Space Surgery Special The Sky at Night

Hello! And welcome to the Brecon Beacons and our weekend star party.

While we're here, we're going to try to answer some of the many questions

with all the fun of the star camp,

But first, the October Sky Notes

with the constellation of Cassiopeia.

such as NGC 457, the Owl Cluster.

and you will see two owl eyes

such as M103 and M52, are here, too.

M52 contains about 100 stars

over 5,000 light years away.

Brilliant Jupiter is now visible

nestled amongst the stars of Gemini.

each cast their shadows on the

extend the line from Regulus

for the same distance again

the icy depths of the solar system,

To find the objects for this month, go to our website for all the charts.

brings us to the Brecon Beacons

of dark skies and some light relief.

to this same star party with my dad,

I've brought the whole family!

This is Clara's first star party.

an impressive variety of equipment,

"Do not put your eye up..."

'Chris North's brought his trusty

So, there's the, uh... Got it.

I'll grab the tripod and the mount,

and that's most of everything

more substantial to assemble.'

'It's not a normal Sky At Night

It's looking rather good, though, isn't it, Camp Sky At Night?

It's fairly substantial. Yeah.

Where's the tea-making facilities? That's what I want to know.

'but meanwhile, while the campsite gets ready for the long night ahead,

Since we launched our Space Surgery

we've been overwhelmed by the number

and about a third of them have been

is from Wayne in Portsmouth,

who says, "I live in a city with lots of light pollution,

"so is there anything at all

there's loads of stuff you can see,

even in very light-polluted skies.

and the moon stands out pretty well.

all the stars, star clusters,

You get problems when you start to look at diffuse objects,

like galaxies and nebulosity,

who says, "What type of telescope should I buy to begin with,

"and what do I need to know

And he adds, "I've got plenty of opportunity to look at the sky,

you can just press a few buttons

That's true, but that also suits

the go-to solution can be a godsend.

I think this might be the most

It's from Paul Phillips in London,

who wants to know... "I'm just

"weather and clear-sky predictions?"

always standing there, saying,

and be clear for 47 minutes."

You can't predict the future that accurately. The further

If you are going 48 hours or less,

you can have a good general idea.

to go onto some of the online sites,

for example, the BBC Weather site,

and I'll look at that and try and work out if there's going to be

a gap which should be predicted for when I want to observe.

I'll try and find an infrared

The Met Office do an infrared

and then you just look at the gaps and if they're coming over your way,

that's when you go out and set up.

we'll put this to the test -

'The sun is out, the astronomers

Quite often. Well, if there's a clear sky, it's out there.

Yeah, Brilliant! Very much so.

I live up in Kendal, so we're

rather than in town, where I live.

'with observatories in space,

This was the view of the sun that got me into solar physics

that will slowly work its way across,

and you'll see a nice big streak

Yeah, so you see the prominences

If you come back up tomorrow,

That is a spectacular view.

or project the sun's image.

'on how to make a solar filter and observe the sun safely.'

There's sort of two smaller bits and then a much longer bit up on

We've just spotted a sun halo,

which is a beautiful, faint but quite clear rainbow around the sun,

and it's formed by ice particles

I think it's a really good sign

Time to put the solar telescopes away and get ready for the evening.

Nick's telescope is a pretty big

which will capture lots of light -

Andrew's telescope is a compound with both mirrors and lenses.

but it carries a big punch -

and Chris is taking a keen interest.

Did you make this yourself?

and the main mirror is underneath

So, it does actually pack flat and the, em...the poles collapse.

There seem to be a lot of toilet

but they are actually being used

Handy if it starts to rain!

This is the second year the Baker Street Irregular Astronomers

have organised a star camp at Cwmdu

to escape the bright lights

of the Astro Camp. Astro Camp again.

hopefully we're going to get

What are we going to be seeing

Epsilon Lyrae, and trying to split

I'm going for a bit of a double

as we're going to see them.

the best place in the south of the country that we can get to.

The Pole Star has come out,

so astronomers can polar-align

and keep track of the stars

You're crouching down there

We are currently in the Keystone of Hercules looking at M13.

Do you mind if I have a quick crouch down and have a look as well?

That is absolutely stunning.

You really can. It sort of runs

You can really see it. So what are we using to get an image of that?

Yeah, it's my new toy, a seven inch

It's big. Yes! Bigger than I thought

What else are you going to try

I am pretty intrigued actually for the Pleiades when they do show up.

Right at the end of the night. Yeah!

The night sky is looking fabulous,

catches the sunlight on its antenna.

We were tracking her earlier,

but we had a little break to watch one of the iridium flares come over.

That was fabulous. Did you see that?

They're just pretty awesome,

an eight inch Celestron. It's quite short, but it would be like

It's a telescope that uses folded

it'd be a lot longer... Yes.

It's compact to make it easy

You've got what looks like a pretty

so it doesn't fog up tonight.

A dew shield wrapped around the end

Sometimes a small heater can also help stop things fogging up.

Carl is using his big Dobsonian

it will collide with our own galaxy.

So, for now, let's enjoy it

Chris, the clouds have rolled in,

and we've even had a bit of rain

so a good time to come back to some more of our Space Surgery questions.

because there's so many stars

The first question comes from Jane Cross, who lives in the Midlands,

"and doesn't know the first thing about the geography of the skies,

The first thing is get hold of a decent beginners' book to observing

or a set of night-sky charts

onto what you see in the night sky,

to going from page to the sky.

In the winter, a great constellation is Orion for similar reasons.

Phil Parry from North Wales asks,

This is actually the subject of one of Pete's guides last month,

so you can go on the website and find the gallery of images

"There are 88 constellations -

"how many of these can be seen from the UK?" which is a great question.

There are 88 constellations

and I've tried to count this,

and I reckon there's something like 50-55 you can see from the UK.

Now, that depends on your horizon.

We've got hills here, which block out the stuff that's really low down,

and you might have light pollution

covering up a lot of the lower

So get a list and start ticking

'The clouds are staying put.

'Pete has had to put a bin bag

'Let's hope it doesn't rain.'

It's day two of our star camp

and Chris is having breakfast

You stand there, sweetheart...

am judging a cake competition.

I might judge with my eyes,

There's something inside which makes

It sounds terrifying. Whose is this?

MSL. MSL. It's looking downwards.

Yeah, it kind of got damaged

We'll call it the Pete Lawrence telescope as he's having trouble,

And we're going to call the spiral Chelsea buns. Are these yours?

They are not Chelsea buns, they are Danish. Cinnamon and raisin Danish.

I don't know whether we care

Uranus is bigger than Neptune. Is this yours? Neptune was squashed.

Neptune was squashed! Yes, you're right, something's happened here!

It's quite amazing, how she did it.

This has to go to the Space Shuttle

Many of you have been sending in questions to our Space Surgery

So I have some questions for you.

"and I have had some good results

"of the full moon, I only see part of the moon." Can you advise?

That's because the focal length of the telescope he's using is too long

to shorten the focal length

of the telescope. You don't need to take a hacksaw to the tube.

You can use a device called a focal reducer, which sits in front

of the camera or between the camera and the main optics of the telescope,

and that should allow you to see

Whether you can get the whole moon in depends on your telescope.

Andrew Morrell from West Yorkshire,

"I have a six-inch reflector,

"with two axes of rotation.

"I can track the stars more easily,"

and he asks, "Can you demonstrate

but you can trip up when you're

they actually move in a way

they head to the highest point

and then set down in the west.

So, you have to emulate that motion

So, there's an easy way to do it.

so it points at what's called

basically pointing that more or less

with the axis of the earth.

..which is what causes the stars to do that arc across the sky.

and if I now move this camera,

and then you rotate it round like so,

So, just that simple action of tilting the axis of rotation over

at the north celestial pole

as you pan it left and right,

getting Polaris in the camera?

That is right. Different mounts have different ways of doing this.

and having a quick look at the stars

That is fantastic practical advice,

so everyone get out and have a look at the constellations, track the

of their Astronomy Photographer

The overall winner was by Mark Gee

and his image is of the Milky Way

Here are some of the other winners.

And what was your answer? 27.

Well, we saw the Ring Nebula

A little bird told me you're very

We've taken a picture of Saturn before and my dad said it was one of

the best photos he's ever taken

and if you go back 12 months, you can see that our Jupiter then

The gas giants are always changing,

the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus.

Hello, Mike. Hello. This looks like

A lot of people might think that a bigger telescope is better and

this has to be one of the smaller ones on site. Can you tell us

why a small telescope can be good as well? I have got a larger scope

but I particularly chose a small

A lot of the nebula are huge objects

field of view to get that in.

Tell us about the three cameras

which I use for main imaging.

That is attached to the telescope.

Attached to that is a smaller

for my guide camera. It tracks the star and keeps everything

perfectly aligned so you don't

and this one has a 10.5 millimetre fish-eye lens. I will use that

for taking very wide field shots of

Just get some nice constellation

The Milky Way from this dark site

and it's here that new stars

Hello there, Jeni. Hiya, all right?

Oh, I must have about 30 on here.

so just a bit of guesswork, really.

Well, judging by these images, that's pretty impressive guesswork.

Andromeda is a spiral galaxy

as well as its companion galaxy

but we've been doing some rather simpler observing using binoculars,

It's been absolutely amazing.

I've stepped away from the camera,

just wandering around the sky,

I don't think I've seen you

instead of behind the camera.

So, I mean, the first thing

Oh, the Coathanger Cluster.

Yeah. And you can see that with

about a third of the way up

and there it is, a little hazy patch but if you look at it closely

with your eyes, you can just make out that upside-down coat hanger.

Yeah, it's one of the few things

that looks like it's supposed to.

and then I went further down,

behind those trees now. OK.

But I saw the Lagoon Nebula.

and you've got the steam coming out.

That's right, and in the steam

You just saw a couple of stars and then the faint gaseous structure.

That's a great one to tick off here,

Do you reckon there's any other

I have been able to see on the other

if you come down from there,

I can see that through binoculars.

pleased about, I didn't realise you could do it, was with these

binoculars I had a look at the region

because I've never seen that

You actually get to find your way

and with a bit of luck, a bit of a clear sky and a bit of help,

you can actually find an awful lot

And don't forget, you only have

in the Moore Moon Marathon,

the results of the marathon

an intriguing lunar eclipse.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd