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Friday, March 05, 2010Galaxy huntingFor amateur astronomers, spring is traditionally the time to go hunting for those elusive and faint little balls of fuzz, namely galaxies. We call these and other objects outside our solar system, such as star clusters and nebulae, deep-sky objects. Galaxies, though, are perhaps the most sought after deep-sky objects, not because they are anything spectacular to view in telescope eyepieces – most are simply little grayish balls of fuzz - but because, by their very nature, galaxies are objects of mystery and awe. For one, galaxies, even our closest galaxy neighbors, neighbor are immensely distant objects and it sometimes strikes me as a miracle that we can even see them at all in our telescopes. For another, galaxies are truly immense objects; they typically appear small in our telescopes because they are so distant. Then, too, each galaxy may hold many millions of planets, some of which may harbor life and intelligent life, at that. As I look through my telescope at a distant galaxy, I sometimes wonder if some alien life form is looking at my galaxy and wondering the same thing. Galaxies may not be great fare as a visual image in an amateur telescope, but they do make the imagination soar. Galaxy hunting in our amateur telescopes is an endangered pastime, however. Not to worry, the galaxies are still there and, in fact, the Hubble keeps finding more and more; the problem is light pollution. Galaxies, even relatively bright galaxies, are faint objects as far as deep-sky objects go. Light pollution washes a dark sky with so much scattered light that it becomes impossible to detect the faintest galaxies and, since light pollution is an ever spreading and growing problem, due to our urban population growth, it is becoming harder and harder to hunt for galaxies. In fact, the hunt for galaxies is as much a hunt for a site that offers dark skies, free of light pollution, as it is a hunt for the galaxies, themselves. For most of us enthusiastic galaxy hunters, then, our only option is to pack a telescope in our car and drive to dark rural observing sites, far from urban areas. I fear that we galaxy hunters are becoming as rare as those dark observing sites. Comments: |
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