Astrofest

On the Astrofest Oval telescopes are clustered together in "Pods"! Each Telescope Pod will be showing a different object. Tall flags with the names of the objects will let you know what the telescopes will be viewing. You'll be able to look through telescopes to see Saturn, the Moon, star clusters and much more...

This year there will also be a "Smart Telescope" Pod featuring the new technology that allows observers to take great images of deep sky objects. These telescopes have an inbuilt camera, so you don't look through an eyepiece. Instead, check out real time images of deep sky objects on the screens each operator will have.

All Telescope Pods will be marked with the objects they are trained on. Read on and you'll discover more information about the objects you may see. Enjoy the views of the Universe with WA's wonderful astronomy groups, clubs and organisations.

Please note, objects on show may change if cloud interrupts the view of the night sky.

The Moon

Image: NASA

Distance: 384 000km
Size: 1/4 x Size of Earth (fits between Perth and Sydney)
Mass: 1/81 x Mass of Earth
Orbital Period: 27.3 Earth Days
Rotation: Tidally locked to Earth

The Moon is the Earth’s only natural satellite. Only 59% of the Moon’s surface can ever be observed from the Earth, this is because the moon is tidally locked to the Earth; this means that the Moon rotates around its axis at the same period as it orbits the Earth. Due to the lower gravity you would weigh 16.6% of your earth weight. When a month has two full moons, the second full moon is called a blue moon; this occurs once every two to three years.
The dark spots we see on the Moon that create the image of the man in the Moon are actually craters filled with basalt, which is a very dense material.
There is an ongoing project called the “Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment” which measures the distance between the earth and the Moon using lasers bouncing off of reflectors left behind by the Apollo 11, 14 & 15 missions.
The Moon has been discovered to be slowly receding from the earth at a rate of 3.8 cm a year.
A total of 12 men have landed on the Moon so far over 6 Apollo missions between 20 July 1969 and 14 December 1972.
The Moon is believed to have formed 4.5 billion years ago when an object the size of Mars which we call Theia impacted the Earth; the resulting ejected material coalesced to form the Moon as we know it today.
The ocean tides on the earth are produced by the gravitational influence of the Moon, the closest and furthest points on the Earth to the Moon experience high tides and the sides of the earth experience low tide.
A high portion of the craters on the moon were created 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago during a period know as the Late Heavy Bombardment, this was a period where all the rocky planets are known to have received frequent impacts.
Due to a lack of atmosphere, weather and geological processes many of these billions of year old craters have been preserved on the moon. Due to a lack of any significant global magnetic field astronauts who have visited the moon are subject to much higher doses of radiation as the magnetic field of the Earth protects us.
When Alan Sheppard was on the moon during Apollo 14, he hit a golf ball and drove it 732 meters.

Saturn

Image: NASA

Size: 9 x Size of Earth; Mass: 95 x Mass of Earth
Orbital Period: 29.5 Earth Years
Planet Number: 6; Rotation Speed: 10 Hours 39 minutes
Moons: 146 (as of June 2023)

Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system. Saturn has the brightest ring system of all of the giant planets, as it is made predominantly of water ice, which is very reflective.
Saturn is the furthest planet visible to the naked eye, and has been observed by humans for thousands of years.
Saturn takes 29 earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun, meaning seasons on Saturn last for a little over 7 earth years. In contrast, Saturn rotates very quickly, with a single Saturnian day lasting only 10 hours and 42 minutes.
Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of methane, ammonia and various ices.
Saturn is the least dense planet in the Solar System, If you had a bath big enough it would float.
Saturn's pale-yellow appearance is due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere.
Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h which are faster than on Jupiter, but not as high as those on Neptune.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is the only place in the solar system -except for Earth- to have liquids present on the surface. however, the liquid is not water - its liquid hydrocarbons!
Titan is also the only moon to have a thick, permanent atmosphere, that extends dozens of km above the surface of the moon.
Another of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has a subsurface ocean. Ice volcanoes at the south pole of Enceladus are constantly erupting, throwing ice and water out into Saturn’s rings.
They were created by a moon of Saturn whose orbit had decayed to much being ripped apart by tidal forces of Saturn.
Saturn's ring system consists of nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs.
The rings are mostly ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust.
Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture.

Venus

Image: NASA

Size: 0.95 x Size of Earth; Mass: 81% Mass of Earth
Orbital Period: 225 Earth days
Planet Number: 2; Rotation Speed: 243 Earth days
Moons: 0

Venus was the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility. She was a lover of Mars.
Venus is the brightest planet and is known as the morning and evening “star”.
Venus is the second brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon.
Venus is often called "Earth’s twin" because they’re similar in size and structure, but Venus has extreme surface heat and a dense, toxic atmosphere.
Venus is the 2nd closest planet to the Sun, orbiting at about 108 million kilometres
Venus has a solid surface covered in dome-like volcanoes, rifts, and mountains, with expansive volcanic plains and vast, ridged plateaus.
The average surface of Venus is less than a billion years old, and possibly as young as 150 million years old.
Venus the hottest planet in our solar system with surface temperatures.
Venus’ thick atmosphere traps heat creating a runaway greenhouse effect giving Venus a surface temperature of ~460 °C making it hot enough to melt lead
Venus is permanently shrouded in thick, toxic clouds of sulfuric acid that start at an altitude of 45 to 70 kilometres. The clouds smell like rotten eggs!
Venus’ clouds reflect 60% of sunlight back into space and prevents any view of the surface.
Venus rotates the slowest of any planet and longer than its year.
Due to an axis tilt of 177° its rotation is backwards compared to Earth and a “day” on the surface (sunrise in the West to sunset in the East) would be 117 days.
This unusual situation is likely to be the result of a massive impact early in Venus’s life and subsequent tidal locking due the very dense atmosphere.
Venus has the most volcanoes present on the surface of all planets in the solar system with over 1,600 known major volcanoes.
Although the Venus moves slowly, the clouds move across the atmosphere once every four Earth days; this is known as 'super rotation'. This generates speeds of 360 kilometres per hour, which surpasses the speeds of the most dangerous hurricanes on Earth.
Being inside Earth’s orbit, Venus has phases like the Moon.
Venus is known to transit in pairs, with over a century separating the pairs, making it a very rare event.
It is possible that Venus once could have supported life for billions of years.
Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.

47 Tucanae (47 Tuc)

Image: NASA

Magnitude: +3.95
Distance: 15,000 Light Years
Object: Globular Cluster
Constellation: Tucana

47 Tuc is the second brightest globular cluster in the night sky, after Omega Centauri.
Like all globular clusters it is extremely old, around 13 billion years.
It is located in the constellation Tucana as such is only visible from the southern hemisphere.
47 Tucanae lies around 15,000 light-years away from Earth, making it one of the closest large globular clusters to us.
47 Tucanae spans about 120 light-years in diameter and contains several million stars.
47 Tucanae's total mass is estimated to be about 1 million solar masses, making it one of the most massive known globular clusters.
Globular clusters tend to have more massive stars near their centres, while less massive stars tend to migrate further out into the suburbs through a process called mass segregation.
Globular clusters are located in the halo of the Milky Way Galaxy, meaning that they are either above or below the main disk of the galaxy and therefore do not get disturbed by the material in the disk.
There are around 160 globular clusters currently known to be in the halo of the Milky Way.
All the stars in a globular cluster are metal poor, making them an unlikely location to find exo-planets.
Due to the density of a globular cluster it is a good place for astronomers to look for black holes.
The cluster is known for its large number of millisecond pulsars—neutron stars that spin incredibly fast. In fact, it hosts over 35 known pulsars, one of the highest numbers found in any globular cluster.
If the earth was located inside 47 Tuc the stars all around would light up the sky to an extent that night would be as light as day.
The cluster is near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in the night sky, though it is not physically associated with it.

Alpha Centauri

Image: Alpha Centauri by NASA

Magnitude: +3.29
Distance: 4.3 Light Years
Object: Double Star
Constellation: Centaurus

Alpha Centauri is one of the most famous double stars. It’s one of the “Pointers” to the Southern Cross and is the third brightest star in our night sky. It can only be seen in the southern hemisphere.
It is actually a triple star system, with the third star being Proxima Centauri. Proxima is some distance away from the bright pair of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. Proxima is not visible in the same field of view through a telescope.
Alpha Centauri is the next closest star after our sun. The bright pair of Alpha A and Alpha B orbit one other every 79.2 years. This motion/orbit is measurable in during an observer’s lifetime. The greatest separation between the two stars was in 1976, and minimum was in 2016. The separation is widening now and will be at its greatest again in 2056.

Star Clusters

Image: Butterfly Cluster by NASA

Magnitude: +4.19
Distance: 1,600 Light Years
Object: Open Cluster
Constellation: Scorpius

M6 The Butterfly Cluster was seen by Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D. It contains 80 stars spread over a 54 arc minute area. It is between 50 to 100 million years old. Like all open clusters these stars are believed to have formed from the same giant molecular cloud and are still loosely gravitationally bound to each other.
Open clusters are key objects in the study of stellar evolution, having been born in the same cloud they contain similar chemical compositions allowing for easier determination of their other properties such as distance and age.

Tarantula Nebula

Image: Tarantula Nebula by NASA

The Tarantula Nebula is a very faint object and it’s very difficult to see it well through a telescope in the light polluted skies of Perth. At this Telescope Pod, you might find larger telescopes that will give a better view. Plus, there may also be some telescopes set up for live streaming which will enhance the view of this wonderful object.

Magnitude: Nebula: +4.0, Cluster +8.
Distance: ~ 160,000 Light Years
Object: Reflective and Emission Nebula
Location: In the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Doradus Constellation

The Tarantula Nebula is a star-forming region, made up of clouds of interstellar matter.
The Tarantula Nebula not only reflects light from its stars, but it also glows with its own light, produced when its high-energy stars ionise the gas like a neon sign.
It is circumpolar and is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby satellite galaxy of our own galaxy.
It spans an area slightly larger than the size of the full Moon
If it were located at the distance of the Orion Nebula M42 ~1350 LY it would outshine Venus, casting shadows on Earth, and span ~60° of the sky.
The dark loops and the central cluster give the faint impression of a large spider with glinting multiple eyes, possibly the origin of the Tarantula
Tarantula nebula is the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of galaxies.
Tarantula nebula has an estimated diameter of around 650 to 1860 light-years. This makes it well over 10 times the diameter of Orion’s nebula.
The Tarantula nebula is one of the largest nebulas in the Local Group, sometimes described as the largest, although NGC 604 may be larger.
Tarantula nebula is on 'leading edge' of rotation on the Large Magellanic Cloud which results in compression that is part of star forming process.
The estimated mass of its star cluster is 450,000 solar masses, suggesting it may become a globular cluster in the future.
The stars and star clusters inside the Tarantula Nebula range in age from just two million years old (which is very young for a star) to more than 25 million years old.
The Tarantula Nebula also contains the fastest known spinning star and the speediest moving stars currently known.
A black hole, with a mass of at least 9 solar masses, has been discovered in the Tarantula Nebula, orbiting a 25 solar mass blue giant companion VFTS 243.
Supernova 1987A, the closest supernova observed since the invention of the telescope, occurred in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula.
The name "Tarantula Nebula" arose in the mid-20th century due to its appearance in photographic exposures.
It's also called the Great Looped Nebula, and the True Lover's Knot (a bowknot used as a symbol of love) after 19th-century explorer of the skies, Admiral William Henry Smyth
The Tarantula Nebula was discovered to be a nebula by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751–52 from the Cape of Good Hope.

Smart Telescopes

The Smart Telescope Pod is new for Astrofest 2024. Recent technological developments have seen the popularity of smart telescopes rise over the last year. These new telescopes allow observers to take great images of deep sky objects. They have an inbuilt camera, so you don't look through an eyepiece. Instead, check out real time images of deep sky objects on the screens each operator will have.