Monday 17th to Sunday 23rd October 2022
If you go outside after 10pm on Monday 17th, the constellation of Taurus will have risen above the horizon in the east, with the Pleiades open cluster of stars above it. Planet Mars will be to the left of Taurus.
Approximately half way between Mars and the star Zeta Taurus (which is the constellation's bottom left star) you can find the Crab Nebula. It was the first deep sky object that Charles Messier catalogued and is therefore also known as M1. The nebula has a magnitude of +8.4 so is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. A telescope or binoculars should reveal a fuzzy blob that is estimated to be between 5000 and 8000 light years away from us.
The astronomer John Bevis first spotted the fuzzy blob in 1731 and Messier catalogued it a few decades later. In 1842, William Parsons who was the 3rd Earl of Rosse, used his large 36 inch telescope to draw the nebula and his sketch looked a bit like a crab - hence its common name. The nebula contains the remnants of a supernova that the ancient Chinese observed in 1054. In the centre is a neutron star that emits loads of x-ray and gamma radiation.
Moving towards the end of the week and a bit closer to home, the evening of Friday 21st sees the peak of the Orionids meteor shower, so named because the radiant point where the meteors appear to originate from is in the constellation of Orion close to the star Betelgeuse. As you approach midnight, Orion will have risen above the horizon to the east. The meteors are produced as the Earth passes through the dust left by comet Halley. The shower has a zenithal hourly rate of around twenty meteors per hour and a lack of Moon in the night sky that evening gives the best chance of seeing some.
Crab Nebula images courtesy of Wikipedia
Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2022
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