Stellar Spectacles: January's Night Sky Highlights

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, Episode one, for broadcast on the second of January twenty twenty six. Coming up on space Time, cosmic matter spotted traveling at twenty percent the speed of light, studying wind sculpted landscapes on the red planet Mars, and could there be a vastation under the surface of Uranus's moon Ariel. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have observed a sudden outburst of matter near a super massive black hole, shooting out into deep space at some twenty percent the speed of light. The findings reported in the journal Astronomy in Astrophysics a demonstration a new way of powering these superluminal jets. Astronomers were studying the super massive black hole at the center of NGC thirty seven eighty three, a barred spiral galaxy some one hundred and thirty five million light years away the constellation Centaurus. During a ten day observational run primarily using NASA's Chrism space telescope. Astronomers witness powerful outbursts of matter being ejected. Now they often find that these outbursts are powered by strong radiation, But this time the most likely cause isn't radiation, but a sudden change in the magnetic field, similar to bursts on the Sun caused by solar flares. While super massive black holes are known to flicker and X rays, this is the first time astronomers have clearly seen a high speed ejection accelerated during an X ray burst. During this ten day period, scientists saw variations in X ray brightness and intensity, especially in the softer X ray bands. Now, these changes, including the outbursts that lasted for three days, aren't un usual for super massive black holes. However, what makes this event so unique is the simple tennis ejection of gas from the accretion disc of swirling matter orbiting the black hole. This gas was expelled at incredibly high speeds, reaching some sixty thousand kilomets per second that's twenty percent the speed of light. The gas appear to originate from a region at a distance roughly fifty times the size of the black hole itself. In this turbulent region, gravity and magnetic forces interact in extreme ways. The authors believe the ejection was caused by a process called magnetic reconnection. The sudden reconfiguration of magnetic fields, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. The Steadies lead author Lay Ego from the Netherlands Institute of Space Research says these observations are providing a unique opportunity to study the launch mechanism for ultrafast outbursts. The data suggested the acceleration of the outflow is being driven by magnetic forces, similar to chronal mass ejection from the Sun. Now. Coronal mass ejection on the Sun happens when larch blobs of hot plasma and magnetic field are hurled into space during a solar flare event, and a super massive black hole can do the same, only the eruptions that tens of billions of times more powerful, dwarfing anything everything blasting out from our sun doing. Colleagues propose that the observed black hole event, just like its solar counterpart, is being fueled by sudden bursts of magnetic energy, but that contradicts the hypothesis that black holes expel matter through intense radiation or extreme heat. The results therefore often new insights into how black holes not only pull matter in and under the right conditions, can also shoot it back out again into space. The process has been dubbed feedback, and it may play a key role in how galaxies grow and change over time, influencing the stars and gas around the black hole and helping shape the universe as we see it today. This is space time still to come studying the wind sculpted landscapes of the red planet Mars, and could there be a vast ocean under the surface of Uranus' moon Ariel. All that and more still to come on space time. While much of NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover's work focuses on ancient rocks that record the red planet's long lost rivers and lakes, mega ripples are offering a rare opportunity to examine processes which are still shaping the Martian surface today. Mega ripples are sand ripples, some up to two meters tall, that are mainly built and modified by wind. However, when water in the atmosphere interacts with dust on the ripple surface, a salty, dusty crust can often form, and when this happens, it's much harder for the wind to move or reshape the mega ripple. As such, mega ripples on Mars are largely considered inactive, standing as records of past wind regimes and atmospheric water interactions. Over time. However, some have shown signs of movement, and it's possible that periods of high wind speeds may erode or even reactivate these deposits. Again. Despite within Martian atmosphere today, which is just two percent that of Earth's atmosphere density, wind remains one of the main drivers of change on the Martian surface, eroding local bedrock into sand sized grains and transporting these grains across the ripple field. As a result, Mega Ripple studies and help scientists better understand how wind reshapes the Martian surface, how it changes the planet's recent history, and in the process, it will help scientists plan for future human missions to the Red planet, because the chemistry and cohesion of Martian soils will influence everything that people do on Mars, from mobility through the resource extraction. Following the successful investigation of the does the inactive mega ripple at Kurla Guna, the cas sized Perseverance Rover, which is traveling along the rim of Jezrot Crater, has now begun exploring a new, more expansive field of mega ripples known as Honeyguide. This region boasts some of the largest mega ripples ever seen along the rover's journey so far. That makes it an ideal location for a comprehensive study of these features. The mega ripples at Honeyguide are larger and extend further, and have sharply defined crests with more uniform orientation compared to those at Kerla Guna. The consistent orientation of the mega ripples that Honeyguide suggests that the winds in this area have been blowing predominantly from the same direction, that's north to south, for a long, long period of time. At honey Guide, Perseverance has been studying the Hazy View mega ripple, where more than fifty observations have now been taken, looking for grain movement, signs of early morning frost, and for changes in mineralogy from crest to trough. The investigation of the Hazy View bed form builds the directly on the results from Kerlaguna and represents the most detailed study yet of these intriguing wind form deposits this space time still to come. Could there be a vast ocean deep under the surface of Uranus's moon Ariel and planet earth richest Perihelian serious, the brightest star in the night sky. The missing constellation of Argo Navis and the Quadranted's meteor showers are among the celestial highlights of the January night skies on SkyWatch. There's growing evidence suggesting that a vast subsurface ocean could be lurking beneath the icy surface of Uranus' moon Ariel. The findings reported in the journal Icarus, looks at the possible evolution of this ocean, finding that it may once have been more than one hundred and seventy kilometers deep. Now, by comparison, Earth's largest ocean, the Pacific average, is just four kilometers in depth. One of the studies authors, Alex Padder from the Planetary Science Institute, says Ariel is unique in terms of icy moons. It's the brightest and second closest moon to Uranus, and at just one one hundred and fifty nine kilometers in diameter, it's the fourth largest moon in the entire Uranian System. From the little astronomers can see, it has some very old geological features like craters, which are right next to some very young features like smooth terrain of the type possibly created by cryovolcanism. Ariel has fractures, ridges and grabon. That's crust that's dropped lower than its surroundings, and it has these its scales larger than almost anything anywhere else in our solar system. It's this dramatic landscape that's prompted the study. The authors want to understand Ariel's past interior structure as well as its orbit eccentricity, that is, how much the Moon's orbit deviates from s circular, which would help define how features on Arial's surface have evolved today. Both characteristics can contribute to how much stress can be applied to the surface, causing it the fracture under the push and pull gravity that's exerted on the small Moon as it orbits around its ice giant host. To work out what's going on, the authors first mapped out the large structures which we're able to see on the Moon's surface. They then use a computer program the model the tidal stresses on the surface, which result from the distortion of ariol from a soccer ball shaped object a slightly more elongated rugby league or gridiron shaped ball, which then moves back to around soccer ball shape and back to an elongated shape as it moves closer and further from Urinus during its orbit around the planet. Platov says, by combining the model with what can be seen on the surface, Heed his colleagues were able to make some inferences about Ario's past eccentricity and how thick the ocean beneath the surface must have been. They found that in the past, Ariol needed to have an eccentricity of about zero point zero four. That's about forty times higher than its current value. While zero point zero four may not sound very dramatic, eccentricity can strengthen the effects of tidal stresses, and Ariel's orbit would have been four times more eccentric than that of Jupiter's moon Europa, which is racked by tidal forces pushing and pulling on it, creating its cracked and broken surface. Patov says, in order to create these fractures, the body has to have either really thin ice on a really big ocean, or a higher eccentricity and a smaller ocean, but either way, one still needs an ocean to create the sorts of fractures seen on ariel surface. These new findings represent the second in a series of studies investigating the moons of Uranus. Back in twenty twenty four, the same set of authors published a paper on Miranda with similar results. Of course, the problem is astronomers have only seen the southern hemispheres of both Aril and Miranda. Ultimately, astronomers will need to send a mission there studying the Urinus system in order to find out what's really going on. This is space time, and time that to turn our eyes to the skies and check out the celestious sphere for January on SkyWatch. January is the first month of the year in the Julian Angagorian calendars. The name originates in the Latin word for door. That's because January is the door to the new year and an opening to new beginnings. The month is conventionally thought of as being named after Janus, the mythical Roman god of beginnings in transitions, but according to the ancient Roman Farmer's Almanac, it was actually Juno, who was the traditional god of January. Of course, from an astronomical point of view, January marks Earth's closest orbital position to the Sun perihelion, which occurs of two weeks after the descent of solstice. Planets, including the Earth, don't orbit the Sun in perfect circles, but rather in ever changing elliptical orbits. The shape of these orbits vary due to gravitational influences from other planetary objects, and in Earth's case, that especially includes the Moon, which is almost massive enough to be considered a binary partner. So over a roughly one hundred thousand year cycle, Earth's orbit changes in shape from almost circular to far more elliptical. This difference is known as eccentricity, and the nearest point in Earth's orbit around the Sun is called perihelium. This year, perihelium will occur on Sunday, the fourth of January, at four fifteen in the morning Australian Eastern daylight time. That's when the Earth will be just one hundred and forty seven million, ninety nine thousand and eight hundred and ninety four kilometers from the Sun. That's a quarter past twelve in the afternoon of Saturday, January the third US Eastern Standard time, and five point fifteen in the afternoon of January the third Gretitch meantime. Around six months later, and about two weeks after the June solstice, Earth will be at its furthest orbital position from the Sun, a location known as Appelian. Okay, let's start our tour of the January night sky by looking to the northeast, right next to the constellation of Ryan, where you'll see the brightest star in the night sky, the Dog Star Serious, so called because it's the brightest star at the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. The name Sirius actually meets scorching or brilliant, a clear reference to its spectacular brightness in the sky. As well as being one of the nearest stars to the Sun at just eight point seven light years, it's also intrinsically bright and almost twice as bright as the second brightest star in the night skies, Canopus. A light year is about ten trillion kilometers, the distance a photon can travel in a year at three hundred thousand kilometers per second, the speed of light in a vacuum, and the ultimate speed limit of the universe. Sirius is the fifth closest start of the Sun, and it's gradually moving closer to the Soul system, so it will steadily increase in brightness over the next sixty thousand years, after which time it will begin moving away again, and it will gradually become fainter and fainter, but it will still continue to be the brightest star in Earth's night sky for at least the next one hundred and ten thousand years. Sirius is a binary star system comprising a spectro type A main sequence white star called Serious A, and a small white dwarf companion, Serious B, which orbits between eight point two and thirty one point five astronomical units away from the primary star. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, about one hundred and fifty million kilometers. Main Sequence stars are those undergoing hydrogen fusion into heal him in their core. Astronomers describe stars in terms of spectro types, a classification system based on temperature and characteristics. The hottest, most massive, and most luminous stars are not a spectro type of blue stars. They follow by spectual type B blue white stars and spectrotype A white stars, spectual type F whitish yellow stars, specual type G yellow stars. That's where our Sun fits in spectrotype K orange stars, and the coolest and least massive stars known are spectrotype M red stars. Each spectral classification can also be subdivided using a numeric digit to represent temperature, with zero being the hottest and nine the coolest, and a Roman numeral to represent luminosity. Now put all that together, and our Sun becomes a G two v G two five yellow dwarf star. Also included in the spectral classification system are spectrotypes LT and Y, which are assigned to feldstars known as brown dwarves, some of which were born as spectual type M red stars but became brown dwarves after losing some of their mass. Brown dwarves fit into a category between the largest planets, which are about thirteen times the mass of Jupiter, and the smallest stars, those spectro type M red dwarfs we talked about before, which are about seventy five to eighty times the mass of Jupiter or around zero point zero eight solar masses. Brown dwarves don't have enough mass to build up the sorts of temperatures and pressures in their cores needed to trigger the nuclear fusion process which makes stars like our sun shine. Serious A has at least twice the mass of the Sun and is about twenty five times more luminous. The serious binary system is between two hundred three hundred million years old, quite young by astronomical standards, and it originally consisted of two bright spectral type A white stars. The more massive of these two stars, Serious B, consumed its resources and became a red giant before shedding off its outer layers and collapsing into its current state as a white dwarf around one hundred and twenty million years ago. A white dwarf is the stolar corpse of a Sun like star, having used up its nuclear fuel supply of fusing hydrogen to helium and its core, it expands into a red giant as it fuses helie him into carbon and oxygen. Now biggest stars confused progressively heavier and heavier elements, but lo maas stars like the Sun simply aren't big enough to fuse carbon and oxygen into heavier elements, and so they turn off their outer Gas's envelope separates and floats off into space as a spectacular object called a planetary nebula. What's left behind is a super dense, white hot stellar core about the size of the Earth, called a white dwarf, which will slowly cool down over the eons of time. Our Sun will become a white dwarf in about seven billion years from now five thousand years ago. The ancient Egyptians looked at Sirius and they saw it as the god of Nebis, lord of the underworld, who had the head of a dog, and who invented him balming the funeral rites, and who guided one through the underworld to judgment, where he attended the scales during the weighing of the heart to determine one's fate in the afterlife. And Nubis was later replaced in Egyptian mythology by Assiris as the lord of the underworld, and Sirius became the goddess Isis. By carefully watching Sirius's movements across the sky, the ancient Egyptians determined that it would be visible every night for two hundred and ninety five and a quarter nights, followed by seventy nights of absence, and this allowed them to determine that a year was three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days long. Their calculations were accurate to within eleven minutes. The hell call rising of Sirius also marked the annual flooding of the river Nayle in ancient Egypt, and the hot, sultry dog days of summer for the ancient Greeks. In Greek mythology, Sirius was the dog star and the canine companion of Orian, the hunter. Helly call Rising refers to the first time of the year when it star becomes visible above the eastern horizon for a brief moment just before sunrise. It's been claimed that the Dogon people in Mali and Western Africa have ancient stories describing the fifty orbital period of Sirius and its companion White Dwarf, which pre date the White Dwarf's discovery by modern astronomers. Also claimed that these legends were handed to the Dogon people by ancient aquatic space travelers who told them of the third star accompanying Serius A and B. However, a report in the journal Current Anthropology raised serious doubts about whether the stars referred to by the Dogon people were in fact serious A and its White Dwarf companion. That's because Senior Dogon claimed the story actually refers to a different grouping of stars. Also, other researchers have pointed out that the Dogon could have heard about the discovery of Sirius's companion and then simply incorporated into their mythology. In eighteen ninety three, when a French expedition arrived in Central West Africa to observe in April sixteen total eclipse, and were overheard discussing the discovery. Looking due north just above the horizon this time of year, and you'll see the bright yellowish star Capella, the brightest star, and the constellation Riga the charioteer. Capella is the Latin term for a small female gar got. The star's alternative name is Capra, which is more commonly used in classical times. Although it appears to be a single start of the unaided eye, Capeller is actually a system of four stars in two binary pairs. The first pair comprises two bright yellow giant stars, both of which were around two and a half times the mass of the Sun. Having exhausted their core hydrogen supplies, both stars have cooled and expanded out to become giants, moving off the main sequence. Designated Capella AA and Capeller AB. They're in a very tight circular orbit, some zero point seven to six astronomical units apart, orbiting each other every one hundred and four earth days. Capella AA is the cooler and more luminous of the two, with some seventy eight times the luminosity and twelve times the radius of the Sun. Known as an aging red clumpstar, Capeller AA is fusing helium into carbon and oxygen in its core. Capella AB is a slightly smaller but hotter subgiant about seventy three times is luminous and almost nine times the radius of the Sun, and it's in the process of expanding out to become a red giant. The Capella system is one of the brightest sources of X rays in the sky, thought to come primarily from the corona of the more massive giant. The second pair of stars and Capella are located about ten thousand astronomical units from the first pair. They consist of two faint, small, relatively cool spectral type M main sequence red dwarf stars. The two red dwarfs have been designated Capella H and Capella L. Now almost directly overhead this time of year, a position in the sky known as Zenith, we find Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky after Sirius, located some three hundred and thirteen light years away in the constellation Careen. Of the keel. Canopus looks incredibly bright because it is huge. It's a giant spiritual type, a white star with some ten times the mass, seventy one times the diameter, and ten thousand times the luminosity of the sun. Canopus is another bright X ray source, also most likely produced by its corona, magnetically headed to several million kelvin. The temperature is also likely to be stimulated by fast rotation combined with strong internal convection currents percolating through the stars out of layers. No star in our night sky closer than Canopus is more luminous than it, and it's been the brightest star on earth night sky during three different epochs over the past four million years. Other stars appear brighter only during relatively temporary periods during which they're passing the Solar System at much closer distances than Canopus. About ninety thousand years ago, serious move close enough that it appeared to be brighter in our night sky than Canopus, and as we mentioned earlier, that'll remain the case for another two hundred and ten thousand years, But in four hundred and eighty thousand years from now, Canopus will once again be the brightest star in the night sky, and it will remain so for a period of about five hundred and ten thousand years. In Greek mythology, Canopis was a helmsman and the navigator for the fleet of Menelaus, king of Sparta, which was sailing back from the Battle of Troy. Canopus is said to have died when the fleet arrived to the port of Alexandria in Egypt, and so a star which was visible on the horizon was named in his honor. Now, as we said, it's the brightest star in the constellation Carina, which represents the keel of the boat Argo, used by Jason the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece, located nearby other vessels sails represented by the constellation Vila, and the roof of the Bert's rear cabin or poop deck, which is represented by the constellation Pappis. Combined Karina, Villa and Pappas used to form the constellation Argo Navis, representing the ship Argo skimming along the river of the Milky Way. But moderday astronomers considered the constellation simply too big, as it was twenty eight percent larger and the next largest constellation had more than one hundred and eighty easily visible stars, so it was divided into three smaller constellations, Karina, Vela, and Puppis in seventeen fifty five. Canopus forms part of the stellar association of Asterism known as the False Cross, which straddles the constellations Carina and Veal of the Cells, and is often confused with the real Southern Cross or Crooks. This time of the year, the Southern Cross is upside down low down in the southern skies during the early evening. For our listeners north of say Brisbane, it will most likely be hidden by trees and buildings on the horizon during the early evening, but later on, as the Earth turns, the Southern Cross will rise above the horizon in the south southeast for our northern listeners and appear to be lying on its left side. One of the best things about living in the Southern Hemisphere is that most of the brightest stars in the night sky are visible during January nights. Serious the Dog Star is the brightest, followed by Canopus, the Navigation star. Third brightest is Alpha Sentry, the furthest of the two pointest pointing to the southern cross and the nearest star system to the Sun. The fourth and fifth brightest stars arek Taurus and Vega, aren't visible in the Southern hemisphere during January, but the sixth brightest Capella is visible just above the northern horizon, and the seventh Rigel marks Orion's knee. Next in eighth place is Prosy on the Little Dog, and ninth is Akinar at the end of the river Eridanus. Finally, there's bettle Goes Orion's shoulder, the tenth brightest star in the night sky. So that's eight of the ten brightest stars in the night sky, all visible at once on a warm summer's evening in the southern hemisphere. January also plays host to one primary meteor shower, the Quadratids. Most meteor showers radiate out from a recognizable constellation, like Leo's Leonids or gemini'sed Geminids or Orion's Orionids, but the Quadratids are meteors that appede radiate out from the location of the former Quadran's Morales constellation. In the early nineteen twenties, the International Astronomical Union divided the sky into eighty eight official constellations. However, that means more than thirty other historical constellations didn't make the cut. The quadrans Moraleus area of the sky falls within the boundaries of the official constellation Booties. The radiant point of the shower is near the Big Dipper, between the end of the handle and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. The Quadratids are usually one of the year's most spectacular meteor showers. They're best seen from the northern hemisphere, and unlike other meteor showers, which tend to peak for at least a day or two, the Quadrantids only peak for a couple of hours. While most meteor showers are produced by the Earth passing through debris trails left behind by comets, the Quadratids are one of only two meteor showers known to be produced by asteroids. They're associated with the asteroid two thousand and three EH one, which is thought to be the remains of a cometary nucleus that fragmented and broke aparts centuries ago. H one still circles the Sun in a five and a half earthly elongated, comet like orbit which extends out beyond Jupiter. The Brigenitor is thought to be the comet C. Fourteen ninety y one, which was first observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers five hundred years ago. It was classified as an asteroid when it was discovered by a Near Earth Asteroid telescopic survey in two thousand and three. The only other major meteor shower associated with an asteroid are the Geminids, which occur in December and are caused by a debris left behind by the asteroid thirty two hundred Feeton, which is also thought to be the remains of a comet. And joining us for the rist of our tour of the January night skies, senior science writer and Sky Telescope magazine contributor Jonathan Nalley. Good, it's Stuart. Well, it's summertime where I am. It's right in the middle of summer in fact, so it's really really warm friends up in the northern industry of course, right in the middle of winter uppers, so it's probably really really cold where a lot of people are listening from. But it doesn't really matter. I've got great stuff to see up in the night sky where you have to rug up and stay war more, try and cool down a little bit, as we do here in Australia. So let's begin at the evening sky for January. But you know we've got rush down here of course, from the south, we've got the Southern Cross. It's actually still more or less upside down at the moment and still low down on the southern horizon for most people that round about mid southern latitudes or so the furthest south we go, it's a little bit higher in the sky, so you can definitely see it. But pere in the northern States of Australia, for instance, then you're not going to see the Southern Cross in the early evening because it's down below the horizon. But as the earth turns, things rise in the east and they go down in the west. So the Southern Cross starts to make its experience. It starts to rise in the south southeast, and so getting towards midnight or so, you can definitely see the Southern Cross there that's flying on its left hand side. It looks a bit like a kite. Imagine a kite flying in the sky to sort of did to join the dots of the corners of the Kite. That's the shape of the Southern Cross. And it's quite small too. It's actually the smallest of wall of constellation. So people do understand it because I suppose because I heard about the Southern Cross and how prominent it is, they expect to see this huge thing in the sky, but it's actually really tiny. But once you spot it, you've never unsee it. You can never lose it again. Really well, I'll come back to that a little bit. There is a little trap here for some people. What's next the Milky Way. The Milky Way right, which is our galaxy is seen from the inside. Now there's the Milky Ways to stretching right across the sky from the south to the north or north to south as the evening begins in January, and it's it's starfield just contained some superb constellations and deep sky objects because you know, we're looking into the main part of our galaxy, so it's very populated with things. And starting in the south, as we said, there's the Southern Cross or Crux as it's formerly known. They're moving along. We've got the constellations of Karna and then Mela and puck Us, and then they get to most people have never heard of these, but they're real constellations. Then we get to Canus Major, and then we end up in the northwest. We've got Orion and Gemini and Taurus and a whole bunch of others as well. And all of those constellations have some amazing starfields and star clusters and nebulas, a lot of which can be spotted just for the pair of binoculars, you know, But a telescope will bring out a lot more detail, even a small telescope because of the magnification you can get. I mentioned Karina. This constellation Carina, it's a fat southern constellation, has the famous Karina nebula. It's a huge gathering of nebulosity of stars. There's a big nebula in Orion, the great nebit of a RM, which everyone in astronomy is very familiar with. But a lot of people say that this one in Carena is better than the one in Orion. It's just that there are a fewer people see it down here in the South. When I say nebulosity, by the way, too, nepilosity just means gaps and dust clouds. Constellation Vela, Now this is what I was talking about about getting confused with the Southern Cross, because it has a bunch of stars, these four stars that do make exactly the same shape as the Southern Cross, and it's not fun enough in the Southern Cross. But this false Cross, as it's called, is much much bigger. It's really big, and a lot of people spot it first and then god, I've seen the Southern Cross. Some of them probably never realized they made the mistake that others will later on realized, Oh, hang on, that's the false Cross. I mentioned the Ryan before, So the Great Nebula, the Great nebulta of Orion. You know, if you've got really good eye sight in the room, really dark spot with no lights around, and you've let your eyes dark adapt and you use what's called averted vision, so you don't look directly at the thing. You sort of look out the corner of your eye. You can just make out a smudge or light that is the great near bit of a iron if you're in the city but no hope really, but if you're out of the dark country skies, you can see it but look really really good. And when you compare that with a picture in a book or a magazine or online and you realize what you're seeing and you can actually see it with your eyes with a bit of help with from a telescope. It really is quite awe inspiring. I think Orion's also got these two bright stars right yellow and beetle juice, and three stars right in the middle of it, sort of cutting it in half, and a short straight line three stars sort of spaced out equally. It's very easy to spite Taurus. I mentioned Taurus. Taurus has a fabulous wedge shaped grouping of stars, a star cluster, and it's called the hyge and you can see this one. It's just your own eyes. You don't need a telescope. It's actually quite large, this wedge shape or triangular shaped group of stars. And also in Taurus and more or less directly north from the southern hemisphere, if you're looking from down south in the mid to late evening this month, or you're looking from to the south in the northern hemisphere, there's another tiny complets Taurus called the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, which we've spoken about many times in the program. It's a group of oh more than a thousand stars, quite a long way from Earth, and if you have good eyes stars and you've got some dark skies. Then you take a look, and most different see six or seven of these stars, but that it's quite scalled with seven sisters. Some people have claimed to be able to see ten or eleven if they've got really good eyesight. And if you have a pair of monoculars and you take a look at this little star cluster, look brilliant. It really really does. It's like these little sparkling rules in the night sky. You don't see all thousands or a thousand plus of these stars. You are going to see a dozen or maybe twenty or whatever with a pair of monoculars, but it still looks really fantastic. It's probably the best in the night sky. I reckon or looking at with a pair of Knox now back in the south and high up in the sky. Two galaxies that you can see with the unaided eye, as long as you don't have too much light pollution around such as lots of street lights, so you're really doing a dark location. And these are the small and large magelantic clouds, very famous and quite big. You know, they're not little small things in the night sky. They're really quite large. And you know, if you get out and do as we would say here Australia the bush, you know, get out in the remote rural area with no lights around, and you lift your eyes get dark adapted. You can spot these things so easily. Then you're called the Magellanic clouds. They are named after Magell and the explorer, so you can imagine what an amazing view he would have had out in the middle of the ocean with no lights around. And professional astronomers really liked the Magellanic clouds because they're very nearby in space downs there are sort of neighbors of our Milky Way, and they're so close that you can actually make out individual stars through professional telescopes. The most famous things that have happened in Magenitic clouds was a supernova back in nineteen eighty seven. It's Supernova nineteen eighty seven, a imaginatively a huge explosion of a star in the largest Magellanic cloud. The light got to us in nineteen eighty seven, but it actually happened about one hundred and seventy thousand years before, because the Magellanic Cloud is about one hundred and seventy thousand light years away. So I took all that time for the exposure to get to us, and I remember seeing it when the light reached the Earth in and I think it was February eighty seven. It was quite amazing. There was something that astronomers had been waiting for literally for centuries. We hadn't had a really bright superable. When did you just go out and see with the naked eye for centuries? In fact, the telescope had been invented basically, So I remember that just every professional astronomer and every professional observatory in every amateur astronomer who who could see this part of the sky just dropped. Everything dropped, everything dropped. Everything wos doing for months. There was an Australian astronomer who religiously took pictures of the night sky, including of that area, and in the morning he would check his pictures and develop the pictures and evidence before digital cameras, and he would check these pictures to see if anything had changed, like a supernova or an asteroid or something that hadn't been there the night before. And this particular morning he just wanted to stepped in or I'll do it later. He never never used to do and so he missed being the first one to make the discovery. How did you feel that's the way? Wow, I suppose, But look he went not his discovered comets, asteroids, all sorts of things. He's made stacks and stacks of discoveries. So he's done, all right, He's done all right. Now turning to the planets, as I mentioned last month, both Venus and Mars are out of view at the moment. They were lost in the sun with glare both in the morning sky and the evening sky. And the same now goes to Mercury too. I mean, technically speaking, at the beginning of the month, Mercury just pops its head over the horizon in the sort of dawn glow. But for the average person who's not used to looking for these things, you know, you really don't have much of a hope of seeing it, particularly as when I say it pops a head over the horizon, it's the theoretical horizon. There were no buildings and trees and hills and everything in the way, so most people have something in the way, so you're not going to spot Mercury unfortunately. So the only two planets visible to the unaided iron January are still good ones. They're Saturn and Jupiter, and fortunately both of them are up and about in the evening hours. For Saturn after sun set, look about halfway up from the horizon in the west northwest if you're in the southern hemisphere, so that would be west southwest and northern hemisphere, and you should see it. It looks like a medium brightness star planet obviously, but it looks like a star, and it has a slightly yellowish tinge. Now Jupiter is on the other side of the sky. It's just right over the northeastant horizon after the sky becomes dark. It's the northeastern horizon for southern hemisphere of yours southeastern for our friends of the north, so it's just coming over the horizon at the after the sky becomes dark at the start of the month, it looks like a big, bright white star and you really can't miss it because at the moment, with Venus out of sight, Jupiter is the brightest light in the night sky apart from the Moon. So even though the stars serious is also visible at the same time, Jupiter is much much brighter than the brightest star in the night sky, so you shouldn't have any excuse for not seeing it. And that Stewart is the n spy for General that senior science writer and Sky and Telescope Magazine contributed to Jonathan Nlly and this space Time, and that's the show for now. 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