Saturday: Dead
October flowers lead to November meteor showers. While the Leonid meteor shower
is the next big name event, the few bright and surprisingly colorful fireballs
per hour you can see during the typical Southern and Northern Taurids meteor
showers may make it worth your while to stay up late for a few nights. These
two showers overlap from mid-October to mid-November. Meteor showers are named
after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These
meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is nearly four
fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-southeast horizon at 11
p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night, as it will remain one fist
to the right of the V-shaped Hyades Cluster with its bright star Aldebaran
(pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran). Meteors are tiny rocks that burn up in the
atmosphere when the Earth runs into them. These rocks are broken off parts of
Comet 2P/Encke. For more information about the Taurid meteor showers, go to https://goo.gl/oqnZWy.
Sunday: Halloween
is coming soon so make sure you load up on peanut clusters, almond clusters,
and open star clusters. That last one will be easy (and cheap… actually free)
because two of the most prominent open star clusters in the sky are easily
visible in the autumn sky. The sideways V-shaped Hyades Cluster is two fists
above due east at 10 p.m. Containing over 300 stars; the Hyades cluster is
about 150 light years away and 625 million years old. The Pleiades Cluster, a
little more than three fists above due east, is larger at over 1000 stars and
younger. Compared to our 5 billion year old Sun, the 100 million year age of
the Pleiades is infant-like. The moon will help you find these clusters. This
morning at 6:30 a.m., the Pleiades cluster is less than one fist to the upper
right of the moon and the Hyades cluster is about one fist to the upper left of
the moon. Tomorrow morning, the moon sits in the “V” of the Hyades cluster.
Monday: Saturn
is about one fist above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m.
Tuesday: Vega,
the bright bluish star in the constellation Lyra, is six fists above the west
horizon at 8 p.m.
Wednesday: Along with the not-so-subtle drug reference in their name, The
Doobie Brothers could have made an astronomy reference in their song lyrics if
they would have written: “Old Earth water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon
won’t you keep on shining on me.” Astronomers now think that some of the water
on Earth may be older than the Solar System. The chemical signature of the
water indicates it came from a very cold source, just a few degrees above
absolute zero. The early Solar System was much warmer than this meaning the
water came from a source outside the Solar System. For more information about
the old Earth water, go to http://goo.gl/QsEu5P.
Thursday: Rho Cassiopeiae is the most distant star that can be seen with the
naked eye by most people. It is about 8,200 light years away. That means that
the light that reaches your eyes from that star left over 8,000 years ago,
before the beginning of time according to the Byzantine calendar. Rho
Cassiopeiae is six fists above the northeast horizon at 8 p.m., just above the
zigzag line that marks the constellation Cassiopeia.
Friday: At 7
a.m., Mars is two fists and Venus is one fist above the east-southeast horizon.
The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.
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