Wednesday, 14 May 2025

A little ramble through Camelopardalis the Giraffe

 

We have another of the modern and dull constellations, quite possibly Camelopardalis the Giraffe is one of the dullest of the northern constellations. It was first created by the Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius around 1613. There are some suggestions that originally the constellation represented a camel rather than a giraffe.

With Camelopardalis being a modern constellation there are no myths and legends associated with it.

Although the 18th largest constellation in the sky there are no bright stars and only alpha and beta might be glimpsed with the naked eye.



The brightest star is beta with a magnitude of 4.0 it is a G class supergiant and is cooler than the Sun, it lies around 870 light years away. It is a triple star system although you would need a telescope to see the two companion stars.

Beta is the brightest star in Camelopardalis at magnitude 4.0 Its a G1 supergiant 870 light years away.

Although alpha should be the brightest star using the Bayer system it isn’t with a magnitude of 4.2. As in the case with beta any sort of mist haze or moonlight would mean that both stars would be impossible to see with the naked eye.

However, alpha is interesting because it is one of the rare O class supergiant stars. Its surface temperature is a whopping 29,000 degrees compared with just 5,800 for our Sun. It lies at a massive 6,000 light years from Earth. I think we can safely say that at some point in the future this star is going to become a supernova and destroy itself in a massive explosion.

The only other star of interest here is the variable star Z Camelopardalis which is the prototype star for the Z Camelopardalis group of stars. It is known as a cataclysmic type variable star it is a dwarf nova, the mechanism behind the outbursts is different from classical nova. Dwarf Nova are fainter than the more classical nova. It varies in brightness between magnitude 9.8 to 14.5 meaning that a telescope is needed to observe it at all times.

The star was discovered in photographs taken in 1904 by Henry Park Hollis 1858-1939 a British astronomer who worked at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London.

The only dep sky object I will refer you to is Kemble’s Cascade. It is an apparent line of more than 20 stars with brightnesses of between the 5th and 10th magnitude. It appears to flow into the open cluster NGC 1502.

Kemble’s Cascade is what is known as an asterism, a pattern of stars with a constellation. The group of stars we call the Plough is an asterism within the constellation of Ursa Major the Great Bear. The asterism was named by the astronomer Walter Scott Houston 1912-1993 who wrote The Deep Sky Wonders collum for the Sky and Telescope magazine from 1946-1993. He named it after a Franciscan friar and amateur astronomer Father Lucian Kemble 1922-1999 who wrote to Scott Houston and described it as a beautiful cascade of stars tumbling from the north west down to the open cluster NGC 1502. The stars are not part of the open cluster it is just a line-of-sight effect. It was after this letter in 1980 that Kemble’s Cascade was named.

I said at the beginning that this constellation was a faint constellation and broadly speaking Camelopardalis fills the large area of space between Capella in Auriga, Polaris the North Star and Cassiopeia. It has been said that if you come across an area of sky in the north with nothing in it, you have located the Giraffe!



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Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Asteroid Mancuria (Latin for Manchester) discovered in 1912

 On May 18th 1912 Harry Edwin Wood who was chief assistant at the Union Observatory in South Africa discovered an asteroid, it was named Mancuria after the city in which he was born, Manchester. He would discover 12 asteroids between 1911-1932. 

Mancuria is the Latin name for Manchester


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Monday, 12 May 2025

The Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio

 Join me, Martin Lunn MBE tonight and 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.

Cooke telescope mounting for Dollond telescope in 1865

 The Rev Frederick Howlett FRAS (1821-1908) purchased in 1865 a plain equatorial mounting from Thomas Cooke & Sons, it was made to carry either a 4 or 5 inch telescope. At the time that the mounting was ordered he was living at the St Augustine's Parsonage , Hurst Green , Sussex.

 Howlett used a 3 inch Dollond telescope, I am not sure when he purchased this telescope but it was before 1863. During the 1860s-1880s he used this small telescope to make extensive observations of sunspots.


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Sunday, 11 May 2025

A little ramble through 19th century astronomy - Remarkable Sunspots in 1871

                                                           

The accompanying sketch shows in a rough way the umbrae and a small portion of the penumbra of a sunspot that I observed on the 6th and 7th May 1871, and which was made remarkable by the presence of a reddish-brown object like a cloud, that seemed to hang over the nucleus of the principal umbra, apparently dividing it into two. Could this object be seen without the intervention of the dark glass, it would doubtless show a bright red instead of a reddish-brown colour; and from its fog like aspect, though it was well defined in outline and acuminated at both ends, the impression was inevitable that it hung at a certain altitude above the spot. 

                                                          Sunspot Drawing May 6/7 1871

However, it evidently had no motion distinct from the latter, as on the 7th May it occupied the same position as on the day before, but it was much reduced in size. On the 8th May it was seen no, longer, and the nucleus was now in one, seeming to show pretty clearly that its previous apparent division in two was really caused by the intervention of the brown cloud suspended over it, and that the phenomenon did not consist of two distinct nuclei with the brown object lying between them.

I am not aware that anything like this was observed before.

 J Birmingham , Millbrook, Tuam May 18th 1871


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Saturday, 10 May 2025

May Flower Micro Moon

 May 12th sees the last of the year's Micro Moons. 

The opposite of a supermoon is a micromoon. That’s when the new or full moon reaches apogee or its greatest distance from Earth. A full micromoon appears about 12-14% smaller than a full supermoon and about 7% smaller than an average full moon.

 The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, so there are times when it is closer to us and we see the Super Moon. At the other extreme, the Micro Moon appears smaller than normal, because it is farther away. If you miss this one, you will have to wait until next year.

The full moon in May is called the Flower Moon. The flowers in the fields and in the gardens are now becoming abundant for everyone to see.


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Friday, 9 May 2025

The Walter Goodacre Cooke telescope for sale in 1938

 In the journal of the British Astronomical Society from May 1938 there was an advertisement for a 10 inch Thomas Cooke offered by the executers of the late Walter Goodacre FRAS: together with an observatory with a 20-foot dome by Reid of Manchester. 

Price £500 or would sell telescope separately. There is also a sidereal clock by Home, Thornthwaite & Wood. 


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