Adrian Dening's Stars Over Somerset

Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:00

Monday 28th February to Sunday 6th March 2022

Continuing our theme of open star clusters from last week, if you look due south around 10pm, there is an excellent opportunity to see M44 which is also known as the Beehive Cluster. Between the constellations of Leo and Gemini is the constellation of Cancer. M44 is located near the centre of Cancer. It contains more stars than many other open clusters and is best viewed with binoculars or a small telescope.

Facing back towards Leo, it is also currently possible to see a minor planet known as 16 Psyche. Named after the Greek goddess of the soul, it is located below the belly of Leo the Lion and you will definitely need your binoculars or telescope as it only has a magnitude of around +10.

16 Psyche is one of the larger asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The "16" prefix signifies that it was the sixteenth minor planet discovered in order. If you manage to spot it, you are looking at an object that is only 220Km diameter , but over 200 million miles away from us! At that distance, the faint light reflecting from its surface takes 18 minutes to reach us.

Distances are hard to comprehend when they become many millions of miles, so astronomers use Astronomical Units within the Solar System. One Astronomical Unit (or AU) is the distance from the Earth to the Sun which is about 93 million miles. 16 Psyche is currently at 2.2 AU or in other words, roughly twice as far away as us from the Sun. I bet that's easier to understand!

Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2022