Star Hopping #1 - Find m8, m20, and m22

In this first episode of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory, we'll look at the rich Sagittarius region, and show you how to find these beautiful deep sky objects: The Lagoon Nebula The Trifid Nebula And the Large Globular Cluster M22 Alright, Let's Go Star Hopping! Hey there and welcome to the very first episode of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory! I'm Dave Hearn, and I'm very excited to be your host. In this series of programs we'll show you the most beautiful sights in the night sky, and explain exactly how to find them with your binoculars or telescope. Well lucky for us, we're starting off in one of the best times of year to look for some beautiful and relatively bright deep sky objects. Late summer nights begin with the Milky Way appearing straight overhead. If you're in a place away from city lights, you can look straight up and see a glow that extends from the northeastern sky the whole way down to the southern horizon. This glow is caused by the collective light of millions of stars in our own Galaxy: The Milky Way. Seen from far above, the Milky Way would look something like this galaxy, and we live about halfway out in one of the spiral arms. When you look toward the deep southern sky, the Milky Way appears brighter. That's because you are looking across the spiral arms toward the core of our galaxy. The brightest part of the Milky Way lies in the constellation of Sagittarius, which is where we will be pointing our telescopes tonight. Here's Sagittarius. It's shaped like a teapot - can you see it? It has a handle, a lid, and a spout. We'll be starting our hunt from the top star in the lid, which is named Kaus Borealis. So now we're going to start a process called Star Hopping. When you use Star Hopping to find a particular deep sky object, like a nebula, a galaxy, or a star cluster, you start at a bright star, then "hop" or move to another star close by, all the while referring to your star atlas or electronic star chart. You continue to hop to other stars, moving closer to your target. Once you get close, you can judge the distance and direction needed to find your target, and voila, there it is in your telescope's eyepiece. So, as we mentioned, we will start our search at the top star in the teapot: Kaus Borealis. There are many targets in this area to keep you busy, but the brightest and arguably the most beautiful is the Lagoon Nebula, entry number 8 on the famous Messier list. This list of 110 star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies was compiled by the French astronomer Charles Messier in the 1700s, and is the list that beginner amateur astronomers try to tackle first, some of which are pretty challenging to locate. It's amazes me that they could find some of these faint deep sky objects so long ago. But back to the Lagoon Nebula. This massive area of nebulosity is a stellar nursery; a birthplace of stars. The red color of the nebula is due to glowing clouds of hydrogen, excited into luminescence by the energy streaming from the young stars within it. To find the Lagoon, we move up from Kaus Borealis, and look for another star about the same brightness, about 8 degrees above it. Looking at your fist against the sky spans about 10 degrees, so it's just a bit smaller than that. The second star is called "Polis". Now, imagine an equilateral triangle (all sides the same length) with a base between Kaus Borealis and Polis. Where the third point of the triangle would lie out to the right, you will see a small fuzzy patch. Turning you telescope to it, you have found the Lagoon Nebula! In medium size telescopes the Lagoon is an easily seen object, appearing as a swirling patch of nebulosity with a generous smattering of stars in and around it. Well, Congratulations on your first star hop! Well, it was kind of a triangulation. But the concept is the same. You just have to use positions and shapes outlined by surrounding stars in order to locate your target object. Some times it's easy like this one, but sometimes it can be a bit challenging. But when you finally locate a tough object, there's a lot of satisfaction and pride in your success. The great thing about this particular area of the sky is that there are so many other objects close by. So you can use the object you are on, in this case the Lagoon Nebula, to start your next Star Hop. I guess in this case we should call it a "Nebula Hop"! Our next target, the equally famous Trifid Nebula, is only one degree away. This is the distance that just one finger covers on the sky at arms length. The Trifid is another emission nebula, but it has an interesting feature of having some additional reflection nebula behind it. In addition to the cooler red-orange stars within the emission nebula, there are some hotter blue stars outside of it. This light from the blue stars bounces off the reflection nebula and makes the nebula appear blue. So the red and blue colors together are very striking. Add to that an open star cluster associated with the complex, and even a dark nebula in front of it all that seems to split the emission nebula into three parts? Wow, that certainly makes for a gorgeous nebula in astrophotos, like this one taken at the observatory. So, let's Star Hop. Starting from the amazing Lagoon Nebula that you currently have in your eyepiece, all you have to do is move slowly upwards and away from the teapot lid, and the Trifid will appear in your eyepiece. So one comment about viewing these nebulae that appear so colorful in astrophotos. Unless you have an extremely large telescope, most nebulae and galaxies appear ghostly white through a telescope. Many people find this somewhat disappointing the first few times. But once you start to recognize these faint fuzzies, you know when you've found a target. The reason we don't see color in the eyepiece is because the light is too faint to activate the cone cells in our eyes. So the rod cells see the light but there's no color information, so the deep sky objects appear ghostly pale. Now, the brightest stars CAN stimulate your cone cells, so we can see yellow stars like Capella in Auriga, and orange stars like Antares in Scorpius, or blue stars like Vega in Lyra. I like to show star color comparisons at public observing sessions, which the kids and some of the adults really enjoy. So, one more Star Hop for this episode. We're going to locate the massive globular star cluster: Messier 22. A globular cluster is a densely packed group of stars that all formed together. As Carl Sagan eloquently described it, a globular cluster is like a cloud of bees, bound by gravity, every bee a star. I've always wanted to say that on camera! Anyway, In some of these globulars, there are hundreds of thousands of stars, and in some rare cases, over a million stars can comprise one of these magnificent objects. To locate M22, we return to Kaus Borealis, at the top of the lid of the Teapot of Sagittarius. This is a little more of an elaborate Star Hop, so you'll need to use a low power eyepiece in your scope, or your binoculars. So let's do it. To the left of Kaus, about 1/2 degree away, lies a pair of stars that form a triangle with Kaus. From the bottom star of that pair, continue another half degree in the same direction and you will locate another star of approximately the same brightness. Now we make a leap of faith, and move another full degree in the same direction, until we discover 4 or 5 stars, the brightest two being 24 and 25 Sagitarii. You'll know it when you find them. Now we're getting close to M22. Move another half degree in the same direction, and, oh my goodness, glorious M22 comes into view. A larger scope will resolve this beast to the core and it will cover half the eyepiece at 100x magnification. Now that's a payoff for your efforts! So that's our three targets in Sagittarius for this episode. I hope you enjoyed hopping around the Milky Way. We're really looking forward to bringing these astronomy tutorials to you as often as possible. They will be designed to help you find deep sky objects that are up in the sky at the time we post them to YouTube. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our channel, click Like, and share them with all your friends. Also, please feel free to leave a question or comment below, and we will be sure to respond quickly. Also, please follow us on Facebook where we post all of our astrophotos and keep everyone informed about upcoming astronomical events. 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