Australian Sky & Telescope — November-December 2017

4 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE November | December 2017

REGULARS

5Spectrum

8Newsnotes

12 Discoveries

17 AS&T bookshop

53 Vistas

61 New products

FEATURES

10 AustraliaandtheEuropean

Southern Observatory

Australian astronomers are eager to

makeuseofsomeofthebiggestand

best telescopes in the world.

By Jonathan Nally

14 Searching a trillion stars

for E.T.

Shrinkingthepossibilitythatreally

advanced aliens are broadcasting far

and wide.

By Robert H. Gray

18 ThehuntforPlanetX

Evidence is building that a large

worldlurksfarbeyondPlutoandthe

KuiperBelt.Theracetofinditison.

By Scott S. Sheppard

24 Earth’s dying days

ThefutureofourSolarSystem

largelydependsonhowtheSunages.

Regardless of the outcome, it doesn’t

look good for Earth.

By Peter Tyson

34 The father of southern

astronomy

French astronomer Nicolas-Louis

de Lacaille invented more of today’s

constellations than anyone else.

By Brian Ventrudo

Contents

November | December 2017 ISSUE 105, VOL. 13 NO. 8

OBSERVING & EXPLORING

42 Binocular highlight

Finding the Silver Coin galaxy.

By Matt Wedel

44 Under the stars

Atrioofstellarprototypes.

By Fred Schaaf

46 Sun, Moon and planets

Jupiter’s planetary pairings.

By Jonathan Nally

47 Meteors

ReadyfortheLeonidsandGeminids?

By Con Stoitsis

48 Double star notes

Binary stars, true and false.

By Ross Gould

49 Variable stars

A famous star’s climb to peak light.

By Alan Plummer

50 Comets

Faint fuzzball visits our summer skies.

By David Seargent

52 Celestial calendar

How to spot Uranus and Neptune.

By Alan MacRobert

54 Celestial calendar

The drama-ridden story of R Aquarii.

By Alan MacRobert

56 Exploring the Moon

The vagaries of crater ‘tweens’.

By Charles A. Wood

58 Targets

Eridanus — a river full of galaxies.

By Sue French

P.14 Are aliens broadcasting to us from the Andromeda galaxy?

P.62 What it’s like to see a quasar