Celestial Observer CCAS member Frank Widmann shot this image of Markarian’s Chain. Located in the constellation Virgo and visible during the Summer months, this string of galaxies forms part of the Virgo Cluster which contains over 1,300 galaxies. ____________________________________________________________ Next Star Gazing: ONLINE! Free Class: How to Use Saturday, July 10th at 7pm PDT Binoculars for Astronomy CCAS President Aurora Lipper, On Demand! and astronomers Kent Wallace Join Aurora and Brian as they go and Brian Cox will be taking you over what you need to know to get on a virtual tour of the July night started touring the night sky with a sky, so you can stargaze right from pair of binoculars! home! Connect here: More info here: CentralCoastAstronomy.org/stargaze CentralCoastAstronomy.org/binoculars_6-22-21 Next Stargazing: ONLINE! Invite friends!! Saturday, July 10th at 7pm PDT On July 10th, CCAS President Aurora Lipper, along with amateur astronomers Kent Wallace and Brian Cox will premier a tour of the July Summer sky. You’ll learn about objects visible naked-eye, through binoculars, and through a telescope. Then, using the tools you learn during the video, you’ll be able to stargaze from the comfort of your own home! Invite all your friends! Anyone with the link can view our free online stargazing session. All that’s needed is an internet connection. Join the stream using any tablet, personal computer, or YouTube enabled TV. After the premier, the video will be available on demand on our YouTube channel. Check our website for all the details: CentralCoastAstronomy.org/stargaze Central Coast Astronomy CentralCoastAstronomy.org Summer Triangle Corner: Vega, Deneb & Altair by NASA Night Sky Network nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov Can you spot Vega, Deneb & Altair? You may need to look straight up to find them, especially if observing late in the evening in the Summer months. Vega to find for novice stargazers. Ancient humans from 14,000 years ago likely If you live in the Northern Hemisphere knew Vega for another reason: it was and look up during Summer evenings, the Earth’s northern pole star! you’ll see the brilliant star Vega shining Compare Vega’s current position with overhead. Did you know that Vega is that of the current north star, Polaris, one of the most studied stars in our and you can see how much the skies? As one of the brightest summer direction of Earth’s axis changes over stars, Vega has fascinated thousands of years. This slow astronomers for thousands of years. movement of axial rotation is called precession, and in 12,000 years Vega Vega is the brightest star in the small will return to the northern pole star Greek constellation of Lyra, the harp. position. It’s also one of the three points of the large “Summer Triangle” asterism, Bright Vega has been observed closely making Vega one of the easiest stars since the beginning of modern Central Coast Astronomy CentralCoastAstronomy.org astronomy and even helped to set the Interested in learning more about standard for the current magnitude variable stars? Want to observe their scale used to categorize the changing brightness? Check out the brightness of stars. Polaris and Vega website for the American Association have something else in common, of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) at besides being once and future pole aavso.org. You can also find the latest stars: their brightness varies over time, news about Vega and other fascinating making them variable stars. Variable stars at nasa.gov. stars’ light can change for many different reasons. Dust, smaller stars, or even planets may block the light we see from the star. Or the star itself Deneb might be unstable with active sunspots, expansions, or eruptions The Summer Triangle is high in the changing its brightness. Most stars are sky after sunset this month for so far away that we only record the observers in the Northern Hemisphere, change in light, and can’t see their its component stars seemingly brighter surface. than before, as they have risen out of the thick, murky air low on the horizon NASA’s TESS satellite has and into the crisper skies overhead. ultra-sensitive light sensors primed to Deneb, while still bright when lower in look for the tiny dimming of starlight the sky, now positively sparkles caused by transits of extrasolar overhead as night begins. What makes planets.Their sensitivity also allowed Deneb special, in addition to being one TESS to observe much smaller of the three points of the Summer pulsations in a certain type of variable Triangle? Its brilliance has stirred the star’s light than previously observed. imaginations of people for thousands These observations of Delta Scuti of years! variable stars will help astronomers model their complex interiors and Deneb is the brightest star in Cygnus make sense of their distinct, seemingly the Swan and is positioned next to a chaotic, pulsations. This is a major striking region of the Milky Way, almost contribution towards the field of as a guidepost. The ancient Chinese astroseismology: the study of stellar tale of the Cowherd (Niulang) and the interiors via observations of how sound Weaver Girl (Zhinü) - represented by waves “sing” as they travel through the stars Altair and Vega - also stars. The findings may help settle the features Deneb. In this tale the two debate over what kind of variable star lovers are cast apart to either side of Vega is. Find more details on this the Milky Way, but once a year a research, including a sonification demo magical bridge made of helpful that lets you “hear” the heartbeat of magpies – marked by Deneb – allows one of these stars, at: the lovers to meet. Deneb has inspired bit.ly/DeltaScutiTESS many tales since and is a staple setting of many science fiction stories, Central Coast Astronomy CentralCoastAstronomy.org including several notable episodes of exact details of how this will occur, as Star Trek. with other vital details about this star, remain unclear. Astronomers have learned quite a bit about this star in recent years, though much is still not fully understood – in part because of its intense brightness. Altair The distance to Deneb from our Sun was measured by the ESA’s Hipparcos Altair is the final stop on our trip mission and estimated to be about around the Summer Triangle! The last 2,600 light years. Later analysis of the star in the asterism to rise for Northern same data suggested Deneb may be Hemisphere observers before summer much closer: about 1,500 light years begins, brilliant Altair is high overhead away. However, the follow-up mission at sunset at the end of the season in to Hipparcos, Gaia, is unable to make September. Altair might be the most distance measurements to this star! unusual of the three stars of the Deneb, along with a handful of other Triangle, due to its great speed: this especially brilliant stars, is too bright to star spins so rapidly that it appears be accurately measured by the “squished.” satellite’s ultra-sensitive instruments. A very bright star, Altair has its own Deneb is unusually vivid, especially notable place in the mythologies of given its distance. Generally, most of cultures around the world. As the brightest stars seen from Earth are discussed in our previous edition, within a few dozen to a few hundred Altair represents the cowherd Niulang light years away, but Deneb stands out in the ancient Chinese tale of the by being thousands of light years “Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.” Altair distant! In fact, Deneb ranks among is the brightest star in the constellation the top twenty brightest night time of Aquila the Eagle; while described as stars (at #19) and is easily the most part of an eagle by ancient peoples distant star in that list. Its luminosity is around the Mediterranean, it was also fantastic but uncertain, since its exact seen as part of an eagle by the Koori distance is also unclear. What is people in Australia! They saw the star known about Deneb is that it’s a itself as representing a wedge-tailed blue-white supergiant star that is eagle, and two nearby stars as his furiously fusing its massive stocks of wives, a pair of black swans. More thermonuclear fuel and producing recently one of the first home enough energy to make this star computers was named after the star: somewhere between 50,000 and the Altair 8800. 190,000 times brighter than our Sun if they were viewed at the same Altair’s rapid spinning was first distance! The party won’t last much detected in the 1960s. The close longer; in a few million years, Deneb observations that followed tested the will exhaust its fuel and end its stellar limits of technology available to life in a massive supernova, but the astronomers, eventually resulting in Central Coast Astronomy CentralCoastAstronomy.org direct images of the star’s shape and Additional Skywatching Resources surface by using a technique called interferometry, which combines the Plan your skywatching with help from light from two or more instruments to the Night Sky News planner page, produce a single image. Predictions featuring daily stargazing tips courtesy about how the surface of a rapidly EarthSky, monthly sky maps, and spinning massive star would appear videos from NASA/JPL. You can even held true to the observations; models find out how to spot the International predicted a squashed, almost Space Station! “pumpkin-like” shape instead of a round sphere, along with a dimming effect along the widened equator, and the observations confirmed this! This equatorial dimming is due to a phenomenon called gravity darkening.