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This Months Sky Charts.
Charts for  January 13 to February 10 2012 No. 171 

The Sky this month.  
The sky this month is dominated by Monoceros at midnight jsut east of Orion.  There are many deep sky objects of interest here such as NGC 2264, the Christmas
tree cluster (Collinder 112) which contains around 40 stars which resemble a Christmas tree in the eyepiece. 
NGC 2261, Hubble’s Variable Nebula which is around 1 degree south of the Christmas tree cluster.   Hubble found this nebula to vary from month to month.  A star, R Monocerotis, illuminates the nebula.  Next is NGC 2244, an open cluster in the Rosette nebula a favourite of many a deepsky imager.  Here you will see a rectangular shape of around 30 stars.  This groups of stars lay at the centre of the Rosette nebula.   Never seen this nebula is my telescope from my light polluted back garden but maybe from a dark sight.
Last is NGC2301 which is often an overlooked cluster in the centre of the Monoceros.


Deceember 2011 chart







Graph Dark
Rising and setting times of the Sun,  Moon and the planets.
To use the chart above place a ruler  vertically on the date you wish to observe. Read on the left or right the time it cuts a planet line, to find the rising or setting time.  The dark bands indicates when the Moon is absent from the night sky, useful when observing comets, nebulae or star clusters.




Light Pollution

Recently The House of Common's Science and Technology Committee reported on "LIGHT POLLUTION AND ASTRONOMY", but when Tom Harris MP of the Select Committee asked a question in the house about light pollution on Oct 22 2003, it was treated less than seriously by many present. Please write to Rt.Hon. A. Blair MP, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London. 


GRAIL's Twins Safely Reach the Moon.
January 1, 2012. Braking rockets fired on cue placing twin spacecraft in lunar orbit. In the coming months, they will exploit the Moon's own gravity to revolutionize what we know about the lunar interior.  Heartbeat Suggests Smallest Black Hole January 6, 2012. Strange, regular pulses from a black hole-star binary system suggest that the smallest black hole yet discovered lies behind the signals. Similarities between it and another known mystery
object may mean the black holes are hiccupping as they eat.   Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury January 6, 2012. Dynamical odds makers insist that several samples of the innermost planet, blasted into space from fresh craters such as Mena, should be lying somewhere on Earth. Observations by
NASA's Messenger spacecraft suggest they'll have a unique, easily-identified composition. So where are Brief notes from Sky and Telescope.
they?


UTC TIME STEP A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2012. The sequence of
dates of the UTC second markers will be:
2012 June 30, 23h 59m 59s
2012 June 30, 23h 59m 60s
2012 July 01,
0h 0m 0s


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