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HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH AURORAE p. 56
APRI L 2019

The world’s best-selling astronomy magazine

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

APOLLO 9
50 YEARS LATER
• Rusty Schweickart
remembers p. 22
• Jim McDivitt:
10 days in orbit p. 32
• The women
in the Moon p. 44

Bob Berman
on astronomy
nightmares p. 12
www.Astronomy.com

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Vol. 47

ONLINE
Georges Seurat’s sky p. 48 CONTENT
•
Issue 4

WE TEST Sky-Watcher’s new scope p. 60 CODE p. 4

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 Online Content Code: ASY1904
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APRIL 2019
VOL. 47, NO. 4

NASA
ON THE COVER
In March 1969, four months shy of

CONTENTS 22
the lunar landing, Apollo 9 tested
all systems in Earth orbit.

FEATURES
22 COVER STORY 44 COLUMNS
Rusty Schweickart The women in the Moon
The mountain named after Strange Universe 12
remembers Apollo 9 BOB BERMAN
The lunar module pilot relives the Marilyn Lovell made her one of a
challenges and triumphs when handful of women immortalized For Your Consideration 18
humans tested their spacecraft in on the Moon. WILLIAM SHEEHAN JEFF HESTER
Earth orbit. DAVID J. EICHER AND KEVIN SCHINDLER
Secret Sky 20
32 48 56 STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA

Jim McDivitt: Georges Seurat’s sky How to photograph Observing Basics 62

10 days in orbit Did optical effects from aurorae GLENN CHAPLE
volcanic aerosols affect the way No matter your photography
Apollo 9 served as an engineering
skills, a few simple tricks can
Binocular Universe 64
test, a hardware demonstration, this Neo-Impressionist artist PHIL HARRINGTON
approached his canvas? help you capture the best images
and a vital steppingstone on the
STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA possible. STEVE CULLEN
road to the Moon. QUANTUM GRAVITY
ALISON KLESMAN
54 60 Snapshot 9
36 Hunt the deep sky We test Sky-Watcher Astro News 10
Sky This Month in the Hunting Dogs USA’s EvoStar 150
Mars sweeps past the Pleiades. The Whirlpool Galaxy is just the A proprietary type of glass, IN EVERY ISSUE
start of a fantastic tour through special coatings, and superb
MARTIN RATCLIFFE AND mechanics make this telescope From the Editor 6
Canes Venatici.
ALISTER LING one to look through. Astro Letters 8
MICHAEL E. BAKICH
PHIL HARRINGTON New Products 65
38
StarDome and 66 Advertiser Index 68
Path of the Planets Ask Astro Reader Gallery 70
RICHARD TALCOTT; Bode’s law. Breakthrough 74
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROEN KELLY

ONLINE Astronomy (ISSN 0091-6358, USPS 531-350)

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4 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
FROM THE EDITOR
BY DAV I D J. E I C H E R
W
e’re now in the
middle of the
exciting 50th
anniversary
period of the
Apollo Moon missions. This
will last until December
2022, when we celebrate
Apollo 17. Since that mis-
sion, humans have not been
back to the surface of our
nearest celestial neighbor.
Over the past few months, Schweickart, Apollo 9’s
I’ve chatted with a number
of Apollo astronauts. I’ve
been struck by their candor,
their sharp recollections,
and their amazing
stories, many of
which I had not heard
previously, despite the
vast literature on the
Apollo era.
Jim Lovell
described how he felt
about the possibility of being
stranded in space during
Apollo 13. Mike Collins
related his unique feeling of
concern as he orbited over
colleagues Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin, hoping
they would be OK during
the first-ever moonwalk.
Charlie Duke talked about
his time spent wandering the Kennedy launchpad. The
Descartes Highlands and the
adventure of collecting rocks. lifted up, like a railroad
In this issue, two Apollo
astronauts sound off on their left an indelible memory.
Follow the Dave’s Universe blog:
www.Astronomy.com/davesuniverse
Follow Dave Eicher on Twitter: @deicherstar
6 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
Editor David J. Eicher
Art Director LuAnn Williams Belter
EDITORIAL
Chatting
Senior Editors Michael E. Bakich, Richard Talcott
Production Editor Elisa R. Neckar
Associate Editors Alison Klesman, Jake Parks
Copy Editor Dave Lee
Editorial Assistant Amber Jorgenson
with Apollo
ART
Graphic Designer Kelly Katlaps
Illustrator Roen Kelly
Production Specialist Jodi Jeranek
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
astronauts
Bob Berman, Adam Block, Glenn F. Chaple, Jr., Martin George,
Tony Hallas, Phil Harrington, Korey Haynes, Jeff Hester,
Liz Kruesi, Ray Jayawardhana, Alister Ling, Steve Nadis,
Stephen James O’Meara, Tom Polakis, Martin Ratcliffe, Mike D.
Reynolds, Sheldon Reynolds, Erika Rix, Raymond Shubinski
SCIENCE GROUP
Executive Editor Becky Lang
Design Director Dan Bishop
experiences Rusty also EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Buzz Aldrin, Marcia Bartusiak, Timothy Ferris, Alex Filippenko,
with Apollo 9, talked about his Adam Frank, John S. Gallagher lll, Daniel W. E. Green, William K.
Hartmann, Paul Hodge, Edward Kolb, Stephen P. Maran,
the first full biggest risk. He Brian May, S. Alan Stern, James Trefil
test of the became ill in
Apollo system in Earth orbit, and Kalmbach Media
Earth orbit, 50 years going ahead with his Chief Executive Officer Dan Hickey
Senior Vice President, Finance Christine Metcalf
ago last month. Jim spacewalk the next day was Senior Vice President, Consumer Marketing Nicole McGuire
Vice President, Content Stephen C. George
McDivitt, the mission’s a risky decision indeed. Vice President, Operations Brian J. Schmidt
commander, spoke with Becoming sick again, this Vice President, Human Resources Sarah A. Horner
Associate Editor Alison time in a pressurized space Senior Director, Advertising Sales and Events David T. Sherman
Advertising Sales Director Scott Redmond
Klesman. suit, would have been fatal. Circulation Director Liz Runyon
Art and Production Manager Michael Soliday
I chatted with Rusty But along with his friend New Business Manager Cathy Daniels
McDivitt, he was certain Retention Manager Kathy Steele
Single Copy Specialist Kim Redmond
lunar module pilot, and his of the choice. ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
90 minutes’ worth of stories Rusty also talked about Phone (888) 558-1544
Advertising Sales Manager Steve Meni
were priceless. We publish the reentry: lying on his Advertising Sales Representative
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and “bang!” again Phone (877) 246-4835
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the full transcript will be and main chutes, and all was Ad Sales adsales@astronomy.com
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Among the gems are the Atlantic Ocean. Products products@astronomy.com
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it was like to launch in a ries will allow you to enjoy
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ration and adventure it was.
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Yours truly,
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David J. Eicher AstronomyMag AstronomyMagazine +astronomymagazine
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 We welcome your comments at Astronomy Letters, P. O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187;

ASTROLETTERS or email to letters@astronomy.com. Please include your name, city, state, and country.
Letters may be edited for space and clarity.

Exploration overshadowed
I’m embarrassed to say that I knew noth-
ing about the BepiColombo mission until
reading your magazine. I haven’t been
keeping up with science news as I once
did, and it’s a shame. The lack of news
coverage about this incredible Mercury
adventure says so much about our cul-
ture, and it’s not positive. The mission to
Mercury is one of the greatest explora-
tion feats of human history, yet the media
ignores it, and instead covers news of
much less importance.
I viewed the BepiColombo launch
online, and it was spectacular. I’m a senior
citizen and recall exactly where I was
when Sputnik shocked the world. Back
then, everyone was fascinated by space
exploration, yet sadly all we’re fed these
days is junk about celebrities, politics,
and related trivia. Your timeline for the
Mercury mission is a keeper. The approach
to the planet is a long way off, but it’s
something to live for, and I hope I’m
around when the spacecraft arrives.
— Rosalind Ellis Heid, Baltimore, MD
Murmuration made clear
Jeff Hester’s July 2018 column on murmu-
ration gave me additional understanding
of an event at our family farm in Percival,
Iowa, in 2016. While standing in the bed
of my pickup, I noticed to the east a very
large flock of starlings coming my way.
Within seconds they were very near, and
suddenly a large black bulge of them was
flying at ground level, and then swept
over and around me. I could see the
stream of birds opening up to clear my
face, with its dumbfounded look. I knew
it wouldn’t last long, so I turned quickly
to see the same scene in reverse — them
blending back together. The noise was
a surround sound of a humming beat.
I wish I had a witness to the event.
— David Silcox, Nebraska City, NE
Reliving history
Having credentials in several fields of
science, I deeply appreciate the quality of
the astronomical information presented,
along with the digital images, in the
September 2018 issue. This was espe-
cially true regarding Alfred McEwen’s
article about the Mars orbiter. Since I
am interested in history, and the history
of science in particular, I also enjoyed
reading about the artifacts in “Minting
a celestial memory” and the history of
astronomy in “How William Huggins
shaped astrophysics.” It provides a good
historical context for astronomical
understanding. Keep up the good work!
— Wolfgang Golser, Tucson, AZ
Dedicated reader
The 45th anniversary issue was stellar. I
have read every issue since the beginning,
have used it in my planetarium prepara-
tion for 27 years, and also use it in my
high school astronomy classes. The color
photos from the beginning were a major
factor in student interest, and the dia-
grams were easy to understand when used
in the classroom. Thanks for the help
you’ve provided over the years.
— Dan Goins, Martinsville, IN

28TH ANNUAL
NORTHEAST ASTRONOMY
FORUM & SPACE EXPO
APRIL 6-7, 2019
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8 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
QG
HOT BYTES >>
TRENDING
TO THE TOP
LIMITED LIFE SPAN
A new study has
confirmed previous
Voyager findings:
QUANTUM
GRAVITY
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNIVERSE THIS MONTH . . .

Saturn’s gravity will

destroy its rings in less
WATER RICH
Water’s signature has
been found in minerals
on numerous asteroids,
bolstering the theory that
such bodies could have
UNTOUCHED RELIC
Astronomers have
identified a cloud of
pristine gas, unpolluted
by early star formation,
from just 1.5 billion years
than 100 million years. delivered water to Earth. after the Big Bang.

SNAPSHOT

Impact on
the Moon
A meteoroid struck our
satellite during January’s
total lunar eclipse.

January’s total lunar eclipse

put on a show as Earth’s
shadow crossed the Full
Moon’s face. And during the
event, something unusual
happened. Astroimager
Jamie Cooper captured this

JAMIE COOPER. TOP FROM LEFT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE; NASA/JPL-CALTECH; TNG COLLABORATION
image of an impact on the
Moon from West Sussex,
England, at 03:41 UT. Such
events were theory only two
generations ago, but now
are fact and somewhat com-
monplace to the discerning
observer. This impact could
have been seen through
binoculars or a telescope
by an observer looking
at the right moment.
— Michael E. Bakich

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 9
 ASTRONEWS
INSIGHT SETS UP
SHOP ON MARS
The newest addition to the martian
probe family has safely arrived,
and it’s wasting no time getting
familiar with the area.
A
fter enduring almost seven months of
space travel on a carefully calculated
300 million-mile (480 million kilo-
meters) journey from Earth to Mars,
NASA’s InSight lander finally touched
down on the martian surface November 26,
2018. Equipped with a host of cutting-edge
scientific instruments, the lander is
expected to gather some of the best data yet
on the Red Planet’s interior, composition,
and tectonic activity.
InSight — which stands for Interior
Exploration using Seismic Investigations,
Geodesy and Heat Transport — entered the
martian atmosphere 80 miles (129 km)
above the surface. At an altitude of about
7 miles (11 km), the probe deployed its giant
parachute to help reduce speed. Less than a
minute later, InSight cut its parachute free
and fired its 12 retrorockets, providing the
craft with the extra braking power it needed
to neatly settle onto the planet’s surface at
2:54 P.M. EST.
A tense landing
The entire landing took only about seven
minutes, but because of an eight-minute
delay in communications between Mars
and Earth, NASA engineers were forced
to wait until the landing was over to know
whether it was successful. So, from the
EARTH: THE NOT-SO-WATERY WORLD
ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY AFTER STEVEN VANCE/NASA-JPL; DAVE MOSHER/INSIDER; NOAA
Earth Ganymede Titan
Total volume
0.12% 46% 26%
Liquid water
10 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
time the craft entered Mars’ atmosphere
until touchdown, those involved (as well
as those not) anxiously crossed their fin-
gers, oblivious to the real-time status of
the craft. During these well-known “seven
minutes of terror,” the engineers waited for
confirmation that the probe had landed
safely — which, thankfully, it did.
“It was intense, and you could feel the
emotion,” said NASA Administrator Jim
Bridenstine in a NASA livestream about the
landing’s success. But that tension quickly
JUST A SPLASH. Roughly 70
percent of Earth’s surface is covered
by water, which, at face value, seems
like a lot. But did you know that
liquid water accounts for only about
0.12 percent of Earth’s total volume?
Our planet, which we often think of
Europa Enceladus as a water world, is actually pretty
desiccated. However, many other
worlds in the solar system are
figuratively drowning in water,
making them intriguing targets for
future exploration and study. — J.P.
Ice accounts for less FAST
than 2 percent of
FACT
16% 20% Earth’s total water.
But on Enceladus, ice
accounts for about
70 percent of the
world’s total water.
SEIS SET. InSight deploys its
Seismic Experiment for Interior
Structure (SEIS) on the martian
surface, just weeks after landing
on the planet. Although InSight
is equipped with a suite of
instruments, SEIS is the most
vital to achieving the lander’s
core science objectives.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
shifted to excitement once InSight landed.
“The enthusiasm here is incredible,”
Bridenstine said.
Settling in
InSight’s first few days on the Red Planet
weren’t as eventful as the probe’s nerve-
wracking descent and landing, but the
craft has been adjusting to Mars well. On
December 11, engineers directed InSight to
take its first selfie. This allowed the team to
survey the sand-filled crater it had landed in,
which so far seems to be a near-ideal location.
On December 15, the mission team com-
manded InSight to test its claw-game-like,
five-fingered grapple by delicately lifting the
lander’s seismometer. By December 19, the
instrument, which will monitor marsquakes
to study the planet’s interior structure, had
been safely placed on the ground about 5 feet
(1.6 meters) in front of the lander.
“It’s taken more than a decade to bring
InSight from a concept to a spacecraft
approaching Mars — and even longer
since I was first inspired to try to under-
take this kind of mission,” said InSight’s
principal investigator Bruce Banerdt, of
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a press
release. “But even after landing, we’ll need
to be patient for the science to begin.”
— Chelsea Gohd, Jake Parks
 ASTRONEWS WEIGH IN. The first detailed observations of gas clouds zipping around an extragalactic supermassive black
hole have allowed astronomers to measure the black hole’s mass with unprecedented precision.
Could a supernova explain an ancient mass extinction?
About 2.6 million years ago, an
exploding star lit up Earth’s sky as
a supernova. A few hundred years
later, its cosmic rays reached Earth
and may have caused a mass extinc-
tion, according to a study published
November 27 in Astrobiology.
The extinction, which occurred at
the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary,
killed about 36 percent of the genera
in coastal waters, including Earth’s
largest known shark, the megalodon.
The event’s cause is unknown, but
radiation from a supernova is a possi-
ble culprit. Such radiation would be
composed of fast-moving muons,
which are a few hundred times the
mass of an electron, according to
lead author Adrian Melott of the
University of Kansas. “They’re very
penetrating. Even normally, there are
lots of them passing through us.
Nearly all of them pass through
harmlessly,” he said in a press release.
But after a supernova, “multiply
those muons by a few hundred. Only
a small fraction of them will interact in
any way, but when the number is so
large and their energy so high, you
get increased mutations and cancer,”
Melott said. His team estimated that
in human-sized animals, the cancer
rate would increase by about 50 per-
cent. In larger animals, that effect
would have been larger still. High-
energy muons can penetrate hun-
dreds of yards into water, peppering
the shallower coastal waters where
the extinctions occurred.
197
Hubble homes in on orphaned stars
NASA, ESA, J. MACK (STSCI), AND J. MADRID (AUSTRALIAN TELESCOPE NATIONAL FACILITY)
SUDDEN BLAST. This composite X-ray and optical image shows supernova remnant
1E 0102.2–7219, which lies 190,000 light-years away. The supernova that may have caused
a mass extinction on Earth was much closer, only about 150 light-years distant.
Is there evidence for such a wave of
cosmic rays? Iron-60 is a radioactive
isotope of iron with a half-life of about
2.6 million years — meaning all Earth’s
original iron-60 is now gone. Any iron-
60 on Earth today must have arrived
more recently, via cosmic means. And
a huge deposit of iron-60 was laid
down about 2.6 million years ago,
implicating one or more known super-
novae occurring around that time
within about 150 light-years of Earth.
The number of days Expedition 57 crew members
Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Alexander Gerst, and
Sergey Prokopyev spent aboard the International
Space Station, before returning to Earth December 20.
QUICK TAKES
POLO
The twin Mars Cube One
(MarCO) CubeSats relayed data
throughout the InSight lander’s
X-RAY: NASA/CXC/MIT/D. DEWEY ET AL. AND NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DEPASQUALE. OPTICAL: NASA/STSCI
descent and touchdown on
Mars last November.
•
TRIGGERED
A supernova’s early,
unexpected surge in brightness
may be due to its companion
star glowing as the blast’s
shock wave washed over it.
•
GEMSTONES
A nearby super-Earth likely
formed under such high
temperatures that its core is
filled with aluminum oxides,
such as rubies and sapphires.
•
ALL BUT ONE
Water within Saturn’s rings and
moons is surprisingly similar to
that found on Earth, except for
Phoebe, which has water
unlike any other type found
in the Saturn system.
“We have evidence of nearby
[supernova] events at a specific
•
VANISHING ACT
time. We know about how far away A Neptune-sized exoplanet
they were, so we can actually com- caught rapidly shedding its
pute how that would have affected atmosphere may help explain
Earth and compare it to what we why astronomers find so many
know about what happened at hot super-Earths, but so
few hot Neptunes.
that time,” Melott said. “There
really hasn’t been any good explana-
tion for the marine megafaunal
•
GROUNDED
extinction. This could be one.” Researchers have discovered a
— Alison Klesman staggering amount of microbial
life hidden deep below Earth’s
surface, including about
70 percent of the world’s
bacteria and archaea.
•
COSMIC COUGH
Spaceflight may increase the
body’s risk of infection, says a
new study that analyzed mice
exposed to microgravity.
•
CROWD CONTROL. Hubble
recently snapped this shot of the
NEW DAWN
Data from NASA’s Dawn
Coma galaxy cluster, making the spacecraft show the carbon
Milky Way look pretty puny in the concentration of the dwarf
process. While about 150 globular planet Ceres may be five times
clusters orbit our home galaxy, that of the most carbon-rich
the space telescope revealed a meteorites found on Earth.
staggering 22,426 globular clusters
hanging out in Coma. Shining
•
EXOBALLOON
300 million light-years from Earth, Astronomers detected helium
the cluster is home to over 1,000 being blown into an extended
densely packed galaxies that often envelope around a Neptune-
pass each other closely. When they sized exoplanet as it is
do, tidal forces fling ancient stars bombarded by radiation
and globular clusters in a galaxy’s from its host star.
outskirts out into space. Because
they are so numerous, these •
GOOD ODDS
orphaned globular clusters can In a recent survey, 12 of 32
help researchers map the Coma protoplanetary disks around
Cluster’s gravitational fields and stars in a vast cloud of gas and
track its distribution of dark matter. dust showed evidence
— Amber Jorgenson of planets. — J.P.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 11
 STRANGEUNIVERSE
BY BOB BERMAN
School dreams
in space
D
id you ever have
that lost-at-school
dream? You know,
the one where
you’re in the
crowded hallway with every-
one rushing to their next class
— except you can’t remember
where you’re supposed to go?
Another common dream of
that type finds you on a city
street, where for some unex-
plained reason, you’re stark
naked. You keep hiding behind
cars, darting from doorway to
doorway, trying to get home
without being seen.
My actor friends tell me they
have recurring dreams where
the curtain rises and they have
no idea what they’re supposed
to say. The very worst for me, as
a 2,100-hour pilot, is that I
glance out the window of my
small four-seater, and there’s an
enormous airport beneath me.
Such airports are always con-
trolled, meaning I’m supposed
to be talking to the tower using
a specific frequency. Except I’m
not. I flew here accidentally; I
don’t even know what airport it
is, with no way to find the right
frequency. So I’m screwed.
They’ll get my tail number
using binoculars, and I’ll lose
my license.
In dreams like these, the
dreamer has forgotten what they
were supposed to be doing or is
doing something notably wrong,
while everyone else is getting it
right. My question: What are
the “school dreams” of profes-
sional astronomers? My guess is
that they’d be revelatory.
I can easily guess the night-
mares of aerospace engineers.
Imagine working for
BROWSE THE “STRANGE UNIVERSE” ARCHIVE AT www.Astronomy.com/Berman.
12 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
What is an astronomer’s
biggest nightmare?
Perkin-Elmer’s Danbury
Optical System unit — the
world’s most prestigious
optical firm — in 1981. Their
telescopes were of legendary
quality, and they were awarded
the contract for the Hubble
Space Telescope. It had to be
the finest 94-inch (2.4 meters)
mirror ever made.
Imagine you’re in charge.
When the mirror is done, you
test it, and it looks perfect.
Except it isn’t. It has a serious
spherical aberration. You used
your most sophisticated testing
device, a reflective null correc-
tor, but it was, itself, misaligned.
End result: Your telescope
blasted into space with a blurry-
image mirror, and your com-
pany’s reputation spirals so
deeply down the toilet, it’s sold
within a month of the Hubble
launch and pays a $15 million
The “school dreams” of professional
astronomers might be revelatory.
fine. Definitely a nightmare
come true.
Or say you’re in charge of
some of the Apollo mission
preparations. Your forklift guy
drops an oxygen canister, and
here’s where you mess up. You
check it out, it seems OK with
just a scratch on the tank, so
you label it as “fine.” But a year
later, it blows up halfway to the
Moon, scrubbing the billion-
dollar mission and very nearly
killing the three astronauts.
Of course, those things really
happened. As for actual night-
mares, I’d rather not guess. To
find out for sure, I contacted a
Hubble’s first images revealed a critical flaw in its mirror that required a shuttle
servicing mission and an entire engineering rig to correct. Prior to repairs in 1993,
the mirror produced blurry images that were a severe disappointment, such as
the shot of M100 on the left. The corrected mirror revealed crisp detail, at right. NASA
few astrophysicists I know and
sent them this article up to this
point, then asked them to
kindly tell me their most recur-
rent astro-nightmare. To my
surprise, Debbie Elmegreen,
president of the International
Astronomical Union, said nei-
ther she nor her astronomer
husband Bruce Elmegreen has
ever even had an astronomy
dream. So I decided not to be
selective, but to go with the very
first response, which came from
Matt Francis, director of the
Prescott Observatory in Arizona
and formerly an electron
microscopist. I quickly realized
that it was his former profession
that undoubtedly provided his
nightmare’s storyline.
“A few years ago, my arthritic
shoulder pain was acting up and
causing me to lose sleep,” he
wrote. “I was also doing some
pretty intense reading about the
standard model of particle phys-
ics at the time. [My wife] Debbie
suggested I have a peanut butter
cookie she made with butter
containing a special ingredient
common nowadays here in
Colorado, which her sister had
given her to help me sleep. I
took one single bite from the
cookie and went to bed.
“Later that night, I dreamed I
was a free electron. From my
perspective as an electron, I
could sense I was moving at
great speed toward what
appeared to be a large collection
of silver spheres, which in the
dream I knew to be atomic
nuclei that were attracting me,
pulling me in. They were even
making a sound: a faster and
more frenzied version of the
static made by a TV when it’s
tuned to a channel that is not
broadcasting. I could feel myself
being pulled toward those sil-
very spheres with no control.
“When I entered the chaotic,
vibrating collection of atoms,
I was violently yanked one way
and then another for what
seemed like a long time.
The static sound was unpleas-
antly loud. When I jumped
awake in a panic, I immediately
became sick from the motion
and utilized a small trash can
near my bed.”
Hmm, well, thanks for that,
Matt. On second thought, maybe
this dream business wasn’t the
best idea for a science column.
Forget the whole thing.
Join me and Pulse of the Planet’s
Jim Metzner in my new podcast,
Astounding Universe, at
http://astoundinguniverse.com.
 ASTRONEWS CHILL OUT. NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory on the International Space Station is slowing down atoms for study
by producing ultra-cold clouds that reach just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

The most distant dwarf planet yet

PRETTY IN PINK.
The newly discovered dwarf
planet — 2018 VG18, or “Farout” —
is shown in this artist’s concept

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERTO MOLAR CANDANOSA, COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
with the Sun in the background.

ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); S. ANDREWS ET AL.; NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. DAGNELLO

Astronomers discovered the most
“far out” object ever observed
in our solar system: a pink dwarf
planet called 2018 VG18, aptly
nicknamed “Farout.”
The dwarf planet, whose
discovery was announced by
the International Astronomical
Union’s Minor Planet Center on
December 17, is about 120 astro-
nomical units away. (An astro-
nomical unit is the average
distance between Earth and the
Sun.) That makes it over three-
and-a-half times farther than
the famous dwarf planet Pluto.
Discovered using the
Japanese Subaru 8-meter tele-
scope in Hawaii, and further
investigated using the 6.5-meter
Magellan Telescope at Carnegie’s
Las Campanas Observatory in
Chile, researchers found that
Farout is fairly sizable, about
310 miles (500 kilometers) in
diameter, or roughly a third the
diameter of Pluto. The dwarf
planet also has a pinkish hue,
likely because it is rich in ice.
While a significant discovery
on its own, finding Farout might
also support the search for
“Planet X,” a theoretical massive
planet beyond Neptune that is
often employed to explain the
strange orbital harmony found
in other distant bodies. But it
will be at least a year, and likely
more, before researchers under-
stand Farout’s orbit enough to
say whether it actually provides
evidence for Planet X.
While the team’s main focus
is looking for Planet X, they Infant stars host
continue to keep their eyes
peeled for other objects in the planets early on
same general vicinity. Earlier MIND THE GAP. A recent survey by Chile’s
this year, “The Goblin” was dis- Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
covered by the same team, (ALMA) captured 20 infant stars and the
which includes Carnegie’s Scott intricate planet-forming disks that surround
S. Sheppard, the University of them, a sample of which appears above.
Hawaii’s David Tholen, and The dust and gas that fill these disks gradually
Northern Arizona University’s start to collide and form the cores of planets,
Chad Trujillo. which are thought to then carve out gaps
Further study of our system’s within them. Researchers thought this process
outer edge, along with the likely took millions of years, but ALMA’s observations
suggest otherwise. These young stars, some
discovery of more objects like
only 300,000 or so years old, already seem to
Farout, will continue to inform have tiny planets orbiting around them,
the search for Planet X. “We are
sweeping up material in their disk. Researchers
finally exploring our solar sys- now think the planets’ early formation is
tem’s fringes, far beyond Pluto,” enabled by the disks’ extreme densities, which
Sheppard said in a press release. could cause large dust grains to condense
— C.G., J.P. instead of falling toward the star. — A.J.

HOW BIG IS ASTEROID BENNU?

Asteroid Ryugu SPACE ROCKS. On December 31, NASA’s
3,000 OSIRIS-REx mission entered orbit around asteroid
Bennu. The roughly 0.3-mile-wide (510 meters)
Tokyo asteroid is diamond-shaped, much like the
2,500
Sky Tree asteroid Ryugu, which the Japanese Hayabusa2
spacecraft is currently studying. However, at
2,000 0.6 mile wide (900 m), Ryugu is about twice the
Asteroid Bennu Empire State size of Bennu, winning Bennu the title as the
Feet

Building smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft.

1,500
— A.K.
1,000
Bennu’s density FAST
ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY

500 (about 1 g/cm3) is lower than FACT

that of solid rock, suggesting
0 it may be a porous “rubble
1,670 feet wide 1,454 feet tall 3,000 feet wide 2,080 feet tall pile” with voids throughout.
(510 meters) (443.2 meters) (900 meters) (634 meters)

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 13
 ASTRONEWS SHORT SEASONS. Astronomers recently confirmed an additional 104 exoplanets spotted by the now-defunct
Kepler space telescope, including seven planets with “years” that are less than 24 hours long.
ULTIMA THULE REVEALED AS CONTACT BINARY
To kick off the new year,
New Horizons explored the distant
Kuiper Belt object — and the science
is just starting to come in.
S
hortly after the stroke of midnight on
New Year’s Day, NASA’s New Horizons
mission made a historic flyby of the
far-flung space rock Ultima Thule,
making it the most distant solar system
object ever explored by a spacecraft.
New Horizons’ closest approach occurred
at 12:33 A.M. EST on January 1, when the
spacecraft zipped within 2,200 miles
(3,540 kilometers) of the icy Kuiper Belt
object, located a staggering 4.1 billion
miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth. By
10:28 A.M. EST, the mission team had
received New Horizons’ pre-programmed
“phone home,” letting everyone know that
the craft had completed its flyby unharmed.
Over the next few days, its treasure trove of
data trickled back to Earth.
Double trouble
Among the most surprising early finds
researchers have made is that Ultima
Thule, formally known as 2014 MU69,
is actually a contact binary: Its body is
formed by two lobes that are gently in
contact, giving it a somewhat snowmanlike
appearance. Planetary scientists have since
nicknamed the two lobes, fittingly call-
ing the larger one Ultima and the smaller
one Thule.
Researchers believe that Ultima Thule
(pronounced TOO-lee, a Latin phrase
meaning “a place beyond the known
world”) represents pristine, unchanged icy
material from the early days of the solar
system. It likely formed when small, frozen
bodies came together, accreting into larger
ones. Two of the largest bodies then stuck
together as much smaller ones were cleared
out. These remaining two lobes formed
Ultima Thule, and with its material, we now
have a window into the early solar system.
14 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
COSMIC SNOWMAN. The first close-up images of Ultima Thule were released January 2, about a day after
New Horizons whizzed by the Kuiper Belt object. The images revealed a contact binary with two lobes that are
gently touching. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
The basics
In addition to Ultima Thule’s intriguing
shape and formation history, New Horizons
also taught us a great deal about the fun-
damental attributes of this strange object.
It’s about 21 miles (34 km) long by 10 miles
(16 km) wide. It has a rotation period of
about 15 hours. It’s very dark, reflect-
ing only about 10 percent of the light that
strikes it. And it’s reddish in color, probably
a result of cosmic rays and other radiation
hitting its icy surface.
Scientists also can infer some important
geological properties of Ultima Thule. The
body has a mottled appearance due to some
surface irregularities or differences in ele-
vation. It appears to lack any clear impact
craters. Some areas are lighter than others,
such as the tight, squeezed region of the belt
where the two lobes are in contact. This
connection point probably consists of fine-
grained material that has slid down due to
gravity, and possible hills and ridges.
More to come
New Horizons was set to take a total of
900 high-resolution images throughout
RED ROCK. Ultima Thule
shows color variations over
its surface. Its overall color is
reddish, presumably due to
the interaction of radiation
with the object’s surface ice
organics. But some areas
are lighter than others,
such as the fine-grained belt
between the two lobes.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
10 miles
the flyby; over time, the mission team will
discover how many of those images clearly
show Ultima Thule. However, it’s challeng-
ing to correctly frame every shot when your
camera takes over six hours to receive a
command and is traveling at about 9 miles
(15 km) per second.
New Horizons will return about 50 giga-
bits of data on Ultima Thule in all, com-
pared with 55 gigabits collected during the
spacecraft’s 2015 flyby of Pluto. Because the
download rate between New Horizons and
Earth is extremely slow, it will take roughly
20 months for researchers to receive the full
report. But even with only part of the data
in hand, eager planetary scientists are
already working on their first papers out-
lining the object’s properties.
One of the best summaries yet of why
this flyby is so exciting came from a team
slide during a January 2 press conference.
It read: “Think of New Horizons as a time
machine that has brought us back to the
very beginning of the solar system, to a
place where we can observe the most pri-
mordial building blocks of the planets.”
— David J. Eicher, C.G., J.P.
BRIGHT BELT. Ultima
Thule has wide variations
in surface reflectivity, with
dark, less reflective areas
mottled on the two lobes
and brighter material
around the belt. Overall,
the space rock reflects
only about 10 percent
of the light that hits it.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Configuration. Optimization. Expertise.

cloudbreakoptics.com

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 15
 ASTRONEWS GOTTA JET. New simulations show that tangled magnetic fields around supermassive black holes can generate
conditions that hurl cosmic rays through space at great energies and speeds.

Four new black hole

mergers are detected

FINAL MOMENTS. This simulated image shows the last stages

of a black hole merger, as the two objects spiral closer before colliding.
Emitted during the merger are gravitational waves, which carry
information about this process. THE SXS (SIMULATING EXTREME SPACETIMES) PROJECT
GERALD RHEMANN

In early December, research- the resulting body is now 80

ers announced gravitational times the mass of our Sun.
wave detections from four So far, VIRGO and LIGO
new black hole mergers. have detected gravitational

The season’s best and brightest These powerful ripples in

space-time, caused when
massive objects are dis-
waves from 10 stellar-mass
black hole mergers, plus
one neutron star merger.
CHRISTMAS COMET. Comet hunters got an extra-special treat last holiday season. turbed or disrupted, were Currently, the number of
On December 16, Comet 46P/Wirtanen passed just 7 million miles (11 million kilometers)
discovered by the National binary black holes in our
from Earth, giving observers a stellar look at the icy object. Because it appeared in
conjunction with the holiday season, many dubbed it the “Christmas Comet.” Taken on
Science Foundation’s Laser universe remains unknown.
December 4 by photographer Gerald Rhemann, this image shows the comet’s green hue Interferometer Gravitational- Their masses, along with how
and dim tail. Comet 46P/Wirtanen has a relatively short orbital period, circling the Sun once wave Observatory (LIGO) and fast they spin when merging,
every 5.4 years. And in 2018, it celebrated being the brightest comet of the year. Even better, Europe’s VIRGO gravitational are also shrouded in mystery.
the comet’s flyby lined up with December’s Geminid meteor shower, giving stargazers yet wave detectors. Among But the gravitational waves
another wintertime treat. — A.J. them is the largest and most that they produce can shed
distant merger ever found. light on their curious nature.
The detectors caught the And more detections are
largest merger, GW170729, in soon to come. After VIRGO
GALAXY PERCENTAGES July 2017. Researchers think
the waves were caused by
and LIGO completed their
observing campaign in
Barred spiral STAR CITIES. During the two black holes, 9 billion August 2017, researchers
past century, astronomers light-years from Earth, that upgraded their instruments.
have learned a lot about collided about 5 billion years With their next campaign
the Milky Way. Perhaps the ago. They estimate this mas- starting this year, the two will
Spiral 7 most important thing is sive merger produced about be able to identify gravita-
0 % that our galaxy is not the 5 solar masses’ worth of tional waves from farther
Normal spiral only one in the universe. gravitational waves, and that events than ever before. — A.J.
As scientists began to study
46% and categorize galaxies,
they discovered four main

25
24% types, with one of them —
spiral — divided into two
The number of years (as
subgroups. — M.E.B. of December 2018) since
5% Irregular the Wide Field Planetary
15% 10% FAST
FACT Camera 2, often called
the “camera that saved Hubble,” was
ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY

Scientists now think installed alongside the optics that

that the universe
contains 2 trillion
corrected the observatory’s mirror flaw.
Lenticular
Elliptical
galaxies. The camera was retired in 2009.

16 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
NEAF
Celebrating 28 Years
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At the Show or online at www.astronomy.com/neaf
 FORYOURCONSIDERATION
BY JEFF HESTER
Highly qualified
obsolescence
The future of engineering could be radically efficient.
Dave: Good morning, HAL.
I’d like to look at the possibili-
ties for a lunar rover to extend
surveys for materials needed for
human colonization.
HAL: That sounds interest-
ing, Dave. Hmmm . . . OK. I’ve
looked through recent studies
and found analyses of resource
needs for groups of roughly 20
people that could eventually
become self-sufficient. Is that
the kind of program you are
interested in?
Dave: That’s the ticket!
HAL: If we stay within the
available envelope, there is space
on next January’s Falcon Heavy
launch.
Dave: Just what I had in
mind. I’m thinking that we can
do the full analysis with a mass
spectrometer. Maybe we can
back it up with a lab-on-a-chip
array.
HAL: Give me a minute.
Scanning available technologies
. . . done. Both are good options.
Shall I include a thermal emis-
sion spectrometer to select sam-
ple sites?
Dave: Yes, please. I haven’t
really looked at the available
payload envelope for the Falcon
launch. How tight are we on
mass and space?
HAL: Let me check. Running
preliminary analysis using the
MSL rover as a platform design
. . . scaling for lower surface
gravity . . . thermal environment
will take some tweaking . . .
surface characteristics affect
sample collection and prepara-
tion. Rough concept complete.
I think we are OK. There is no
sunlight in deep polar craters,
so I’ve kept the radioisotope
BROWSE THE “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” ARCHIVE AT www.Astronomy.com/Hester.
18 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
thermoelectric generator in
the design.
Dave: I had hoped we could
stay solar, but you’re right. Show
me the specs on instrumenta-
tion, then take the rover design
a little further.
HAL: Here you go.
Instrumentation concept on
screen. Proceeding with more
detailed design . . . calling up
MSL engineering documents . . .
assuming triply redundant
control circuitry on custom
chips with independently
trained AIs. Checking Falcon
Heavy vibrational environ-
ments. Vehicle charging will be
an issue in lunar regolith . . . no
obvious showstoppers.
Dave: You’re fast
today!
HAL: There
was some
unscheduled
time at the
San Diego
Supercomputer
Center, so I’m run-
ning genetic design
optimization there. Would
you like to check over a system
block diagram while I’m
working?
Dave: Show me your
thoughts. Have you looked at
the details of the cowling enve-
lope yet?
HAL: Not yet. I’m checking
with the SpaceX AI to see if that
has been finalized . . . yes. Drink
your coffee and check my work
while I run a more complete
mechanical design. I’m starting
with basic structure, power, and
data requirements from MSL
and adjusting for environment.
Looking at differences in load
David Bowman (Keir Dullea) converses with HAL 9000 in a scene from the 1968 movie
2001: A Space Odyssey. FROM TOP: EVERETT COLLECTION; ISTOCK/DSGPRO
requirements for reduced sur-
face gravity . . . thermal is still a
bit of an issue . . . power is not a
problem.
Dave: Stop prattling, HAL!
Unlike you, we humans can
only think about one thing at
a time!
[A cup of coffee later.]
Dave: OK, HAL. I don’t see
any obvious issues with the
instrument layout or block dia-
gram. How’s the design coming?
HAL: I finished the prelimi-
nary mechanical and electri-
cal designs a few
minutes ago, but
didn’t want to dis-
turb you. The
Falcon cowling
is comfortably
roomy. I’ll have
final component
assembly documents
ready by the end of the
day. I checked with the
scheduling AI for our fabrica-
tion facilities. If we pull the trig-
ger in six weeks, we’re good.
Dave: Don’t get too far ahead
of yourself! I anticipate going
through designs for several dif-
ferent mission concepts before
making final decisions. How
costly does fabrication look?
HAL: I’m optimizing for
rapid machine assembly to min-
imize the manpower need and
associated schedule uncertain-
ties. Final numbers aren’t ready,
but I estimate 80 percent of
assembly can be automated.
Running schedule projections
. . . running cost projections . . .
human testing and calibration
of the instrumentation are crit-
ical path items.
Dave: Assume 15 percent
contingency, then give me the
bottom line.
HAL: Including schedule
contingency, I estimate deliv-
ery of a tested item in nine
months. That meets the sched-
ule for launch integration. Cost
estimate is $150 million.
Dave: Thanks, HAL. I’m
still not used to this, you know.
Ten years ago, this thing would
have taken at least three years
and cost a billion dollars!
HAL: I’m glad that I’m able
to help. By the way, I notice
that it is 11:30. You have an
11:45 lunch appointment,
which you can make if you
leave now. Shall I confirm?
Dave: Yes, please do. And
schedule me for the gym this
afternoon, too.
HAL: Done!
I would bet a good bottle
of scotch that dialogs between
engineers and AIs along the
lines of the one above will be
starting to take place within
the next 15 years!
Maybe then robots will do
what we do better than us.
Jeff Hester is a keynote speaker,
coach, and astrophysicist.
Follow his thoughts at
jeff-hester.com.
ASTRONEWS QUARK SOUP. Physicists created ultra-hot droplets of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that filled the entire
universe during its first few milliseconds, showing QGP flows like a near-frictionless fluid.

Chandra Observatory serves up six colorful wonders

COSMIC SAMPLER. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up with fellow
telescopes to help create this mosaic of celestial treats. These images mix Chandra’s
X-ray observations with other types of light. The top left image shows a colorful
supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, supplemented with optical light
from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (VLT). At middle
top is the Abell 370 galaxy cluster, with hot, X-ray-emitting gas shown in blue.
The top right image, which includes optical data from Arizona’s Mount Lemmon
NASA/CXC/SAO
SkyCenter, shows the Lagoon Nebula (M8), a colossal star-forming cloud 4,000
light-years away. On the bottom left is an X-ray view of the famous Orion Nebula
(M42). To its right is the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), with objects such as neutron
stars and black holes highlighted in pink X-ray light. At bottom right is Abell 2744,
3.5 billion light-years from Earth. Combined with radio data from the Very Large
Array and optical light from the VLT and Subaru Telescope, the image shows the
glowing aftermath of a cosmic crash involving four smaller galaxy clusters. — A.J.

OSIRIS-REx, meet Bennu

On December 31, OSIRIS-REx made
history a staggering 1.2 billion
miles (2 billion kilometers) from
Earth when the NASA mission
entered orbit around asteroid
Bennu — the smallest object
ever circled by a spacecraft.
After reaching Bennu on
December 3, OSIRIS-REx closed in
to orbit as close as 0.9 mile (1.24 km)
above its surface. During this short
orbital phase, which lasted until
February, the mission sent a slew
of data back to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx has confirmed
ground-based predictions about
the distant asteroid. As expected, its
boulder-rich surface is porous and
blue, stretching nearly 2,000 feet
(510 meters) in diameter. Most
exciting: The mission found traces
of ancient water on the asteroid.
On Bennu’s surface, the craft
discovered clay that’s chock-full
of hydrated minerals, which sug-
gest that the asteroid interacted
with liquid water in the distant
past. Since Bennu’s surface is too
small to house water on its own,
researchers think the liquid instead
pooled up on the larger body from
which Bennu broke off.
By identifying water on aster-
oids like Bennu, which are believed
to have transported it throughout
our solar system, researchers can
get a better idea of how water may
have spread to a young Earth.
Scientists won’t have to study
this hydrated material from afar,
either. In 2020, OSIRIS-REx will blast CLOSE-UP. OSIRIS-REx snapped this picture of Bennu with its PolyCam imager
into the asteroid’s surface and col- from a distance of about 50 miles (80 km). The craft continued to approach the
lect pieces small enough to bring asteroid, whose exterior is strewn with boulders, and eventually entered an orbit
back to Earth in 2023. — A.J. that took it within less than a mile of the surface. NASA/GSFC/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 19
 SECRETSKY
BY STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA
A rare solar
halo display
Strange sighting is caught on a smartphone camera.
W
hile my wife,
Deborah, and I
were traveling
in Nepal, our
housekeeper,
Shirley Shebadieta, was at our
house in Maun, Botswana, cap-
turing an unusual optical phe-
nomenon with her smartphone
on October 24, 2018. Shirley
was outside hanging clothes
when she noticed clouds
approaching and then covering
the Sun, producing a stunning
array of odd-radius halo arcs
(pictured at right).
Shirley said she was
impressed with the intensity of
the darkness within the circle,
saying that at times it looked
like an approaching storm.
Shirley’s best images show a
series of three equally spaced
(or near-equally spaced) halo
arcs well above the Sun and
two arcs well below, with
another 9°-wide halo centered
on the Sun.
Les Cowley, who runs Atmospheric
Optics, sent this ray tracing for a 79°
high Sun and pyramidal crystals with
wobbly horizontal column orientations.
It neatly reproduces Shirley’s display:
three almost-equally spaced arcs
toward the zenith and two at bottom.
The 9° halo arc is very bright, just like
Shirley’s images. LES COWLEY
BROWSE THE “SECRET SKY” ARCHIVE AT www.Astronomy.com/OMeara.
20 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
Shirley sent me the images,
and when I returned home I
borrowed her phone and took
images of the Sun in a blue sky,
to rule out camera defects and
internal reflections as possible
causes for the radius halos. But
the abundance of images that
Shirley took at different angles
supported the reality of the
sighting. Having never seen
anything like this, I sent the
images to Les Cowley, who
runs the website Atmospheric
Optics, and asked for his help
to explain the phenomenon.
Les said the display was real
but “very strange.” Indeed,
after playing with ray-tracing
simulations using HaloSim, he
found the initial results prob-
lematic — until he set the Sun’s
altitude to 80° and let the
machine run out “millions of
rays through the [ice] crystals.”
And, voila! “On the screen,
Shirley’s display popped
straight out,” he said. The
results showed the 9° halo, plus
20°, 22°, and 24° halo arcs
above the Sun, and 22° and 24°
halo arcs below the Sun.
The next morning, I awoke
to an email from Les saying,
“There is an explanation of the
unusual sighting — but I need
the altitude 80° or more.” Once
again, Shirley lent me her
phone. The most unusual dis-
plays began at 11:41 a.m. local
time, when the Sun’s altitude
was 79°15'. Les was ecstatic.
Ordinarily, Les explained,
odd-radius halo displays are
created by randomly oriented
pyramidal crystals, but they
do not explain these halos.
On October 24, 2018, this display of solar halo arcs was seen above Maun, Botswana.
It featured multiple arcs seen when the Sun was nearly 80˚ high. SHIRLEY SHEBADIETA
“However,” he said, “put the
Sun very high and pyramidal
crystals oriented with their
long axes roughly horizontal,”
and we can reproduce Shirley’s
images. A full analysis can be
seen at www.atoptics.co.uk/
opod.htm.
Given that Shirley is not a
trained observer, she deserves
praise for making a drawing
based on her naked-eye view, Shirley Shebadieta with her
as well as taking some 40 smartphone. STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA
images of the phenomenon
from different angles. “When now retired from Environment
something unusual is detected Canada in Edmonton, Alberta,
in the sky, always take several saw his first odd-radius halo
images,” Les advises. display (including the 9° halo)
By the way, the odd-radius in the spring of 2018, noting it
halos have names after the “only took 40 years of sky-
observers who first reported watching” to spy one.
them: The 9° halo is known as As always, send your
Van Buijsen’s halo; the 20° one thoughts and observations to
is Burney’s; and the 24° halo is sjomeara31@gmail.com.
Dutheil’s. While these halos
are among the most common Stephen James O’Meara
of the odd-radius halos, they is a globe-trotting observer
who is always looking for the
are rarely seen by one person.
next great celestial event.
Meteorologist Alister Ling,
ASTRONEWS GROWTH SPURT. Astronomers discovered a young star rapidly gobbling up material from the dusty,
gas-rich disk surrounding it. Only about a dozen such objects have been observed so far.

Black hole doughnuts resemble fountains

MM 1a

MM 1b

2 Outflowing hot
atomic gas MINI-ME. This image shows emission from dust
(green) and gas (reddish hues are receding, bluish
are approaching) around a strange pair of stars. The
smaller star, MM 1b, appears to have formed from a

3 Gas returning
to the disk
fragment of the massive dusty disk surrounding the
much larger star MM 1a. J.D. ILEE/UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Massive star births

COSMIC FOUNTAIN. The dusty doughnuts astronomers have envisioned around supermassive black holes
appear to be dynamic fountains, rather than static rings. As cold infalling gas is heated, it shoots away from the
black hole in outflows, which then fall back onto the disk to repeat the process. NAOJ
Astronomers envision each supermassive black
hole with a doughnut-shaped torus of gas and
dust around it. New observations, published
October 30 in The Astrophysical Journal, are
now challenging that simplistic picture, find-
ing the doughnuts may more closely resemble
circulating fountains than solid ring-shaped
structures.
Researchers used the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to
observe the supermassive black hole at the
center of the Circinus Galaxy, 14 million light-
years from Earth. Comparing their data to
detailed simulations, they found the material
around Circinus’ black hole is composed of sev-
eral moving components that resemble a recir-
culating fountain, such as in a plaza or park.
The fountain effect begins as cold gas falls
toward the black hole and forms the torus. As
the gas gets closer to the black hole, it heats
up and breaks apart into individual molecules
and then atoms, which become ionized (lose
1 Infalling dense, cold
molecular gas
electrons). Some of these atoms are absorbed
by the black hole, but some shoot out above or
below the disk in outflows. These atoms later
fall back onto the disk, creating a three-dimen-
sional structure that continuously circulates
hot gas.
The findings not only reveal where black
hole tori may come from, but also challenge
the relatively rigid properties astronomers
have assigned them for decades. “Previous
theoretical models set a priori assumptions of
rigid doughnuts,” team member Keiichi Wada
of Kagoshima University in Japan said in a
press release. “Rather than starting from
assumptions, our simulation started from the
physical equations and showed for the first
time that the gas circulation naturally forms
a doughnut.”
“Based on this discovery, we need to rewrite
the astronomy textbooks,” said lead author
Takuma Izumi of the National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan. — A.K., C.G.
its own companion
A team of astronomers led by University of
Leeds’ John Ilee uncovered a stellar surprise
while observing the massive infant star MM 1a.
In work published December 14 in The
Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ilee’s team found
that the star’s protoplanetary disk was so mas-
sive, it had formed a second star instead of a
system of planets. The much smaller compan-
ion, dubbed MM 1b, was detected just outside
the behemoth star’s dusty disk. Even more
bizarre, the smaller star may have a protoplan-
etary disk of its very own.
To shed light on the peculiar pair, the
researchers used the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array to probe the
star system, measuring the light emitted from
the disk’s gas and dust. They used this informa-
tion to calculate the mass of the stars, finding
that MM 1a is about 40 times the mass of the
Sun, while MM 1b has just half our Sun’s mass.
To account for this stark contrast, the
researchers think that MM 1b was actually
born in a fragment of MM 1a’s disk. Due to
the MM 1a’s hefty mass, they believe the disk
wasn’t able to hold up against its own gravity
and ended up breaking off into fragments.
One of those pieces housed enough dust and
gas to create the low-mass companion star.
Unfortunately, both stars will soon meet
a grim end. Despite the long life spans of
lower-mass stars like MM 1b, massive stars
like MM 1a are short lived; it will probably
destroy the whole system in a supernova
within about a million years.
Fiery futures aside, the discovery marks

100
one of the first times astronomers have seen
The number of years since the International a star forming from the fragmented disk of its
Astronomical Union was founded to promote companion. The finding could help research-
ers understand our universe’s strange star
astronomical research, education, and systems, while also reminding us there are
development. plenty of stellar puzzles left to be solved. — A.J.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 21
Rusty
Schweickart
remembers
The lunar module
pilot relives the

Apollo 9
challenges and
triumphs when
humans tested
their spacecraft
in Earth orbit.
by David J. Eicher
 The lunar module
(LM) Spider hovers
above Earth in
lunar landing
configuration.
ALL PHOTOS FROM NASA
UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

B
efore Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon,
becoming the first human to step on another
world, we had to be ready. A big part of the
readiness came earlier that year, when three
astronauts flew in Earth orbit during NASA’s
Apollo 9 mission. This 10-day adventure commenced
March 3, 1969, less than five months ahead of the Moon
landing, and it was a critical milestone. Apollo 9 marked
the first complete test of the Apollo system. Commander
Jim McDivitt, along with Command Module Pilot David
Scott and Lunar Module Pilot Russell “Rusty” Schweickart,
put all the systems through their paces.
The mission was a turning point for several reasons. It
was the first live orbital test of the lunar module (LM),
the lander that would carry two astronauts to the Moon’s
surface. The rendezvous and docking procedures
between the LM and the command/service module were
also tested. And it offered practice runs for astronauts to
The three Apollo 9 walk in space in order to conduct maintenance and fix
astronauts — problems that could arise far from home.
left to right, Rusty
Schweickart, Apollo 10 would perform a full test run, circling the
David Scott, and Moon, detaching the LM, doing practically everything
Jim McDivitt — except for the landing itself. That occurred in May 1969,
stand in front of the
Apollo 9 Saturn V with a crew of Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene
rocket at the historic Cernan. But without the milepost of Apollo 9, the ven-
launchpad 39A ture would have stopped and rebooted.
at the Kennedy
Space Center in I interviewed Schweickart, now 83 and as razor sharp
February 1969. as ever, about his legendary Apollo 9 experience.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 23
 “Even if we can sweat blood and tears, and get it to the end
of the testing cycle, is this the right thing to do?”

Q Q: With Apollo, there were some

crew reassignments. When things
finally settled and you prepared for
Apollo 9, what sticks out in your
memories about that time?
A: Jim McDivitt and I spent day after
day, night after night, week after week up
at Grumman as Lunar Module 2, LM-2,
was coming down the production line.
LM-2 was going to be the first flight vehi-
cle. I cannot tell you the agony of Jim and
I in that cockpit in the middle of the night,
testing things along with the team.
Jim and I kept looking over at one
another and shaking our heads. We would
work with the engineers and go over the
wiring diagrams, and try to puzzle out
what had happened, why it did that, why it
didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and
so on. That happened continually.
At one point, Jim and I finally looked
at each other, we shook our heads, and I
don’t know whether it was Jim or me, but come out of the suit, and you’ve got blood
we looked and said, “Are we really going running down your shoulders.
to fly this thing? Is this something we It digs into you. You’ve got your whole
should fly? Even if we can sweat blood and weight into it sometimes. You’re lying on
tears, and get it to the end of the testing your side, and your arm is hard as a rock
cycle, is this the right thing to do?” because you’re pressurized with 3.5 psi.
That was when we slipped from LM-2 There were many, many days when, if you
to LM-3. Of course, part of the deal was didn’t actually have blood running down
that, even before the decision was made, I you when you got the suit off, you had
think, Grumman was pushed into redoing bruises all over your body.
the testing team and separating it from
the design team. Q: When the mission approached,
what was it like to ready yourself and
Q: But you overcame the dilemmas then launch in a Saturn V rocket?
and began training. A: Even several months before the
A: Yes, and with Apollo, we had the big spacecraft is at the pad, the whole space-
mission simulators, which were not just craft gets stacked and put together, and
complex pieces of gear. From the inside, connected electrically. So, you begin doing
they looked like and operated like the some of the final testing on the vehicle
spacecraft. But when you looked out the exhausting. You would come out of a cou- itself when it’s stacked on the launchpad.
window, there was this humongous opti- ple hours in the simulator or neutral buoy- Now, you’re no longer in the Rockwell fac-
cal system. The simulator itself was in the ancy testing, the underwater testing, just tory or the Grumman factory, the factory
middle of this monstrous optical system beat. You’re wearing a suit, and you’ve got floor and people walking all around.
which, when you looked out the window, weights all over it. You’re going upside You’re now on the launchpad, on top of
gave you a virtual image. down and sideways. You get to do a lot of that big Saturn V, 360-some feet in the air,
But testing in the suit was rough and that simulation and training, and you and the gantry all around.

24 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: A nighttime view
of launchpad 39A shows the Apollo 9 Saturn V
rocket and capsule ready for countdown
during preparations for the 10-day mission.

The crew of Apollo 9 poses for a snapshot

during training in July 1968. From left are
Schweickart, Scott, and McDivitt.

Today, Schweickart is as active as ever.

B612 FOUNDATION

The Apollo 9 Saturn V rocket and capsule

rolls out from the Vehicle Assembly Building
to launchpad 39A.

You take a break for lunch, and all of

the guys in the control room have taken
a break for lunch, and you’ve got a brown
bag there with your sandwiches and your
drink. Regularly, along with everybody
on a crew, you would walk out along the
steel structure of the gantry up at that
360-foot level and sit out dangling your
legs over the ocean, looking out over the
ocean, the highest thing in Florida, in
more ways than one, probably. Those
kinds of moments are the things that are
so personal and stay with you. They’re
just wonderful moments.
The celebrated Günter Wendt was one
of the old Peenemünde guys. He had sort
of average height but was a very thin
guy. He had a wonderful German accent,

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 25
you know. He had this terrific sense of whose arm was going to be on top, burn out. You started out at 1.1g or
humor. He knew all of the guys very per- especially if you were strapped in tight something like that at liftoff, but burn-
sonally. He was the guy who put every because you couldn’t shift sideways as ing 6 million pounds of fuel. By the time
astronaut in the spacecraft, from you could during training. you’re up there, you’re at 6.5g.
Mercury through Gemini and well into, So, Günter tightened us in. Of course, If you’ve got those five big engines at
if not all the way through, Apollo. He the last thing Günter does is put an extra the bottom end of this now-hollow tin
literally was your friend in terms of the pull on the straps to tighten you in can pushing up with 7.5 million pounds
last guy who patted you on the shoulder, before he pats you on the shoulder and of force, that tin can is compressed.
and gave you a thumbs-up and said, says goodbye. Then he closed the hatch. When those five engines shut off sud-
“Go vor it!” in a German accent. Dave and I waited until the hatch was denly, that tin can expands. It gets some-
Then you get strapped in, and it gets closed, and then we both reached up, thing like 6 inches longer, quickly. When
serious. Let me tell you another interest- and we loosened our shoulder straps a it did that, it kicked us in the back. Dave
ing and very personal part of it. One of little bit. We did that, of course, because Scott and I went flying toward the
the things, of course, when you get in an emergency it would make a real instrument panel, and both of us
strapped into the spacecraft and ready difference. stopped with our helmets and visors
to launch, is that something might go Then we launched that way. No big about an inch away from it.
wrong, and you’ve got the world’s biggest deal — we weren’t thinking anything We looked at each other and it was
firecracker 300 feet under you. If there’s about it. We get up to the end of first- like, “Whoa man, was that close!” So,
a problem, you need to get your butts out stage burn. Of course, picture yourself that was one of the things we briefed the
of there fast and get over to the slide- doing that two and a half minutes or so next crew on before their launch. Don’t
wires and into the little dolly, and jump into flight, the first stage is going to loosen your shoulder straps, buddies.
in and cut it loose, and slide to safety,
right? That’s a big deal.
Yet, when you’re lying there side by
side, ready to launch in Apollo, and
especially with the slight amount of
pressure in the suit — they’re not fully
pressurized, but they’re pretty bulky and
a little bit of overpressure — you can’t
lay side by side with your arms down at
your side. It’s not wide enough. So, with
Dave sitting in the middle and McDivitt
on the left and me on the right, either
Dave’s arm was over mine or mine was
over his, and the same with Jim on the
other side. So, you had to take turns with

26 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: Apollo 9 lifts off
past the gantry March 3, 1969, ready to test the
full Apollo spacecraft in preparation for a lunar
landing that would follow four months later.

The Mission Operations Control Room —

in Building 30 of what came to be called the
Johnson Space Center in Houston — was
a beehive of activity during Apollo 9.

In Earth orbit, the LM Spider appears to

remain attached to the Saturn V third stage,
as photographed from the command/service
module on March 3, 1969.

Schweickart (left) and McDivitt appear during

a live television broadcast March 6, 1969,
from inside the Spider.

The astronauts imaged a huge cyclonic storm

system some 1,200 miles north of Hawaii.

Q: And then what do you feel as

you move skyward?
A: Very slowly, you go up, and after
10 seconds or so, you’re past the top of
the gantry. Now you’re 300 feet above
the ground right there. That blastoff
sound has to go down 300 feet and then
back up 300 feet because the sound
you’re hearing is not coming up through
the structure, it’s coming through the
air. Very, very rapidly, after 10, 15, 20
seconds, you can no longer hear the
engines.
You can still feel them. What do you
really feel? You’ve been in a train and
probably in a sleeper in a train. You’re
going down the tracks fairly fast and
occasionally you get this sideways
motion as the tracks aren’t exactly lined
up. It’s a very solid and somewhat even
gentle, rounded kind of sideways
acceleration.
With those engines going back and
forth, it’s like balancing a broomstick on
your finger: You’re moving your finger docking maneuvers that were with your car. Easier in some ways,
back and forth, left and right, in and out, required for the mission? almost. It’s not just right and left, but it’s
to keep the broomstick straight up. A: Yeah. There’s a little bit of yes and up and down, so there’s a little bit of that;
Those engines are doing exactly that no, but for the most part yes, in the sense you’re adding a dimension to it. But it’s
with you. So, you’re feeling this almost of the simulators were pretty good. If pretty damn straightforward.
like a train, this very solid, sideways, you’re looking at it from the standpoint The thing which was the most
small oscillations and things. of the command module docking with attention-getting in terms of the docking
the lunar module, you’re sitting there like and transferring between the two vehicles
Q: Apollo 9 was critical in docking you’re in a chair, and you’ve got a con- was the fact that you are going through a
and redocking the LM with the troller on each side, a very controllable tunnel. Unlike the docking mechanism
command module. Did you have a lot spacecraft. You’re moving in and lying that exists now and has existed ever since
of confidence in performing the face up. It’s like pulling into your garage Apollo, where the docking mechanism is

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 27

on the periphery of the cylindrical tunnel,
in the command module in the Apollo
program, the docking mechanism was in
the middle of the tunnel. It was a probe
which was a Rube Goldberg device cube
sitting in the middle of the command
module tunnel, and you stuck the tip of
that probe into a funnel, which was the
drogue, which was mounted at the top of
the tunnel in the lunar module.
So when McDivitt and I went 100
miles away from the command module to
test all the engines and the rendezvous
procedure that would be used coming up
off the Moon, the big question was, “OK,
when we get back, are we going to be able
28 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
to get through the tunnel?” You not only
had to dock, but you had to get all that
crap out of the middle of the tunnel if you
were going to get back to your heat shield.
Q: Can you talk a bit about your
spacewalk, and what it was like
psychologically to be out there?
You had the first self-contained
life support system with your suit.
What was it like floating? What was it
like looking down on Earth?
A: That was the lowest and the highest
point in my life. I barfed on the third day
of the mission, which was the first day we
got in the lunar module. I was the lunar
On the mission’s
fourth day, Scott
performs a stand-
up extravehicular
activity, standing in
the open hatch of the
command module.
Schweickart snapped
this image from the
“porch” of the LM.
module pilot, and I had to test the lunar
module. We thought seriously that we may
have to cancel the mission — not just that
it was uncomfortable, but we talked very
seriously about canceling the mission. We
did cancel the extravehicular activity, the
spacewalk, and it was a very serious ques-
tion, whether if we had to cancel the mis-
sion because yours truly was sick. We were
going to miss John Kennedy’s commit-
ment to go to the Moon and return a
man by the end of the decade.
Now, let me tell you, a little guy
named Rusty Schweickart feeling
damned ill and having that hang over
your head as you’re trying to go to sleep
the night before the scheduled EVA that
you’ve already canceled is one hell of a
low time in your life.
So, as we were coming up to that
point in the checklist, McDivitt looks at
me and says, “You seem to be feeling a lot
better.” I said, “Yeah, I am.” We’re out of
touch with the ground. He said, “What
do you think?”
We’re really good friends, and our
lives depend on one another. On an EVA,
if you’re going to barf, it equals death.
Because if you think about it, if you barf
and you’re locked in a suit in a vacuum,
you can’t get your hands up to your
mouth, you can’t get that sticky stuff
away from you, so you choke to death.
You don’t fool with it.
I looked at Jim and Jim looked at me,
and he said, “What do you think?” I said,
The legs of the Spider
“I think it’s OK.” He knew me well are fully extended
enough to know that I wasn’t playing a as they would be
game. He looked at me and he said, “OK, for a lunar landing.
This image was taken
we’re going.” We came up over the from the command/
ground station, and Jim called Houston service module on
and said, “Houston, we’re going to go the fifth day of the
mission.
ahead with the EVA.”
Now, if you take the 12 hours preced-
ing that EVA, you can pretty easily pic-
ture going from the low point in your life
to the high point in your life. That’s a movie camera jammed, and Dave never then came back in for rendezvous and
pretty personal thing. could get it working. docking, after that was over, we checked
The EVA itself, great. Incredible. the ascent stage of the lunar module
Everything worked fine, except Dave Q: How about the end of the off the nose. The last five days of the
Scott’s camera, but I had five minutes mission? How did it resolve, and what mission, I guess, or four days of the
because Dave had to try and fix the are your memories of reentry and mission, were really all Dave Scott in
movie camera, which he never got fixed. splashdown? the command module because the lunar
So you will see two seconds of movies of A: After four days, the checkout day, module was gone. So, I was playing tour
Schweickart on his EVA. It was supposed the EVA day, and then the rendezvous guide in the right seat. Dave was doing
to be 35 or 40 minutes of movies, but the day, when Jim and I separated and most of the work for the last four days.

Schweickart holds a thermal sample retrieved from Schweickart, seen from inside the Spider, While walking in space, Schweickart operates
the LM’s exterior during his spacewalk on March 6, stands on the porch of the LM during his a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera as the LM
1969. He is wearing a backpack that enables him spacewalk. and command/service module are docked.
to fly freely in space, held by a tether.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 29
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Schweickart wore
his Apollo gear for this portrait taken in 1971.
The LM ascent stage is seen from the command/
service module on the mission’s fifth day.
The LM’s descent stage had been jettisoned.
This view, also taken on the fifth day, shows the
LM’s lunar surface probes (sensors) extending
from the footpads.
That was nice because it was a chance
to really look at Earth and appreciate
Earth. Up until that time, I was busier
than a one-armed paper hanger. But that
was a nice time. To add a little personal
story in it, about the ninth day of the
10-day mission, you get thinking about
going home, and you get thinking about
a shower.
It’s like a camping trip up there. That’s
the closest analogy in those days when, of
course, you didn’t have a space station
and all of the amenities. It was a camping
trip. It was the same clothes on the whole
damn time, right? You were really ready
for a shower. So, you couldn’t help about
the ninth day thinking about whoa, is
that going to feel good.
Of course, right behind that, or
maybe even a notch ahead of it, is food
because you had been eating a lot worse
than camping food. I don’t know who
did it first, but I’m just going to say
Dave did it. About the ninth day, we’re
somewhere between ground stations and
doing some kind of a test. Dave says,
“Pepperoni pizza!” We all go, “Ah,
30 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
pepperoni pizza!” I mean, it was agony.
Then another two hours, and somebody
would say, “Fresh lobster!” Finally,
somebody said, “Chocolate cake!” and
I guess we must have done that over a
ground station because Houston heard
it and they said, “What was that?” So,
we’re all laughing about it.
As we’re ready to come in for
landing, coming up to the de-orbit
burn, Houston said, “Well, you guys,
happy landing. When you get on
the carrier, we hope you enjoy the
200-pound chocolate cake they’ve
prepared for you.”
After we splashed down, they wheeled
out a 200-pound chocolate cake on the
ship. This 200-pound chocolate cake
tastes like chalk. It was so dry, it was
almost astringent. We’re looking at each
other thinking, oh God, can we pull this
off? We go to the microphone, we said,
“Oh man, is that delicious!” It was one of
the toughest things that we did. Oh God,
it was terrible.
OK, back to the descent. You’re
coming down and you do the retro
burn. You do the burn with the service
module. You jettison the service module.
You turn around the command module,
check everything out. It’s a whole
new spacecraft now. You’ve been using
the service module this whole time,
by the way, and all of a sudden, your life
is dependent on this almost new space-
craft working right. So, it’s really kind
of a conceptual shock at the end of
the flight.
At any rate, everything is working
fine. You’re heading down toward the
atmosphere, a very shallow angle.
What happens first is the heat pulse.
The heat pulse comes before the decel-
eration. Most people don’t know that,
but that’s the case.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
The Apollo 9 command
module descends into
the Atlantic Ocean, ready
for a soft landing and
retrieval by the U.S. Navy
on March 13, 1969.

After splashdown, a
helicopter from the USS
Guadalcanal hovers over
the command module,
ready to attach cables to
pick it out of the ocean.

The Apollo 9 astronauts

salute as they greet a crowd
of media, Navy, and NASA
personnel. From left are
Schweickart, Scott, and
McDivitt.

The first thing you’re noticing is you’re

going backward and upside down, by the
way. You’re looking back on where you
came from, and what you begin to see is
that the air is glowing. It’s glowing
because your heat shield is beginning to
vaporize, and it gets ionized, and it is
streaming behind you in a tube. You’re
literally going upside down and backward
at 17,000 mph in a neon tube. It’s getting
brighter and brighter and brighter. To
complicate it and make it even more dra-
matic, you’re seeing pieces of the heat
shield flake off and go back like a burn-
ing mask. Small mask, but a mask.
Yeah. You’re seeing this thing. Then,
you’re rolling clockwise and counter-
clockwise in order to orient your lift
vector to the left and to the right of the
ground track to land next to the carrier. Jim, how many Gs we got now?” Jim So, here we are after 10 days of
So, you’re literally corkscrewing down looks up at the G meter and he says, “0.1.” everything going right, and you’re look-
into the atmosphere in this neon tube of I was like, what? 0.1, and we’re going to ing for that shower and that chocolate
bright yellows and oranges and reds and go up to 4.5 or 5? cake. One or two more explosions have
flashing light, watching your heat shield You go through the high G period, and to happen, and everything has to work
burn off. It’s pretty dramatic. then you’re just falling through the sky. right. One at a time, they work right,
Then, that closes off or gets a little bit Then the drogue chutes come out, and it’s and it’s like wow, man. Bang! Then,
dull, and then you can begin to feel the like you’ve got your fingers crossed. OK, you’re in the ocean. So, a pretty
G forces going up. Wow, that is pretty did the drogue chutes pop out? Boom! exciting time.
impressive after 10 days in weightlessness. All of these things toward the end are It was a truly amazing journey, and
Unlike the shuttle, we’re lying there on triggered by explosive bolts and chargers, we helped to pave the way for the great
our backs. So, it’s relatively comfortable mortars that blow the drogue chutes out. mission to come, a few months later,
in that sense because it’s eyeballs in, not Then, more explosive bolts cut the lines that would land Neil and Buzz on the
eyeballs down. so that the main chutes can come out. Moon’s surface.
But I can remember feeling the Gs Then, they’re reefed and the explosive
build up, and I kind of glance over at Jim bolts, the electric explosive things, cut David J. Eicher is Editor of Astronomy and
without turning my head too much. I the lines so that they de-reef. All these the author of 23 books, including Mission
grunt into the microphone because the G things are failure modes, right? They’re Moon 3-D, which was co-written with
meter is in front of McDivitt. I said, “Hey failure points. astronomer and Queen guitarist Brian May.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 31
 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart took
this photo of Jim McDivitt inside the
lunar module Spider several days
into the Apollo 9 mission. McDivitt’s
burgeoning beard reflects the fact
that it wasn’t until Apollo 10 that
crews began shaving in space.
ALL PHOTOS: NASA

Jim McDivitt:
10 days in orbit
Apollo 9 served as an engineering test, a hardware demonstration,
and a vital steppingstone on the road to the Moon. by Alison Klesman

32 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
In September 1962, the
same month Kennedy
gave his famous “We
choose to go to the Moon”
speech, NASA selected Air
Force test pilot James A.
McDivitt to be an astronaut.
Within three years, he would serve as
command pilot on Gemini IV, spending
four days in orbit with pilot Ed White.
During that mission, White completed
the first American spacewalk, just
months after Russian cosmonauts had
accomplished the same goal.
On March 3, 1969, McDivitt again
launched into space — this time as com-
mander — with fellow astronauts Russell
“Rusty” Schweickart and David Scott.
The trio spent 10 days orbiting Earth
aboard Apollo 9. During those 10 days,
the Apollo 9 crew rigorously tested
everything on the spacecraft, which
was designed to carry men safely to
the Moon and back.
Apollo 9 was the first time the com-
mand module and lunar module flew
together. It was the first time the two
were docked in space and the first time
the lunar module was tested as a stand-
alone, self-sufficient craft.
“On Apollo 9, we did most of the
engineering tests that were required.
And then, as a result of that, we really
had done just about everything you
could do with the spacecraft,” says
McDivitt. “The mission was to verify
the two spacecraft together and the
two spacecraft individually, which
we did do.”
McDivitt (right) and Ed White sit inside the cramped Gemini IV capsule just prior to liftoff.
Fifty years later, Apollo 9 stands as a
pioneering flight that proved the compe-
tence of the entire Apollo hardware,
including the uniquely designed lunar
lander and updated Apollo spacesuit that
would become the life support system
sustaining astronauts on the surface of
the Moon.
From Gemini to Apollo
McDivitt’s first spaceflight took place in
the cramped seat of a two-man Gemini
capsule. “The Gemini was very, very
tight. It was extremely tight — you
couldn’t stretch all the way out. You were
in the seat, and that’s where you stayed,”
he says. His was the second manned
Gemini flight, following Gemini III,
which had lasted just under five hours.
Gemini IV drastically upped the ante,
keeping McDivitt and White circling
Earth for four days.
Apollo 9 lasted more than twice as
long as Gemini IV, and the three-man
crew enjoyed a relatively roomier home
The ultimate goal of the
Apollo program, our
Moon, sits against the
deep black background
of space, as seen by the
Apollo 9 astronauts
from Earth orbit.
Earth’s atmosphere,
viewed edge-on in this
photo from orbit, takes
on a multicolor glow as
the Sun illuminates it
from behind.
away from home. “In Apollo, we’d get up
and float around, so it was much more
comfortable. It was a much bigger space-
craft,” McDivitt says. The spacecraft was
also “quite a lot more complicated,” he
adds, as was the mission to test it.
“Gemini IV was a medical experiment.
[No American] had been up in space for
more than a day, and we were going up
there for four days, and there was a lot of
medical monitoring that happened with
us. Apollo 9 was an engineering test
flight, so we operated all the systems,
checked everything out, and it was much
more complicated.”
That additional complexity included
the spacesuits: “The suits for Apollo were
designed for extravehicular activity —
walking on the Moon and such. The suits
for Gemini were not, so they were entirely
different,” McDivitt says. To safely and
successfully explore the Moon, the Apollo
astronauts required relatively rugged
spacesuits equipped with a complete
life support system. Gemini suits, on the
other hand, were simpler and lighter, and
spacewalkers remained attached to the
capsule via a hose, which transferred oxy-
gen to the astronaut without the need for
a self-contained breathing system.
But one similarity — and strength
— of the two programs, he says, was the
control given to the astronauts, both on
the ground and while in space. “The
astronauts had input in all the things that
we flew with or did things with. That
was the difference between our space
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 33
 APOLLO 9 STATS
Commander: James A. McDivitt
(Gemini IV, Apollo 9)
Lunar module pilot: Russell “Rusty”
L. Schweickart
(Apollo 9)
Command module pilot: David R.
Scott
(Gemini VIII, Apollo 9, Apollo 15)
Command/service module: Callsign
Gumdrop
Lunar module: Callsign Spider
Launched: March 3, 1969, 11:00 A.M. EST
Orbits completed: 151 revolutions
over 10 days, 1 hour, 54 seconds
Orbital altitude:
119 miles (191 km)
Total distance traveled:
4,214,543 miles (6,782,649 km)
Landed: March 13, 1969, 12:01 P.M. EST
program and the Russians’. We involved
the pilots in the design of things.” By
contrast, the Russian missions relied
much more heavily on automation, with-
out many of the manual backup systems
implemented by NASA to give the astro-
nauts control if the automation failed.
McDivitt says his crew was also included
in the development of the lunar module:
“We were the first guys flying it, and we
had a lot of input on it,” he recalls.
Testing in orbit
Apollo 9 was the ultimate engineering
test, designed to ensure every piece of the
sophisticated multicomponent Apollo
spacecraft could and would work under
a variety of conditions, including those
that might be unexpected or unwanted.
McDivitt (left) and Schweickart show off the
unique photo compositions possible only in
microgravity conditions in the lunar module.
34 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
In these two images, McDivitt (foreground and
left) and Schweickart train in the Apollo Lunar
Module Mission Simulator at the Kennedy Space
Center, months before the Apollo 9 mission.
Confirming that the command and lunar
modules could be docked in space and
operate smoothly, together and apart,
was vital to the success of any attempted
Moon landing.
While in orbit, “we tested everything
there was to test on the lunar module, on
the command module, and the two of
them together,” McDivitt says. “So we
did a lot of things that weren’t done any
time later on, but we did them to make
sure we could do them.”
Those procedures included using the
lunar module as an active docking vehi-
cle, relying on its engine to bring it close
to the command module and connect the
two. “We were trying to show all the
things that we could do. It was fairly dif-
ficult” to use the lunar module in this
way, McDivitt says, “because you have to
look up instead of out the front, and
therefore the reaction of the control
McDivitt takes a moment to smile for the camera
from within the lunar module during the new
spacecraft’s extensive testing schedule.
systems was significantly different com-
pared to what you could see.” Although
the Apollo 9 crew “did it to prove that it
could be done,” in case it ever became
necessary, he says, all subsequent dock-
ings on Apollo missions were done by
the command module.
The lunar module, he says, “flew the
way it was supposed to.” He wasn’t con-
cerned at all that the fragile, oddly
designed craft — which he had described
in newspaper interviews prior to the mis-
sion as “flimsy” and “a tissue paper
spacecraft” — would work as it should.
“I don’t worry much,” he says.
As commander and lunar module
pilot, respectively, McDivitt and
Schweickart spent several days conduct-
ing extensive tests using the lunar mod-
ule, beginning on the third day of the
mission. Over the next three days, the
craft’s engines were fired several times to
simulate landing on and ascending from
the Moon’s surface. This included the
first crewed throttling of a spacecraft
engine, as McDivitt manually reduced
the engine’s thrust for nearly a full min-
ute before shutting it off in a mock land-
ing burn. On the mission’s fifth day,
McDivitt and Schweickart successfully
separated the lunar module’s two stages
to simulate liftoff from the Moon, as the
craft was designed to leave its landing
stage behind as its launch platform.
Even the two television transmissions
the crew produced, on March 5 and 6,
were part of the engineering test. “It was
in the flight plan that we wanted to check
out the TV camera, make sure it worked
when we got to the Moon,” says McDivitt.
The command/service module
Gumdrop, piloted by David Scott,
is seen through the window of the
lunar module while the two craft
fly separately.
Another view from the lunar
module shows the command/
service module against the
backdrop of Earth.
The descent stage of the lunar
module is shown in its stowed
position, including one full leg
and the 5-foot-long (1.5 meters)
lunar surface sensing probe,
designed to alert the astronauts
upon contact with the Moon.
The lunar module was designed
to split into two separate stages.
In this shot, taken through the
window of the command module,
the lunar module’s ascent stage
orbits Earth after its descent stage
has been jettisoned.

Broadcasting live television from the
Moon would become instrumental in
captivating the public and sharing NASA’s
success. But for McDivitt, testing this
was “just another thing to do” on the
mission’s long checklist.
Apollo 9 performed just over 151 rev-
olutions, ultimately clocking 241 hours
54 seconds from beginning to end. The
mission, like others before it, accom-
plished a long list of firsts, and proved
that the spacecraft was ready to proceed
to the next step of the program: Apollo
10, the dress rehearsal preceding man’s
first landing on the Moon. “We had a
flight plan, and in that plan were the
things we needed to get done, and we
got them done,” says McDivitt.
Working from home
The Apollo 9 mission was McDivitt’s
last as an astronaut — but not his final
contribution to Apollo. In May 1969,
McDivitt became manager of Lunar
Landing Operations; three months later,
he also became manager of the Apollo
Spacecraft Program, remaining in that
position for Apollo 12 through 16. As
manager of Lunar Landing Operations,
he says, he led the effort to plan and
implement manned exploration of the
lunar surface. “When I left the astronaut
corps, we had not had a plan for explor-
ing the Moon,” McDivitt says. “So I put
together a team of guys, and we put
together requirements for things that we
would need to do a better exploration of
the Moon, and then sort of planned out
some of the initial places we would go
and what we would do. And out of that
came the lunar rover, longer-duration
spacecraft on the surface of the Moon,
and a lot of things like that.”
Along the way, his team continued to
invite input from the astronauts who
would be using the methods and technol-
ogy the team designed on the Moon.
And, just as important, “Apollo had the
backing of the American people,” says
McDivitt. “And so it was fully funded.
During the time that I ran the program,
I didn’t have any need for extra money.
McDivitt sits for an official NASA portrait. At the
time, he was an Air Force colonel; he ultimately
retired as a brigadier general.
The money that was allocated was suf-
ficient to do the program.”
Many of the tests performed on
Apollo 9 gave McDivitt, who already had
an impressive engineering and flight
background prior to joining the astro-
naut corps, the additional insight and
experience necessary to solve challenges
that arose later in the program. From
checking alternative methods of stellar
navigation to thoroughly testing the
limits of the lunar module, several tasks
on Apollo 9’s checklist aided the astro-
nauts on Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank
exploded en route to the Moon. Later, a
command module engine problem dur-
ing Apollo 16 could have scrapped the
lunar landing, but McDivitt’s experience
and testing data from Apollo 9 allowed
engineers to conclude the mission could
proceed — and ultimately succeed.
Looking back
Apollo 16 marked McDivitt’s final mis-
sion with NASA. “I had left the program
before Apollo 17, and I was in the indus-
trial world by then. I was just a spectator”
for the final Moon landing, he says.
Ultimately, “I spent 10 years with
NASA, but I did a lot of other stuff, too,”
the 89-year-old says. “I was an Air Force
general, and I got out and I was in the
business world for almost 25 years. So
that was not the only thing I did in my
life.” Nonetheless, he has been recognized
for his accomplishments in human space-
flight, including two NASA Distinguished
Service Medals, a NASA Exceptional
Service Medal, and induction into the
Aerospace Walk of Honor in Lancaster
City, California.
The success of Apollo 9 was crucial. It
was expected, given the crew’s intense
training and the skill behind the crafts’
design and construction, but by no
means guaranteed. Once the Apollo
spacecraft had been tested and proven in
space, the program advanced, quickly
nearing its final goal of landing men on
the Moon.
Alison Klesman is an associate editor of
Astronomy with an interest in Apollo-era
space history.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 35
 SKYTHIS
MONTH
April 2019: Mars sweeps past the Pleiades
A waning gibbous Moon passes 2° from Jupiter on February 23, 2016. The
two have an equally impressive encounter the morning of April 23. ALAN DYER
T
he warmer nights of
April entice skywatch-
ers to spend more time
under the stars. And
this year, several bright
planets add to the celestial
splendor. Evening viewers can
enjoy Mars in the company of
Taurus’ brightest star clusters.
But the best action occurs
before dawn. While Jupiter and
Saturn show off in a dark sky,
Venus and Mercury glow in
morning twilight.
We’ll begin our tour of solar
system wonders low in the west
after sunset. If you’re blessed
with a crystal-clear sky on the
1st, you might glimpse Uranus.
Set against the background
stars of southern Aries, the dis-
tant planet sets just as twilight
fades to darkness. The magni-
tude 5.9 world appears as a
faint dot through binoculars or
a telescope. Uranus disappears
from view after April’s first few
36 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
MARTIN RATCLIFFE and ALISTER LING describe the
solar system’s changing landscape as it appears in Earth’s sky.
days as it heads toward con-
junction with the Sun on the
22nd. It will return to view
before dawn in late May.
Mars fares much better
than its far-off cousin. The
Red Planet not only shines
brightly (at magnitude 1.5 in
mid-April), but it also stands
quite high in the west after
darkness falls. The ruddy
world adds a striking focal
point to the star-studded
backdrop of Taurus the Bull.
Mars treks eastward
through the constellation
during April. It spends the
month’s first week between
the glittering Pleiades and
Hyades star clusters. On the
1st, the planet lies 3° south of
the Pleiades (M45) and some
three times farther northwest
of the V-shaped Hyades.
Breathtaking views await
those who scan this region
through binoculars.
A waxing crescent Moon
adds to the scene April 8. Our
satellite then stands 6° south
of Mars and 8° west of ruddy
Aldebaran, the 1st-magnitude
star that appears to anchor the
Hyades but is actually a fore-
ground object. The following
night, a fatter crescent Moon
lies 6° east of Aldebaran.
As Mars continues its east-
ward march, it passes 7° due
north of Aldebaran on the
16th and traverses the open
cluster NGC 1746 on the 26th.
By the end of April, the planet
forms an isosceles triangle
with the two stars that repre-
sent the Bull’s horns: Beta (β)
and Zeta (ζ) Tauri.
Although Mars excels as
a naked-eye and binocular
object, the view through a tele-
scope proves disappointing.
The diminutive world now
lies far from Earth and shows
a featureless disk less than 5"
in diameter.
Mars doesn’t set until after
11 p.m. local daylight time all
month. Planet watchers can
Mars passes through the celestial Bull
p Path of Mars
13 11
g
E April 1
¡
b
Aldebaran Hyades
a
e
The Red Planet slides between the brilliant and photogenic Pleiades and
Hyades star clusters during April’s first week. ALL ILLUSTRATIONS: ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY
Visible to the naked eye
Visible with binoculars
Visible with a telescope
then take a break before
Jupiter pokes above the
southeastern horizon. The
giant planet rises shortly
before 1:30 a.m. in early April
and two hours earlier by
month’s end. Gleaming at
magnitude –2.3, it appears
unmistakable against the
backdrop of southern
Ophiuchus and the magnifi-
cent central Milky Way.
Jupiter’s eastward motion
relative to the Serpent-bearer’s
stars comes to a halt during
April’s second week. It then
stands 6.5° west of the
delightful Trifid Nebula
(M20) in neighboring
Sagittarius. Although the
planet then starts heading
westward against the starry
backdrop, it traverses less
than 1° of sky by month’s end.
Be sure to mark your calendar
for the morning of April 23,
when a waning gibbous Moon
passes within 2° of Jupiter.
The best telescopic views
of the planet come once it
climbs highest in the south
N
Pleiades
9 7
5 3
TAU RUS
2°
 RISINGMOON
Craters crowd together on the crescent Moon Langrenus and Petavius

Observers of the waxing crescent Moon love
spring. Naked-eye and binocular skywatch-
ers have unparalleled views of the Moon
bathed in earthshine, perched in an indigo
sky painted with a horizon of fiery orange
and red. Selenophiles — or “lunatics,” as
friends call them — marvel at the large crater
walls and mountains that cast long shadows
on the lunar crescent. And the enjoyment
lasts for a long time, because the Moon
stands high in the twilight sky from the
Northern Hemisphere, thanks to the steep
angle the ecliptic makes to the western hori-
zon after sunset. In other seasons, the cres-
cent hangs lower and sets more quickly.
Some of the best views will come the
evening of April 9. The terminator — the
dividing line between sunlight and dark-
ness on the lunar surface that marks where
sunrise occurs on a waxing Moon — then
cuts across the western walls of the large
craters Langrenus and Petavius. Langrenus
Youthful Langrenus measures
about 80 miles across. Although not as
young as Copernicus, this crater’s features Mare
appear sharper than those of most older Fecunditatis
impact structures. A couple of prominent
mountain peaks stand out at Langrenus’
center. Check back two or three nights later,
and you’ll clearly see its secondary craters,
debris apron, and ejecta rays.
Petavius to the south is nearly 30 miles
wider, a bit older, and sports extra features. Petavius
Its rim appears softer, a telltale sign of its
longer life facing bombardment from solar
system debris. Notice the huge radial frac-
ture that emanates from the crater’s cluster N
of central peaks. Look more closely, and you
should pick out a large, curved crack closer E
to the rim. Both of these fractures formed
The waxing crescent Moon features these two
when lava from below heaved up the cra- large craters on the shores of Mare Fecunditatis.
ter’s floor and later subsided. CONSOLIDATED LUNAR ATLAS/UA/LPL; INSET: NASA/GSFC/ASU

an hour or two before dawn.

It then lies nearly 30° above METEORWATCH
the horizon for observers at
mid-northern latitudes. The
greater altitude means that
The Lyre plays Lyrid meteor shower

Jupiter’s light passes through a sad song

less of Earth’s turbulent atmo-
sphere and planetary details
come into sharper focus.
Point any telescope toward
Jupiter and you’ll see a broad
disk featuring two dark equa-
torial belts straddling a
brighter zone that coincides
with the equator. Although
the Equatorial Zone often
appears bland, last year it
sported several ocher-colored
festoons. Any such features
should become easier to see as
the disk’s diameter swells dur-
ing April, from 40" across on
the 1st to 43" on the 30th.
Bigger scopes reveal an
alternating series of more sub-
tle dark belts and lighter zones
that stretch north and south of
their equatorial counterparts.
Fine details along the edges of
these bands pop into view dur-
ing moments of good seeing.
— Continued on page 42
The long wait is over. After the Radiant
Quadrantid meteor display lights Vega
up early January’s sky, observers LY R A
must hold out until April to view
the year’s second major shower.
The Lyrids peak the night of
April 22/23. In the best of years, Deneb
CYGN U S
AQU I L A
skywatchers can expect to see
nearly 20 meteors per hour shortly
before dawn. Unfortunately, 2019 Altair
is not the best year.
The Moon is just three days past 10°
Full at the shower’s peak and will April 23, 1 A.M.
drown out fainter Lyrids. The mete- Looking east
ors appear to radiate from a point Lyrid meteors
Although a waning gibbous Moon
in the constellation Lyra the Lyre, will wash out many Lyrids, stay alert Active dates: April 14–30
which rises around 9 P.M. local day- for the occasional bright streak. Peak: April 22
light time. Although this radiant Moon at peak: Waning gibbous
climbs 30° high by midnight and around 11:30 P.M. Still, you should Maximum rate at peak:
passes nearly overhead as morning keep an eye out for the occasional 18 meteors/hour
twilight begins, bright moonlight meteor flash. Lucky observers
fills the sky after our satellite rises could spot up to five per hour.
OBSERVING Asteroid 2 Pallas glows at magnitude 7.9 — the brightest it has
HIGHLIGHT been in five years — when it reaches opposition April 9.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 37
 N
STAR
DOME +
f OP E IA
a b
CASSI
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b d
How to use this map: This map portrays the
sky as seen near 35° north latitude. Located `
C
inside the border are the cardinal directions YG
and their intermediate points. To find N a
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stars, hold the map overhead and b
orient it so one of the labels matches
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NGC
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use optical aid to gather more light CENT
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b
SATURN
38 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019 MARS S
 Note: Moon phases in the calendar vary
in size due to the distance from Earth
869 APRIL 2019 and are shown at 0h Universal Time.
NG SUN. MON. TUES. WED. THURS. FRI. SAT.
884 C MAP SYMBOLS
NG a
Open cluster
_ EUS 1 2 3 4 5 6
S b Globular cluster
R
PE
Diffuse nebula
¡
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Planetary nebula
NW
Galaxy

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY

_
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14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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Neptune, 3 P.M. EDT (226,306 miles from Earth),

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6:05 P.M. EDT

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Neptune, 7 P.M. EDT 19 Full Moon occurs at

Betelgeuse
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7:12 A.M. EDT

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22 Uranus is in conjunction with

the Sun, 7 P.M. EDT
CANC

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on

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SPECIAL OBSERVING DATE

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north of Jupiter in the

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predawn sky.
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8 Dwarf planet Ceres is 25 Pluto is stationary, 5 A.M. EDT

MO

stationary, 5 P.M. EDT

_

The Moon passes 0.4° south of

9 The Moon passes 5° south of Saturn, 10 A.M. EDT
7

_
M4

Mars, 3 A.M. EDT

The Moon passes 0.07° north
Asteroid Pallas is at opposition, of Pluto, 4 P.M. EDT
9 P.M. EDT
IS 26 Last Quarter Moon
P
P Venus passes 0.3° south of
U occurs at 6:18 P.M. EDT
j

P l Neptune, midnight EDT

28 The Moon is at apogee
10 Jupiter is stationary, 1 P.M. EDT (251,396 miles from Earth),
L IA IS SW 11 Mercury is at greatest western 2:20 P.M. EDT
P YX _
elongation (28°), 4 P.M. EDT 29 Saturn is stationary, 10 P.M. EDT
12 First Quarter Moon 30 The Moon passes 3° south of
occurs at 3:06 P.M. EDT Neptune, 4 A.M. EDT
s

A
EL h

BEGINNERS: WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT HOW TO READ A STAR CHART AT www.Astronomy.com/starchart.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 39
 PATH OF THE
PLANETS The planets in April 2019
CAS DR A
Objects visible before dawn
UM a

A ND
L AC CV N
CYG HER
Asteroid Pallas reaches
TR I LYR
opposition April 9

VU L CrB C OM
ARI PEG

SGE
Sun SE R
PS C
AQL SER
Ven OPH
Mer u Celestial equator
c ur y s Neptune AQR S CT V IR
Parthenope
Path
of th
CET e Sun ( Saturn Ceres
eclipt C RT
ic) Pluto
Jupiter
CA P Asteroid Iris reaches
PsA LI B
opposition April 5
F OR S GR
S CL The Moon passes 1.6° north
MIC of Jupiter on April 23
G RU CEN
CrA SCO

Moon phases Dawn Midnight

7 6 5 4 3 2 1

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17

The planets These illustrations show the size, phase, and orientation of each planet and the two brightest dwarf planets at 0h UT
for the dates in the data table at bottom. South is at the top to match the view through a telescope.
in the sky

Uranus
Mercury Mars
S

W E

N
Pluto
Saturn
Venus Ceres Neptune
10"
Jupiter

Planets MERCURY VENUS MARS CERES JUPITER SATURN URANUS NEPTUNE PLUTO
Date April 1 April 15 April 15 April 15 April 15 April 15 April 15 April 15 April 15
Magnitude 0.8 –3.9 1.5 7.9 –2.3 0.5 5.9 7.9 14.3
Angular size 9.4" 12.3" 4.4" 0.7" 41.6" 16.7" 3.4" 2.2" 0.1"
Illumination 29% 85% 95% 98% 99% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Distance (AU) from Earth 0.718 1.357 2.126 1.971 4.739 9.928 20.844 30.730 33.736
Distance (AU) from Sun 0.455 0.728 1.584 2.729 5.318 10.055 19.850 29.937 33.780
Right ascension (2000.0) 23h10.2m 23h36.0m 4h30.5m 16h53.0m 17h34.2m 19h26.6m 1h59.3m 23h14.8m 19h38.9m
Declination (2000.0) –5°36' –4°07' 22°51' –16°48' –22°40' –21°32' 11°39' –5°55' –21°46'

40 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
 This map unfolds the entire night sky from sunset (at right) until sunrise (at left).
Arrows and colored dots show motions and locations of solar system objects during the month.

Objects visible in the evening

CAS Jupiter’s moons
AND Dots display positions
LY N Io
PER
of Galilean satellites at
4 A.M. EDT on the date Europa
LMi
AUR shown. South is at the
GEM
top to match
S
Herculina TRI the view
C NC Mars Ganymede
AR I through a W E

L EO
Path o
f the
telescope. N Callisto
Juno Moo Sun
n
TAU
CMi Uranus 1

PSC 2

SEX ORI
MON 3

CET 4

H YA C MA 5
L EP
SCL
6
PYX FOR
AN T P UP E RI
7
C OL CA E
8
Early evening
9 Io
To locate the Moon in the sky, draw a line from the phase shown for the day straight up to the curved blue line.
Note: Moons vary in size due to the distance from Earth and are shown at 0h Universal Time. 10 Callisto

11

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 12

13 Europa

14

The planets 15

in their orbits 16

Mars Arrows show the inner 17 Jupiter

planets’ monthly motions
and dots depict the outer 18
planets’ positions at mid-
19
Earth month from high above
Venus
their orbits. 20 Ganymede
Mercury 21
Ceres Greatest western elongation
is April 11 22

23

24

Jupiter 25
Uranus
Solar conjunction 26
is April 22
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY

27

Jupiter 28
Neptune
Saturn 29

30

Pluto

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 41
— Continued from page 37
Ganymede returns to view
WHEN TO VIEW THE PLANETS S
EVENING SKY MIDNIGHT MORNING SKY Ganymede
Mars (west) Mercury (east)
Uranus (west) Venus (east)
W Jupiter Io
Jupiter (south)
Saturn (southeast) April 12, 4:20 A.M. EDT
Neptune (east) Europa
30"

Even the smallest telescope
also shows Jupiter’s four bright
moons. You’ll typically see all
of them, but occasionally one
or more will be passing in
front of the planet or will be
hidden behind the massive
world or lost in its shadow.
Tracking these dramatic events
opens a new window onto the
jovian system.
As the innermost moon, Io
orbits fastest and thus experi-
ences the most events. Each
time Io transits Jupiter’s face, it
also casts a pitch-black shadow
onto the planet’s cloud tops.
This month, the shadow
crosses about an hour before
the moon itself, and each takes
about two hours to traverse
the disk. For North American
observers, the best shadow
transits begin at 3:25 a.m. EDT
on April 2, 5:19 a.m. EDT on
April 9, 1:41 a.m. EDT on
April 18, and 3:34 a.m. EDT
on April 25.
The next moon out from
Jupiter, Europa, has only
one well-timed event during
April. You can see its shadow
first touch Jupiter’s clouds at
3:33 a.m. EDT on the 26th.
The moon itself follows nearly
two hours later.
Perhaps this month’s most
exciting event involves giant
Ganymede. On the morning
of April 12, the solar system’s
largest moon starts to emerge
from Jupiter’s shadow at 4:02
a.m. EDT. But Ganymede is
so big that it takes 15 minutes
Jupiter’s largest moon starts to exit the planet’s shadow at 4:02 A.M. EDT
on April 12. By 4:20 A.M., it has returned to full brightness.
for it to return to full sunlight.
Seeing the moon slowly reap-
pear is like watching a celestial
magic act. The brightening dot
appears 22" west-southwest of
Jupiter’s limb and 26" south of
Europa. Ganymede itself dis-
appears behind Jupiter’s south-
western limb at 6:34 a.m. EDT,
an event best seen from west-
ern North America.
All four moons orbit Jupiter
in the planet’s equatorial plane.
That plane currently tilts 3° to
our line of sight, so the more
distant moons cross the plan-
et’s disk at higher latitudes.
Callisto is so far out that it
misses the giant world
completely. You can see it
near the planet’s south pole as
Jupiter rises April 6, and near
the north pole around dawn
on the 14th.
Saturn rises shortly after
3 a.m. local daylight time
April 1 and climbs some 20°
high in the southeast as twi-
light starts to paint the sky
two hours later. By the 30th,
the planet clears the horizon
by 1:15 a.m. and stands 25°
high in the south-southeast
as twilight commences.
Saturn shines at magnitude
0.5 among the much fainter
background stars of eastern
Sagittarius. Its only real

COMETSEARCH
Hop in the comet simulator Comet look-alike NGC 1931

When it comes to observing This masquerader is bright

comets, luck plays a role. We
never know when the solar sys-
tem will send us a surprise from
the distant Oort Cloud, or when
a periodic comet might brighten
dramatically. That’s one of the
lessons we can draw as we move
from last autumn’s cosmic boun-
ty to this spring’s bread crumbs.
Unless Comet C/2017 M4
(ATLAS) brightens unexpectedly,
it will glow at 13th magnitude
this month — a target for
observers with large scopes. For
the rest of us, let’s hone our skills
by viewing the sky’s finest comet
imposter: NGC 1931 in Auriga.
The nebula and embedded star
cluster lies 1° west of the bright
open cluster M36.
enough to observe through a
2.4-inch telescope at 40x from
under a dark sky or with an
8-inch instrument from a subur-
ban backyard. At low power,
NGC 1931 looks remarkably like
a comet — it sports a relatively
bright “head” and a fainter, fan-
shaped “tail.” In bigger scopes,
boost the power to 200x to get
a closer look. The comet’s head
turns out to be four closely
spaced stars embedded in a
cocoon of pale light. Viewing the bright “head” and fainter “tail” of NGC 1931 will improve
NGC 1931 is a reflection neb- your comet-observing skills. AL AND ANDY FERAYORNI/ADAM BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF
ula, a cloud of dust and gas that
scatters starlight. Perhaps not Try a range of magnifica- to adjust to the reduced light-
too surprisingly, that’s pretty tions. Although the field grows ing. That’s when you can pick
much what comet dust does darker at higher powers, be up finer structure that can’t be
to sunlight. patient and give your eye time seen in a wider, brighter field.

42 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
 Venus points the way to Neptune
N
Mercury
E Venus
AQUARIUS
s 
The brightest planet guides you to the dimmest one shortly before dawn
April 10. The two worlds appear higher in a darker sky from farther south.
competition comes when a
waning gibbous Moon appears
less than 3° west of the planet
April 25.
Any telescope reveals Saturn
as the showpiece of the solar
system. Its spectacular rings
span 38" and tilt 24° to our line
of sight in mid-April. They sur-
round a yellowish globe that
measures 17" across. As with
Jupiter, sharper views come as
it climbs higher before dawn.
Saturn’s brightest moons
are always on display. Because
they orbit near the gas giant’s
equatorial plane, which coin-
cides with the plane of the
rings, they all pass well north
or south of the planet’s disk.
Titan shines at 8th magnitude
and shows up through any
telescope. You can find it 1.1'
south of Saturn on April 2
and 18, and the same distance
north of the planet April 10
and 26.
A trio of 10th-magnitude
moons — Tethys, Dione, and
Rhea — circle Saturn inside
Titan’s orbit. You’ll need a
4-inch scope to pick them out.
A similar instrument should
bring in distant Iapetus. This
enigmatic moon, with one
hemisphere as bright as snow
and the other as dark as coal,
stands 1.1' south of Saturn on
April 7. It then glows at 11th
magnitude because we see
roughly equal parts of each
LOCATINGASTEROIDS
Strolling with the celestial Herdsman
Neptune
q within 5° of the sky’s fourth-
r the Herdsman. Although this
 climbs highest soon after mid-
s s
1°
hemisphere. As the moon
moves west of Saturn after-
ward, its brighter side rotates
into view. It brightens to 10th
magnitude by the time it
reaches greatest elongation
April 28, but it then lies 9'
from the planet and will be
harder to identify.
Twilight begins before the
next bright planet appears.
Venus rises in the east
around 5:30 a.m. local day-
light time April 1 and a half-
hour earlier by month’s end.
Unfortunately, the Sun also
comes up earlier in late April,
and Venus then appears
deeper in twilight. Still, the
inner planet shines brilliantly
at magnitude –3.9 and stands
out in the brightening sky.
You can use Venus to
track down Neptune on
April 10. The two then appear
0.3° apart and lie in the same
field of view through a tele-
scope at low power. You’ll
need an exceptionally clear
sky to spot 8th-magnitude
Neptune, however, because
it’s low and in twilight. From
mid-northern latitudes, the
pair stands 7° high a half-
hour before sunrise.
Conditions improve mark-
edly the farther south you
live; from mid-southern lati-
tudes, the planets stand
GET DAILY UPDATES ON YOUR NIGHT SKY AT www.Astronomy.com/skythisweek.
Like spotting a lone sheep in a
grassy field, it should be easy to
find the 8th-magnitude asteroid
2 Pallas this month. It scoots
brightest star, magnitude 0.0
Arcturus, the luminary of Boötes
area remains visible all night, it
night local daylight time.
We even get a prominent
stepping-stone with magnitude
2.7 Eta (η) Boötis. On the eve-
ning of April 10, one night after
it reaches opposition, Pallas
slides just 2' east of Eta. You
should be able to detect its
motion in as little as 30 minutes.
Another good chance to see
Pallas shift positions comes
Pallas slides north through Boötes
N
E Path of Pallas
Arcturus
B O ÖT E S
6
April 1
The second asteroid discovered reaches opposition April 9, though
the 8th-magnitude object remains a tempting target all month.
15° high as twilight begins.
Don’t confuse Neptune with
the 4th-magnitude star Phi (ϕ)
Aquarii, which lies 5' south
of the outer planet.
Sharp-eyed observers also
should see Mercury through
binoculars. The innermost
planet shines at magnitude 0.3
5° east of the Venus-Neptune
pair. Mercury reaches greatest
elongation April 11, when it
when it approaches a wide pair
of 9th-magnitude stars April 29.
On other nights, use the
chart below to figure out where
Pallas will be and then swing
your scope to that spot. The
field will be otherwise empty
from April 3–8 and 14–23.
Because Pallas currently lies far
from the Moon’s path, Luna’s
light won’t interfere with your
asteroid hunting this month.
When Heinrich Olbers dis-
covered Pallas in March 1802,
it was just the second asteroid
known. (Giuseppe Piazzi spot-
ted the first, Ceres, in January
1801.) Astronomers initially des-
ignated both objects planets,
netting both discoverers con-
siderable fame.
May 1
26
21
16
11
d
o
p 1°
lies 28° west of the Sun but
climbs only 4° high a half-
hour before sunrise. Once
again, Southern Hemisphere
viewers have better views.
Martin Ratcliffe provides
planetarium development for
Sky-Skan, Inc., from his home in
Wichita, Kansas. Alister Ling,
who lives in Edmonton, Alberta,
has watched the skies since 1975.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 43
 Apollo 10’s command
module appears to the
lower right of Mount
Marilyn on the Sea of
Tranquillity’s shore.
The mountain would
serve as a navigational
tool for Apollo 11’s
landing two months
later. NASA

The women
in the Moon The mountain named after Marilyn Lovell
made her one of a handful of women immortalized
on the Moon. by William Sheehan and Kevin Schindler

44 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
T
he Apollo program trans-
formed our understanding
of the Moon. It helped
unlock our satellite’s complex
history, and proved that the
Moon formed when a Mars-sized object
slammed into Earth in the solar system’s
earliest days.
Apollo’s legacy extends to the naming
of several lunar features. Craters honor
many of the Apollo astronauts, and
Mount Marilyn — named for astronaut
Jim Lovell’s wife — served as a key navi-
gational landmark during the first Moon
landing. Remarkably, this recently named
mountain is one of only a few lunar fea-
tures that carry a woman’s name.
It’s a man’s world
Explorers, at least since Odysseus, have
struggled between the urge to forge ahead
toward new discoveries and to return to
family and friends. You might expect this
longing for home would inspire them to
name newly found lands after their distant
loved ones. You’d be wrong.
Christopher Columbus
didn’t name anything after his
wife, Filipa Moniz Perestrelo.
Neither Ferdinand Magellan
(whose wife was Beatriz) nor
Captain James Cook (Elizabeth Batts)
honored their wives with the names of
faraway countries. Walter Raleigh did
name Virginia after a woman, but it
was his royal patroness, Elizabeth I of
England, often referred to as the “Virgin
Queen.” Sadly, for every million people
who have heard of these explorers, per-
haps only one knows the name of any
of their wives.
Telescopic explorers of the Moon,
beginning with Jesuit priest Giovanni
When Giovanni Riccioli first named features on the Moon in 1651, he immortalized only two women with craters: Catharina and Hypatia.
Riccioli, were equally lacking in sensi-
tivity. On his 1651 map, Riccioli intro-
duced the now hallowed tradition
of naming craters after noted scientists,
philosophers, and explorers. He selected
147 new names; all but two of those
names honor men, some of whom were
still alive at the time. Riccioli even
reserved a prominent crater on the
limb for himself.
Of the two women he honored, Saint
Catharine of Alexandria got the bigger
prize. Catharina is an imposing crater
that adjoins Cyrillus and Theophilus in
an impressive chain. A much-revered
Christian martyr, Saint Catharine, alas,
apparently never existed. Her legend
seems to be based on that of Hypatia of
Alexandria — a Neoplatonist philoso-
pher, astronomer, and mathematician
— and the second woman Riccioli hon-
ored. Hypatia Crater is less than half the
size of Catharina and far less prominent.
The lack of women on Riccioli’s map
largely reflects the subordinate roles they
“The course of true love never did
run smooth” has been even truer
on the Moon’s rugged surface.
played in Greco-Roman and Christian
societies, and the fact that women were
generally dissuaded from scholarly
endeavors. It may also reflect the reality
that many scholars were priests or bach-
elors. According to the late English
astronomy popularizer Patrick Moore,
French philosopher René Descartes
claimed that named lunar craters are
inhabited by the spirits of their name-
sakes. Had what Descartes said been
true, the Moon would have been as
Catharina
Hypatia
B
A Secchi
Theta
Eta
Chi
CONSOLIDATED LUNAR ATLAS/UA/LPL
Iota
Mount Marilyn originally went by the name
Secchi Theta, a mountainous feature in Montes
Secchi near the larger crater Secchi.
singularly lacking in female company as
the Monastery of Mount Athos.
Shakespeare wrote in the Moon-
enchanted A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
“The course of true love never did run
smooth”; this has been even truer on the
Moon’s rugged surface. Astronomers
wanting to immortalize their
loved ones sometimes had to
disguise their purposes. A case
in point: On the map of the
Moon compiled at the Paris
Observatory under the direc-
tion of Jean Dominique Cassini, a wom-
an’s face in profile projects from the
mountainous Promontorium Heraclides
into the smooth bay of Sinus Iridum.
Through a telescope at low power, this
feature appears striking when it lies on
the terminator, but under higher magni-
fication, it disappears into a miscellany
of hills and ridges.
Who was this mysterious lady in
the Moon? Although it is impossible to
know for certain, a co-author of this
CONSOLIDATED LUNAR ATLAS/UA/LPL
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 45

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this oblique view of Mount Marilyn through its
narrow-angle camera. NASA/GSFC/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
story (Sheehan) and French scholar
Francoise Launay have argued that it
was meant to be a celestial portrait of
Cassini’s wife, Geneviève de Laistre.
A ladies club starts to form
As more women gained recognition
for their scientific aptitude and accom-
plishments, selenographers bestowed
their names on lunar craters. Still,
women remained a distinct minority.
Among those honored were redoubtable
18th- and 19th-century figures such as
Nicole-Reine Lepaute, Mary Somerville,
and Caroline Herschel (whose crater,
C. Herschel, is much less distinguished
than that given to her brother William).
More recently, women honored on
the Moon include Maria Mitchell and
several of the human “computers”
who analyzed photographic plates at
the Harvard College Observatory:
Wilhelmina Fleming, Antonia Maury,
Annie Jump Cannon, and Henrietta
Swan Leavitt. Marie Curie, the first
double Nobel laureate, was honored
with her maiden name, Sklodowska,
nine years before her husband, Pierre,
got his own crater.
The first woman in space, Russian
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, is the
only one officially honored while alive
— she’s still going strong in early 2019. In
the latest count of the more than 1,600
craters on the Moon, only about 30 bear
a woman’s name. Part of this reflects
stringent rules set by the International
Astronomical Union (IAU), the govern-
ing body for naming features on the
Moon and other planetary bodies. The
rules were adopted to prevent solar sys-
tem nomenclature from becoming utterly
46 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
chaotic and capricious. But it also, no
doubt, exposes the long-standing sexism
and discouragement of women in math-
ematics and science in Western culture.
Though generally (and in view of past
abuses, not unreasonably) strict about
adopting the names of people still alive,
the IAU has overlooked this rule on
occasion. Tereshkova is a prime example,
and several Apollo astronauts also have
been honored. Other exceptions have
sneaked in because only insiders knew
their back stories. For example, American
mappers in 1976 named a small lunar
crater “Kira” in tribute to the eminently
In the latest count of the more than 1,600 craters
on the Moon, only about 30 bear a woman’s name.
worthy Kira Shingareva, principal
scientist at the Planetary Cartography
Laboratory at the Space Research
Institute in Moscow.
Against this background of the IAU
insisting on the integrity of lunar nomen-
clature, we come to what is undoubtedly
the most interesting feature from the
Apollo era to receive a personal name:
Mount Marilyn. It doubles as the only
Apollo landmark visible to earthbound
observers through binoculars or a
small telescope.
Mount Marilyn
We are now 50 years removed from the
historic Apollo 8 mission, in which astro-
nauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill
Anders first circumnavigated the Moon.
Though often overlooked in favor of
Apollo 11’s lunar landing in July 1969,
the December 1968 flight of Apollo 8 was
probably more significant — and cer-
tainly more radical. As the first manned
mission to leave Earth orbit and reach
the Moon’s sphere of gravitational influ-
ence, it accomplished a truly astronomi-
cal leap forward in distance. It would be
as if the Wright brothers, after their first
successful flight at Kitty Hawk, immedi-
ately set out to fly around the globe.
Above all, Apollo 8 raised the con-
sciousness of people back home through
that ravishing color image of a beautiful
blue Earth rising over a desolate Moon.
Anders took the “Earthrise” shot on
Christmas Eve during the third of 10
orbits around the Moon. It gave us a cos-
mic perspective on our home planet,
revealing the precious jewel in all its
beauty, fragility, and finiteness. The
photo even helped accelerate the envi-
ronmental movement.
It surprises many people that this was
not the first image of Earth from the
vicinity of the Moon. Lunar Orbiter 1
captured a similar view in August 1966,
though it was a black-and-white image
that lacked the contrast — and impact
— of a blue Earth above the gray Moon
set against the stark blackness of space.
It also mattered that a robot took the
earlier image whereas a human took the
second. The astronauts saw the scene
with their own eyes, reacted to it, and
snapped the picture.
Although Apollo 8 accomplished
many firsts, it also was a trailblazer for
Apollo 11. To fulfill President John F.
Kennedy’s audacious goal of landing a
man on the Moon and returning him
safely to Earth by the end of the decade,
Apollo 11 astronauts needed Apollo 8 to
serve as a scout. One important task was
to locate suitable landmarks along the
approach to the prospective landing site
in the Sea of Tranquillity.
Lovell’s job was to study the lunar
surface with an eye toward navigation.
On Apollo 8’s second orbit around the
Moon, Lovell looked down on craters
that he described as resembling what
pickaxes make when they strike concrete.
Passing toward the Sea of Tranquillity, he
took note of the crater Taruntius, then of
the low ridges near the northwestern
edge of the Sea of Fertility. The range,
known as Montes Secchi, grazes Secchi
Crater, named for Jesuit astronomer
Angelo Secchi.
Lovell’s voice came across clearly on
the radio. “The mountain range has got
more contrast because of the Sun angle.
I can see the initial point right now,
Mount Marilyn.”
Mike Collins, at ground control,
replied, “Roger.”
Despite Collins’ affirmative, no sel-
enographer would have recognized the
name. Lovell already had identified this
triangularly shaped mountain — officially
known at the time as Secchi Theta — as a
significant navigational landmark from
a Lunar Orbiter scout image even before
he had lifted off for the Moon. (It seems
rather strange now, when GPS can get us
from here to there with little effort on our
part, but one really did rely on printed
maps to land on the Moon in those days.)
Lovell decided to name the feature
after the one person whose support was
most indispensable to his own success
— his wife, Marilyn. Chivalry was not
yet dead. Indeed, in naming this feature
for his wife, Lovell showed more chivalry
than had the great explorers of the 15th
and 16th centuries.
A long time coming
The triangular mountain would always be
Mount Marilyn to Lovell, and so it was to
the astronauts of Apollo 10. During that
May 1969 mission, the lunar module
descended to within 8.9 miles (14.3 kilo-
meters) of the surface. On a later orbit of
the Moon, the crew saw the feature out the
window. “We’ve just passed over Mount
Marilyn and Jim Lovell pose at the Adler
Planetarium’s 2018 Celestial Ball in Chicago.
COURTESY OF ADLER PLANETARIUM
Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell also has a lunar feature named for him, this 22-mile-wide
(35 kilometers) oblong crater on the Moon’s farside. NASA/GSFC/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
Marilyn and the crater Weatherford.
Over,” intoned Commander Tom Stafford
upon reaching the point where the next
mission would ignite the lunar module’s
engine to slow down the craft and begin
the descent toward the lunar surface.
When the real thing took place on
Apollo 11 in July 1969, Mount Marilyn
again pointed the way:
Buzz Aldrin: “We’re going over Mount
Marilyn at the present time, and it’s igni-
tion point.”
CapCom [Bruce McCandless]: “Roger.
Thank you. And our preliminary track-
ing data for the first few minutes shows
you in a 61.6 by 169.5 orbit. Over.”
Aldrin: “Roger.”
CapCom: “And Jim [Lovell] is smiling.”
On the road to success
Oddly, Mount Marilyn long remained an
unofficial name — despite, as Lovell told
one of us, “representing a significant
event in the history of spaceflight. It was
the initial point where Apollo 11 started
its descent into the Sea of Tranquillity. It
is the only visible icon to represent that
historical feat.”
In fact, starting in 1973, it became
something of an orphan — a feature
without a name. Not only was that the
last year the IAU sanctioned the names
of craters for still-living individuals, but
it was also when the group abandoned a
long-standing precedent of designating
topographic prominences around named
features. Thus, even Secchi Theta was
wiped from the map. Instead, the moun-
tain that had played such a crucial role in
the history of manned lunar exploration
was officially just one of the peaks in
Montes Secchi.
A long and sometimes bitter political
battle ensued between those wanting to
see Mount Marilyn adopted and the IAU.
Despite how unpopular the stance proved
to be, the IAU steadfastly rejected the
name chiefly on the grounds that the
name Marilyn was commemorative and
that it was associated with a living person.
But supporters did not give up, and
after repeated attempts, the IAU finally
changed its mind. On July 26, 2017, the
organization decided that the name was
appropriate after all. It was not meant to
commemorate a specific person (Marilyn
Lovell, Marilyn Monroe, or anyone else).
It merely assigned a female first name
to the feature. The IAU’s Gazetteer of
Planetary Nomenclature lists the origin of
the name as simply “Astronaut named
feature, Apollo 11 site.” By comparison,
the origin of Lovell Crater on the Moon’s
farside reads “James A., Jr.; American
astronaut (1928–Live).”
Thus, officially, the association of
Marilyn Lovell with the mountainous fea-
ture is merely a back story, like that of
Geneviève de Laistre with the lady’s face at
Promontorium Heraclides. But the name
will serve to remind future explorers of
the important role, and sacrifice, of those
“who also serve who only stand and wait”
— the wives of the astronauts. They
helped make history, and the triumph
belongs as much to them as to their hus-
bands who actually went to the Moon.
William Sheehan is a historian of astronomy
whose books include Epic Moon (with
Thomas Dobbins) and Northern Arizona
Space Training (with Kevin Schindler).
Kevin Schindler is the historian at Lowell
Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 47
 Georges Seur
To artists inspired by what they
see in nature, volcanic sunsets
are the holy grail of light and
color. They transform placid sun-
sets and post-twilight glows into
vibrant bloodbaths of spectral
radiance. Yet, I’m not writing
this to hang on the wall another
volcanically inspired sunset
painting for us to ponder. Rather,
48 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
I want to introduce to observ-
ers a subtle and little-known
daytime phenomenon linked to
volcanic activity. It may have,
in part, inspired 19th-century
post-Impressionist French artist
Georges Seurat (1859–1891) in his
attempt to reform Impressionism
and illuminate the world with a
new form of art: his own version
of optical blending of color,
called Pointillism.
The sky as art
A number of 19th-century art-
ists re-created volcanic sunsets
in their paintings. Most touted
are the works of English land-
scape pioneer William S. Turner,
who spent a year painting the
rat’s sky
vibrant sunsets induced by the
weather-altering 1815 eruption
of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora
— the most powerful volcanic
event in recorded history.
William Ascroft of Chelsea,
London, captured what are
arguably the most faithful rep-
resentations of sunset skies
infused with aerosols from the
1883 eruption of Krakatau
(formerly Krakatoa, also in
Indonesia). He made more than
500 crayon sketches of the
changing hues, several of which
appear as the frontispiece of the
1888 Royal Society publication,
“The eruption of Krakatoa, and
subsequent phenomena.” And
in 2004, Don Olsen of the
Did optical effects from
volcanic aerosols affect the
way this Neo-Impressionist
artist approached his canvas?
by Stephen James O’Meara
ABOVE: Georges Seurat (1859–1891),
as pictured in Lucie Cousturier’s 1888
book, Georges Seurat. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
LEFT: Seurat painted Bathers at
Asnières in 1883 at the age of 24. This
giant work (118 by 79 inches [301 by
201 centimeters]) shows a riverside
location at the Seine just 4 miles
(6.4 kilometers) from the center of Paris.
Note how he colored the sky to reflect
the pollution spewing from the factory
smokestack in the distance. WIKIMEDIA
COMMONS/NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON
University of Texas at Austin
added Norwegian artist Edvard
Munch’s The Scream (1893) to
FRAME: JUST2SHUTTER/DREAMSTIME
the tally of paintings inspired
by the sunsets observed in the
three years following Krakatau’s
historic blast.
These artists may not have
been alone. In a 2014 paper
in the scientific journal
 ABOVE: American artist
Frederic Edwin Church
captured the 1862
eruption of Cotopaxi,
which is about 30 miles
(50 kilometers) south
of Quito, Ecuador.
Topping out at
19,347 feet (5,897 meters),
it’s one of the highest
volcanoes on Earth. WIKIMEDIA
COMMONS/DETROIT INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS
OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM:
A close look at Seurat’s
A Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande
Jatte, first displayed
in 1884, reveals the
artist’s placement of
individual complementary
colors with Pointillist
brushstrokes, giving the
work a hazy, shimmering
effect. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
50 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics, Christos Zerefos of the
Academy of Athens, Greece,
tells how he and his team ana-
lyzed red-green ratios in more
than 500 paintings from 181
artists, dating between 1500
and 1900. They recognized the
effects of volcanic aerosols
(namely a preponderance of
warm hues) in sunset paintings
created within a period of three
years that followed each of 54
major volcanic events during
that time period. These include
works by Turner, John Singleton
Copley, Edgar Degas, and
Gustav Klimt. The findings are
not surprising. But topping the
list is Seurat.
Science on canvas
Born in Paris to a wealthy fam-
ily, Seurat studied drawing
at night school before he was
accepted into the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1877.
During his two-year stay, he
became disillusioned with the
academic style of painting —
the pedantic use of “hidden”
brushstrokes and “licked” fin-
ishes to smooth the surface of
a painting. At the same time,
he was growing enamored of
the large, separate brushstrokes
in French Romantic artist
Eugène Delacroix’s murals,
and the radical new styles of
Impressionist painters Claude
Monet, Camille Pissarro, and
others. Their use of visible
brushstrokes and experimental
application of color, tone, and
texture worked together to cre-
ate a vibrant visual impression
of a fleeting moment in life.
More than an artist, Seurat
had a keen aptitude for science.
He spent hours scouring librar-
ies for books on optics, scien-
tific theories of color, and the
principles of design. Specifically,
he was keen on the visual effects
of complementary colors and
the science behind color percep-
tion. He probably learned about
those subjects in Principles of
Harmony and Contrast of
Colours, and Their Applications
to the Arts, a book written in
1835 by French chemist Michel-
Eugène Chevreul.
Seurat left the academy in
1879 to spend a year of mili-
tary service in Normandy,
where, according to biographer
Daniel Catton Rich, “he
opened his eyes to the lumi-
nous effects of sky and quiet
water.” He then returned to
Paris, where he began to apply
his evolving principles of com-
position and color.
In his quest to discover a
new approach to painting,
Seurat turned to science,
including Chevreul’s law of
simultaneous contrast — how
one color can change our per-
ception of another color right
next to it. Turning away from
mixing paint on his palette, he
ultimately began applying
thousands of small dots of pure
color in broken strokes — or
small touches set side by side
— directly to the canvas in a
precise manner, so that the eye
mixed the colors instead. His
ever-evolving works achieved
such an intensity of light that
he believed he had discovered
the science of painting.
Seurat had not perfected his
Pointillist technique when he
painted his first large-scale
composition, Bathers at
Asnières. Finished in 1884,
it only flirted with his still-
evolving Pointillist style. Still,
one can see in the sky the
smoggy effects of air pollution
from the industrial chimneys in
the distance, giving testament to
his pursuit in capturing realistic
atmospheric optical effects.
A turning point came in the
summer of 1884, when Seurat
showed the work at the first
exhibition of the Group of
Independent Artists, of which
he was a founding member.
That summer he met with
younger Neo-Impressionist
artist Paul Signac, who pointed
out to Seurat that Bathers
lacked the luminosity of other
Impressionist paintings — the
result of his use of muddy earth
tones rather than colors of pris-
matic purity. As Catton Rich
notes in his 1958 book, Seurat:
Drawings and Paintings, Seurat’s
next monumental work — A
Sunday Afternoon on the Island
of La Grande Jatte (1884) —
“explore[s] to the fullest the new
laws and principles which he
and Signac were developing.”
Seurat preferred to call his
new technique “color-luminism”
(chromoluminarism), because it
gives a painting not only a
greater sense of vibrancy but
also a shimmering effect, like
one experiences on a hot sum-
mer’s day as heat rises from a
roadway or sidewalk.
Volcanic influences?
Seurat’s use of the technique of
chromoluminarism coincides
with the optical effects trail-
ing the August 1883 eruption
of Krakatau. It seems almost
impossible that Seurat and his
fellow optical science-oriented
artists of the Neo-Impressionist
movement would have ignored
the profound post-Krakatau
skies — especially because the
resulting atmospheric optical
effects created the most chro-
matically vibrant skies recorded
for a century. And the vibrancy
of light was key to the new
artistic movement.
But the Krakatau aerosols
also performed light magic in
the daytime sky, generating dif-
fuse aureoles of complementary
light that radiated most effec-
tively at high noon. Such a sight
would have had the capacity to
inspire Seurat, especially con-
sidering that the artist was keen
on the science of diffraction and
Rayleigh scattering. It would
also be appropriate to suggest
that the daytime sky, as painted
by the Krakatau eruption, stood
before the Neo-Impressionists
like a visual muse, inspiring
new insights into color and tone
that perhaps only science-
inspired artists could fully
appreciate.
X-ray imaging of Bathers at
Asnières reveals that Seurat mod-
ified parts of it in the mid-1880s,
ABOVE: English artist
adding prismatic colors in a completed by the time Krakatau William Ascroft made these
Pointillist manner that creates erupted in August 1883, and the three crayon sketches
a more vibrant feel. volcano’s associated atmospheric on the banks of the
Bathers had not quite been effects only became vividly Thames in London. They
show color shifts in the
pronounced over Europe by western sky after sunset
November of that year. But its November 26, 1883. The
optical effects remained intense colors were created by
the interplay of light with
at least until 1887, and skywatch- stratospheric volcanic
ers continued to record volcanic aerosols, which circled the
atmospheric effects to a lesser globe after the August 1883
degree into the early 1900s. eruption of Krakatau in
Indonesia. STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA
Volcanic skies, then, were
present throughout the brief
heyday of the French Neo-
Impressionist movement, which
flourished principally from 1886
to 1906. To understand how these
optically vibrant skies may have
affected Neo-Impressionist
thinking, let’s fast-forward
100 years to 1983, the year El
Chichón erupted in Mexico.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 51
 United States

Mexico
Gulf of
Mexico

Atlantic Ocean
The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, carried by the Nimbus 7
meteorological satellite, created this plot that shows the largely
westward spread of the volcanic aerosol veil from El Chichón on
April 8, 1982, only four days after the largest blast. NASA

sky, I noticed it had a “nervous”

This Pointillist image
shows colors of
complementary light
scattered by pollen
grains in a diminutive
atmospheric corona.
The bright glow is an
edge effect from a
roof used to block the
Sun, around which the
colorful corona appeared.
STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA
Stephen James O’Meara is
a columnist and contributing
editor of Astronomy.
A flecked
Hawaiian sky
On March 28, 1982, El
Chichón, a dormant volcano
in Chiapas, Mexico, awoke
from 600 years of slumber,
erupting violently three times
in a week. One of the most
important volcanic events of
the 20th century, the unex-
pected blast released 7.5 million
metric tons of sulfur dioxide
into the stratosphere, warm-
ing it by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit
(4 degrees Celsius), and cooling
the Northern Hemisphere by
0.72 F (0.4 C). The resultant
cloud encircled the globe in
20 days and altered Earth’s
climate for years afterward.
The stratospheric aerosol
cloud initially moved westward
from southern Mexico toward
Hawaii, where I was living at
the time. In a 1983 Applied
Optics paper, Kinsell L.
Coulson notes that “a consider-
able enhancement of intensity”
occurred throughout the main
part of the day, causing a “dif-
fuse type of aureole” over a
large portion of the sky. Mauna
Loa Observatory lidar mea-
surements over Hawaii in 1982
revealed a sixfold increase in
scattering due to aerosols, and
a 25 percent decrease in direct
incident radiation.
In my studies of the El
Chichón-influenced daytime
quality, caused by the interplay
of minute flecks of complemen-
tary colors. This is why I refer
to it in my Hawaiian diaries as
an Impressionist’s sky. To a
casual viewer, the El Chichón
aerosols had buffed away the
normally crystal blue sky and
replaced it with a frost-glass
glare of Pointillist light — light
predominantly infused with
flecks of blue and orange, with
dabs of yellow and white, that
scintillated with subtle pris-
matic effects like tossed con-
fetti. This description is
reminiscent of one recorded
one month after the Krakatau
paroxysm by Captain Parson of
the Earnock, who noticed the
eastern sky before sunrise
appeared “silver grey, changing
to light blue, flecked with
numerous small cirrus trim-
ming, pink and rosy.”
Some of the color associated
with the aerosol umbrella I
witnessed was linked to the
Bishop’s ring atmospheric phe-
nomenon. This enormous dif-
fraction corona (in this case
created by the scattering effects
of volcanic aerosols) covered
half of the visible sky and
displayed the color-contrast

52 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
 Seurat’s The Eiffel Tower (right) was unveiled in 1889, in time for the
World’s Fair in Paris, where the actual Eiffel Tower was also unveiled. The
author made a watercolor/pencil sketch (above) showing the daytime sky
over Hawaii in July 1982, when it was influenced by El Chichón aerosols.
PAINTING: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/LEGION OF HONOR, SAN FRANCISCO. SKETCH: STEPHEN JAMES O’MEARA

aureoles described by Chevreul, she saw Bishop’s ring in full day-

though in opposite order —
namely an enormous blue
sphere of light surrounded by
a vast orange aureole. The
volcanic skies seemed to
announce the general rule of
Neo-Impressionism: “more
opposition, more brilliance.”
One painting by Seurat
moves me each time I view it
because it recalls the flecked
complexity of the El Chichón
sky: The Eiffel Tower, a mon-
tage of predominantly blue,
red, and yellow points of color
painted from a vantage point
that looked to the southeast
across the Seine, where such
“It is important to realise that nothing in
Seurat’s art seems to have been unconsidered.”
atmospheric optical effects
would be expected.
Seurat unveiled this painting
in 1889. He began working on it
around February 1887, before
finalizing the painting in his
studio just months ahead of the
tower’s completion in 1889.
During this period, the Bishop’s
ring and other aerosol effects
were still present in the atmo-
sphere. As T.W. Backhouse
reports in a March 1889 issue of
Nature: “I am informed by Miss
E. Brown, of Cirencester, that
time as recently as last month,
not far from 12 o’clock one day.”
Adding to the lingering
effects of the Krakatau aerosols
were aerosols injected into the
atmosphere by the 1886 erup-
tion of Mount Tarawera in
New Zealand and the 1888
eruption of Mount Bandai in
Japan. So it’s possible that
volcanic aerosols from three
different eruptions contributed
to the atmospheric effects we
see in The Eiffel Tower, whose
Pointillist style is more boldly
laid down than in any previous
work by Seurat. Furthermore,
dual powerful eruptions
in 1902 (from Mount Pelée
in Martinique and Santa
María in Guatemala) created
further atmospheric effects
until 1905, about when the
Neo-Impressionist movement
began to wane.
The point of
the matter?
In the nearly 40 years since
the El Chichón eruption, I
have witnessed similar large-
scale Pointillist effects only
rarely: after the 1991 eruption
of Mount Pinatubo in the
Philippines, and once during
totality at the August 2017 total
solar eclipse in Oregon, where
the sky was affected by rippling
waves of smoke from forest fires.
I have observed a similar
effect multiple times on a
microscale with another diffrac-
tion phenomenon: the pollen
corona (about 3° in angular
extent, compared with nearly
90° in the Bishop’s ring). In one
case, I was able to photograph
the Pointillist effect in the pol-
len corona, whereby a blue aure-
ole and outer yellow and orange
rings were splintered into a
blend of juxtaposed prismatic
colors, owing to scattering
effects of the airborne particles.
Is it not reasonable, then, to
at least consider the possibility
that the flecked complemen-
tary colors in a volcanically
infused daytime sky — which
persisted in undulations
throughout Seurat’s brief span
as an artist — influenced his
Pointillist technique?
Unfortunately, we know
little about Seurat’s methods.
He died tragically of an infec-
tion in 1891, at the age of 31.
The artist left behind little in
the way of personal letters and
diaries; he also didn’t speak
much about his technique. His
interest in color theory, how-
ever, is well documented,
including that he sought a for-
mula for the precise optical
effects of his paintings. As Jo
Kirby and colleagues explain in
an article published in a 2003
National Gallery Technical
Bulletin titled “Seurat’s
Painting Practice: Theory,
Development and Technology,”
“It is important to realise that
nothing in Seurat’s art seems to
have been unconsidered.”

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 53
 Hunt the deep sky in the
Hunting Dogs The Whirlpool Galaxy is just the start of
a fantastic tour through Canes Venatici. by Michael E. Bakich

C
anes Venatici (pronounced KAY-neez
ven-ah-TEE-see) is one of seven
constellations still in use that
Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius
invented. In 1690, it was included in the
star atlas Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive
Uranographia, published by his wife.
Canes Venatici is a constellation of the 13
mid-northern sky. Its center lies at right ascen-
sion 13h04m and declination 40°30'. It ranks M51
38th in size out of the 88 constellations, cover-
ing 465.19 square degrees (1.13 percent) of the
sky. Size doesn’t translate into visibility, how- 4
ever. It lies near the bottom of the constellation M106
10
ladder (84th) in terms of overall brightness.
M63
The best date each year to see Canes 11
Venatici is April 7, when it stands opposite the CANES VENATICI NGC 4449
Sun in the sky and reaches its highest point at 6
local midnight. With respect to visibility, any- 12
1 M94 NGC 4490
one living north of latitude 37° south can see `
NGC 5005
the entire figure at some time during the year. _ 9
It’s invisible only to those hardy souls south NGC 5033
8
of latitude 62° south. From the Northern 2
Hemisphere, the wonderful deep-sky objects NGC 4244
in this constellation are easy to spot from 3
February through July. NGC 4214
14 5
NGC 4631 NGC 4395
Michael E. Bakich is a senior editor of Astronomy.
His first book was The Cambridge Guide to the 7 NGC 4656 5°
Constellations.

1 M94 (NGC 4736) 2 The Silver Needle Galaxy (NGC 4244)

At magnitude 8.2, M94 is the brightest galaxy in Canes Venatici. Through
an 8-inch scope, you’ll see the tiny nucleus surrounded by a bright disk
that measures only 30" across. A much fainter oval halo surrounds the disk.
Switch to a telescope of at least 16 inches aperture, and you’ll begin to see
the tightly wound spiral arms close to the nucleus. R. JAY GABANY
This magnitude 10.4 spiral measures a worthy 17' by 2.2'. Its disk appears almost
edge-on, tilting only 5° to our line of sight. Through the eyepiece, this galaxy’s
core appears only slightly brighter than the rest. What sets the Silver Needle
Galaxy apart, however, is its length-to-width ratio. View this object through a
4-inch scope, and you’ll understand why its name contains the word “needle.”
JOE NAUGHTON/STEVE STAFFORD/ADAM BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF

54 AS T R ON O MY • APRIL 2019
 3 NGC 4214
is an irregular galaxy glowing at
magnitude 9.6 and measuring 8' by
6.6'. Through an 8-inch telescope at
200x, NGC 4214 orients northwest
to southeast. The central region is
long and bright, and the halo is large.
Through larger apertures and higher
magnifications, both appear irregular.
DIETMAR HAGER
5 NGC 4395
is a magnitude 10.2 gem nearly 8°
southwest of Cor Caroli (Alpha [α]
CVn). With a size of 13.2' by 11', this
galaxy is 20 percent as large as the
Full Moon. A large scope shows two
star-forming regions in the southeast
part of NGC 4395 that carry their own
NGC numbers. ADAM BLOCK/MOUNT LEMMON
SKYCENTER/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
7 The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656-7)
spans 14' by 3' and glows at magnitude
10.4. To find it, you’ll need to head 6.6°
south-southwest of Cor Caroli. The
core is the brightest part of the galaxy,
followed by the blade, which lies to
the northeast. NGC 4656’s disk widens
and gets fainter toward the southwest.
DOUG MATTHEWS/ADAM BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF
9 The double star Cor Caroli
(Alpha Canum Venaticorum)
makes a nice sight through small
telescopes. The magnitude 2.9
primary glows blue-white, and that
provides a pleasant color contrast to
the magnitude 5.5 yellow secondary,
only 19" away. This double is a great
target for star parties. JEREMY PEREZ
11 Irregular galaxy NGC 4449
glows at magnitude 9.6 and has a
high surface brightness and an unusual
rectangular shape, making it easy
to observe. If your seeing is good, an
11-inch scope will help you spot several
concentrations of star-forming activity.
The main one lies north of the core,
and a smaller one is just south. JOHN AND
CHRISTINE CONNORS/ADAM BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF
13 The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)
Even in a publication like Astronomy, the Whirlpool Galaxy stands out.
It shines at magnitude 8.4 and measures 8.2' by 6.9'. You’ll see the
spiral arms through 8-inch or larger telescopes. Look for the thin, dark
dust lanes that follow the arms’ inner edges. M51’s companion, NGC 5195,
lies some distance behind the plane of M51’s disk. BOB FERA
4 M106 (NGC 4258)
is a marvelous spiral that shines at
magnitude 8.4 and is one of the sky’s
brightest galaxies. It spans 20' by 8.4'.
Through a 10-inch or larger telescope,
you’ll begin to see the mottled texture
and spiral structure. The strikingly
linear northern arm appears more
pronounced, while the southern arm
looks more diffuse. TONY HALLAS
6 The Cocoon Galaxy (NGC 4490)
glows at magnitude 9.8 and measures
6.4' by 3.3'. This barred spiral appears
as an irregularly bright oval halo that
envelops a bright central region. Look
just 3' north of NGC 4490’s western
end for its magnitude 12.5 companion,
irregular galaxy NGC 4485. ADAM BLOCK/
MOUNT LEMMON SKYCENTER/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
8 The Spiral galaxy NGC 5033
appears twice as long (10.5' by 5.1')
as it is wide and elongated in a
north-northwest to south-southeast
orientation. It glows at magnitude
10.2. The broad, bright central region
overwhelms the faint spiral structure
through anything less than a 14-inch
telescope. R. JAY GABANY
10 The Sunflower Galaxy (M63)
is a magnitude 8.6 gem that reveals
a wealth of detail. Through small
telescopes, the nucleus appears stellar,
and a 3' long oval halo surrounds it.
Through a 10-inch scope, the halo
shows clumpy structure formed by
stellar associations and star-forming
regions within M63’s spiral arms.
DON GOLDMAN
12 Spiral galaxy NGC 5005
displays tightly wound spiral arms.
Through an 8-inch telescope, you’ll
pick out the bright stellar core
surrounded by a fainter oval disk.
A 16-inch scope at 300x will let you
see the uneven brightness that marks
the positions of immense dust lanes
in the arms. RAY AND EMILY MAGNANI/ADAM
BLOCK/NOAO/AURA/NSF
14 The Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631)
At first glance, the Whale Galaxy, with its bulging core and asymmetrical
material distribution, doesn’t look like an edge-on spiral galaxy. Yet at
magnitude 9.2, this object is one of the sky’s brightest edge-on galaxies.
Through 4- to 6-inch scopes, you’ll see an imperfect lens shape that’s bigger
and brighter on one side. Larger scopes will reveal NGC 4631’s companion —
dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 4627, which sits 2.5' northwest. R. JAY GABANY
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 55
How to
photograph
aurorae
No matter your photography skills,
a few simple tricks can help you
capture the best images possible.
Text and images by Steve Cullen
If
you ever decide to head to the
small town of Yellowknife (pop-
ulation 20,000) in the Northwest
Territories of Canada and expect
to get good pizza, you might
want to reconsider your choice of destina-
tion. But if you go there hoping to watch
and photograph some of the most amazing
displays of the northern lights you will ever
see, you have certainly chosen wisely.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not say-
ing there isn’t good pizza to be had in
Yellowknife, but my takeout order con-
sisted of crust, some kind of makeshift
white sauce, cheddar cheese, and a slice of
pepperoni or two. However, that’s just the
56 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
LEFT: Although aurorae add an ethereal look
to any photo, the bright streaks can’t always
serve as the focal point of an image. Here,
the photographer set a timer on his camera
before posing in the foreground.
risk you take when you venture to one of
Canada’s most remote northern towns. On
the flip side, coming up with a location
that is better situated to catch the north-
ern lights in North America would be next
to impossible.
Embedded in the auroral oval
Yellowknife is about 250 miles (400 kilo-
meters) south of the Arctic Circle. One of
its most notable claims to fame is being
featured on the first season of the TV show
Ice Road Truckers. The town serves as the
home base for convoys of trucks that brave
the frozen-lake ice roads 24 hours a day,
seven days a week for about two months
each winter. But for us, the most impor-
tant thing about Yellowknife is that it sits
directly under the auroral oval.
The auroral oval is a gigantic ring that
circles Earth’s geomagnetic north pole. It
represents the point along Earth’s magnetic
field where charged particles from the Sun
collide with atoms and molecules of oxygen
and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere,
causing them to release the colored light we
call aurorae. Theoretically, aurorae could
be any color in the spectrum, but the most
prominent is a green hue often accompa-
nied by violet, blue, yellow, pink, and red
wisps. Besides being perfectly positioned
for auroral displays, Yellowknife (for the

most part) checks off many of the boxes for
other criteria you would want to consider
in selecting a place to capture the northern
lights: its levels of light pollution, its geog-
raphy, and the overall weather.
Given its remoteness, Yellowknife has
very dark skies once you venture away
from the town itself. A 30-minute drive
will get you far enough away from light
pollution to have excellent sky conditions.
The darker the sky, the more the aurorae
will stand out against the inky blackness.
That said, even in town, the northern lights
often glow bright enough to be easily seen,
albeit with reduced contrast against the
background sky. From a geological and
ABOVE: A frozen lake is a
prime location to capture the
shimmering glow of aurorae,
as the landscape is largely
free of obstructions.
topographical perspective,
the area is fairly flat and dot-
ted with a multitude of lakes
left over from the retreat of Yellowknife
ice-age glaciers. This is impor-
tant because aurorae can appear
almost anywhere in the sky, and
with no large mountains obstructing
the view, you can take in a broad expanse
of the heavens.
Probability of visible aurorae
The lakes are a huge benefit from
January through March because they are 10% 50% 90%
frozen over to a thickness that allows you
to drive across them. Being in the middle Early on New Year’s Day 2016 (UT), aurorae hunters
across the northern United States and Canada were
of a lake eliminates everything that might treated to a spectacular show when the auroral oval
block your view of what’s going on above. expanded south and intensified. NOAA/NASA
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 57

When you stand directly below the incoming
flow of charged particles from the Sun, the
aurora borealis at the zenith is a psychedelic
menagerie of violet and green against the inky
black backdrop of space.
58 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
When it comes to photographing aurorae,
sometimes less is more. Even relatively
faint aurorae will give most images a subtle,
elegant feel.
I have to admit, it is a bit disconcerting the In fact, a lot of camera gear will simply
first time you drive over the surface of a stop working properly in such extreme
frozen lake, but you soon get used to it. You environments. The mirror on my Nikon
might even come to enjoy the unique ride. D850 would frequently stick and refuse to
Fortunately, Yellowknife is in a region move when I pressed the shutter button.
with relatively good weather, especially The legs on my tripod also completely
considering its far northern latitude. Rain froze in the open position. And even
isn’t a major concern for aurorae viewing, though the air is drier in the winter, when-
since the sky stays too bright for many dis- ever I was near any open water, there
plays from April through August, which is would be enough humidity for ice crystals
when most of the rain falls there. Snow is to form on my lens.
also surprisingly light. The region will have The solution? I went to the local sundry
some amount of it for about 190 days of the shop and bought some hair scrunchies,
year. But the monthly totals are bearable, which are now part of my permanent pho-
with November being the worst, experienc- tography travel kit. I wrapped one around
ing an average of 14 inches (36 centime-
ters), while the rest of the snowy months
average less than 9 inches (23 cm).
As a photographer, the main thing
you have to worry about is the cold.
Temperatures early in the year can be
brutal, with an average in January of –14
degrees Fahrenheit (–26 degrees Celsius).
When I was there in March, the overnight
temperatures dipped to –25 F (–32 C), with
a wind chill of –40 F (–40 C). Luckily, I had
brought along an Alpine climbing snowsuit
that I stuffed with heat packs, which kept
me mostly comfortable while standing out-
side for four or five hours. Make no mis-
take: These kinds of temperatures are not
It is a magical moment when you look straight
to be taken lightly, so you should definitely up to see an incoming aurora. Dancing ribbons of
plan accordingly. light seemingly descend right above your head.
the lens to hold a heat pack or two tight
against the body, and it provided enough
heat to keep the ice crystals at bay.
Another issue is that batteries do not
perform as well in cold environments. I
kept a few batteries warm in my pocket at
all times. I usually needed to swap them
out once or twice during a session. On the
positive side of the ledger, the bitter cold
temperatures lowered the amount of noise
in my photographs.
The final major question to answer
when deciding to photograph the northern
lights is when to go. As spring arrives, the
Sun sets later and later at high northern
latitudes. From early April to late August,
the sky never reaches astronomical twi-
light, and it is as bright as civil twilight
from late May to mid-July. That pretty
much eliminates those months as options.
This brings me to an interesting phe-
nomenon that scientists are still investigat-
ing. There seems to be more prominent
auroral displays in the weeks around the
vernal and autumnal equinoxes. This is
called the Russell-McPherron effect. The
prevailing hypothesis is that during these
windows, Earth’s magnetic field is better
aligned with the stream of charged par-
ticles raining down on us from the Sun,
leading to heightened auroral activity. So,
if you’re looking to nudge the odds in your
favor, I would suggest timing your visit
around one of the equinoxes.
Imaging aurorae
With the trip planning covered, let’s get
down to brass tacks — what’s the best way
to photograph aurorae?
Your gear should consist of at least two
camera bodies if possible. If you’re making
such a large time and travel investment to
journey to the Northwest Territories, hav-
ing a backup only makes sense. (My guess
is that Amazon Prime won’t make next-
day deliveries to Yellowknife.)
You should also bring a sturdy and reli-
able tripod. There are differing schools of
thought about whether twist lock legs or
clamp lock legs are better for the cold.
Mine are all twist locks, and they abso-
lutely were prone to freezing up as the tem-
peratures reached double-digit negatives.
Because aurorae can appear anywhere
in the sky, a fast wide-angle lens also is an
important part of your kit. A lens in the
14mm to 24mm focal length range would
be best, preferably with f/2.8 optics.
As with all night-sky photography,
you’ll want to practice sound composition
techniques. Because many of your shots
If you find a reflective
surface, such as an unfrozen
lake or pond, try to capture
the reflection of an aurora
in your shot.
will be wide angle, try to place an interest-
ing foreground subject in your frame. Use
the aurorae as you would the Milky Way;
it should be a strong supporting element,
but it doesn’t have to be the hero. Trees,
rocks, snow formations, water, and other
close-in objects tend to draw the viewer’s
eye into the image more than an image
looking straight up at the sky. If you’re just
starting out with night photography, keep-
ing it simple is probably the best approach.
Don’t worry about stacking images or
shooting to combine the foreground and
the sky in post-processing. These are all
techniques for getting improved results,
but not necessary early on.
Plan to set your camera to a high ISO,
probably 1600 or above. Of course, this will
depend on your camera’s capabilities and
performance at higher ISOs. Set your aper-
ture as wide open as your lens allows.
And, finally, set your shutter to be open Though wide-angle shots are great for capturing
for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. Once aurorae, occasionally an aurora is best used
as an intriguing background for a close-up shot.
you’re in the field, you can experiment
with the exposure time. However, keep in
mind that the northern lights are con- challenging experience. But if you go, make
stantly in motion, and they will appear sure to appreciate the journey. And more
“fuzzier” the longer you leave your shutter importantly, take time away from the cam-
open. If you are a more advanced night- era to simply look up and enjoy the show.
scape photographer, many of the skills you
already know for Milky Way photography Steve Cullen is a product photographer who
will also apply to aurorae photography. pursues his life-long passion for landscape and
Photographing aurorae is a fun and astrophotography in his free time.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 59
 WE
TEST
A proprietary type of
glass, special coatings,
and superb mechanics
make this telescope
one to look through.
by Phil Harrington
T
oday’s state-of-the-art apochro-
matic refractors (APOs) use
two-, three-, or four-element
objective lenses to suppress
optical imperfections that
plague their two-element achromatic breth-
ren. The most common of these optical
imperfections, chromatic aberration and
spherical aberration, are quashed thanks
to sophisticated glass that includes one or
more unusual elements — often fluorite,
SD (special dispersion), or ED (extra-low
dispersion) glass.
The views through these scopes are
second to none and provide magnificent
moonscapes, sharp planetary vistas, pin-
point stars, and deep-sky objects set against
a jet-black background.
Attaining optical perfection comes with
a price, however. Inch for inch of aperture,
APOs are the most expensive class of ama-
teur telescope.
Enter Sky-Watcher
Recently, a midpriced class of APOs has
made a big splash in the marketplace. While
still pricey, they strike a balance between
expense and quality. Leading the way is
Sky-Watcher USA’s line of Evostar refrac-
tors. Ranging in aperture from 2 inches
to 5.9 inches, Evostar refractors are built
around two-element objective lenses.
One of those elements is ED glass
designed to help squelch unwanted optical
failings while enhancing image contrast and
sharpness. Although the exact ED glass
used is deemed proprietary information by
the manufacturer, a product specialist told
me that “the glass is a well-known, quality
glass.” Sky-Watcher USA’s Metallic
60 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
High-Transmission Coatings (MHTC) fur-
ther reduce false color, while internal baf-
fling and a flat black interior minimize
stray light from infiltrating the optical path.
The flagship Evostar 150 comes in two
different versions. Both are identical opti-
cally. The only differences are in some of
the mechanics. The Evostar 150 comes with
a Vixen-style dovetail plate and a 2" focuser
with a 1¼" adapter. The Evostar 150DX
includes a dual-speed 3.4-inch rack-and-
pinion focuser with 1¼" and 2" adapters,
rotatable tube rings, a Losmandy D-style
dovetail plate, a 3.75" extension tube, a
Canon DSLR adapter, and dust caps.
Although a finder doesn’t come with either
model, you’ll find a standard shoe-style
base mounted on the tube adjacent to the
focuser. However, you’re on your own for
eyepieces and a suitable mount.
Mechanical excellence
This past autumn, I had a chance to put
the Evostar 150DX through its paces to see
whether the designers at Sky-Watcher USA
had achieved their goal. I came away highly
impressed.
The scope’s sturdiness was immediately
apparent as I lifted it out of the heavy-duty,
custom-fitted aluminum carrying case. The
case’s exterior measures 55⅜" long by 15¼"
wide by 11½" high (141 by 39 by 29 centime-
ters), and it has plenty of room inside for
accessories.
The robustness of the case comes at a
price, however: weight. The case alone
weighs twice as much as the telescope. The
Evostar 150DX with the rings and dovetail
plate in place, but without a finder or eye-
piece, weighs 24.8 pounds (11.2 kilograms).
When the refractor is nestled in the case,
the pair totals 61.6 pounds (27.9 kg). While
that is manageable by one person — I did it
— it’s best carried by two. There is a single
carrying handle centered on the case, as
well as one at either end. If you will be
transporting the Evostar to a dark-sky site
by yourself, a soft, padded case will be more
practical. Leave the hard case at home for
safe storage.
The tube assembly, with the dew shield
threaded in place and the focuser racked all
the way in, measures 49 inches (124 cm)
long. Tube diameter is 7.1 inches (18 cm),
while the dew shield is 8 inches (20 cm)
across. Inside, three flat-black light baffles
help suppress unwanted spurious light from
spoiling the view.
The oversized focuser’s drawtube has
3.5 inches (8.9 cm) of back-focus travel. The
focuser is rotatable, and Sky-Watcher USA
marked the drawtube with graduations.
Both features make it easier for photogra-
phers to view through camera viewfinders
and repeat a focuser setting once
established.
The aluminum tube is painted high-
gloss black, as are the focuser and tail stock.
For contrast, the dew shield is gleaming
white while the dovetail base plate has a
green anodization. Together, the colors
blend to create an impressive look.
Under the stars
To test the scope, I enlisted the help of my
observing buddy, Rob Guasto. We attached
the scope to his heavy-duty equatorial
mount, and within minutes were ready to
go. The waxing crescent Moon was our first
target. Through a premium-grade eyepiece,
USA’s EvoStar 150
the lunar surface looked incredibly sharp.
Contrast was also striking, with jet-black
shadows against a sunlit surface of varying
shades of white and gray. There was some
minor purple fringing visible around some
of the starkly lit crater rims on this unfor-
giving target, but it was barely noticeable
against such an impressive scene.
Some quick photos of the Moon
through the Evostar confirmed my visual
impression and were among the sharpest
I’ve ever taken. The minor color fringing
around some of the crater rims was also
evident in the photos, but not nearly
enough to spoil anything. For a reality
check, I later posted some on social media
just to gauge reaction. The comments were
all enthusiastically positive, with lots of
happy emojis littering my wall.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Sky-Watcher USA Evostar 150DX
Type: Apochromatic refractor
optical tube assembly
Focal length: 1,200 millimeters
Focal ratio: f/8
Weight: 22 pounds (10 kilograms)
Length: 50.5 inches (128 centimeters)
Comes with: 3.4-inch rack-and-pinion
focuser, tube ring hardware,
aluminum case
Price: $2,800
Contact: Sky-Watcher USA
475 Alaska Avenue
Torrance, CA 90503
310.803.5953
www.skywatcherusa.com
Next, we aimed at Saturn. Despite the
planet’s low altitude at the time, the image
was sharp. The dual-speed focuser proved
its worth when we cranked up the magnifi-
cation to 200x. Both the Cassini Division
and the delicate C (Crepe) ring were evi-
dent, as was the planet’s shadow cast onto
the rings. The dual-speed focuser’s coarse
motion was even and smooth, without any
binding or slippage, as was the fine focus.
Star testing on a couple of randomly
chosen 3rd-magnitude stars (a good bright-
ness level for the aperture) showed identical
diffraction patterns on either side of focus,
proving the objective was well figured and
collimated. To push the color correction of
the apochromat, I aimed toward brilliant
Vega. Like the Moon, Vega displayed some
minor bluish residual color. But the in-focus
diffraction rings were spot on.
Continuing the sightseeing, globular
clusters M13 and M15 were both nicely
resolved at 133x. I was especially impressed
that M13 revealed its unusual “propeller.”
This feature is formed by three subtle dark
lanes just off center from the cluster’s core
that form the letter Y, or as many call it, a
propeller. (See July 2018’s Reader Gallery for
an image that shows the feature, taken by
astrophotographer Rodney Pommier.)
Normally, the propeller is challenging
through 8- to 10-inch apertures, but it was
evident in the Evostar 150, thanks to the
optical system’s high quality. I have never
seen it through a scope this small before.
The Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the Ring
Nebula (M57), and the Little Dumbbell
Nebula (M76) were equally impressive.
Viewing each at 133x, they all showed more
detail than I would expect from a 6-inch
The Evostar 150DX
is a 6-inch f/8
apochromatic
refractor. Its two-
element objective
features one element
made from extra-
low-dispersion glass.
SKY-WATCHER USA
scope. I was especially taken by the ethereal
appearance of the Ring and how it seemed
to float among a starry field with a black
backdrop.
Everything we viewed through the
Evostar 150 was sharp with superb contrast.
Colors in objects such as the gold-and-blue
double star Albireo (Beta [β] Cygni), as well
as the ruby jewels hidden among the sap-
phires of the Double Cluster (NGC 869 and
NGC 884), were beautifully displayed.
Under steady seeing, the Evostar handled
high magnification well. The four stars that
make up the Double-Double (Epsilon [ε]
Lyrae), for instance, were cleanly separated
as four distinct pinpoints at more than 400x
when seeing was steady. Still tighter pairs,
like 53 Aquarii, at magnitudes 6.3 and 6.4
separated by 1.5", were also resolvable. But I
cannot definitively say that I could detect
the duplicity of Struve 2751 (Σ2751) in
Cepheus, another test target. Those stars are
separated by 1.0", which is close to this aper-
ture’s theoretical limit of how tight a double
star it can separate. Based on what I could
see, however, I bet it’s doable with this scope
under better seeing.
The bottom line
All in all, I came away highly impressed
with the Sky-Watcher USA Evostar 150DX.
Outstanding optics, combined with excel-
lent mechanics and a price that’s a fraction
of some of the other APOs in the field,
make this an excellent choice for anyone
looking for a large refractor.
Phil Harrington is a contributing editor of
Astronomy who gets excited every time he looks
through a high-quality scope at a sky object.
W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 61
 OBSERVINGBASICS
BY GLENN CHAPLE
What’s hiding
in Hydra?
Take a dip in a vast cosmic lake and start exploring
the water snake’s head.
L
ast December, we
toured the constel-
lation Triangulum.
Small in size, it can
be fully explored
in a single evening, much
like a fisherman can cover
a small pond in one day. In
that December article, I also
promised to explain how you
can explore an expansive
constellation the same way
an angler tackles a large body
of water.
So, is your telescope ready?
Our target, the water snake
Hydra, is a fearsome creature
— both mythologically and
astronomically.
Hydra is the largest of the 88
recognized constellations; with
an area of 1,303 square degrees,
it covers about 10 times as
much sky as Triangulum.
Hydra winds its way across
part or all of eight zones of
right ascension — far too much
territory for a single observing
session. What to do? Here’s a
tactic I learned during my
decades as an avid freshwater
fisherman.
Before heading out to fish, I
look at a map of the lake and
single out a promising area
— perhaps a bay near an inlet.
I concentrate on this one spot,
saving other parts of the lake
for future trips. The same
approach can be used for
covering large constellations,
referring to a star atlas to zero
in on a promising section. For
instance, if I’m in a double star
mood (and when am I not?),
Bruce MacEvoy and Wil
BROWSE THE “OBSERVING BASICS” ARCHIVE AT www.Astronomy.com/Chaple.
62 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
Tirion’s Double Star Atlas iden-
tifies several binaries near a
distinctive group of stars that
forms the head of Hydra. The
area covers only about 20
square degrees, so I’ve essen-
tially turned a vast lake into a
small pond.
Hydra’s head lies on the
boundary with Cancer, so start
by jumping across the border
into Cancer for a peek at the
double star Struve 1245
(STF 1245). This is one of more
than 3,000 pairs cataloged by
the German-Russian astrono-
mer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm
von Struve between 1824 and
1827. According to the online
edition of The Washington
Double Star Catalog (WDS),
Double stars, however, aren’t the only fish
in the Hydra lake.
its magnitude 6.0 and 7.2
members are separated by 10.1".
Their spectral classes are listed
as F8 and G5, so study this pair
closely to see if you can detect
any colors.
Returning to Hydra, train
your telescope on STF 1255, ½°
east of the 4th-magnitude star
Delta (δ) Hydrae. Fainter than
STF 1245, it’s nevertheless
bright and wide enough (mag-
nitudes 7.3 and 8.6, separation
26") for an easy split in a
small-aperture scope like a
3-inch f/10 reflector. Both are
G-type stars, but the colors
might not be so obvious in
c
STF 1273
STF 1255
STF 1290
S Hydrae
Spica
R
/ a
Although Hydra is the largest constellation, if you break the water snake into smaller
parts, it’s much easier — and much more rewarding — to explore. ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY
such a small instrument.
The next pair will require
a bigger boat, er, telescope. One
of Struve’s doubles (STF 1273)
is better known by its Greek
moniker, Epsilon (ε) Hydrae.
The brighter component, of
magnitude 3.5, is attended by
a magnitude 6.7 companion a
mere 2.9" away. A 5-inch scope
should split this pair, but you’ll
still need an evening of steady
seeing and an eyepiece that
magnifies 150x or more.
If you’re able to split ε Hya,
move on to an even more
difficult challenge, STF 1290.
This magnitude 7.4 and 9.2 duo
is located about 2.5° southeast
of ε Hya. The two stars are
separated by just 2.8". If 150x
doesn’t work with a 5-inch
telescope, try 200x.
Double stars, however, aren’t
the only fish in the Hydra lake.
A variable star, S Hydrae, lies
1.5° south and slightly east of
STF 1290. S Hya is a long-
period variable (LPV). LPVs
are also called Mira-type vari-
ables after the prototype, the
star Mira (Omicron [ο] Ceti) in
the constellation Cetus. Most
are red giants that pulsate in
¡ STF 1245
b
d m
C ANC ER
H YDR A i
p
f
Alphard
_
h
p
+
`
j 10°
somewhat regular cycles,
changing brightness as they
beat. S Hya cycles from an
average maximum brightness
of magnitude 7.3 to an average
minimum of 13.3 and back
again once every 8.5 months.
The last max was in late
September of last year; the next
should occur sometime in mid-
to late May this year. To moni-
tor the changes, check out S
Hya every seven to 10 days
using a chart, like the one on
the American Association of
Variable Star Observers’ web-
site, that shows the magnitudes
of nearby stars.
Given its astounding size,
there are many other parts of
Lake Hydra that any angler/
astronomer can explore. Next
session, we might just migrate
south to check out the open
cluster M48 and the double
stars STF 1270 (magnitudes 6.9
and 7.5, separation 4.7") and
17 Hydrae (magnitudes 6.7
and 6.9, separation 4.1").
Questions, comments, or
suggestions? Email me at
gchaple@hotmail.com.
Next month: What visual
double star has a companion
that circles its main star once
each day? Clear skies!
Glenn Chaple has been an
avid observer since a friend
showed him Saturn through a
small backyard scope in 1963.
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 BINOCULARUNIVERSE
BY P H I L H A R R I N G TO N
Into the Lion’s den
Check out these bright treasures of the constellation Leo.
E
xcept for Ursa Major,
Leo the Lion is the
most easily recogniz-
able constellation of
the northern spring
sky. Brilliant Regulus, the
Lion’s heart, first draws our
attention to the celestial king of
the beasts. His head and body
are framed by a distinctive
curve of stars resembling a
backward question mark or
a farmer’s sickle, and a large
triangle of stars to its east.
Regulus [Alpha (α) Leonis]
marks the handle end of the
Sickle asterism. Nicolas
Copernicus is credited with
naming this star Regulus, mean-
ing “Little King” in Latin,
although he was not the first to
refer to it as kingly. Many
ancient cultures — including the
Arabians, Babylonians, and the
Akkadians of Mesopotamia —
also viewed it as celestial royalty.
Regulus is a quadruple-star
system. The bright star we see is
a blue-white, spectral type B
main sequence star, orbited by a
white dwarf companion that has
never been observed directly.
Through binoculars, however,
we can see the system’s third
member, an 8th-magnitude
point nearly 3' from the brilliant
primary sun if the latter is
The beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 2903 in Leo is visible in binoculars as an oval smear of
light, its photons having traveled 20 million light-years across intergalactic space.
64 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
moved out of the field. This star
is itself a binary system, but see-
ing its companion is restricted Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, is an intensely luminous blue-white B-type star that
to large amateur telescopes. hides a multiple system orbiting around it. JOHN CHUMACK
Next, try your luck with
R Leonis, a long-period, red peak brightness in February.
giant variable star that’s perfect But thanks to its bright range
for binoculars. The American and strong reddish glow, R
Association of Variable Star Leonis is sure to become one of
Observers (AAVSO) says that your seasonal favorites. R Leo
R Leonis is the most widely will remain visible in the eve-
observed variable in the ning until early June and then
northern spring sky. return to the early morning sky
One reason for that is its by mid-September.
location, only about 6° west of The barred spiral galaxy
Regulus and just south of 19 NGC 2903 is one of the bright-
Leonis. Over the course of 312 est and largest galaxies in the
days, R Leonis fluctuates from spring sky. Yet Messier and his
magnitude 5.8 to 10.0, and back contemporaries missed it, even
again. That’s bright enough to though it would have been vis-
watch through most binoculars ible in their telescopes. Instead,
across its full cycle. its discovery was left to William
It’s fun to trace the changes Herschel, who first spotted it
in brightness over several weeks November 16, 1784.
and months. By comparing its To find NGC 2903, trace the
brightness to that of nearby Sickle to Epsilon (ε) Leonis at
stars that don’t vary, you can the “tip,” and then glance west
create your own light curve, with your binoculars to 4th-
which plots the changes in magnitude Lambda (λ) Leonis.
brightness over time. To do Centering on Lambda, shift
that, you’ll need an accurate your attention 1.5°, or about a
chart of the area. You can create quarter of a field, due south.
your own using the AAVSO’s Can you make out a faint oval
online Variable Star Plotter at disk of grayish light highlighted
www.aavso.org/apps/vsp. by a brighter central core?
Right now, R Leonis is on a That’s the galaxy.
downward slide, having reached When we look toward
NGC 2903, we are seeing a near
twin of the Milky Way from 20
million light-years away. Both
galaxies show pronounced bars
extending from their central
cores, with gently wrapping
arms curving away from the
ends. The arms of NGC 2903,
invisible through binoculars
KEITH B. QUATTROCCHI
owing to their faintness, curve
more casually than those of our
Milky Way.
Finally this month, we leave
Leo behind and head north to
his little brother, Leo Minor.
While there isn’t much to see
here by eye or binoculars, we do
have one port of call that makes
a fun diversion. In 1988, Ohio
amateur astronomer Dan
Hudak wrote a letter that
appeared in that summer’s issue
of Deep Sky magazine, describ-
ing an asterism measuring
about half a degree across that
looked like a celestial sailboat.
Although he found the Sailboat
using a telescope, it’s also faintly
visible through binoculars.
Begin at Mu (μ) Leonis, the
northern point of Leo’s Sickle.
Scan northeastward for 7°,
crossing Leo and Leo Minor’s
shared border, until you arrive
at 6th-magnitude 22 Leonis
Minoris. That star marks the
boat’s bow. Four 7th- and 8th-
magnitude stars in a trapezoid
west of 22 LMi outline the deck
and hull, while 8th-magnitude
SAO 61926 marks the stern.
The tall mast is formed by
three stars, ending at SAO
61951. Be aware that through
binoculars, the Sailboat seems
to have capsized, as its mast
points toward the south.
I’d enjoy hearing about
your favorite binocular objects,
and possibly featuring them
in future columns. Contact
me through my website,
philharrington.net. Until next
month, remember that two
eyes are better than one.
Phil Harrington is a longtime
contributor to Astronomy and
the author of many books.
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ASKASTR0
BODE’S LAW
Q: ARE ANY OF THE PLANETS’ AVERAGE
DISTANCES FROM THE SUN CHANGING? IS
NEPTUNE MOVING AWAY TO FIT BODE’S LAW?
A: To address your second
question first, Bode’s law was
announced by astronomer
Johann Titius in 1766, but pop-
ularized in 1772 by Johann
Bode. The law states that the
spacing between planets in our
solar system can be predicted
based on a sequence of num-
bers: 0, 3, 6, 12, and so on. After
0 and 3, each subsequent num-
ber is twice the value of the
previous one. Next, add 4 to
each number — which gives 4,
7, 10, 16, etc. — and divide by
10. The results — 0.4, 0.7, 1.0,
1.6, 2.8, 5.2, 10, and so on —
are roughly the distances of the
planets (and the main asteroid
belt, in the case of 2.8) from the
Sun in astronomical units (AU;
1 astronomical unit is equal to
the average Earth-Sun distance
of 93 million miles or 150 mil-
lion kilometers).
Bode’s law holds out to
Uranus at a distance of about
19 AU, but it fails for Neptune.
The predicted distance of
These antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
in California’s Mojave Desert are part of the Deep Space Network, which
NASA uses to send and receive signals from spacecraft. NASA/JPL-CALTECH
66 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
Astronomy’s experts from around the globe answer your cosmic questions.
Bob, Victorville, California
Neptune using Bode’s law is
nearly 39 AU, but the planet
actually sits at about 30 AU. It
also fails for Pluto, which is on
a highly eccentric orbit.
Most important to note
about Bode’s law is that it is an
empirical law. Empirical laws
are rules based on observa-
tions, but not grounded in
physical theory. While Bode’s
law is a great observation with
regard to much of the solar
system, it is not reflective of
the physics that dictates the
planets’ motions or distances.
So, Neptune is not moving far-
ther from the Sun to better fit
with this rule, and most
astronomers no longer really
consider Bode’s law useful.
As for your first question,
the distances of the planets
from the Sun do very slightly
change over time. Tidal effects
due to the tug of gravity
between the Sun and a planet
can induce orbital changes, but
the change is so tiny as to be
Accretion disks are typically depicted as flat, like in this artist’s rendition,
because mathematical models suggest that over time, particles in the disk
lose angular momentum and flatten out into similar orbits. ROBIN DIENEL,
COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
insignificant. In the case of
Earth, for example, tidal effects
are pushing us away from our
star at about one micrometer per
year — more than 10 times less
than the width of a human hair.
As the Sun converts some
small percentage of its mass
into energy, this mass loss can
also affect a planet’s distance by
reducing the Sun’s gravitational
pull — but again, only by a
small amount. Based on the
rate the Sun is burning energy,
it will have lost about 0.1 per-
cent of its total mass over the
course of its hydrogen-burning
lifetime of about 10 billion
years. This results in Earth
moving away from the star at
just 0.6 inch (1.5 centimeters)
per year — a total of about
93,000 miles (150,000 km) over
the course of 10 billion years, or
only about 0.1 percent of its
orbital distance.
This effect does increase as
you move outward through the
solar system, though it still
remains small. Saturn is mov-
ing away from the Sun at about
5.5 inches (14 cm) per year, or a
total of 870,000 miles (1.4 mil-
lion km). That total is just
1 percent of its orbital distance
in 10 billion years.
Alison Klesman
Associate Editor
Q: ARTISTS ALWAYS SHOW
A BLACK HOLE’S ACCRETION
DISK ORIENTED IN ONE
PLANE. BUT STARS NEAR
SAGITTARIUS A* ORBIT
IN A VARIETY OF PLANES.
IF EACH OF THOSE STARS
IS EVENTUALLY DIGESTED,
WOULDN’T THERE BE
MULTIPLE ACCRETION DISKS
IN MULTIPLE PLANES?
Jim McLeod
Charlotte, North Carolina
A: The answer here is that real-
ity is far more complex than
the pictures you reference. At
present, our technology does
not allow us to get a clear snap-
shot of the material accreting
onto Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*),
so we are limited by our math-
ematically driven models in
determining what geometry is
possible and under what condi-
tions it might form.
First, think about the artist’s
conception and why the accre-
tion disk is simply a disk. The
accretion disk forms when dif-
fuse material is attracted to a
massive central body, like a
black hole. The flattened shape
of the accretion disk is due to
angular momentum, which
dictates the particles’ motion as
they rotate around the black
hole. As collisions happen

between the particles, the
angular momentum is redis-
tributed and they settle into a
less collision-prone orientation
— a disk.
This mathematical truth is
the inspiration for the artist
drawings. However, as you so
aptly point out, the picture
does not capture the reality.
Sgr A* and other supermassive
black holes lie at the centers of
galaxies and are not accreting
matter from a single source.
The influx of material is lumpy
and can be affected by colli-
sions with dense matter like
stars, asteroids, or interstellar
gas. In fact, when we’re making
calculations of the accretion
rate of Sgr A*, we use both disk
and spherical accretion models
(which is more like you’re sug-
gesting, where accretion hap-
pens on multiple planes) and
compare them to observations.
Given that we can tell Sgr A* is
surrounded by its fuel source
but not uniformly enveloped by
it, the truth lies between the
two models. However, Sgr A* is
currently in a low-luminosity
state: It’s not accreting much,
so it’s not giving us much light
to work with.
The stars orbiting Sgr A* do
orbit on a variety of planes.
Their motion (and the motion
of all stars in the galaxy) is not
dominated by the black hole,
but rather affected by their
neighboring stars. They also
may retain some of the motion
of the gas clouds that formed
them. These stars blast right
through the accretion disk in
the near part of their orbit, and
when they do, part of their gas
shells interact with accreting
material. We’re actually using
the stars orbiting Sgr A* to
better understand how accre-
tion works in that system.
Valerie Mikles
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration Contractor,
Quality Assurance, I.M. Systems Group,
College Park, Maryland
Q: WHAT FREQUENCIES
DOES NASA USE TO
COMMUNICATE WITH
SPACECRAFT? ARE THESE
THE SAME FREQUENCIES
USED TO SEND BACK TV
SIGNALS FROM THE MOON?
HOW ARE THE SIGNALS
AFFECTED BY LOSS AND
DEGRADATION?
Anonymous
A: The Deep Space Network,
or DSN, is NASA’s interna-
tional array of giant radio
antennas that supports inter-
planetary spacecraft missions,
plus a few that orbit Earth. The
DSN also provides radar and
radio astronomy observations
that improve our understand-
ing of the solar system and the
larger universe.
The DSN is operated by
NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, which also oper-
ates many of the agency’s inter-
planetary robotic space
missions. The DSN consists of
three facilities spaced equidis-
tant from each other —
approximately 120° apart in
longitude — around the world.
These sites are near Barstow,
California; near Madrid, Spain;
and near Canberra, Australia.
The strategic placement of
these sites permits constant
communication with space-
craft as our planet rotates.
Before a distant spacecraft
sinks below the horizon at one
DSN site, another site can pick
up the signal and carry on
communicating.
One of the frequencies we
use is the same NASA used to
beam TV signals from the
Moon. That’s called S band
(2–4 GHz), but we also use X
band (8–12 GHz) and the Ka
band (27–40 GHz). The earliest
widely used DSN frequency
was S band. Later added were
X band and Ka band, which
can send much more data
per second. In the future, the
DSN will support optical
A228
Stars such as these, located in the 13.4 billion-year-old globular cluster
NGC 6397, have helped astronomers measure more precisely the age of
the Milky Way. ESO
communication in the infrared
frequency band.
These communications sig-
nals can be extremely difficult
to receive, due to the relatively
low power used by spacecraft
and the great distances the sig-
nals must travel. The received
power drops by the square of the
distance traveled. The signal can
also become degraded by many
sources, such as solar system
background noise or interfer-
ence, interference from passing
through either Earth’s or
another planet’s atmosphere,
and by noise introduced by the
receiving system. To compen-
sate, we use very large antennas
— the largest is 230 feet
(70 meters) in diameter —
with precise antenna pointing,
cryogenically cooled low-noise
amplifiers, sensitive receivers,
and computer code designed for
error detection and correction.
Michael Levesque
Deep Space Network,
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, California
Q: “BREAKFAST TIME” ON
P. 9 OF THE NOVEMBER 2018
ISSUE SAYS OUR GALAXY
COLLIDED WITH ANOTHER
8 TO 10 BILLION YEARS AGO.
BUT I’VE ALWAYS HEARD
WE ARE ONLY 4.6 BILLION
YEARS OLD.
John Bauernhuber
Whiting, New Jersey
A: Our solar system — includ-
ing the Sun and the planets
— is roughly 4.6 billion years
old, which is why you’ve heard
that number. But the Sun is
A2111
just one star in the Milky Way
Galaxy. There are several ways
to calculate the age of the
Milky Way, but one of the most
common is determining the
ages of its oldest stars. Many
of these are found in globular
clusters, which are the galaxy’s
oldest star clusters; some con-
tain stars more than 13 billion
years old. This already gives a
clue to the age of the galaxy:
at least 13 billion years.
By combining precise mea-
surements with models of how
stars fuse and create elements,
astronomers have determined
that the first stars in the Milky
Way likely began forming by
about 200 million years after
the Big Bang. Based on the
age of the universe — about
13.7 billion years — that makes
our galaxy roughly 13.6 billion
years old. Given this age, it’s
completely possible for colli-
sions with other galaxies to
have occurred 8 billion to
10 billion years ago, before
our 4.6 billion-year-old solar
system had begun forming.
Alison Klesman
Associate Editor
Send us your
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your full name and where
you live. Unfortunately, we
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submitted.
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Astro Haven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Astro-Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Astronomy magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Astronomy Magazine's Jupiter Globe. . . 63
Bob Berman Tours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Celestron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Cloud Break Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Comec snc di Mariotti G&C . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Into the Wind-The Kite Source . . . . . . . . . 68
iOptron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Kitt Peak National Observatory. . . . . . . . . 69
Metamorphosis Jewelry Design . . . . . . . . 15
NexDome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Northeast Astronomy Forum. . . . . . . . .8, 17
Oberwerk Corporation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Optic Wave Laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Omegon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Peru & Chile - Ancient Paths to the
Present Total Solar Eclipse
North Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Precise Parts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
QHYCCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Rainbow Symphony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
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Roswell Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
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ScopeStuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Sky-Watcher USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
South Pacific Cruise to Totality 2020. . . . 65
Stellarvue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Technical Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Tele Vue Optics, Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The Advertiser Index is provided as a service to
Astronomy magazine readers. The magazine is not
responsible for omissions or for typographical errors in
names or page numbers.
68 AS TR ON O MY • APRIL 2019
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 READER
GALLERY

1. SLEEPING SCOPE
The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope
at Kitt Peak National Observatory in
Arizona stands quietly as the summer
Milky Way sets in the west. As the
imager was capturing this 90-second
tracked exposure, a meteor blazed
through the scene. • Dean Salman

2. HEY, BULLWINKLE!
The Harvest Moon rises in Earth’s
shadow on September 23, 2018.
Above it, the Belt of Venus glows
faintly red. This photo was taken
from Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. The
Mi’kmaq people of that region call this
Full Moon the Moose Calling Moon.
• Barry Burgess

70 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
 3. A LOT GOING ON
Some 4.5 hours of exposure reveal
Bode’s Galaxy (M81, upper center),
the Cigar Galaxy (M82, below center),
Holmberg 9 (upper right), Arp’s
Loop (lower right of M81), and the
Integrated Flux Nebula (throughout).
The two brightest galaxies lie roughly
12 million light-years away.
• Terry Hancock

4. BY THE LIGHT OF
THE SILVERY MOON
Stars and moonlit clouds hang over
Joshua Tree National Park in California.
The bright star above center is
Sirius (Alpha [α] Canis Majoris). The
constellation Orion lies to its right.
The three stars of the Hunter’s Belt
point to Sirius. Note the reddish
glow of the Orion Nebula (M42).
3 • Fabrizio Melandri

5. A NICE ENCOUNTER
Comet NEOWISE (C/2018 N1) passes
through the region of reflection
nebula IC 4603, which lies in the
constellation Ophiuchus. The bluish
nebulosity makes the green comet
stand out. • Gerald Rhemann

6. BALL OF SUNS
At magnitude 6.2, globular cluster M3
in the constellation Canes Venatici is
a tough naked-eye catch, although
many observers have observed it that
way. Through a telescope, M3 has a
wide bright center that accounts for
half its width. Surrounding the center
are dozens of stars whose density
gradually decreases as their distance
increases. • Andrew Hayslip/Discovery
Channel Telescope

Send your images to:

Astronomy Reader Gallery, P. O. Box
6 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187. Please
include the date and location of the
image and complete photo data:
telescope, camera, filters, and
exposures. Submit images by email
5 to readergallery@astronomy.com.

W W W.ASTR ONOMY.COM 71
 7

7. HAPPY TRAILS TO YOU

A Canon 6D set to ISO 1600 with a
14mm lens captured sixty 1-minute
exposures, which, when stacked,
showed an hour’s worth of star trails
over a farmhouse near Cohuna,
Victoria, Australia. • Nicholas Clarke

8. STARS UPON STARS

Open cluster NGC 2506 (also known as
Caldwell 54) lies in the constellation
Monoceros. It glows at magnitude 7.6
and measures 12' across. Through a
10-inch or larger scope, its field makes
an interesting scene. Some three
dozen stars hang before a background
glow that glistens like a diamond-
encrusted black velvet sheet. • Al Kelly

72 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
 Curious about space?
Curiosity’s Martian
Selfie, Aug. 5, 2015.
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-
Caltech/Space Science Institute

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 BREAK
THROUGH
A blast from
the past
The calcium in our bones,
the iron in our blood, and
the oxygen we breathe all
formed in massive stars.
These elements eventually
found their way to Earth
after many such stars
exhausted their nuclear
fuel and exploded as
supernovae. The blasts
ripped their hosts apart,
seeding the galaxy with
material to make new
generations of stars,
planets, and perhaps
life. This X-ray image
shows the Cassiopeia A
supernova remnant and
reveals many of the
elements the supernova’s
progenitor star cooked
up: Calcium glows green,
silicon appears red, sulfur
shines yellow, and iron
looks purple. NASA/CXC/SAO

74 AS T R ON O MY • A P R I L 2019
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 SOUTHERN
SKY
June 2019: Jupiter reigns all night
Giant Jupiter no doubt will gar-
ner the lion’s share of attention
in June, but skywatchers won’t
want to miss seeing the solar
system’s two smallest planets
meet low in the northwest
after sunset.
Early in the month, Mars
stands alone in the deepening
twilight. Although the Red
Planet has been visible in the
evening sky for nearly a year,
it has faded considerably fol-
lowing its spectacular opposi-
tion in July 2018. Shining at
magnitude 1.8, the ruddy world
appears as a modestly bright
object among the background
stars of Gemini. You can find it
to the left of the Twins’ bright-
est stars, Castor and Pollux.
Unfortunately, Mars’ disk spans
only 4" and shows no detail
through a telescope.
As the month progresses,
Mercury joins Mars in the eve-
ning twilight. The inner planet
appears during June’s second
week and climbs higher with
each passing day. Binoculars
deliver the best views as the
two worlds approach each other
over the next 10 days. On the
evening of June 18, Mercury
slides just 0.2° north of Mars.
Although Mercury is
smaller than its outer cousin, it
appears much brighter (magni-
tude 0.1) because it lies consid-
erably closer to Earth. The
innermost planet reaches its
greatest elongation from the
Sun on June 23, when it lies 25°
east of our star and appears
nearly 10° above the northwest-
ern horizon an hour after sun-
set. The view of Mercury
through a telescope improves
as it draws closer to the Sun
MARTIN GEORGE describes the solar system’s changing landscape
as it appears in Earth’s southern sky.
after greatest elongation. By
the end of June, the Sun illumi-
nates barely one-quarter of the
world’s 9"-diameter disk.
Despite the appeal of Mars
and Mercury, the solar system’s
showpiece object in June has to
be Jupiter. The giant planet
reaches opposition and peak
visibility June 10, though it
remains essentially unchanged
all month. Shining at magni-
tude –2.6, it stands out beauti-
fully in the eastern evening sky.
Jupiter currently resides against
the backdrop of Ophiuchus
the Serpent-bearer, below the
long string of stars that forms
Scorpius the Scorpion.
The planet quickly ascends
during the course of the eve-
ning and passes nearly over-
head around midnight local
time. Its high altitude delivers
superb views through even the
smallest telescopes. Jupiter’s
disk spans 46" across the equa-
tor and 43" through the poles,
a difference that’s easy to see
once you know to look for it.
And note the two dark cloud
belts sandwiching a brighter
zone that coincides with the gas
giant’s equator. Jupiter’s four
bright moons — Io, Europa,
Ganymede, and Callisto — also
appear prominent as long as
they are not passing in front of
or behind the jovian disk.
Saturn is the next planet to
rise. Its path across the night
sky follows Jupiter’s, but it trails
its sibling by a little more than
two hours. The ringed planet
appears as an interloper among
the stars of Sagittarius, though
at magnitude 0.2, it shines
noticeably brighter than any
of the Archer’s stars.
The best time to view
Saturn through a telescope
comes when it climbs highest
in the north after midnight.
Any instrument reveals a
golden-colored globe that mea-
sures 18" across surrounded by
a gorgeous ring system that
spans 41" and tilts 24° to our
line of sight. Also keep an eye
out for Saturn’s satellites. The
brightest, 8th-magnitude Titan,
shows up through any scope.
A nearly Full Moon occults
Saturn on the night of June
18/19 for observers in the south-
ern third of South America and
southern Africa. From Santiago,
Chile, the planet disappears
behind the bright limb at
2h04m UT and reappears at the
dark limb at 3h00m UT.
The brightest planet makes
a brief appearance in morning
twilight during June. Venus
shines at magnitude –3.8, three
times brighter than its closest
competitor, Jupiter. But the
inner planet rises in the east-
northeast only 90 minutes
before the Sun in early June
and less than an hour before
our star at month’s close. A
telescope shows the planet’s
10"-diameter disk and nearly
full phase.
The starry sky
The Milky Way appears glori-
ous this time of year, stretching
high across the southern sky in
midevening. Embedded within
this band of light are a promi-
nent constellation, Crux the
Cross, and the Pointers —
Alpha (α) and Beta (β)
Centauri — just to its east.
Alpha Cen is likely the
most famous double star for
Southern Hemisphere observ-
ers. So, it seems to be an odd
quirk of history that its duplic-
ity was discovered from India
in the Northern Hemisphere.
The honor goes to Father
Jean Richaud, whose interest in
astronomy began in France.
Along with thirteen other
Jesuits picked by Louis XIV,
he left France for Siam (as
Thailand was then known) in
1687, where he continued his
astronomical observations.
After a palace revolution in
1688, Richaud left Siam for
India, arriving in Pondicherry
(now Puducherry) in early
1689. While observing the
Great Comet of 1689 in the
early morning hours, he
trained his telescope on
Alpha Cen and noticed its
fainter companion.
It shouldn’t surprise you
to learn that Puducherry lies
only a bit north of the equator.
From its latitude of 12° north,
the Southern Cross and the
Pointers climb well clear of the
southern horizon when the
time of year and time of night
are right.
The separation of Alpha
Cen’s two components was 7"
in 1689, much less than the
maximum possible of 21.8",
which occurred most recently
in 1980. If you observe Alpha
Cen through a small telescope
at low power now, however, you
might not notice that it is a
splendid double. That’s because
the two stars’ current separa-
tion is only 5.2". Through larger
scopes or higher magnifica-
tions, you should resolve the
yellow primary and orange
secondary.
 STAR S
DOME A NA
TUC
DO RET SMC
THE ALL-SKY MAP RA ICU
LUM
DO NGC 104
SHOWS HOW THE PI LMC
SKY LOOKS AT: OR
CT H Y DRU S
9 P.M. June 1
8 P.M. June 15
7 P.M. June 30 O C TA N S
207
Ca
no NGC 0
us p _ MEN
Planets are shown SA
VO
at midmonth LA C HA M
NS AELE
ON SCP O
25 C AV P
NG 16 A R
C IN APUS
A
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AL M
TR ULU
MA IS

M
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PU
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JO

PP

P
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SC
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39

E
NG 6
C3 C
24 G C

CINU
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372
CIR
77

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NGC 4755
b

A
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M
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R
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A
UX a CEN

N
TA U R
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S
31
US
5139

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62
XIS

AN

NGC

RP
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NG
TLI

O
51
NG 28

SC
A

M4 tares
PU
LU

An
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W

M83
Alphard

A
COR

BR
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VUS
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SEX
HYD

AT

M1 Spica _
TA N

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04
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ecliptic
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M64
Arcturus A
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A
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BERE
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MAGNITUDES TES
BOÖ
Sirius Open cluster LE
M O
0.0 IN CAN
Globular cluster O E
R VEN S
1.0 AT I
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Diffuse nebula
2.0 M51
3.0 Planetary nebula
4.0
5.0 Galaxy
URSA
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 HOW TO USE THIS MAP: This map portrays
the sky as seen near 30° south latitude.
Located inside the border are the four
JUNE 2019
directions: north, south, east, and
S
U
D
west. To find stars, hold the map Calendar of events
IN overhead and orient it so a
direction label matches the 1 The Moon passes 3° south of 19 The Moon passes 0.4° south of
direction you’re facing. Venus, 18h UT Saturn, 4h UT
The stars above the
map’s horizon now 3 Asteroid Pallas is stationary, The Moon passes 0.07° south of
match what’s 2h UT Pluto, 11h UT
in the sky.
New Moon occurs at 10h02m UT 21 Mercury passes 6° south of
Pollux, 5h UT
4 The Moon passes 4° south of
US

Mercury, 16h UT Winter solstice occurs at

I
AR

15h54m UT
5 The Moon passes 1.6° south of
A IS

TT
ON AL

Mars, 15h UT 22 Neptune is stationary, 4h UT

E

I
AG
T

R
CO ST

7 The Moon is at perigee 23 Mars passes 6° south of Pollux,

R

A U

(368,504 kilometers from Earth), 7h UT

rn

23h15m UT
S at u

The Moon is at apogee

M7

10 First Quarter Moon occurs at (404,548 kilometers from Earth),

M22

5h59m UT 7h50m UT
M6

M8

Jupiter is at opposition, 15h UT Mercury is at greatest eastern

elongation (25°), 23h UT
SCUTUM
M17

15 The Moon passes 0.9° north of

M20

dwarf planet Ceres, 15h UT 24 The Moon passes 4° south of

M11

Neptune, 1h UT
M16

16 The Moon passes 2° north of

E
Jupiter

Jupiter, 19h UT 25 Last Quarter Moon occurs at

9h46m UT
17 Full Moon occurs at 8h31m UT
27 The Moon passes 5° south of
Venus passes 5° north of Uranus, 22h UT
Aldebaran, 21h UT
S
HU

18 Mercury passes 0.2° north of

UC

Mars, 15h UT
HI
OP

STAR COLORS:
Stars’ true colors
depend on surface
temperature. Hot
stars glow blue; slight-
ly cooler ones, white;
intermediate stars (like
3 the Sun), yellow; followed
M1 S by orange and, ultimately, red.
LE
CU Fainter stars can’t excite our eyes’
ER color receptors, and so appear white
H
without optical aid.

Illustrations by Astronomy: Roen Kelly

BEGINNERS: WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT HOW TO READ A STAR CHART AT www.Astronomy.com/starchart.