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The Night Sky Podcast | Dog Days Of Summer
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I’m Marina Hansen. And this week, we’re going to be talking about some of the sky washing events that are going on in the sky above us for the first and second week of August. It’s really cool. It’s already this fine to the year though. So strange. Yeah, we’re moving through the summer pretty fast. Yeah, it seems like we’ve just been pushing through the summer really quickly. It seems like just a few minutes ago, it was early May. And it has Yeah. It’s, it’s been good, though. I’m really happy that we’re moving on in the year, there’s some cool stuff coming up. There’s some cool stuff we got to see though, too. And that’s all kind of changing around a little bit. It’s reconfiguring in the southern sky, and there’s gonna be some new stuff that we get to see. So we’ll talk about that a little bit, too. But I was thinking about it. It’s like, it’s already into August. And you’ve heard of it before, like the dog days of summer. We’ve talked about it a couple of times before. And it’s kind of interesting. I didn’t I didn’t understand this for a long time. I just read it on on an astronomy site, and it kind of started to come together for me. Oh, is that? Where is that? Why it is? What are you know what the deal is with that. But when we when you think about it, so and this is something I didn’t understand we had the dog days of summer, I always just thought it was your hot as a dog or tired as a dog. Because you were in the heat of the summer at that time. That’s what I had figured I didn’t really think about it much more deeply. But when I started understanding it more Is it the end of July, the beginning of August and up into September, these dog days of summer is supposed to be when Sirius, the dog star that we know about in the winter sky. Now in the summer sky six months later, is right in line with the sun when it’s rising. So it’s you know, it’s it’s there’s the sun and then south of the sun, if you could see through the blue sky, you would see Sirius below that. So it was thought at the time that when Sirius and the sun rose together at the same time, Sirius being the brightest star that we could see in the sky, it was thought that it would add a few degrees of heat to the earth it would it would be they thought it was closer or more relevant, or you know, he would add to the weather or something. But they thought that Yeah, when when Sirius route was it was extra energy, extra heat from another star coming in to push up our temperature and the weather for the next few weeks until they separate it again. I think it’s kind of a funny old tradition.
Yeah, that’s funny. that’s a that’s a cool explanation for it. I didn’t know that. That’s what it meant. I just thought Yeah, kind of how you explained it, I just thought was a cute little phrase.
Yeah, just like a dog.
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But I thought it was kind of cool to learn a little bit about that. But it was it’s just funny to the way that that story goes. But I’ve heard dog days of summer on my life. Yeah. And I guess it goes way back, I think it goes back to Egypt to where they had they had some understanding of, of Sirius or the dogstar and synchronisation of series in the sun at the same time, was also an indicator of the floods of the Nile for their, their rainy season and their dry season that they would have, since their equatorial location, their their seasons are a little bit different. So their understanding of the way that a year passes is a bit different than two seasons, as opposed to for the our culture’s sort of build off of, yeah, they have that that wet and dry season, but everything’s hot. It’s just wet and dry. And I think yeah, there’s a, the idea was that it coincided with the flooding of the Nile in the spring, or, or in the end of the summer, something like that. It’s really interesting, though, how that goes. Yeah. So I don’t know there’s a few different historical connections that it has that I wish I understood better. We should read, we should get like a few anthro astronomy books. Okay, cool. That’d be really interesting. If no astronomy whatever they were. Yeah, but I want to learn more about like the Babylonian astronomy and the Egyptian astronomy are just just different generations of how it from Babylonian to I think Greek to Roman to Arabic right. I don’t know what then what happened. I think that’s where a lot of stuff got lost for a long time. But that’s where a lot of our names come from. Yeah, so like last name comes from there but seems to also come from Babylon and I don’t know so that’s all strange, but like all the the A names we get like on the or the shuba, or Antares as are all stars in Scorpio, and those are all those are all Arabic words. miser Alcor. Arcturus is an Arabic word. Battle Jews boaties all those are like elements of the Arabic language but then when we get to the planet so as a Roman words, right and super strange, strange that are Latin words, right, but from Rome, yeah, the Roman gods and the sentence of words that were in In Latin, but that’s where like Spanish gets to stay the week, there’s a lot of weird similar connections with history and the planets and, and the way that the language kind of moved around. So it’s just kind of interesting learning about that. I want to learn more about those. Yeah, I like the stuff that we talked about in the podcasts previously, that was more about, or that was about the cultural impacts of certain elements of skywatching. I really appreciate that stuff. I think it’s really interesting when you start to learn more about it. It’s got it’s just really fascinating stuff.
Yeah, definitely. I think it’d be cool to get some books.
Yeah, I think it’s cool. And, and just understanding more about the dogstar serious. And so some of the effects that are some of the implications that it has on the year, some of the phrases and words that we use, it’s just interesting to have some more of that context. So it’s kind of cool. Other than that other things going on. It’s really neat that we’ve been watching Mars for this whole year, really, we’ve been trying to keep an eye on what Mars is doing and the changes that it’s making in the evening sky. And what we’re noticing right now is that after Mars started its retrograde and back into Libra, and then started pro grade motion at the beginning of July. It’s been moving now for about a month, and it’s returning like you see in the evening sky, like what you were looking at that Mars has returned to the front edge that had a Scorpio in the southern sky right now. That’s really cool. It’s getting a lot closer to, to Saturn, there. And through this week, we’re gonna see a lot of changes of Mars is location and coming up to Saturn, we’re gonna have a little bit of a conjunction, or it was at a conjunction syzygy I’m not sure what it is, but it’s gonna be a lineup of Saturn, and then Mars, and then Antares. And I think that’s later this week, or in about a week, next two weeks or so we’re gonna see it. Yeah, so right now. So this is a cool thing. So right now, I think tonight, it’s going to be just outside of Scorpio. And then over the next few nights on August 8, the evening of the eighth, what I understand is that the shuba one of the stars in the head of Scorpio is going to be right next to Mars, they’re going to be really close together. And then Mars, the next night is going to be moving past that. So it might be a good time to get a little bit of a visual measure of how much the planet is moving in procreate motion each evening. And it’s weird how it’s variable to, like we talked about a little bit before, like when it was really close to its, its pro grade, its turn as it kind of made that turn from retrograde to pro grade, it sort of did the same thing that it would if you throw a ball up in the air and kind of succumb to gravity as it slowed down from its upward force that you threw into it, it would slow it down to almost zero speed and then start accelerating again back down toward the earth is already does a similar type of motion when we’re looking at. When we look at the planet Mars, when it comes into retrograde, it speeds up a lot and slows down. Almost like to a whole stop to a stop and then reverses its motion and falls back down progress. So that’s what we’re seeing now is it speeding up a little bit. So it seems like the appropriate motion the progression that the planet makes each night toward Scorpio or further east in the sky along the ecliptic is moving up in speed just a little bit and just a little bit just a little bit further. So it’s getting more and more and then it’ll kind of average out at a point. Really pretty soon to, to what it looks like right now too, I think. But yeah, it’ll be cool to see what it does over the next couple of days.
Yeah, it’s been really cool watching Mars move around this year. It’ll be neat to see it right up next to the Sheba.
Yeah, I think that looking at it, when it’s up next to the Sheba would be really cool, we should pull the telescope out for that I use binoculars, cool, look out, will spy in a little bit. And then in a few days, it’s going to be cool when we get all three of those bright objects lined up in the sky there. So we’ll have Antares and then Mars, and then Saturn right there. And Antares is kind of interesting. The name Antares even means anti Mars. Oh, that’s in his name. And that’s, that’s an Arabic word to but it was or like false. Mars was sort of the idea because it was so rad. And because it’s along the ecliptic, like what we’re going to see in a few days is Mars, this red planet, just a few degrees up from from Antares in the evening sky. And there’s probably still more latitude or more flexibility that the Mars could have along the ecliptic. Like if we remember a few months ago, before Mars dropped into retrograde motion. It was above Saturn in the sky. And and now what we see is that it’s dropped back at it like a diagonal, almost zigzagging. If we were to speed up at shape, we see a drop back and retrograde motion and then drop forward again. And it kind of leans down in the sky along the ecliptic. While it does that, so there’s the background starts at least seem to shift and position against where it was. Previously, when it was in that constellation. It’s not an exact precise line of the ecliptic. And that’s really peculiar movements of the stars and planets and and us to it. I should stuff I don’t understand at all.
Yeah, it’s really interesting seeing it was like that.
Yeah, it’s really good. Cool. So I think it’s going to be like just after the proceed meteor shower, we’re going to start to see that lineup that we were talking about. of all three of those are the two planets in the star, which will be pretty cool. Speaking of the Perseids, which is talking about the persons we talked about the last couple podcasts, we’ve seen a few things, which is really cool that we get to, we get to see a few of the Delta query IDs this last week, as they were passing through. I think we saw a handful a good shooting starts from that.
Yeah, definitely. And that fireball Yeah. I think we were just talking about on that last episodes episode. I’ve never seen a fireball before. But that’s not true anymore. This last weekend, we saw a fireball and it was so cool. I had no idea how different they were. Yeah. So it looks it’s like lightning. Yes. So bright. It’s this huge flash of light. That was a good one. Sky. Yeah. It must have been oh so bright. And it had like a greenish color. It was a green color. Yeah, that green flash as a burned out. Yeah, it was super cool. It was awesome. Getting to be out there. We were at the Pine Mountain observatory. Yeah. Kinda like Central Oregon. Oregon observatory out there. Yeah, really?
It’s a cool spot. It’s a good look. I think it’s about 6500 feet above sea level out
there is a good spot. It’s nice and high. And it’s really outside of city lights. Yeah,
it’s it’s east of the city band. You can look up and see the city establishment Since you’re so high. You can you can see out to the band. And Redmond and Madras up there really beautiful view of the mountains to the Cascades from that spot. Like when we look back up and you can see that draw from where we were on Pine Mountain up to Mount Hood way in the distance. Right? See that and then over to Jefferson and then three fingered jack and then Mount Washington, North sister middle sister, South sister. It was really cool. You get to see the whole lineup. But the cascade
really cool view from those. It was really neat getting to see all the mountains lined up from higher up like, yeah, like, I don’t think I’ve gotten to see them that way before. Yeah. Understanding how they’re lined up a little bit more.
Oh, yeah. That was really cool. Yeah, it’s fun when you get to kind of step back a little bit and see everything and yeah, all at the same time. That really helped me out when I was younger, kind of geographically orient like, Oh, so that’s like, how it’s all shaped. Yeah, it’s so strange. But it was really cool that I’m glad we got to go up to the spot. The Pine Mountain observatory is pretty cool. And yeah, getting to see these. These shooting stars. Part of the Delta query is maybe some of the early ramp up to the Perseids. Yeah. And, and then yeah, this fireball, that was really cool. It was green colored. And what I remember way back from like, high school astronomy classes that that that could be like I think I mentioned in the last podcast could be a copper based object. That’s where it gets the green color from. I think that’s where it gets the green color from Is it the copper elements ionized to green as as it gets burned up. So it just burns a green color. It’s really cool, though, it was really fun to see I’ve seen like a couple of red ones and yellow ones before, but that was probably one of the brightest ones. For as dark as the sky was. I was I have my back to it. And all of a sudden, I saw a green of flickering in the sky. Like if someone shot up a bright firework in the sky behind me or something. But there was like a green flickering on everything around me. And I turned around to look up to it in the sky, and it saw it by and then burn out. Yeah. Wow. No way. That’s you.
Yeah. That’s about how I saw it, too. It was. I wasn’t facing it when it first lit up. And I thought it was lightning. It was just this huge, bright flashlight. And I turned around and it was an object. Yeah, no, not lightning.
Yeah, that was really cool. It’s very fun to see. And that’s a cool thing about getting your observation hours in, you get to see more things like that. Yeah, you know, it’s like every time we go out, we see something. Yeah. Yeah, you see something you see more satellites or like kind of Halo. Look at that. There’s a space station. There’s the satellites are looking at this little maneuver that something’s doing. And so it’s really cool. You get to see more stuff. You need to see shooting stars or cool fireballs. Like we didn’t see a fireball last week. And now you did. Yeah. And it’s cool. I like that part about getting more time in when you get to go and look out at the sky. That’s a cool part about just getting your hours in sky watching and doing the night sky. And this was a good spot for it up at this observatory. Especially I think, well for the Delta query. It’s It was cool seeing those shooting stars that fireball and then kind of looking forward as a new section of the podcast goes, the Perseids are coming up. And I’m really excited for the Perseids. We’re gonna probably do maybe another episode on the Perseids. I’m not sure we should do it seems like a significant it’s enough. It’s a big enough thing, a big enough topic. We should look into it. Do a little special special on the Perseids. But yeah, the yellow The Night of the well. So this year it’s peeking, I guess it’s going to be coming in, it’s going to be coming in really strong. It’s something about the orbit of Jupiter is what I found out today, that every 12 years, the orbit of Jupiter kind of swings past this section, and its gravity affects some of the material that would be coming in to the meteor shower that would eventually affect the earth, because the meteor shower is really just debris material left behind this path of a comet that goes through this section of the sky that we’re going to be passing through. So it’s, it’s interesting how that goes, it’ll be coming out of the constellation of Perseus, which would be rising after midnight in the evening sky, really, you want to be out from like 1am to when it’s happening most like three, four and five? Well, I don’t know, three and 4am is what I understand on the 11th and 12th. I think it’s the peak time and of the 11th day morning of the 12th those hours, I think is when it’s going to be peaking. But they say that on the 10th 11th I think it’s going to be coming in really quite strong too. So it could be a whole set of days around that. But this year, yeah. It’s supposed to be stronger. That’s cool. Yeah, I’ve heard that too. Whatever, whatever is happening with Jupiter, I guess is why
the need to see. I think swift Tuttle is the name of the comment. Yeah, the parachute review showers from Yeah, swift Tuttle, the Swift, you know, you know where they need those names come from, I don’t, it also has, I didn’t write it down. I can’t remember what it is. It also has another name. That’s a few letters and some numbers.
I remember to the there’s a classification number, like a like a scientific registry. That’s where that the names and numbers is going to come in. Like when we look at galaxies, and it’s m 61. It’s that but it’s also named something. And it’s also named often. And this is what we’re seeing by swift title. And non very whimsical name for such a cool thing is so timeless and beautiful that we see in the night sky. Don’t misunderstand. And I know you don’t. But that person meteor shower is a much older event than this realization that there’s a comment that generates the material that we see happen for the perceived meteor shower. This comment probably recently found and then in the 19th 20th century, I’m sure 20th century now is named for scientists, Dr. Swift and Dr. Tuttle. Like do you remember back in the 90s? You were a little kid. But there was comet Hale Bob? I do remember. And that’s scientist, Dr. Hale and Dr. Bob. Nice. Yeah. So these co discoverers both get name credit for the object that they’ve identified in the sky. And that’s where the name comes to.
That makes the name a lot more interesting, actually, then if you don’t know that, that’s why they’re named, which I didn’t realize I’m pretty sure
that makes sense. I’m, I’m making it. I mean, I’m not making it up. But that’s how I understand that the names and when I see something like that swift title, which it sounds like, how do you come up with, you know, you don’t come up with it? Being someone’s name, the name of a dude who wanted his name on a comet? And like he did? I don’t want to do it, too. Yeah, we got a comment Marina. Marina did the comment. Was that’s making sense, was silly name. But the person meteor shower. That’s a much older event. You know, it’s been known for a long time. And we just thought it, thought of it as perceived meteor shower, which we should look into the history and you know, sort of what people thought of shooting stars, that sort of thing. You know, there’s a lot of other meteor showers too, that are really interesting. If we were in other parts of the world, I bet our exposure to these other meteor showers would be I don’t know different, a little bit different in the northwest here or in the Northern Hemisphere. In America and Europe, the Percy is a really the one that we connect to the most, because they happen in this really good time of the year, in August and the July, August, we’d really have just warm nights, bright, clear skies, but in other times of the year for us, like I think there’s the there’s a handful that come around in November, like the leonides. Those are supposed to be really cool, too. But we don’t often get to see those because they’re in November, which can’t, can’t see that stuff. Yeah. So maybe if we were in another part of the world, and we saw, the leanings come about in a period of time when we had great weather, like, oh, wow, look at all that stuff coming through. How interesting. How cool is that? So I think that there is like a better understanding in different sections. Maybe if you live like closer to the equator, you saw different things. But it’s cool. It’s cool how it’s ramping up. So right now, if I understand, right, it’s ramping up even right now at the beginning of August. And since this year is supposed to be a stronger wave of, of a meteor shower. It’ll start being probably I mean, what the fifth sixth, I’m sure by the sixth seventh eighth, it’s really going to be starting to ramp up like we saw even a week ago, we were still making up handfuls of different things. Stars coming up. Yeah, yeah, we’ve been seeing stars for a while. Yeah, the gift section, the year the end ended July through through mid August, a whole month is really probably the densest period of the year because of these two meteor showers that are almost coexisting at the same time. Because there’s a happening at the same time, you just get a pretty prolonged period of time where you get more meteor showers coming through the night sky. And it’s fun. It’s cool. I really like you know, getting to spot some good ones. There’s some, there’s the quick, the little ones, which are fine. They keep you going to keep you into it. But it’s a tough thing. It’s kind of like soccer or something where not much happens for a long time and then and then there’s a goal, then there’s something cool, then there’s an exciting thing. And that just keeps you in it long enough to stay in it until the next time. But the best thing about it is it’s supposed to be 100 an hour. They say they say this year if it’s peaking like they over always, are they always overestimate? They say it’s going to be up to 200 meters an hour. Man, that’d be so cool. What again, we got to go to a good spot. That’s why we decided
I really want to this this last weekend that we were at Pine Mountain observatory. We’re out there. It was really cool. Because you just get to see way more The sky was a lot darker. We were higher was much darker. Yeah. Yeah, it was a really good night for it. Yeah, no, Moon sky was really clear. And we saw a time. Yeah, there were a lot of shooting stars. I think that there were like 16 that I counted when I was paying attention. So cool. Yeah. And there were some there are a lot of them. Were those like little short ones, like you’re just talking about where they’re just a little burst of light for a second, but there were a few of them that were really long trail. So it’s pretty cool to see. I think they’re like three of them. That’s so cool. Yeah, fireball. Yeah. That fire buzz after seeing the night
guy. We saw that. Yeah, that was really good to see after we talked about it just before. Like,
I thought that was so cool. And I had never seen anything like that before. We were just talking about it. And then all of a sudden, super bright one. It was pretty intense. Yeah, it was it was really it was a good one to get to. It was cool. Yeah, they’re they’re very different. They’re like, Really? I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the first person to see something like that. Oh, sure. Yeah, like, I think so. Yeah, just like, Oh my gosh, yikes. Fire in the sky was happening. Yeah, I
bet it would be a sign of a prophecy. Probably. If I said something like that. I I believe something’s happening.
Yeah, if I didn’t know about fireballs? Yeah. And then there was just one right above me. Dark Night.
Yeah. It’s a I think something was going. Yeah. pretty intense for you. It was cool. It was really fun to get to see that one. We got to look out for more stuff. Next week and weekend. Yeah. Some good stuff to see.
I think so I was thinking we should get out somewhere good. Yeah, dark summer high.
Yeah, well ahead as far east as we can, so that we get that that good section over the Cascade Mountains, it’s all dark. So I will try and go for but just dark, North Eastern view of the sky, I’m sure we can find some cool spot at a bath like highway 126 will go up in the mountains in the truck, somewhere I care about for the night. So yeah, I want to do more Astro photography with you. And we’ve been really getting into it the last like two weeks or so we did like a couple little outings. And then like at the observatory, we did a lot of cool stuff, too. I’m really glad that we started doing that where we brought like a wide angle lens to shoot it about 10 millimeters or so. And it worked. It worked really well. But like we had been talking about a few times for our Astro photography projects is that there’s that ratio you need to hold to. So that the what you what you want is a really wide angle lens so that you don’t get that rotation of the earth that drag effect the cost of star trails to show up in your photograph. And what that allows you to do is leave that lens or excuse me, leave the shutter open for upwards of 2025 30 seconds and capture as much light as possible but still get a crisp image when you come out of it. And so we’re working on is still there’s a lot of other people that have a ton of experience in it. But it’s fun for us to start kind of getting into more and more and trying it with this wide angle lens was really cool. I haven’t shot anything 10 millimeters. That was fine. I think it works pretty well for you too. I really liked the photos. You got some of the vertical shots of the Milky Way really excited, really beautiful. You have like stretches up from the horizon line, where you see Scorpio Sagittarius and you see that bright section, the galactic center where there’s a lot there’s a lot of structure. So I know there’s like right on either side and then there’s dark and dark pieces.
That is a really cool part of getting these photos is getting to see all of that depth that you can’t really pick up with your eyes the same way. Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool seeing there there those dark sections through there too.
Yeah, it’s when I was learning when I was a kid. I think my dad explained this to me that those dark sections we think of that are Is something whether when there’s no stars like, Oh, that must be a gap in that field of really bright stars. What it is, is just dark material in between us. And that really bright background of the galaxy. It’s dark. It’s dark material. Yeah. So it’s like dust. It’s dust in space, that’s just black. Wow, I know that. That’s the interesting thing. We’re not everything’s illuminated in the sky. So that’s just dark material that’s out in space that’s blocking our view of the light from that’s more clear, more crisp behind that. Oh, yeah, it’s really fast. Milk, Milky Way is all stars. And it’s really bright even further back there. And especially when we looked at the galactic center, when we look at what we were noticing, when we were out there, and what’s really cool about being up really high in elevation and in a dark sky. And I hope everybody gets a chance to do this, if they’re doing the sky watching stuff that you can see this puff of smoke off the off the tee part of Sagittarius. I like that way would be described as kind of fun, but there’s a section this little patch, and you have to almost use your side vision. I know you saw it, when we were up there, you almost have to use your side vision to catch it. But it’s this little bright, buzzy spot up from the teapot of Sagittarius. And it’s probably like a sixth or seventh magnitude level of light and that patch. And that’s why it’s so tough for us to almost see. But if you notice, in this photograph that we made those long exposures of the Milky Way through that section, the brightest section of the Milky Way is right there in that patch, right. So interesting, because that brightest thing is what our eye can pick up, just barely. But through this, through this process of leaving the shutter open for a long time, we’re able to pull in more light with this wide angle. And we’re able to pick up all of this interesting details probably in the eighth ninth magnitude area of the Milky Way. That’s really funny. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of fun doing this. And it’s a good way to kind of look at the astronomy stuff that you’re learning about too. You can kind of like, get a picture of it and you sort I can go through and spot stuff. Again, it’s very difficult that when you when you shrink the sky down, we shrink a really wide angle the sky down to a computer screen you go, I can’t make out any of this. And then you look in Scorpio is the size of your thumbnail. Oh, oh, man, my scale is way off. That’s nuts. But it’s so cool, though. I really liked getting to do this stuff and getting to do it up there. On top of the mountain, Pine Mountain observatory. That was cool. It was very cool. Yeah, there’s some good stuff within the north eastern sky too. I really liked that when we when we pointed over to the north eastern sky, take some photographs over there. And there’s a lot that I know about that section in the sky. But what was great about doing this is when we looked at it again, and when we were up there was great because there’s some people to point some of the things out to us. And I don’t know if you and I’d spotted it before, this is one of the darker skies we’ve been in. So it’s been easier to observe. But they pulled the telescope around to point at the Andromeda galaxy. And it was really cool. And you can see it this night to most of the time and most like conditions that people are in even in dark skies. Like when I was a kid, it was too bright to really make out the Andromeda galaxy. And what was really cool is that it was so dark that you could you could really just make out the fuzzy point, the fuzzy speck of light at that section where the Andromeda Galaxy was, and you can just see, oh, wow, it’s right there. That’s the that’s the mark that people knew is the Andromeda Nebula in the constellation Andromeda. And then later after Hubble sort of discovered that it was actually a new whole thing called a galaxy. It was called the Andromeda galaxy is really cool. It’s getting to look up in the sky and see it there. See, like others would have seen it before in the past. I thought that was really cool. But did you get a chance to see it? Yeah, I got to look at it in the telescope. And I also was checking it out without the telescope. Yeah. It’s really cool. Yeah, it’s just kind of smudge. A little smudge smudge. Yeah, it’s I think that I read that it’s the furthest away thing that we can make out with our I. Yeah, I’m sure that it is. But it’s a to 2.3 million million light years away. Yeah, that’s a really interesting thing. 2.3 million light years away, and we’re able to see it. It’s so fascinating to that it’s that far, that’s a trippy thing, too, is that if we think about that, the light that we’re observing, even with our naked eye, or through the telescope when we when we see that light, that’s time that existed 2 million years ago before the human species is really even developed at all. That’s a time in that galaxy before humans even existed that we’re getting to observe now and it’s the closest galaxy to ours. So there’s all that empty space in between how fascinating is that? Really cool to get to observe.
Very, very cool to observe. Yeah, that’s cool. Getting to check it out the telescopes you still just kind of smudge. It’s cool getting to see it. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was really cool getting to see that, that little smudges stuff though. And then the other thing. So we saw that through a 10 inch telescope. Yeah, a 10 inch stop Sony and style telescope that was set up there. And we got to see a few other things through that telescope, we pointed it to the southern sky looked at Saturn. That was really fun.
Yeah, that was so cool. It was really fun. Like he has Saturn, we’ve been looking at it with our tiny telescope. Yeah. And you can make out the rings on it with our telescope. But I couldn’t see the moons that all the times that we tried it but with this telescope, it
was really cool to see a couple of demands floating over and you can make just the, you know, the visual size of sat in the shape of the ring as the color of it, you can just see that so much better with this. And you can see that we could see three, maybe four little moons floating around it. But people weren’t sure at the time, which which means we’re which on that. When we look to Jupiter, we didn’t know what we could see, I think it was it was Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. And then IO was wrapped somewhere in the shadow or behind Jupiter at the time that we were observing it, but it’s really cool. You can see those equatorial bands as red bands are cut across, you can see those really well. And it almost looked like I don’t know, you know, you always overestimate but when I looked into the telescope, it looked like a, you know, a good sized thing.
Yeah, it was really cool. Getting to see it in that bigger telescope.
It was really cool. Oh, yeah. So that’s why we should say so we were looking at the you know, the high end at home astronomy kits for for sky watching this 10 inch dobsonian telescopes, but we’re at this Observatory, and what they have in the big dome that you know, the big white Astronomy Observatory dome was a 24 inch telescope and that was really powerful collect a lot of light. And it was electronically controlled on this arm. That’s that a guy that was volunteering there was running that evening. And so when we first showed up, it was pointed up at Jupiter where we could take these really cool observations of Jupiter you wait in line for a long time you risk sharing some kind of I I born skin, the skin infection is transferred from Little kids to everybody else there that looks through this telescope. And you look through scan through it and you see a big, a big ball a big sphere out there. That’s Jupiter that you know, is this other planet super far away from his way out there. Wow, how many how many? Astro? It’s like 7.5. A us away from us. Or out from the sun? Shoot, I’m not sure. I think it’s 7.5 au. I could be wrong, whatever. But Jupiter way out there. And you see these little moons flying around it to is really cool to see through that through that really big telescope. I thought that was a fun thing to observe. And
I was just gonna say it was really cool. I’ve never gotten to use a telescope that big before.
Yeah, neither have I yeah, that was a really, really impressive wind to get to look through. There’s a lot of other things I’m sure I really would like to look at, through that telescope. I said, I heard they were saying in in September, by last weekend that they’re open, they stay up super late, they stay up as late as they can out to like, three 330 in the morning with those telescopes running so that Orion rises up into the sky high enough for them to observe the Orion Nebula. Apparently, that’s really cool through one of those more powerful telescopes. That would be cool to check out. Yeah, I think it’d be really fun. I think it’s a, you know, there’s Orion’s belt. And then and then down from that, I think it’s in a sword. I understand, right? Oh, that’s cool. Something like that. There’s a handful of really cool things to observe about there. And we finally go again, there, you know, it’s a, it’s an astronomy crowd, or the it’s a mixed crowd. There’s like kids, you know, and then there’s, there’s people that do research and blends. But it was really fun. It was cool to get to go do and learning more about that stuff. Working with those more high powered telescopes is really fun. The other thing we saw, like we saw the Andromeda galaxy, we also looked at the Whirlpool Galaxy when they sided that in. And that was interesting to see, I’ve seen pictures of it before, you know, like, you know, just illustrations of it. I’ve known where it was, but I didn’t have any tools to get to make better observations of it. But it’s really cool to see the other day we started first with that dobsonian 10 inch telescope, we sided that into it. And that was my first sighting of it. And it was those two galaxies, we see the Whirlpool Galaxy, and then you saw that smaller section off to the side of it that’s being consumed into the larger galaxy. Is that interesting
is really interesting. I didn’t look at it in the small telescope. Oh, yeah. I looked at it again later when they had it cited in with that big telescope again. Yeah,
that’s that’s what I mean to talk or that we saw it through this or that I saw through this one. But you’re citing over there. You saw that big section or that there’s the two sections. It’s a cool galaxy, because we see it’s a spiral galaxy, whereas I don’t know if the Andromeda galaxy is a spiral. I’m not sure I think that it might be. I forget the name is more like a cluster and I can’t remember, but but it shape doesn’t seem quite like it but but looking at to the Whirlpool Galaxy, use kind of flat on what we often see maybe it’s like a disk. Like as we look kind of sideways at the, at the side of the galaxy, so we just see a slice of it. In this situation, it’s oriented so that it’s faced flat toward us almost that we see the whole circle the galaxy. And what we’re able to make out through this is the is the rings and without big telescope, or it’s not the rings, but the spirals of the galaxy with that big telescope, we could really make those observations, which was cool. You can see those blue rings sort of spiraling out from the center of that galaxy.
Yeah, it was really cool. It’s like a pinwheel shape. Yeah, it’s getting to see it like, yeah,
and then you can see that other chunk that second galaxy often side of the way that’s being pulled into it over time over millions of years. And that that’s the other thing, too. How far away was the Whirlpool? He read that? It was 24 million light years away? Wow. Yeah. So that so there’s the 2 million light years away that the Andromeda galaxy is, and now 24 million light years away 22 million light years further than Andromeda. There’s the Whirlpool Galaxy out there, which is another near galaxy to us another easily observable galaxy. And that light is 24 million years old. That’s almost back to dinosaurs. But well, it’s way back. So it’s really interesting to think like, How fascinating is that we’re finally seeing this light coming out of this whole other galaxy 24 million years ago, where there’s dinosaurs on one of those planets out there that we’re looking at, in that galaxy. And that’s, but it’s really cool. It’s fantasy. And it was it was good. Getting to observe that through through big telescope, it’s really very different. When you get to look at it yourself through the real light that’s happening. That is a planet that is another galaxy that you can see. Yeah, it seems more real to you, to me, at least than than it does to look at the photograph of the Wikipedia page about that Messier object.
Definitely. Yeah, it’s really neat. Being able to observe it in person through such a powerful telescope that we just use our own. That’s really cool. Yeah, it was so cool. It makes me really motivated to try to get some more observatory trips in there. A couple more in Oregon. I think some of them are kind of hard to go to you. Oh, really? Are they just have limited hours? Yeah. Why people from outside become? It’d be really cool. There are some more things. I think it’d be really fun to get to check out.
Yeah, we got to make some observatory buddies. Yeah, some cool ones I want us to get. We’re not the public. No, we’re just we’re a little bit. We want to go. You want to like yeah, there’s got to be like some option for that. Friends and family style. I don’t know how to take a lot of time for that. But we should just get out and telescope. Yeah, good start. Yeah, it’d be fun. But yeah, that’s about everything that’s going on. I suppose the first story of hanging out shooting photos for the evening camping out up at the observatory is a fun option to do. I want to try and do it again. And I want to get a good observation night in this weekend. Maybe Sunday. And then I want to do definitely some stuff throughout the week to see a lot of these proceed meteor shower ramp up that we’re getting. Yeah. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be really fun. I’m looking forward to watching Mars. That’ll be fun.
Oh, yeah. We’ve got check Mars out. Yeah, we should. What is it? What day? Is it that it’s next to August issue that August 8. It’s right up next to the shoe. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Monday, pay day. Hey, that’s so cool. Yeah, that’d be really fun to see.
Yeah, I’m excited for that one. It’ll be cool. So I think it’s about everything. And you get, I think we talked about everything. So I think we cover star stuff for this week, the observatory trip. Yeah, it was cool. And we got everything else figured out. So yeah, on behalf of Marina Hanson, my name is Billy Newman. I want to say thank you very much for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast.