Salutations celestial sight seers I'm David fuller welcome to eyes on the sky
what's up this week over in the southwestern part of the sky are the winter constellations of Orion and
Canis Major and canis minor and those stars are starting to set off that direction
Rising in the east if we're looking towards the south
We see Spica and Arcturus and in between there, there's kind of this blank --is-- part of the sky
Especially if you're in more light polluted areas where there is a constellation that resides called
Hydra, and it sort of snakes its way from underneath where cancer is
And then underneath crater and Corvis and it's not terribly bright
Its brightest star is Alphard a second magnitude star, but there is an object if we zoom in here
Called the ghost of Jupiter nebula and it's a very bright
Object it's a planetary nebula. That is 8.6 magnitude
And as you can see that surface brightness is really bright six point eight eight
Which means this should not be difficult to find and see and that's true
It's not very difficult to find and see it's just a matter of knowing the right stars to hop
in order to get there and I'm gonna show you how to do that from
Alphard over here, which is a little ways off from Procyon not
It's really shifted more towards Procyon about 40 percent of the way between there and Spica
So if you look kind of generally in that direction about an hour and a half or so after sunset
Because that's when the ghost of Jupiter will be at or near the meridian
Giving you the best opportunity to see that because it will be at its highest so you've been looking through the least amount of atmosphere
we can start here at Hydra and if we put up a
binocular field of view
We've got some bright stars over here and you see these two stars this direction if we're gonna go swing over
Towards the east we're gonna kind of go that way and sort of slip between these two sets of stars here
Now we have a little ways to go because that's about an eight or nine degrees star hop
So Alphard is going to leave our field of view before we actually get to where our next star is, but don't be fooled
It's not this one, because that one is a 5th magnitude star. We're going to go to the slightly brighter star right here
which is upsilon hydrae and
That one is a little brighter now. We got to go up
This way and we'll see a couple stars this direction
You can actually see these stars in the same field of view because you're gonna go from Upsilon up towards lambda
Over here and you got several stars that will help you find that now we're gonna go back down again
We'll still be in that same field of view
where we have our target star and that's right here where you need to go to Mu Hydrae a
3.8 magnitude star and as you can see ghost of Jupiter nebula is in that
Seven degree field of view without any problem whatsoever
but
The difficulty is knowing exactly where to stop you can see how there's these stars
These are like seventh magnitude stars these two little ones here and then these two little ones here
But what I find a little easier to do is look a little further down because this star is brighter at sixth magnitude
So if you're having trouble identifying stuff, you gotta go about halfway in between
there and where Mew is that and
You can even maybe even see this star and this star
so you have this right triangle of stars like that the sort of you think of it as like an arrow and
then ghost of Jupiter is halfway between and if you imagine that ghost of Jupiter is almost right at where the
fourth point of a square would be and if you just kind of aim your telescope right there using your finder scope you're gonna be
Awful darn close at that point check this out when we go to something. That's just slightly under a 1 degree field of view
So this is a 0.96 (degree) field of view in a reflector telescope
So instead of ghost of Jupiter being up here as it was with our binoculars. It's flipped
Upside down and left to right. So we've gone from here over to this way in our actual field of view
Now that may not actually happen depending on how your telescope is turned
But that's how at least it shows up on stellarium, but you know that you've got it in your field of view. So
Look at the star field that you've got here
And if you even Center the ghost of Jupiter, you can see how there's a number of bright stars
And this star right here is a 10th magnitude star
So that's not gonna be super bright. A lot of these other dim ones here are 12th and 13th magnitude
Unless you've got a really big telescope. Those won't show up
But this 10th magnitude star is kind of your your point that you want to go from here at a 10th magnitude
You're gonna go over to this
This is a 9th magnitude star. So that's gonna go too far but ghost of Jupiter
It's small but it's not super small as far as planetary nebulae go it actually is
fairly close in size to what Jupiter actually is
so if you know what your
magnification needs to be to look at the planet Jupiter and to be able to see the equatorial bands on it and some of the
Other things like the Great Red Spot then, you know, you need a fair amount of magnification. We're only at about 85
Times magnification right here. That's not a whole lot for a planet
It's not a whole lot for this particular nebula either. So you want to bump that up some more here. We're at a
4.7 millimeter eyepiece. So now we've got a field of view. That's a half a degree hour magnification is at
160 now we're gonna have a good opportunity to see this bright object
That is just a hair smaller than what Jupiter actually is
but initially you might confuse it for a star until you start bumping up that magnification and then it actually
Expands in size unlike stars, which will remain point-like. So check out this very cool
shell of an exploded star
NGC 3242 or also known as Caldwell 59 over in the constellation of Hydra and
Look for it and see what you can find for the ghost of Jupiter nebula. That's all for this week
Keep your eyes on the sky and your outdoor lights aimed down so we can all see what's up
I'm David fuller wishing you clear and dark skies
You