Over the moon? Definitely.

Tonight I got my first look at the moon through my scope. It was spectacular. Seeing something that you think you know so well in such a different light is amazing. You can see every crater, every sea, every hill.

I even managed to get a semi-decent shot by holding my camera up to the eyepiece. 

This is the view through the 25mm ep. The view through the 10mm was brilliant too, but unfortunately I couldn't get a decent shot through it... I need to work on my afocal imaging...

But I've found an old webcam that I don't use anymore, so I'm going to attempt to modify it for planetary imaging in the next few weeks! 

The best part of tonight though, was my Dads reaction. It took a bit of coaxing to get him to come outside for a look, but he was blown away by the view. His exact words were 'Oh good Jesus, I didn't think you'd be able to see that!' Delighted!

Astronomy is so exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DNA Day

59 years ago today, the 25th April 1953, molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper in Nature which suggested a structure for DNA.

(Source, via Wikipedia)

Their paper 'Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid' provided a brilliantly simple answer to the question of how genetic instructions were both stored inside organisms and passed from one generation to the next. It described Rosalind Franklin's discovery of the structure of DNA, and had a major impact on the field of biology, and genetics in particular.

(Watson and Crick with Maclyn McCarty. Source, via Wikipedia)

Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

(Source)

The full paper has been made available online and can be viewed here, with an annotated version here.

Earth Day 2012

In honour of Earth Day 2012, here is the most distant image ever taken of our beautiful home, photographed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Carl Sagan said it best:

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. 

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. 

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

SATURN!!!!

So after last nights ISS adventures, I headed back out with my telescope. It was an absolutely beautiful night out, hardly a cloud in the sky and not a breath of wind.

My objective for the night was Saturn.

Unfortunately, from my garden much of the south-eastern horizon is blocked by a huge hill, houses and trees. It would be a while before I was able to see the planet, so I decided to do some Messier-hunting for a bit. M42 was my first Messier object, spotted on my first night out with my scope - it's a fairly obvious one, being visible to the naked eye, and utterly beautiful in a scope. Last night I went for something different.

I took a quick flick through Turn Left at Orion, and pretty much went for the first one I opened. M37, an open cluster located in Auriga. It took almost an hour of lining up, focusing, checking Stellarium and then starting over before I finally spotted it in my eyepiece. It was an incredibly faint fuzzy blob (why they're referred to as 'faint fuzzies', I guess) but the satisfaction of finally finding it was immense! I'm so glad I didn't get a GoTo mount now, I love the chase!

And what was I looking at? Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

'M37 is located in the anti-center direction, opposite from the Galactic Center as seen from Earth. Estimates of its age range from 347 million to 550 million years. It has 1,500 times the mass of the Sun and contains over 500 identified stars, with roughly 150 stars brighter than magnitude12.5.

At its estimated distance of around 4,500 light-years (1,400 parsecs) from Earth, the cluster's angular diameter of 24 arcminutes corresponds to a physical extent of about 20–25 ly (6.1–7.7 pc).'

It's 4,500 light-years away. So the light I was seeing started it's journey 4,500 years ago. And the cluster I was looking at is approximately 25 ly across. That's 250 trillion kilometers. Amazing stuff.

(Source, via Wikipedia)

(Note: This is not how it looked in my scope!)

By the time I had recovered from the rush of finding my first real Messier object, Saturn was up! With more than a little excitement, I swung my scope around and lined it up in the finder. I looked first with the 25mm and then with the 10mm ep, and frankly, there are no words to describe the feeling of finally viewing those rings with my own eyes. It was easily the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever seen. 

The seeing was perfect, the view pin-sharp and crystal clear. I just stood for a while whispering 'Wow' to myself before running inside and dragging my parents out to look. I called my sister down from her bed too. They were all amazed. I jumped around with excitement, and my sister hugged me. It was a seriously brilliant moment. But it was really cold, so they went back inside pretty quickly...

(Stellarium screenshot - Teeny tiny, but so beautiful)

I stayed out for another 2 hours or so. It was just spectacular. I couldn't quite believe what I was looking at. Saturn. The rings. Two visible moons (Titan and Rhea). It's been nearly 24 hours now, and I'm still struggling to articulate quite how it made me feel. Everyone should see it, at least once.

It's really there!!