Saturday: Warrant,
the American glam metal band (as labeled by Wikipedia) was singing about carbon
stars in its 1991 hit “I Saw Red”. The lyrics for the astronomy version are
“Then I saw red, when I looked up in the sky, I saw red, Orion’s bright star it
was by.” R Leporis, also known as Hind’s Crimson Star, is one of the reddest
stars in the sky. It is a star near the end of its life that has burned its
helium nuclei into carbon. Convective currents, like those in a pot of boiling
water, bring this carbon to the surface. There it forms a layer of soot that
scatters away the light from the blue end of the visible spectrum leaving the
light from the red end of the spectrum to reach our eyes. For more information
about Hind’s Crimson Star and a list of other deep red stars, go to http://goo.gl/EnhRe4.
Hind’s Crimson star is one fist to the lower right of Rigel, the brightest star
in Orion. You’ll need binoculars or a small telescope to see it Hind’s Crimson
star. But you can easily spot Rigel two fists held upright and at arm’s length
above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.
Sunday: Saturn
will be obscured by the light of the Sun for a few weeks before peeking up in
the morning sky in mid-January.
Monday: Just
before Christmas, you look for junk to clean out of your closets so you can
re-gift it. I mean, so you can throw it out or recycle it. NASA’s Meter Class
Autonomous Telescope on Ascension Island is a key tool in a program tracking
about 22,000 pieces space junk. Some of this junk is dangerous. The
International Space Station occasionally performs debris avoidance maneuvers to
keep is panels and sensitive instrument safe. For more information about the
project, go to http://goo.gl/Kxgihd.
Tuesday: The
bright star Capella is nearly straight overhead at midnight tonight.
Wednesday: The
Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight. Meteor showers are named after the
constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear
to come from a point in Gemini the twins. This point is about three fists above
the east-northeast horizon at 9 p.m. tonight. You can follow this point
throughout the night, as it will remain near the bright star Castor, the right
hand star of the “twin” stars Pollux and Castor. This shower is typically one
of the best ones of the year producing bright, medium speed meteors with up to
120 meteors per hour under ideal conditions near the peak. This year IS near
ideal because the Moon is close to new so it will be below the horizon for most
of the night.
Most meteor
showers occur when the Earth passes through the orbital trail of a comet. The
broken off comet fragments collide with the Earth and burn up in the
atmosphere. Astronomers had searched for a comet source for this shower since
1862 when the shower was first observed. Finally, in 1983, astronomers
discovered the object that created the fragments that cause the meteor shower.
To their surprise, it was a dark, rock that looked like an asteroid, not a
shiny icy comet. Astronomers named this object Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. As an
added bonus this year, this asteroid is visible through a small telescope. If
you are up for the challenge of finding 3200 Phaethon, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/3200-phaethon/.
For more information about the Geminid shower, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/geminid-shower-2017/.
Now that’s a self-explanatory URL!
Thursday: Jupiter is less than a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon
in the southeastern sky at 7 a.m. Mars is a little more than a fist to the
upper right of the Moon.
Friday: Columbia
the dove, representing the bird Noah sent out to look for dry land as the
floodwaters receded, is perched just above the ridge south of Ellensburg. Its
brightest star Phact is about one fist above the south horizon at midnight.
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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