Saturday: Is your favorite astronomy-loving relative asking for a telescope this Christmas? Before reaching for your credit card, read this guide to choosing your first telescope, available at http://goo.gl/5oXmGj. If cost is an issue, look no further than this article about low-cost telescopes https://goo.gl/8yyddy. These are not cheap telescopes. They are simple, low-cost, easy to use telescopes that your future astronomer will still use for quick observing sessions long after she has purchased a much larger instrument for richer viewing. If you want to give a gag astronomy gift to someone who really bugs you, give them a copy of this column. After such a dud “gift”, you’ll never hear from them again. And that may be the best gift of all.
Sunday: Lieutenant Worf, the Klingon Starfleet officer on
Star Trek: The Next Generation, might say “Today is a good day to die.” But
Deneb, the bright supergiant star in Cygnus the Swan would say “two million
years from now is a good day to die.” This may seem like a long time. But,
compared to the lifespan of most stars, two million years from now is as close
as tomorrow. For example, the Sun will last about five billion years. Small
stars known as red dwarfs may last trillions of years. Prepare your astronomically
short goodbyes to Deneb tonight at 11:00 when it is about two fists above due
northwest.
Monday: Have you been online shopping all weekend? Do you
need an evening sky break? You deserve a big reward so make it a double. A
Double Cluster. The Double Cluster, also known as h and Chi Persei, consists of
two young open star clusters in the constellation Perseus. Of course, young is
a relative term as these clusters are about 13 million years old. Each cluster
is spread out over an area about the same size as the full moon. To the naked
eye, the Double Cluster shines with a steady, fuzzy glow. Binoculars resolve
dozens of individual stars in the clusters. The Double Cluster is five and a
half fists above the northeastern horizon at 6:00 p.m., about a fist below the
sideways “W” of Cassiopeia and three fists above the bright star Capella.
Tuesday: Venus is one and a half fists above the
southwestern horizon at 5:00 p.m. Saturn is three fists above the
south-southeastern horizon at this time.
Wednesday: It’s getting too cold to see frogs in the wild.
But this is a great time to see frogs in the sky. Ancient Arabs referred to the
stars that we now call Fomalhaut and Diphda as Ad-difdi al-awwal and Ad-difda
at-tani. This means the first frog and the second frog, respectively. Both
frogs are low in the southern sky at 6:00 p.m. Fomalhaut is nearly one and a
half fists above due south. The slightly dimmer Diphda is two fists above the
south-southeast horizon.
Thursday: While you were looking through your underwear
drawer for clean socks, some citizen scientists were looking through sky maps
obtained by robotic telescopes to find brown dwarfs. The project, called
Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors, allows anyone with a computer and internet
connection to search through thousands of images to find these strange objects
that are midway between being classified as large planets and small stars. Some
brown dwarfs can have surface temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius, the
recently discovered ones are cooler than the boiling point of water and may
even have clouds of water vapor! Read more about the discovery and how you can
participate in this project at https://noirlab.edu/public/blog/newly-launched-backyard-worlds/.
Friday: Jupiter is four and a half fists above the
east-southeastern horizon at 9:00 p.m. Mars is one fist above the
east-northeastern horizon at this time.
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.
All times are Pacific Time unless noted.
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