A little ramble through the winter sky - Taurus the Bull

 One of the most ancient constellations. Taurus has been known to people throughout the world since the dawn of civilisation, for the bull’s attributes of strength and fertility mean that it has always held an honoured place in ceremony and religion.

Usually only the head of the bull is depicted, its face being formed by the V shaped cluster of stars known as the Hyades. Its glinting red eye is marked by the star Aldebaran, and its long horns are tipped by the stars beta and zeta. In addition to the Hyades, Taurus contains the celebrated cluster of the Pleiades or Seven Sisters.

Alpha, Aldebaran which means the ‘follower of the Pleiades’ is a K class giant with a temperature of 3,800’C, it is a variable star and varies between magnitude 0.7 and 0.9, Aldebaran lies 65 light years away

Beta El Nath which means the ‘butting one’, in the times of ancient Greece the star was shared by both Taurus and Auriga but since 1930 it has been permanently transferred to Taurus, its magnitude is  1.7, it is a class B class giant with a temperature of 13,500’C and is 134 light years away.

Zeta lies 440 light years away, it’s a B class giant with a temperature of 15,500’C, it has a magnitude of 3.0.

Gamma Prima Hyadum is the first of the Hyades, with a magnitude 3.6, lying 154 light years away. Gamma is a G class giant with a temperature of 4,600’C

The Hyades is a large and bright open cluster of about 200 stars. The brightest members form a noticeable V shape, easily visible to the naked eye. In mythology the Hyades were the daughters of Atlas and Aethyra, and half-sisters to the Pleiades. Some people think that Aldebaran is a member but while Aldebaran is 65 light years away The Hyades are about 150 light years away.

The Pleiades also known as the seven sisters is the brightest and most famous star cluster in the sky, it is listed as M45. In mythology the seven sisters are named after a group of nymphs the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. About 7 can be seen by keen eyed people but there are about 250 stars in the group. The seven sisters are about 430 light years away.

In Taurus occurred the famous supernova that was seen from Earth in 1054, which gave rise to the Crab Nebula, M1. This is the celebrated Crab Nebula named by Lord Rosse in 1844 using the 72 in telescope. No one is sure why he thought it looked like a crab. At the centre of the nebula is a neutron star.

 Between epsilon and omega lies NGC 1555 the faint Hind’s variable Nebula, discovered in October 1852 by the English astronomer John Russell Hind; at the centre of this nebula lies the star T Tauri, a prototype of a class of irregular variable stars believed to be stars in the process of forming into stars. It lies at a distance of 400 light years and varies between magnitude 9.4 to 13.0.

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A little ramble through the February night sky - The Snow Moon on February 1st

 The Moon takes a month or 'Moonth' as it used to be described hundreds of years ago to go once around the Earth. If we take the old word moonth we get the modern day word month.

The full moon in February which will be on February1st this year is called the Snow Moon. This is the month when we are most likely to see snow and to have the coldest weather of the year.

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Cooke Telescope Tales - telescope for publican in London

Alfred Compton a Publican from Barnsbury Terrace in London, I don’t know what pub he ran ordered a 3.75 inch telescope from Thomas Cooke & Sons in 1864. The instrument had a focal length of 4 feet. 

This particular instrument was made in York but sent down to the Cooke & Sons shop in Southampton Street London to be collected

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A little ramble through 19th century astronomy - oval shadows on Jupiter in 1874

 Academy Newspaper Saturday 16^th May 1874 

Mr. Brett, the well-known artist, has, from a consideration of the shadows. cast by certain oval-shaped white markings on Jupiter, given reason to conclude that we do not see the true body of the planet, but only a semi-transparent stratum of vapour or liquid. In connexion with  this idea, we must remember that Jupiter is, on  the whole, very little more dense than water, so that  there seems a strong  probability that a  considerable portion of its visible diameter is  composed of vapour.

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A little ramble in Gemini with the Moon and Jupiter

 On Friday 30^th January if you look to the southeast, you will see a spectacular rectangular shape of four objects.

 The Moon, Jupiter the largest planet in the solar system and the two brightest stars in the constellation of Gemini the twins, Castor and Pollux form this rectangle. You can see this as soon as it gets dark.

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A little ramble through Astronomy in Yorkshire -The Silverpit Crater

It is always difficult to know where to start a story but here we will begin around 35 million years ago when  the Earth was hit by a meteorite, this did not cause the death of the dinosaurs they had been wiped out earlier around 66 million years ago when a much larger meteorite struck the Earth, that meteorite was about 9 miles wide and struck near the Yucatan peninsula in Mexica and produced a crater about 110 miles in diameter.

The meteorite we are talking about was smaller than the one that killed the dinosaurs but it is very important to our story.  This is because it is not only the first impact crater identified in or near Britain, but it’s a Yorkshire meteorite crater!

The meteorite would have been travelling at about 25 miles per second when it struck the Earth, and was about 120 metres across and weighed around 2 million tons, it crashed into what is now the North Sea about 60 miles off the Yorkshire coast, this I think is close enough to be classified as Yorkshire!

This impact would have devastated the area around what is now Britain, northern Europe and Scandinavia. The crater which is called the Silver Pit Crater is about 1.5 miles wide. At the time that the meteorite struck this area was still under about 150 metres of water, the crater is now located about 0.5 miles under the sea bed covered by shale and sand. The name Silver pit comes from a long valley called the Silver Pit Valley which is in the bed of the North Sea.

It was discovered in 2002 by a company looking for new oil and gas fields. While looking for these resources the oil and gas companies produce three-dimensional maps which tell them whether or not it is worth drilling in the area. It was during the course of this routine exploration that the data collected indicated that there was a crater below the sea bed in the North Sea.  The 3D map shows a spectacular set or rings sweeping out around the crater.

There are suggestions that the ring like structures of the crater that have been discovered are rare on craters discovered on Earth, however they do appear to be similar to those that are seen on Europa and Calisto two of the large icy moons that orbit Jupiter. These are moons that scientists speculate could be places where life might exist in our solar system. Europa and Calisto are two of the four large moons that were discovered by Galileo back in 1609 when he first used his telescope to look at the night sky. The other two moons he discovered are Io and Ganymede.

It all depends on what is under the icy surface of these moons, and we can’t be certain yet, however there could  be could be some kind of layered briny ocean, scientists believe that under the Silver Pit crater, there are layers of shale.  It could possibly be that these layers are causing these ring features both on Jupiter’s moons and around the Silver Pit crater. The theory being put forward is that is that it is  this layering effect below the surface that causes these rings to appear.  I wonder if it is possible that by studying this 35 million year old Yorkshire crater scientists can try to better understand what is going on under two of the large moons of Jupiter which are over 480 million miles away!

And if we were able to look at the Earth around 35 million years ago we would see a very different world, the Earth was in the middle of the Eocene period, the term Eocene comes from the ancient Greek meaning the ‘dawn of modern fauna’ which appeared during the period. It was then that animals that we might recognise today started to appear such as hoofed animals and the first small horse like animal.  It was also at this time that huge mammals such as Brontotherium and Embolotherium roamed the Earth. These looked like massive Rhino type of animals and no doubt were among the prey of the largest land carnivore mammal ever to have lived on Earth the Andrewsarchus.

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The Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio

 Join me, Martin Lunn MBE every Monday evening from 7.00 pm-9.00 pm on the award-winning Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio, probably the only regular astronomy show on any radio station in the country. 

I will take my weekly look at the night sky and look at all the latest news in astronomy. There will be the astronomical anniversaries this week plus the latest news from the astronomical societies in the north of England.

The Astronomy Show every Monday evening only on Drystone Radio live online at www.drystoneradio.com DAB radio in Bradford and East Lancashire, or 102 and 103.5 FM and can also be heard later on the Drystone Radio Podcast.