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With whale watching season underway and winter scenery on offer, pop into to see BINTEL if you’re seeking out the best possible spotting scope to take full advantage of your views and travels. Our retail premises in Glebe, on the edge of the Sydney is the only place in Australia where you can try and compare for yourself from a wide of the best spotting scopes available. Zeiss Harpia 95 Angled 23-70x with Eye piece ZEISS HARPIA 95 ANGLED 23-70X SPOTTING SCOPE WITH EYEPIECE $6,698.00Add to cart This is a large, 95mm spotting scope with renowned ZEISS optics with FL and other advanced glass components. It’s also weatherproof and well suited to less than ideal conditions. Swarovski ATX 30-70×95 Spotting Scope Swarovski Optik is famous for producing high end binoculars and spotting scopes to suit even the most demanding requirements of bird watchers, wildlife observers and nature lovers. At BINTEL, we’ve been Swarovski dealers for several decades and have numerous customers who have used their beloved “Swaros” for 10, 20 or more years. The Swarovski ATX spotting scope range is module, meaning you can swap out eyepiece and main optics modules as well as adding DSLR camera adaptors and more. Kowa 55 mm Angled spotter with eyepiece 15-45x zoom KOWA 55 MM ANGLED SPOTTER WITH EYEPIECE 15-45X ZOOM $2,100.00BACKORDER Stepping down a little in size but not in quality is the Kowa TSN-553. This is a small spotting scope, with a 55mm diameter main lens. It means it doesn’t have quite the reach into the distance of the two ZEISS and Swarovski larger spotting scopes mentioned above. It does however feature fluorite crystal main lens that delivers stunningly crisp and clear views.  It also has a beautiful “made in Japan” quality throughout. The Kowa TSN-533 also  far lighter and might be a good option if you’re after a spotting scope that can more easily moved around or to take travelling with you. Which one is right for me? We often have customers  tell us their spent hours researching various products on the web, watching YouTube reviews and more, yet end up purchasing  different binoculars or spotting scopes than what they originally decided on once they try in person and talk to one our friendly optical experts in person. At this level of quality optics,  you’re going to experience years if not decades of some of the best quality viewing available.  If you have great views other at home or when during your travels, have a chat with us to help make the most of them! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 6th June 2024 PS: For an excellent value but high quality spotting scope, we suggest you also have a look through the Pentax Spotting Scope PF-80 EDA . This features “ED” glass for sharp images and we also have some options for eyepieces to deliver a range of magnifications.

The Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 6″ is an ideal telescope for observing Saturn and Jupiter – plus lots more! The Celestron StarSense Explorer range has certainly made the Universe vastly more accessible in recent years.  Across all models, they feature a very clever gizmo that runs a custom Celestron app that turns your phone in a celestial navigation device. Much like using your phone to map your journey in a car, the Celestron StarSense Explore system shows you where to move your telescope to in order to find Solar System planets like Saturn, Jupiter or Mars as well as thousands of deep-sky objects including nebulae and star clusters. Heading outside the Milky Way, the StarSense Explorer will also offer the chance to view galaxies millions of light years away. You’ll even be be offered your own personal astro tour for the evening if you not sure what to look.  We’ve sold probably thousands of Celestron StarSense Explorer based telescopes in the last several years and had positive feedback from our customers. We mentioned this $1199 special on the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 6 a few weeks ago in the BINTEL newsletter and we’re now down to our last couple of dozen at this price.

  There’s something strange going on with the planets on the outer edge of the Solar System…. For centuries, astronomers have been using slight oddities in the motion of  known planets to uncover other planets. Probably the most famous of these was the discovery of the outer gas giant, Neptune, which was found  in 1846 after its position in the sky was calculated by Urbain Le Verrier in Paris as well as being independently  by John Couch Adams in Cambridge, UK.  These calculations were based on slight variations in the orbit of the planet Uranus, itself only confirmed as a planet 1781.  While Uranus was discovered by William Hershel through repeated observations that picked up on the planet’s movement against the background of Milky Way stars, Neptune was hunted down based on the fact that the orbit of Uranus wasn’t quite right.  Urbain Le Verrier and others thought that there was something beyond  Uranus that was causing these orbital variations. As it turned out – they were right. Using Le Verrier’s calculations, Neptune was found less than one degree from its predicted position by a telescope at the Berlin Observatory.  As anyone who has looked at Neptune through even a smallish telescope will realise it’s simply not that hard to see. Both Uranus and Neptune had been observed by astronomers going back as far as Galileo, however they were not recognised as planets. Their movement against the background stars wasn’t enough to draw attention.   From Galileo’s notebooks from the night of December 27th and 28th 1612 where he recorded Jupiter and its moons along with several background stars – one of which was Neptune.  The discovery in 1930 of the first of the, what are now called, trans-Neptunian objects (TNO), Pluto, was more of a search, rather than predicting an object to be in a certain location.  It took until 1992 for the discovery of the next TNO , and now over 3,000 bodies, of a wide range of sizes, orbiting the Sun in the outer reaches of the Solar System have been found.  Astronomers estimate that there’s many more of these TNOs or “dwarf planets” to be discovered.  While Pluto will always be  “The People’s Planet” for lots of folks, the vast collection of the same type of rocky bodies extending into space hundreds of times the distance of the Earth to the Sun made it hard to continue to group Pluto with the planets comparatively closer to the Sun. After all, if Pluto is a planet, then why isn’t <insert the name of your favourite TNO> as well? Please note that all the planets out to Neptune are visible in even small telescopes, and a larger amateur telescope will show you Pluto (which appears simply as a very faint star and not that interesting), you won’t be able to spot these TNOs visually. We need to have  bit of dive into the scale of the Solar System. One term you might read about is the Astronomical Unit or “AU”. It’s the average distance that the Earth to the Sun and it’s a smidge under 150 million km. We can say the Earth orbits at one AU, Mars is about 1.5 AU and Jupiter at around 5 AU. Saturn is at 9.5 AU, Uranus at 20 AU and Neptune at 30 AU. This might sound like a mind boggling distance – thirty times as far from the Sun as the Earth is –  but we’re only getting started. The first TNO, Pluto, orbits the Sun at between 30 and 49 AU. Makemake’s 306 year rotation around the Sun is between roughly 38 and 52 AU, and Eris between 38 and 90 AU. But again – we’re just getting started. Astronomers are now looking at data around the orbits of a group of these TNOs, which have long, looping orbits, and are referred to as ETNOs (Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects). They have long looping orbits, which bring some of them within 150 AU and then some  out to as far several hundred AU. The Earth, by comparison, has an almost circular orbit around the Sun. A diagram showing some of the main ENTOs (Extreme Trans-Uranian Objects) Why are these ETNOs of interest? Apart from the discovery and cataloguing of these small, rocky bodies at vast distances, are they of any real interest?  After all, none of  of them will ever be visited by a spacecraft in our lifetimes, and possibly not for several generations! First of all, they’re all too distant to have their orbits influenced in any real way by known solar system bodies. However, multiple observations point towards these remote bodies slightly clustering together, towards a larger distant body – in much the same way Neptune was discovered by how it influenced the movement of Uranus, which started with the discovery of Sedna in 2004. Even more tantalising, the outer Solar System body that’s influencing the orbits of these ETNOs, is calculated to be really massive. Professor Mike Brown (yes, the same Mike Brown who lead the charge to boot Pluto from the roster of planets) and Konstantin Batygin put forward the idea of Planet 9, a massive body with a mass somewhere between the Earth and Uranus orbiting. Estimates of distance put Planet 9 around 500 and 600 AU from the Sun. How massive? Current estimate of the mass needed to cause the observed strangeness of the Solar System bodies out past Neptune, that of a large planet, possibly at least 7 times the mass of the Earth. This is not another planet in the TNO community, the largest found so far being  Pluto, which is just  0.2% of the Earth’s mass. Planet 9 is something very different. How did it form? There’s a number of ways a large body that far out, on the outer edges of the Solar System, could end up being there.  First of all, it could have formed there. This is unlikely as there is simply not enough matter on the fringes of the Solar System to clump together under gravity, or “accrete” and form a planet of this size.  The Solar System we see today is relatively stable but could have come under the influence of a passing star, that gravitationally ripped a planet from the orbit where it formed, and flung it to the edges of the Solar System. However, we haven’t, to date, found any other distortions in the orbits of other major planets to confirm this has happened. Another possibility is Planet 9 is an interstellar body that was captured by the Solar System, as it was passing on its own through interstellar space.  We’ve touch on rogue planets before, and they’re thought to exist in vast numbers.  These are planets that do not orbit a host star like the Earth, Mars or Saturn does, but instead orbit the Milky Way on their own. Illustration of what Planet 9 could look like. Robin Dienel/ Carnegie Institution of Washington Where is it? Astronomers including Brown and Batygin along with Matthew Holman, earlier in 2024, released results from a long survey taken with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) observatory in Hawaii. The team scanned 78% of the likely region of the sky where Planet 9 might be found with no success. To test their techniques, they also seeded 50,000 “fake” Planet 9 data points and their processes spotted 99.99% of them. The remaining region of approx. 22% is further away, and will need more powerful observing tools. Brown , Batygin and Holman are currently working with data from larger telescopes in Hawaii. Other searches including citizen science projects have not found Planet  9 either. What else could it be? Astronomers Jakub Scholtz and James Unwin have another idea about Planet 9. Along with others, they theorised that a large numbers of micro black holes were formed early on in the history of the Universe, called primordial black holes or PBH, and Planet 9 could be a small black hole.  For it to be the mass that’s causing the anomalies observed  – i.e. around 7 times the mass of the Earth – a small PBH would only need to be around the size of a cricket ball.  (It’s not the size of the object disturbing orbits – it’s the mass.) With no matter nearby to fall into or accrete into a  PBH, and emit energy as it does, we’d be extremely hard pressed to spot it apart.  Microlensing events – light from behind massive objects being bent  – might be a way to determine if this is the case. Astronomers Ann-Marie Madigan and Michael McCourt suggested Planet 9 might be an unseen ring of material, similar to that seen in other system, and there’s also been theories about Planet 9 being a collection of dark matter. When will we know If the current data survey of the remaining 22% of the Solar System where Planet 9 could be located draws a blank, the final confirmation might be made using one of the upcoming new generation “mega” telescopes such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is due to start scientific operation in 2025, as we talked about in a previous blog article. “Within a year of that telescope operating, I think we’ll find it,” Professor Mike Brown has said. “We have spent centuries studying the giant planets that we have. Imagine we get a new one all of a sudden. All the things we’ve done for studying the giant planets, we get to do all over again for the first time.” Wrapping it up…. While not accepted by every  astronomer, the concept of a large body on the outside of the Solar System influencing the orbits of ETNOs has wide support and the searches will continue to find out what exactly what it is. It’s one of the many mysteries still remaining in astronomy.  When it’s finally tracked down you won’t have to worry about where to find out more – it’ll be front page news around the world! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 2nd July 2024 PS: As usual, this is an introduction to a complex and developing topic. Drop me a message at BINTEL if you’d like more information or comment.

Bintel are the major sponsor for this years Astronomy open night !

It’s no secret that we’re all very fond of the DWARF II Smart Telescope here at BINTEL. Some of our staff have even purchased one for their own personal use! Overnight, our friends at DWARF Lab announced their new telescope, which is unsurprisingly called the DWARF 3. This is a considerable upgrade to the DWARF II while keeping the things that made the DWARF II such a popular gizmo – it’s small size and extreme portability. The new DWARF 3 on the left compared with the original DWARF II on the right What was upgraded? There’s probably two major factors that will make a big difference to astrophotographers as well as bird photographers and nature fans in general. The first is an increase in the size of the main lens. DWARF have increased the aperture of their new, APO style lens from 24mm to 35mm. This will mean more detail for both astro and terrestrial images. If you’re thinking of the DWARF 3 for wildlife or scenery, the new lenses mean it’s roughly equal to a DSLR 737mm telephoto lens and a 45mm wide angle lens. The camera sensor has also received a major upgrade to a Sony IMX 678 Starvis with a bump in pixel size. This brings longer exposures with less background noise. Full support for EQ mode shooting as well as DWARF enabling astro imaging with the wide angle lens point to the DWARF 3 as possibly being a fantastic gizmo for large scale, Milky Way and night sky panorama photography. While it probably won’t replace for everyone the conventional way of taking these sorts of images (say a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i + a tripod + your DSLR camera and lens), the portability of the DWARF 3 might make a handy companion for nightscape fans. The DWARF 3 mosaic mode with the option for EQ mounting also means it will be capable of imaging larger deep-sky nebulae and clusters.  Maximum single exposure has also been increased to 60 seconds. Included are new filters to help improve both daytime and night time photography as well. These also include a Duo-band filter to assist with taking astro images in areas with light pollution . They’re also internal and can be selected by the DWARF app. External Solar filters for photographing the Sun are included, as they were with the DWARF II deluxe package. The DWARF app  itself has also received a major boost. There’s AI powered noise reduction to help bring out the details on the image captured by the telescope. This handy when you have to take astro photos in light polluted or not perfectly clear nights. DWARF have also implemented “One-Click Shooting” that leaves behind many of the complexities normally associated with astrophotography to help beginners start their astro imaging journey. However manual control over just about every aspect of the imaging process is still on offer for more experienced folks including file export to not just JPG, PNG but also TIFF and even FITS. The new Astro Plan feature also lets you plan an entire evening of astrophotography ahead of time and then simply leave the DWARF 3 to do its thing while you snooze. (And yes, you can leave the DWARF 3 out in the open with its new IP54 weather proofing.) There also new features that will especially appeal to bird watchers. The DWARF 3 will not just follow a bird as the DWARF II currently does, but will use both cameras to re-locate the bird if it suddenly takes flight and automatically continue to track it. Species identification has been added as well. There’s an extended “giga pixel” panorama feature to let you build massive, large images that can be zoomed in into to see details.  Basically, the astro mosaic feature but for daytime and landscape photography. There are a few other changes such as larger internal memory and built-in battery as opposed to the removable battery of the DWARF II.   Despite these changes including the big bump in the lens size, the DWARF 3 is only around a 100g heavier than the DWARF II and only a few mm larger on all sides. It will only come in one version that will include a bag and accessories. We’ll give the DWARF 3 a thorough test of all the new hardware and software features as soon as we can. However, from what we’ve seen so far, the DWARF 3 looks like a very impressive little telescope. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 31st May 2024

When was it? The peak of the Great Aurora of 2024 occurred around the 10th,  11th and 12th of May 2024 depending on where you were . Aurora, or lights in the parts of the Earth’s atmosphere which are usually only seen in regions closer to the north and south pole, were seen in much of southern Australia and across New Zealand, with some reports of Aurora being seen even in Queensland! What causes Aurora? The frequency and size of sunspots seen on the surface of our nearest star – the Sun – change over an approx. 11 year period. We’re heading in the period of peak  activity called  Solar Maximum. Sunspots appear like as darker regions compared to the rest of the Sun’s disk but are in fact areas of intense storms of magnetically charged plasma particles. (This is a very simplified explanation of the complex changes seen on the Sun’s surface. On any clear day, pop into BINTEL and we’ll show you the Sun through a dedicated Solar Telescope and explain more.) Sunspots can  produce loops of plasma that crash back onto the Sun’s surface,  send out ultraviolet light and x-rays that can play havoc with satellites and communication.  Such radiation travels at the speed of light and impacts the Earth only a few minutes after it’s emitted from the Sun. The Earth is surrounded by a  series of our own magnetic fields which are called the magnetosphere. This protects us from harmful radiation from the Sun as well as from other sources further out into space. The Sun can also eject charge particles during these storms. These are streams of material, not different wavelengths of “light” like high energy ultraviolet or x-rays and travel far more slowly.  They take some hours or days to reach the Earth and if aimed just right and interact with the magnetosphere, will cause the Aurora.  This stream of particles is called a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME.  If lined up towards Earth, particles in a CME from the Sun will strike the magnetosphere and be directed into the upper regions of the Earth’s atmosphere. The atoms in the atmosphere are “excited” by these particles from the Sun slamming into them and release energy as photons or light as we see it. What did we see? Why all the different colours? The different colours seen in Aurora are the due to different gasses in our atmosphere, much like the different colours seen in old school neon lights.   You’ll be able to see a all these different colours in our customer photos below.) Green – the most common colour seen in Aurora as our eyes are sensitive to this part of the spectrum.  This happens when CME particles interact with oxygen at around 100 to 300kms altitude Red – interactions with oxygen at higher altitude, from  300 to 400kms Pink/red – this produced by nitrogen at approx 100km. Blue or purple – particles hitting helium and hydrogen right on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere as these gases are the lightest and float above other elements of the atmosphere. The colours are hard to see against a dark sky background, however there’s some images below showing them. Does a CME needs to be a direct hit to cause an Aurora? Yes.  Many of the Solar storms we see emit CMEs in all different directions. We won’t see the particles as they travel through the Solar System unless they interact with something in their path. Why was this such as massive display of Aurora? Solar storms are measured by various scales. Think of these as similar to cyclones or earthquake measurements.  One common scale is the G Scale. The most severe of these G5 – are rare events. The Great Aurora of 2024 was produce by a G5 geomagnetic storm The last time a G5 even occurred was in 2003. (As I’m writing this, we’re  at G0 geomagnetic conditions with a slight change a  G1) From the 7th to the 11th of May at least seven CMEs headed towards Earth including from the sunspot group AR3664 pictured below taken by Franco Fantasia & Guiseppe Conzo. Aren’t Aurora normally only seen much closer to the Earth’s polar regions? Yes! Due to the shape of the Earth’s magnetic field lines, nearly all of the charged particles from the Sun’s CME are directed into the atmosphere near the North and South poles. In the case of this event, the intensity of the CME was so massive that Aurora was visible at latitudes that have never seen them in living memory. Will it happen again?  How big was this event? There’s no doubt this was a rare event! We’re unable to predict exactly when aurora will occur in the future with any certainty but we can get a heads up on likely aurora based on our observations of the Sun.  As mentioned, the surface of the Sun is becoming more active during Solar maximum and more frequent and strong aurora are expected. The events of a few weeks are quite rare and it compares with major aurora events in past decades. Some commentators are suggesting that the aurora seen recently were more widespread and widely seen than any aurora of the last 500 years! It’s the only G5 event since the availability of smartphone (the last one being in 2003) and there’s a strong possibility of there being more photos of the Great Aurora of 2024 than all other auroras put together. How I keep an eye on aurora events and get involved? One citizen science project is Aurorasaurus located here.  This projects tracks aurora in real-time based on local reports and send you updates.  It helps scientists to build valuable data on aurora to build into space weather models and theories. The Australian Space Weather Alert System located here will you updated with current Solar conditions, news and expected events. The US government’s Space Weather Prediction Center located here is also a key resource. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 22nd May 2024

BINTEL is a part of a global group of Premier Select Celestron Dealers who are able to provide the entire Celestron product range, offer the highest level of support and expertise and have full Celestron head office warranty support.

Members of the BINTEL crew have been attending NEAF 2024 in the USA  –the world’s largest expo of telescopes and astronomy gear! – Here’s some of latest product news and releases Please note that all the products listed are from suppliers that we currently represent and will be heading to BINTEL this year Sunday 21st April 2023 – ZWO again lead the way, showing the move to integrated astrophotography equipment. As any astrophotographer would know, there’s a lot more than simply attaching a camera to a telescope to take photos. There’s other gear (and cables) needed to locate astro objects in the night sky, control the mount, guide long exposures, focus and more.  There’s been a move in recent years to merge a lot of these control requirements into a single device like the ZWO ASIAIR. Announced at NEAF 2024 is the new ZWO ASI260MC Air This remarkable new camera includes a built-in ZWO ASI Air that, a guide camera all controlled over Wi-Fi via an app on your phone or iPad/tablet. (Please note any prices shown are in USD$, not the Australian price). It’s no doubt going to simplify the astrophotography process. More time capturing ancient star light and less time setting up and managing equipment! At NEAF 2023, the ZWO Seestar S50 was launched.  This has been a super popular astronomy product over the last 12 months, with many hundreds of them finding a new home among our customers. While no new Smart Telescope hardware was shown by ZWO, they did remind folks of the near continuous feature upgrades that have been delivered to all Seestar S50 owners via software and firmware updates. They did however highlight future upgrades to the Seestar lineup aimed at both the new astronomer and those with more experience requiring more advanced features. Watch this Space! Always good to catch up with friends – Memory Li from ZWO and Clare Mills from BINTEL earlier today. Sky-Watcher has joined the Harmonic Drive/strain wave mount family with the release of their new WAVE 100i and 150i telescope mounts. Based on what we saw of the mounts themselves and the specifications, they’re going to be a very compelling option for astro imagers and even visual observers. You can also use the Sky-Watcher Wave mounts in both Equatorial and Alt-Az mode as can be seen in this video. More on these soon. Pegasus Astro had on display their new SmartEye “Smart Eyepiece” and running a simulation of the view from it.  This is one of the more interesting gizmos shown and is yet another example of tech making astronomy and astrophotography easier and more open to everyone. Rather than being an entire system like other Smart Telescopes like the ZWO SeeStar S50 or the Vaonis Vespera, the SmartEye is used in place of a tradition eyepiece on a telescope. The view through the SmartEye is of what the telescope is seeing, except automatically and quickly electronically enhanced.  It has a swag of other functions including traditional astrophotography features and object assistance via Wi-Fi. We’re quite excited by the SmartEye.  We posted a video  of the view through a SmartEye and it’s stunning! You can find it here. This an ideal way to upgrade a serious telescope and likely to breath new life into larger ones like Dobsonians.  Availability will be later in the year. Pricing is likely to be around that of a mid-range Smart Telescope. Optec Inc. showed their Aquila-88 high-torque focuser and camera rotator. This has a full 88mm clear aperture (hence the name) and apart from camera rotation, can handle field de-rotation for Alt-Az mounts, image composition and guide star acquisition for the more high end astrophotography setups. The Celestron Origin continues to attract attention ahead of its widespread availability later in the year. Celestron Origin shown with optional table top tripod. The Origin currently has the best specifications among Smart Telescopes and we’re expecting some fantastic images to be come out of this device and  can’t wait to get it into the hands of our BINTEL customers. Celestron have been taking the time to explain how much of the hardware that goes into the Origin, including the RASA optical system, has been incorporated and field-proven in other Celestron products. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 18th April 2024  

1st April 2024 - Australian amateur space scientists plan a launch later today to solve long-term observing problem for astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere.  We've heard from a number of unreliable sources that today is the launch of a new class of spacecraft - those to help amateur astronomers instead of posing problems like Elon Musk's Starlink satellites. Professor Trevor Zipman from the Australian Space Infrastructure Foundation (ASIF), a non profit organization aiming to modify the night sky to better suit amateur astronomers, spoke exclusively with BINTEL about their immediate plans. Finally - a pole star for the Southern Hemisphere. "Frankly, it's it's a pain in the bee-hind trying to get polar alignment in Australia from what I've read.  Up north of the equator, there's a nice bright star called Polaris where you point your mount and off you go. No mucking around.  The central planning committee of ASIF thought this oversight sounded like a perfect first cab off the rank in terms of our space launches." ranted Professor Zipman. "Basically, we're putting up a large, lightweight balloon, right into geosynchronous orbit so it will sit at exactly where the southern pole star would be if the powers that be saw fit to install one in the first place." he continued with a wink. SPOLARIS-1, is a 20m diameter reflective balloon that will be launched later today from their new facility near Bogan Gate NSW, not far from the famous Parkes radio telescope and aims to be the new south pole star to help with polar alignment in the southern hemisphere. "All going to plan, and especially if the guidance system points our launch vehicle point in the right direction, we'll have SPOLARIS-1 in place and shining brightly this Monday. The first two test launches of the new launch system, Direct Reach into Near Geo Orbit (DRONGO), placed their payloads into wildly, unplanned paths." Professor Zipman, or "Mungo" to his friends, colleagues and wildlife on and around his midget Alpaca farm where he retreats on weekends,  commented that "unlike that Musk bloke who blows his spacecraft  a few times and calls it success, we get 'em up there. We just don't know where exactly "there" is. They go and and stay up and don't crash back down to Earth. At least not on anyone who's made a kerfuffle about it thus far." BIG plans for ASIF Mungo admits he's not an astronomer and it's been a while since he looked through a telescope that didn't involve putting in a 20c coin and pointing it scenery . He'd also not consulted either professional or amateur astronomers when laying out future missions.   Despite this, he and ASIF have some exciting plans for the future. "It's always bugged me how the Southern Cross has a single extra star in the corner. We're seeking funding to fix that stuff up and don't get me started on why Orion's belt is upside down Downunder." "My take is that if you're going to have space junk whizzing around up there, it might as well be bloody useful." Mungo concluded. How to see SPOLARIS-1 Simply head outside just after dark and look directly south and up at the same angle as your latitude. For example,  if the SPOLARIS-1 launch is successful, a bright star will be visible from Sydney at about this angle. It also won't move during the night and can be used for the polar alignment of your telescope.   The crosshairs show were SPOLARIS-1 will (hopefully) be located  as seen from Sydney from evening of the first of April, 2024. Definitely something to keep an eye out for! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL

March 27th - 2024: A common question we get asked here at BINTEL is what's the furthest thing  I can see with my telescope along with a slightly less often asked - "what's the oldest thing I can see and how do we know how old it is?" Currently, possibly the oldest known star in the night sky is a comparatively close by to us in the Milky Way and can even be seen with binoculars! But how do we know how old it is? First of all, let's talk about metal  - in an astronomical sense. Everyone has a different definition of what "Metal" is.  Growing up in the inner western suburbs of Sydney when I did, my immediate answer would be "AC/DC", but not everyone would agree. (Lots of Metallica fans out there too...) We also know metals when we see them in day to day life. Cars are made of them, the copper in power leads carry electricity, jets use titanium in their engines and we drink out of aluminium cans. We're surrounded by metal and we know what it is. Astronomers don't think of metals the same way. You might hear them talk about stars as being "metal rich" or "metal poor" or even talking about "metallicity of a star."   Here's what they're referring to plus we'll chat about what's one of the oldest known stars in the Universe which happens to be on our galactic backyard. Going back a bit.....(actually, really big bit!) The Big Bang produced basically the two simplest observable elements after initial cooled down - lots and lots of Hydrogen and some Helium. (And a tiny dollop of other lighter elements.) The Cosmic microwave background (CMB)  .A  snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was only around 380 000 years old. Image via ESA and the Planck Collaboration. Even after billions of years, about 73% of the visible Universe is Hydrogen and 25% of Helium. The rest of the visible Universe  - around 2% - is all of the other elements put together. This 2% is composed of every other element from Lithium up and this is all the other gases including oxygen and nitrogen, and all the way through to ultra heavy elements such as Uranium. Astronomers use the term "metals" to refer to this 2% of matter we can observe  which wasn't left over from the Big Bang. Sometimes you hear we're made of "star stuff", but what does this mean? If it wasn't from the Big Bang, where does oxygen and nitrogen in the air we breath, the carbon in our bodies and the copper in the speak cables to play come from? All the energy we see from stars, whether it's ancient starlight or the sunlight during the day comes from nuclear fusion in the cores. Lighter elements like hydrogen and helium are pressed together under extreme pressures and temperatures. This process* turns the lighter elements into heavier elements and along the way, a tiny bit of matter is also turned into energy.  All other elements were formed in stars through the nuclear fusion processes that power them. The first generation of stars formed from the primordial gasses left over from the Big Bang. This mean that they were only made of up hydrogen, some helium and that tiny smidge of lithium.  It's a good chance these first stars were huge compared to the Sun. We also know that massive star have a short lifespan, measured in possibly only a few million years. This means that these ancient stars that formed early on  in the Universe's history - which we refer to as "population III" stars - have likely long ceased to exist and have never been directly observed.**  They had no "metals"  - anything in them other that hydrogen, helium  -  in them whatsoever. Why? Simply because anything else didn't yet exist in the early Universe. When astronomers talk about how much of materials other than hydrogen and helium or metals in a star - and use terms like metallicity, they're  talking about how much of a star is formed from the gasses left over from the Big Bang and how much of it is from previous generations of stars. How does material from older stars end up in younger stars? A normal star can produce elements all the way up to to Iron (Fe)  during fusion but to produce elements heavier than this, a different and spectacular event takes places make the remaining, heavier elements - a supernova. During the life of a star, the inwards pressure of gravity and the outwards pressure of energy  and are somewhat balanced. As the star reaches the end of its life, the  star cools slightly as "fuel" is burned through and the energy is not enough to overcome gravity and it collapses quickly and then explodes. (Our own Sun is not large enough to explode in a supernova.) This is the final explosion of a massive star that not release vast amounts of energy but also throws these materials out into interstellar space where they then become part of later generation stars and planets and even end up in speaker cable we use to play AC/DC music.  Early, short lived Population III*** stars would have ended their lives as supernovas.  These supernova explosions  spread the heavier elements created into interstellar space, where they become part of the material from which later generations of stars are formed. As stars explode and their remnants combine into later generation stars, by looking their spectrums and analysing what's inside them we can determine their age, their likely lifespan and more. The oldest stars we can see today referred to as population II stars, would have been formed from gasses in the interstellar medium and some elements produced by the explosions of population III stars. They would have some "metals" in them but only in tiny amounts.  Population II stars then further spread elements during their own end of life supernova events. To wrap up: Astronomers use the term "Metals" for elements that weren't left over from the Big Bang and are created in stars.  The amount of metal or metallicity of a star is a guide to its age. There's three main groups of stars: Population III Stars - stars theorised to have existed, formed from the remnants of the Big Bang and distributed heavier elements throughout the Universe. Population II Stars - ancients stars that contain are metal poor, simply because there were few metals in the Universe when they formed. The Methuselah star is a Population II star. Population I Stars - metal rich stars formed from the remnants of the Big Bang, metals from Population II supernovae. Our Sun is a Population I star. Going back to the oldest star we can see, it's a critter called  HD 140283 or "the Methuselah star" about  200 light years away.  If you'd like to see where it is in the sky, click here to view in Stellarium and then the + button to zoom in.  It's bright enough to to viewed in binoculars.  It's a population II star, very poor in metals - which fingers crossed you now know that this means - and includes some elements created by population III stars.   Digitized Sky Survey image of the HD 140283 of "The Methuselah Star".  Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) UK Schmidt telescope photographed the star in blue light and visual observations will show as a faint star. It's not that spectacular to view at but you're looking at a piece of history from an ancient time in the Universe's history. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL PS: This is a super brief overview of a very complex topic - happy to answer more detailed questions and pass along the one's I can't! *"Splitting the atom" or nuclear fission is the opposite. Elements are broken into lighter elements and energy released.  If you saw the movie Oppenheimer, this is the type of energy that powered the bombs dropped on Japan **There haven a tiny few indirect observations of population III stars via the JWST through gravitationally lensed, high red shift galaxies. ***Most of the stars we see are population I. When older stars were discovered, these became population II, and then when even older stars were theorised, no surprise they were termed popular III three stars.