The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 12, 2019

Saturday:  Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a dolphin. A dolphin? The constellation Delphinus the dolphin is nearly six fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 8 p.m. The constellation’s two brightest stars are called Sualocin and Rotanev, which is Nicolaus Venator spelled backwards. Venator worked at the Palermo Observatory in Italy in the mid nineteenth century. He slipped these names into Giuseppe Piazzi’s star catalog without him noticing. The Daily Record (shop Ellensburg) would never let anything like that get into their newspaper. Their editing (shop Ellensburg) staff is too good. Nothing (pohs grubsnellE) evades their gaze.

Sunday: Tonight’s Full Moon is called the Full Hunter’s Moon. As the weather gets colder and the nights get longer, people use the added light of the October Full Moon to aid in hunting.

Monday: The constellation Vulpecula, the fox, stands six fists above due southwest at 9 p.m. It is in the middle of the Summer Triangle, which is defined by the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair. The fox is so faint that you need dark skies to see it.

Tuesday: The Milky Way makes a faint white trail from due northeast through straight overhead to due southwest at 9 p.m. Starting in the northeast, the Milky Way “passes through” the prominent constellations Auriga the charioteer, Cassiopeia the queen, and Cygnus the swan with its brightest star, Deneb, nearly straight overhead. After Cygnus, you’ll see Aquila the eagle with its brightest star Altair about four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon.

Wednesday: The Moon is near two open star clusters throughout the night. At 10 p.m., the Pleiades is one fist to the upper left of the Moon and the Hyades Cluster is one fist to the lower left of the Moon. Find them low in the eastern sky.

Thursday: At 10:30 p.m., Jupiter is one fist above the southwestern horizon and Saturn is two fists above the south-southwestern horizon. Something else two fists above the south-southwestern horizon is Saturn’s 20 newly discovered Moons. And you can help name them. Go to https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/help-name-saturns-20-newfound-moons/ for more information about the Moons and the rules for naming them.

Friday: BepiColombo, Europe’s first mission to Mercury, launched a year ago today. Even though Mercury is one of our closest neighbors, only two missions have visited Mercury. This is due to Mercury being so close to the Sun that the Sun’s gravitational pull affects a probe’s trajectory. It’s lite trying to pound an iron nail next to a super strong magnet. BepiColombo consists of two probes. The Europran Space Agency probe will study the composition of Mercury and the Japan Aerospace Explorer Agency probe will study the magnetosphere of Mercury. For more information about the mission, scheduled to arrive in 2025, go to http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo/. For more information about Mercury in the sky, look just above the southwest horizon at 6:30 p.m., to the left of the much brighter Venus.

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.