Salutations celestial sight seers!
I'm David Fuller, welcome to Eyes on the Sky; what's up this week?
The first star to rise in the Summer Triangle and therefore highest in the east during early
summer, is that of 0 magnitude Vega -- it is bright, easily seen from most anywhere,
and anchors the constellation of Lyra the Harp.
But why was this shape seen as a harp in the sky?
More on that in Astronomy Theater.
Lyra represents the musical instrument of Orpheus, who played beautiful music with his
lyre.
Due to an extended period of mourning for his late wife, he spurned the advances of
the beautiful women of Thrace, his home.
They were enraged when he ignored them.
So they tried to kill him, but arrows and knives were stopped in the presence of his
beautiful music.
The women shrieked so loudly they overpowered his music, and they tore him limb from limb,
tossing his lyre into the sea.
Zeus retrieved it, playing the lyre in the sky for us to view.
While Vega is the easy star to spot here, the constellation gets quite a bit dimmer
rather quickly.
However, it isn't all that large, so navigating the parallelogram from the beacon nearby isn't
all that difficult.
I mean, check this out -- you can see almost the entirety of Lyra within a 7 degrees wide
binoculars field of view.
Not bad, eh?
Now as we look at the stars here, note a few things: One is this double star next to Lyra
- that's the famous "Double-double" star Epsilon Lyrae, and in a good telescope at high magnification,
each of the components can be split again into a total of four stars.
But that's not our destination this week; rather, we're going to take a turn towards
the other side of the constellation instead.
Dark Sky Fact: A popular phrase is, "I slept like a baby."
Well, if that's the kind of sleep we would want, why do we allow so much light to exist
at night?
To sleep like a baby, or for babies to sleep better even, we ought to be turning off indoor
lights and shielding, aiming down, or putting motion detectors on outdoor ones to reduce
light at night.
Using Epsion and Vega as a guide, make a 90 degree angle turn here, into the heard of
Lyra -- in other words, go this way.
We're looking for the two further stars of the harp's parallelogram shape, here: 3-rd
magnitude Sulefat and Sheliak.
These B and A class stars, respectively, are 635 and 881 light years distant.
But from our perspective, almost right between the two, is another "former star" that is
even farther away at 2,300 light years: Messier 57, also known as the Ring Nebula.
Though we often refer to this object by it's Messier number of 57, it was actually first
discovered by this French astronomer.
Messier learned of the object and viewed it the same month in 1779.
This planetary nebula is the remains of a red giant star that has expelled it's outer
shell into space, and we see this gas glowing from the central, white dwarf star that is
slightly more massive then our Sun, and many times hotter.
That star requires at least a 12 or 14 inch telescope to see, but the gas cloud is quite
bright -- though small at just over one arc minute in diameter, despite it's nearly one
light year's entirety across.
It's slightly oblong shape may be visible at higher magnification, and the small size
definitely requires more in order to get a reasonable image size.
Fortunately this object does handle magnification well.
But what will you see?
Look for a tiny smoke ring in the sky -- it will be small, and at very low powers may
appear like a fuzzy star out of focus while the stars around it appear pinpoint.
Along the Ecliptic: If there's one great reason to get up early this week, it is the conjunction
of the Moon with Venus as both bright objects are near the Pleiades in the morning sky.
This may require a lot of sleep loss, as will be best viewed about 60 to 90 minutes before
sunrise on the morning of June 24.
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.