Welcome to the Cosmos

The first post of a blog is always the hardest to write and generally the most embarrassingly self-centred, so I’ll do my best to keep my introduction short and sweet. Hello and welcome! I’m a second year Astronomy student at University College London and wanted a chance to share just why I think the Universe is so fascinating. I’ll be posting write-ups of any interesting astronomical news when I can and letting you know what you can look out for each month in the skies. Feel free to contact me if you have any particular questions- I’ll do my best to answer them for you or sneakily Wikipedia them if I can’t... And if there’s anything important I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll get on the case asap.

So to begin, for my first bit of Astronomy news I think I should briefly mention the Perseid meteor shower. Sadly my lack of forsight means I’ve started blogging a day too late to catch the shower’s peak between the 12th and the 13th of this month. That doesn’t mean that the shower is over however and if you still want a chance to catch a glimpse of a shooting star, grab a deckchair and head outside this evening. The Perseids are the result of Earth’s orbit passing through the debris of comet Swift-Tuttle, which passes close by to us every 130 years. These tiny fragments of dust and ice may only be 1 millimetre in diameter, but as they come into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere at very high impact velocities they burn up and streak across the sky as shooting stars.

As their name suggests, the Perseids appear to originate from a point in the constellation of Perseus, which will appear in the northeast just under the conspicuous ‘W’ shaped constellation, Cassiopeia. My top tip for seeing as many meteors as you can is to your eyes moving around the northern sky, making sure that you don't focus directly on the point of origin, but at the area around it. If nothing else, moving your head around will at least help to maximise the time you have before your neck inevitably starts to freeze into position. This is especially important given the universal decree that whenever you finally look downwards to stretch your spine, at least half a dozen of the brightest meteors ever seen will suddenly streak overhead. I call this the "Sod's Law of Astronomy" and it is best avoided as much as possible.This year with the moon out of the way for a change seeing has been good when the clouds have parted and from dark sky locations the peak of the shower normally allows observers to see up to 80 meteors per hour. I popped out into my very light polluted suburban garden last night for just 20 minutes and saw 4 meteors and an iridium satellite flair: Granted it was in the shower’s peak, but I have high hopes that the Perseids should continue to be pretty rewarding for at least a few days yet.

As a side note for those with equipment other than their eyes, Jupiter is making a reappearance in the skies- rising in the east at about 21:45 BST. I can normally get a view of the Galilean moons and even make out the main bands of Jupiter in good weather (just) with my 70mm children’s telescope, so anyone with even a good pair of binoculars should be in for a decent view. Recently the main southern cloud band on the planet disappeared and no one is entirely sure why. The most popular theory postulates that its disappearance is simply due to pale high-altitude clouds in the planet’s upper atmosphere, but even then I’m not convinced. Whatever the cause however, this strange phenomenon has happened before and it will definitely be worth watching to see when the cloud band finally reappears again. I also have it on good authority that the great red spot on the planet should also be in view for anyone with decent telescopes on the 31st of this month at 03:17BST. Take a look if you can! It’s times like this that I wish I had unlimited access to the University of London Observatory’s 8 inch refractor/ the money for my own observatory. Do they do student loans for those?