Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.

Follow us online: Facebook Twitter Flickr

National Museums Liverpool Blog - February - celestial gems in the night

 Friday, February 17, 2012

February - celestial gems in the night


Friday 17 February 12

Here's John Moran, Education Demonstrator at the Planetarium, to tell us what to look out for in the night sky this month.


OrianOrion - image courtesy of NASA.

There are still plenty of easily observable planets for your viewing delight this month. I came out of my house at 7.30pm a few days ago and there were three bright planets which seemed to be set up for anyone who can’t see the whole of the sky. There was Venus in the east, Jupiter directly above and Mars in the west. It doesn’t get much better than that! 

If that’s not enough, then later on we have the appearance of the ringed beauty Saturn which follows behind Mars in the west a few hours later. Me and a few colleagues went up on the fifth floor balcony of the of the museum on Friday 3 February and everything looked perfect. I set up two telescopes to view all of these planets and as soon as I started getting lined up on Venus, the clouds came along and just blanketed everything out! 

But we hung around for an hour and a half and got small breaks in the clouds every now and then. We got to see the Galilean moons of Jupiter and Venus at two thirds crescent. But I’ve got to say the star of the show was the often overlooked moon; the craters looked spectacular through the six-inch Newtonian telescope we had, with interchangeable eye pieces. 

As always I’ve been making the most of the constellation Orion. There is a night times worth of celestial gems in this one region and you are never disappointed. The Orion nebula always makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I think of the countless Proto-planetary nebulae that are forming here. These are solar systems like our own that are in the process of forming. 

Imagine it, there could be some bloke just like me somewhere in the Orion nebula right now writing a blog, looking into the night sky in our direction and wondering what we look like. If that doesn’t fire your imagination then nothing will. 


Posted by Lisa | 17/02/2012 16:21   | Comments [0]

Posted in: stargazing | world museum liverpool
Tagged with: astronomy | liverpool | planetarium

Post a comment

All comments require the approval of the site owner before being displayed.
Name
E-mail

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):

Live Comment Preview

By posting your comment you have agreed to the terms and conditions below

Terms & Conditions

National Museums Liverpool welcomes your comments. All comments are moderated and will only be published if they adhere to the following standards. The editors reserve the right not to publish comments which they deem inappropriate:

  1. Our Maritime Archives and Library deals with enquiries relating to all aspects of Liverpool's maritime history including ships, passengers, seafarers, shipping and maritime companies. Their web pages describe the information they hold and how to get in touch, along with useful research guides on popular subjects such as tracing seafaring or emigrant ancestors. Please do not submit requests for this type of information as comments on this blog.
  2. Specific enquiries, as opposed to comments on blog posts, should be submitted using our contact system. Please note that we do not provide valuations.
  3. Posts must be text only and under 1000 characters (including spaces). Html code, links or multimedia are not permitted.
  4. We will aim (but do not guarantee) to publish approved comments within 72 hours although there may be delays over weekends and during public holidays.
  5. Please do not post anything that is libellous, abusive, obscene, prejudiced or unlawful.
  6. Do not contravene any rights to privacy (such as personal contact details), copyright or trademark legislation.
  7. Please do not spam or post commercial promotional information.
  8. By posting you agree that you are wholly responsible for the content that you post. Although the blog comments will be moderated National Museums Liverpool will publish comments in the good faith that they comply with the law.
  9. By posting your comment you agree that it may be reproduced by National Museums Liverpool online or in print without compensation.