Highland Astronomy

13/01/2025

On Monday evening the full Moon will sit next to the planet Mars and the head stars of Gemini 🌕🔴✨

Clear skies.

04/01/2025

Saturn and Moon occultation

04/01/2025

04/01/2025

Saturn and Moon occultation. Telescopes or binoculars at the ready? Please read my previous post and look up from 5.20pm.

Clear skies

03/01/2025

Venus and the thin crescent 🌙 Moon struggling beneath low cloud here in Inverness. Hope some of you catch better views?

03/01/2025

Tonight is the peak of the Quadrantids meteor shower ☄️☄️

Look up from midnight for the best chances to see shooting stars when the radiant (near the plough) is gaining height above the NE horizon.

Ideally you'll be somewhere dark and away from city light pollution. The absence of a Moon makes this shower potentially one of the best this season if skies stay clear.

Remember you don't need to look at the radiant to see meteors as they'll appear to come from many directions. The radiant is just a useful guide for timing as the higher it is in the sky the better the rates.

Good luck.

01/01/2025

Venus will appear close to the waxing crescent 🌙 Moon on Friday 3rd Jan.

31/12/2024

Saturn and Moon Occultation on 'Saturn-day' the 4th Jan 2025 🪐🌙

Planet Saturn will be occulted by the early evening waxing crescent 🌙 Moon on Saturday 4th Jan.

By about 4.30pm you should see the crescent Moon towards the south with Venus burning brilliantly to the Moon's right.

Saturn will by this point already be close to the left of the Moon but much much dimmer than Venus naked eye, so grab some binoculars or a telescope for the best views.

By about 5.20pm (give or take depending on your location) Saturn will start to disappear behind the dark limb of the Moon. This is quite a spectacular thing to see, and a written description of it doesn't do it justice. If you can, go out and try to witness it for yourself.

You can then wait an hour or so later to see the planet emerging from the bright limb of the Moon at approximately 6.25pm (but this will again vary depending on your location).

If you're local to the Highlands and would like some company to view the phenomena with (and access a bigger telescope) the Highlands Astronomical Society are hosting a public event (good weather permitting).

Good luck and clear skies.

31/12/2024

The potential Nova in the constellation Corona Borealis, you may have read about, will be easiest to see in the early morning sky, around 6am or before skies brighten.

There's no exact date and time for this event, just an astronomical hunch that it could happen 'very soon' due to recent photometry data from the target binary system that showed a similar dimming light curve 80 years ago.

That said, if you're up early and it's clear look overhead for the Plough towards the SE. Follow the arc in the handle to Arcturus (a bright red giant star), then look left to a small C shape of stars.

The fleeting 'guest star' is predicted to appear just below the C, rising from magnitude +10 (below naked eye threshold) to an average naked eye stellar magnitude of +2. That's about as bright as the north star Polaris, so readily visible from even suburban skies. It's also the same magnitude as the brightest star in the C shape itself - 'Alphecca', so it will be very obvious.

These transient recurrent novae are relatively common from a galactic perspective, but it's still rare to see them happen naked eye on human timescales.

They occur when stellar material from a star is accreted onto a companion white dwarf, causing an extremely bright transient explosion that doesn't result in the destruction of either star - so it happens again and again periodically.

24/12/2024

Looking for a late Christmas present idea?

Hosted by Astronomer Stephen Mackintosh Tour Season: September to March During the longer nights between September and March, I host evening astronomy tours for small groups of 1-4 people based out…

24/12/2024

The bright star like object burning on the south west horizon just after sunset is the planet Venus.

21/12/2024

Happy Shortest Day and Winter Solstice! Today the Earth's northern hemisphere is maximally inclined away from the Sun.

Solstice means 'Sun standstill' because the Sun's changing altitude and rise and set times seem to halt at this time of year.

That's because the changes in daylight are like the flat portion of a Sine curve at the moment, with little perceptible movement over the next couple of weeks.

It's only from around mid January that we start to notice bigger jumps in daylight time, heralding the return of longer days.

Image: Clava Cairns

21/12/2024

Santa Alert!! 🎅🛷🦌☄️

See Santa's supersonic sleigh soaring overhead in the early morning sky over the festive week.

New modifications to Sant's sleigh and special breathing apparatus devised by the infamous Elf_Speed R&D department mean he can now travel at over 18,000mph at 250 miles overhead.

One excited elf was quoted as saying "Santa's fight back against Amazon begins here!"

Look up for the bright light in the sky emerging from the south west and heading eastwards on the following days and times:

23rd Dec @7.39am
24th Dec @6.51am
25th Dec @6.04 and 7.38am
26th Dec @6.50am

Clear skies and Merry Christmas 🎄 🎁 ✨✨

21/12/2024

Burns Beneath the Stars at Abriachan Forest (25th January)

Join us up at Abriachan Forest (a Dark Sky Discovery site) for an evening of stargazing and astronomy with a Burns night twist.
If conditions are clear astronomer Stephen Mackintosh will be guiding you under the Milky Way class dark skies of Abriachan Forest (with a backup astronomy presentation if clouds roll in).

Plus a Burns themed activity hosted by Abriachan with Haggis hand warmers and refreshments for a simple Burn's supper fare.
Due to site and classroom capacity, booking via Eventbrite is essential. Admission is free for under 16s with accompanying adults but please inform Abriachan of any large booking requests.

Event clicks are down below in the discussion thread.

16/12/2024

New stars, new worlds and perhaps new organic synthesis takes place within the Orion nebula - the closest massive star forming region to our Sun. These stellar processes operate at a scale and pace incompatible with our own humble human timelines, yet as inquisitive beings we still look up and wonder at the potential of what is and what may be....

With binoculars or a telescope you can glimpse the emitted and reflected light from this enormous stellar incubator, where over 1000 new Suns are being forged. This bright region is just one small part of an even bigger star forming region that covers the whole of the constellation Orion.

In binoculars the nebula is a bright smudge below the belt stars in the hunter. Larger aperture telescopes, especially viewed under dark skies, will reveal more and more structure and diffuse luminosity.

16/12/2024

Mars next to the Moon by Kevin Williamson.

"Hi Stephen. A couple of weeks ago Mars and the Moon were very close together and I wanted them in the same shot. However, in trying to catch Mars, the brightness of the Moon blows out the image. I opted for a composite image formed of two photos taken a few seconds apart with different exposures- one to show off Mars and the other to the show the Moon's details and a little of the unlit side." - Kevin

16/12/2024

The double cluster in Perseus. A popular circumpolar target for binoculars or telescopes, especially for observers at mid and high northern latitudes. The two open star clusters are over 7000 light years distant but have blue shifted spectra because they're traveling towards us at about 30 miles per second.

The age of these clusters is relatively slight, estimated at less than 20 million years, so they're younger than the Pleiades.

I remember seeing them in a big 14 inch telescope many years ago and was blown away by the large density of stars and the variety of colours present. But they impress even in binoculars.

This image, after 4 minutes of integration time on a Seestar S50, shows some of the stellar temperature variation, with some red giant stars visible.

Many of the prominent members in this image are blue giants and blue supergiants, massive nuclear furnaces burning through their hydrogen stores at breakneck speed. Many of those energetic stars will only last several tens of millions of years, before blowing apart and seeding subsequent generations of stars.

13/12/2024

☄️ Friday evening into Saturday morning is the peak of the Geninids meteor shower. If you can find clear skies the bright Moon will unfortunately get in the way leaving only the brighter and fireball specimens visible to the naked eye.

Clear skies.