Stellar Starters

For us smart telescope owners every clear night is like a visit to a smorgasbord. I don’t know about others, but I have trouble controlling myself at “all you can eat” terrestrial buffets. So, what was I to do when I first started scanning the offerings on the extra-terrestrial menu?

Well, I wound up developing a year long strategy I call stellar starters. A stellar starter is an eastern night sky object that gets me going quickly on any given observing session. The Milky Way Galaxy offers up different types of nebulae or clusters for optimal viewing on a seasonal basis.

Remember that the plane of our Milky Way is inclined to the plane of the Solar System by over 60 degrees. So, during the night at different times of our year, we alternately have prominent displays of:

1. the north intergalactic hemisphere or “up” in my view;

2. the intragalactic center region;

3. the south intergalactic hemisphere, “down” in my view, and

4. the intragalactic anti-center region. Whew! That’s a lot of inter’s and - intra’s.

Luckily these roughly correspond to the following respective seasons here in the northern hemisphere: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. They needn’t have, but they do and that makes the rest of this blog much easier to explain*.

I’ve found that it’s useful to think of different stellar starters for different seasons. This is because I often find myself showing objects to others one-on-one or at star parties, so I need something that will be a really great first image for the impatient people like myself. Here’s how I define a great stellar starter object:

1. Good design => compelling shape or shapes;

2. Bright... relatively speaking;

3. Eastern sky in first hours of darkness; and

4. Must be an object with a story or two connected with it.

Here is a list of my stellar starters. I’m biased, of course, because I’m at 42 degrees north latitude. Southern hemisphere observers have some real gems of their own. And, of course my seasons are reversed from theirs. Feel free to suggest others good offerings in the comments.

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Spring Stellar Starters — The themes are very deep space and the richness of our local super cluster of galaxies. I will define this as looking out the top side of our galaxy.

M67: Open Cluster

• Okay, it’s not a galaxy, but it’s a great star cluster.

• I use it to determine the magnitude limit of my telescopes using the charts in the RASC Observer’s Handbook too.

M81 & M82: Spiral Galaxies

• A handsome spiral and a starburst galaxy.

• AKA: Bode’s Nebula and the Cigar Galaxy.

• Capable of appearing in the same image in all but the Unistellar scopes.

M104: Edge-On Spiral Galaxy

• For a close up image see below at the end.

M51: The Poster Child of Face-On Spiral Galaxies

M83: Grand Spiral Galaxy

• It’s at a declination of minus 30 degrees, so it’s a bit tough for the northern-most observers, but if you can get it, it’s fabulous.

M87: Giant Elliptical Galaxy

• Not that much to look at, but it harbors the supermassive black hole that had its shadow image a few years ago by radio astronomers.

• If your seeing and resolution are good enough, then, you can actually see a hint of the jet coming out from the region around the black hole.

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Summer Stellar Starters — These themes include staring into our inner galaxy with its halo of globular clusters plus lots of colorful HII regions and planetary nebulae showing off active stellar evolution. Except for the clusters, this is the time to put on your dual band nebular filter, if you have one. All of these make for an amazing summertime feast of sights.

M13: Globular Cluster (Great Hercules Cluster)

• Globulars define a halo centered on the galactic center.

M8: HII nebula (The Lagoon Nebula)

• Large and detailed structure.

• Great for talking about star forming clouds.

M17: HII Nebula (The Swan Nebula)

M16: HII Nebula (The Eagle Nebula)

• Also features the so-called Pillars of Creation made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope communications department.

M57: Ring Nebula

• Colorful planetary nebula — ejected outer envelope illuminated by a hot, exhausted star on its way to becoming a white dwarf.

• BTW… These smart scopes are great at showing colors that regular eyeball only amateur scopes cannot. My granddaughters like this one because I call it the "rainbow ring."

M27: Dumbbell Nebula

• Another planetary. IMHO looks nicer than the Ring.

M22: Globular Cluster

• Just a nice one. A favorite of mine

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Autumn Stellar Starters — The offerings are leaner now because we are looking out the bottom side of our galaxy into intergalactic space opposite the Virgo Supercluster. But there are still some very rewarding sights. With the clusters we’re starting to look away from the galactic center too.

M15: Globular Cluster (Great Pegasus Cluster)

M31: Grand Spiral Galaxy (Great Nebula in Andromeda)

• Our “sister” galaxy in the Local Group of Galaxies.

• Really one of the greatest sights our smart telescopes can image. It’s 3 degrees from end to end, so only scopes that can go that wide will get the entire thing.

• Nearby is M33 and is well worth the imaging effort, but is a bit fainter … requires patience and a dark sky really helps.

NGC 869 and NGC 884: (The Double Cluster)

• Beautiful open clusters, especially when you can image both at once in a FOV that is greater than 1 degree.

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Winter Stellar Starters — The crowning glory of deep space objects is on the table for the holidays. At this time of the year and time of the early evening we are looking out along the disk of the galaxy away from the central region.

M45: Open Cluster (The Pleiades)

• Okay, well you didn’t need your smart scope to see this one, but it’s oh so more fantastic in a smart scope — especially if you can get a FOV 2 degrees across.

M42: HII Region (The Great Nebula in Orion)

• Excuse me while I take a pause because this one overwhelms me with emotion……

• Okay, I’m back.

• So much to see here and in its environs. It will look great no matter what, but if you can put on a dual band nebular filter you’ll do much better.

• Take the time to explore the entire area…. including the following:

Barnard 33: Dark Nebula (AKA The Horse-head Nebula)

• A nebular filter is really necessary because you’re detecting the light from the background ionized cloud.

• If you can get it, it’s a real crowd pleaser.

M37: Open Cluster

• There are several nice ones in this constellation. This is my favorite.

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I find the list to be a handy first start to any observing planning. There are other tools I’ll talk about at some point in a blog entry, but I feel strongly that it’s important to understand the best “starter” for each season.

It’s also critical to begin with visually compelling sights when showing novices. I’ve learned that it’s not so much that they’re impatient as it is you want to grab their interest and have something to talk about right away.

Speaking of “talking about,” you’re going to find that with a smart scope you really need to know more about your subject than you might if you were just showing the Moon or a planet. To me that’s one of the great advantages of these things since I’m basically an educator. Stay tuned for other blog posts where I will direct you to some of the best resources for upping you astrophysics IQ.

Finally, I want to mention that one of the inspirations for this post was The Friendly Stars, a small book by Martha Evans Martin. It’s an astronomical classic and now well over 100 years old. When I first learned I would be taking a job at The Adler Planetarium I bought a copy to learn my basic stars and constellations. I’d learned astrophysics in graduate school and done radio astronomical research. So, I didn’t know anything about the night sky or even planets. I’d had little experience under dark skies, either. So I had to educate myself quickly. Martin’s well-crafted little volume filled the gap perfectly.

Bon Appetite!

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*The image included with this post is of a galactic armillary sphere we created for the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. Alas, it is no more, but the computer renderings by the famous exhibition designer Molly Lenore show how the disk of the Milky Way is oriented with respect to the main other celestial circles, namely the celestial equator (indicating the Earth’s equator) and the ecliptic (indicating the plane of the Solar System).

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M104 if one could see it close up.