Night sky: The ETA Aquarid Meteordschusche and other highlights for May

A closer look at M87

M87 was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781. He classified it and eight other similar space objects than “nebulous”.

With a small telescope, M87 looks like this:

M87 became famous among the astronomers in 1918 when Heber D. Curtis discovered that in short -term photos they could see a “straight steam” from the middle of the fog. It looks like this.

The beam (protrudes up to the left) is a plasma beam that comes from the black hole in the middle of the galaxy. This jet lasts about 18,000 years, and the particles it contained there are close to the speed of light!

Of course, this jet deletes everything that gets in his way, but it also seems to have a disadvantage on the surrounding stars. Recent studies indicate that this plasma jet may explode near Stars as Nova!

M87 was only classified as a galaxy in 1926 when Edwin Hubble classified it as an excalactic fog. He did not use the term “galaxy” because he was synonymous for the Milky Way at the time.

It is interesting to determine that Hubble's research on Cepheid -Variablenstars in 1925 helped him to prove that M31, the Andromeda galaxy, is outside the Milky Way. The Milky Way is 53,000 light years in diameter and M31 are 2.5 million light years. In one year, the well -known universe expanded 50,000 light years to over 55 million light years.

What you can search for in the night sky in April in April

If you get up on May 1st before sunrise (6:09 a.m.) and it is clear, you can merging Venus, Saturn and Neptune about 5 degrees above the eastern horizon.

In the evening, the summer triangle slowly climbs over the eastern horizon. It starts with Vega at 8:34 p.m. next at 9:51 a.m. The last star of the triangle, Altair, rises at 11:44 p.m.

The ETA Aquarid Meteor shower summit on the night of May 5th. The best tour will occur between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. The shooting star seems to come about 15 to 30 degrees above the eastern horizon.

Moon phases:

1st quarter is May 4th

Full moon is May 12th

The last quarter is May 20th

Neumond is May 26th