Hidden Wonders of the Southern Sky

Here in southern Arizona, we can theoretically see 92.4% of the celestial sphere. I say “theoretically” because atmospheric extinction, light pollution, local topography, and obstructions limit the amount of the celestial sphere that we can see well. Also, far southern objects (down to δ = -58° at φ = 32° N) spend very little time above our horizon each day.

Practically speaking, then, we see somewhat less than 92% of all that there is to see from spaceship Earth.

Percent of the Celestial Sphere Visible

\% = 50\left [ 1-sin\left ( \left|\varphi \right| -90^{\circ}\right ) \right ]

where |φ| is the absolute value of your latitude in degrees

What are the most prominent objects we are missing, and what objects that we can see are they closest to?

Alpha Centauri

Never visible north of latitude 27° N, the nearest star system beyond our solar system is Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri A & B are bright stars, having a visual magnitude of 0.0 and +1.3, respectively, and in 2023 they are separated by just 8 arcseconds, about 1/4 of the angular separation between Albireo A & B. While Alpha Centauri A & B—which orbit each other once every 79.8 years—lie just 4.36 ly away, a faint red dwarf companion, Proxima Centauri (shining at magnitude +11.1), is even closer at 4.24 light years. It is not yet known whether Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1915, is gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri A & B, or just presently passing through the neighborhood. Proxima is a full 2.2° away (over four moon-widths) from Alpha Centauri A & B.

When Arcturus (α Boo) and Zubenelgenubi (α Lib) are crossing our celestial meridian, so are Alpha & Proxima Centauri below the southern horizon.

Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the largest satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy and easily visible to the unaided eye, lies directly below our southern horizon when Rigel has crossed the meridian and Bellatrix is preparing to do so.

Small Magellanic Cloud

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the second-largest satellite galaxy of the mighty Milky Way lies underneath our southern horizon when M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, crosses the meridian near the zenith.

47 Tucanae

The 2nd brightest globular cluster in the sky (after Omega Centauri) is impressive 47 Tucanae. It is just 2.3° west and a little north of the Small Magellanic Cloud, so crosses the meridian below our horizon just as M31 is nearing the meridian.

Eta Carinae Nebula

Four times larger and brighter than the Orion Nebula, NGC 3372, the Eta Carinae Nebula, is a spectacular star-forming region containing a supermassive (130 – 180 M) binary star (Eta Carinae) that may go supernova at any time. When Leo the Lion is straddling the meridian, the Eta Carinae Nebula sneaks across as well.


Any other spectacular objects I should be including that are south of declination -58°? If so, please post a comment here.

Brightest Event Ever Observed

On June 14, 2015, perhaps the intrinsically brightest event ever recorded was detected at or near the center of the obscure galaxy APMUKS(BJ) B215839.70−615403.9 in the southern constellation Indus, at a luminosity distance of about 3.8 billion light years.

ASASSN-15lh (All–Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae), also designated SN 2015L, is located at α2000=22h02m15.45s, δ2000=-61° 39′ 34.6″ and is thought to be a super-luminous supernova—sometimes called a hypernova—but other interpretations are still in play.

Let’s put the brightness of SN 2015L in context.  Peaking at an absolute visual magnitude of -24.925 (which would be its apparent visual magnitude at the standard distance of 10 parsecs), SN 2015L would shine as bright as the Sun in our sky if it were 14 light years away—about the distance to van Maanen’s Star, the nearest solitary white dwarf.  SN 2015L would be as bright as the full moon if it were at a distance of 8,921 light years.  SN 2015L would be as bright as the planet Venus if it were at a distance of 333,000 light years.  Since the visible part of our galaxy is only about 100,000 ly across, had this supernova occurred anywhere in our galaxy, it would have been brighter than Venus.  If SN 2015L had occurred in M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, it would take its place (albeit temporarily) as the third brightest star in the night sky (-0.47m), after Sirius (-1.44m) and Canopus (-0.62m), but brighter than Alpha Centauri (-0.27m) and Arcturus (-0.05m).

The Open Supernova Catalog (Guillochon et al. 2017) lists three events that were possibly intrinsically brighter than SN 2015L.  Two events were afterglows of gamma ray bursts GRB 81007 and GRB 30329: SN 2008hw at -25.014m and SN 2003dh at -26.823m, respectively.  And the other event was the first supernova detected by the Gaia astrometric spacecraft, Gaia 14aaa, 500 Mly distant, shining perhaps as brightly as -27.1m.

References
Chatzopoulos E., Wheeler J. C., Vinko J., et al., 2016, ApJ, 828, 94
Dong S., Shappee B. J., Prieto J. L., Jha S. W., et al., 2016, Science, 351, 257
Guillochon J., Parrent J., Kelley L. Z., Margutti R., 2017, ApJ, 835, 64

Cosmologically Distant Objects Appear Magnified

George F. R. Ellis writes in section 2.3.3 of his outstanding survey paper, Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology:

…there is a minimum apparent size for objects of fixed physical size at some redshift zc = z depending on the density parameter and the cosmological constant.  The past light cone of the observer attains a maximum area at z; the entire universe acts as a gravitational lens for further off objects, magnifying their apparent size so that very distant objects can appear to have the same angular size as nearby ones.  For the Einstein-de Sitter universe, the minimum angular diameter is at z = 1.25; in low density universes, it occurs at higher redshifts.

Electromagnetic radiation such as visible light that we observe from a source that is in motion relative to us (the observer) experiences a change in wavelength that is given by

This is called redshift and is positive for a source that is moving away from us and negative for a source that is moving towards us.  The higher the relative speed toward or away from us, the greater the magnitude of the redshift.  Superimposed upon the kinematic velocities of individual galaxies relative to our Milky Way galaxy, since 1929 we have known that there is a cosmological redshift (called the Hubble flow) that is always positive and increasing in magnitude with increasing distance between any two galaxies.  In the nearby universe, the redshift (or blueshift) from kinematic velocities (often referred to as “peculiar velocities”) swamp the contribution from the Hubble flow, so some galaxies are actually approaching each other.  A good example of this is M31 and the Milky Way galaxy.  For more distant galaxies, however, the cosmological redshift swamps any contribution from the kinematic velocities.  Thus, redshift becomes a useful proxy for distance at cosmological distances.

From our everyday experience, we know that the further away an object is, the smaller is its angular size.  However, there comes a point where the angular size of an object reaches a minimum, and at even greater distances, its angular size increases!  As George Ellis states above, the entire universe acts as a gravitational lens to magnify distant objects.

Michael Richmond presents an equation for angular size as a function of redshift (based on some classical assumptions about the structure of the universe).  In his equation, the angular size of an object also depends upon the value we choose for H0, the Hubble constant, the matter density parameter, ΩM, and, of course, the physical size of the object of interest.

Let’s work through an example using this equation.  The visible part of the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be about 220,000 light years across.  In megaparsecs, that is 0.0675.  This is the value we will use for S.

For the Hubble constant, H0, let use a recent result: 71.9 km/s/Mpc.

And, for the matter density parameter, ΩM, let’s use 1.0.  This indicates that we live in a universe that has just enough matter for the universe to eventually recollapse, were it not for dark energy.  Though Richmond’s equation above only applies to a matter-dominated universe where the dark energy density parameter ΩΛ is zero, as George Ellis indicates above, a minimum angular diameter is still reached in a universe with dark-energy (i.e. low density universe), only this occurs at a higher redshift than that presented here.

I have not been able to find or derive a more general equation for angular size as a function of redshift that will work for a dark-energy-dominated universe (perhaps a knowledgeable reader will post a comment here providing some insight into this issue), but it will be a useful exercise to continue with the calculation assuming the matter-dominated Einstein-de Sitter universe.

Casting Michael Richmond’s equation into the following SAS program, I was able to find that the Andromeda galaxy would reach a minimum angular size of 11.3 arcseconds at z = 1.25, as shown below.

In principle, measuring the angular size of a “standard” object at various redshifts could allow us to determine what kind of universe we live in.  But there’s a problem.  As we look further out into space we are also looking further back in time, so there is no guarantee that a “standard” object in today’s universe (say, a spiral galaxy such as M31) would have looked the same or even existed billions of years ago.

References
Ellis, G. F. R. 2006, Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology, Philosophy of Physics (Handbook of the Philosophy of Science), Ed. J. Butterfield and J. Earman (Elsevier, 2006), 1183-1285.
[http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602280]

Richmond, Michael, Two classic cosmological tests
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180909221238/http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys443/lectures/classic/classic.html]

M31, M33, and the Milky Way

We live within a small cluster of at least 54 galaxies (most of them small), given the unassuming name “The Local Group” by Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) in 1936. The largest of these, M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) is a barred spiral galaxy 2.5 million light years from Earth.  The second largest galaxy in the Local Group is our Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy whose center lies about 26,000 light years away in Sagittarius.  The third largest galaxy in the Local Group is M33 (the Triangulum Galaxy), a spiral galaxy (possibly barred) located 3.0 million light years from Earth.  There are no other spiral galaxies in the Local Group.

M31 and our Milky Way are moving towards each other, and will pass through one another (or at least graze: shall we call it star grazing?) in about 4 billion years.

M33, however, is only about 860,000 light years from M31.  Isn’t M33 in even greater danger of colliding with M31?  The answer is no, we don’t think so, because M33 appears to be orbiting M31.  M33’s eventual role in the Battle of the Titans remains to be determined.