But there’s still more. Telescopes will show the differing apparent sizes and appearance of each planet, with Mercury’s and Venus’ partially illuminated disks contrasted with Jupiter’s nearly full one. And depending on when you look, you will see up to all four of the giant planet’s "Galilean" satellites (those discovered by Galileo with his primitive telescope) changing position about their host world from night-to-night. Should you be fortunate enough to own a low-power, wide-field telescope like the famed Edmund Astroscan-Plus with its amazing 3-degree apparent field of view (that’s 6 full-Moon-diameters of sky!), when closest on the evenings of the 26th and 27th the trio will easily fit within a single eyepiece field of view! What a truly wonderful and rare sight that promises to be!

Meanwhile, across the sky, Saturn graces the southeastern heavens at dusk during May and is highest in the south late in the evening. Its magnificent ring system is a beautiful sight in any optically sound telescope at magnifications of 25X or more. In the Scientifics 60mm refractor at 35X, its tiny image looks like an exquisite piece of cosmic jewelry! While the view in large amateur and observatory-class scopes is quite beyond any words to adequately describe, I still enjoy looking at Saturn’s crisp, tiny, and remote-looking countenance as seen at low power in a small telescope. Today, we’re all used to seeing this amazing other-worldly sight. But can you imagine how astounded the earliest stargazers were to come upon the sight of a ringed-planet? No wonder that many of them doubted both their eyes and their telescopes. You may well have too when you saw it for the very first time—I know I certainly did!

— James Mullaney
Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine & author of nine books on stargazing.

While both funding and technical issues have yet to be resolved, if all goes according to plan the world’s two largest telescopes will make their appearance on the astronomical scene within the coming years. And these new instruments aren’t going to be just a bit bigger than their predecessors. We’re talking really BIG!  The one will be five times and the other eight times as large as Palomar’s 200-incher!

The smallest (!) of the two is the Giant Magellan Telescope of the Carnegie Observatories (which operates Palomar along with Caltech).  Hailed as the “Dream Machine,” it will consist of seven individual mirrors each 330-inches or more than 27 feet across! Combined, they will give this behemoth an effective aperture of 1,000 feetand a resolving power 10 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope! Being technically unfeasible (most optical engineers would say “impossible”) to make one single glass mirror in such unprecedented sizes, nearly all large telescopes today have taken advantage of high-speed computers, electronic imaging and laser technology to bring the images from a grouping or mosaic of separate mirrors to a single focus (an amazing achievement!). This seven-eyed giant will truly be a wonder to behold when it eventually goes into operation.

Enormous as the Magellan will be, there’s an even larger telescope in the works. Called the European Extremely Large Telescope, it’s being built by the European Southern Observatory for its existing mountaintop site inChile. Its “segmented” primary mirror will consist of 798 individual hexagonal ones working together as a single unit. (The 400-inch primaries of the Keck telescopes are also segmented, being made up of individual mirrors joined together.)  This will result in an instrument with an effective aperture of nearly 1,600 inches—about half the size of a football field!

It should be mentioned that there’s a third monster telescope that’s only being talked about right now (preliminary work has already started on the above two projects). A planned partnership of Caltech, theUniversityofCalifornia, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, this instrument would use a segmented mirror having 760 individual hexagonal ones and resulting in an effective aperture of nearly 1,200 inches.

When I look at the little 4-inch mirror in my Astroscan-Plus and think of all the marvels it shows in the night sky, I can only imagine what wonders these new telescopes with their monster mirrors will revel to astronomers.  It’s going to be utterly awesome!

—James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine & author of nine books on stargazing.

Comets are notorious for not living up to predictions (famed Comet Halley not meeting expectations at its 1986 appearance, being just one obvious example). But astronomers are confidently predicting that Comet PanSTARRS will not disappoint at its appearance this month. Discovered last summer when quite remote by an automated sky-survey project in Hawaii called PanSTARRS, this is the first of two bright comets that will grace our skies this year. (Comet ISON is the second one, which is expected to be even more spectacular this December and will be profiled in that month’s Sky Talk).

PanSTARRS will be visible above the western horizon after sunset all of March and is expected to be at its best between the 12th and the 18th of the month.  It will slowly move toward the northwestern horizon from night-to-night and should remain visible into early April. And on March 12th itself, look for a very thin crescent Moon to its right.  While predicted to be bright enough to be easily visible with the unaided eye (including its tail), it should be a stunning sight through your Edmund binoculars.  But optimum impact will likely come viewing it through low-power, wide-field telescopes like the Edmund Astroscan-Plus with its amazing 3-degrees of sky coverage (or six fill-Moon diameters!) using its 16 power eyepiece.

Hunting for comets visually through telescopes was long a traditional pursuit of amateur astronomers—ones like famed observers Leslie Peltier and David Levy. (This also included some professional astronomers like Edward Emerson Barnard, who paid the mortgage on his house from the gold medals that were once awarded for comet discoveries!)  Photography, and later electronic CCD imaging, soon largely replaced visual discoveries.  Today nearly all new comets are found though automated sky surveys like PanSTARRS.  But some are still picked up by stargazers sweeping the sky.  (And here I strongly recommend Leslie Peltier’s delightful autobiography Starlight Nights, subtitled The Adventures of a Star-Gazer, available from Sky Publishing at www.shopatsky.com.  I personally consider this “must-reading” for all who love the stars!)

There’s also one other sky event you should definitely put on your calendar this month.  On the evening of the 17th, looking halfway up the western sky—where you will see the not quite half-full Moon flanked to its upper right by brilliant Jupiter and to its lower left by the bright orange star Aldebaran. While a wonderful sight to the unaided eye, this heavenly “triple-treat” will be most spectacular as seen in binoculars. (But only on that night—as the Moon leaves the scene by the following evening in its never-ending eastward journey around the Earth.)

— James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine & author of nine books on stargazing.

There are three basic types of optical telescopes used for viewing the heavens. Best-known is the refractor or lens-type, which employs a compound objective having two or more elements to collect light and bring it to a focus. It’s what most people think of when they hear the word “telescope”—someone looking through the end of a long tube at the sky. Another form is the reflector or mirror-type, which uses a precision concave primary mirror to do the same. The third type is a combination of these two. Called a catadioptric or compound telescope, it uses a system of both mirrors and lenses.  They come in two versions—the Maksutov and the very popular Schmidt-Cassegrain (or SCT).

Generally speaking, refractors with their unobstructed light paths (no secondary mirrors) and closed tubes give the sharpest images and rarely require any adjustment (collimation).  Reflectors offer the most aperture for the dollar, but their open tubes can result in image-degrading tube currents (with the exception of Edmund’s unique Astroscan, which has an optical window to seal the tube). Due to their folded light-paths, catadioptrics are the most compact for their size but are typically the most costly of the three types.  Both SCT’s and reflectors require collimation on occasion (an easily-mastered process).An exception here is again the Astroscan, which is permanently collimated at the factory.”  Volumes have been written about the advantages of one type of telescope over the others. Suffice it to say that if optically sound, each of them performs equally well and can provide a lifetime of viewing pleasure. The final choice often comes down to a matter of affordability. In any case, purchasing a telescope is a good investment—for unlike many other technical devices they typically appreciate in value over time rather than depreciate!

 The range of telescope sizes in use by stargazers today is astounding—from hand-held or table-top-mounted small scopes to large observatory-class instruments. Often seen at star parties are the popular “Dobsonian” reflectors, some of which are so huge that they are moved around in trucks and require stepladders to reach their eyepieces! Named for their simplified mountings invented by famed telescope-maker John Dobson, they are ultra-easy to use and in the smaller sizes are very affordable. There’s also a wide variety of more complex (and typically heavier and costlier) mountings, including computer-driven/controlled ones able to locate thousands of targets automatically from a keypad. However, most of these so-called “Go-To” systems have a “learning curve” in terms of setup and actual use under the stars at night. (And to us purists, they take much of the fun out of leasurely stargazing using a good star map or atlas to “star hop” our way to celestial treasures!)

As to the best size, a valuable rule-of-thumb here is that the smaller (i.e., more portable) the telescope, the more often it’s likely to be used. Lugging a 100-pound instrument outside and setting it up in the dark is enough to dissuade many observers, especially on frigid winter nights. Professionally, I’ve been privileged to have used some of the largest telescopes in the world. But my personal instruments are a 3-inch refractor, a 4-inch reflector, and a 5-inch catadioptric—any one of which I can easily pick up and carry about with one hand!

Edmund Scientific is pleased to offer a selection of all three types of telescopes in a range of sizes, mountings and prices.  To see them, simply go to www.scientificsonline.com and click on the “Telescopes” icon.

—James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine and author of eight books on stargazing.

You can’t miss it!  Blazingly bright Jupiter rivets your attention as soon as you step outside and look up.  It lies in the constellation Taurus near the glittering Hyades and Pleiades naked-eye star clusters.  Your steadily-held Edmund binoculars will clearly show its non-stellar-appearing disk and with attention you may glimpse one or more of its satellites.  (While here, be sure to take a peek at both star clusters with you glasses as well!) Even a small beginner’s telescope like the Scientifics’ 60mm refractor will give a beautiful view of both the planet itself and all four of its bright Galilean satellites (those discovered by Galileo).  As they waltz around the planet from night-to-night, they undergo a number of fascinating phenomena—the most striking of which are their disappearance and reappearance into and out of Jupiter’s huge shadow cone.  For much more about this see the July, 2009, installment of Sky Talk archived on our site.

On the evening of January 3rd into the morning of the 4th, the annual Quadrantid Meteor Shower reaches its maximum. The display’s radiant—that point in the sky from which the meteors appear to stream—lies in the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis (thus its unusual name), which is part of Bootes today.  For this reason, some observers prefer to call this display the “Bootids” rather than the Quadrantids.  Peak activity is expected sometime before dawn on the East Coast.  The Moon will be approaching Last Quarter on the 5th and so will definitely interfere with this year’s display once it rises.  Under dark skies observers can normally expect to see upwards of 100 or more “shooting stars” an hour at the peak.  While this number will be reduced due to moonlight, the brighter ones should still show through and make the shower worth watching. Although Bootes itself doesn’t fully rise until well after midnight in January, meteors can still be seen shooting from over the northeastern horizon after darkness falls on the 3rd with meteoric activity increasing throughout the night as the constellation climbs higher in the sky. And as we’ve discussed in the past, after midnight our spinning planet is turned in the direction of the radiant—causing the meteors to slam into the atmosphere at higher speeds and making them more visible.

Since meteor observing sessions usually run many hours, reclining on a lawnchair is normally recommended.  But on a frigid January night, you may prefere instead to remain standing and keep moving about to stay warm. (A thermos of hot chocolate or coffee will definitely help here too!)   And while this is basically a naked-eye activity in order to canvass as large an area of the sky as possible, using your Edmund binoculars is also encouraged for following the fascinating drifting “smoke” trails or trains left behind by many of the really bright meteors.

—James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine and author of eight books on stargazing.

This year’s Perseid Meteor Shower put on a great show back in August, but it was somewhat compromised by bright moonlight during part of the display—and widespread cloudiness across much of the country prevented many of us from seeing it. So this month’s Geminids offer a wonderful “rain check.” It’s one of the most observed annual showers due to a consistent intensity of as many as 100 shooting stars per hour during its peak activity as seen under a dark sky.  They appear to radiate from near the bright star Castor, one of the two “Twin Stars” marking Gemini, the mythological twins (the other being the star Pollux).  To find them, set your Scientifics Star and Planet Locator for about 7:00 p.m. around mid-December and face northeast, where you’ll see the pair just clearing the horizon. Unlike most other meteor showers whose host constellations typically don’t rise until the hours after midnight, this one is already above the horizon after dark, making this shower ideal for early evening viewing.

The shower will be best seen on the evening of November 13^th into the early morning hours of

the 14^th, with maximum activity expected sometime after midnight.  And this year, the Moon is at its New phase that same night and will offer no interference at all. If you watch thorough the evening hours, you’ll notice that the number of meteors seen increases as the night grows later. This is partly because Gemini continues to rise ever-higher in the sky.  But there’s also another more important factor at work here. In the evening, we’re on the side of our planet “facing away” from the direction the meteors are approaching and so they have to “catch up” with us.  But after midnight we’re turned into the direction of the radiant, causing them to slam into the atmosphere at much higher speeds and resulting in many more of them being seen.  So the later you observe the more activity you can expect to see.

Observing meteors is basically a naked-eye activity in order to survey as large an area of sky as possible. A helpful technique here is to face east toward the radiant while concentrating your attention on the sky overhead—ideally reclining comfortably on a lounge chair as you do.  Using your Edmund binoculars is also encouraged for following the smoke trails or “trains” often left behind by many of the brighter meteors.  And pointing these glasses at the radiant itself, you may even be fortunate enough to see a meteor coming directly at you—appearing from out of the darkness as a brightening “star” and ending its flight in a blinding burst of light. This is a Geminid meant expressly just for you!

—James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine and author of eight books on stargazing

The Aurora Borealis (better-known as the “Northern Lights” when seen from the Northern Hemisphere) and the Aurora Australis (or “Southern Lights” seen from the Southern Hemisphere) are wonderful atmospheric displays directly tied into sunspot activity. Charged particles from the Sun excite gases like neon and oxygen in our upper atmosphere causing them to glow. And here we’re talking about an amazing light show quite unlike any earthly counterpart-multicolored undulating curtains, shimmering arcs, and pulsating rays so bright in some cases that they cast shadows on the ground! While relatively infrequent around sunspot minimum, displays often occur several times a week centered on maximum activity. Whenever a big naked-eye sunspot appears near the center of the Sun’s disk during the day, you can be fairly sure of an auroral display that night or the one following. (See the May Sky Talk for information on safely viewing the Sun with the unaided eye.) If a large sunspot or sunspot group is seen, news flashes are often posted on www.astronomy.com and www.skyandtelescope.com among other Internet sites alerting readers to an impending display, should you prefer to learn about it that way instead of actually looking at the Sun itself.

The higher your latitude (or closer to the poles) the more likely that an aurora will be seen. A total eclipse of the Sun is without question nature’s grandest spectacle. But an intense auroral display is unquestionably its greatest light show! Many (including myself) witnessing one experience a heady exhilaration. As we approach sunspot maximum, make it a practice to always check the northern sky on clear nights for a possible display. That is, except when the Moon is full and “washes out” their visibility. (There actually have been auroras bright enough to be seen even then, but they are relatively rare.)

Since this is November, we can’t close without alerting readers to the Leonid Meteor Shower, which peaks on the night of the 16th-17th. Normally, a modest 15 to 20 meteors an hour will be seen under good conditions. But occasionally-and almost always unpredictably-the sky is literally filled with “shooting stars” radiating from the constellation of Leo. On a November morning just before dawn in 1966, most of the worldwide astronomical community wherever it was still dark (both amateur and professional) was totally blown away when the Leonids unexpectedly reached a rate of 40 meteors per second (that’s 144,000 per hour) and looked like snowflakes coming at you in a driving snowstorm! There have been other Leonid outbursts since, but none to date that have matched that amazing display. (Ones similar to that in 1996 had also been seen in 1799, 1833 and 1866.) So, as with auroras themselves, it’s best to check the sky just in case the meteor shower turns out to be a meteor storm!

- James Mullaney
Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine & author of eight books on stargazing.

Some are so unusual and artificial-looking that they seemingly couldn’t possibly be real!  One of these is the famed “Coathanger” asterism, now well placed for viewing with your Edmund binoculars on October evenings.

Undoubtedly the best-known and most easily recognized of all asterisms is the Big Dipper. (Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a constellation—but rather part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear of the Heavens.  See the Sky Talk column for April, 2007, for more about it.)  The much smaller heavenly Coathanger appears as an upside-down coat hanger lying within the Milky Way, with six stars aligned in a straight line and a curved hook coming out of the center made up of four more.  Over a degree in length, it’s too big to fit in typical telescopic fields of view.  An exception is the Edmund Astroscan-Plus with its wide 3 degree field (that’s six Full-Moon diameters of sky!) using its 16x low-power eyepiece. Since telescopes typically invert the image, the upside-down Coathanger appears right-side-up as seen in this amazing window on the heavens.

To find the Coathanger, we use another of the sky’s asterisms—this one the huge “Summer

Triangle.”  It’s made up of the three bright, blue-white stars Vega, Deneb and Altair, positioned high in the southwestern sky at this time of the year. (Use your Scientifics Star and Planet Locator to identify them.)  The Coathanger lies about one-third of the way along a line from Altair to Vega, appearing as a bright patch in the Milky Way to the unaided eye on a dark, moonless night. It’s a delightful surprise coming across it while sweeping its location with binoculars. Altogether, there are some two dozen fainter suns visible in such glasses sprinkled across and around the cluster. However, despite appearances, this lovely sight is not a true cluster of related stars but rather a chance alignment of them lying at different distances from us.

Officially logged as Collinder 399, it’s also known as “Brocchi’s Cluster” after is discoverer.  The Collinder Catalog itself contains many other such fascinating groups of stars all over the sky—ones too wide and scattered to have been included in standard compilations like the Messier Catalog or the New General Catalogue (the NGC).  Even without a detailed star chart to identify them, simply scanning the heavens with binoculars or a wide-field telescope like the Astroscan will turn up many other asterisms. But none can match the remarkable appearance of the Coathanger itself!  With so many wonders like these available to stargazers every clear night, it almost seems as if the universe wants us to be in a perpetual state of amazement.  Even after more than half a century of viewing the sky, I still find myself saying “wow” at the views virtually every time I go out observing.

-James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine and author of eight books on stargazing.

If our lovely satellite didn’t rotate on its axis as many believe, we would alternately see both the front of it and the back of it during the course of its monthly orbit of the Earth. And here’s a fun demonstration to prove it. Sit or stand in the middle of a room. Then have someone walk around you in a circle with them always facing in the same direction of the room as they do–in other words, not rotating their body as they “orbit” you. As you turn to follow their movement (just as the Earth continually turns) you will alternately see the back of their head and half a revolution later their face! In between, the side of them would be visible. In fact, the Moon slowly rotates on its axis in the same number of days that it takes to orbit the Earth. This is the same as having that person continually face you while circling you—meaning that they would have to rotate themselves to do so (and would see different parts of the room as they did).

The mistaken belief that the back of the Moon is always dark can be easily dispelled by the following logical statements of fact. When our satellite is in its Full Moon position, the entire front side is illuminated–and, the back side is indeed dark! But half a lunar orbit (or month) later when at New Moon, the side facing us is dark and the back side if fully illuminated by the Sun! At both First Quarter and Last Quarter when the Moon looks half-illuminated, the other side is also half illuminated. Technically stated, the lunar phase presented to us is always the “compliment” of that on its back side. Incidentally, many wonder (and rightly so!) why the half-full Moon is called the First Quarter seen in the evening sky or Last Quarter in the morning one. It’s simply because the Moon at those phases is one quarter or three quarters, respectively, around its orbit at those times. When Apollo 8 circled the Moon for the first time in human history, the flight was planned so that at least part of the back half was illuminated so the astronauts could see and photograph its surface features as they passed over it.

Despite giving the above demonstration and explanation during my public lectures in answer to questions about these misperceptions, there are always those in the audience who don’t buy it and continue to believe that the Moon doesn’t rotate and that its far side is dark. They are also many of the same ones who are convinced that we never landed on the Moon!

-James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine and author of eight books on stargazing.

On Saturday night, August 11^th into the morning hours of Sunday, August 12^th the annual Perseid Meteor Shower is predicted to put on quite a show.  Perfectly timed over a weekend, observers can stay up late to follow the display into the morning hours if so inclined.  Rising around 1:30 a.m. local time on the 12^th, the waxing Moon itself will be heading towards its crescent phase and should be thin enough to offer minimal interference with visibility of the meteors. This display is expected to produce at least 60 “shooting stars” an hour at its maximum (that’s one-per-minute on average) and possibly as many as 100 an hour as seen from dark-sky locations.

The radiant — that point from which the meteors appear to “shoot” toward us — is located in the constellation Perseus (after which the shower is named).  It will just be clearing the northeastern horizon around 9:00 p.m. local time on the 11th, and continue to climb ever-higher in the sky as the Earth spins in that direction.  Use your Scientifics Star and Planet Locator to first identify it, and then see its altitude increase by setting the star-disk to later and later hours.

It’s also due to the Earth facing into the direction the meteors are coming at us that their numbers typically increase noticeably after midnight.  But there’s always some uncertainty as to the actual time of peak activity, so it’s best to begin watching as soon as darkness falls on Saturday (perhaps going out every hour or so to check on activity).

Many avid meteor watchers like to do counts of the number seen in precise hourly intervals (technically known as determining “hourly rates”).  This allows you to see if shower activity is increasing or decreasing.  It can also provide valuable data if properly recorded for the various professional meteor societies around the world.   In this country, you can contact the American Meteor Society at http://www.amsmeteors.org/ for much useful information about observing meteors in general and also submitting observations.

For optimum coverage of the Perseid shower, face east toward the radiant while at the same time concentrating your attention on the sky overhead — preferably reclining comfortably on a lawnchair or heavy blanket and pillow.  And while this is basically a naked-eye activity since it’s important to canvass as large an area of sky as possible, using your Edmund binoculars is also encouraged for following the trails or “trains” often left behind by many of the brighter meteors.  And for an added thrill, point them from time to time at the radiant itself — you may be lucky enough to see a few meteors coming directly at you, suddenly appearing from out of nowhere as brightening stars!

—James Mullaney

Former assistant editor at Sky & Telescope magazine & author of eight books on stargazing.