Saturday: In
1979, The Police released the song called “Walking on the Moon”. Today at 1:00
p.m., The Virtual Telescope project will host an online lunar observing session
to allow you to virtually walk on the Moon. This is your opportunity to see the
Moon close-up. Go to https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/online/4693-walking-on-the-moon.html to access the
observing session.
Sunday: The
Stargate movies and TV shows have access to a portal to other planets. Harry
Potter has access to a portal to the Chamber of Secrets. You have access to a
Portal to the Universe. This portal is not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom but on
the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/. It is a
repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts.
One recent feature
highlights the first direct image of a black hole. You probably saw the now
famous donut-shaped image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope in the news last
week. NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory obtained a much wider field of view of
the same black hole, showing the giant jet of high energy particles launched by
the strong magnetic and gravitational fields. This jet is more than 1,000 light
years long. For more images, go to http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2019/black_hole/.
Monday: The Lyrid
meteor shower peaks next week. But there will be increased meteor activity for
the next ten days in the vicinity of the constellation Lyra. The meteors appear
to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the
constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists above the
east-northeast horizon at midnight and close to straight overhead near dawn.
Tuesday: Saturn is
one and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 5 a.m.
Wednesday: The
early modern astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote about the “music of the spheres”,
exploring the relationship between planetary orbits and musical intervals. It
turns out there is no actual relationship. On the other hand, Italian pianist
and composer Giovanni Renzo gets inspiration from astronomy videos and photos from
around the world to put on the Cosmic Concert. Original music and videos will
flow together to form one coherent work of art. Listen and watch the concert
starting at today noon Pacific Daylight Time by going to
Thursday: Tonight’s
full Moon is in the constellation Virgo. The bright star Spica remains to the
lower right of the Moon throughout the entire night.
Friday: Astronomers
are often fascinated with large objects. Planets that could fit 1000 Earths
(Jupiter). Stars that would fill up the entire inner Solar System (Betelgeuse).
Galaxies with 400 billion stars (Milky Way). But what about the smallest
objects? One of the smallest stars is Proxima Centauri, the closest known star
other than our Sun. It is about 12% of the mass of the Sun. Three years ago,
astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting Proxima
Centauri indicating that even very small stars can have planets. The smallest
theoretically possible star would be about 7.5% of the mass of the Sun. Any
smaller and it could not support the nuclear reactions characteristic of stars.
For more on small stars, go to http://goo.gl/EHBdOX.
Jupiter, the object
that will fit 1000 Earths rises at 12:30 a.m. and is two fists above due south
at 5 a.m.
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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