Observing Forecast
The evening forecast for this Friday, February 17th is not available.
Forecast provided by National Weather Service.
Clouds are not the only kind of weather skygazers have to worry about. If the air between the telescope and the object is turbulent enough (a condition astronomers call bad seeing), the image will shimmer and blur. Planets tend to be most affected by bad seeing, stars or open star clusters the least. Clear Sky Clocks can predict bad seeing a day or two in advance.
Now Visible
This a list of the major types of objects visible in the sky over the coming weeks. It is neither an exhaustive listing nor a guarantee that we will see everything described here.
Planets
Throughout the course of the year, all of the major Planets can be viewed from the Fuertes Observatory.
Currently, Jupiter, appearing in the constellation Ophiuchus, dominates the southwestern sky during the early evening hours. At -2.2 Magnitude, it is easily visible to the naked eye, appearing brighter than any stars. When view through the telescope, Jupiter's four largest 'moons', can be seen orbiting the planet on any given night.
To the persistent and skilled observer, Mercury is visible through binoculars very low in the western sky immediately following sunset.
Neptune and Uranus can be viewed later in the evening, but at magnitudes 7.8 and 5.7, respectively, they are only visible through the telescope.
Mars rises around midnight, shining brightly orange (at magnitude +0.3) high in the predawn sky. It will make its way into our night sky late this fall in the constellation of Taurus, and will be well placed for excellent evening viewing by winter.
Saturn is not long behind it, at the moment just visible at +0.6 magnitude near dawn in the constellation Leo, below the brilliant "morning star" Venus, which, at -4.4 magnitude, is at its brightest for the year. While Saturn rises earlier each night, eventually making its way into our evening skies by spring, Venus will remain shining brilliantly in the morning sky for the next six months.
Star Clusters
Star clusters are a common Fuertes target throughout the year. Clusters come in two types. Open clusters are groups of newly formed stars. They are typically within a few thousand light years of the Earth and appear through the telescope as a dense collection of a few dozen to a few hundred stars. What you are actually seeing are only the brightest cluster members; most of the stars are too faint to see except in photographs. Globular clusters are groups of up to a million stars that (with a few exceptions) date from the formation of the Galaxy. There are few visible at this time of year.
Diffuse Nebulae
Stars form inside large clouds of interstellar gas and dust that collapse under their own weight. Once the stars begin to shine, their UV light causes the gas surrounding them to glow and produce a diffuse emission nebula. Many stars also emit jets that push aside the gas around them, blowing open holes in the cloud and making the entire complex even more spectacular.
The Orion Nebula (a.k.a. M 42) is the best emission nebula visible this winter. The visible portion is a few light years across (the cloud itself is many times larger), and most of the florescence is caused by radiation from a cluster of stars in the center called the Trapezium. The Trapezium is easy to see through the Fuertes telescope, and some people have spotted it through steady binoculars.
Reflection Nebulae
Newly formed stars are often surrounded by remains of the gas and dust that formed them. Sometimes starlight will reflect off the dust to produce a reflection nebula. While much fainter than emission nebulae, reflection nebulae are still among the more beautiful objects in the sky.
Galaxies
While galaxies come in a range of shapes and sizes, the ones that you can easily spot through the Fuertes telescope are all fairly large (the size of the Milky Way or larger) and appear to the eye as elliptical blobs. Some galaxies do have spiral arms, of course, but those are usually hard to see even with a telescope much larger than ours. Arms and other subtle features usually show up only in long exposure photographs.
M 81 and M 82 are a pair of galaxies that we look at fairly often.