3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
(Psalm 8: 3-4)
Hello all, I hope you had a good Christmas and a good start to 2024! January was a disappointing month for astronomy with the Moon hiding the Quadrantid meteor shower from us. February will continue to be a quiet month in the skies, but let’s delve in to what’s up there!
Jupiter and Saturn will continue to be visible, although nowhere near as stunning as their conjunction at the end of last year. They will appear closer to the horizon and thus closer to the Sun as the orbit of the inner planets is much faster than the outer planets and we are moving behind the Sun relative to the outer planets. As we move into March and April they will disappear from the skies entirely before we move back out from behind the Sun and they once again become visible later in the year.
It’s a bit early to be thinking this far ahead, but as we move into early March there will be a new Moon which will allow us to see fainter, more distant objects. My favourite of these is the Andromeda galaxy, which can be seen just after sunset in the north west near the Cassiopeia and Andromeda constellations. For those with dark skies, this can be seen with either binoculars or even the naked eye. Andromeda is one of the closest galaxies to our Milky Way galaxy, sitting at approximately 250,000,000 (250 million) light years away. A light year is the standard unit of measurement for distance in space beyond Solar System level and is the distance that it would take light one year to travel. This means that the further away the object you are looking at is, the further back in time you are seeing!
Finally at the end of January and early February, those of you with access to dark skies and ideally a pair of binoculars might be lucky enough to spot the Beehive Cluster. Located in the Cancer (or Crab) constellation in the eastern sky, the cluster will appear as a smudge to the naked eye. However, with binoculars or a telescope this will be revealed to be a group of blue-white stars with a smattering of red and yellow stars mixed in. As a side note, the Cancer constellation is one of the fainter and more overlooked constellations and this is therefore a more advanced object to look for!
That’s it for this month. Next month we will be taking a look at one of the most mysterious “objects” in all of creation, but in the mean time I hope you enjoy the dark skies of our Benefice.
CM
Feature Image: Beehive Cluster, NGC2516_DSS, Wikicommons, P.D.