Saturday: Draco
Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series.
Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the constellation Draco the dragon makes an
appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed
from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon
is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due north at 9 p.m. Eltanin,
the brightest star in the constellation, is at one corner of the
trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.
Sunday: Saturn
is three fists above the south horizon at 7 a.m.
Monday: Jupiter
is about a finger thickness from the moon throughout the night. At 7 p.m.,
Jupiter is just above the moon, six fists above the southeast horizon. In parts
of the South Pacific, the moon will occult Jupiter. In musical language, that
can be describes as “Some enchanted evening, you may see a planet, you may see
a moon, across a crowded sky.”
Tuesday: You
think wintertime weather is bad in Ellensburg. Astronomers have discovered
storms and earth-sized clouds on a brown dwarf. These are cool, small stars
that are not massive enough to fuse hydrogen atoms and fuse hydrogen. In fact,
they are more similar to gas giant planets such as Jupiter that to the Sun. In
this context, the discovery of storms similar to the giant Red Spot on Jupiter
makes sense. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/jQS3k.
Wednesday:
Let’s review three important sets of three cats. There’s Josie, Valerie, and
Melody of Josie and the Pussycats. Felix, Tom, and Sylvester from old time
cartoons. And, if you want to get away from the mind-numbing effects of television,
there’s Leo the lion, Leo Minor, and Lynx in the night sky. Leo is by far the
most prominent of these three constellations. Its brightest star called Regulus
is nearly four fists above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. The backwards
question mark-shaped head of Leo is above Regulus and the trapezoid-shaped body
is to the left of it. Leo Minor consists of a few dim stars right above Leo.
Pretty wimpy. The long dim constellation spans from just above Leo Minor to
nearly straight overhead. You and fellow stargazers won’t need to wear a long
tail or ears for hats to enjoy these stellar cats.
Thursday: Are
you looking for a vacation spot close by? One that is not to warm and not too
cold. One that is “just right”. Last month, astronomers discovered that the
star Tau Ceti, one of our closest neighbor at 12 light years away, may have
five planets. One of those planets orbiting the Sun-like star is in the
so-called Goldilocks Zone where the temperature is just right for having liquid
water. You’ll want to do some research before you travel there. Tau Ceti is
four and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 7 p.m. For more
information about the discovery, go to http://goo.gl/jZ9xx.
Friday: Are
you interested in participating in astronomy research? You don’t need to go
back to school. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting a fake
degree from an online university. The scientists working on the High Resolution
Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
would like your input on which objects they should target for close-up
pictures. While you may think the scientists are just trying to build interest
in their project by having people look at pretty pictures, there is a real
scientific benefit to having many eyes searching for interesting targets. There
aren’t enough scientists to carefully inspect all of the low power images. And,
surprisingly, computers are not nearly as effective as people in making
educated judgments of images. So, go to http://www.uahirise.org/ and click on
the HiWish button. You’ll be on your way to suggesting close-up targets for
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week.
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