Blogtrek

National Dark Sky Week

Today is the day of National Dark Sky Week. For the next eight days, keep your lights off between 10 am and midnight Mountain and Eastern time, between 9 and 11 pm Pacific and Central Time, and if you are elsewhere, for two hours just before your local midnight. National Dark Sky Week is the brainchild of a 15-year-old woman named Jennifer Barlow, of Midlothian, Virginia. It was her idea to do more than just the usual A project in Science Class, more than a Science Fair even, but to engage in a project that affects all of us. This nationwide project is sponsored by many organizations, including the Astronomical League. So turn off your lights tonight.

I did tonight and I brought out my telescope for viewing. I aimed it at Jupiter and saw one moon on one side and one on the other. Then I tried for a tougher object. Spring is galaxy time, as the Milky Way is along the horizon and not very visible. The constellation Virgo is loaded with galaxies, including the elliptical galaxy M87, which looks like a ball of fuzzy light with a jet emanating from it, most likely caused by a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. This object is more than 40 million light years away. I did see a galaxy, and I remembered some guide stars. I then looked it up in Uranometria 2000 and found that I most likely saw NGC 4452 instead. It is also probably a member of the Virgo Cluster, as is M87, and appears to be an edge-on galaxy.

I'll try again some other night for M87. But note that I had darker skies than usual because of my telling my community association about National Dark Sky Week.