Saturday: School
starts next week so it is time for a little geometry review. A square is a
four-sided figure with four equal sides and four right angles. Go outside at 10
p.m. tonight with notebook in hand to sketch one. The Great Square of Pegasus
is balancing on its corner two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due
east. The top corner of the square is two fists above the bottom corner. The
other two corners are to the left and right of the line segment connecting the
top and bottom corners.
Sunday: Geometry
review, part 2. Go outside at 10 p.m. tonight with notebook in hand. (Good teaching
involves a little repetition.) A triangle is a polygon with three corners and
three line segments as sides. A good example is the Summer Triangle made up of
the bright stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. Vega, the brightest star in the
triangle is a little bit west of straight overhead. Deneb is a little bit east
of straight overhead and Altair is five fists held upright and at arm’s length
above the south horizon.
Monday: You
think the Ellensburg wind is bad. Some of the Jovian planets have winds of over
1000 miles per hour. Jupiter and Saturn have belts of rapidly moving clouds
that can be observed with back yard telescopes. To learn more about windy
worlds, go to http://goo.gl/GLWAi.
Tuesday: The
moon is midway between the Hyades star cluster and the Pleiades star cluster
throughout the night. At midnight, they are just above the east-northeast
horizon. By 5 a.m., they are high above due southeast.
Wednesday:
The Ellensburg Rodeo is a “Top-25” rodeo. What does it take to be a “Top-25”
star? There are many ways to rank stars. The most obvious way for a casual
observer to rank stars is by apparent brightness. The apparent brightness is
the brightness of a star as seen from Earth, regardless of its distance from
the Earth. Shaula (pronounced Show’-la) is the 25th brightest star in the
nighttime sky as seen from Earth. It represents the stinger of Scorpius the
scorpion. In fact, Shaula means stinger in Arabic. Shaula has a visual
brightness rating of 1.62. Sirius, the brightest star has a visual brightness
rating of -1.46. (Smaller numbers mean brighter objects.) The dimmest objects
that can be seen with the naked eye have a visual brightness rating of about 6.
There are approximately 6,000 stars with a lower visual brightness rating than
6 meaning there are 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye. Shaula is a blue
sub-giant star that radiates 35,000 times more energy than the Sun. It is 700
light years away making it one of the most distant bright stars. Shaula is a
challenge to find because it never gets more than a half a fist above the
horizon. Look for it tonight about a half a fist above the south horizon, a
little bit west of due south, at 8:30.
Thursday: Venus is one fist above the
west-southwest horizon and Saturn is one and a half fists above the southwest
horizon at 9 p.m. Enjoy them while they last in the evening sky because they
are getting closer to the Sun’s glare.
Friday: Deneb
is about seven fists above the east horizon at 10 p.m. When you look at Deneb,
you are seeing light that left Deneb about 1,800 years ago.
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