First published in the June 2023 edition of The West Dorset Magazine
Well, with the solstice nearly upon us, and the few hours of actual darkness only available to dedicated night owls, it may not the best time to be trying to write an astronomy column, but here goes …
Planets – it’s not the best time for planetary observing, but early risers canl view Saturn in the southeast in the pre-dawn sky. Jupiter will join in later in the month. Venus and Mars will be setting around midnight, the former in its waning gibbous phase.
The Milky Way – Something I try to do every summer is pay a visit to the Isle of Purbeck viewing area, above the village of Creech, to view the core of the Milky Way to the south. The area around the constellations of Sagittarius, Scutum and Scorpius is awash with stunning nebulae and globular clusters, such as Messier 22 (just over the diameter of the full moon and home to around 500,000 stars), and Messier 4 (at an estimated age of over 12 billion years old, one of the oldest known globulars). Then there’s the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, Messier 24, a bewildering view of countless stars seen through a gap in the stars, dust and gas surrounding the galactic core … a vast ‘object’, in which the stars appear as densely packed as grains of sand on a beach … Wow! Aim for a moonless night over the coming months; a pair of binoculars will help.
At one of our recent gatherings in Cerne Abbas, myself and a few others were treated to the awe-inspiring sight of the Milky Way rising over Giant Hill, with more and more detail coming into view the higher it got… the accompanying photo, taken with my phone, gives just a hint of what could be seen.
The moon – A recent post on the astronomy forum Stargazers Lounge prompted me to take a closer look at our nearest celestial neighbour, the moon. The topic focused on something called ‘the stars of Aristillus’, a group of mountain peaks in the centre of the named crater. The tips are only illuminated on one night of the month, and appear as bright pinpoints of light … This is just one of the many ephemera that make lunar exploration so fascinating.
My latest book (The WOW! List – 50 Stunning Deep Space objects for amateur stargazers) is out now.
The astro guy 