Online Astronomy Society
Sky Notes Feb 2014
Top Ten Physicists Ernest Rutherford Focus on Orion! Supernova! in M82
Image of Orion Nebula by Gareth Harding: Stoke on Trent 1
Welcome
Contents
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OAS Sky Notes 3 Orion - The Hunter
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Taurus 6 Taurus the bull is top right of Orion. It contains the famous M45 Star Cluster. ISS Passes
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Planets 9 Estimating Angles
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Lunar Calendar Feb 2014
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OAS competition time! 11 OASA Presents 12 Higher Level Maths - Distance Learning 12 Lunar Map - Print off, take out! 13 Supernova in M82
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The 10 best physicists – no. 09 16 Ernest Rutherford
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OASA Higher Level Maths
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Pre Course Quiz 20
GCSE Astronomy - By distance Learning Why not get qualified with the Online Astronomy Society Academy and get a GCSE in Astronomy? For a mere ÂŁ180 you get Access to our Portal 24/7 Access to worksheets Expert Tutor Support by a professional astronomer Text Book Enrol now for June 2014
For more details see www.onlineastronomycourses.co.uk 2
Welcome OAS Sky Notes Its certainly been an interesting couple of months since the first revamped issue of the OAS Sky Notes went out. BBC Star Gazing Live happened here in Northampton and I learned there was a get together to be arranged by the Northamptonshire Natural History Society at Delapre Abbey. I have previously been a member of the NNHS so thought as it was just a short walk i would pop down and take a look. So glad i did. Despite it being FREEZING cold it was nice to be able to see so many people who in some cases, were getting breath taking views of the Moon and were treated to brilliant views of Jupiter for the first time. In all some 600 people turned out for the event. I found myself, as i often do, mentoring at the event. It was great to catch up with some old friends. As if being treated to this were not enough, we now have a Supernova in our skies. More will be discussed on this later. I said it had been a busy month astronomy wise, i was also invited to run an astronomy workshop in the area. It was great to see so many people young and old having a fascination for astronomy. Free copies of Eyes on the Skies DVD were given away. I think one of the most touching though was meeting a disabled lad, Aiden and his father Andy Cox (no relation to Brian Cox, he assures me)! The passion they both showed for astronomy, was inspiring, certainly looking forward to going back
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Look Up Orion - The Hunter Orion, i would argue is one of the most celebrated and easily recogniseable constellations in the night sky. It is the one i started with as a lad. Packed full of interesting objects, it is also an excellent sign post to the rest of the sky. I call it the bow tie on its side. The star top left is the star Betelgeuse which is a red supergiant that has started come to the end of its life. If that star replaced our Sun in the Solar System it would come up to the orbit of Mars! The star to the right is Bellatrix. Then you have the belt of Orion with Siaph and Rigel at the bottom left and right respectfully. Follow the middle star in the three star belt straight down and you will see M42, the great Orion Nebula. (right). This nebular (image by Gareth Hardy) is a joy to both the beginner and those getting into astrophotography
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Betelgeuse
Bellatrix
Belt of orion
Rigel Saiph
Messier 42 (NGC 1976) is approximately 1344 light years from Earth, aking it the closest actual star formation to us. It is approximately 24 light years across. (A light year is a measure of how far light travels in one year). so we are seeing M42 as it was 24 years ago. It is one of the most heavily observed and intensely studied nebulae in the night sky. Mainly too for its star birth. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary discs 5
Taurus Taurus the bull is top right of Orion. It contains the famous M45 Star Cluster.
Imagine of M45 taken by David Haring The cluster itself was formed some 100 million years ago. You can see the nebulosity being blown away by the wind from the newly formed stars. M45 also known commonly as the Seven Sisters or The Pleaides is easily visible with the naken eye or a pair of binoculars. Though the gasous clouds you see above will not be visible through binoculars. The cluster is also intrinsically close to our solar system, which makes efforts at measureing its distance reasonably easy. ALTHOUGH that said there seems much debate on the figure from 118 to 135 Parsecs (a parsec is about 3.26 light-years 6
Aldebarren is the brightest star in Taurus, also known as the “eye� of the Bull
Hyades
Seen inset is one of the best studied open clusters. It lies around 130 Light Years away which places it pretty much on our doorstep in cosmological terms. The age of the cluster is estimated at around 625 mllion years
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ISS Passes Fair few ISS passes this month so have just listed the events.
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Planets
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Estimating Angles Courtesy of Starrynight.com
Lunar Calendar Feb 2014
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OAS competition time!
Competition time. We’ve teamed up with Starry Night and the Online Astronomy Society Academy to offer you A FREE copy of Starry Night Complete Space worth £50 A FREE OASA Passport worth £30 Access to: • Beginning Astronomy • Spectroscopy for Beginners • Imaging with a webcam • Imaging with a DSLR camera, plus bonus material (please note this does NOT include GCSE Astronomy or copies of Eyes on the Skies DVD or such) To enter, well if you’re reading this you have already fulfilled one condition, you’re looking at the OAS Ezine. The other two conditions
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OASA Presents Higher Level Maths - Distance Learning Would you like a chance to get into University to read Astronomy or Astrophysics but lack the necessary maths skill’s? Our Higher level maths course might be the answer. With details, course videos, assessments and end of course tests. Though you will not walk away with a qualification you will have the skills and confidence to tackle many maths problems at this high level. Tutored by Dr Billye Cheek, herself a professional mathematician, you will be in great hands
E = M C2 Special offer ÂŁ35 first module, how to rearrange formulae Visit www.onlineastronomycourses.co.uk 12
Lunar Map - Print off, take out!
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Supernova in M82
It is not often we see a supernova in the night sky, especially one that is visible. However over the past few weeks one has suddenly flaired up, so two questions: Whats a supernova? How do we see it? Well a supernova is a sudden flaring of a star as it dies. So a star that comes to the end of its life, exhausted of all its fuel, will suddenly implode on itself, bounce off its inner core then explode. There is another kind of Supernova though, where you have a binary system, that is one star orbiting the other. Except the other star is dead. Its a cinder of an old dead star, however it’s still free to orbit and pull material off its neighbouring star. As it does so it builds a nice envelope of gas about itself and continues to do so until the material reaches critical temperature and mass for nuclear reactions to take place. Suddenly the “cinder” brightens as this material is “burnt” off. We call this a Supernova Type 1a. One of this category has occured in a galaxy not very far from here called Messier 82 Image credit of binary system http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2008-05/dl-de1050708.php 14
Where is M82? M82 is just off the pan of Ursa Major (Great Bear). If you follow fron the Star Dubhe, you see two slightly fainter stars, making a kind of triangle with Dubhe. Draw a line through the one on the left and you come to M82. It is a galaxy which right now has a supernova in it, and its visible in small telescopes!
Dubhe
A comparison picture courtesy of Hugh Allen
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The 10 best physicists – no. 09
Ernest Rutherford
The 10 best physicists – no. 9
Gill to take up a position as a Professor at Manchester University in England. It was Ernest Rutherford whilst here that he discovered the atomAt number 9 in The Guardian’s list of the ic nucleus. In 1919 he left his position at Manchester University to take over as 10 best physicists is Ernest Rutherford. Director of the Cavendish Laboratories Rutherford is on this list for two great in Cambridge, a position that was held by achievements, discovering the atomic nucleus and understanding the process of J.J. Thomson, who had brought Rutherford from New Zealand back in 1895. radioactive decay. Rutherford’s brief biography Rutherford was born in 1871 in Brightwater, a town near the northern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. He did his undergraduate degree at Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. Then, in 1895, Rutherford obtained a scholarship to go to do postgraduate studies at the Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge University, England. After three years at the Cavendish laboratories, in 1898, Rutherford left Cambridge to go to McGill University in Canada.
Radioactive decay In 1899, the year after he arrived at McGill, Rutherford was able to separate radioactive decay into two distinct decay. The types, which he called following year a third type or radioactive emission was observed, and in 1903 Rutherford was able to show that this third type was a fundamentally new type of radiation which he called rays. In 1902, Rutherford published with his colleague Frederick Soddy a paper entitled “Theory of Atomic Disintigreation”. Rutherford and Soddy were able to show in this 1902 paper that radioactivity involved the spontaneous disintegration of atoms into other types of atoms. For this work, Rutherford was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (not Physics!). Soddy would win the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1921.
It was at McGill that he did his work on radioactive decay which won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. He was the sole recipient of the Chemistry prize in 1908, and was cited by the Swedish academy “”for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances”. Ironically, although considered to be a physiDiscovering the atomic nucleus cist, Rutherford never won a Nobel Prize in physics. Rutherford left McGill in 1907 to take up a Professorship at Manchester University, 16 In 1907 Rutherford left McEngland. In 1909 Geiger and Marsden,
under Rutherford’s direction, did an experiment which led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. I will talk more about this experiment and how it showed atoms have nuclei in a future blog, but to briefly summarise the experiment ,what they found was alpha-particles bouncing back from a thin gold foil. This could not be explained by the plum pudding model of the atom that J.J. Thomson had proposed after Thomson had discovered the electron in 1897. Rutherford published in 1911 a paper explaining that the results of the Geiger-Marsden experiment fitted perfectly with a model of the atom that has the negatively charged and very low mass electrons orbiting a dense positively charged nucleus.
This article can be see along with
the others featured in this magazine may be seen on the blog of Rhodri Evans who is lecturer of Astronomy at the University of Cardiff http:// thecuriousastronomer.wordpress.com/
If one were to represent an atom by the size of a football stadium, the electrons would be buzzing around where the stadium stands are. The nucleus would be way down in the centre, and on this scale would be about the size of a grain of rice. Thus an atom, and hence everything, is nearly entirely empty space! It was for these two paradigm-shifting discoveries about the properties of atoms that Rutherford gains his place in this “best 10 physicists” list. How do you rate his achievements? And, if Rutherford is in the list, shouldn’t Thomson, the discoverer of the electron, also be in the list?
Next Month we look at No.8 Richard Feynman 17
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OASA Higher Level Maths Pre Course Quiz
How did you do? Less than 50% we suggest you take our basic maths course, due out soon Between 50 and 80% we suggest the course might be of interest Greater than 80%, this course will be of limited benefit to you This SHOULD play in your pdf, if viewing online or on mobile device you might need to visit the actual page which is http://www.onlineastronomycourses.co.uk/hmathsquiz
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Alastair Leith Home Education Services and Outreach I have been off radar of late due to a bump into an amazing group of people called Home Educators. These are parents who choose for one reason or another to educate their children at home as opposed to having them attend a school. I have had some success offering my services as a tutor to Home Educators (HE) and wanted firstly to thank those who have engaged my services on a regular basis, but also to invite others to do the same. Hopefully I will be running a series of Astronomy workshops in and around the Northamptonshire (UK) region and am also available for tutoring. Interested parties can email me Alastair.Leith@gmail.com You can also view my website www.alastairleith.co.uk We have a Twitter account too @AlastairLeithHE As well as astronomy tuition i am also able to offer Chemistry to higher level, maths, Physics, and a range of other subjects. Even if you have just about a telescope and are not sure how to use it, again happy to oblige.
Our Stall!
Unfortunately due to safeguarding we could not show display pictures of our audience. However many questions were asked and we had a VERY good attendance. Next time we will be launcing rockets! 21
Gallery - A selection of your images each month we will select some of the highlights from our groups and post here
Chris Sinclair, Caithness Leo Triplet 15 x 30 second exposures, stacked in DeepskyStacker with 4 Dark Frames also added.
Chris Sinclair, Caithness Milky Way This was 12 shots taken of various segements of the sky, then stitched in Microsoft ICE to make a pano. Each shot was 30 seconds at F3.5 and ISO 6400. On Canon 7D
Would you like to see your images here? Please email onlineastronomysociety@gmail.com stating that you give permission for use and what you used to take the images. 22
Hige Allen, Somerset
Gareth Harding, Stoke on Trent The Pleides M45 Scope: Orion Optics VX6 with 1/10 PV upgraded optics Guide: Skywatcher ST80 & QHY 5 Mono Mount: Skywatcher HQE5 Camera: Nikon D5100 Exposure: 18x5 Minute Subs, 10x Darks, 10x Bias, 20x Flats, 20x Dark Flats Technical: ISO 800, 750mm f/5 Software: DSS, Photoshop CS6 Goran Vukajlović, Serbia Horsehead Nebula SkyWatcher APORefractor 900/100 Nikon D5100, ISO 800, 24 x 600 sec NEQ6 mount,
It is possible to take images of the stars with inexpensive equipment Check our www.onlineastronomycourses..co.uk 23
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