News

As always, lots of news about astronomy and space this week. New moons discovered around Saturn. Heaps of them. The Solar System planet with the most spectacular set of rings, the gas giant Saturn, has long been known to have a large number of moons.  This number essentially doubled this week with the announcement of the discovery of a further 128 moon orbiting Saturn.  These are small, only a few kms across and oddly shaped. They're not large enough to form themselves into a spherical shape under their own gravity. We also might have problems coming up with new names for them all. Read more in our article here.  The world's largest digital camera installed in a remarkable telescope The 3,200 megapixel LSST Camera, weighing over 3 tonnes, has been installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera. C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Apart from its size, the LSST Camera is part of one of the most ambitious scientific facilities every constructed by humans. The aim of the Vera. C. Rubin Observatory is not just to photograph and observe the southern night sky, but to capture a complete photographic record every few nights. This means that rather than spending years gradually photographing and observing different objects in various parts of the sky, this new LSST Camera will capture a virtual movie of the sky over a 10 year period.  By comparing the sky night to night, it will be able image a range of Transient Phenomena - new comets, supernovae, black hole binaries; gamma-ray bursts and X-ray flashes which are thought to be from the death of massive stars.  It's likely to spot new comets, and no doubt find many more interstellar objects passing through the Solar System such as Oumuamua and Comet Barisov.  Full testing of the Vera. C. Rubin Observatory is expected to commence soon and images to be released to the public shortly afterwards.  Read more about the LSST here.  A super massive blackhole found in the middle of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The galaxy next door is also packing a super massive black hole - and it likes to throw stars into intergalactic space! Large Magellanic Cloud  or LMC  - visible in our southern night skies as a misty patch several times the size of the Full Moon Last year we mentioned in a BINTEL blog article that the Large Magellanic Cloud or LMC is no longer considered the largest satellite galaxy of our home, the Milky Way. You can read about this here. Rather than orbiting the Milky Way, it's just passing by. While the LMC will not spend the next few billion years orbiting the Milky Way and instead chart its own course, the encounter has left the smaller LMC quite scarred and disrupted.  Now astronomers are suggesting that the LMC has a super massive black hole at its centre much like Milky Way does.  It's thought that most largish galaxies contain these, but there's never been one directly observed or identified in the LMC. (While we can't "see" a black hole as, by definition light can't escape its event horizon, we can observe the effects on stars, and interstellar gas clouds that such massive objects and their gravity cause. This was how the super massive black hole in the centre of the Milk Way, Sgr A*, was discovered.) What's been observed in the LMC are hyper velocity stars. There are stars that are travelling through the LMC at such high speeds they will eventually fly away from the galaxy and beyond. They've effectively reached "escape velocity" for the LMC. A probable mechanism for these fast stars is a nearby encounter with a massive object. These stars accelerated towards the black hole, but their path and distance from it was far enough away to stop the stars from going into orbit, or even descending towards the blackhole's event horizon. NASA uses similar fly-by techniques to speed up spacecraft headed into the Solar System by performing flybys of the Earth, Moon, Venus and even Mars! An artist's impression of a star being yeeted out of the LMC by the galaxy's supermassive blackhole at its centre. Image via: CfA/Melissa Weiss "It is astounding to realize that we have another supermassive black hole just down the block, cosmically speaking," said Jesse Han of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), who led the new study. "Black holes are so stealthy that this one has been practically under our noses this whole time." The LMC's central black hole is around 600,000 times the mass of the Sun. The Milky Way's own central massive black hold is around 4,000,000 the mass of the Sun. More on this fascinating topic here. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL  15th March 2025  

Earlier today, astronomers announced that the ringed planet Saturn now has some 247 moons after a further 128 were discovered.  This means that Saturn has more moons than all the other planets in the Solar System combined. These new moons are between 2 to 4km wide and possibly formed by the collision of larger moons in the distant past. Many are also irregular or "potato shaped" and not round like many of the planetary moons we're used to seeing. Saturn with several of its larger moons captured by Izaak Cerneaz using a Celestron 8" SCT telescope and posted to the BINTEL Society Facebook Group here. These new discoveries were made by Edwin Aston and his team with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope using a technique familiar to many amateur astronomers in Australia and New Zealand: taking many hours of exposures and then stacking the images together. One of the new moons of Saturn -image via Edwin Aston et al. The moon is the "dot" in the middle of the image. Are these moons or just bits of rock in orbit around a the planet? There is a vast number of small objects in the Solar System with more being found. Should these new, smaller space rocks be called "moons", simply because they're in orbit around a major planet?  “I don’t think there’s a proper definition for what is classed as a moon. There should be.” said Dr. Ashton.  “With current technology, I don’t think we can do much better than what has already been done for moons around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune." continued Dr Ashton. Do these new moons have names yet? These new moons have been recognised by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), although for now they're just numbers in a catalogue and haven't been assigned formal names. With so many new moons discovered, the MPC might have to get a bit creative with naming as they've likely run out of classical Greek, Roman and even Norse gods to name them after! Some of the new moons of Saturn announced recently at the Minor Planet Center. You can read more about these spread over several bulletins starting here. Can I see these newly discovered moons of Saturn in my telescope? First of all - and we get asked this all the time - new discoveries like this are normally beyond the reach of the types of telescopes that our BINTEL customers use. While you will be able to see Saturn, its rings and many of its largest moons, these newly discovered ones won't be seen.  It does raise some interesting questions about just how chaotic the early period of formation of the Solar System. With Saturn tricky to see as it disappears in the evening twilight, when it reappears in a few months time in the early morning sky, you'll be able to view it through your telescope knowing the chunks of rock orbiting around the ringed planet have just doubled in number - with possibly many more out there! Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 12th March 2025

It's been a hectic and busy few days for astronomy and space exploration tech. Probably the largest single event was the 8th launch of SpaceX's Starship yesterday. This is the largest rocket even flown - larger even than NASA's Saturn V rocket that took humanity to the Moon in the 1960s - and it a major part of plans to land people on Mars in the coming decade. This flight launched successfully and the booster was captured back the launch pad, however like the previous mission, the Starship spacecraft itself exploded after a few minutes of flight.  After 8 launches of this massive rocket, no payload the size of a Corgi has been placed into orbit. See more here. Roll on Starship 9! A far more successful space mission was the Lunar landing of Blue Ghost 1 by Firefly Aerospace. Blue Ghost on the Moon with us all on the blue dot in the background. Say cheese This is a private mission carrying a range of instruments and scientific packages. It was FIrefly Aerospace's first attempt at landing on the Moon.  The second Moon lander from Intuitive Machines touched down software on the Lunar surface on the 8th March 2025, however it appears like their previous spacecraft, to have tipped over in its side. (I'm not an engineer, but it seems to me that if tall, spindly landers like those from IM fall over and the wider, squat lander from Firefly nails it on the first attempt, you might want to get someone in to look at that...) IM-2 on its side on the Moon's surface Only a few hours ago, NASA announced that they had received some data from IM-2 before the mission ended. On March 5th 2025, NASA also announced that it was shutting off two of the remaining instruments on the Voyager 2 spacecraft to preserve dwindling power and to help extend its mission as it journeys further into interstellar space. An artist’s concept depicts one of NASA’s Voyager probe. Image via: NASA/JPL-Caltech The Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 probes were launched in 1977 and provided our first up close glimpses of the Solar System's ice and gas giants before travelling further into space. This power down will hopefully keep the electricity generated from the decay of plutonium in their systems flowing for while longer: “The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL. “But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.” If you read our article a few weeks ago about Open Star Clusters and how to view them with your telescope, I mentioned that while we know of about 1,000 open star clusters in the Milky Way, many more are hidden by cloud of gas and dust. It now looks like astronomers have just found another nine open clusters! More details in the fairly technical article here. These newly found clusters won't be able to spotted in your telescope but don't worry - there's still plenty that you can discover and explore. A couple of years ago you might have spotted a BINTEL article about rogue planets. These are planets that have either formed around a star and then been ripped away from their host system or might have even formed in deep space. They're estimated to exist in vast numbers throughout the Milky Way and likely in other galaxies as well. You can read more here.  On the 3rd of March, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of SIMP 0136, a free-floating "super Jupiter" only 20 light years away. An artist's impression of SIMP 0136 - please note this cannot be imaged like this using any telescope Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the team was not only able to identify SIMP 1036, but it also found it seems to exhibit weather characteristics that cannot be explained by the planet's clouds of gas alone. A really fascinating object and you can read more here. As always, astronomy is a constantly evolving science with new and often puzzling discoveries always being made. Cheers,Earl White BINTEL 8th March 2025    

The 1st of March marks the start of Autumn in Australia and New Zealand. In the northern hemisphere autumn starts at the equinox, which can vary by a day or two. We start autumn on the 1st of the month to help farmers to keep consistent calendars to assist with crop plantings. The first week of March sees  Jupiter and Mars still fairly high in the sky as it gets dark. Both planets are past the best time of the year to observe them but still worth taking a peek at them with a telescope.  7th March is First Quarter Moon. The Moon will be visible as the Sun sets and dips below the horizon towards the middle of the night. Many folks starting out in astronomy often don't realise that this the time to observe the Moon, as the low angle of sunlight across the Lunar surface will highlight craters, mountains and much more.  9th March the Moon and Mars appear close together in the sky . View from Sydney on the 9th of March 2025 around 10.00pm local time.  10th March is a good time to catch the famous M45 open cluster which is also known as The Pleiades or The Seven Sisters before it disappears from our night skies until the warmer months return.  The Pleiades as seen in the north western sky around 8.30pm from Sydney on the 10th of March This is a young, open cluster of stars about 100 millions years old and known to cultures throughout the world since ancient times. There's seven stars easily visible to your eyes and many more can be seen with binoculars or a telescope. You can read more about open clusters in this BINTEL article here. (This cluster will only be together for another 250 million years, so you'd better get a wriggle on to catch it!) 14th March is Full Moon. Get your Moon Filters out! 20th March 8.01pm Sydney time is the Autumn Equinox  The is one of two times in the year when each part of the Earth's surface receives roughly the same amount of sunlight and the night and day are about the same length. The Sun crosses into the northern part of the sky.  The autumn equinox for us here or the spring equinox for northern hemisphere readers. Image via timeanddate.com 22nd March is last quarter Moon 29th March is New Moon Effectively this is when the entire side of the Moon that's always pointed towards is engulfed in darkness during the long Lunar night. It's also a good time to catch the constellation of Orion before it spends the next few months in the daytime sky, hidden from view, before returning in spring. Orion appears on its side as it does this time of the year, along with Jupiter and Mars. The view from Sydney 29th March 2025 around 8.00pm What can't be seen from Australia: March 14th a total Lunar Eclipse occurs which will not be visible from Australia. March 29th a Partial Solar Eclipse will be visible from locations in the Northern hemisphere. There's a lot more in the sky in March! Please comment with any events you'd like to mention and I'll add them to this article. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL  1st March 2025    

During March 2025, Sky-Watcher have some of their most popular telescope and DSLR star tracker mounts reduced in price. Here's a few suggestions!  AZ-EQ6 - Dual EQ and AZ Mount with tripod - now $2,499 This is the heavy duty version of the long serving EQ6 platform that has been used by astrophotographers around world for many years to produce stunning astro images as well as a stable platform for serious visual observing for extended periods.  The "AZ" part of the name refers to the mount ability to be used in both standard equatorial EQ mode as well as AZ or altazimuth setup. Using this, two optical tubes, mounted side by side, can be attached. For example, a SCT on one side and a wide field refractor on the other.  A full height, metal tripod is included as well as a SynScan hand controller. You can plug in a PC to control the mount via a USB cable and there's also an optional Wi-Fi adaptor.  As the SynScan protocol used in Sky-Watcher mounts is an industry standard, the range of supported apps and PC applications is extensive. Full details here. Star Adventurer Pro 2i Kit - now $549 The Star Adventurer series were the "star tracker" mounts that popularised taking wide field portraits of the Milky Way and other large scale structures in the night sky. There's a vast collection of deep-sky astro objects with colours and fascinating features that are just beyond the abilities of our eyes to see - they're revealed surprisingly easily by DSLR camera with long exposures. The problem is that while the DSRL is taking an image, the world turns and the sky above us moves -resulting in blurry or streaky astro images.  Star trackers like the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer moves with the sky, keeping the image still while your DSRL captures the ancient photons from distant parts of the Milky Way or even further beyond.  Even a basic DSLR kit with a starter lens will let you make beautiful starry photos - and with experience and other wider field lenses etc, the potential for producing remarkable art is almost unlimited.  You will need a tripod to mount the Star Adventurer mount and camera. If you already have a sturdy tripod as part of your photographic kit it's likely to work well, otherwise have a chat with us about tripod option. The other thing to note is that's several Star Adventurer "kits", the astro, the photo version. This is the high end Pro version with all the accessories you will need such as a counterweight, a wedge and mounting rails. Full details here   Star Adventurer Mini Pro Kit - now $399 This is the smallest of the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer model range. Unlike the large 2i models, this Star Adventurer Mini has motor drives on both RA and DEC axes, meaning it's a full "GOTO" mount capable to moving to any part of the night sky and tracking astro objects once they're found.  One of the appeals of this Mini kit is Wi-FI support as well - meaning you can control your mount with a phone or iPad/tablet. It's small than the 2i series and would be well suited as a travel companion for one of the new generation of compact mirrorless cameras. We're also scratching our heads to see if we can remember ever selling a full Wi-Fi GOTO telescope mount for $399 before.... Full details here MiniAZ  GOTO Wi-Fi mount and tripod -  now $599 This popular mount is designed for turning small telescopes into full GOTO systems. Using the SynScan app you can locate and then track objects in the night sky.  We'd suggest it will carry telescopes up to about a 130mm (5") Newtownian style reflector or a small refractor. The mount is also lightweight, making it ideal for travel, and a matching tripod is included.  As it uses the same protocol as larger Sky-Watcher mounts, the same wide of selection of programs and apps can be used the smallest of their GOTO mounts. It's a fun mount if you're keen on experimenting and tinkering - lots of YouTube videos about this system. (The Sky-Watcher Mini AZ is the same as AZ-GTi, and the AZ-GTe is lower specification version of the mount.) While Sky-Watcher suggests the the Mini-AZ is NOT suitable for astro imaging, many folks have used it to take photos. Full details here If you have any questions about these Sky-Watcher mounts, please drop BINTEL a message. There's only limited stock of some of these available in Australia.  Cheers, Earl White BINTEL  28th February 2025  

There's lot of talk in the media and online about yet another planetary alignment that's happening on the 28th of February (or the 1st of March Australian/NZ time) and won't happen again for another 400 years.  Why shouldn't we be getting excited over this date? First of all, the planets move around the Solar System at a fairly leisurely pace. The Earth as you'd know takes about a year to complete an orbit around the Sun and even the innermost planet Mercury takes around 88 days. Beyond Earth, Mars and the other outer planets takes even longer. The outermost planet Neptune take some 165 Earth years to complete a Solar orbit.  What this means is the any planetary events such as alignments or oppositions (when a planet is at its closest to Earth for a while) are great viewing the weeks leading up the event and after as well. They are not one of those "blink and you'll miss it" sort of astronomical events. The seven planets that are part of this 28th February/1st March "planetary line up" - Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars will indeed be visible in the sky so yes, that bit of the reports are correct. They'll also be lined up for many days before and many days after that date. Saturn and Mercury appear close to the Sun in the sky and will dip below the horizon while still in the glare of the sunset. This makes them very hard to spot.  Neptune which cannot be seen without a telescope will set with them. Venus will set a little while after sunset and will appear in the early evening sky as a blazing white star. Jupiter and Mars are visible even to you eyes alone for well into the night. Both are spectacular with a telescope! Uranus will also be in the sky after sunset but you will need a telescope to see it. You won't be able to see it with your eyes alone.  Where the Solar System planets will appear on the 1st March around 7.15pm Sydney time. Please note the Sun will be in the sky at this time. There will be seven planets in the sky early in the evening, some of which will be tricky to spot. They are also spread out over a large section of the sky and not in a neat straight line that the term "alignment" suggests.  Ok, so what's the good part? First of all, any news about celestial events is good news -  people looking up at the night sky will hopefully lead to a lifetime of discovery and wonder.   This "event" might be overblown by some outlets in terms of the number of planets visible, how rare it is and the date it's happening. On the plus side, there's still some of the most spectacular Solar System planets on show and this coming weekend the Moon is also setting early in the evening - meaning the night sky is not affected by moonlight and ideal for planetary viewing.  It's well worth heading outside and looking up, especially with a telescope.  If you don't have one, this Celestron StarSense Explorer LT70 AZ not only is a great way to kick off your astronomy journey, it even uses your mobile phone to show you the around the Universe.  You can find out more about this telescope here. Another larger telescope that will provide even better views of the planets and ideal for starting deep-sky observing is the saxon  6" Dobsonian. Dobsonian telescopes renowned for providing excellent value for money and this saxon "Dob" is a classic example of this. Read more about it here. We're big fans of using binoculars for astronomy here at BINTEL but planets are quite small in sky and you won't really see much more detail if you look at them through binos. While you're out there. Observing planets through a telescope is often what leads many folks into astronomy.  There's nothing quite like looking at a bright "star" which turns out to be Saturn with its rings or Jupiter with moons when you view it through a telescope. While the planets are spectacular, there's only a handful of them and there's a lifetime of deep-sky astro objects to explore within our Milky Way galaxy and even beyond.  Here's some guides to get you started: You've seen the planets, what now? A guide to the night sky in the coming months A guide to the night sky in the coming months part 2 - Globular Clusters A guide to the night sky in the coming months part 3 - Open Clusters and star colours These only touch the surface and there's more guide on topics like double stars and galaxies that will be our website shortly. If you'd like more information about some cool things are the sky every week, make sure you sign up for the BINTEL newsletter via our webpage.  We feature current sky and nature events, product updates and news as well the latest in astronomy and space missions. Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 26th February 2025                

If you purchased a telescope from us for the 2025 Summer of the Planets, welcome to the BINTEL family! While Mars and Jupiter are still putting on a show in the evening sky even as we head into the autumn months, remember these delights are only a small part of what you can discover with a telescope.  (Make sure you catch up Part 1 of this series where we chatted about misty patches of the sky called nebulae where stars are being formed.) This week we'll explore open star clusters and feature what's perhaps the most beautiful object like this in the night sky - the Jewel Box Custer.  Unlike the ancient globular clusters that are bound together for billions of years and we touched on last week, open clusters are far more youthful and represent collections of stars that will eventually part company with each other.  Where to find the Jewel Box cluster on 15th of March around 10.00pm as seen from Sydney - it's near the "side" of the Southern Cross, shown with the two pointers Hadar and Alpha Centauri. Back in part one we talked about the vast clouds of interstellar gas called nebulae. Some of these star forming region such the Great Orion Nebula or the Tarantula Nebula are spectacular in just about any telescope. Over time these clouds of gas collapse due to gravity. Their tightly packed and heated hydrogen gas molecules ignite as stars due to the atomic fusion.  Once this happens, the outward radiation pressure from the stars formed in the nebula pushes the remaining gas outwards and spreads it further out into interstellar space, leaving behind groups of new stars. They are loosely bound together by gravity and generally start travelling around the galaxy in the same direction and speed.  Members of this group are also all about the same age to within a few million years or so - as once they ignite and disperse the interstellar gas in the nebula, it is no longer be able to continue to create new stars.  This newish group of stars is called an open cluster.  The shape of open clusters and how many stars are contained within it vary as they size and much gas was in each nebula varies. Basically, no two open clusters appear the same unlike globular clusters which all basically resemble tight balls of stars.  What do open clusters look like? What's possibly the best open cluster to view in a telescope is the Jewel Box cluster which is part of the Southern Cross constellation. It was called as "a superb piece of fancy jewellery" by astronomer John Herschel and the name stuck.  This contains about 100 stars, many of which are visible even in binoculars. To your eyes alone, it can be spotted as a small, fuzzy patch of sky not far from the star in the left "arm" of the Southern Cross. Larger telescopes will show more and more stars and also highlight their vivid range of colours.  An illustration of the Jewel Box Cluster - NGC 4755 - as created by Stellarium   If you've never seen a star cluster through a telescope, the Jewel Box is a must see!  Another open cluster that's on the other side of the Southern Cross to the Jewel Box and located in the constellation of Centaurus is NGC 3766, which is sometimes called the Pearl Cluster. This is just on the edge of being able to be seen with your eyes under a dark sky, so grab some binoculars or any telescope to view it.  Another lovely collection of brightly coloured star that's well worth exploring.  Moving further along the Milky Way that runs through this part of the sky is the famous open cluster, IC 2602 which is often called the Southern Pleiades. This cluster can be spotted with your eyes under dark skies. Its stars are more spread out across area much larger than a Full Moon and is about 45 million years old. You'll find both of these open clusters are easily found by the Celestron StarSense Explorer system and apps like Stellarium can be used to help locate them. The entire region is worth exploring with your telescope, especially if you can get away from the worst of the city lights when the Moon isn't is in the sky. Globular clusters appear to around the edges of galaxies and in the sky, spread right across it. Why do open clusters seem to be within the Milky Way? The Milky Way, especially the brighter central regions we see during the cooler months in the southern hemisphere, contain star vast regions of gas and dust which are denser in the galaxy's spiral arms. We're seeing these open clusters which are recently formed (in galactic terms) before they spread out further into the Milk Way. How many open clusters are there in the Milky Way? Our galaxy is home to about  known 1,000 open star clusters, but maybe even ten times this number are probably hidden by dust and gas clouds. We see open star clusters in many other galaxies where active star formation is taking place.  This compares with 150 globular clusters in our galaxy, with the possibility of just a few more obscured and hiding from view. Did the Sun have companion stars that were formed from the same nebulae? Where are they now? Yes. There would have been numerous stars formed around the same time as the Sun from the same nebula. They have been tricky to pin down despite extensive searches through catalogues of stars.  Astronomers have searched for stars of about the same age as the Sun (appox. 4.6 billion years) with the roughly the same chemical composition. They mightn't be the same size or colour as the Sun as they might have collected more or less of the material from our host nebula before they turned into stars.  The Sun has also completed over 20 entire orbits of the Milky Way and the stars it formed near it have spread throughout the galaxy. Astronomers have discovered some potential siblings of the Sun.  At some 110 light years away, HD 162826 is in the constellation of Hercules. You would able to spot it in a telescope as it shines about magnitude 6.5. A second star.  HD 186302 in Pavo, was thought to also be a sibling of the Sun, although some have suggested its orbit around the Milky Way is different enough to rule it out from being formed with the Sun. This is a complex area and there's a lot of ongoing research about our Sun's history.  Did the Sun form with our nearest star, Alpha Centauri? Almost anyone who's looked at up our southern skies would know the two pointers to the Southern Cross. The brightest of these is Alpha Centauri which is a three-star system of which two are easily visible separately in most telescopes. (It's also the home to the baddies in Netflix and sci-fi book series "The Three Body Problem".)  Despite it being the closest star system to us, it doesn't seem to have been formed from the same nebula as the Sun. Both major component stars are older than the Sun. This rules the system our as stars formed in the same nebula are thought of roughly the same age and they also have different compositions - what astronomers call "metallicity". Read more about this here.  What this means is the Alpha Centauri and our Solar System have simply wandered close to each other during respective orbits around the Milky Way. If they're the same age, why do different members of an open cluster have different colours? One thing you notice about stars when you view them through a telescope is just how vivid their colours are. It's something you can certainly see with your eyes but it takes a telescope to really appreciate them and these are especially on show in open clusters. We'll go into the complex life cycles of star in an article shortly. The short version is that the colour of a star is related to the temperature the star is "burning" through its nuclear fuel and this is closely related to how much material in the star.  Stars that form in denser, rich clouds of gas in their nebulae will collect more material and by the time they "ignite" will be much larger and hotter.  The Sun is a middle of the road star in terms of temperature, mass and life span.  Would the Sun appear to be in a cluster from elsewhere in the Milky Way? Surprisingly, the answer is no.  Not only is our Sun is not only a rare single star system (well over 80% of stars are in multiple star systems, although roughly just under half of those of the same class as the Sun are in binary system), but by now members of its original star forming nebula have dispersed. The Sun would appear to be somewhat of a loner from other observers in the galaxy.  To wrap up: Star clusters are wonderful and stunning parts of the night sky. Many of these will quickly become old favourites that astronomers return to over and over again to observe while find ones to explore.  Cheers, Earl White BINTEL  21st February 2025      

The team at BINTEL were delighted at the announcement a few days ago that Tele Vue are releasing their newest eyepiece range, the Nagler Type 7. We've been selling Tele Vue eyepieces, mounts and telescopes for decades and have always been impressed with the quality of their gear. We regard their eyepieces especially as the best money can buy. The new Nagler Type 7 is a further development of Tele Vue's special edition Apollo 11mm Eyepiece. (The company's founder Al Nagler was heavily involved in NASA's Apollo program that took humans to the Moon and he designed the optical systems the Lunar astronauts used in their training systems.) A Tele Vue Apollo 11mm eyepiece on display at the BINTEL store in Sydney - and no, we won't sell it... The Nagler Type 7 is also an extension of the long running Nagler Type 4 eyepieces, with improvements on comfort, which will be welcomed especially by eyeglass wearers, with a long, 19mm eye relief. (Eye relief is how far away the image is formed from the eyepiece.)  There is a lockable eye guard on the Nagler Type 7 for those don't observe with glasses, blocking stray light and keeping you at the best distance when viewing.  Tele Vue Nagler Type 7 eyepieces from left: 19, 14, 9, and 5.5-mm. Special optical coatings across the range are standard along with internal baffling to further increase contrast and add to the pin point star images and bright colours already seen in other Tele Vue eyepieces. Tele Vue Nagler Type 4 eyepieces were famous for the "space walk experience" they produce. With such an expansive view and the image remaining crisp and ultra sharp right out the edge, you really get the sense of being out among the stars. The even larger eyelens - the glass facing the observer - and wide field of view will make observing through these new eyepieces an even more memorable event. We know there's a large number astronomers in Australia who are big Tele Vue Nagler fans and will be looking forward to trying the new Type 7 eyepices. BINTEL will have pricing and availability from Tele Vue in a little while and we'll be announcing local prices when we do.   Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL  12th February 2025    

If you purchased a telescope from us for the 2025 Summer of the Planets, welcome to the BINTEL family! While Mars and Jupiter are still putting on a show in the evening sky, remember these delights are only a small part of what you can discover with a telescope.  (Make sure you catch up Part 1 of this series where we chatted about misty patches of the sky called nebulae where stars are being formed. ) Other fascinating types of deep-sky object that many have heard of are star clusters. These are groups of stars common throughout galaxies like our own Milky Way.  One type, globular clusters, are some of the most fascinating objects in the night sky, as well as being spectacular deep-sky targets for telescopes of all sizes. These are definitely in the "wow" category for new astronomers and even the most experienced get a thrill from looking at them. Globular Cluster NGC 6752, first observed by James Dunlap from Parramatta in 1826 Stars in clusters are gravitationally bound to each other as they move through interstellar space. There are a few "varieties". (We'll cover open clusters in the next article and touch on how most stars in are binary or even multi star systems. Our Sun moving through the Milky Way on its own is a bit of an oddity.)  Open clusters are comparatively young in galactic terms, in comparison to globular clusters which are ancient. Found in mainly in the halos around the outskirts of galaxies, they are made up of vast numbers of stars, sometimes into the millions, which means they're held together so tightly they've been able to hang around for the life of their host galaxy and sometimes even longer. When observed through a telescope, globular clusters appear as a sparkly ball of stars, so closely bound, they seem to be touching each other.  The first deep-sky object to be identified as a globular cluster was M22 or NGC 6652, in 1655. This is in the constellation of Sagittarius. This contains more than 83,000 stars and weighs about as much 500,000 times the weight of the Sun. We're lucky in the southern hemisphere to have in our skies some of the brightest and largest globular clusters in the Milky Way. The most famous of these is Omega Centauri. This appears to our eyes as a faint star, although it's a bit "fuzzy".  Omega Centauri was known to ancient peoples and catalogued as a "star" but wasn't known as anything of major interest until it was observed through early telescopes in the 17th century. Even with these primitive instruments, it was quickly found to be unlike any other star in the night sky. Instead of being a single point of light, it was revealed to be an uncountable number of individual stars. The second brightest globular cluster is known as 47 Tucanae or 47 Tuc to its friends. It's around 15,000 light years from us   Where to find 47 Tuc from Sydney on the 5th of March around 9.00pm. To help get your bearings, Hada and Alpha Centauri are the pointers to the Southern Cross This is positioned in the far south of the sky near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) although not located in that nearby galaxy. It's very much a Milky Way local. This is a stunning astro object to view in telescopes of all sizes. It will show as a ball of tightly packed stars in a smaller telescope like the Celestron StarSense Explore LT70 AZ. As the telescope size and power increases in telescopes such as a saxon Dobsonian, more and more stars can be made out.  47 Tuc is home to millions stars and is about 120 light years across. It's over 13 billion years old, which is almost as old as the Milky Way itself. Under a dark sky, it appears as almost the same diameter as the Full Moon.  47 Tuc is takes up much more any telescope's field of view than even the largest planet, Jupiter.  Carlos Taylor posted his image of the bright globular cluster 47 Tucanae to the BINTEL Society Facebook Group. He used a 10" Sky-Watcher Quattro Newtonian reflector. It looks pretty crowded in there. How tightly packed are globular clusters? Do stars ever collide? Through a telescope globular clusters look dense on their outskirts and seem to be a tightly packed core towards their centres. The stars almost seem to be touching! However, there's still a huge distance between each star, with around a light year on average and maybe about a third of a light year in the core. This is still vast in human terms. Both of NASA's Voyager spacecraft have been travelling for 40 years but would take them a further 6,300 years to reach the nearest star if it were travelling between stars in the core of a globular cluster. Even with these distances, collisions between stars at the centre of globular clusters are possible. Whether collisions or mergers results in "core collapse" or black holes is still a topic for research. The HST (Hubble Space Telescope) helped us understand how their stars can pull matter from others, effectively winding back their stellar clocks to and forming a brighter star called a "Blue Straggler". Could life emerge in globular clusters? Most astrobiologists regard planets as essential for life as we know it to exist and globular clusters are probably not likely places for planets to form. The lack of elements much heavier than hydrogen and helium around their older stars means the materials needed for planets, especially rocky ones like the Earth, simply aren't there*. If planets were to form, they'd probably be yeeted from the globular cluster by gravitational interactions between the stars. Where did globular clusters come from?  While our understanding of star formation in a galaxy is generally agreed on, how ancient globular clusters emerge is still not fully clear. A distinguishing feature is that they tend not to have a central black hole - although astronomers have found candidates in some  - nor do they have a halo of dark matter.  Young star clusters in nearby galaxies also don't have these features. There's no gas and dust in a globular cluster and this means no new stars are now being formed, although some show different populations of stars. What you're viewing is light only from the stars themselves and not from illuminated gas clouds, unlike the emission nebulae we discussed last week. How can a globular cluster be older than the host galaxy? Globular clusters are hardy critters. As they're compact (in space terms at least) and so tightly bound together by gravity, as galaxies merge and collide, they're likely to maintain their original form and not be torn apart by the gravitational effects of the encounter.  Studies by the Gaia mission and other studies have help unravel how the Milky Way was assembled and have discovered more than half of its globular clusters were formed in other galaxies and ended up within it because of mergers. The Milky Way is the result of multiple mergers with other smaller galaxies. This is quite common for galaxies. While a "galactic merger" sounds like a pretty violent event, they happen over enormous time frames. The stars in galaxies have large distances between each other even in galactic cores so collisions between them would be extremely rare. Think of these events as being more like thin clouds of smoke sliding into each other. The Milky Way and The Andromeda Galaxy will merge in the next few billion years and the globular clusters from the two galaxies will likely settle into the "new" combined entity just fine. What are some other globular clusters worth exploring? Here's some of our favourites out of the many that can be seen with even a small telescope. Comment or message me with others you think are worth observing M 22  47 Tucanae NGC 6752  Omega Centauri M 62 (You might need to wait for some of these to be visible from your location) Make sure you point your telescope at a globular cluster in the coming months. They're an amazing sight, with each one being a little bit different. There's nothing like staring at one of these sparkling balls on the edge of our galaxy and realising you're looking at thousands, if not millions of ancient stars from the early days of the Universe. Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 11th February 2025 *The famous short story "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov takes place in a globular cluster. Well worth a read.

Update 21st February: NASA has changed the chance of the impact on Earth of 2024 YR4 to 0.28% after further observations. This will likely change as further investigations and observations are carried out.  There's also now a 1% chance it could also hit the Moon! Check out more at the NASA Blog here -  https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/ Cheers, Earl White - BINTEL   There's been lot of media coverage over the last few weeks about an asteroid called 2024 YR4. This is a hunk of space rock currently orbiting the Sun and the path it’s on means there’s a non-zero chance of it hitting the Earth on the 22nd of December 2032.  It’s estimated it’s between 40m and 100m in size. (You’ll see a lot of articles and posts with varying sizes. We still don’t have enough observations to make a more accurate estimate.) This is the not in the same class of object that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, but it would cause major damage across a large area if it were to hit a populated area.  Will it hit Earth? First of all -  Hand's up anyone who hasn't played Lotto? I won't remind you about the enormity of just how difficult it is to win a first or even second division. Nice to happen, but pretty much impossible. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for to win a consolation prize in the lowest division and the chance of this happening are around the same as 2024 YR4 impacting Earth in a few year's time. NOT an image of 2024 YR4  - this is the asteroid Bennu but 2024 YR no doubt looks similar. Image via NASA How was 2024 YR4 found? It was reported to the minor planet centre on the 27th of December 2024 and found by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System or ATLAS based in Chile. We talked a little while ago about ATLAS in this BINTEL article here. While this system is mainly designed to do exactly this - find objects that might pose a threat to the Earth - it’s also very good at finding comets and that’s why so many comets in discovered in recent years have ATLAS in their name. ATLAS scans the skies and looks for any unknown objects that move against their background stars from night to night. Anything that is not in the database of known objects is reported for further investigation. There's a lot of bodies that have been discovered in the Solar System. If you're playing pub trivia and one of the questions is "roughly how many near Earth space objects have been identified?" The answer is close to 38,000! How dangerous is it? 2024 YR4 has been classified as an Apollo class asteroid. This is because its orbit crosses Earth's own orbit.  We measure just how dangerous near Earth objects are by the Torino Scale. This goes from 0-10, with 0 being nothing at all to worry about and 10 being certain disaster for humanity.  There's a BINTEL article from a couple of years ago when there was an object at one on the scale. You can always check out the Minor Planet Center here. Currently, 2024 YR4 is three on the Torino scale. (There was an object that briefly reached four some years ago. More detailed refinements observations of its orbit showed it to be harmless.) Torino ratings of two to four are classed as "Meriting attention by astronomers". An illustration showing the progress of 2024Y4 through the inner Solar System. Image via NASA We know where it is, how big it is and what direction it’s moving in. Why can’t we get a good prediction now?  The issue is that we don’t know these things with enough accuracy to make a more detailed prediction. For example, scientists estimate the size of an object like this by the amount of light they reflect. As they learn about the composition of 2024 YR4 they’ll be able to calculate its size and path with more accuracy. Currently its moving away from Earth making observations more difficult. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will make detailed observations of 2024 YR4 in March and May and from these we'll learn more about its composition and size.  We will be closer to the asteroid during an encounter in 2028 (with zero chance of collision during then.) This will also an ideal time to learn more about 2024 YR4. What’s the chance of it impacting Earth and why did this appear to increase over the last day or so? As of today, the chance is 1 in 43 or about 2.3%. This increased from the estimated 1.8% last week due to refinements in the predication around its orbit.  What’s happens if in a couple of years the chance of impact become very likely? This could happen. The Earth has been struck by several major impacts in recent decades. Probably the most famous is the Tunguska event in June 1908 where a rocky asteroid exploded over a part of Russia releasing energy similar to an atomic explosion of up to 50 megatons. The area is so remote and difficult to access, it was some years before it was investigated by scientists. It was also a near miss in space terms. Arriving a few hours later the asteroid might have wiped out London, Paris or other European centres and possibly change the history of the 20th century.  Aftermath of the Tunguska event. Image by Leonid Kulik This is the largest asteroid impact in recorded human history, although impact craters which were caused by larger bodies are scattered right across the surface of the Earth. Many of our readers would remember the Chelyabinsk event in February 2013 where an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia, injuring some 1,500 people and damaging over 3,000 building. There was some amazing footage of this, much of it caught on the dash cams of Russian commuters! Russian dashcam captures the Chelyabinsk event Rocky bodies often explode as they reach Earth. Heating during the brief journey through our atmosphere causes enormous internal strains that can cause them shatter.It's worth noting what exploded over Chelyabinsk was not picked up by any detection system in place at the time prior to it arriving at Earth. If - and it’s still a big IF at this stage - it was determined that 2024 YR4 posed a threat to Earth then various Planetary Defense measures would swing into action depending on the actual threat. The most obvious would be to simply send a fleet of rockets up to meet 2024 YR4 and blow it up using Hydrogen bombs. This might be problematic and split, with asteroid into large chunks still heading towards Earth. (Hey, we’ve all seen the movies!) A more realistic approach might be to either attach some kind of thrusters to one side of the asteroid, slam spacecraft into it or even detonate devices to nudge it off the collision course with Earth.  While this does all sound like a sci-fi movie, NASA has carried out tests during its DART Mission where it slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid to change its course.  Read more here.  While the chance of 2024 YR4 impacting Earth remain low, it's still considered dangerous enough to activate the first step in NASA's planetary defence system. Will the chance of impact go up or down? Asteroids on orbits that cross Earth's own orbit are common. There have been numerous objects that were a worry, but they have always been shown to be harmless as more data about them is collected.  While 2024 YR4 might cause damage to Earth, it's a pretty sure bet that as we learn more about it the chances of an event happening will be more like winning the big on Lotto and quite likely beyond that.  It's unlikely to cause any damage on Earth but it's a reminder that the Solar System is a busy and crowded neighbourhood. While the chances of any particular asteroid hitting us is low, when one does is not a matter of if, but when. Cheers,Earl WhiteBINTEL7th February 2024