Perseus

September 30: Open Night

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Stephens Memorial Observatory of Hiram College will be open for public observing Saturday, September 30, from 9:00 to 11:00 PM. Featured that night will be Earth’s Moon, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Perseus Double Cluster. Other objects of interest may also be viewed. Visitors are invited to bring their smart phones and try lunar photography via our grand century-old telescope! Patience will be a necessity as acquiring good smart phone images through a telescope is more difficult than it might seem!

The night’s observing depends upon clear skies and those have been in short supply this season! Cloudy skies at the starting time cancel the event and, in that case, the observatory will not open. No reservations are required and there is no admission fee for observatory public nights.

The Observatory is located on Wakefield Road (Rt. 82) less than a quarter of a mile west of Route 700 in Hiram. There is no parking at the Observatory. Visitors may park on permissible side streets near the Post Office, a short distance east of the observatory.

Here is a link to a map of the Moon with some of its most visible features labeled. The map may be helpful in figuring out just what it was you photographed, or what you may be able to see through binoculars or a telescope!

Perseid meteor shower a good show

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Photo: 2015 Perseids meteor shower imaged over five hours by Scott MacNeill
2015 Perseids Peak by Scott MacNeill, Frosty Drew Observatory, Charlestown, Rhode Island – http://exitpupil.org/

For those with a dark site from which to watch, and the patience to “wait for it…” the 2015 Perseids meteor shower was a good show. Reports from around the world noted substantial numbers of “shooting star” sightings. In the Northeastern Ohio area, amateurs reported from 25 to as many as 57 meteors per hour from good viewing locations. Local observers reported seeing persistent trains, greenish colors, and even flares from some meteors.

The NASA All-Sky “Fireball Network” recorded hundreds of meteors during the event peak, the night of August 12 to 13. “The Perseid shower last night was an almost perfect combinations of circumstances – no Moon, decent shower rates, and clear skies over much of the network,” wrote Dr. Bill Cooke, Meteoroid Environments Office, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Photo: Long Trail of a Perseid Fireball Recorded at 9:42 PM, August 12 via NASA All-Sky Fireball Network
Long Trail of a Perseid Fireball Recorded at 9:42 PM EDT, August 12

The Fireball Network camera system located on the campus of Hiram College recorded a good number of fireballs — meteors brighter than the planet Venus — overnight including several that appeared directly overhead and at least one that appears to have ended in a flare … a bolide. In the images we have posted here, the top of the photo is north and the bottom is south.

Photo: Apparent Perseid Bolide over Hiram at 2:59 AM EDT. NASA All-Sky Fireball Network
Apparent Perseid Bolide over Hiram at 2:59 AM EDT, August 13

The Perseid meteors are associated with the stream of dusty debris called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift–Tuttle. Meteors appear when Earth passes through the dust cloud and bits of cometary material plunge into the atmosphere where friction heats and vaporizes them. The debris particles enter Earth’s atmosphere at around 35 miles per second and most are about the size of grains of sand. The name of the shower is derived from the fact that the meteors, if traced back along their paths, appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus.