The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 3/2/19

Saturday:  The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from 10 to 11 am. Note the different time for this month. Dr. Darci Snowden will give a tour of the solar system. Shows are free and open to all ages. There will be a show at (or near) noon on the first Saturday of every month hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

Sunday: Are you worried about winter storms on Earth? Wait until you see some of the storms on Uranus and Neptune. Hubble Space Telescope scientists just released images of the weather on these two ice giants. Neptune has a storm that is about half the size of the Earth. Uranus’ north polar region is covered by a giant, yamaka-like cloud cap. Learn more about the weather on these planets at https://earthsky.org/space/hubble-space-telescope-sees-storms-uranus-neptune. Neptune is too low in the sky to be seen. But Uranus is easily visible using binoculars three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west-southwest horizon. First find Mars, the bright orangeish dot four fists above the west-southwest horizon. Then move your binoculars toward due west, where the planet Mercury sits just above the horizon. Uranus is about two binocular fields of view below Mars.

Monday: As part of the CWU and Ellensburg Big Read events about the novel “To Live”, there will be a presentation about Chinese astronomy, myths, science, and stories about the stars tonight from 6:30 to 7:30 in the CWU Lydig planetarium. For more Big Read events, go to https://libguides.lib.cwu.edu/ToLive.

Tuesday: Avast ye matey. Swab the poop deck. Pirates love astronomy. In fact, the term “poop” in poop deck comes from the French word for stern (poupe) which comes for the Latin word Puppis. Puppis is a constellation that represents the raised stern deck of Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. Argo Nevis was an ancient constellation that is now divided between the constellations Puppis, Vela and Carina. The top of Puppis is about a fist and a half to the left of the bright star Sirius low in the southern sky at 9 p.m. Zeta Puppis, the hottest, and thus the bluest, naked eye star in the sky at 40,000 degrees Celsius is near the uppermost point in Puppis.

Wednesday: Orion stands tall in the southern sky. At 7:00 p.m., the middle of Orion’s belt is four fists above due south. And talk about belt tightening! Alnilam, the middle star in the belt, is losing mass at a rate of about 100 thousand trillion tons a day. That’s a 1 followed by 17 zeros tons per day.

Thursday: At 6 a.m., Jupiter is two fists above the south horizon, Saturn is one and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon, and Venus is one fist above the southeast horizon.

Friday: It is often said that Earth is a water world because about 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. What would it look like if all that water on the surface were gathered up into a ball? That “ball” would be about 700 km in diameter, less than half the diameter of the Moon. The Astronomy Picture of the day shows us right here https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120515.html.

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.