The Night Sky astronomy

waning phase just before New Moon so conditions for observing are very favourable. These meteors are debris from the Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle which is also known as The Great Comet of 1862. The Perseids can be bright, fast and often leave persistent trains. Given the lovely warm evenings, this month is a perfect time to arrange a star party with friends and spend a few hours spotting the Perseids. The shower will continue until around the 24th.

Image of the month

It is possible, with a simple DSLR camera fixed to a sturdy tripod, to create images of Meteor showers like the one seen here. Set your camera up to point towards the sky where the meteors will emanate from. Start with an ISO of 1600 to 3200 and adjust from there (take a few test shots to find out what works best for your location and for your particular camera). If you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) enabled on your camera, switch this off… you are guaranteed to miss the best meteors while your camera is creating a noise reduction frame! You’ll also need to cover a fairly large part of the sky, so opt for a normal photographic lens with a focal length of 18-35mm if you’re using a nonfull-frame camera, or a focal length of 2850mm if you’re using a full-frame model. The lens needs to be opened fully so that it’s set at its lowest f/number: f/2.8 is good, f/2.0 excellent, but f/1.4 is close to perfect. It also needs to be pre-focused at infinity and have autofocus turned off. Take many images over as long a period as you can using an intervalometer, with an exposure time of around 30 seconds each. I have left my camera out all night at times, if no rain is forecast! Perhaps you will be lucky and capture multiple Perseids. Please do share your images in our Facebook group....

Virtual space journey no.5 - Saturn

During this journey we will travel a mere 1.33 light-hours from Earth in our virtual space ship. We are making our trip on the 27th when the Planet Saturn is at 'opposition'. The view for us upclose will be so much more spectacular than it is from Earth. We can begin to see in detail the stunning rings of Saturn which measure 170,000 miles from one side to the other and are less than 1 mile thick. We will be careful to avoid the house sized chunks of ice which make up the rings as we fly by. You can see the three main rings now, the bright A and B rings and then the third dark C ring which we can almost see through. The 'small' gap you can see between the A and B rings is the 'Cassini' division and is in fact around 3000 miles. Many theories have been considered as to how these rings formed but one popular theory states that a large Titan sized satellite was ripped apart creating the icy rings as the pieces were pulled inwards and outwards. Should we return to visit the planet in billions of years time, we may not find any rings at all.

SpaceX's next astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA now has a target launch date.The flight, known as Crew-7, will lift off on 15th August if all goes according to plan, NASA officials announced on Wednesday (5th July).

Like SpaceX's previous astronaut missions, Crew-7 will employ the company's Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. It will launch from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew for this mission will be mission specialist Konstantin Borisov, pilot Andreas Mogensen, commander Jasmin Moghbeli, and mission specialist Satoshi Furukawa.

The day 'Saturday' was named after the planet Saturn. The rings of Saturn could reach almost all the way from Earth to the Moon!

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ByKristian Jennings