December 2022 Stargazing Photos

Here are the best pictures I got when I went stargazing in December 2022. I am going to keep this posting short and sweet just like I did in my last post. Be that as it may, I think I have made some interesting comments below. I hope you read them and find them to be interesting too.

Star Clusters

I took another picture of the Pleiades because I recently learned more about it. Most cultures around the world have noticed and named the Pleiades. Here are some of the names given to the Pleiades. The ancient Greeks called it the Seven Sisters because seven of the stars in the cluster were visible to the naked eye. Renowned French astronomer Charles Messier catalogued it as M45 in the 18th century. The Chinese called it Mao. The Japanese called it Subaru. Yes, the car company was named after this star cluster. In fact, the company’s logo is a stylized representation of this cluster. The largest star in the logo is Alcyone, the brightest star in the cluster.

You can find the Pleiades northwest of Aldebaran, Taurus the Bull’s red eye. While only 6 – 7 of the stars in the cluster are visible to the naked eye when you have dark skies, the cluster actually contains over 800 stars. The cluster is 444 light years from Earth. It is the closest Messier object to us.

Messier 39 or M39, also known as NGC 7092, is an open cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Cygnus the Swan. It is 1,110 light years from Earth.

Messier 29 or M29, also known as NGC 6913, is a quite small (only 50 stars), bright open cluster of stars. This cluster is also part of Cygnus the Swan. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, and can be seen from Earth by using binoculars. The cluster is 3,740 light-years from us.

Nebulae

When you look at this picture, a lot of you will see the Orion Nebula (M42) but you will only be part right. There is actually a second nebula in this picture called De Mairan’s Nebula (M43) that is in the upper left portion of the photo. De Mairan’s Nebula is more or less round, has one bright star in the center of it, and contains a dense lane of dust known as the northeast dark lane which – in this picture – goes through the bottom left of the nebula. De Mairan’s Nebula is approximately 1,300 light years from Earth.

The Ring Nebula (M57) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra. (Lyra was often represented on star maps as a vulture or an eagle carrying a lyre.) Fans of the Big Bang Theory may recognize this nebula as the one seen in Leonard’s and Sheldon’s apartment. The nebula can be found southwest of the star Vega and is 2,567 light years away.

The next three pictures are examples of one of the most common types of planetary nebulas. As some stars age, they blow off their outer layers as a shell of ionized gas. This gas often glows blue. Then the star collapses into a white dwarf and is surrounded by its blue gas “shell”. That’s why there are so many nebulae that look like the ones included here. The size of the gas shell and its shade of blue will vary. The prominence of the nebula’s white dwarf star will vary too. Be that as it may, they all have the same basic structure.

The first nebula in this group of three is Cleopatra’s Eye Nebula. It is in the constellation Eridanus, the River. It is between 5,500 and 7,500 light years from Earth.

The second nebula in this group is the Blinking Planetary Nebula. It is in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. It is around 2,000 light years away. (I’ll explain why it appears to blink in a later post.)

The third nebula is the Crystal Ball Nebula. It is in the constellation Taurus, the Bull. While this nebula is dimmer than the other two, it still has the same basic make up. It is around 1,520 light years away.

There are other examples of this type of nebula in earlier blog posts.

Planets

I took this picture of Mars when it was at opposition. You will see that Mars is bigger in this picture than the pictures in earlier blog entries.

Jupiter is moving away from us now so – as this picture shows – it appears to be smaller than the pictures in earlier blog entries. In particular, look at the picture of Jupiter at opposition in the September 2022 blog entry. The planet was noticeably larger back then.

Galaxies

M77, also known as Cetus A and nicknamed the Squid Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cetus. The Whale. It lies at a distance of 47 million light years and has an apparent magnitude of 9.6. Currently, M77 is in the southwestern sky to the right of Orion and Taurus. M77 is one of the largest galaxies included in the Messier catalogue. It occupies an area of 7.1 by 6 arc minutes of apparent sky, which corresponds to a linear diameter of 170,000 light years.

The galaxy is easy to spot with binoculars as it is quite compact and has a bright core. Small telescopes will reveal a fuzzy ball of light with a bright center, and 4-inch instruments will also show the galaxy’s oval halo. The rest of the galaxy is difficult to see with visible light because there are dust clouds between us and M77. If those dust clouds weren’t in the way, we would all see M77 in the night sky.

Messier 110, or M110, also known as NGC 205, is a dwarf elliptical galaxy that is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy in the Local Group. Charles Messier never included the galaxy in his list, but it was depicted by him, together with M32, on his drawing of "Nébuleuse D'Andromède", later known as the Andromeda Galaxy. A label of the drawing indicates that Messier first saw the object in 1773. The suggestion to assign the galaxy a Messier number was made by Kenneth Glyn Jones in 1967, making it the last member of the Messier List. M110 is 2.7 million light years away.

Messier 108 (M108) – also known as NGC 3556, nicknamed the Surfboard Galaxy – is a barred spiral galaxy about 28 million light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation Ursa Major, the Bear. From the Earth, this galaxy is seen almost edge-on. This galaxy is an isolated member of the Ursa Major Cluster of galaxies in the local supercluster.