SkyNews – September 2019

DEPARTMENTS

04 EDITOR’S REPORT
GARY SERONIK
Astrophoto Mishaps
Taking the perfect shot requires care
and consideration

06 SKY NEWS BRIEFS PAUL DEANS
A Serious Case of Shrinkage; New Space Eyes
for Canada; Wobbling Disc, Precessing Jets;
Maybe Our Solar System Is Unusual;
O Sunspots, Where Art Thou?

16 ON THE MOON
GARY SERONIK
Sailing an Elusive Lunar Sea
Timing is everything for viewing limb-hugging
Mare Australe

18 SCOPING THE SKY
KEN HEWITT-WHITE
The Great Pegasus Cluster
Put this impressive globular on your
light-bucket list

20 STAR CHART
Night sky for early autumn for Canada
and the northern United States

25 THE BINOCULAR SKY
KEN HEWITT-WHITE
M27: The Distant Dumbbell
This famous nebula is well within reach
of common binoculars

36 CONSTELLATION CORNER
KEN HEWITT-WHITE
Cygnus
In ancient times, Cygnus was a huge swan
in graceful flight along the Milky Way

38 PARTING SHOT
KEN HEWITT-WHITE
Superstar Ring World

COVER: Approximately 8,000 years ago, a star estimated to be

20 times more massive than our Sun exploded. The expanding debris

from that cataclysm formed the Veil Nebula, in the constellation Cygnus.

The supernova remnant’s entire expanse is presented with startling

clarity in our Photo of the Week contest Grand Prize winner, captured

by astrophotographer Oleg Bouevitch of Nepean, Ontario.

VISIT US ATskynews.ca

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

Volume XXV/Issue 3 CONTENTS

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06

FEATURES

11 SKYNEWS 17TH ANNUAL

PHOTO OF THE WEEK CONTEST

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

A tremendous crop of superb reader images made selecting

the ‘best of the best’ extremely challenging

22 EXPLORING THE NIGHT SKY BY ALAN DYER

OUTER PLANET VIEWS

It’s prime time for a pair of distant worlds, and the annual Harvest Moon rises

27 COSMIC ENIGMA BY IVAN SEMENIUK

BEYOND THE HORIZON

Astronomers now know what a black hole looks like.

Their next challenge is understanding what they’re seeing.

32 PRODUCT REVIEW BY GARY SERONIK

ORION’S ECONOMICAL

ASTROGRAPH

This 6-inch f/4 Newtonian reflector offers

a low-cost route to deep-sky imaging

32