The purpose of this feature is to give scout leaders, educators and naturalists an idea of some of the natural events coming up each month.  We will try to cover a variety of natural events ranging from sky events to calling periods of amphibians, bird and mammal watching tips,  prominent wildflowers and anything else that comes to mind.  We will also note prominent constellations appearing over the eastern horizon at mid-evening each month for our area for those who would like to learn the constellations.  If you have suggestions for other types of natural information you would like to see added to this calendar, let us know!

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Notes From January 2021

After imaging Mars, Jupiter and Saturn this fall I was ready to return to the deep sky. On January 5th I converted my observatory telescope back to its galaxy mode. I spent the afternoon changing cameras, cables and settings, and was surprised to be finished by early evening. Ursa Major, the Great Bear, was poking its head above the horizon and it seemed like a good place to begin. Since I took an image of the galaxy Messier 81 last April, I thought it would be fun to explore its nearby neighbor Messier 82.

Skilled galaxy observers wrote eloquently about graceful spiral arms and intricate dust lanes. I saw only dim, shapeless glows, when I saw anything at all. But that changed when I turned my telescope to M82. It was bright and cigar-shaped! Cutting diagonally through its center was a dark dusk lane! I felt redeemed! The hardest skills to develop are usually the most satisfying, and for me it's been that way observing galaxies.

This evening it was fun to go back and visit my old friend M82. Since I hadn't set up my guide camera yet, these exposures would be unguided. After beginning the exposure sequence I spent some time outside the observatory.

It was a beautiful night. Unlike my summer and fall evenings this year, it was very cold, still and quiet. The great insect orchestras were gone. No tree crickets trilled, no katydids chanted. There were no dark-singing mockingbirds or chats calling from the edge of the woods. There was not even a barred owl to ask who cooked for me, just stars blazing in the silence.

Cygnus, with summer on its wings, was disappearing over the tree line to the west accompanied by Pegasus, the Flying Horse. The Andromeda Galaxy shown brightly to the naked eye. Mars, now fading, looked a little forlorn in Aries. To the south the stars of Orion and Canis Major were like diamonds. Leo was rising in the east, bringing a promise of a new season of galaxies. I stayed until the waning crescent Moon rose over the eastern horizon. The telescope continued on until high clouds moved in during the morning hours and drew a curtain over the evening.

Messier 81 and Messier 82 are among the closest large galaxies to the Milky Way Galaxy. Both are around 12 million light years distant. They are only separated by about a half a degree, so they will both fit in a low power telescopic field of view. You can spot the two galaxies with any pair of binoculars on a dark, moonless night. Mentally draw a line from the star at the lower right corner of the dipper (as it rises) diagonally across the dipper and extend it about the same distance beyond the dipper. Look carefully there for two small colorless glows, probably only about a tenth of your binocular field of view apart.  The position of these galaxies is shown against the stars in the free version of Sky Safari 6 (see below in recommended apps).

Around 100 million years ago, the two galaxies had a close encounter. Gravitational tides from Messier 81 disrupted the interior of Messier 82, resulting in a tremendous outflow of hydrogen gas from the interior of the galaxy. The bright red filaments of hydrogen glow in the light of hydrogen alpha and extend for thousands of light-years in the above image.

This is a region of very rapid star formation and Messier 82 is considered a starburst galaxy. It is not a very large galaxy, only about 37,000 light-years in diameter, but due to its disturbed core it is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared wavelengths. Its total luminosity is about five times greater than our Milky Way Galaxy. Faint trailing spiral arms have been detected in recent studies, indicating it is a spiral galaxy seen edge on.

There are many small background galaxies in the image above. The stars you see are in the foreground are part of our own galaxy and are within tens of thousands of light-years. M-82 is around 12 million light-years distant and the background galaxies are around half a billion light-years away.

On January 23rd I hiked up Mount Cammerer in the Smokies. I'd hiked the trail in summer but never in the winter months.

The Low Gap Trail is pretty steep in places and I found myself having to stop and catch my breath. The steepness makes this three-mile section of the trail seem longer than it is. The woods were very still. Every now and then we heard a woodpecker drumming, but silence won out most of the time. As we approached Low Gap we started to encounter patches of snow and ice on the trail.

After we hit the AT at Low Gap the trail was not as steep. The snow deepened along the trail and icy spots made it a little treacherous in places. But the beauty of the snow-covered landscape made the time pass quickly and it wasn't long before we reached the 1930's era stone observation tower. It was a crystal clear morning and the views were spectacular.

We had lunch on a small rock outcropping. I used an app called PeakFinder to identify some of the more distant peaks. When I got home I used Google Earth, along with the bearing that the app supplied, to find out the distance to the peaks. The farthest peak I found was Big Brushy Mountain, 73.5 miles distant! The peak is right on the horizon left of center of the image above. The line of sight takes you directly over Sevierville and Knoxville. You are actually seeing the terrain where the Cumberland Mountains begin. We were looking across the Tennessee Valley to the other side. The hike was a little over 12 miles and it and made for a memorable day.

 Sky Events for February 2021:

Morning Sky:

Around the middle of the month, watch for Mercury to emerge from its inferior conjunction with the Sun on February 8th and join Jupiter and Saturn who have emerged from their conjunctions with the Sun. The three planets should make a pretty trio till the end of the month in the morning twilight. Begin looking about 30 minutes before sunrise. A flat eastern horizon helps, as does a good pair of binoculars.

Evening Sky:

Mars continues to fade after its October opposition. This month it moves from Aries into Taurus, and on February 18th and 19 it will form a nice grouping with the Pleiades and the waxing crescent Moon.

Ursa Major, the Great Bear, is now prominent in the northeast. It has quite a few bright galaxies and other deep sky objects. The nearby galaxies Messier 81 and Messier 82 can be spotted as dim small glows with binoculars on dark moonless nights.

All of the bright stars of Leo, the Lion, are visible now, including Denebola, the bright star at the tip of the Lion's tail.  Part of the constellation of Virgo is visible below Leo.  It's handy to know where Denebola is, because below it, if you imagine sliding down the Lion's tail, is the great Virgo cluster of galaxies.  Left of Denebola, on a line towards the handle end of the "big dipper," you will see the faint star cluster Mellotte 111, in Coma Berenices. The little constellation of Crater has now cleared the horizon.

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