discoverer
and it seemed to be a work in progress. One
feature I’d really like to see added is the
ability to adjust the time in hourly incre-
ments without having to call up the Prefer-
ences menu. As this review was readied for
publication, AstroHawk released an update
(V1.31), which doesn’t correct the issues
I’ve raised above (at least not in the Mac
version). Despite its flaws, the program’s
mapping functions are good enough that
I’ll definitely make this program the one I
use for lunar observing. ✦
Paul Deans is a freelance astronomy writer
who has recently rediscovered the joy of chas-
ing shadows along the lunar terminator.

The program has many customization options for displaying lunar features and their labels, though
labels can sometimes become very crowded along the Moon’s limb. The calculated terminator
dividing lunar day and night shows as a red line, while a gray band indicates the region when crater
rims and mountain peaks might be catching a few rays of sunlight. Compare the charts made using
photographs (left and right) with the one showing a synthetic surface (center).

56 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
worldmags & avaxhome
 New Product Showcase

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58 May 2010 sky & telescope

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worldmags & avaxhome
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60 May 2010 sky & telescope

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 Alan MacRobert
Celestial Calendar

Saturn’s 8 Amateur Moons

How many of them have you bagged? Now’s the time to push your limits.

Saturn, glowing yellow in the head of Much tougher is Enceladus, magnitude 11.7 and buried
Virgo, is at opposition on the night of March 21st and deeper in Saturn’s glare. I’ve barely glimpsed it with my
remains almost as close and big during April and May. Its 6-inch, but it’s a fairly routine catch in my 12.5-inch.
rings are narrow and narrowing further; they’ll be a thin You can determine where each of these five satellites
sliver tilted just 1.7° to our view from mid-May through appears at any time in May, and which is which, by using
early June, before widening again for many years to come. the wavy-line diagram at far right. Its counterpart for
So this spring, we have one really good last chance to April is in last month’s issue, page 47.
go satellite hunting close to Saturn. As many as eight of From here on, things get trickier.
Saturn’s moons (out of the 62 known) are within reach
of advanced amateurs. How many are on your life list? Iapetus Far Out . . .
Now’s the time to push for perhaps one or two more. Missing from the diagram is Iapetus, though it’s often
Easiest is big, bright Titan, magnitude 8.3 for much of easy to spot in amateur scopes. That’s because Iapetus
the spring. It always hovers within four ring-lengths of ranges much farther from Saturn and has an orbit that’s
the planet. A 60-millimeter refractor usually shows it. tipped out of the orbital plane of the first five moons.
The next three counting inward are Rhea, Dione, and Iapetus is Saturn’s oddball in another way. Its lead-
Tethys, magnitudes 9.7, 10.4, and 10.2. These are stan- ing side is darker than dark chocolate, and its trailing
dard pickups in a 6-inch scope, though Tethys, close to side is mostly covered with bright ice. So when Iapetus
Saturn’s glare, may require some careful looking. is farthest west of the planet, it shines at an easy magni-
tude 10.3, but when it’s farthest east, it’s a lot harder at
11.7. Once you’re used to finding Iapetus on one side, its
Titan, Rhea, Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys (counting inward) brightness or dimness on the other side looks bizarre.
were lined up on Saturn’s western side when Ed Sampson The best way to locate Iapetus is by its distance east or
took this stacked-video image on March 18, 2009, using a 12- west of the planet. Here are its offsets from Saturn, in sec-
inch Newtonian reflector. The image has been brightened a bit
onds of right ascension, on selected dates (at 0h Universal
for clarity. The rings were tilted 3° from edge on at the time,
Time, which is on the evening of the previous date in the
with their south face still in view. South is up in all images.
Americas). Interpolate to find the value for when you plan
to observe:
April 2, 37s east; Apr. 8, 28s east; Apr. 12, 18s east; Apr. 16,
s
6 east; Apr. 18, directly south of Saturn by 4 Saturn diameters;
Apr. 20, 6s west; Apr. 24, 18s west; Apr. 30, 31s west.
May 2, 34s west; May 8, 36s west; May 14, 31s west; May
20, 18s west; May 24, 8s
west; May 27, directly
Saturn in 2010
north of Saturn by 3 Saturn
Ring Mag. diameters; May 30, 8s east.
Date Dia. tilt (total)
To measure this dis-
April 1 19.5″ 2.8° +0.6 tance, turn off your tele-
May 1 19.0″ 1.9° +0.8 scope’s drive and let the
sky drift for the correct
June 1 18.1″ 1.7° +1.0
number of seconds. When
July 1 17.2″ 2.2° +1.1 Iapetus is east of Saturn,
if follows the planet across
Aug. 1 16.4″ 3.3° +1.1
your view. When it’s west

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 61

worldmags & avaxhome
 Celestial Calendar

Bright Rhea was

transiting Saturn’s
Saturn’s Moons
face, and a white May 16 0h UT
spot in the Equatorial
Zone was nearing
the central meridian, May 1
when Damian Peach
in England took this 2 EAST WEST

white spot image on May 9,

Rhea
of Saturn, it precedes Saturn.
Iapetus is also a little south of Saturn
for most of April, and a little north of it
from the end of April through May.
Mimas Close In . . .
Also omitted from the wavy-line diagram
is tiny, challenging Mimas, closer in than
even Enceladus. Most amateur scopes
can’t show it. Mimas is 400 km in diam-
eter compared to Enceladus’s 500, and it’s
magnitude 12.9 compared to Enceladus’s
11.7. Worst of all, Mimas is deeper in
Saturn’s overwhelming glare. I’ve never
seen Mimas in my 12.5-inch, but my S&T
colleague Tony Flanders has seen it in his
own 12.5-inch reflector — once in 1998
and again in 2005 when the rings were
wide open! Last year, Alan Whitman of
British Columbia described seeing it in his
16-inch (S&T: August 2009, page 11).
You’ll need to look less than an hour
from when Mimas is at eastern or western
elongation from the planet. Here are the
dates (in boldface) and times (in decimals
of an hour) when Mimas is at eastern (E) or
western (W) elongation, in Universal Time:
h h h
April 1, 8.5 W, 19.8 E; 2, 7.1 W, 18.4 E;
3, 5.7h W, 17.0h E; 4, 4.3h W, 15.6h E; 5, 3.0h W,
14.3h E; 6, 1.6h W, 12.9h E; 7, 0.2h W, 11.5h E,
22.8h W; 8, 10.1h E, 21.4h W; 9, 8.7h E, 20.0h W;
May Meteors
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower should
be active for a few mornings around May
6th, though last-quarter moonlight will
interfere. This shower is often the year’s
best for the Southern Hemisphere, with
40 to 80 meteors visible per hour before
dawn under ideal conditions. Fewer are
seen from northerly latitudes, and essen-
tially none north of about latitude 45°.
3
2009, using a 14-inch
Schmidt-Cassegrain 4
scope. The ring tilt
5 Enceladus
was 4°.
6
10, 7.3h E, 18.6h W; 11, 5.9h E, 17.2h W; 12, 4.6h E,
15.9h W; 13, 3.2h E, 14.5h W; 14, 1.8h E, 13.1h W; 7
15, 0.4h E, 11.7h W, 23.0h E; 16, 10.3h W, 21.6h E; 8
17, 9.9h W, 20.2h E; 18, 7.6h W, 18.9h E; 19, 6.2h
W, 17.5h E; 20, 4.8h W, 16.1h E; 21, 3.4h W, 14.7h 9 Tethys
E; 22, 2.0h W, 13.3h E; 23, 0.6h W, 11.9h E, 23.2h 10
W; 24, 10.6h E, 21.9h W; 25, 9.2h E, 20.5h W; 26,
7.8h E, 19.1h W; 27, 6.4h E, 17.7h W; 28, 5.0h E, 11
16.3h W; 29, 3.6h E, 14.9h W; 30, 2.2h E, 13.5h W. 12
May 1, 0.9h E, 12.2h W, 23.5h E; 2, 10.8h W,
22.1 E; 3, 9.4h W, 20.7h E; 4, 8.0h W, 19.3h E;
h 13
5, 6.6h W, 17.9h E; 6, 5.3h W, 16.6h E; 7, 3.9h W, 14
15.2h E; 8, 2.5h W, 13.8h E; 9, 1.1h W, 12.4h E,
15
23.7h W; 10, 11.0h E, 22.3h W; 11, 9.7h E, 21.0h
W; 12, 8.3h E, 19.6h W; 13, 6.9h E, 18.2h W; 14, 16
5.5h E, 16.8h W; 15, 4.1h E, 15.4h W; 16, 2.7h E,
17
14.0h W; 17, 1.4h E, 12.7h W; 18, 0.0h E, 11.3h W,
22.6h E; 19, 9.9h W, 21.2h E; 20, 8.5h W, 19.8h 18 Titan
E; 21, 7.4h W, 18.5h E; 22, 5.8h W, 17.1h E; 23,
19
4.4h W, 15.7h E; 24, 3.0h W, 14.3h E; 25, 1.6h W,
12.9h E; 26, 0.2h W, 11.5h E, 22.8h W; 27, 10.2h 20
E, 21.5h W; 28, 8.8h E, 20.1h W; 29, 7.4h E, 18.7h
21
W; 30, 6.0h E, 17.3h W; 31, 4.6h E, 16.9h W.
Mimas completes an orbit in just 22.6 22
hours, so you should see its motion during
23
your observing session.
24 Rhea
. . . and Hyperion in the Dark 25
Very different is Saturn’s weird “sponge
moon,” Hyperion, magnitude 14.2. It’s only 26
a little beyond the orbit of Titan, where 27
Saturn’s glare may still be a problem, and
at that magnitude you’ll need to distin- 28 Dione
guish it from 14th-magnitude background 29
stars. This requires very high power and
top-quality charting software from a mas- 30
sive stellar database. But if you have a big 31
scope and can print out such a chart for a
The wavy lines represent five Saturnian satellites; the central
time when Hyperion is near elongation,
vertical bands are Saturn and its rings. Each gray or black hori-
Alan Whitman reports that this prize catch
zontal band is one day, from 0 h (upper edge of band) to 24h UT
is “much easier” than Mimas. ✦ (GMT). The ellipses at top show the actual apparent orbits.
— Alan MacRobert

62 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
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 Sue French
Deep-Sky Wonders

The Gossamers
of Coma Berenices
The constellation north of Virgo is littered with galaxies.

There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket, the middle and easternmost of the three stars arcing
Seventeen times as high as the moon; across the galaxy. A fainter strand starting north of the
Where she was going I could not but ask it, galaxy’s center trends north-northwest. An elusive, star-
For in her hand she carried a broom. like nucleus rests at the heart of NGC 4559, and brighter
“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I; spots ornament the galaxy’s face.
“O whither, O whither, O whither so high?” The magnificent showpiece galaxy NGC 4565 slashes
“To sweep the cobwebs from the sky, the sky 2° south of NGC 4559. Its slender profile earned
And I’ll be with you by-and-by!” this edge-on spiral the nickname of the Needle Galaxy,
ANNE ANDERSON
while some observers fondly call it Berenice’s Hair Clip.
As the brightest of the galaxies appearing at least seven
Garrett P. Serviss cites this nursery rhyme in times longer than wide, NGC 4565 is one of the best “flat”
his book Astronomy with an Opera-Glass when describ- galaxies for a small telescope. In my 130-mm refractor at
ing the constellation Coma Berenices, Berenice’s Hair. 37×, its 9′-long streak contains a brighter area half as long
He writes, “Nearly on a line between Denebola and with a small central bulge. At 102× the core is a flattened
Arcturus, and somewhat nearer to the former, you will oval, with a stellar nucleus and a faint star hovering over its
perceive a curious twinkling, as if gossamers spangled
with dew-drops were entangled there. One might think
the old woman of the nursery rhyme who went to sweep The barred spiral galaxy
the cobwebs out of the sky had skipped this corner, or NGC 4559 is similar in
structure to our own
else that its delicate beauty had preserved it even from her
Milky Way.
housewifely instincts.”
Garrett’s gossamers comprise Melotte 111, the huge
cluster of stars that diadem Berenice’s Hair. Gazing up
at a clear dark sky, I can see several of its glittering gems
entwined in her tresses, and dozens of stars spring forth
through binoculars (S&T: May 2008, page 51).
Through a telescope, we see more evidence that the
old woman left this region of the sky unswept, for it’s rife
with dust-bunny galaxies. One of the most obvious bits of
fluff is NGC 4559. It lies 2° east and a bit south of yellow-
JEFF HAPEMAN / ADAM BLOCK / NOAO / AURA / NSF

orange Gamma (γ) Comae, the bright foreground star that

caps Melotte 111.
Through my 105-mm (4.1-inch) refractor at 28×, NGC
4559 is an oval glow with faint stars hugging each side
of its southeastern end. At 76× a dimmer star pops out
at the southeastern tip. The galaxy covers about 4′ × 1½′,
has a brighter core, and is slightly uneven in brightness.
NGC 4559 is very pretty through my 10-inch reflector
at 192× and spans 6½′ × 2½′. Hazy wisps reach out toward

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 65

worldmags & avaxhome
 Deep-Sky Wonders

4150
37 4525 6

Star magnitudes
4308
+30° 7
COMA 4136 +30°
4274 8
4793 BERENICES 4253 9
4314
Hickson 61 4274 10
4448 G 4251 11
4185 4245
Mel 111 Hickson 61
4839 31 4559 4286 4283
4173
4310 4278 4175 4169
4789 4670 4555

Star magnitudes
5 +29° 4174
LoTr 5
4725 4565 6
4747 4338 12h 20m 12h 15m
7
4494
+25° 4712 8
9 Most of the galaxies shown on these charts belong to the Virgo
Galaxy Cluster, roughly 60 million light-years distant. Melotte
12h 45m 12h 30m 12h 15m 111, the Coma Star Cluster, lies just 280 light-years from Earth.

northeastern pole. A dusky lane is subtly incredible 15′ of sky, and I can trace its eral stars points toward it from the east.
charcoaled across the core and a bit beyond, dark lane for about 3′. The galaxy is fairly large and bright in my
skimming just northeast of the nucleus. Moving 3.2° east and a little south takes 105-mm scope at 28×. It features a small
In my 10-inch reflector at 192×, NGC us to a galaxy with remarkable structure, core with extensions northeast and south-
4565 is a beautiful sight. It bridges an NGC 4725. A sharply peaked chain of sev- west, all enveloped in a faint halo. A faint
star dangles beneath the galaxy’s southern
edge. At 87× the extensions become part
of an oval haze, uneven in brightness,
surrounding the core. The core itself is
slightly oval and harbors a tiny, bright
nucleus. All told, NGC 4725 spans about
6½′ × 4½′ with an extremely faint star
SHELDON FAWORSKI / SEAN WALKER

pinning its edge, north of the nucleus.

My 10-inch scope at 192× nicely displays
details within NGC 4725 and reveals two
JOHANNES SCHEDLER

nearby galaxies. NGC 4275 juts into one

side of a roughly 10′ rhombus of 12th-
magnitude stars. The moderately faint
galaxy NGC 4712 lies along the opposite
Left: NGC 4565 is often cited as the most spectacular edge-on spiral galaxy in the sky. Right: NGC side in the same field of view. Its 2′ × ¾′
4725 and 4712 are both barred spirals, and each is tilted roughly halfway betweeen edge-on and face- oval holds a small oval core. Farther afield,
on to Earth. But NGC 4712 is more than three times farther, so it appears much smaller. NGC 4747 is 6′ north of the brightest star
in the chain. This very faint streak is 2′
Dust Motes in the Queen’s Hair long with a somewhat brighter center.
Those with large scopes, dark skies,
Object Type Mag. Size/Sep. RA Dec. and a touch of masochism might like to
NGC 4559 Galaxy 10.0 10.7′ × 4.4′ 12h 36.0m +27° 58′
try for the planetary nebula Longmore-
Tritton 5. It rests 52′ east by north of
NGC 4565 Galaxy 9.6 15.9′ × 1.9′ h
12 36.3 m
+25° 59′ NGC 4747, where it surrounds an 8.9-
NGC 4725 Galaxy 9.4 10.7′ × 7.6′ h
12 50.4 m
+25° 30′ magnitude binary star whose fainter
component is the nebula’s progenitor.
LoTr 5 Planetary nebula — 8.8′ 12h 55.6m +25° 54′
This planetary has extremely low surface
NGC 4274 Galaxy 10.4 6.8′ × 2.5′ 12h 19.8m +29° 37′ brightness and is among the largest in
h m
our sky. It has a diameter of 8.8′ and a
Hickson 61 Galaxy group 12.2–13.4 6′ 12 12.4 +29° 12′
structure reminiscent of the Helix Nebula
Angular sizes and separations are from recent catalogs. Visually, an object’s size is often smaller than the cataloged value (NGC 7293). To catch sight of it, try low
and varies according to the aperture and magnification of the viewing instrument. Right ascension and declination are for
magnification and an O III nebula fi lter.
equinox 2000.0.
I’ve gazed at this phantom planetary a few

66 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
 of four galaxies tightly packed into 6′ of
STEVE & SHERRY BUSHEY / ADAM BLOCK / NOAO / AURA / NSF

a foreground galaxy not associated with

sky. My 105-mm refractor at 87× shows
three of them. NGC 4169 is the brightest.
It’s tilted north-northwest and has a large
oval core. NGC 4174 and NGC 4175 are
very faint. The former is a small fuzz-spot
tipped northeast, while the latter is larger
and leans northwest. The fourth member,
NGC 4173, is elusive even in my 10-inch
scope. Its long, highly elongated profile is
in line with NGC 4173 and best seen with
Both the inner arms and the outer halo of the
averted vision.
spiral galaxy NGC 4274 appear to form ring Odd though it may seem, NGC 4173 is
structures around the galaxy’s core. The bright
inner ring is often likened to Saturn’s rings.
the other three. We see evidence of this
in photos, where NGC 4173 looks larger,
more detailed, and bluer than its chance
companions on the sky. As with most of
the galaxies in this tour, NGC 4173 is a
member of the Virgo Cluster, centered
some 60 million light-years away. The
other Hickson 61 galaxies and NGC 4712
are about three times more distant. ✦
Sue French welcomes your comments at
scfrench@nycap.rr.com.

times with 14- to 15-inch scopes and could

only log it as a “maybe.” Folks with darker
skies have reported success with scopes as
small as 16 inches in aperture.
Now let’s move 2.1° northwest of
Gamma Comae to NGC 4274. It shares
the field of view with NGC 4278 and NGC
4314 through my 105-mm scope at 28×.
NGC 4274 is a fairly bright oval, NGC 4278
is smaller and round with a very bright
nucleus, and NGC 4314 is a faint smudge.
At 87× NGC 4274 is about 5½′ × 1¾′ and
leans south of east. It enfolds a large oval
core with a small, round, bright center. A
close, unequal star pair lies 6′ south. NGC
4173
4278 grows much brighter toward the cen-
ter. A very faint star floats 5′ north, while
the very small but fairly bright, round
galaxy NGC 4283 keeps it company 3½′
east-northeast. NGC 4314 shows a bright,
2½′ spindle with a round central bulge
clasping a stellar nucleus. The spindle has
a very faint star near its northwestern tip 4169
and is enclosed in a tenuous halo. 4175
NGC 4274 looks rather strange through
my 10-inch scope at 192×. The oval halo
seems disconnected from the sides of
the core by darker ears. It’s like looking
at a ghostly Saturn! There’s a diapha- 4174
nous envelope around the whole thing
that quickly fades outward. NGC 4286
emerges 5′ east-northeast of NGC 4283.
Its faint oval glow has a small brighter
SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY

core and a dim star off its south-south-

eastern tip.
Our final stop is Hickson 61, resting
1.7° west of NGC 4278. Commonly known
as The Box, this compact group consists

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 67

worldmags & avaxhome
Ken Hewitt-White
Going Deep
A Fine Field in Boötes
This ragtag herd of galaxies is worth corralling.
Often overlooked by galaxy hunters, the giant
Herdsman is not without extragalactic attractions. As
evidence I offer the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5529 in
the western part of the constellation. My interest in this
11.9-magnitude wisp dates back to Sue French’s Deep-Sky
Wonders column of June 2004 (page 84). Sue’s impres-
sion of NGC 5529 as a “remarkably flat galaxy” inspired
me to scrutinize it with my 17.5-inch Dobsonian under a
country black sky. I had no trouble finding the little guy
less than 1° northwest of the 5th-magnitude star A Boötis.
And, as often happens when one digs deep with large
optics, I unearthed other subtle treasures nearby. Let’s
tour the area beginning with that flat fuzzy.
Sue reported that NGC 5529 “is one of the entries
in the Revised Flat Galaxy Catalogue, a compilation of
4,236 galaxies that appear at least seven times longer
than wide.” At 6.4′ × 0.7′ — a ratio of 9:1 — NGC 5529
qualifies easily. My initial inspection of the galaxy at 83×
resulted in the following statement in my logbook: “Very
5545/5544
5557
SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (3)
5572
68 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
slender and gently brighter toward the middle. Slanted
northwest–southeast with a dim star off southeast tip.” At
285× I added: “Small, distinct core with some mottling.” I
interpret that blotchy texture as a hint of the galaxy’s dust
lane. The image on the facing page shows the dust lane
cutting north of the nucleus, indicating that NGC 5529
isn’t precisely edge-on. My log entry agrees: “North edge
fairly straight; south side bulges slightly.”
Two very faint galaxies hover near NGC 5529. PGC
50952, also known as MCG 6-31-87, is visible in my scope
at 222× about 4′ southeast of the edge-on’s hub, as shown
on the facing page. PGC 50925 (sometimes identified
incorrectly as NGC 5527) is an extremely difficult object
located a similar distance southwest of the hub. Both
companions are comparable in size, but while PGC 50952
has a bright core and glows at magnitude 15.3, PGC 50925
is diff use, with much lower surface brightness. When I
try for the fainter galaxy, I first note the 14th-magnitude
star directly south of NGC 5529’s core. On the best nights,
UGC 9123
5527
PGC 50944 (“5524”)
5529
15′
 5529

PGC 2076843 5545

PGC 2076761
PGC 50925
5544

PGC 50952

my averted vision occasionally glimpses an exceedingly
faint patch whose position relative to the star and the
other two galaxies matches what I see in images. Con-
sider PGC 50925 your challenge of the night!
Eagle-eyed observers might pick up three other small
fry in the same high-power field. Two of the galaxies, PGC
2076761 and PGC 2076843, lie close together 4′ east of
NGC 5529. I only recently noticed these tiny targets on
photographs and haven’t yet attempted them telescopi-
cally, but they seem brighter than the aforementioned
PGC 50952. They’ll likely appear stellar unless high mag-
nification is applied. Another midget is 15th-magnitude
PGC 50944 (MCG 6-31-86), almost 9′ north of NGC 5529.
This pale blob flickers on and off in my optics at 285×,
east-northeast of a 10th-magnitude star.
Less than ½° northeast of NGC 5529 is a compact
galaxy pair I call “the comet.” NGC 5544 and NGC 5545
(together known as Arp 199) make a pretty picture: NGC
5544 is a yellowish, face-on barred spiral partly overlapped
by NGC 5545, a bluish, nearly edge-on spiral. At 83× this
tight twosome is just an irregularly-shaped nebulosity,
but 285× reveals a binary galaxy oriented northeast-south-
west. NGC 5544 glows at magnitude
13.4 and exhibits an obvious core
inside a 1′-diameter halo. NGC 5545
is about 1 magnitude dimmer and BOOTES
the “comet.” The most prominent of these is 11.0-magni-
tude NGC 5557, whose 2.3′ × 1.9′ halo surrounds a bright
core and nucleus. At 285× I see a dim star in the halo
southeast of the core. Also in the region are 14.2-mag-
nitude NGC 5572 and 13.8-magnitude NGC 5527. The
latter object is labeled NGC 5524 on most star charts, but
in a note on the NGC/IC Project website (www.ngcicpro-
ject.org), Harold G. Corwin, Jr. argues that NGC 5527, the
name sometimes given to faint PGC 50925, should apply
to this much more prominent galaxy. According to Cor-
win, NGC 5524 is likely a faint double star mistaken for a
galaxy by Lord Rosse while observing NGC 5529 through
his 72-inch reflector in 1855. ✦
Ken Hewitt-White hunts galaxies from western Canada.
14h 30m 14h 20m 14h 10m
a
+38°
BOOTES
4
5557
Star magnitudes

5
elongated 1.0′ × 0.3′ — a faint “tail” 5529 +36° 6
flowing away from the bright “head” 7
formed by NGC 5544. Delightful! A
8
Your scope can sweep up three 9
10
additional NGC galaxies within ¾° of

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 69

worldmags & avaxhome
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
A Small Dob Solution
The smaller the scope, the trickier the mount.
Some of today’s most interesting homemade
telescopes marry tried-and-true designs with recent
innovations — sort of a scenario where Jean Texereau
meets John Dobson. That was my first thought when I
saw Wichita Falls, Texas, ATM Arthur Gamble’s nifty 6-
inch f/5 refractor. Although its resemblance to the scopes
appearing in Texereau’s classic volume, How to Make a
Telescope, is more superficial than actual, the Dobsonian
touches are real and very useful.
Art’s telescope uses a short-focus, air-spaced achro-
matic objective lens sold by the New York firm A. Jae-
gers, Jr. Optics, Inc. (www.ajaegers.com). But the scope’s
design has several features that can be utilized in a wide
range of instruments, from small refractors to short-focus
ARTHUR GAMBLE
Arthur Gamble’s attractive 6-inch f/5 refractor has a modified
Dobsonian mount that can also carry a host of other instruments,
including 4- and 6-inch Newtonian reflectors.
70 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
Newtonians. And it’s with the latter that I think Art’s
mount has its greatest utility.
As anyone who has made a small Dobsonian knows,
such an instrument’s dimensions and light weight can
create problems. First, the scope’s focuser is usually
located uncomfortably close to the ground. If you build a
standard rocker box, you’ll find yourself either kneeling to
peer into the eyepiece or setting up the scope on a table.
Neither situation is ideal.
Second, the scope’s balance point changes dramati-
cally depending on the weight of the eyepiece. This is
because the mass of the eyepiece is proportionally more
significant in a lightweight scope than in a heavy one. For
example, swapping a 3-ounce Plössl for a 1½-pound wide-
field eyepiece doesn’t necessarily change the balance of a
50-pound instrument, but it will cause a 5-pound scope to
nosedive! Art’s mount solves both issues elegantly.
The low-focuser issue is neatly addressed with a
rigid tripod that elevates the rocker box to a comfortable
viewing height. Art’s plywood tripod consists of three
identical legs, and a triangular piece on top. The result
is both functional and undeniably stylish. And thanks to
its fi xed-height, non-folding design, he was able to avoid
the sorts of complications that typically make building a
tripod such an involved exercise.
To tackle the balance problem, Art used a three-way
attack. “First, I tried to even out the weights of my eye-
pieces by machining a steel adapter to make the lighter
eyepieces match the weight of the heavier ones,” he
explains. “Second, for the altitude bearings, which are
riding on Teflon pads, I chose PVC in place of Ebony Star
Laminate to increase the friction. Third, I built a set of
adjustable clamps to further control the altitude motion.”
These clamps are key to preventing the scope from
being overly sensitive to changes in balance. As the photo
on the next page shows, each altitude-bearing assembly
has a ½-inch-wide strip of 1/8-inch-thick steel bent into a
curve. This component forces two Teflon buttons against
the PVC bearing from above. By adjusting two knurled
nuts, Art is able to set the friction of the altitude bearings
precisely, for just the right resistance and feel. You can
make the clamp with wood if working with steel doesn’t
appeal to you.
 Far Left: The scope’s
altitude bearings
include a variable
friction adjustment
that’s described in the
accompanying text.

Left: A sturdy, fixed-

height tripod supports
the rocker box and
elevates the eyepiece
ARTHUR GAMBLE (2)

to a comfortable
height.

Although good looks and functionality are not neces-
sarily related, over the years I’ve noted that builders who
take the time to make their scopes attractive usually
spend extra effort to ensure their scopes work well too.
Art’s refractor is certainly a good example of this. I was
curious how he obtained the fine finish. As he explains,
“I used three coats of a high-gloss acrylic enamel — basi-
cally an interior trim paint. I applied the paint with 3- and
4-inch mini rollers, which produces a nice textured fi nish
that’s very durable and easy to touch-up if damaged.”
Nicely done. I have a feeling that Jean Texereau would
be impressed. ✦
Contributing editor Gary Seronik builds scopes and observes
the night sky at his home in Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada. He can be contacted through www.garyseronik.com.

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Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 71

worldmags & avaxhome
 Innovative Image Processing
Digging Out
the
Details
Layered deconvolution adds depth to your astro-images.
Astrophotographers always strive to capture the
most detailed and colorful images possible with their
equipment. While most of us don’t shoot from mountain-
tops with subarcsecond seeing, we still manage to take
noteworthy pictures. Local atmospheric conditions, imper-
fect guiding, wind buffeting, and other problems blur our
images, obscuring small-scale details, bloating stars, and
making our pictures look flat or out of focus. Fortunately,
modern image-processing techniques, particularly decon-
volution, can compensate for many of these deficiencies.
The trick is learning how to use them effectively.
Perhaps the most powerful digital tools available today
are the various deconvolution algorithms included in
many astronomical post-processing software programs.
Deconvolution is a mathematical process used to sharpen
images based on known values, such as the theoreti-
cal brightness profile of a perfect star image. Deep-sky
72 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
KEN CRAWFORD
astrophotos respond particularly well to deconvolution.
Software can measure the amount of blur in a star image
(known as the point spread function, or PSF), and use
this to deconstruct the view and then reassemble it based
upon the PSF, resulting in a much sharper image.
The problem with deconvolution from an aesthetic
perspective is that it attacks the entire image. If I want
to really dig out the very smallest details in my photos of
galaxies or nebulae using a strong deconvolution setting,
Above: Taking highly detailed astrophotos with large telescopes is
a challenge. To get the most out of his images, Ken Crawford uses
a novel technique he calls multi-strength deconvolution layer
blend (MSDLB). Crawford recorded this stunning picture of NGC
891 with his 20-inch Ritchey-Chrétien telescope and an Apogee
Alta U9000 CCD camera, and then he processed it using his
MSDLB technique. All images are courtesy of the author.
the algorithm will add artifacts to the brighter stars, and
it will greatly enhance any noise in the background. I’ve
developed an easy method in Adobe Photoshop I call multi-
strength deconvolution layer blend (MSDLB) to reduce
these adverse effects. This technique allows me to aggres-
sively sharpen my images without introducing artifacts
that can be misinterpreted as real features.

Processing in CCDStack
After I’ve captured, calibrated, and combined all of my
data into their various red, green, blue, and luminance
images, I start my process with the luminance image.
This is where the majority of the contrast and detail
resides in a digital color photo. I prefer to use the software
CCDStack (www.ccdware.com) to combine, deconvolve,
Above: Once you combine all the data for a luminance image in CCDStack,
and stretch my images before bringing them into Photo- apply deconvolution to reduce the “fuzzy” appearance of stars and sharpen
shop, but the end result will be the same if you use your detail in the subject. You can do this with the Process > Deconvolve pulldown
favorite CCD processing software. menu, and by clicking a medium-brightness star to measure its full-width, half-
In CCDStack I pull down the Process > Deconvolve maximum (FWHM) as a reference.
action, which opens the deconvolve window. I then select
the Positive Constraint function, and set the number of
iterations to about 30. CCDStack measures the PSF of the
stars by having you simply click on one; you should avoid
choosing the brightest stars in your image, because they
can be saturated, which results in an inaccurate PSF value.
As soon as you click on a star, an information window
opens that lists measurements of the point — the most
important is the full-width, half-maximum (FWHM). This
measurement reflects how much of a star’s light is con-
centrated in its Airy disk. The larger the number, the more
bloated and soft stars will appear.
I often select a few stars of about the same brightness
to make sure the FWHM is similar in each, and then I
click the Deconvolve button. This action slightly tightens
the medium-brightness stars and faint, tiny galaxies in
the background. The idea is to make this deconvolution
process mild enough so that it doesn’t introduce noise
in the background or artifacts to the bright stars. I then
save this result as a new 32-bit FIT fi le. Next, I return to
the original luminance fi le and apply the same Positive
Constraint deconvolution, this time performing 75 to 150
iterations, until I see major improvement in the small
details in the galaxy itself; the brighter stars will start
showing artifacts such as bright edges and darker centers.
I can correct this later. When fi nished, I save this result as
a new 32-bit FIT fi le so that I now have three luminance
frames: the original, one with mild deconvolution, and
another with aggressive sharpening.
My next step is to perform a non-linear stretch to each
deconvoluted fi le using the DDP (Digital Development
Process) function. This step compresses the dynamic These two crops of NGC 891 show the difference between a mild applica-
range of the images so that the faintest objects and bright- tion of deconvolution (in this case, 30 iterations) in the top image, and an
est areas of the images can be displayed simultaneously. aggressive application of the technique at bottom. The latter method greatly
DDP can actually be displayed in CCDStack throughout increases details in the galaxy’s dust lanes, but at the expense of creating
the entire process by keeping the Adjust Display window bright rims and dark centers in most stars throughout the image.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 73

worldmags & avaxhome
 Innovative Image Processing
open and by clicking the DDP and Apply to All boxes.
These changes aren’t applied permanently to the images
until they are saved as scaled data using the pulldown
menu File > Save scaled data, then selecting the “All”
option. I always save these two scaled images as 16-bit
TIFF files so they can be opened in Adobe Photoshop CS.
Blending It All Together
The idea behind MSDLB is to blend both deconvolved
luminance images into one master luminance to take
advantage of the smoothness and tight stars in the mildly
deconvolved version and the sharp detail of the aggres-
sively deconvolved photo.
I begin by copying the heavily sharpened photo and
pasting it onto the mild version. You do this on a PC by
first selecting the aggressively deconvolved image and
holding down the Ctrl and A keys, then the Ctrl and C
keys to copy all. Next, click your mildly sharpened image
and hold the Ctrl and V keys to paste the earlier image
onto it as a new layer. I now have one file with two layers
of data that I’ll save as a Photoshop Document (PSD).
To blend these images together, I open the layer
window (Window > Layers) then click on Layer 1. Next, I
apply the pulldown option Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.
This makes a layer mask that appears completely black
next to the thumbnail of layer 1, and hides everything on
that layer. To reveal selective parts of the heavily decon-
volved layer, I click on the new mask to the right of layer
1, and select the brush tool from Photoshop’s tool palette.
Then I’ll chose the brush radius and start “painting” on
my image in the places that I’d like to reveal. I should note
that I don’t use a feathered brush tool, because I prefer to
control the edges of my mask using Photoshop’s Blur func-
use DD6a Befo-
reMSDLB.tif
Left: Combining the two deconvolved images in Adobe Photoshop CS requires the use of layer masks. Once the aggressively deconvolved image
is pasted on top of the mild version as a new layer, you use the pulldown action Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All to conceal the top layer. Right: A
“hide all” layer mask needs to have the areas you wish to reveal “painted” in. The mask above has been painted white in the areas of the galaxy to
be sharpened. Over-sharpened stars that are revealed can be hidden again by painting black spots over them in the mask. Blending between the
two layers can be varied by blurring the mask.
74 May 2010 sky & telescope
worldmags & avaxhome
tions. Like magic, the sharpened regions start to appear
wherever I paint onto my mask. When I’m satisfied with
this mask, I apply the Gaussian Blur fi lter to smooth the
transition between the layers.
One tool I would highly recommend for any “digital
darkroom” is a Wacom Intuos tablet (www.wacom.com/
intuos). This tool offers a very high degree of control for
most Photoshop applications, such as painting masks or
creating complex selections; it’s used just like a pencil on
a pad of paper.
If I accidentally paint an area in the mask that reveals
over-sharpened stars, it’s easy to fi x by changing the color
of the brush tool from white to black (done by clicking the
small arrow icon at the bottom of the tools palette). This
reverses the background and foreground colors, which on
a grayscale image are white foreground and black back-
ground by default. I then paint a circle over the stars I’d like
to hide, changing the radius of the brush tool as needed to
accommodate smaller stars. To see the entire mask, I hold
the ALT key while clicking on the mask thumbnail.
Once I’m happy with this fi le, I simply save it as it is
and then create additional adjustment layers to control
brightness and contrast, curves, and additional sharp-
ening. The beauty of working with layer masks is that
everything is contained in a single fi le, yet the original
image is not changed.
To combine the processed image with my color image,
Author Ken Crawford shares many innovative
imaging techniques in a number of step-by-step
video tutorials on his website: www.imaging-
deepsky.com/Presentations.html.
Crawford’s MSDLB technique combines the best areas of each image. The left photo shows the grayscale view of his data without any
deconvolution, while the version on the right displays his final results.

I first flatten the layers by selecting the pulldown menu
Layer > Flatten Image, then I copy this image and paste
the result onto my color file, switching the layer option
from normal to luminosity. A similar technique can be
used on tri-color narrowband images by combining each
filtered image into a single luminance file. This would be
processed exactly as described here, then pasted into the
color fi le the same way.
Digging out very small details in images with MSDLB
requires patience and the right fi lters and masks. Once
you have these methods down, you can selectively apply
almost any filter or blending mode. These tools can be
used like a surgeon’s knife or a blacksmith’s hammer, so
remember to save changes as you go, and go slowly. Start
digging out the details in your images using this easy
method and leave the noise and artifacts behind. ✦
Ken Crawford is the president of the Advanced Imaging
Conference (www.aicccd.com), held each year in San Jose,
California. See his images at www.imagingdeepsky.com.

The MSDLB
technique can
be applied to
most deep-sky
astrophotos,
including tri-
color narrow-
band images.
The author
recorded
this colorful
narrowband
photo of the
Tarantula
Nebula (NGC
2070) from his
second obser-
vatory, located
in Moorook,
Australia.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 75

worldmags & avaxhome
Sean Walker
Gallery

◀ POSEIDON’S VIEW
Chris Kotsiopoulos
The Moon appears to take a
bite out of the Sun over the
ancient Temple of Poseidon
in Sounion, Greece, during
the annular eclipse last
January 15th.
Details: Skywatcher PRO 80
ED APO Refractor and Canon
Digital Rebel XTi DSLR
camera. Exposure was ½ 000 at
f/7.5, ISO 100.

76 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
◀ THE CLOUDS OF MARS
Donald C. Parker
The red planet presented observers with wispy
equatorial clouds and a persistent dust storm
over the north polar cap (bottom) in this image
captured shortly before opposition last January.
Details: 16-inch Newtonian refractor with Lumenera
SKYnyx 2-0 video camera.

▶ SHADOW PLAY
Ted Kayser
Sunlight filtering through tree leaves produced
hundreds of tiny images on the ground in Kampala,
Uganda, during January’s annular solar eclipse.
Details: Nikon Coolpix L18 digital camera.

▴ 2009 LOOP OF VENUS

Tunç Tezel
This digital composite of 26 images follows Venus as it traced a retro-
grade loop across the constellation Pisces during the first half of 2009.
Details: Canon EOS 5D DSLR camera with 50mm lens.

◀ THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

Greg Merkel and classmates
Students attending the University of Minnesota’s Spacefl ight with
Ballooning class launched a weather balloon containing several upper-
atmosphere experiments, including a digital camera programmed to
snap pictures every 30 seconds. This photo records the curvature of
Earth from roughly 118,000 feet (36 kilometers).
Details: Canon PowerShot A570 IS digital camera. Exposure was
1/1250 second at f/2.6, ISO 80.

Gallery showcases the finest astronomical images submitted to us by our readers. Send your
very best shots to gallery@SkyandTelescope.com. We pay $50 for each published photo.
See SkyandTelescope.com/aboutsky/guidelines.

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 77

worldmags & avaxhome
 Gallery

COLORFUL CEDERBLAD 214

Eric Africa
This 2½° patch of gas and dust in
Cepheus is cataloged as Cederblad
214 at top, and NGC 7822 below,
though both are actually brighter
areas of the same nebulous cloud.
South is up in this photo.
Details: Takahashi FSQ-106N astro-
graph with SBIG STL-6303E CCD
camera. Total exposure time is 20
hours through Astrodon Hα, O III,
and S II narrowband filters. ✦

78 May 2010 sky & telescope

worldmags & avaxhome
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 Inside This Issue
BINOCULARS MOUNTS TELESCOPES
Product Locator

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Celestron (Pages 39, 50, 88) Meade.com Celestron (Pages 39, 50, 88) Astro-Tech (Page 60)
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To advertise on this page, please contact Lester Stockman at 617-758-0253, or Ads@SkyandTelescope.com

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 Index to Advertisers
Adorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Arctic Odyssey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Ash Manufacturing Co., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Astro Haven Enterprises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Astro-Physics, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Astrobooks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Astrodon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Astronomical Tours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Astronomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Astronomy Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Atik Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Bob’s Knobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Celestron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39, 50, 88
CNC Parts Supply, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Cyanogen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
DiscMounts, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Dream Cellular, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Equatorial Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Explore Scientific LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Finger Lakes Instrumentation, LLC . . . . . . . 47
Fishcamp Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Foster Systems, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Glatter Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Goto USA, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Half Hitch Telescope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Hands On Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
High Point Scientific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Hotech Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Hutech Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
InSight Cruises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
International Dark-Sky Association . . . . . . . 50
Interstellar Studios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
iOptron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
JMI Telescopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Kendrick Astro Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Khan Scope Centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Knightware. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
IN THE NEXT ISSUE
Lumicon International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Meade Instruments Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . .7, 41
Northeast Astronomy Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Oberwerk Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Observa-Dome Laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Oceanside Photo & Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Officina Stellare s.r.l. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars . . . . . . .21, 63
Peterson Engineering Corp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Pier-Tech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
PlaneWave Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
PreciseParts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Quantum Scientific Imaging, Inc. . . . . . . . . 54
Hubble at 20
The Hubble Space Telescope has
Riverside Telescope Makers Conference 83 transformed astronomy during its
two decades on orbit.
Santa Barbara Instrument Group . . . . . . . . 13
ScopeStuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Observing Planetary
SCS Astro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Nebulae
The death shrouds of solar-type stars
Sirius Observatories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 offer vivid deep-sky targets.
Skies Unlimited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Deep-Sky
Sky-Watcher USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Discovery
An amateur
BOTTOM: TRAVIS RECTOR (UNIV. OF ALASKA, ANCHORAGE) / NOAO / AURA / NSF, ET AL.; TOP: NASA / ESA / MARIO LIVIO (STSCI)
Society for Astronomical Sciences. . . . . . . . 79
planetary nebula
Software Bisque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 finding shows that
interesting deep-
SpacialInfo Tech, LLC/RITI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
sky objects remain
Star GPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 undiscovered.
Starlight Xpress, Ltd.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The New Western Frontier
Stellarvue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 An observer’s guide to some of
the best astronomy hotspots in the
Technical Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79, 81 Southwestern U.S.
Tele Vue Optics, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Observatory, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
The Teaching Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
TravelQuest International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
University Optics, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
SkyandTelescope.com
Van Slyke Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 800-253-0245
Willmann-Bell, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81, 82
On newsstands May 4th!
Woodland Hills Telescopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2010 85
worldmags & avaxhome
 Focal Point Constance E. Walker

Our Light or Starlight?

Children can play key roles in raising awareness about light pollution.

The arc of the Milky Way seen from a Globe at Night campaign (www.globeat
truly dark location is part of our planet’s night.org), which encourages people all
natural heritage. But with half of the over the world to record and report the
world’s population now living in cities, brightness of their night sky by match-
many urban dwellers have never experi- ing Orion’s appearance with star maps of
enced the wonderment of pristinely dark progressively fainter stars. One Indiana
skies and maybe never will. So, how do school district took this simple concept
you explain to them the importance of to a whole new level. Thousands of its
what they’ve lost to artificial skyglow? students observed Orion from their back-
How can you make them aware that light yards — amassing 20% of the 2009 Globe
pollution is a concern on many fronts: at Night data. But they did not stop there.
safety, energy conservation, cost, health, They next asked: how much of our night
effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to sky have we lost?
view the stars? How do you convince them To find the answer, the students visual-
that it’s worthwhile to take steps, even ized the sky with a 3-D model of their
small ones, to help redress this issue? Globe at Night sky measurements. They
ISTOCK.COM: WORLD BULB; BLACKJACK3D / BACKGROUND: SOLOLOS

In preparing for the International Year first stacked 35,000 LEGO® blocks to
of Astronomy (IYA2009), the Dark Skies represent a pristinely dark sky in which
Awareness (DSA) Working Group and I, thousands of stars could be seen, and then
as its chair, wrestled with these questions. they took away 12,000 blocks according to
(DSA was 1 of 12 global cornerstone proj- their Globe at Night sky measurements.
ects for IYA2009.) Ultimately, I’ve come What remained corresponded to a sky
to think that to influence cultural change nine times brighter than the truly dark
effectively — to make people literally look ideal. The students presented their find-
up and see the light — we must make ings to local leaders and were honored for
children a main focus and use approaches their efforts (visit www.LetThereBeNight.
that offer cursory to committed involve- com for details).
ment. We must make the programs and Countless individuals around the world
resources as turnkey as possible, espe- have contributed toward preserving dark
cially for educators, and provide ways to organized effort through the Cerro Tololo skies by raising public awareness, either
visualize the problem with simple, easy-to- Inter-American Observatory to work with through their own grassroots efforts or
grasp, and enjoyable activities. schools in regions near astronomical sites. through the DSA programs, many of
As I watched IYA2009 unfold, I was A book included in the kit, Bob Crelin’s which will continue beyond IYA2009. See-
astounded by the large number of people There Once Was a Sky Full of Stars, struck ing their efforts bear fruit will take time,
worldwide who became involved in DSA, a chord with her students. The students but ultimately they’ll have lasting effects.
and also by the creativity of these people. translated the book and made one of Perhaps this year you too will choose star-
Their efforts sparked a revolution in their the best dark-skies videos from a child’s light over our light. ✦
communities — motivated by some aspect perspective that I have ever seen. You can
of a DSA program but fueled by their inge- find the video (with English subtitles) at An astronomer by training, Connie Walker
nuity and sweat. http://is.gd/7wuvP. serves as the Senior Science Education Spe-
In one instance, this revolution was the In another instance, creativity flew cialist for the National Optical Astronomy
outcome of simply providing a dark-skies off the Richter scale. It all started with Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Learn more
kit to a teacher in Chile, as part of a well- preparations in advance of last year’s at www.darkskiesawareness.org.

86 May 2010 sky & telescope

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