Constellation Profile - Horologium

We are now out of the Lacaille constellations that are visible from Calgary.  However, if you are lucky you may be able to see Horologium from Alberta as there are some stars that reach up to 39.75°S.  If you are ever south enough to see the naked eye star Alpha Horologii you can find it by star hopping by drawing a line from Betelgeuse through Alnitak (Easternmost star of Orion's belt) about 50°.  The constellation is quite long by the measure of celestial latitude .  You can just barely see it from the Alberta/US border and even if you go all the way down to Key West you will still not fully see it.  Only when you drop below 23°N can you see the entire constellation.  The map below shows where it is in relation to some familiar constellations in our sky.

Star-hop to Horologium

Horologium is originally etymologically derived from Ancient Greek and is the Latin word for 'clock'.  This may be familiar to anyone who follows a 'Horoscope'.  A horoscope simply means time observation.  Horologium continues the theme of enlightenment laboratory equipment that Lacaille chose to honour.  The constellation is supposed to represent a 18th century pendulum clock as drawn by Lacaille below.

Lacaille Horologium

As with all of the constellations, Johann Bode went on to improve the depictions in his work: Uranographia.  His version is shown below.

Uranographia Horologium

Unlike previous Lacaille constellations we have heretofore discussed Horologium has quite a number of deep sky objects.  These objects are great targets for amateur astronomers throughout the United States and South.  NGC 1261 also known as Caldwell 87 is a globular cluster that makes its home within the constellation.  Many galaxies reside in this region that can be viewed with large backyard telescopes.  The Horologium Supercluster is located here and contains several tens of thousand giant galaxies and many more dwarf galaxies.

Although I may never get the opportunity to see this constellation for myself, I drew a map of it to add to my collection.

Horologium

If I lived in the Southern Hemisphere I would notice that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds will straddle the southernmost point of Horologium.  I have seen pictures of southern hemisphere skies and I can only imagine how beautiful it would be to see with my own eyes.

Another final interesting fact about this constellation is there is a star located within its boundaries known as R Horologii.  This variable star fluctuates in apparent magnitude from the naked eye 4.7 to dimmer than Pluto on a good night at 14.3.  This cycle lasts just over 400 days.

2017 Week 46: (November 12-18)

We are nearing the end of the year and it is getting colder.  However, in Calgary, the weather can surprise us giving us a few warm Winter evenings.  This allows for some great observations.  Last night we held our first McKenzie Lake Star Night.  The sky grew foggier as the evening wore on and we were unable to view the sky.  We did have the opportunity to make our own constellations with different types of stars!

What is going on this week!?  Well we have a meteor shower peak in Taurus and Leo!  The Taurid meteor shower was discussed last week and the link is below.

http://simonjastronomy.blogspot.com/2017/11/2017-week-45-november-5-11.html

I hope to have the opportunity to blog specifically about the Leonids later in the week.  The table below highlights all of the sky events for the week.

Date	Event
November 12	North Taurid Meteors Peak
November 12	Venus 0.3°N of Jupiter
November 14	Mars 3°S of Moon
November 16	Vesta 0.4°N of Moon
November 16	Jupiter 4°S of Moon
November 16	Venus 4°S of Moon
November 17	Leonid Meteors Peak
November 18	New Moon

The morning sky offers the best sights this week.  Also of the conjunctions listed below occur pretty close to the Sun so they may be difficult to see.  If you're looking into the twilight with optical aid be careful of the sunrise.  Jupiter is now in the morning sky after spending the last handful of months in the evening.  Saturn is going that way too and will be in conjunction with the Sun just before Christmas.

Andromeda and Cassiopeia are sitting right above our heads at 9:30 in the evening.  This is great for observing with binoculars and difficult for those with Dobsonian telescopes.  It is doable if you book a chiropractic appointment for the next day.

The Summer Triangle is moving off to the West as the Winter Hexagon starts to make its appearance in the East.  I do enjoy the Winter constellations but not so much the snow and cold.

The Leonids will be an interesting meteor shower for those who like early mornings.  The radiant sits right in the head of the Lion as shown below.

Leonid Radiant

If the weather stays clear this evening I think I will set a goal to map one constellation.  With all of the public events occurring over the last few weeks I have not had too much time for my own observing.  As a side order, I may attempt M103 and M52, a couple open clusters, hanging out in Cassiopeia.  With the warm weather and possible clear skies this week, I challenge you to look up and recognize something!

Constellation Profile - Caelum

There is one final Lacaille constellation that is visible from Calgary.  It is known as Caelum and it is representative of a chisel in the sky.  This continues the theme of enlightenment laboratory equipment constituting many of the southern constellations.  Unfortunately, Caelum is only partially visible from Calgary as it ranges in declination from 27°S - 48.5°S.  As members of the city of Calgary we are only able to see as far South as 39°S with a clear horizon.  This gives us access to the Bayer stars Gamma, Zeta and Beta Caeli.  If you are out for a walk around Christmas at 11:30pm at night you will have a chance to catch these few stars with binoculars.  You can wait until New Year to catch it at 10:30pm in the evening.  Just to the West of the bright constellation of Canis Major is Columba followed by Caelum.  Use the map below to help you find it.

Star-hop to Caelum

A lot of work throughout the enlightenment period related to sculpting art.  This was done with the aid of a chisel.  This constellation goes hand in hand with Sculptor and continues the great theme.  Lacaille imagined this representation as the below diagram from his planisphere.

Lacaille Caelum

Bode continues to improve upon the images nearly 50 years later in the Uranographia.  His version is shown below.

Uranographia Caelum

Caelum is the 8th smallest constellation in area and the smallest we have discussed so far on this blog.  It is quite a sparse region of space and only has two stars brighter than magnitude 5.0.  The brightest deep sky object is a faint spiral galaxy denoted as NGC 1679.  I suppose it is interesting to note that Caelum hosts NGC 1701, a nondescript galaxy that sits around 30°S.  The only reason I mention this is that the registry number of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek is NCC 1701.  It may be fun trying to find this galaxy but it registers quite close to magnitude 13 low in the horizon.  A long exposure photograph using a properly adjusted mount will likely be the best bet.

Given that the constellation has relatively few bright stars, mapping it was quite easy.  This is shown below.

Caelum

The top three stars in the above map can be seen from Calgary assuming a clear view of the southern horizon.  It is difficult to find much exciting about this constellation.  However, it contains a possible quasar with no host galaxy (HE0450-2958).  Canada's own Universe Today did an article on it back in 2009, the link is below.

https://www.universetoday.com/46503/quasar-caught-building-future-home-galaxy/

 A video of this phenomenon can be found below.

A binary star system known as RR Caeli has been found to have an exoplanet, possibly four times the size of Jupiter orbiting every 11.9 years.

I tried.  I tried to make Caelum interesting.  If you observe a star from the constellation from Calgary, record it in your log book.  You can check one more constellation off your bucket list of observations!  Stay warm while you seek out the chisel in the sky!

Constellation Profile - Pyxis

The next constellation on our tour of Lacaille's southern sky is Pyxis.  This constellation represents a nautical compass box found on many ships throughout the centuries.  It is fully visible from Calgary as its declination ranges from 17.5°S - 37°S.  It contains quite a few bright naked eye stars which should make it easy to find in the sky.  Looking at the sky maps it seems one can draw a line south across Orion's belt for 50° and land below Alpha Hydrae (Alphard).  As it is quite south in the sky from Calgary it only appears briefly during a given night.  A recommended time to observe it would be around 10:30pm at the beginning of March.  The sky will be dark and the time reasonable for viewing.  A compass may help you locate the compass constellation in the horizon as it should be directly South at this time.  The map below will help to locate the constellation.

Star-hop to Pyxis

Lacaille used a 'Pyxis' on his legendary trip to South Africa and chose to honour it in the sky as its own constellation.  His original representation is shown below.

Lacaille Pyxis

As always, Johann Bode improved on the representation in his great work: Uranographia.  This image is shown below.

Uranographia Pyxis

There are quite a few objects of interest for amateur astronomers.  NGC 2818 is a planetary nebula that lies in the southern reaches of the constellation.  This may be difficult to find without a decent view of the horizon.  This beautiful nebula is framed by an open cluster NGC 2818A which makes it a good target for astrophotographers.

Zeta Pyxidis is in the same field of view (40') of most moderate power telescopes as NGC 2627.  This is an open cluster consisting of around 15 stars.  If you are ever feeling like exploring the south horizon constellations this might be a good target.

A lot of astrophotographers like to go after NGC 2613, a spiral galaxy located in the northeastern hinterlands of Pyxis.  Xi Puppis and Rho Puppis form a line to a magnitude 5 star that is about 1.25° away from this galaxy.  Good luck searching for it with your telescope as it nearly magnitude 11.

Pyxis may have some bright stars but it does not contain very many Bayer stars.  This fact made it easier to put together my map of the constellation as shown below.

Pyxis

I have never really been able to make out the representations in Lacaille's constellations.  How he came up with a compass box and the other shapes eludes me.  The northern constellations seem be easier to see the supposed image in the star.  This may be due to my whole life lived under the northern stars, but I doubt it.

I hope you are enjoying this tour of some southern constellations that most northerners never talk about.  We will continue the tour later in the week with another that is partially visible from Calgary.  After that, you will need to travel south in order to view the rest of them!  Stay warm and keep looking up at the sky (preferably not when a flock of birds fly over).

2017 Week 45: (November 5-11)

The cold and snow have hit Calgary with great force this week and observational astronomy has been kicked to the wayside.  However, there is some clearing in the forecast this weekend and we can perhaps see some sights in the sky.  A meteor shower will be peaking this weekend and also don't forget to set your clock back one hour so you can get some rest!  The table below shows some of the week's highlights.

Date	Event
November 5	Daylight Savings Time Ends
November 5	South Taurid Meteors Peak
November 5	Aldebaran 0.8°S of Moon
November 10	Last Quarter
November 11	Regulus 0.4°S of Moon

The Taurid meteor shower is broken up into two parts: The North and South Taurids.  Debris from the comet 2P/Encke (we discussed this back in February) is spread out quite a fair distance causing an extended run for these meteors (~3 months).  These meteors are not frequent with an average zenith rate of 5 per hour.  However, the debris tends to be larger than most comet debris fields.  This causes them to be brighter and they have been known as Halloween Fireballs.

If you feel strong enough to brave the cold check out the map below for where to look.  Taurus rises in the eastern sky around 8pm and will be visible all night.  Watch the area in the vicinity of the Pleiades and hopefully you'll catch a meteor or two.

Taurids

The last quarter Moon will be in our sky this upcoming Friday for anyone who cares to look at some great craters along the terminator in the early morning. 

Another event that is happening on Friday is our first community star night.  We want to reach out to our neighbours to share everything the night sky has to offer.  It will be an evening of learning, fun and discovery.  There will be free hot chocolate and crafts for kids.  Following a presentation of what to expect in the evening's sky we will brave the chill to see some of these objects through the telescope.  It will be held in the east room of the McKenzie Lake Community Centre on November 10, 2017 from 7-9pm.  For more details please see the event page below.

https://www.facebook.com/events/164787904116626/

There will be a couple close encounters of bright stars with the Moon.  Aldebaran and Regulus make their typical conjunction with the Moon.  Orion and Gemini are coming into the sky at a reasonable time.  Both of those constellations are filled with great things to observe, notably M42 - The Orion Nebula.

Stay warm this week and come to our event.  Enjoy the Autumn sky!

Constellation Profile - Fornax

We now look to the East of the constellation Sculptor and find one called Fornax.  Fornax seems to be more interesting than the other of Lacaille's constellations.  It has several bright stars and plenty of deep-sky objects.  It is nearly completely visible from Calgary as its declination ranges from 24°S - 39.5°S.  There are numerous ways to pick it out of our sky.  If you take Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse) and make a path through the westernmost star of Orion's belt (Delta Orionis - Mintaka) it will take you right into the middle of Fornax.  It is a fair distance away from Mintaka though (~50°).  It can be estimated by stretching your pinky finger and thumb out on both hands and placing them together held at arm's length.  The sky chart below will help.

Star-hop to Fornax

In keeping with the theme of enlightenment laboratory equipment Lacaille represented these stars as a Furnace.  Fornax is the Latin word for furnace, oven or kiln.  Lacaille's original diagram is shown below.

Lacaille's Fornax

It is said that Lacaille named it in honour of his friend, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier.  This is obviously a propagating error on the internet as Lavoisier was barely a teenager when the constellation was named.  However, Johann Bode renamed Fornax to Apparatus Chemicus which was based on the heater use in Lavoisier's many experiments.  Bode's renaming did not hold up over history and we continue to use Fornax as the official name.  Bode's diagram is shown below.

Uranographia Fornax

It is visible from Calgary in the evening (10-11pm) in the southern sky around the beginning of December.  Use the Orion trick above to find it.  Telescope users may find a few things to look at.  NGC 1360 is a planetary nebula commonly known as the Robin's Egg Nebula.  It is a blue ellipsoid that, coincidentally, looks like a Robin's Egg.  I'd love to take a crack at finding it from the observatory one evening.

The Fornax Dwarf Galaxy is located just to the southwest of Beta Fornacis.  It is a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way and is relatively nearby at just over 460,000 light years.  If you want to have fun with astroimaging try to see if you can find several of its 6 globular clusters.

Similar to Microscopium, Fornax is home to a cluster of galaxies about 62 million light years away.

Using my typical format for constellations I compiled this constellation into an image.  All my formatted images contain all the Bayer stars to scale.  It is actually quite a bit of work.

Fornax

 As of this writing (November 2, 2017) one of the largest asteroids is sitting right between Gamma 2 Fornacis and Omega Fornacis.  Its name is Pallas and it is about half a thousand kilometers in diameter.  Discovered very early in the 19th century it contains more than 7% of the entire mass of the asteroid belt.  This could be an intriguing target for those with the patience to scan the southern horizon in the cold, dark days of Winter.

Constellation Profile - Microscopium

As we move through the southern sky we come to the constellation known as Microscopium.  This is another of Lacaille's laboratory junk scattered throughout the sky.  The famous British Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore described this constellation as "totally unremarkable".  The brightest star is magnitude 4.68 and likely invisible to anyone in the city.  It would be a good challenge to see if you can pick out any stars from this constellation at a dark site near Calgary.  The declination range is 27.5°S - 45°S so two thirds of it should be visible at its highest in our sky.  It is relatively easy to find as Capricornus essentially points right to it.  It is also about 20° West of the bright star Fomalhaut as shown in the image below showing 7:45pm local time on the last day of October from 51°N.

Star-hop to Microscopium

As the name suggests it is a representation of a microscope which was commonly found in an 18th century laboratory.  Lacaille's original drawing is shown below.

Lacaille's Microscopium

Johann Bode went on to improve on the image in his monumental work Uranographia.  His image is presented below.

Uranographia Microscopium

Microscopium is a very faint constellation and does not contain very many observable deep sky objects.  This is likely why Patrick Moore gave the constellation a lackluster review for amateur astronomy.  However, a group of 6 friends in New Zealand found a supernova in NGC 6925 on July 25, 2011.  In fact, they have found more than 150 supernovae over the past decade.  Their dedication to the pursuit is inspiring and if you would like to see their website it is linked below.

http://bosssupernova.com/

NGC 6925 is probably the only Deep Sky Object (DSO) worth hunting for as a backyard amateur although it has a magnitude at a faint 11.3.  At a declination of 32°S you will be fishing close to the horizon about 4° NW of Alpha Microscopii.  The unbarred spiral galaxy does not have a great name but if you can see it from the Calgary area you are amazing and I'd be willing to refer to the galaxy by your name. 

Out of the 110 objects on the Messier list, only 4 reside more southward of NGC 6925 but they are much brighter.  As this is probably the most anyone on the internet has ever written about this galaxy I should move on.

I compiled the constellation into my own format and it is presented below.

Microscopium

Some other quick facts about a constellation that I may never set eyes on is that it is home to the Microscopium Supercluster.  At the same time there is a void located in the constellation known simply as the Microscopium Void.  These are some terms I hope to define in future blogs.  Finally, there is a known meteor shower called the Microscopids.  Apart from the fun name it is a relatively quiet shower that I can not find too much information on.

If you are out around 7:30-8pm near the end of October one year, use Capricornus the water goat to point to the microscope.  There are clearly mundane sights there to behold on a good night!