Betelgeuse - Orion's Red Shoulder

I love the constellation of Orion, it was the first constellation I learned to recognise in the night sky.  I've been ill for a few weeks so I've not been able to get out with the telescope, so I've been doing some reading about Betelgeuse, Orion's red shoulder.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, and it's the 10th brightest star in the sky. It's colour is actually visible to the naked eye - next time you look, try comparing the colours between Betelgeuse and Rigel on Orion's knee. It's actually an unstable star, and it fluctuates between 300 and 400 times the size of the sun, and so it's apparent magnitude changes from 0.4 to 1.2.

It's cooler than our Sun, scientists think the temperature is 3300 degrees Kelvin whereas our Sun is 5778 degrees Kelvin.  It's actually 1000 times more massive though, and its size is huge - if it was placed in our Solar System, it would reach out almost to Jupiter's orbit.  Wow! Lucky it's 640 light years away, huh?

Scientists say that though the star is young, it has probably already fused it's Hydrogen and has begun to fuse Helium.  It will eventually work through its other elements - neon, magnesium, sodium and silicon down to its iron core before it collapses into a type II supernova.  That will definately be a sight to see! 

Finally, it's the only star other than our own that NASA has got a surface image of, the first was in 1995, by Hubble:







image credit NASA, for more info on the image, click here

January 2015 Viewing Aims

To give my stargazing some kind of direction, I've set myself some targets for January:

Very early in January comes the Quadrantid meteor shower, also known as the Bootid shower.  It's name comes from the now declassified constellation of Quandrans Muralis and the shower material is associated with asteroid 2003 EH1 or maybe the comet c/1490 y1 - there is some debate over this.  It has a small peak window on the night of the 4th January, but a well lit waxing gibbous Moon may well wash the shower out.  Meteors may also be seen between the 1st and 5th of January, but in smaller numbers.

I've got a bit of a thing about double stars at the moment, having managed to split spectacular Albireo earlier this winter.  This month, Ill be trying to split Alnitak and Mintaka in Orion.  Alnitak is the farthest East of the belt stars, Mintaka the western most.  Alnitak might be tough to split it in my particular telescope, but I like a challenge, and Orion is now in a favourable viewing position for me.

A short hop from Orion is the constellation of Monoceros, I've read about beta Monocerotis and it sounds like it will be a nice treble to try and split and see.

On the 11th January, Mercury and Venus will be close together low in the South West.  Ive never seen Mercury so I've really got my hopes up about this.  I've a sneaking feeling though that they will be too low on the horizon for me - my South West view is partially blocked by trees.

Jupiter is now in a position where I can see it from about 2230, so Ill be looking forward to my first views of the season.  It's one of my favourite sights, and I'm hoping to attempt some images this year.

Early January should give me some opportunities to continue my Lunar 100 challenge.  I'd like to try to image each one, but my main aim for January- lunar wise at least - is to image the Appenines!

Finally, comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy is on it's way so I'll be trying to catch a little glimpse of it.  There is a wealth of information on the comet here.

I hope this may have inspired you to look at some of these, let me know how you get on, and your own aims via the comment option below. Here's hoping for clear skies!