Hey Facebook for live from Goddard Space Flight Center, I'm Aaron kiss luck with the Hubble Space, Telescope
Did you know that this weekend is the peak of the Orionid meteor?
Shower so if you go out and look up and happen to see a few shooting stars what you're actually seeing is
debris from Halley's Comet
In the mid 1700s there was an astronomer named Charles, Messier, and he studied comets
But sometimes when he'd go out and look up he'd catch these fuzzy images and so he decided to
categorize them and
Make a list so that he would never be distracted by them ever again thus began the Messier catalog
Hubble just today released its own album full of Messier objects taken by the space
Telescope and we're gonna talk about them here today with you make sure to send in your questions
And we'll answer them at the end of the show, but I'm gonna introduce you to some very special guests so today
We're joined by Michelle Fowler and Kevin Hartnett. Thank you both for being here today. Yeah, it's great to be here
All right, we're gonna jump right on into it who is Charles, Messier
And why is this catalog so cool?
Well Helen you just said Charles Messier was an astronomer who was active in the late 1700s
And he was really interested in finding comets
He actually found many of them over the course of his career
But there was some fuzzy little blobs in the sky that looked like comets
But he could tell that they really weren't comets because they didn't move with respect to the Stars comets appear and disappear
And they actually move with respect to the background stars
But these little fuzzy blobs stayed right where they were
So he made a catalog of basically things to avoid that weren't comets
And the thing that is a wonderful irony is what he actually had discovered were some of the most dramatic and beautiful
objects in the entire universe
He discovered things like dead stars
Or stars being born or what we now know are very distant galaxies so in fact Messier found some of the most
fascinating things in the sky
Yep
What's very interesting is the first object that will talk about the Crab Nebula?
he was looking actually for the return of Halley's Comet himself which was predicted to show up in the
Constellation of Taurus in that period and so he was scanning to find Halley's Comet and came across this object
We're kind of talk about so the catalog is just numbered basically in the order that meze
Discovered these things and so we're gonna start with m1 and and just like Kevin said m1 is something called the Crab Nebula
So we actually have so depiction here of where the Crab Nebula is in the sky and a little bit about what it looks like
So you can see it's actually here in the constellation Taurus
It's gonna be honing in on that and as this begins to pan and look
There's a fuzzy little thing there and that's what he saw and that's what he thought might be a comet
But as we pan into it even more you see that
There's wonderful dramatic structure and what this turns out to be is an exploded star
It's what we call a supernova remnant
So there was a star long ago that exploded
And it actually spread its material over hundreds and hundreds of light-years and in the middle
There's the dead core of a star called a color a neutron star
Neutron stars are amazing. They have the density of Mount Everest pushed into every teaspoon full of material
And they actually rotate hundreds of times a second, and and I remember that you actually knew what year the star exploded. Yes, so
Historians have figured out that this is associated with
the Chinese
sighting of a guest star they called it that was visible of so brightness could be seen during the day time and that was
1054
So we're very sure when this star actually exploded now Kevin is an amazing amateur astronomer
He actually takes pictures of these objects with his own telescope
So should we go to some of the images that you took taken to yourself sure why not?
In this case I don't have one of em one will see others
But I wanted to show you both this chart and where m1 can be found do you see?
the constellation of Taurus here
This little cluster of stars called the Hyades is v-shaped
And it marks the horns of the bull of Taurus
he's up and to the right of a Ryan very easily spot in the winter sky and
You take the lower horn and look at it with a telescope and you're sure to find
M1 if you just sweep around the field of view
With that star in it because it's very close to that star named Z Tatari
So I want you to know that in the Hubble catalog that's been released
We have a star chart like this for every Messier. That's in the catalog so
Even if you don't know anything about the Messier objects. You'll know basically where to find them in the sky what?
What season to look for them in what constellation? They're in and
we also tell you in the in the album what the telescope is is a going to look for this object with and
At what time of the month or what month of the year you should be looking for it
So keeping with the theme of dead stars. There's another one of my Messier objects
It's one of my favorites is called the ring nebula and so we talked about m1 being the first one
This is all the way at M
57 now the ring nebula is in the constellation Lyra
And this is actually a different sort of dead star the first one we saw exploded violently in a supernova
This star is basically gently unraveling itself into space. It was a star. That was more about the mass of the Sun
It's dying and actually losing shells of gas around it and in the middle
There's the remnant of this tiny little star which is now cooling off and basically dying
So the ring nebula is a beautiful beautiful object
And you can see some of the complexity that the Hubble Space Telescope discovered when it actually took many different
visuals of this ring nebula
So the thing that I really love about the ring nebula is it's not very easy to see in a telescope you have to use
a special technique to see it so tell us a bit about your
observations of the ring nebula and and how you see an object like this okay sure I'd be happy to
It's one of my favorites. It's a great summer favorite for amateur astronomers
It's high in the sky, and it's fairly easy to locate in the constellation of Lyra, but as Michelle said
it's small and a little bit hard to find and when you
put an eyepiece that has more magnification it dims and
It gets a little tricky to see especially the hole, that's in the center
What you have to do, and this is a trick that we amateurs use is
Look to the side of the object because the edge of your eye is more sensitive to light
Than the center is oddly enough you have rods and cones and your I and the cut of the rods are along the edge
so at night
your your
Peripheral vision is better than your centre vision and you can see things that move
so as a trick we get the object in the telescope and then look to the side of the object and
wiggle the telescope a little bit
And you can actually see it better when you do that. Especially the hole in the middle
It looks like a big smoke ring in the sky
When you use those tricks now, you won't see the center star because that's pretty faint and although. I took this
photo with just general
DSLR and an immodest telescope that the camera is more sensitive than your eye
And so it can pick up on the star you'd need probably
OG
14-inch telescope to see that star
So we're going from the theme of dead stars to something now very different
That's the birth of stars Messier actually discovered things that represent all the different phases of the life cycles of stars
So we're gonna start talking about young stars yeah, and while we walk over to talk about the young stars over here
I wanted to remind everybody to continue to send in your questions. We're getting some really great ones
we're still here at Goddard Space Flight Center talking about Hubble's Messier catalog and
Now we're gonna be talking about dead start, so take it away. I'll get out of your way
Well, that's right. These are stars that are being born the next object
We're gonna talk about is one of my favorites on the sky
It's like an old friend returning every time the fall sky rolls around and that's m42
This is the Orion Nebula and as you can see in this wonderful animation
What the Orion Nebula really is is a giant cloud of dust and gas and?
Inside it there are stars forming that are lighting up this cloud
And there are actually four very bright stars at the very heart of the nebula called the trapezium cluster
And these stars are actually larger than the Sun more massive than the Sun and brighter and the light from them is
Lighting up the whole area that we know of as the Orion Nebula to me
This is one of the most beautiful images ever taken by Hubble
It's not only beautiful
but it's very dramatic when you think about this is a cloud of dust and gas many many hundreds of light years across and
Inside it there are dozens if not
If new stars forming right now, so this is a beautiful object. I have to say that the image you took of this is spectacular
I mean you are amazing a straw astrophotography look. Let's take a look at what you got with this one well
It is one of my better efforts, but they're all work, and I want to really communicate that
Taking pictures is another aspect of astronomy
That's enjoyable it has its technical challenges, but I've spent most of my life observing these things with binoculars
Or a telescope, and it's as much fun. It's probably more fun than trying to take pictures of them, which is just hard
So here you see
an image of
Orion, Nebula, and I want to point out the contrast between this one and this one it took Hubble about
500 different pointings
Mosaics stitched together to form this image because Hubble zooms in it's it has such high
Magnification it zooms into a smaller
Part of the object this could all fit in the field of view of my telescope
When you're looking at this object?
Just with a telescope and not worried about taking pictures you want to look for it beneath the three stars that form Orion's belt
The sheath for his sword if you will
Right in that area from a dark spot. You can see a faint cloud and
Put a telescope on it, and you can see there right there is an image of where
M42 is again. This is on our website, so you can find
These for all the Messier objects there
but you put a telescope on it, and you can see this trapezium four little stars in a trapezoid shape and
Enjoy the the dark and light and bands of this nebula. It's truly spectacular
Messing he actually found a number examples of young stars in the case of the Orion Nebula the stars are still forming in this cloud
of dust and gas
But then there are other stars that are a little farther along
That have actually moved out of the clouds they were born in and in many cases
You're just the radiation and also the particle winds coming off these bright young stars
Blows away the cloud and so the next thing we're going to is an example of young cluster of stars
Stars that have all formed probably in the last at least tens of millions of years doesn't sound very young to us
but four stars that they are and this is the cluster called the Pleiades and
The Pleiades is a wonderful thing to see in the autumn and winter sky
It always is wonderful for me because I know that that wonderful beautiful autumn sky is rolling around these images look very different
So here's the image that you took of this young cluster of stars and in fact the Hubble image is so as it's so much
Resolution and so much focus it's only a tiny part of your image here
So so compare the Hubble image that we have here with what you were able to see what the Pleiades
So it's a very tiny portion the Pleiades is a naked-eye object, and it's somewhat like
Three or four times the size of the full moon, so it's it's very big on the sky
this image taken by Hubble of part of the
Gas and dust surrounding these stars is right in between this bright star called Naropa and these two little stars
Next to it, so it's a very very tiny portion of the actual Pleiades
Pleiades is also known as the Seven Sisters a lot of people mistake it for the Little Dipper because it has this dipper shaped and
With your eye. You really only see six, you know there's this
legend of a missing pleiad
Because you don't see seven
But this cluster is also known in japan as subaru and so when you look at the logo on the back of the subaru
You're looking at this star pattern most people don't know that
So it's a very very beautiful cluster and best appreciated actually in binoculars, or a small telescope
Where you can see just these?
diamonds on a black background so
We're talking about families of stars and the type of cluster that the Pleiades is something called an open cluster
And these are stars that form relatively close to each other in one of these big clouds
But the Sun was probably in a cluster like this billions of years ago, but over that time
we've been around the galaxy so many times that just the
Gravitational interaction between the stars has peeled off all the other members of our star cluster
We don't really know where in the sky our brother and sister stars are so an open
is a
Family of stars that all form together and actually we're gonna go over and talk a bit more about some different families of stars now
Yeah, and once again while we're walking over. I just wanted to remind everyone to keep sending in your questions
I'm getting some really really great ones and
We're here at Goddard Space Flight Center talking about Hubble's Messier catalog so continue sending in your questions
And I'll let you guys talk about clusters. Thanks Aaron, so here's another example of an open cluster
This is M. 11, which is also called the wild duck cluster and as I said before open clusters, or stars that form together
Relatively recently in the last millions or tens of millions of years and are slowly peeling apart over time
so this is another one that you have a
Very different image Hubble is taking sort of the picture here at the heart of this cluster
And then you have a picture of the larger cluster
So people can see that right neither one of them look much like a wild duck do they but if you had a small telescope
Or a pair of binoculars and looked at this object
Which is in the summer sky in the Milky Way? You will see of a v-shaped?
grouping of stars the brighter stars or v-shaped and reminded the early observers of a flight of ducks
Or geese that are characteristically you know flying in a V
When I look at this and this is one of my favorites, too
You notice right away, and so did Messier. He wrote in his catalogue about this
That is a very bright star in the center of the cluster hard to make out here
Because it just gets lost with all the others
But it's very very noticeable when you look at it for the first time in a telescope this
amazing
grouping of stars and
This one bright one right in the middle now. I find this cluster is
particularly fun to look at
In higher magnification, and I like to use a zoom eyepiece
so I look at it at low magnification and the
Stars are really tight
And then as you twist the eyepiece it zooms in and you see just hundreds more
It's a remarkably beautiful
Open cluster and there's something like ogee
Hundreds of stars in the cluster that's right now an open cluster can have dozens or hundreds of stars
But there are actually much larger star clusters as well and certainly the largest ones that are in our own galaxy the Milky Way are
Called the globular clusters, and we have an absolutely spectacular picture of a globular cluster here
This is a globular cluster m15
So this is the 15 thing on the list of things that were not comets and this is actually a cluster of stars that contains
Millions of stars now astronomers believe that globular clusters are actually ancient clusters
They probably formed very early on in the lifetime of our galaxy, and if you think about the Milky Way galaxy
We live in a spiral galaxy. That's kind of shaped like a frisbee
It's a disk of stars and gas and dust
But the globular clusters actually orbit around the entire galaxy almost kind of like a swarm of angry bees they're going all different directions
Around the Milky Way and in fact globular clusters were one of the first ways that we discovered our own place in the Milky Way
It turns out that we're nowhere near the center of the Milky Way
We live out in the suburbs about three-quarters of the way out into the disc from the center
So that's a long way from the middle of the galaxy and all of these globular clusters orbit around
the center of mass of our galaxy
So astronomers a long time ago realized that most of the globular clusters were in one half of the sky
And they were fewer on the other half of the sky
And that's because we were looking from a vantage point of being very far out from the center of the galaxy
So whenever I see globular clusters?
I'm really aware of the place the role that they had and actually giving us a map as to where we are in the galaxy
And it's really a good thing that we're not on a planet inside a globular cluster
Because we wouldn't see much of the sky at all right
Oh, it would be like daytime all the time just all of those stars packed into that little area
Yes, so it's very good for observing that we are where we are so you've got another great image here. Yeah, so
This image is fun because I took it to nights ago right and I took it with a very small telescope
But it's in the constellation of Pegasus the flying horse, which if you go out in tonight's sky
Will appear as a square
They call it the square Pegasus very prominent square in the sky
and I like to consider it like a baseball diamond because it's oriented that way and
This object is located off first base, so you go up to first base, and there's a an
L-shaped string of stars, it's right at the tip of the L very easy to find
So we've been talking about families of stars the star clusters and in fact the largest
families of stars in the universe are the galaxies and these are families of stars that include hundreds of billions of stars
So let's talk a bit about some of the galaxies that we're looking at yeah
And actually while we walk over to the biggest screen in the room
We'll talk about the biggest objects right so I just want to turn mine everybody once again that we're here at Goddard
we're talking about Hubble's messier objects and
Please continue to send in your questions. We've got a ton of good ones, and I'll let you talk about galaxies now. That's good yes
right, so we're gonna end with looking at some of these beautiful spiral galaxies and the first one we're looking at is something called the
Whirlpool galaxy
Which is known as m51 and the Whirlpool galaxy is a spiral galaxy about
Half the size of our own Milky Way and is actually at a distance of about 23 million light years away
So you can see here in this beautiful Hubble image the detail on the spiral arms of this galaxy
The dark areas are actually lanes of gas and dust
Where new stars are forming inside that right now and in fact whenever you see red areas along the spiral arm
That's active star formation
That's where young stars are still embedded in the dust and they're actually lighting up the dust and making it glow red
It is an absolutely beautiful spiral so the thing that's amazing about this is it actually looks quite different
Through a telescope and some people might be disappointed
But I still think it's a wonderful thing to look at so so tell us a bit
But about what it's like to observe a beautiful galaxy like this ok. I'll tell you it's fun
To glimpse these things even if you're not seeing them particularly clearly in the night sky. There's a
There's a connection you feel with the universe by looking at the light of these things with your own
Eye, so just like Messier would have seen this it was a smudge
now you know what it really is and
And that's electrifying if you're at night
Searching for these things with your telescope and finding it and realizing what you're seeing
There's nothing really quite like it
So Messier would not have seen the spiral arms
Because you need a large telescope to do that and his telescopes
Were not very good
they weren't even made of glass the ones that we use now with mirrors the mirrors were made out of metal back then and
We've looked at these globular clusters in
m15
Messier noted he didn't see one star in that globular cluster that we now know has
millions of stars so his view was very very different
But this is an image. I took it took about four hours to lay up that image in a second
I'll show you what one little frame look like
But this object was not seen by Messier at the time. It's a neighboring galaxy
He only saw the very core of this and it looked like a little blob
So the thing is is that even if this doesn't if your telescope image doesn't look like this
It's still wonderful to think that the light you're looking at even when you see a little smudge on the sky
In this case is 23 million years old
23 million light years away means the light took that long to get to us so when you see this beautiful
Galaxy as just a smudge in the sky that light left long before there were humans on the earth
So you mentioned you're going to show us, so this is what you might see through even a large telescope
Yeah
well
This is taken through an 8-inch diameter
Telescope and it took so I'm trying to remember now about three minutes or four minutes to lay up this particular image
And you see you get all the light pollution right the sky glow in the background - and the trick that
amateurs use is
To stack all these up line them all up
And so I took whatever four hours of three minute exposures
And you can get software free off the web now to align them all and stack them up
And then you learn some about processing honestly, although. I don't want you to think that you're going to see these marvelous images
The pictures like from Hubble or even my telescope by looking through the eyepiece
It is encouraging or it should be encouraging to you that I've only been at Astro photography for maybe four years
With a digital camera and so you can learn very quickly. There's a lot of resources on the web
But start with the Hubble site you can find out where the Messier 's are in the sky
And what instrument to use to look at them and once you get more familiar with the sky like I've done over many years
then dabble in Astro photography
so we're going to wrap up our catalog of the the Messier objects with one of the most beautiful things in the sky called the
Andromeda galaxy, and this is m31 and I have to say Kevin. This is your image. This is absolutely spectacular
The Andromeda galaxy is a galaxy very much like the Milky Way
It's at a distance of a little bit more than 2 million light years away
And the thing that's amazing about the Andromeda galaxy is that edge to edge?
This is as large on the sky as 3 full moons
Think about lighting three full moons up across that galaxy so at night when this thing is up
There's this giant galaxy actually covering a fairly large part of our sky, but the reason you don't see is
It's very faint and in fact, Messier
Could only see the very very central part of the galaxy
But that there's other objects in here as well that Messier saw in the minutes and this gorgeous image
You tooks it to tell us about that well
Would that we all had eyes to see this thing?
in the sky
Hanging there in the autumn. Sky as big as
Six full moons across right, it's just an amazingly big object, but it's faint because it's a long way away
So when you look at this in a telescope or with binoculars in fact you can see this object with the naked. Eye
from a dark place
You're really only seeing the very bright core
and but that's what you'll see in a scope or binoculars very fun to see I
Remember dragging my whole family out when I was maybe 15, and it was in the winter
And I said now that I found it you have to see it, so it was like 20 degrees outside
Drag all my sisters out to see this thing because it's it's just it's a classic. It's very spectacular this object
Messier also found
Probably within the same night that he looked at m31
This is called m32
Again very easy to see because it's so close damn 31
and it looks like a slightly out of focus star a little harder to see is this one down here a
companion galaxy now known as m110 and
You have to use that little trick I mentioned earlier
Looking to the side of m110 to see it more clearly. I like to take people out and show them
Andromeda through the telescope because very easy to see this a little harder to see this and they have to really work to see
M110 but so it's a great learning experience so going to the Hubble image of Andromeda
This is something that's kind of mind-blowing Hubble is so powerful I can actually see the individual stars in this galaxy
2 million light-years away now this galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars and when you look at this image
There's kind of a graininess to the image
And that's real these are all individual stars the Hubble can pick out now the amazing thing is it took Hubble over
400 different pointings to stitch together this giant mosaic of Andromeda and in fact Hubble only had the time to image about
one-third of the galaxy so think about that more than
400 Hubble images all put together in a mosaic to cover just about 1/3 of the Andromeda galaxy
So that's it's an amazing thing to see and an incredible Messier object
So hopefully in talking about these wonderful objects. You can see in the sky things like dead stars stars being born
Galaxies star clusters, you might want to go out and actually look at them yourself
And this is where Kevin is the expert and he's going to talk to you a bit about what you can do to actually go
Out and make your your own Messier catalog so you brought some telescopes here. Let's say, let's go over here. Take a look at this
So I should probably start here
Because
From a dark sky, you can see
Most of the Messier objects with a good pair of binoculars
from the Washington DC area
Maybe a quarter of them
but if you're out in the dark spot, you can see many of these so you get yourself a star chart like this and
Find them or use the star charts that are on the hubble site, and you'll know where to look
It's good to use a set of binoculars at night, that's one like this
This is a 10 by 50 10 is the magnification?
50 is the size and millimeters of the glass up front most of us have 7 by 35 s at home, and they're great for
terrestrial viewing
Looking at things in the yard or whatever, but you want a little more power
And you want to gather more light because the stars are faint, so you want this
Lens to be as big as you can hold steady. That's the other
Caveat right so if you get too heavy of an ocular you can't hold it steady, and you won't get a very good view
So just two other Representative scopes you
might be
Fascinated to know that the beautiful picture of Andromeda that I took and the one of the Pleiades was taken with a scope
Almost exactly the skies it wasn't this particular one
But I had it
mounted on the back of a larger scope and a more expensive mount that was tracking the Stars because again had to lay up these
time exposures
But you can enjoy the Pleiades and the Orion
Nebula and m31 all as beautiful objects in a scope of this size
our website says
For each individual object. It's best seen or can be seen with a large medium or small
Telescope, this is what we mean by small up to 3 or 4 inches
Medium would be more in the class of a 6 to say 10 inch
diameter telescope the size of the lens again is the size of the
It's what's collecting the light so think of it as your eyeball
Imagine your eyeball being 8 inches wide you collect a lot more like and and then larger scopes
Which you didn't have room on set to bring in here can be 10
12 16 some amateurs have 20 telescopes great big things, but they get obviously
difficult to move around
so
Each has their own price range and and pros and cons
Read up on a website that describes telescopes before buying one and really I recommend learning your constellations
Finding the Messier objects of the binocular and then stepping up as your interest continues
here's a
Zoom eyepiece that I was mentioning before so you just twist it and it magnifies
So you don't have to keep reaching for different eyepieces
if you do want to do that there's many different types and
It just makes it easier I find it easier to just zoom in interestingly
Charles Messier he looked through about every telescope he could get his hands on and
They weren't very good
And they didn't have eyepieces they the eyepiece they had weren't
Replaceable I should say they were a fixed magnification
That's interesting different before we go onto some questions from the audience actually the question I have for you is how many Messier objects have?
You personally seen probably?
Yes, so I've seen just about all of them
We didn't talk about it tonight
But there's a large group of galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices
off the tail of Leo and and next to veer go
where there are
Just literally scores of galaxies some of them are Messier objects many of them are not they didn't make his list
so I've looked at that cluster and
When you look through the field of view you might see two or three Messier objects
But two or three that are almost as bright that he missed somehow
And so I haven't I've seen them all I haven't catalogued them all
But I'm starting to do that afresh now it's kind of a bucket list thing for me if you
write down the day and time and scope that you use and some details about the sky and
and send that log to the astronomical league you can get a
Certificate which is really cool say you've seen all the Messier objects
So I'm now logging them all probably seen them all but I didn't log them all well excellent
So you know I I think before we go we have some time for questions
Yeah, we do, and it seems like we have a couple
Messier collection hopefuls in here
We have one question asking. What is the best kind of telescope for a beginner while we're over here
You might as well start with the telescope questions. Yes, yes, so the best answer
I've heard to that question is one that you will use okay, so it can't be too heavy it can't be too complicated
It can't be too expensive right if you're just a beginner because you want to you want to get your feet wet right and and
Realize hey, I really can't find things and enjoy them and then move up from there
So I find ones that have this style of mount
helpful it's called a
Azimuth and elevation and so it's very intuitive to just swing it around and bring it up and look for your object in
One of these types of telescopes why I think this is a good choice
Not maybe this big
but an
Azimuth elevation kind of mount on the telescope and then similar we got we had a different question from someone else asking
What are the best kind of binoculars for backyard astronomy? Yeah, well again? I would say shoot for something
That's like a 10 by 50
Like these and not too heavy
if you get much heavier than this they sell
Stands that you can put them on but you'll you want something to steady them
So I think a 10 by 50 is a pretty good size for most places
That's always my problem is I love using binoculars, but it's hard to keep them steady in your hands
So people have techniques like you know resting your knees on your on your elbows elbows on your knees and studying that way or actually
Going up against a wall
That's one of the harder things is learning to steady the image right speaking of images, maybe we'll come out here
So we can see some more of these images in the background while we take a few more questions about your step
Kelly wants to know what causes new stars to move away from the cloud that they were born in well
There's a lot of reasons for this
I mean there's actually intrinsic movement of the stars that when stars form they actually pick up angular momentum
They begin to spin and the clusters of stars spin in different
- and over time this can actually spend some of the stars out of the cluster entirely
But the other thing to remember is that star clusters never never lived just by themselves we go around the galaxy right now
We're actually flying around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at about half a million miles an hour
But the good thing we don't actually feel that and as the Sun moves around the galaxy it has very gentle
Gravitational encounters with other stars over billions of years over many passes around the galaxy this actually spreads the cluster out
And so we've actually left probably some of our sister stars
Way on the other side of the galaxy the star formed right near us, but now it's a hundred thousand light years away
And that's just a regular gravitational attraction of the different stars as we move through the galaxy great
It seems like these clusters kind of resonated with people someone else wanted to know how far away our stars in a cluster. Oh
Well, that's a very interesting question
I don't have an exact number for some of the things the clusters that we've been showing you
But as Kevin mentioned if you were in a globular cluster
If you were actually in a planet around a star or and again in the heart of a globular cluster the night sky would be
Brilliantly bright so the closest star to us is about four light years away and in the heart of a globular cluster
It'd be a lot closer than that I don't have an exact number
But I do know the night sky would look a lot different four light years is actually a long way yeah, right?
and so if I've read fit if you considered the volume of
Sphere that's four light years and radius in some of these globular clusters there can be as many as
ten thousand stars within that
That sphere and so does imagine being on a planet around one of those
It would be just dazzling yeah
And then another question this one looks like it's specifically for Kevin. How do you deal with light pollution?
Yes, well I cry a lot. I guess is the answer
If you have a portable telescope right
But some of mine, are you get to a dark spot and that way you can just enjoy the night sky and find things easier
Taking pictures see is the strategies that I have to fight like pollution because you can play tricks with a digital camera
Digital camera is very very sensitive. You've seen in these images
and so you could play these tricks about stacking up photos and
Processing them and get these amazing results I live north of Washington DC. Where it's very very bright and yet
You can play these tricks with a digital camera some of the same tricks Hubbell plays actually
Taking an image and then basically covering
the the shutter and
Putting up a black you know cover on the telescope and taking another image you say why would you do that you record the noise?
in the camera and
Then there's software that you can use to subtract off the noise and so this is a way to fight light pollution you
Subtract it off with a digital camera can't do that with your eye
But Hubble plays that same trick not to fight light pollution so much
but just to get that noise that's inherent in the camera because of its its thermal qualities and
Subtract that out. It's amazing to me just how much we're missing with light pollution
I mean, I think that the most beautiful sky
I ever saw was when I was in Chile those in the Atacama Desert where there were no lights around at all and
Somebody actually pointed out that the Milky Way was so bright overhead it actually was making me cry. It was so beautiful
I was getting tears organized
And I actually looked down at the ground and someone pointed out that I was casting a very very dim shadow on the ground
But there was no moon out that night none of the bright planets were out that night
That was actually a shadow being cast by the Milky Way
That's how bright the Milky Way can get so I mean get yourself to a dark sky area if you possibly can
Wow, that's crazy
So we got a question about Hubble specifically how does Hubble take so many sharp images when it's moving so fast?
Pointing I be able to leave this to the Hubble Operations Manager absolutely. That's for you cab yeah
You don't think about it much. That would be more of a problem if the stars were closer
But they're so far away that the light that's coming anywhere near earth is coming in parallel
Beams, and so yes, hubble's moving around the earth, but it's still
Seeing these parallel beams that come from these different
distant stars
If an object were closer like the moon you
Don't see many Hubble pictures of the moon. Do you see Hubble was never designed to look at the moon now? We've
over the years that Hubble has been operating we now have modes that can but they're very seldom used because you have a
What they call a parallax problem the moon's too close and Hubble is moving too fast?
That light beams aren't coming to you in a parallel fashion and so
It the secret is the stars are so far away
Wow, that's fascinating system. When asked. What is the best telescope for astrophotography?
Okay, I don't know
There's there's different types of targets right there's what we've been calling
These ones would be classified as deep space objects DSOs, and there's also like the moon and planets
You would want a different type of telescope?
To do lunar and planetary work than you would for deep sky objects and so that's part of the answer
For deep sky objects I think most
websites that I would go to and people more experienced than I this would say get a
Get a medium size of refracting telescope. It's a type it has the lens up front
with a
fairly short focal length and that will probably do the best for you for these things lots of reasons why but
Those kind of telescopes can range from the $600 one that I bought to six thousand dollars
So you kind of go with your budget, too?
And and so much of it appears to be in the way you process the images I mean like your image of Andromeda was spectacular
I remember when I first saw it when we were rehearsing for this
I said that's something that like the Mount Wilson telescope would have taken a hundred years ago
That would've been like the best astronomical image in the world, but hearing you did this out of this small scope
And so that has to do a lot with what you do with the imagery afterwards - so true yes
The more you stack the more signal-to-noise you get and the more you learn about
Photoshop and these other processing techniques
They're just the better you get and I really consider myself a baby at it this was again was about a four hour exposure and
Many many times more than four hours in processing you've only been doing this about four years. Yeah again
It's because there's so many resources online
we're bringing you the
Hubble missing a catalog online with all its information
There's lots and lots of helpful resources out there about Astro photography
The missing a catalog is such an inspiration to me because I'm sort of wrapping it all up again
We talked about avoiding these things that aren't comets, but instead it turns out to be the catalog of Wonders
I mean
I mean everything from dead stars to baby stars to these vast
Galaxies that you took a picture of well in some strange way we have Charles
Messier to thank for all that even though it wasn't what he was looking for
Yes
He found 13 comments on his own remarkable for the instruments. He had and operating from the center of Paris. Can you imagine it?
in an observatory there
And he co discovered seven others with
With his friends so the man found 20 comets in his lifetime
very very remarkable for the instruments that he had and the place that he was doing it from tried to even discover one from the
center of Paris right now
Pretty hard to do. Yeah, are you ready for another question um
Alejandra wants to know what are your favorite locations for stargazing? I guess I can ask both of you that question
Why just mentioned the Atacama Desert that's going to get you so you know it is is
Amazing to me how much you actually can see from a relatively dark backyard if you can get yourself to an area with a nice
Clear horizon, you know I've seen comets through through small binoculars
You know I've seen small telescopes where you can see the rings of Saturn Saturn in particular is an object
I mean obviously a lot closer to us than the Messier objects are but but this is one of the things where if you're a
Little disappointed by the Andromeda galaxy just being a smudge when you see Saturn and its rings, right?
There in front of you and the moons of Saturn as well
That's something that just floored me the first time
I saw it it looked like somebody had taken a picture of Saturn from a textbook and just kind of pasted it on the end
Of the telescope so some of these objects are actually very easy to see they're very bright
So you don't need a dark sky to see them. Yeah, that's right
the moon and planets in even a very modest size scope
can be a
Unforgettable
Experience as you mentioned seeing the rings of Saturn
I've been at so many star parties. We call them we have telescope out and and
have fun with the heavens, it's
It's so fun to see people see the moon or the planet Saturn or Jupiter with its
moons and bands for the first time
They never forget it. I never forgot it. That's really what got me into astronomy many many years ago seeing Saturn
There's a connection with the universe that you feel and it's really unforgettable, but where would I go around here?
have a brother-in-law that lives down to Virginia in the mountains and so that's a good spot to go and
The Eastern Shore is pretty good dark spot with nice horizon. So you can see things
from Horizon to Horizon
But if I were going to pay money and go someplace. They would probably be chilling here someplace like that or Hawaii
To have a be on the top of Mount and where all the other great zones
go
Telescopes are and and observe from there and one things I have to say is take advantage of your local amateur astronomy societies because pretty
Much wherever you are in the United States. There's a local club. Where if you don't know what sort of telescope?
You'd like you don't know how to use a telescope if you don't know where the nearest dark sky areas are around you your local
Astronomy club will know these things that's right, and they are an incredible resource and as a professional astronomer. I would go to these large
Observatories and people would type the coordinates into computers now. I would would make my observations
I often feel that the amateur astronomy community are the real astronomers
They're the people that really know the sky like the back of their hand
right
amateur astronomy groups will also
Love to show you their telescopes and so you can try before you buy
If you go to a club and that's also helpful
Great, it's kind of like asking someone about their job you asking someone about their telescope
They could talk for days there, so unfortunately we only have time for one more question
We're gonna keep answering some of your questions on
Facebook as they're coming in later on but unfortunately we only have so much camera time so one more question um
What is your favorite object you viewed through a telescope? Oh?
Between your children. Oh, wow, okay, so I guess
We just mentioned Saturn so I mean I think that probably actually is my favorite in the in the southern sky
There's something called the Carina Nebula and the Carina Nebula is an area where you can see star birth and star death all happening at
Once there are young clusters of stars, and then there's a star called a to Carina, which is actually very close
We think to blowing itself up in a supernova explosion
This part of the sky has these vast bands of dark dust and bright gas
And I have to say those are some of the things that I've seen with my own eyes when I was living in the southern
Hemisphere that just blew me away. I mean
This is probably the closest thing I've seen with my naked eyes looking through a telescope that actually looked like a Hubble image
So I ate a Carina it'd have to be one of my favorites
Yeah, and for me
It is like deciding between your children. I guess I
Really love to look visually at an 11 that wild duck cluster because when you first look at it in the scope
You can imagine how Messier didn't see any stars in it?
they're very very close, and yet you zoom in and
It's almost like the fly throughs that we saw
It turns into something else and it's in the heart of the Milky Way
Where is surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of stars to begin with and so it's just?
It's I don't know how to describe it. It's just beautiful. I could look at it for a
Long time if we don't know how to describe it you need to try it yourself
That's right, so get out there and find the Messier catalogue yourself
And enjoy the absolutely beautiful images of Hubble Space Telescope is made of these objects
Absolutely so like they said if you want more got the catalogue up on our website nasa.gov slash hubble
And if you want to know anything about hubble at any time you can follow us on twitter at nasa hubble
Thank you both so so much for being here, and thank you all for tuning in to us
And we'll see you next time hey great to be here. Thank you. Bye
