The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 30, 2022

Saturday: The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on May 4, 5, and 6. Since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, you should start looking before dawn every morning this week. The moon is close to the New phase all week, meaning it won’t obscure the meteors. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. The meteors appear to come from a point in the constellation Aquarius near the star Eta. This point is about one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 4:00 a.m. The Eta Aquarid meteors slam into the Earth at about 40 miles per second. They often leave a long trail. The Eta Aquarid meteors are small rocks that have broken off Halley’s Comet. For more information about the Eta Aquarids, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158833.

Sunday: Mother’s Day is next Sunday. What are you going to get her? Get her a Gem(ma). The star Gemma, also known as Alphekka, is the brightest star in the constellation Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Gemma, Latin for jewel, is the central gemstone for the crown. It is four fists above due east at 10:00 p.m.

Monday: Mercury is one fist above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m., to the lower right of the waxing crescent moon. The open star cluster The Pleiades is just to the right of Mercury.

Tuesday: Four naked eye planets line up in the morning sky all week at 5:00 a.m. Venus is the brightest, lowest, and farthest to the left. It is a half a fist above the eastern horizon. Jupiter is the second brightest, about a half a fist to the upper right of Venus. Mars is one fist above the east-southeastern horizon. Saturn is one and a half fists above the southeastern horizon.

Wednesday: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is moving towards the horizon and out of the evening sky. It is a half a fist above the southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: The daytime is bright and the nighttime is dark. Place the Earth and its atmosphere in fairly close orbit around any star and the daytime rule would still apply. But put the Earth and its atmosphere in orbit around a star at the center of a globular cluster and the night sky would never be dark. Astronomers estimate that the sky would be 10 to 20 times brighter than Earth’s sky when our Moon is full. One of the brightest globular clusters, M3, is six and a half fists above due southeast at 10:45 p.m. It is a little more than one fist above the bright orangeish star Arcturus. It will look like a fuzzy patch in your binoculars. For a hypothetical view of what the night sky would look like at the center of this or a similar globular cluster, go to https://tinyurl.com/yyp88w7x.

Friday: This weekend, celebrate Mother’s Day with the big mom of the sky, Virgo. Ancient Greeks and Romans associated this portion of the sky with their own goddess of the harvest, either Demeter (Greeks) or Ceres (Roman). Demeter was the mother of Persephone and Ceres was the mother of Proserpina. According to myth, each of these daughters was abducted causing their mothers great grief. The first star in Virgo rises in the afternoon. Spica, the bright bluish star in the constellation rises at 7:00 p.m. and is three fists above the south-southeastern horizon at 10:00 p.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.