What's up in the Ellensburg, Washington Sky

The Ellensburg Sky for the week of 1/28/12

2012-01-25T23:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Winter is the best season for finding bright stars. And if you only want to set aside a few minutes, 10 p.m. tonight just might be the best time because the winter hexagon is due south. Starting at the bottom, find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon. Going clockwise, Procyon (6th brightest star visible from Washington state) is about two and a half fists to the upper left of Sirius. Pollux (12th brightest) is about two and a half fists above Procyon. Capella (4th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Procyon and close to straight overhead. Going back to Sirius at the bottom, Rigel (5th brightest) about two and a half fists to the upper right of Sirius. Aldebaran (9th brightest) is about three fists above Rigel. Betelgeuse (7th brightest) is in the center of the hexagon. Adhara (16th brightest) is a little more than a fist below Sirius and Castor (17th brightest) is right above Pollux. That’s nine of the 17 brightest stars visible in the northern United States in one part of the sky.

Sunday: Jupiter is a fist to the left of the Moon, five fists above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Monday: The good news is the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. The better news is the farther north you go in the United States, the longer the days get. Here in Ellensburg, there is one more hour of daylight than on the first day of winter. In the southern part of the US, there are only 30 more minutes of sunlight. Of course, on the North Pole, the day length goes from zero hours to 24 hours.

Tuesday: Two year ago, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spotted its first of many never-before-seen near Earth asteroids. While there is no danger of this asteroid hitting Earth in the foreseeable future, the United States’ government is worried about the threat of a rogue asteroid hitting Earth. So much so that Congress mandated that by 2020, NASA must find 90% of all potential Earth-impacting asteroids down to 140 meters across. I may write a book about this search called “Going Rogue – An Asteroid Life”. Here is an excerpt.
I’d rather “stand with our North Korean allies” than be in the path of even a small asteroid streaking towards Earth. Would it be dangerous? You betcha! The asteroid that created the mile-wide impact crater in Arizona was only 25 meters in diameter and packed a wallop about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I say “Thanks but no thanks” to that kind of risk, even if this size impact occurs only once every few hundred years.

Wednesday: Venus is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

Thursday: Today is Groundhog Day. If Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow this morning, he is telling us that he follows the Chinese calendar and that spring starts early. On the Chinese calendar, equinoxes and solstices occur in the middle of their respective seasons. In order for the vernal equinox to occur in the middle of spring, spring must start on February 3 or 4, depending on the year. Thus, if Phil doesn’t see his shadow, legend is that spring will start on February 3 or 4 as on the Chinese calendar. If Phil sees his shadow, he is telling us he agrees with the western calendar and that there will be six more weeks of winter meaning spring will start near March 20.

Friday: Mars is one fist above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg Sky for the week of 1/21/12

2012-01-18T22:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due north at 9 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the constellation, is at one corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.

Sunday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen.

Monday: Jupiter is four and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 8 p.m.

Tuesday: How many of you live a sedentary lifestyle? Well, get off the couch, go outside and look at the sky. Mars, which is one fist above the east horizon at 10 p.m., should remind you of the sedentary lifestyle tonight because it is stationary. Being stationary does not mean hovering in the sky all night in the exact same location like that spaceship your weird uncle supposedly saw. A stationary planet still rises and sets with the other objects in the sky because this motion is due to the Earth’s rotation. Outer planets such as Mars typically move slightly westward each night with respect to the background stars. As they are in the process of being passed up by Earth, they appear to slow down and stop their westward motion for a night. Tonight is that night. For an effective demonstration of this, go to http://goo.gl/qGeJE.

Wednesday: Venus is about a fist to the left of the newly crescent Moon low in the western sky at 6 p.m.

Thursday: Are you interested in participating in astronomy research? You don’t need to go back to school. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting a fake degree from an online university. The scientists working on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would like your input on which objects they should target for close-up pictures. While you may think the scientists are just trying to build interest in their project by having people look at pretty pictures, there is a real scientific benefit to having many eyes searching for interesting targets. There aren’t enough scientists to carefully inspect all of the low power images. And, surprisingly, computers are not nearly as effective as people in making educated judgments of images. So, go to http://www.uahirise.org/ and click on the HiWish button. You’ll be on your way to suggesting close-up targets for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Friday: What is the number one threat to the peaceful use of space? Missiles from rogue nations? Nope. Aliens? You wish they’d take you away after seeing the preview of Men in Black 3. It is space junk. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk orbit the earth, most of it in the main human-made satellite region. The US Department of Defense is tracking over 21,000 objects greater than four inches across to assess the danger they pose. Go to http://www.heavens-above.com to find out what large pieces of that space junk is visible any night. You may select your location from a map, from a list, or enter it manually. The bright object three and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 6:30 a.m. is definitely not space junk. It is Saturn.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg Sky for the week of 1/14/12

2012-01-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Who can forget that memorable song by Three Dog Constellations Night, “The sky is black. The stars are white. Together we learn to find the light.” Well, maybe it didn’t go like that. This is good because not all stars are white. Most stars are too dim to notice a color. But, the stars in the constellation Orion provide a noticeable contrast. Betelgeuse, five fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10:30 p.m. is a red giant. Rigel, the bright star about two fists to the lower right of Betelgeuse, is a blue giant.
By the way, the three dog constellations are Canis Major, the greater dog; Canis Minor, the lesser dog; and Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. Canis Major contains Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: The Weather Girls recorded “It’s Raining Men” in 1982. This weekend, The Phobos-Grunt Boys will be singing, “It’s raining probes, hallelujah. It’s raining probes. Should have gone to Mars. Launched. Burn, didn’t work. Russia’s good at clean and jerk.” Russia launched the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe on November 9. It was supposed to make the 1.25 year trip to Mars’ moon Phobos, study the surroundings, collect soil samples, and bring them back to Earth. However, the final boost to push it from Earth’s gravitational pull failed and it got stuck in low earth orbit. It is expected to burn up in the atmosphere this weekend with any large pieces reaching Earth on Sunday.

Monday: This morning’s last quarter Moon is in the constellation Virgo, making a small triangle with the bright Spica to its upper right and Saturn to its upper left. The triangle is about three fists above the south horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Tuesday: How do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal shelter, care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle of a star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a minute. Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead, they study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and piece together the information from those different stars. What they do is like studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of star life.
First, find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short lived existence, is three and a half fists above due south at 9:30 p.m. About one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The middle “star” is really a star forming region called the Orion nebula. There you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and a little below Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star. Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life that started out life a bit larger than the Sun.

Wednesday: Jupiter is five fists above the southwest horizon at 8 p.m.

Thursday: January is the coldest month of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace. Fornax the furnace one fist above due south at 7 p.m.

Friday: Venus is two fists above the southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/7/12

2012-01-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

Saturday: One Family Affair explored the trials of well-to-do civil engineer and bachelor Bill Davis as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his luxury New York City apartment (as described on Wikipedia). Another family affair explores how a well-to-do Solar System raises its constituents from birth, through growth, change, and death. Just like Buffy and Jody started off full of energy, planets start out hot and molten. Cissy got wrinkles as she approached middle age; planets become cratered as they age. We watched the TV show “Family Affair” to learn about a nontraditional Manhattan family grew and changed. Astronomers study other planets to learn how the Solar System will evolve. For more information about this Solar System Family Affair, go to http://goo.gl/G029D. Mars, one of the most studied members of the Solar System family, is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: It’s cold. The snow is blowing in your face. Food is scarce. Packs of wild animals are wondering around howling. Does this describe your house after someone broke your window during your New Year’s party? It also describes wolf packs around Native American villages. That’s why many tribes call January’s full moon, which occurs tonight at 11:31, the Full Wolf Moon. It is also called the Moon after Yule.

Monday: The rapper Lil Bow Wow, now known by his adult name, Bow Wow, has a new album coming out soon. The sky has its own lil bow wow coming out every night this winter. Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor, the lesser dog, is about three fists above the east-southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above due north at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: What you see with the naked eye isn’t all that can be seen. While astronomers can learn a lot from observing the sky in the visible wavelengths, many celestial objects radiate more light, and more information, in wavelengths such as radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray. Last year, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to study objects that radiate in the infrared range such as asteroids, cool dim stars, and luminous galaxies. For an interesting comparison of how different wavelengths show different aspects of a galaxy, go to http://goo.gl/nvuax. If it wasn’t for infrared telescopes such as WISE, astronomers would not know about the significant amount of dust in galaxies.

Thursday: The ringed planet Saturn and Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, are three fists above the south horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Friday: If Friday the 13th is supposed to be unlucky, then this is your unlucky year. There are three Fridays that fall on the 13th this year! And they occur 13 weeks apart! And the government is charging an extra $13 tax those Fridays! Okay, I made up that last one. But I’m not making up that Boötes the herdsman is the 13th largest constellation by area. Boötes is a kite-shaped constellation. Arcturus, at the bottom of the Boötes kite and the second brightest star visible from Washington, is six fists above the south horizon at 6:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/31/11

2011-12-27T21:21:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 12/31/11

Today: Forget about that big bright ball in Times Square. You can mark the start of the new year with one of the sky’s own big bright balls. That perennial favorite New Year’s Day marker, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, rises to its highest point in the sky a little after midnight on January 1. Thus, when Sirius starts to “fall”, the new year has begun. Look for Sirius about two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at midnight.

Sunday: Today is the day we celebrate the anniversary of something new – a new classification of celestial objects. Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres [pronounced sear’-ease], the first of what are now called “asteroids”, on January 1, 1801. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. At first, Piazzi thought it was a star that didn’t show up on his charts. But, he noted its position changed with respect to the background stars from night to night. This indicated to him that it had to be orbiting the Sun. In August of 2006, Ceres got promoted to the status of “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union.

Monday: Venus is one fist above the southeast horizon and Jupiter is five fists above the south-southeast horizon at 6 p.m.

Tuesday: Today’s weather forecast: showers. Meteor showers, that is. The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks over the next two nights. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. That makes this shower mysterious because there isn’t any constellation with this name now. The shower was named after Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation found in some early 19th century star atlases. These meteors appear to come from a point in the modern constellation Draco the dragon. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon at 1 a.m. In good years, careful observers can spot about 100 meteors per hour. This year, the moon will be setting during the peak observation time so some of the dimmer meteors will be obscured by moonlight. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Most meteors are associated with the path of a comet. This shower consists of the debris from an asteroid discovered in 2003. Keeping with the comet-origin paradigm, astronomers think the asteroid is actually an “extinct” comet, a comet that lost all of its ice as it passed by the Sun during its many orbits.

Wednesday: If the Sun looks big today, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. The Earth is at perihelion at about 5 p.m. If you dig out your Greek language textbook, you’ll see that peri- means “in close proximity” and helios means “Sun”. So, perihelion is when an object is closest to the Sun in its orbit, about 1.5 million miles closer than its average distance of 93 million miles. Since it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere now, the seasonal temperature changes must not be caused by the Earth getting farther from and closer to the Sun. Otherwise, we’d have summer when the Earth is closest to the Sun. The seasons are caused by the angle of the sunlight hitting the Earth. In the winter, sunlight hits the Earth at a very low angle, an angle far from perpendicular or straight up and down. This means that a given “bundle” of sunlight is spread out over a large area and does not warm the surface as much as the same bundle in the summer.

Thursday: Has it been tough to wake up this past week? It should have been because the sunrise has been getting a little later since summer started. I know. I know. December 22 was the shortest day of the year. But, because the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical and not circular, the Earth does not travel at a constant speed. It moves faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is farther away. This leads to the latest sunrise occurring in early January, today for 2012, and the earliest sunset occurring in early December, not on the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. On the first day of winter, however, the interval between sunrise and sunset is the shortest. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/C7Fyz.

Friday: Mercury is less than a half a fist above the southeast horizon and Saturn is three and a half fists above due south at 7 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/24/11

2011-12-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 12/24/11

Today: What would that special someone want to see on the back of Santa’s sleigh when she gets up early Christmas morning to eat one of Santa’s cookies? A fruit cake? No. A barbell? Maybe to work off the fruitcake. A subscription to The Daily Record? Of course. But what she really wants is a ring. And if she looks out a south-facing window, she’ll see her ring. Saturn the ringed planet, that is. Saturn is three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 7 a.m.

Sunday: Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw Jupiter being eclipsed by the Moon in the east and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2, Bruce Palmquist version, informed by Michael Molnar). There are many theories as to the physical explanation of the Star of Bethlehem, the celestial object that guided the wise men to the location of Jesus. Some people think it was a recurring nova, a star that explodes. Some think it was a close alignment of bright planets. Some think it was a miracle that requires no physical explanation. In 1991, astronomer Michael Molnar bought an ancient Roman Empire coin that depicted a ram looking back at a star. Aries the ram was a symbol for Judea, the birthplace of Jesus. The Magi, or “wise men”, who visited the baby Jesus practiced astrology and would have been looking in that region of the sky for the king prophesied in the Old Testament. Molnar, a modern day wise person, used sky simulation software to model the positions of planets and the Moon in the region of Aries. According to his model, Jupiter was eclipsed, or blocked, by the Moon on the morning of April 17, 6 BC. Molnar’s theory is supported by a book written by the astrologer of Constantine the Great in 334 AD. The book describes an eclipse of Jupiter in Aries and notes a man of divine nature born during this time. See http://www.eclipse.net/~molnar/ for more information.
Aries and Jupiter make an appearance in the Christmas sky tonight. At 8 p.m., Jupiter is five fists above the south horizon and the dim constellation Aries is about a fist and a half to the upper left of Jupiter.

Monday: Mercury is about a half a fist above the southeast horizon at 7 a.m.

Tuesday: Columbia the dove, representing the bird Noah sent out to look for dry land as the flood waters receded, is perched just above the ridge south of Ellensburg. Its brightest star Phact is about one fist above due south at 11 p.m.

Wednesday: Venus is about a half a fist above the southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

Thursday: Have you ever looked down on the ground and spotted a penny? In Yakima? While you were standing in Ellensburg? If you have, then you may be able to see the star Hamal as more than just a point of light. It has an angular diameter that can be directly measured from Earth. Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries the ram, has the same angular diameter as a penny 37 miles away. (For comparison, the moon is about half the diameter of a penny held at arm’s length.) Hamal is six and a half fists above due south at 7:45 p.m.

Friday: NASA’s Kepler satellite recently found the first two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star other than the Sun. Don’t expect to travel there soon. For one thing, the star is nearly 1,000 light years away. For another, the two planets orbit extremely close to their star, much closer than Mercury orbits our Sun. The star, called Kepler 20, is in the constellation Lyra the lyre, two and a half fists above the west-northwest horizon. Read the short article in the journal Nature at http://goo.gl/TqdmT for more information.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/17/11

2011-12-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 12/17/11

Today: Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Whoa oh, oh. The Beatles certainly didn’t write this song about the Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona. Astronomers are studying this 50,000-year-old impact to learn more about our planet’s violent history as well as the physics of impacts throughout the solar system. If you’d like to be let in on some of these secrets, go to http://goo.gl/sqbBe.

Sunday: This morning’s Moon is nearly in the third quarter phase, the phase that occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon make a right angle and the left side of the Moon appears illuminated. I wrote “nearly” because the three objects make a right angle at 5 p.m. this evening, when the Moon is not even visible in Washington. It is visible about four fists above the southwest horizon at 7 a.m. Mars is one fist above the Moon.

Monday: Venus is one fist above the southwest horizon at 5 p.m.

Tuesday: Jupiter is five fists above due south at 8 p.m.

Wednesday: At 9:30 p.m., the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky with respect to the background stars. This point is called the Winter Solstice. During the day that the Sun reaches this point, your noon time shadow is longer than any other day of the year. Also, the Sun spends less time in the sky on the day of the Winter Solstice than any other day making this the shortest day of the year. Even though it is the shortest day of the year, it is not the day with the latest sunrise or the earliest sunset. The latest sunrise is during the first week in January and the earliest sunset is during the second week in December. The Sun is at its southernmost point with respect to the background stars on the day of the winter solstice. This means the Sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon on that day. But, the Sun rise and set time depends on more than its apparent vertical motion. It also depends on where the Sun is on the analemma, that skinny figure-8 you see on globes and world maps. During the second week in December, the Sun is not quite to the bottom of the analemma. But, it is on the first part of the analemma to go below the horizon. During the first week in January, it is on the last part of the analemma to rise above the horizon. For more information on this, go to http://goo.gl/wE9nP.

Thursday: I know you’re staying up late to train yourself to wait up for Santa. So look out a south-facing window at 12:45 a.m. and see Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, as high as it ever gets in the sky. It is two and a half fists above due south.

Friday: Mercury will be as far away from the Sun in the sky as it will get this orbital cycle. This "farthest away" point is known as the planet's greatest elongation. Since Mercury is in morning sky, it is west of the Sun and this occurrence is called the greatest western elongation. This morning and tomorrow morning will be the best mornings to observe Mercury for the next few weeks. Mercury is about a fist above the southeast horizon at 7 a.m. Over the next few weeks, Mercury will move toward the Sun in the sky. By late February, it will be visible in the evening sky.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/10/11

2011-12-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 12/10/11

Today: “Red Moon, you saw me sleeping alone. Before the Sun rises up. Before I turn on my phone.” Early risers will see a total lunar eclipse this morning, low in the western sky. During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon enters the earth’s shadow. Total lunar eclipses are not as obvious as total solar eclipses because light still reaches the Moon even when it is directly behind the Earth. That is because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens and bends rays of light that would normally miss the Moon such that they hit the Moon. That doesn’t mean the Moon looks the same during a total lunar eclipse as it does during a normal full Moon. Sunlight is white. White light is the sum of all of the colors in the visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Our atmosphere scatters the blue component of the Sun’s white light. That is why our sky is blue. When the Sun or Moon is near the horizon, the light passes through a lot of the atmosphere meaning a lot of the blue light is scattered and the Sun or Moon looks redder than when it is high in the sky. During a total lunar eclipse, sunlight passes through a large slice of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining light that reaches the Moon is reddish. Thus, the Moon looks red during a total lunar eclipse. From our perspective in Washington, the Moon will start to enter the Earth’s shadow at 4:45 a.m. Totality starts a little after 6 a.m. By 7 a.m., the total eclipse will be over.

Sunday: Jupiter is five fists above due south at 9 p.m.

Monday: The Geminid meteor shower peaks at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning but will remain highly active throughout the next two nights. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Gemini the twins. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at 9 p.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain near the bright star Castor, the right hand star of the “twin” stars Pollux and Castor. This shower is typically one of the best ones of the year producing bright, medium speed meteors with up to 80 meteors per hour near the peak. Unfortunately, the Moon will be out throughout the night, obscuring most of the meteorites.
Most meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the orbital trail of a comet. The broken off comet fragments collide with the earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Astronomers had searched for a comet source for this shower since 1862 when the shower was first observed. Finally, in 1983, astronomers discovered the object that created the fragments that cause the meteor shower. To their surprise, it was a dark, rock that looked like an asteroid, not a shiny icy comet. Astronomers named this object Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. But, they still don’t know if it an asteroid or if it is a comet with all of its ice sublimated away by many close passes by the Sun. For more information about 3200 Phaethon, go to http://goo.gl/LuwGW.

Tuesday: On these cold mornings, it is difficult to get going. You just want to plop into a chair and sit still. But, are you really sitting still? You’re moving at about 700 miles per hour due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and 66,000 miles per hour due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. If that’s not enough, the entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at a whopping 480,000 miles per hour! So while you may be sitting still with respect to your living room (and all of the over achievers in your house), you are NOT sitting still with respect to the center of the galaxy. For more information about this concept, go to http://goo.gl/lPVPS.

Wednesday: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is one fist above due southeast at 10 p.m.

Thursday: Mars is one fist above due east at midnight.

Friday: Regulus is less than a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 11 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/3/11

2011-12-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 12/3/11

Today: The earliest sunset of the year occurs this week, about 4:13 p.m. This seems odd because the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, isn’t for about two more weeks. The Sun is at its southernmost point with respect to the background stars on the day of the winter solstice. This means the Sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon on that day. But, the Sun rise and set time depends on more than its apparent vertical motion. It also depends on where the Sun is on the analemma, that skinny figure-8 you see on globes and world maps. During the second week in December, the Sun is not quite to the bottom of the analemma. But, it is on the leading edge of the analemma, the first section to go below the horizon.

Sunday: Venus, the brightest of the planets in the night sky, is a half a fist above the southwest horizon at 5 p.m.

Monday: Are you cold? Tired of the blowing snow? Then get up this morning and look at Saturn, the bright point of light two and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 6 a.m. Saturn will not make you warmer. But thinking about its ice moon Enceladus might. Enceladus has numerous geysers that spew ice particles with an aggressiveness that makes the Ellensburg wind feel wimpy – up to 1000 miles per hour. To learn more about Enceladus and its geysers, go to http://goo.gl/5J3iv. If you have a small telescope, you may be able to see Enceladus nearly touching the rings of Saturn this morning.

Tuesday: Jupiter is about a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon at 8 p.m.

Wednesday: “Hey baby! What’s your sign?”
“Ophiuchus, of course”
The Sun is in the same part of the sky as the stars of Ophiuchus from about November 29 to December 17. This is what astrologers mean when they say the Sun is “in” a constellation. Thus, if you were born between these dates, you should be an Ophiuchus. The fact that the horoscopes never list Ophiuchus is a major flaw of astrology. Astrology says that some of our characteristics are based on the location of the Sun at our birth. How can astrologers leave out three weeks from their system? That is like a scientist saying she can explain the results of her experiment every month of the year except early December. Ophiuchus was a mythical healer who was a forerunner to Hippocrates. According to myth, he could raise people from the dead. Maybe that is why he is ignored by astrology. Raising people from the dead is much less impressive than giving spot-on advice such as “Today is a good day to watch your finances.”
The bright stars of Ophiuchus rise just before the Sun. Rasalhague (pronounced Ras’-al-hay’-gwee), the brightest star, is about one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Thursday: When Galileo aimed his telescope towards the sky, he knew of only one Sun-like star: the Sun. By the early twentieth century, Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming and others had developed a scheme for classifying stars so astronomers could identify other Sun-like stars. But it wasn’t until the last few years that astronomers have discovered planets around Sun-like stars. Some astronomers estimate that one out of every four stars like our Sun may be orbited by Earth-like planets. Of course, the definition of Earth-like typically means a rocky planet about the mass and radius of the Earth orbiting at a distance where they can be liquid water. So don’t start saving up for that interstellar vacation yet. But over the next few years, satellites such as Kepler will start imaging Earth-like planets. Not long after that, astronomers will be able to study the atmospheres of those planets and look for clues that the planet might have life. If you want to find the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, look a half a fist above the east horizon at midnight. There you’ll see Mars. Yes, Mars. It is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere that has solid water now and almost certainly had liquid water in the past.

Friday: Do you remember the relative positions of the Moon and Jupiter on Tuesday? Tonight at 8 p.m., the bright star Aldebaran is a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/26/11

2011-11-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

What's up in the sky 11/26/11

Today: Venus is less than a half a fist to the left of the 2-day-old Moon, just above the southwest horizon at 5 p.m. Tomorrow night at this time, Venus will be in nearly the same place but the Moon will have moved up and to the left.

Sunday: Most constellations don’t look like the object their name refers to. Most constellations don’t have such a simple to object to emulate as Triangulum. As you probably guessed, Triangulum is shaped like a princess. Wait…. Just a second…. I read my book wrong. Triangulum is shaped like a thin isosceles triangle. Mothallah is the only named star in the constellation. In Latin this star is called Caput Trianguli, the head of the triangle. Triangulum is seven fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 9 p.m. It is pointing down and to the right with Mothallah being the southernmost star at this time of night. The Triangulum Galaxy can be seen with binoculars about a half a fist to the right of Mothallah.

Monday: Have you been shopping all weekend? Do you need an evening sky break? You deserve a big reward so make it a double. A Double Cluster, that is. 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 six and a half fists above the northeast horizon at 7 p.m., about a fist below the sideways “W” of Cassiopeia.

Tuesday: Jupiter is five fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: Do you like to look in a nursery and say “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”? Not me. I say, “It’s a star”. Of course, I like looking into a stellar nursery – a star forming region such as the Orion Nebula in the middle of Orion’s sword holder. The Orion Nebula looks like a fuzzy patch to the naked eye. Binoculars reveal a nebula, or region of gas and dust, that is 30 light years across. The center of the nebula contains four hot “baby” stars called the Trapezium. These hot stars emit the ultraviolet radiation that causes the Nebula’s gas to glow. The Orion Nebula is three fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: Have you even seen a Black Hole? Neither have scientists. But they have seen the effects of a Black Hole. Black holes have a strong gravitational influence on anything that passes close to them, including light. Cygnus X-1, the first Black Hole candidate ever discovered, is four and a half fists above the west horizon, in the middle of the neck of Cygnus the swan.

Friday: Finally. You can see Mars in the night sky and still get to bed before midnight. Mars is a half a fist above the east horizon at 11:57 p.m. Now, quick, run off to bed.

I am guessing that some of you don’t like the line of reasoning from Thursday: that seeing the effects of a Black Hole is good enough to claim there are Black Holes. You have never seen the wind. But, you have seen the effects of the wind. And no Ellensburg resident doubts the existence of the wind.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/19/11

2011-11-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

Saturday: The Nature of Night event takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Black Hall on the CWU campus. There will be planetarium shows, fun nighttime projects, telescopes, animals, cookies and much more. The event is free. Go to http://www.cwu.edu/~cesme/ for more information. Wait, don’t go to a computer. Go directly to Black Hall, G-12 on the map found at http://www.cwu.edu/newmap.html. The Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education at CWU and various community sponsors work together to put on this event.

Sunday: You know winter is coming when Orion is visible in the evening sky. It is about a fist above the east-southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Monday: When you think of space, the first image that comes to mind is a few large, massive bodies surrounded by a lot of empty space. After all, it is called “outer space”, not “outer stuff”. But that so-called empty space is filled powerful radiation and high-speed sub-microscopic particles. Much of this is dangerous to life. However, many planets, including Earth, have a shield against these called a magnetic field. Jupiter’s magnetic field is the strongest of all the planets. Find Jupiter four and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 8 p.m. For more information about magnetic fields, go to http://goo.gl/OYShj.

Tuesday: Saturn, Spica, and the waning crescent moon are huddled together in the early morning sky. The Moon is one and a half fists above the southeast horizon. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, is a couple of finger widths to the upper left of the Moon. Saturn is less than a half a fist to the upper left of Spica.

Wednesday: Are you thankful that you live in a solar system with multiple planets? You should be. A giant planet like Jupiter cleans up planetary debris that could have collided with Earth and hindered the formation of complex life. Any inhabitants of the planets orbiting Upsilon Andromedae are thankful for this, as well. Upsilon Andromedae, a star in the constellation Andromeda, was the first Sun-like star discovered to have multiple planets orbiting it. So far, all of its planets are giant planets like Jupiter. But, the system is likely to also contain smaller planets. The dim star, but certainly not its planets, is barely visible straight overhead at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Some of us have a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. But, probably not as much as Andromeda had to be thankful for. According to Greek mythology, the beautiful princess Andromeda was chained to a rock next to the ocean. Cetus the sea monster was about to devour her in order to punish her family. Her mother Queen Cassiopeia and her father King Cepheus didn’t know what to do. It seemed that all was lost. But, along came Andromeda’s boyfriend, the great warrior Perseus. Even though Perseus’ standing as the son of King Zeus and the slayer of Medusa was probably enough to win Andromeda under normal circumstances, Andromeda’s impending death-by-sea-monster was not a normal circumstance. So, Perseus drove his sword into the sea monster’s neck and killed it. This was the first time in recorded history that a set of parents actually welcomed an uninvited Thanksgiving visit from the boyfriend. Perseus is about five fists above the east-northeast horizon and Andromeda is about seven fists above the east horizon at 7 p.m.

Friday: Are you staying up late Thursday or getting up super early this morning to catch those Black Friday sales? Mars is about a half a fist above the east horizon at midnight. By 5 am, it is four fists above the southeast horizon. If you find Mars this morning, you’ll be doing a lot better than the poor Phobos-Grunt mission. It launched on November 9, only to have its final booster rocket fail. For more (extremely detailed) information, go to http://goo.gl/1Wfdu.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/12/11

2011-11-11T00:23:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Imagine Opie and Andy Taylor walking down the dirt path at night to that fishing hole in the sky. They’d probably be looking to catch Pisces, the two fish already conveniently tied together with two ropes. The ropes are connected at the star Alrescha, Arabic for “the cord”. Alrescha is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. The fish are attached to lines of stars that branch out at one o’clock and three o’clock from Alrescha. By the way, “The Fishing Hole”, The Andy Griffith Show’s theme song, was rated the 20th best TV theme song of all time by ign.com. That’s too low of a rating in my opinion.

Sunday: Saturn is about a half a fist to the upper left of Spica for the next few mornings at 6 a.m. a fist above the east-southeast horizon.

Monday: Hit the road Mercury. And don’t you come back no more, no more. For a few weeks, Mercury has been hitting the road and moving away from the Sun in the sky. Today, Mercury is as far away from the Sun as it will get on the evening half of this cycle. This is known as its greatest eastern elongation. Yet, this distance does not translate into good viewing because Mercury will be very low in the sky. Mercury is less than a half a fist above the southwest horizon at 5:00 p.m., right below the much brighter Venus. Over the next few weeks, Mercury will move toward the Sun in the sky. After it passes in front of the Sun, it will appear in the morning sky by mid- December.

Tuesday: Jupiter is five fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: Chinese astronomers in 185 A.D. reported a “guest star” that mysteriously appeared in the sky for eight months. By the 1960s, only 1800 years later, astronomers had determined that this was the first recorded supernova. But they could not explain the excessive size of the surrounding nebula, the cloud of gas and dust expelled by the exploding star. Given the age of the supernova and the typical rate of expansion, this supernova remnant should have been smaller. But images from NASA’s Spitzer and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescopes, astronomers discovered that the star exploded in a hollowed-out cavity meaning the material expelled by the star traveled much faster and farther than it would have in a denser region of the galaxy. Go to http://goo.gl/3jLZD for more information.

Thursday: The Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight and tomorrow morning. These meteors appear to come from a point in Leo the lion. This point is about one fist above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night and into the morning as it will remain about one fist above the bright star Regulus. Even if the weather cooperates, this will not be a great night to see a lot of meteors because the last quarter moon rising at midnight will illuminate the sky. The Leonid meteors are particles from the tail of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, a comet discovered by Ernst Tempel and Horace Parnell Tuttle around January 1, 1866. Go to http://goo.gl/OPP6D to see a picture of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Even if there are only a dozen meteors visible per hour, you’ll want to enjoy it.

Friday: Mars is about a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 6 a.m. in the southern sky.

Tomorrow, the Nature of Night event takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Black Hall on the CWU campus. There will be planetarium shows, fun nighttime projects, telescopes, animals, cookies and much more. The event is free. Call 963-2929 or go to http://www.cwu.edu/~cesme/ for more information. The Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education at CWU and various community sponsors work together to put on this event.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/5/11

2011-11-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

What's up in the sky 11/5/11

Today: Don’t forget to “fall back” tonight. Before you fall back on to your bed, set your clock back one hour to the real time. Daylight savings ends early Sunday morning at 2 a.m. This means one more hour of sky watching at night because the Sun will set one hour earlier. Ben Franklin proposed the idea of “saving daylight” by adjusting our clocks way back in 1784. Daylight savings time was first utilized during World War I as a way to save electricity. After the war, it was abandoned. It was reintroduced during World War II on a year-round basis. From 1945 to 1966, some areas implemented daylight savings and some did not. But, it was not implemented with any uniformity as to when it should start and stop. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 codified the daylight savings rules.

Sunday: Did you look up Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Henry Draper based on last week’s Halloween costume suggestion? Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an 18th and 19th century astronomer who discovered the relationship between the luminosity and brightness fluctuations of a certain type of variable star. This led to a fundamental change in our understanding of the size of the universe. Henry Draper was a pioneer of astrophotography and was the first person to photograph the Orion Nebula. You can become about the one-millionth person to photograph the Orion Nebula it you look two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. This fuzzy patch in the middle of Orion’s scabbard is about a half a fist to the left of the brightest star in Orion, Rigel.

Monday: The North Taurid meteor shower peaks for the next few late nights and early mornings with the night of the 11th and 12th being the peak of the peak. This is not a prominent shower but it occasionally produces a couple of bright “fireballs”, larger rocks that take a few seconds to burn up in the atmosphere. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is nearly six fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain midway between the bright star Aldebaran (pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran) and the open star cluster called the Pleiades. If you miss the peak this week, don’t worry. Taurid meteor showers result in a slight increase on meteor activity from mid-October to the beginning of December.

Tuesday: Jupiter is less than a fist to the lower left of the Moon due southeast at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: While Stonehenge is an ancient burial ground visited by religious people for thousands of years, MIThenge is an 825-foot long hallway on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology visited by the Sun’s rays twice a year. Every year in November and January, the setting Sun lines up with a narrow window at the end of the long hall and the light shines down to the opposite end. This season’s alignment is from November 10-13. For more information, visit http://goo.gl/NGbOj of visit MIT.

Thursday: Mars is five and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 6 a.m. The star Regulus is about a finger width to the lower right of Mars.

Friday: We wish you a Merry Martinmas. We wish you a Merry Martinmas. We wish you a Merry Martinmas. And a happy Friday. Martinmas is a holiday in many parts of the world commemorating Saint Martin of Tours. He was buried on November 11, 397. What does this have to astronomy? Not much except that the celebration on November 11 often doubles as a cross-quarter day celebration, a day that is halfway between an equinox and a solstice.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/29/11

2011-10-28T00:08:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Dead October flowers lead to November meteor showers. While the Lyonid meteor shower is the big name among November meteor showers, the one or two bright fireballs per hour you can see during the typical Southern Taurids meteor shower may make it worth your while to say up. This shower reaches a maximum over the next few nights with a peak on November 6th. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is about four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night, as it will remain one fist to the right of the V-shaped Hyades Cluster with its bright star Aldebaran (pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran). Meteors are tiny rocks that burn up in the atmosphere when the Earth runs into them. These rocks are broken off parts of Comet 2P/Encke.

Sunday: Halloween. The pumpkins. The candy. The children going door-to-door dressed up as their favorite astronomers Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Henry Draper. At least they should because Halloween is, in part, an astronomical holiday. Halloween is a “cross-quarter date”, a day approximately midway between an equinox and a solstice. Historically, the Celts of the British Isles used cross-quarter dates as the beginnings of seasons. For the Celts, winter began with Halloween. So when all those little Leavitts and Drapers come to your door tomorrow night, honor the Celts and give them a wintry treat. If they ask you for a trick, point out Venus, a half a fist above the southwest horizon.

Monday: Are you thinking of dressing up like a student and visiting a scary museum? Then the Museum of Culture and Environment at Central Washington University has an event for you, an interdisciplinary symposium called "Fabricating the Fantastic: The Pleasures and Perils of Exaggeration," at 4:30 p.m. Monday in Dean Hall. The symposium is inspired by the museum's exhibit "Storytelling Through the Mail: Tall Tale Postcards." CWU professors will talk about how exaggeration plays a role in certain fields, including astronomy. Go to http://goo.gl/C8Ynf for more information. If you doubt that museums can be scary, check out the size of the bugs on some of the postcards. Buzzzzzz, indeed!

Tuesday: Happy Celtic New Year! Many historians think that this day, known for the festival of Samhain, was the ancient Celtic New Year’s Day. Samhain, Old Irish for “summer’s end”, was a harvest festival that may have contributed to some of the customs of our current “holiday” of Halloween.

Wednesday: Jupiter is two and a half fists above the east horizon at 8 p.m.

Thursday: Lacerta, the faint lizard constellation, is straight overhead at 9 p.m. It was named by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687 to fill the space between the much brighter and well-defined constellations Pegasus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Cygnus going clockwise from the constellation just south of Lacerta. Chinese know this group of stars as a flying serpent or dragon.

Friday: Mars is five and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 7 a.m. Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo is a half a fist to the lower left.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/22/11

2011-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday: “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” Constellations can be considered neighborhoods in the nighttime sky. But, the stars in those constellations are not necessarily neighbors in real life. For example, the bright stars in the constellation Cassiopeia range from 19 to over 10,000 light years away from Earth. One constellation that consists of real neighbors is Ursa Major. Or, more specifically, the Big Dipper. Five stars in the Big Dipper are all moving in the same direction in space, are about the same age and are all about 80 light years from Earth. “Please won’t you be my neighbor?” Skat, the third brightest star in the constellation Aquarius is a neighbor to these five Big Dipper stars, all of which are about 30 light years from each other. They are thought to have originated in the same nebula about 500 million years ago. Just like human children do, these child stars are slowly moving away from home. Skat is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. The much brighter Fomalhaut is a fist and a half below Skat. And, it’s not fun being below Skat.

Sunday: Would you like to contribute to science? Participate in the Great World Wide Star Count this week. Go to http://www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/starcount/ to download instructions. Basically, you’ll count the stars you can see in Cygnus the Swan, a constellation that is nearly straight overhead at 8 p.m.

Monday: 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, available not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom but on the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/, is a repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts. A recent story highlights NASA’s Spitzer Space telescope’s discovery of a comet “storm” in a nearby star system that resembles what astronomers think occurred in our own solar system nearly four billion years ago. By studying the evidence of ice, organic material, and rocks near the one billion year old star Eta Corvi, astronomers may learn more about how the Earth was affected by a similar environment early in its formation.

Tuesday: Mars is five and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m. The slightly dimmer star Regulus is a fist to the lower left of Mars.

Wednesday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen. But it can be felt, especially by the oceans. The Moon is at perigee tonight meaning the Moon is the closest it will be this month. When the Moon is at perigee during the new or full stage, the high tides are especially high because the Sun, Earth and Moon are all lined up.

Thursday: This weekend is Halloween so make sure you load up on peanut clusters, almond clusters, and open star clusters. That last one will be easy (and cheap, actually free) because two of the most prominent open star clusters in the sky are easily visible in the autumn sky. The sideways V-shaped Hyades Cluster is two fists above due east at 10 p.m. Containing over 300 stars; the Hyades cluster is about 150 light years away and 625 million years old. The Pleiades Cluster, a little more than three fists above due east, is larger at over 1000 stars and younger. Compared to our 5 billion year old Sun, the 100 million year age of the Pleiades is infant-like.

Friday: Jupiter is in opposition tonight. No, that doesn’t mean it will disagree with everything you say. (Yes it does. No it doesn’t. Yes it does. No it doesn’t) Opposition means that a planet is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. An object is in opposition when it is due south 12 hours after the Sun. When an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the night. A planet in opposition shines brighter and appears larger in a telescope than any other night of its orbital cycle. Jupiter is five and a half fists above due south at 1 a.m. daylight savings time which is midnight standard time. If you’d rather not stay up so late, you can find it three fists above the east-southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/15/11

2011-10-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The Ellensburg weather is cooling down. But the space weather is heating up. More specifically, the Sun is moving toward a sunspot maximum which means an increase in solar storms. Keep your eye on the space weather by going to http://www.spaceweather.com.

Sunday: 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 8:30 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.

Monday: Jupiter is three fists above the east-southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: What time is tea time? Certainly not during an autumn evening. The constellation Sagittarius the archer, with its signature teapot shape, is sinking into the south-southwest horizon by 8 p.m. The handle is on top and the spout is touching the horizon ready to pour that last cup of tea.

Wednesday: Tonight’s last quarter Moon is in the constellation Cancer the Crab.

Thursday: The Orionid meteor shower consists of the Earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks for the next two nights and early mornings. This is not a meteor shower that results in a meteor storm. There will be about 15-20 meteors per hour, many more meteors than are visible on a typical night. However, the chance of seeing meteors this year is less than usual because the waning crescent Moon will be out during most of the prime viewing hours. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about three fists above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. If you fall asleep tonight, you can catch the tail end of the shower every night until early November.

Friday: Mars is less that a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 6 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/8/11

2011-10-06T21:54:00.001-07:00

Saturday: The Draconid meteor shower peaks tonight. The meteors appear to come from a point in the head of Draco, the dragon constellation. This point is about five fists held upright and at arm’s above the northwest horizon at 10 p.m. tonight. This point remains near the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco throughout the night. Typically, this is a minor shower. However, Draconid meteors are slow moving which means you will have a easy time differentiating true Draconid meteors, from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, from stray grains of dust that happen to enter the Earth’s atmosphere near where we see the constellation Draco. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment.

Sunday: Do the weather people make you mad? Predict the weather yourself. This week, the planet Mars can help. Mars doesn’t actually make the forecast. But, it will help you find an object in the sky that allows you to predict storms. Mars is now close to the Beehive star cluster in the late night/early morning sky. The Beehive cluster is a hazy patch visible to the naked eye under dark, clear skies. If the sky seems clear but the Beehive cluster is not visible, that indicates that faint high-level clouds are moving in, bringing storm clouds in their wake. Mars is about four and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 6 a.m. The Beehive is about a half fist to the upper right of Mars. If you can’t see it, get an umbrella.

Monday: Halley's comet returns this month! In the form of little pieces of its tail, that is. The Orionid meteor shower consists of the earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks on the morning of October 21 but produces meteors from now until early November. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. As you Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment.

Tuesday: The harvest is over. Animals that have filled themselves up with the excess bounty are wondering around through forests that have lost their leaves. It is a hunter’s paradise. The only thing missing is nighttime lighting. Enter the hunter’s moon. Tonight’s full moon, called the hunter’s moon, is in the constellation Aries the ram.

Wednesday: Since Halloween is coming up, the stores are filled with bags of candy clusters. Instead, take time to look at a star cluster. The Hyades cluster is an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the universe. Aldebaran, nearly two fists above due east horizon at 11 p.m., is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.

Thursday: Jupiter is a half a fist to the left of the Moon at 6 a.m.

Friday: Arcturus is one fist above the west-northwest horizon at 8 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/1/11

2011-09-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Mnemonics are helpful for remembering astronomy facts. (Similarly, “Johnny Mnemonic”, the 1995 cyberpunk film, was helpful in getting Keanu Reeves’ career going.) After all, school children all around the country are learning the order of the planets by remembering, “My very excellent mother just served us nine….” Oops, I guess that one needs updating. Well, here’s one that will not need updating for nearly 100,000 years: the order of the stars in the Big Dipper. Because the nighttime stars are so far away from us, their actual motion through the sky, called their “proper motion” is not noticeable over even thousands of years. That is why the constellations have remained the same since ancient times. But two stars in the Big Dipper have a proper motion large enough such than in 100,000 years, the stars will no longer make a dipper shape. Until then, you can remember the names of the seven dipper stars in order from handle to cup by remembering this helpful advice for teens: “AM, ask mom. PM, dad”. The stars are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phad, Merek, and Duhbe. Morning, morning, evening, death is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Sunday: The increasing sunspot activity has led to prominent auroras in many northern states over the past week. The main cause of these auroras is electrically charged particles coming from the region of a sunspot that is over 10 Earth-diameter in length. (I guess it is more of a “sunstreak” than a sunspot.) For more information about sunspots, auroras and other space weather phenomenon, go to http://spaceweather.com/.
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Monday: Jupiter is two fists above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: What do you like to look at in the night sky? Maria Von Trapp made her choice very clear in an earlier version of The Sound of Astronomy: “Light shining off of the moon and the rings, these are a few of my favorite things.” October 2010 to August 2012 is the Year of the Solar System. NASA is celebrating many solar system missions these 22 months, a Martian year. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking high resolution pictures of the Moon and Cassini has drastically updated what we know about Saturn. Saturn is still obscured by the glare of the Sun but the Moon is prominent in the night sky and waiting to be observed by you at an upcoming CWU Astronomy Club event. For more information about moons, rings, and the Year of the Solar System, go to http://goo.gl/jJOPF. For more information about the CWU event, read ahead.

Wednesday: At 6 a.m., Mars is four fists above the east-south east horizon, right in the middle of the constellation Cancer the Crab.

Thursday: Fomalhaut, the southernmost of the bright stars, is a little more than a fist above the south horizon at 10:30. It is in the constellation Piscis Austrinus or the southern fish.

Friday: Tomorrow is International Observe the Moon Night. But why wait? The CWU Astronomy club is having a Moon watching party tonight from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. The event starts in Lind Hall room 215 with a brief presentation about the Moon followed by observing with the CWU observatory and other telescopes. Lind Hall is on the northwest corner of East University Way and Chestnut Street. Parking is free in all CWU lots after 4:30 p.m. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/jh3Zu.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/24/11

2011-09-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday: “You know Aries and Cancer and Draco and Libra. Leo and Pisces and Virgo and Hydra. But, do you recall, the pointiest asterism of all? Triangulum, the three sided asterism, had a very pointy edge….” Sorry. Some stores have started putting up their Christmas decorations and that has put me in the mood to modify some Christmas songs. Anyway, Triangulum is a small constellation between the more prominent Andromeda and Aries. Its main feature is a skinny triangle oriented parallel to and nearly four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: Regulus is a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 6 a.m.

Monday: Did you time the exact length of the day and night last Wednesday on the first day of autumn? They were not equal in duration. Many people think that the day and night are the same duration on the autumnal equinox. The day is a little longer than the night for two reasons. First, the Sun is an extended object so even when the middle part has set, the upper half is still above the horizon lighting the sky. The second, and more influential reason, is that the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is really still below the horizon. Day and night are closest in duration today.

Tuesday: This is the best week of the year to see Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. But you’ll need binoculars to find it. First, find Deneb Kaitos, a star one fist above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m. This star, whose name means “whale’s tail”, is about the same brightness as the Big Dipper stars. Another fist up is a reddish star called Iota Ceti. Put this star in the bottom of your binoculars’ field of view. At the top of the field of view should be a skinny, upright rectangle. Move the upper left corner of this rectangle to the lower right hand portion of your binoculars’ field of view. Uranus is a bluish dot near the middle of the field of view.

Wednesday: The west-southwest horizon is crowded just after sunset. Spica is about a fist to the upper right of the Moon at 7 p.m. The much brighter Venus is another fist to the right of Spica. Finally, Saturn is about a finger width above Venus.

Thursday: The cloudy season is coming to Ellensburg. Don’t feel bad. According to three astronomers, it is always cloudy season on HD 85512b, a newly discovered planet orbiting the star called… wait for it… wait for it… called HD 85512. These astronomers developed a method to estimate the cloud cover on planets orbiting distant stars. They think HD 85512b may be cloudy enough to have liquid water on its surface even though it is fairly close to its host star. While the presence of surface water does not guarantee finding life, it is a critical component. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/bGxMD.

Friday: Jupiter is two fists above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/17/11

2011-09-14T22:00:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Last Friday, I gave you a very brief overview of how to use the Big Dipper as a clock. But, my explanation was helpful only for a late evening in the autumn or spring. Some of you go out other times of the year and need a way to tell time then. First, find the two stars at the far end of the Big Dipper cup, the stars that do not touch the handle. Draw an imaginary line segment starting at the North Star and passing through the two Big Dipper cup stars. Now, draw a big circle around the North Star. Your circle is a 24-hour clock. Number the circle from 0 hours at the top, counterclockwise to 12 hours at the bottom of the circle, and back up to 24 hours at the top. (O hours and 24 hours are the same on this clock because the day is 24 hours long.) The hour number on the big circle closest to where your imaginary line intersects this circle is called your raw time. Due to the location of the Big Dipper compared to the rest of the stars, the time nearest the intersection (the raw time) is correct for March 6. For any other night, subtract two times the number of months the current date is after March 6 from the raw time. For example, let’s say the imaginary line between the North Star and the Dipper stars is pointed to the right. That means the raw time is 18 hours or 6 p.m. If you made this observation on October 6, which is seven months after March 6, you would subtract two times seven or 14 hours from the raw time. Thus, the time for November 6 is 18 hours minus 14 hours or 4 hours. In other words, 4 a.m. Don’t forget to convert for daylight savings time if needed. For a more complete set of instructions, go to http://goo.gl/02HmA. There is a simple “star clock” template and instructions at http://goo.gl/SFKrE. Use this paper star clock whenever you watch is broken.

Sunday: Let me tell you the story of the ghostly white figure that rises early in the morning around Halloween. It appears to be a huge dim glow of white light that rises up from the east in the pre-dawn sky. No, I’m not writing about the ROTC student who has her first early morning physical training. I’m describing an effect called the zodiacal light. This light comes from sunlight reflecting off dust grains in our solar system. The effect is the most visible when the band of constellations called the zodiac makes a steep angle with the horizon. You need a clear sky with no haze or light pollution to see the zodiacal light that will be visible for the next week or so. At its brightest, the zodiacal light rivals the light of the central Milky Way.

Monday: Jupiter is a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: This morning’s last quarter Moon is in the constellation Taurus the bull. This morning’s other Moon is…. Wait a minute. The Earth has only one Moon. True. And it has always had only one Moon. Not necessarily true. According to the best existing model, about four billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the young Earth. The resulting debris coalesced to form the Moon. However, this model left a mystery: why is the Moon so asymmetric? Hardened-lava lowlands dominate the near side while the far side is dominated by mountainous highlands. According to a recent revision of the prevailing model, the early collision formed a large Moon and a small Moon. Over the years, the small Moon caught up to and collided with the large Moon. The highlands are the material from the collided small Moon. For more information about this theory, go to http://goo.gl/6JlcA.

Wednesday: The bright star Vega is nearly straight overhead at 8 p.m.

Thursday: Mars is four fists above the east horizon and one fist to the lower left of the Moon at 6 a.m.

Friday: At precisely 1:06 a.m., the center of the Sun crosses the celestial equator and passes into the southern sky. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that divides the sky into a northern and southern half. When the Sun is in the southern half of the sky, it appears to take a shorter path from rising to setting. It also does not get as high in the sky at noon. This leads to shorter days and longer nights. Since the Sun crosses the celestial equator today, there is an instant when it is equally in the northern and southern sky, called the north and south celestial hemispheres. This so-called “equal night” is given by the Latin word equinox. Thus, today is known as the Autumnal Equinox. However, the day and night are not of equal duration today. The sun rises at 6:50 a.m. and sets at 6:58 p.m. Day and night are closest to equal duration next Monday.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/10/11

2011-09-07T22:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The violent death of lots of aliens is called a video game. The violent death of a supergiant star is called a supernova. On August 24, a star in the Pinwheel Galaxy, a mere 21 million light years away, went supernova. This is the closest and brightest supernova in the past 25 years. You’ll need binoculars or a small telescope to see it. First find the Big Dipper handle, about two fists held upright and at arm’s length, above the north-northwest horizon at 11 p.m. The galaxy is about a half a fist above the end star. There is a very helpful map at the bottom of this page http://goo.gl/Mw2LO.

Sunday: Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky. It’s just like a full moon in January, February, June and July. The only difference is that near the Autumnal Equinox (also known as the first day of fall), the full moon rises near sunset resulting in a full night of light for the harvest. The harvest moon looks like a dull orange color while it is near the horizon because of the dust kicked up from the harvest. The dust scatters the white light reflecting off of the Moon resulting in slightly more of the red and orange components of the white light reaching your eyes. Although the Moon has a dull yellow color whenever it is near the horizon owing to light scattering off of dust and atmospheric particles, the effect is more noticeable for the harvest Moon. Tonight’s full moon, which isn’t completely full until tomorrow at 1:30 a.m., is in the constellation Aquarius the water bearer.

Monday: Science is Central! This week, faculty, staff, and students in the College of the Sciences at CWU will kick off the start of the academic year by hosting a series of evening science lectures and demonstrations geared for all ages. All events are taking place on the CWU Ellensburg campus and all are free. The series kicks off tonight when Ton Cottrell shares photos, stories and thoughts from Northern Alaska from 7:00 – 8:00 pm in Science room 101 followed by a guided tour of the night sky with several telescopes. Check http://goo.gl/5Hi5y for an event schedule.

Tuesday: In most parts of the country, a mixture of tasty carbon-based material and healthy minerals is called a casserole. In Minnesota, it is called a hot dish. (Uffdah, you betcha!) In space, it is called a supergiant. Antares, a supergiant in the constellation Scorpius, is forging lighter elements into carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron in its core. It is on the main course table one fist above the southwest horizon at 7:30. Make sure it cools off before you take a bite.

Wednesday: “One world, group hug, love everyone” philosophy: political borders are human-made and can’t be seen from space. Real world, pragmatic discovery: some human-made political borders CAN be seen from space. Since 2003, India has illuminated its border with Pakistan to prevent illegal crossings. In August, astronaut Ron Garan took a picture of the boarder from the International Space Station. For more information, including the photo, go to http://goo.gl/mY8xG.

Thursday: Jupiter is about a half a fist below the Moon at 10 p.m.

Friday: You can use the position of the Big Dipper as a clock. During the late evening in the autumn, the Big Dipper cup is facing up to hold water. During the late evening in the spring, the Big Dipper cup is facing down to produce those spring showers. The water-holding Big Dipper is one fist above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/3/11

2011-08-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Geometry review: part 2. School starts this week so it is time to continue our little geometry review from last week. Did you forget last week’s lesson? Well, go to the litter box, dig out last Saturday’s paper and review it. Then go outside at 9 p.m. with notebook in hand. Ready? A square is a quadrilateral with four sides of equal length and four right angle corners. A good example in the sky is the Great Square, an asterism (group of stars) consisting of three stars from the constellation Pegasus and one star from the constellation Andromeda. At 9 p.m., the bottom of the Great Square is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east.

Sunday: There is a lot to see at the Kittitas County Fair. But there is not a lot to see in the sky when you are at the fair because the fair lights, which are fairly bright, obscure most celestial objects. Jupiter is one of the few objects bright enough to be seen. As you are getting home from the fair at 11 p.m., look for Jupiter about one fist above the east horizon. Luckily Galileo didn’t do his observing at the Kittitas County Fair because he would not have been able to see Jupiter’s moons. So what, you say? Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter provided strong evidence that objects other than the Earth could have satellites, thus supporting the hypothesis of a Sun-centered solar system.

Monday: Labor Day was the brainchild of labor unions and is dedicated to American workers. The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882. The Greek mythical hero Hercules probably wished there was a Labor Day to commemorate his work. As punishment for killing his family while he was temporarily insane, he had to perform twelve nearly impossible tasks such as killing monsters or stealing things from deities. Humm. Maybe we shouldn’t commemorate his labors. But we can enjoy his constellation. The keystone asterism representing the body of Hercules is six fists above the west horizon at 10 p.m. For more information about the Labors of Hercules, go to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html.

Tuesday: The calendar says summer is nearing an end. School starting tomorrow says summer is nearing an end. The summer triangle in the sky begs to differ as it is still high in the sky. Vega, the brightest star in the triangle, is a little bit west of straight overhead at sunset. Deneb is a little bit east of straight overhead and Altair is five fists above the south horizon.

Wednesday: The little king must have ordered a lot of merchandise on eBay. Mercury, named after the Roman god of trades, passes by Regulus, Latin for “little king” over the next few mornings. This morning, Mercury, the brighter of the two objects, is about a finger thickness above Regulus. By Saturday morning, they’ll be side-by-side and you will not be able to fit an outstretched pinky between them. This interaction offers an excellent opportunity to see why planets are called “planets”, from the Greek word meaning “wanderer”. All planets move with respect to the background stars. Because Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, it moves the fastest in its orbit. And it is, on average, our second nearest planetary neighbor. Both of these contribute to Mercury’s motion through the sky being the greatest of all the planets. This is probably the reason this planet was named after the speedy, messenger god.

Thursday: Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, is one fist above the south-southeast horizon at 11 pm. It is the southernmost bright star visible from Ellensburg.

Friday: Mars is four fists above the east horizon at 6 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/27/11

2011-08-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

Saturday: School starts next week so it is time for a little geometry review. Go outside at 10 p.m. tonight with notebook in hand. Ready? A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three line segments as sides. A good example is the Summer Triangle made up of the bright stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. Vega, the brightest star in the triangle is a little bit west of straight overhead. Deneb is a little bit east of straight overhead and Altair is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon.

Sunday: Jupiter is one fist above the east horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: WISE finds some Y’s and they’re as cool as your eyes. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, WISE for short, has discovered a type of brown dwarf that astronomers are calling a Y dwarf star. Astronomers study brown to better understand how stars form and to understand the atmospheres of gas giant planets like Jupiter. These Y dwarf stars are on the classification boundary between stars that fuse hydrogen at their core, like our Sun does, and objects similar to Jupiter and other newly discovered planets that are a little too small to be a star. One of these Y dwarf stars is only nine light years away making it the seventh closest star system. For more information about this discovery, go to http://goo.gl/hRmJ2.

Tuesday: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout. The galactic center, I pour it out.” (I’m a Little Teapot, astronomy version, 2011.) Despite its great size and importance, the center of our Milky Way galaxy and its giant black hole remains hidden to the naked eye behind thick clouds of gas and dust. By plotting the orbits of stars near the middle of the galaxy, astronomers have determined that the black hole’s mass is equal to about 4.5 million Suns. While you can’t see the actual galactic center, you can gaze in the direction of the center by looking just to the right of the teapot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius. This point is about one fist above the south-southwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: Ah, the beauty of classification. A large three-sided figure such as the Summer Triangle is a triangle. Hence the name “Summer Triangle” and not “Summer Sandwich”. Although those little triangle-shaped sandwiches are quite tasty. Where was I? Oh yes, classification. Any three-sided figure is called a triangle. Just after sunset, Saturn, the Moon, and the bright star Spica make a small right triangle very low in the west-southwest sky. Spica is a half a fist to the upper left and Saturn is a fist to the upper right of the Moon.

Thursday: The morning sky is filled with visible planets. At 5:30 a.m., Mercury is a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon, Mars is three and a half fists above the east horizon, and Jupiter is five and a half fists above the south horizon.

Friday: The Ellensburg Rodeo is a “Top-25” rodeo. What does it take to be a “Top-25” star? There are many ways to rank stars. The most obvious way for a casual observer to rank stars is by apparent brightness. The apparent brightness is the brightness of a star as seen from Earth, regardless of its distance from the Earth. Shaula (pronounced Show’-la) is the 25th brightest star in the nighttime sky as seen from Earth. It represents the stinger of Scorpius the scorpion. In fact, Shaula means stinger in Arabic. Shaula has a visual brightness rating of 1.62. Sirius, the brightest star has a visual brightness rating of -1.46. (Smaller numbers mean brighter objects.) The dimmest objects that can be seen with the naked eye have a visual brightness rating of about 6. There are approximately 6,000 stars with a lower visual brightness rating than 6 meaning there are 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye. Shaula is a blue sub-giant star that radiates 35,000 times more energy than the Sun. It is 700 light years away making it one of the most distant bright stars. Shaula is a challenge to find because it never gets more than a half a fist above the horizon. Look for it tonight about a half a fist above the south horizon, a little bit west of due south, at 8:30.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/20/11

2011-08-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Sometimes you find a quarter on the ground. Maybe you find a dollar in the lining of your jacket. But how often do you find a galaxy in a well-known part of the sky? The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a face-on spiral galaxy in the Coma Cluster of galaxies about 320 million light years away. This galaxy, called NGC 4911, contains regions of gas and dust as well as glowing newborn star clusters. The Coma Star cluster is in the constellation Coma Berenices, found two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 9 p.m. For more information about this newly discovered galaxy, plus a zoomable image, go to http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/24/.

Sunday: This is a great time to observe Neptune because is in opposition tomorrow night. That doesn't mean Neptune is now a teenager. Opposition means that Neptune is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. An object is in opposition when it is due south 12 hours after the Sun. Thus, when an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the day. Neptune is near the boundary of the constellations Capricornus the sea goat and Aquarius the water bearer, about two and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. It is easy to see with binoculars. First find the bright star Fomalhaut just above the southeast horizon. Neptune is exactly 20 degrees, or two fists held upright and at arm’s length, above Fomalhaut.

Monday: You: “I’d like a chocolate cluster for a snack, please.”
Moon: “Not me. I’d like an open star cluster for breakfast.” The Moon will get its request because it is midway between the Pleiades and Hyades open star clusters this morning in the southeastern sky. These clusters, while not as tasty as chocolate clusters, are regions of the galaxy where very young stars can be found. Stars in the Hyades cluster are about 600 million years old and stars in the Pleiades are a very toddler-like 100 million years old. (By comparison, the Sun is about 5 billion years old.) The Hyades cluster is a little less than a fist below the Moon and the Pleiades is a little less than a fist above the Moon at 5 a.m.

Tuesday: You may have trouble holding in your water at midnight. But not the Big Dipper. The cup of the Big Dipper is facing upward in a water-holding orientation about two fists above the north horizon at midnight.

Wednesday: Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg and the entire northern section of the United States, flies nearly straight overhead at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Mars is about a half a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 5 a.m.

Friday: The Sun is finally moving out of it period of having few or no sunspots. But while the Sun was inactive, astronomers were studying sunspots on other stars such as Corot-2a, a star that is similar to the Sun but much younger. Astronomers noticed that the brightness drop of Corot-2a was slightly different every time its planet Corot-2b passed in front of it. They thought it should be the same since the same planet was passing in front of it. So, the astronomers concluded the variation in brightness was due to sunspots on Corot-2a. For more information about this, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/49444867.html.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/13/11

2011-08-04T00:46:00.001-07:00

Saturday: When the Moon is full, it is difficult to see dim objects in the sky because of the sky glow. But why struggle to find dim objects when there is so much to see on the big, bright object in front of you? The lunar crater called Tycho is best seen during a full Moon. Tycho was formed about 109 million years ago when an asteroid struck the Moon, leaving a crater over 50 miles in diameter and ejected dust trails that radiate out hundreds of miles in all directions. For more lunar highlights, go to
http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/ObserveMoon.pdf, a resource of the Night Sky Network.

Sunday: Many big city dwellers never see the milky white, nearly continuous band of stars known as the Milky Way. As cities grow and add more lights, it has become harder to see the bulk of the Milky Way galaxy, our home in the universe. But, there are two easy ways to see the Milky Way. The first way is to look in the mirror. You are part of the Milky Way. The second way is to look from due north through the point straight overhead (called the zenith) to due south from 10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. for the next two weeks. This is the time of year when the Milky Way is highest in the sky and away from the city lights on the horizon.

Monday: Need a caffeine pick-me-up? Make it a double. Need an astronomy pick-me-up? Make it a double-double. Find Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, nearly straight overhead at 11:00 tonight. Less than half a fist to the east (or left if you are facing south) of the bright bluish star Vega is the “star” Epsilon Lyra. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through binoculars, it looks like two stars. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through a large enough telescope, you will notice that each star in the pair is itself a pair of stars. Each star in the double is double. Hence, Epsilon Lyra is known as the double-double. The stars in each pair orbit a point approximately in the center of each respective pair. The pairs themselves orbit a point between the two pairs.

Tuesday: You think the Ellensburg wind is bad. Some of the Jovian planets have winds of over 1000 miles per hour. Jupiter and Saturn have belts of clouds that can be observed with back yard telescopes. You’ll have to look quickly to see Saturn. It is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 9:30 p.m. In a few days, it will be lost in the glare of the Sun. To learn more about Saturn and other windy worlds, go to http://goo.gl/GLWAi.

Wednesday: Deneb is about seven fists above the east horizon at 10 p.m. When you look at Deneb, you are seeing light that left Deneb about 1,800 years ago.

Thursday: Fomalhaut, the bright star in the Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fishes, is about one fist above the southeast horizon at midnight. It is the southernmost bright star visible from Ellensburg.

Friday: Jupiter, another windy planet, is a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon at midnight tonight. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a storm larger than the Earth that has been raging for over 400 years.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/6/11

2011-08-04T00:28:00.001-07:00

Saturday: It’s a moonless August morning. The first remnant of dawn has not appeared yet. Suddenly, you notice a large softly radiant pyramid of light in the east sky. The base of this ghostly triangle is along the east horizon and the peak stretches two or three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the horizon about two hours before sunrise. Don’t be scared. It’s not really a ghost. It is an effect called the zodiacal light. This light comes from sunlight reflecting off dust grains in our solar system. The effect is the most visible when the band of constellations called the zodiac makes a steep angle with the horizon. You need a clear dark sky with no haze or light pollution to see the zodiacal light. At its brightest, the zodiacal light rivals the light of the central Milky Way. This is one of the best times of year to see the zodiacal light in the morning.
This is also one of the best times of the year to see meteors. The Perseid meteor shower peaks this week.

Sunday: The Moon seems to move with precision tonight, moving between the head and the heart of Scorpius the celestial scorpion. Antares, representing the heart of the scorpion, is about a half a fist to the lower left of the Moon at 11 p.m.

Monday: The NASA probe called Dawn is orbiting the asteroid Vesta. Go to http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/ for more information about the Dawn mission and to see some fascinating photos of Vesta. Go to your binoculars to see Vesta for yourself in the constellation Capricornus. First find Deneb Algiedi, the brightest star in the constellation, two fists above the southeast horizon. Place this star in the upper left portion of your field of view, at the 10 o’clock position. Then move your binoculars toward the 4 o’clock position until two fairly bright stars come into your field of view. These two stars are close together, aligned diagonally, about half as bright as Deneb Algiedi. Next, place these stars in the upper left portion of your field of view, at the 10 o’clock position. Then move your binoculars toward the 4 o’clock position until a star about half as bright as these two comes into your field of view. Finally, move this star to the bottom of your field of view. Vesta will be near the middle of your field of view. It is about a finger width above this star, called 24 Capricorni.

Tuesday: Astronomers from the Beijing Planetarium recently identified a 30-ton meteorite in Northwest China. Just like asteroids such as Vesta, meteorites provide clues to the formation of the Solar System. Sometimes we spend millions of dollars on space probes to search for the evidence. Sometimes the evidence comes to us free of charge. See http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/126009563.html for more information.

Wednesday: Had the script been written a little differently for a well-known Robin Williams movie, we might have heard Mr. Williams shout, “Goooood Morning Orion the hunter”. Orion is typically thought of as a winter constellation. But, it makes its first appearance in the summer sky. The lowest corner of Orion’s body, represented by the star Saiph (pronounced “safe”), rises at 4:30 a.m., well before the Sun. By 5 a.m., Orion’s belt is about one fist above the east-southeast horizon.

Thursday: Saturn is less than a fist above the west horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Friday: The Perseid meteor shower peaks late tonight and early tomorrow morning. The meteors appear to come from a point just below the W of the constellation Cassiopeia. This point is about two and a half fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m. By 4 a.m., the peak time, this point is about seven fists above the northeast horizon. If you fall asleep or forget to set your alarm, you will be able to observe this shower from midnight to dawn for a few days before and after tonight in about the same location in the sky. The Perseid shower is one of the longest lasting showers. With dark skies, you can see up to 100 meteors per hour in the late night and early morning hours all week. Unfortunately, the nearly full Moon will obscure all but the brightest fireballs. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. These meteors are sand to pea-sized bits of rock that fell off of Comet Swift-Tuttle. They are traveling about 40 miles per second as they collide with the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. For more tips about meteor watching, go to http://goo.gl/6glPq.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/30/11

2011-07-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen. Typically a new Moon announcement is ho hum. But not during a meteor shower. The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower is just coming down from peak numbers and should provide increased early morning meteors for the next three weeks. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. this week. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky.

Sunday: What are some of the signs of August? 1. Hot weather. 2. Back to school sales. 3. A chain email saying Mars will look as big as a full moon this month. The first two are true. The third one never was and never will be. In August of 2003, Mars was as close to Earth as it had been in all of written history. With the right telescope magnification, it could look as large as the moon without magnification. But, even then, Mars did not appear even as large as Jupiter always does. This year, Mars is about half its maximum apparent size. Mars is one and a half fists above the east-northeast horizon at 4 a.m.

Monday: In Scotland, August 1 was known as Lammas, the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. You can remember this by looking at Spica, named after the Latin word for “ear of wheat”, one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west-southwest horizon at 9:30 p.m. August 1 is known as a cross-quarter day, a day approximately half way between an equinox and a solstice.

Tuesday: Have you ever built a house? You probably had some material left over. If scientists studied that material, they could learn a lot about how your house was constructed, the origin of your house. In fact, studying the building scraps would probably teach them more about the origin of your house than if they studied your house in its current state. After all, your house has been repainted and remodeled. Asteroids are the leftover material from the origin of our Solar System. Scientists study them to learn more about how the Solar System was formed. The NASA probe called Dawn is orbiting Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. For more information about Dawn, go to http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/.

Wednesday: Saturn is one fist above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m., just above the nearly setting Moon.

Thursday: We read a lot about how kids nowadays are heavier than they used to be. You don’t read that about stars… until now. Last summer, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory discovered the most massive stars in the universe using their Very Large Telescope (yes, that’s its real name). These two stars are about 300 times more massive than the Sun or twice as massive as the largest stars previously known. In addition to being very massive, they are several million times brighter than our Sun. Their brightness compared to the Sun is the same as the Sun’s brightness compared to the full moon. Neither of these stars is visible from Ellensburg. For more information, go to http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1030/.

Friday: Jupiter is a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon at midnight.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/23/11

2011-07-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks for the next few nights and early mornings with the greatest concentration of meteors being visible Friday night and Saturday morning. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 1 am tomorrow morning. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky. This year, the Moon will be near the new phase meaning visibility will be maximized. As you Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Sunday: Do you want an easy way to find due north? A compass points to magnetic north, which is a few degrees off of true geographic north. Well, tonight’s your night. Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer, is due north at exactly 10:14 p.m. It looks like a bright light on a pole on the north ridge because is only about one degree above the horizon.

Monday: Say "Cheese". 159 years ago this month, Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, became the first star ever photographed. The photograph was done at the Harvard Observatory using the daguerreotype process. Vega is the third brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg behind Sirius and Arcturus. Vega is nearly straight overhead at 11:00 tonight.

Tuesday: Hercules stands directly overhead this evening. Four moderately bright stars form a lopsided square that represents his body, while his head points southward. The monsters he has dispatched such as Hydra the water snake surround him.

Wednesday: The recently completed sequel to the musical “South Pacific” called “Viewing the South Pacific Sky” will be opening this morning on the island of Tahiti. Critics are raving about the remake of the song “Some Enchanted Evening with the lyrics “some enchanted evening, you may see an occultation, you may see an occultation across a crowded sky.” Just before sunrise this morning in Tahiti, the Moon will pass in front of Mars and block it from view. This is called an occultation. As viewed from Central Washington, Mars will be a couple finger widths to the lower left of the Moon at 5 a.m. and not be blocked by it.

Thursday: Saturn is one fist above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: It’s Friday night. You like to stay up late. Why not make it productive and look at the planet Jupiter and its largest moons. Jupiter is one fist above the east horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. With binoculars and a steady mount such as a tripod or the shoulders of a friend, you can see two to four of Jupiter’s Galilean moons.

Wait a minute. We got all the way to the end of the week with no Moon phase summary? How can that be? There are 29.5 days between the same Moon phase in two different cycles. That means about 7.5 days between the phases new, first quarter, full and last quarter. Since a week is seven days, there are some weeks in which none of the main phases occur. This week, the Moon was always in the waning crescent phase.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/16/11

2011-07-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The NASA probe called Dawn will enter into orbit around the asteroid Vesta today. Launched in September 2007, Dawn will orbit Vesta for one year, mapping the surface and determining exactly what Vesta is made of. Since asteroids don’t undergo nearly as much surface change as planets, they preserve the important evidence of how the solar system was formed. By comparison, the Earth’s surface is extremely young. For more information about Dawn and Vesta, go to http://goo.gl/LViWl.

Sunday: Being in a coma is a bad thing. Looking at the Coma Star Cluster is a good thing. The Coma Star Cluster is an open cluster of about 50 stars that takes up more space in the sky than 10 full Moons. It looks like a fuzzy patch with the naked eye. Binoculars reveal dozens of sparkling stars. A telescope actually diminishes from the spectacle because the cluster is so big and the telescope’s field of view is so small. The Coma Star Cluster is in the faint constellation Coma Berenices (ba-ron-ice’-ez) or Queen Berenice’s hair. Queen Berenice of Egypt cut off her beautiful hair as a sacrifice to the gods for the safe return of her husband Ptolemy III from battle. The Coma Star Cluster is about four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Monday: Mercury is less than a half a fist above the west-northwest horizon at 9:30 p.m. The slightly dimmer star Regulus is about one fist to the upper left of Mercury. This week is the best week for viewing Mercury in the evening sky for the next few months. After this Wednesday, it will move toward the Sun in the sky, soon being lost in the Sun’s glare.

Tuesday: If you want to show your loved ones a celestial sign that they should hang up their clothes, show them Brocchi's Cluster, commonly known as the Coat Hanger cluster because of its resemblance to an upside down coat hanger. The cluster is six fists above the southeast horizon at 10:30 p.m., midway between Altair and Vega, the two brightest stars in the Summer Triangle. You'll need binoculars to make out the shape. First find Altair four fists above the southeast horizon. Slowly move your binoculars up toward Vega. You will run into the coat hanger along the way. And while you are at it, put away your shoes.

Wednesday: Take a two and a half hour walk. Too long, you say? Forty-two years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first ever walk by humans on another world. They spend two and a half hours setting up scientific instruments and collecting rocks for study back on Earth. Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the spacecraft the three astronauts would use to return to Earth.

Thursday: Saturn is two fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m. The star Spica, which is nearly the same brightness as Saturn, is a fist and a half to the left of Saturn.

Friday: Shaula, the star that represents the stinger of Scorpius the scorpion, is a half a fist above due south at 11 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/9/11

2011-07-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Saturday: At 10 p.m., the bright star Regulus is a little less than one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon. But, who is this Regulus? He has many potential identities. The most interesting from a pop culture standpoint is Regulus Black, the brother of Sirius Black who is Harry Potter’s godfather. Regulus Black was a former follower of Voldemort, the bad guy of the Harry Potter series. However, Regulus tried to dissociate himself from Voldemort and was killed. He would be in the pile of forgotten Harry Potter characters except that he is so interesting. Also, in the sixth book, Harry found an important note written by someone known only by the initials R.A.B. Humm. R.A.B. Regulus A. Black perhaps? If you’re too lazy to read the books to learn more about R.A.B., the final Harry Potter movie called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, is coming out this Friday.

Sunday: But what does the “A” stand for? Anthony? Abercrombie? Alfonzo? Not astronomical enough. It stands for Arcturus, the second brightest star visible in the nighttime sky in Washington and at Hogwarts. Arcturus is five fists above the southwest horizon at 10 a.m. The bright star Spica and Saturn are halfway between Arcturus and the southwest horizon and about a fist and a half from each other. Spica is the slightly brighter object on the left within the pair.

Monday: Bellatrix Lestrange is Sirius Black’s cousin. But, far from being kissing cousins. They are killing cousins. Bellatrix kills Sirius in a fight at the Ministry of Magic. Bellatrix the star is the third brightest star in the constellation Orion the hunter. You can find it a half a fist above the east horizon at 4:30 am. But, don’t turn you back on it!

Tuesday: Of course, Bellatrix is in cahoots with “he who must not be named”. Now, that’s a poor sentence, using an obscure synonym for “conspiring” and a non-specific reference. I must be under the curse “writicus dreadfulium”. Clearly this is the work of Tom Riddle, whose mother is named Merope Gaunt. Merope is a star in the Pleiades, an open star cluster about two fists above the east-northeast horizon at 4 a.m.

Wednesday: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter’s young nemesis, is related to Sirius Black. Draco’s mother, Narcissa Black (Sirius’ cousin) helped develop a plan to trap Harry at the Ministry of Magic in the fifth book. Draco’s namesake, the constellation Draco the dragon is one of the largest constellations in the sky, winding around the North Star. Draco’s head is a four-sided figure nearly straight overhead at 11 p.m.

Thursday: The full Luna Lovegood is in the constellation Sagittarius the archer tonight. Happy Potter’s friend, Moon, once again helps him battle Lord Voldemort. Oops, did I mix up those names?

Friday: Not every woman in the Black family is evil. Andromeda Black, Bellatrix’s sister, is a good witch and the mother of Tonks, a young witch from the last few Harry Potter books. (If these Harry Potter references are confusing, talk to a young adolescent about them.) Andromeda the constellation is an interesting one. It contains the Andromeda galaxy, the most distant object visible with the naked eye from a dark site. To locate the Andromeda Galaxy, first find the Great Square of Pegasus. At 11:00 p.m., the left hand corner of the square is about two fists above the east-northeast horizon. Less than two fists to the left and down a little bit is another star the same brightness as the star at the corner of the square. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light known as the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of about 400 billion stars and is 2.2 million light years away.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/2/11

2011-06-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

What's up in the sky 7/2/11

Today: Monday night, while you are looking at an explosion of fireworks, the NASA spacecraft Kepler may be looking at an “explosion” of exoplanets. So far, Kepler has found 16 planets whose presence has been confirmed by other means and evidence of 1,235 planet candidates. Something is called a planet candidate when the light from a star being observed by Kepler dims in a systematic way. Astronomers still need to compare the pattern of dimming with the potential pattern of star wobble caused by being tugged on by one or more planets before they can say for certain that they have actually found planets orbiting these stars. But if even half of these stars show the characteristic wobble, it will more than double the number of planets known to orbit other stars, also known as exoplanets. And this is only the beginning. The Kepler spacecraft is monitoring the brightness of over 156,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus the swan and Lyra the lyre. This region is midway between the bright stars Deneb and Vega. It is about the size of your hand held at arm’s length and is about six fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 11 p.m.

Sunday: Hot enough for you? Don’t blame the Earth-Sun distance. Surprisingly, the overall temperature of the Earth is slightly higher in July, when the Earth is farthest from the Sun, than in January, when it is closest. That’s because in July, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun. (This is the real cause of the seasons.) The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, in July, the large amount of Northern Hemisphere land heats up the entire Earth about two degrees Celsius warmer than in January. In January, the watery Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun. But, water does not heat up as fast as land so the Earth is a few degrees cooler. The Earth-Sun distance is 152.1 million kilometers tomorrow. This is called aphelion from the Greek prefix “apo” meaning “apart” and Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.

Monday: The little king gets mooned! Regulus, Latin for “little king”, is less than a fist from the upper right-hand portion of the Moon at 9:30 p.m.

Tuesday: When people find out that you read this column, they may ask you all sorts of tough astronomy questions such as “Where can I see the Milky Way?” That one is easy. Just look in the mirror. We are all part of the Milky Way. The center of the Milky Way galaxy is in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, about one and a half fists above due south at 11:30 p.m.

Wednesday: The elusive Mercury is a half a fist above the west-northwest horizon at 9:45 p.m. It will be hard to see in the glow of the setting sun. But I know you can find it. I have much more faith in you than in that person standing next to you reading the celebrity magazine. “Best Beach body!” Puh-lease.

Thursday: In 1982, the Australian rock group Men at Work sang “Isolation, rows and rows of cars. Isolation, like Jupiter and Mars” in their song “Catch a Star”. Mars is certainly not isolated this week. It is about a half a fist to the upper left of the open star cluster called the Hyades cluster. They are one and a half fists above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 a.m. Jupiter, on the other hand, is in a portion of the sky with no other bright stars. It is three fists above the east-southeast horizon at this time.

Friday: Saturn is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/25/11

2011-06-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Don’t wait until the 4th of July to go to those wimpy firecracker shows. Find the hypergiant star Rho Cassiopeiae. Astronomers think that Rho Cassiopeiae will likely go supernova (explode) in the near future. Of course, for stars, near future might mean today. It might mean 20,000 years from now. Rho Cassiopeiae is in the constellation Cassiopeia the queen. At 11:00 tonight, Cassiopeia looks like the letter “W” about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon. Rho Cassiopeiae is about a finger’s width to the right of the rightmost star in the “W”. Once you find it you’ll be thinking, “Big deal, I can hardly see it.” Although it is barely visible to the naked eye, it is actually very bright. It is the 20th most luminous star in the sky, a whopping 550,000 times more luminous than the Sun.

Sunday: Jupiter is about a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon at 4:30 a.m. They are low in the eastern sky just ahead of the soon to be rising Sun.

Monday: What you can’t see can’t hurt you… if it does not hit the Earth. An asteroid estimated to be 25-55 feet across will come within 8,000 miles of hitting the Earth this morning at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. This asteroid is too dim to be seen by the naked eye anywhere in the world but will be visible to people with moderate sized telescopes in the far Southern Hemisphere. If an asteroid this size exploded close to the ground due to heating by the atmosphere, it would cause significant damage. Go to http://goo.gl/X19Zd for more information.

Tuesday: Mars is less than a half a fist to the lower left of the Moon at 4:30 a.m. You’ll have to look carefully to see Mars in the dawn sky.

Wednesday: The green ring forged for the Green Lantern by the Guardians of the Universe couldn’t save the movie from bad reviews. But the green rings found by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are helping astronomers learn more about “O” type stars, the most massive stars known. Go to http://goo.gl/kBY6I for an example of a highly rated green ring.

Thursday: The constellation Cepheus the king (husband of Cassiopeia the queen) is about four fists above the northeast horizon at 11 pm. Cepheus is about one and a half fists above Cassiopeia. Cepheus looks like a house on its side with the roof peak pointing towards the west. Cassiopeia and Cepheus revolve around the North Star every night like a happy couple going through life together.

Friday: At the beginning of the June, I wrote about Mizar. Now that it is the beginning of July, I need to warn you not to confuse Mizar with its rhyming brother Izar in the constellation Bootes. Izar is also a binary star with about the same apparent brightness. And both were featured in different episodes of Star Trek. Izar was featured in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy” from the original series. It is the base of Fleet Captain Garth, a former big shot in the federation and one of Kirk’s heroes before he went insane. Garth kidnaps Kirk and Spock before eventually being out smarted. Mizar doesn’t play as big a role in its episode. It is the star of the home world of one of the alien species in The Next Generation episode “Allegiance”. Izar is one fist above the bright star Arcturus and seven fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m. Mizar is seven fists above the northwest horizon at this time.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/18/11

2011-06-17T00:27:00.001-07:00

Saturday: “Mom, I can’t sleep. It is too light out!” A poor excuse you say? Good astronomy skills, I say. The latest sunset of the year happens over the next two weeks. Surprisingly, the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not both happen on the longest day of the year, the day of the summer solstice. The earliest sunrise occurs just before the longest day and the latest sunset occurs just after the longest day. (The earliest sunrise happened last week.) This phenomenon relates to the angle of the Sun’s path near rising and setting. In Ellensburg, that angle is about 66 degrees near the first day of summer. Because of the Earth’s orbit, which causes the Sun’s apparent motion, the angles are not symmetric. The asymmetry in orbital angles leads to the asymmetry in rise and set times. By the way, the “can’t sleep because it is too light out” line may just be an excuse because the sunset times change by only a few seconds each day this time of year. The sun sets between 9:01 and 9:02 p.m. between June 21 and July 3 2011.

Sunday: Summer is nearly here. How do I know? Because my kids are home from school. Also, because the Summer Triangle is fairly high in the eastern sky at 10 p.m. Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg, is about five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon. Deneb, at the tail of Cygnus the swan is about three and a half fists above the northeast horizon. The third star in the triangle, Altair, in Aquila the eagle is two fists above the east horizon.
If you want to put somebody off, tell her or him to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon.

Monday: Saturn is three fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: Today is the first day of summer, the day that the Sun reaches its highest declination (the official name for sky latitude) of 23.5 degrees above the celestial equator. The celestial equator is the line that divides the northern sky from the southern sky. In Ellensburg, the Sun is about seven fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 1:00 p.m. (noon standard time). Contrary to popular belief, the Sun is never straight overhead in Ellensburg or anywhere else in the 48 contiguous states. The northernmost portion of the world where the Sun can be directly overhead is 23.5 degrees north latitude. In ancient times, the Sun was in the constellation Cancer the crab on the first day of summer. Hence, 23.5 degrees north latitude has the nickname "Tropic of Cancer". Because the Earth wobbles like a spinning top, the Sun's apparent path through the sky changes slightly over time. Now, the Sun is in the constellation Taurus the bull on the first day of summer. However, citing the high cost of revising all of the science books, geographers are not changing the name of 23.5 degrees north latitude to "Tropic of Taurus". The first day of summer is often called the summer solstice. However, astronomers refer to the summer solstice as the point in the sky in which the Sun is at its highest point above the celestial equator. Thus, summer starts when the Sun is at the summer solstice point. This year, that happens at 10:17 a.m.

Wednesday: Jupiter is two fists above the east horizon and Mars is one fist above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 a.m.

Thursday: This morning’s last quarter Moon is in the constellation Pisces the fish.

Friday: The early summer days are long so take some time to safely observe the Sun. The best way to do that is to go to http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and watch the great images and videos that come from the Solar Dynamics Observer, or SDO for short. We are approaching a sunspot maximum scheduled to peak 2013. So what, you say? Sunspots and associated phenomena greatly influence the strength of solar flares. The strongest flares can affect satellites orbiting the Earth and even electronics on the Earth’s surface.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/11/11

2011-06-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Have you bought your favorite CWU graduate a graduation gift yet? Why not get her or him a star? I don’t mean from one of those organizations that offers to “register the name of YOUR star with the U.S. Patent Office”. No company owns the right to name stars after people. Besides, the stars those companies “name” are so dim you can’t find them. In this column, I’ll pick a constellation and representative star for each of the four colleges at CWU. Then, I’ll briefly tell the story of the constellation and relate that story to the aspect of public service CWU graduates from that college are uniquely qualified to engage in based on my version of sky interpretation. A couple can have “their” song so your favorite CWU graduate can have her or his star.

Saturday: Just as gyms and stadiums have been crowded with smart people for many evenings for the past few weeks, the eastern morning sky is crowded with bright planets for the next week. Tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m., right as your CWU graduation party is winding down, you can see two, or possibly three, planets. Venus, the brightest planet, is just above the east--northeast horizon. Mars is a fist held diagonally and at arm’s length to the upper right of Venus. You may need binoculars to see it. Finally, Jupiter is one and a half fists above due east.

Sunday: College of Arts and Humanities: You are the people who interpret the world in unique ways. Then, you share those ways with others. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed everyone he met when he played the lyre or harp. After his wife died tragically, he journeyed to the underworld to charm its inhabitants in an effort to win his wife back to the living world. Your service reminder: use your talent to bring joy to others. The constellation Lyra and its bright star Vega should remind you of the power of the arts. Vega is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: College of Business. You are the future movers and shakers. The future CEOs. The future big donors to Central. Auriga represented a king of Athens who happened to be mobility impaired. Instead of sitting around waiting for others to transport him, he took the initiative to invent the four-wheeled chariot. He solved a problem for a special need. Your service reminder: address the problems of those in the most need. To remind you of that, look to the constellation Auriga. Its bright star Capella is about one fist above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: What? Did your favorite graduate tell you that one of these star names is not good enough for them? If their favorite color is red, promise them a blood-red Moon… and a trip to Uzbekistan to see it. There will be a total lunar eclipse visible tomorrow in the Eastern Hemisphere. During a total lunar eclipse, white sunlight passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The blue component of the white light is scattered and the remaining light that bends toward the Moon is reddish. Thus, the Moon looks red during a total lunar eclipse. Call it blood red for effect.

Wednesday: College of Education and Professional Studies. You are the teachers. The craftspeople. The facilitators of learning in a diverse world. Bootes, the herdsman, was such a person. Bootes’ job was to guide the northern constellations to the feeding place and the watering hole. He and his dogs were especially in charge of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the greater and lesser bears. Your service reminder: guide others to a better place in life. Look to the constellation Bootes and its bright star Arcturus to remind you of this. Arcturus is six fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: College of the Sciences. You are the people who will systematically study how the world works. Agriculture is an important scientific application. Each year, farmers must use the findings of science to be successful. Who better to represent the College of the Sciences than Virgo, the goddess of the harvest? Virgo looms large in the sky holding an ear of wheat in her hand. Your service reminder: study the practical aspects of the scientific world. The ear of wheat, and your service reminder, is represented by the bright star Spica. Spica is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Friday: Saturn is three and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. This column is also available online at http://theellensburgsky.blogspot.com/

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/4/11

2011-06-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday: In 1979, the group Foreigner recorded the song “Head Games”. They could have been singing about the constellations Hercules and Ophiuchus when they said “head games, it’s just you and me baby, head games, I can’t take it anymore” because the heads of these two constellations have been right next to each other in the nighttime sky for all of human history. Each head is represented by a star bears an Arabic name that means "the head." In Hercules, it's Ras Algethi (head of the kneeler); in Ophiuchus, Ras Alhague (head of the serpent charmer). At 11 p.m., Ras Alhague, the brighter of the two, is a little more than four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon. Ras Algethi is about a half a fist to the upper right of Ras Alhague.

Sunday: Jupiter is one fist above the east horizon and Mars is a half fist above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 a.m.

Monday: Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, is spending time near the seven sisters for the next few mornings. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The seven sisters, also known as the open star cluster the Pleiades, is a group of about 100 young stars – 50 million years old – in the constellation Taurus. Yes, 50 million years is young for stars. The Sun is about five billion years old. The seven sisters are named after the daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione and are nymphs themselves, companions to Artemis. According to Greek mythology, several important gods such as Zeus and Poseidon had affairs with the seven sisters. Are your children reading this? Put them to bed so they can wake up at 4:30 a.m. At this time, Venus will be a few fingers above the east-northeast horizon and the Pleiades will be a few fingers to the upper left of the Pleiades. Over the next few days, Venus will move lower in the sky and move underneath the Pleiades.

Tuesday: Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo viewed the Pleiades star cluster through his telescope and saw that the seven or so stars in the region visible to the naked eye became many more. There are two main types of star clusters. Open star clusters are groups of a few dozen to a few thousand stars that formed from the same cloud of gas and dust within our galaxy. Stars in open star clusters are young as far as stars go. Globular clusters are groups of up to a few million stars that orbit the core of spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way. One of the most well known star clusters is the globular cluster in Hercules, an object that is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Vega, the bright bluish star five fists above the east horizon at 11 p.m. Two fists above Vega is a keystone shape. Aim your binoculars at the upper left hand star of the keystone. The globular cluster is one third of the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this stuff”.

Wednesday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Leo the lion.

Thursday: Saturn is one fist to the upper left of the Moon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Mizar is a well known binary star in the constellation Ursa Major. You can find it at the bend in the Big Dipper handle, nearly straight overhead at 10 p.m. tonight. Its name is Arabic for waistband. Mizar has an optical double called Alcor which is less than a pinky width away and can easily be seen with the naked eye. Optical doubles are stars that are close together in the sky but do not orbit a common center of mass as true binary stars. Not wanting to deceive sky gazers who call Mizar a binary star, two stars that DO orbit a common center of mass, Mizar actually is a binary. It was the first binary star system discovered by telescope. Mizar A and Mizar B are about 400 astronomical units apart from each other and about 80 light years from Earth. 400 astronomical units is about 10 times the distance between the Sun and Pluto.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/28/11

2011-05-26T21:52:00.001-07:00

Saturday: The constellation Aquila the eagle is starting its migration across the summer evening sky this month. Aquila, marked by its bright star Altair, rises above the east horizon at about 11 p.m. Not all animal migrations are fully understood by scientists. We might be inclined to attribute bird migrations to instinct. This answer certainly did not satisfy the theologian C. S. Lewis. In his short work “Men Without Chests”, he wrote, “to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way”. In science (and theology), Lewis is telling us to look for real causes and not simply labels such as instinct. The cause for Aquila’s migration is the Earth orbiting the Sun. As the Earth moves around the Sun, certain constellations move into the evening sky as others get lost in the glare of the setting Sun.

Sunday: The Moon tries to get in on the morning planet action over the next few days. This morning at 4:30, Jupiter can be seen a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon.

Monday: Cygnus the swan flies tonight. Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation, whose name means “tail” in Arabic, is two fists above the northeast horizon at 10 p.m. Cygnus’ wings make a vertical line one half a fist to the right of Deneb. Its head, marked by the star Albireo, is two fists to the right of Deneb. While Deneb is at the tail of Cygnus, it is at the head of the line of bright stars. It is 160,000 times more luminous than the Sun making it one of the brightest stars in the galaxy. It does not dominate our night sky because it is 2,600 light years away, one of the farthest naked eye stars. If Deneb were 25 light years away, it would shine as bright as a crescent moon. Compare that to Vega, which is 25 light years away. Vega is three and a half fists above the east-northeast horizon at this time.

Tuesday: At 4:30 a.m., Venus is a half a fist to the right of the Moon, just above the east-northeast horizon. Mars is to the upper

Wednesday: Are you feeling lucky today? Then go outside and yell to the sky “come and get me!” Asteroid 2009 BD will nearly oblige. This asteroid, discovered in 2009, is about 30 feet across and will come within 200,000 miles of hitting the Earth today. While 200,000 miles seems like a lot, it is only 90% of the Earth-Moon distance. Asteroid 2009 BD is somewhat rare in that it has nearly the same orbit as the Earth. Its orbit is a little bit larger and a little bit more elliptical meaning it often gets close to hitting the Earth. If an asteroid this size hit the Earth, scientists estimate it would cause approximately the same amount of damage as an atomic bomb.

Thursday: The month of June is named after Juno, the queen of the Roman gods and the mythological protector of the Roman state. In ancient Rome, the month began when the crescent moon was first seen in the evening sky from Capitoline Hill in Rome. If we still started months this way, June wouldn’t begin until about two weeks from now.

Friday: Saturn is four fists above the south-southwest horizon at 10 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/21/11

2011-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

Saturday: There are times when people live up to their namesake. For example, Canadian figure skater Elvis Stojko lived up to the expectation of success that comes with being named after Elvis Presley. He won three world championships and two Olympic medals. The planet Venus does not live up to its namesake. While the planet was named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty, it is not a loving place. The surface of the planet is 460 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough to melt lead. The barometric pressure on the surface is over 90 times greater than on Earth’s surface. Most missions to Venus have failed either before sending back data or after only a few minutes of sending back data. Not a very neighborly attitude from our nearest planetary neighbor. The European Space Agency probe called Venus Express is by far the longest-lived probe. It has been sending data back to Earth for the past five years from a relatively safe polar orbit of Venus. One of the findings that surprised scientists is that Venus had active volcanoes in its recent past. For more about volcanoes on Venus and throughout the solar system, go to http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss/display.cfm?Year=2011&Month=5. Venus is the brightest of the three volcano-laden planets low in the eastern morning sky. At 5 am, Venus is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon. Mercury is a pinky thickness below Venus and Mars is a pinky thickness to the upper left of it.

Sunday: If you are getting up early to spot the three inner solar system planets mentioned above, you might as well look for Jupiter, as well. It is one fist above the east horizon and well to the upper right of the other three morning planets.

Monday: Late spring and early summer is a good time to look for star clusters. Last week, you learned about M3, the third object cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier over 200 years ago. One of the best clusters is the globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, also called M13. (Hummm. Guess what number that object is in Messier’s catalog.) Globular clusters are compact groupings of a few hundred thousand stars in a spherical shape 100 light years across. (For comparison, a 100 light year diameter sphere near out Sun would contain a few hundred stars.) The globular cluster in Hercules is six fists above due east at 11 p.m. First find Vega, the bright bluish star about four fists above the east-northeast horizon. Two fists to the upper right of Vega is a keystone shape. Aim your binoculars at the two stars that form the uppermost point of the keystone. The globular cluster is one third of the way south of the uppermost star on the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this stuff”.

Tuesday: This morning’s last quarter moon is in the constellation Aquarius the water bearer.

Wednesday: When it is sitting low in the western sky, many people mistake the star Capella for a planet. It is bright. It has a slight yellow color. But, Capella is compelling on its own. It is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the most northerly bright star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 10 p.m., Capella is two fists above the northwest horizon. If you miss it tonight, don’t worry. Capella is the brightest circumpolar star meaning it is the brightest star that never goes below the horizon from our point of view in Ellensburg.

Thursday: The bright summer star Antares is a half a fist above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Saturn is four fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m. Scientists have discovered an electrical connection between Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The water cloud above the jets of water that spray out from Enceladus’ active volcanoes contains a charged plasma cloud. Particles from this cloud interact with Saturn’s magnetic field. For more information about this phenomenon, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/wires?id=158250371&c=y.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/14/11

2011-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation Orion, is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due west at 9 p.m. It is on the short list of stars that could go supernova in the near future: near future meaning next million years. Most heavy elements such as radium and polonium are formed in supernova. Why not go celebrate the discovery of radium and polonium by watching living history re-enactress Carole Berg perform an evening with Madam Marie Curie. Berg, a chemistry professor at Bellevue College, performs all around the northwest as Marie Curie for audiences of all ages and all levels of science. This event is on the CWU campus in the Hertz Hall Auditorium starting at 7 p.m. Hertz Hall is H-8 in the campus map found online at http://www.cwu.edu/newmap.html. 2011 is the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie being awarded her Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium. What else do you have to do tonight, put together a collage of newspaper clippings?

Sunday: Saturn is four fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m.

Monday: Give me an “M”. Give me a “3”. What does that spell? “M3.” “Big deal,” you say. It was a big deal to French comet hunter Charles Messier (pronounced messy a). M3 was the 3rd comet look-alike that Messier catalogued in the late 1700s. M3 is a globular cluster, a cluster of over 100,000 stars that is 32,000 light years away. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye but is fairly easy find with binoculars. First find Arcturus five and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m. (See Wednesday’s entry to learn how to find Arcturus.) Move your binoculars up a little so two stars of nearly identical brightness are in your field of view. When the top star is in the lower left part of your field of view, there should be a fuzzy patch near the center of your field of view. This is M3.

Tuesday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Libra the scales. Since this is the time for “May flowers”, the May full moon is called the Full Flower Moon.

Wednesday: This is a good time of the year to find the Big Dipper. It is nearly straight overhead at 10 p.m. The cup is to the west and the handle is to the east. You can always use the Big Dipper to find some other bright stars. First, follow the curve, or arc, of the Big Dipper down three fists into the southern sky. This is the bright star, Arcturus, the second brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg. Next, continue on a straight line, or spike, another three fists down toward the south horizon to the star Spica. Spica is the tenth brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg. It is known as the Horn Mansion, one of 28 mansions, or constellations, in the Chinese sky. You now know how to use the Big Dipper handle to “arc” to Arcturus and “spike” to Spica.

Thursday: The bright star Antares is one fist above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Friday: For the entire month of May, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter can be found in the eastern morning sky just before sunrise. Tomorrow morning just before sunrise, the packing is so close that Mercury, Venus and Mars could hide behind your thumbnail held at arm’s length. Venus is about 40 times brighter than Mercury and 100 times brighter than Mars. For a movie of how the planets will dance around each other this month, go to http://media.skyandtelescope.com/video/planet-animation-may2011.mov.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/7/11

2011-05-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The Kittitas Environmental Education Network (KEEN) invites you to “Get Intimate with the Shrub Steppe” (GISS) at Helen McCabe Park this morning and early afternoon. Go to http://www.kittitasee.net/events/giss2011.html for more information about the entire event. I invite you to Get Intimate with Super Spectacular Saturn (GISSS) tonight. Saturn is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10 p.m. With a small telescope, you can see the rings of Saturn and at least one of its moons – Titan. With a good pair of 10X50 binoculars and a tripod, Titan will be visible tonight to the right of Saturn. The “10X” in 10X50 indicated the binoculars have a magnification of ten times. The “50” means that the diameter of the lenses on the front are 50 millimeters. 10X50 is a common size for binoculars.

Sunday: So you think your mother has problems on Mother’s Day because she has you as you as a child? Her mother issues can’t be as bad as Cassiopeia’s issues. First, she was chained to a chair for boasting about her beauty. Second, she has to revolve around the North Star night after night. Third, her daughter Andromeda was nearly sacrificed to a sea monster. Look for poor Cassiopeia about one and a half fists above the north horizon at 10 p.m. Cassiopeia looks like a stretched out “W”.

Monday: Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are spending the week wishing a happy mother’s day to Venus, named after the goddess of love. They are together in the morning sky all week. At 5:15 a.m., Jupiter and Venus are a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon. Jupiter is one finger to the left of the much brighter Venus. (Mercury and Mars are much dimmer and below the other two planets.) As the days go by, Venus will move to the left and Jupiter will move up in the sky.

Tuesday: Are you interested in observing the night sky but you don’t know what to look at or you don’t know if the sky will cooperate. NASA’s Night Sky Network has a night sky planning page at http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. Here you’ll find links to star charts, a local weather forecast, local sky conditions and more.

Wednesday: Jupiter and Venus are less than a pinky-width apart at 5:15 a.m. in the low eastern sky. Hopefully, you have been following the planets throughout the week. Their noticeable movement with respect to the background stars is evidence that they are much closer to us than the stars.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? Cor Caroli, the brightest star of Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs, understands how you feel. It has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at 10:30 p.m. Its name means "Heart of Charles," in honor of England's King Charles II.

Friday: Are you a henpecked husband? King Cepheus was. He was so captivated by his wife Cassiopeia’s beauty that he let her rule their home. You can tell who is boss by looking in the northern sky at 10 p.m. Cassiopeia is the prominent W-shaped grouping of stars two fists above the north horizon. Cepheus is the much dimmer house-shaped grouping of stars about a fist to the right of Cassiopeia.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/30/11

2011-04-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Mother’s Day is just over a week away. 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 gem stone for the crown. It is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 10 p.m.

Sunday: You may be familiar with the 1980s New Zealand rock group “Crowded House”. They are making a comeback this week and rebranding themselves as “Crowded Sky” with a reworking of their 1987 hit “Don’t Dream it’s Over”. Here is a sample of the lyrics. “Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over. Hey now, hey now, when the planets come in. They come, they come to fill the morning sky now. We know they won’t stay.” The planets Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars are rising just before the Sun. This morning they are joined by the Moon. But the sky is illuminated by the soon-to-rise Sun so the only planet you’ll see is Venus, just above the east horizon at 5:15 a.m. Because all of the planets orbit the sun at different rates, the planets don’t stay in the same location with respect to the distant stars. The morning will not maintain its Crowded Sky. We know the planets won’t stay.

Monday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen. The term “new” comes from the moon seeming to be reborn with light every lunar cycle. Your calendar may list tomorrow as the new Moon. The moon is directly between the Earth and Sun early tomorrow morning making tomorrow the calendar day that the new Moon occurs. However, the night that starts at sunset this evening is the night of the new Moon.

Tuesday: Wake up before dawn for the next few mornings for a nice spring shower – a meteor shower. The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on Friday morning. But since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, there will be many more meteors than in the typical pre-dawn sky throughout the week. 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 above the east horizon at 4 a.m. Although dawn is starting to light the sky, you could be rewarded with a few bright, fast meteors. 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.

Wednesday: Saturn is four fists above the south-southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at 10:30 p.m.

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 brightest star in the constellation rises at 6:30 and is two and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m. Saturn is about a fist above it.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/23/11

2011-04-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

Saturday: You know Metis and Thebe and Adrastea and Amalthea. Io and Ganymede and Callisto and Europa. But do you recall? There are 63 Jovian moons in all. Less than 50 years ago, Jupiter was thought to have only 12 moons. But, astronomers are red-nosed with delight that the advent of supersensitive electronic cameras has caused the number of discovered moons to rapidly increase. Jupiter’s 63 moons range in size from Ganymede, with a diameter of 5,262 kilometers, to S/2002 J12 and S/2003 J9, with a diameter of only one kilometer. Our moon has a diameter of 3,475 kilometers. (One kilometer is 0.62 miles.) Saturn is second place in the moon race with 61. Uranus is next with 27. Then comes Neptune with 13, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. Even dwarf planets have moons. Pluto has 3, Eris has 1, and Haumea has 2. Eris is an outer solar system object that was discovered in 2005 and named in September of 2006. Because astronomers thought it was larger than Pluto, people called it the tenth planet for a while. (More recent measurements show Eris to be a little smaller than Pluto.) Haumea, the newest dwarf planet, was discovered in 2004 and officially named a dwarf planet on September 17, 2008. Saturn, in second place on the moon list, is three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 9 p.m. Go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/A_Guide_to_Planetary_Satellites.html for more information about moons.

Sunday: Are you thirsty. I’ll wait while you get some water. I will NOT wait while Corvus the crow gets you some water. The Greco-Roman god Apollo made this mistake. He sent Corvus the crow to get some water in the cup known as Crater. Corvus got distracted by some figs and he waited for them to ripen so he could eat them. When Corvus got back late, Apollo put Corvus and Crater in the sky with the gently tipping cup just out of the reach of the perpetually thirsty crow. Corvus is a trapezoid-shaped constellation about two fists above due south at 11 p.m. Crater is just to the right of Corvus.

Monday: “Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink” is from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. (No not Ichiro.) But is could be the slogan of our solar system. Astronomers used to think that the solar system was dry with earth being the only place to find water. It turns out that the solar system has an abundance of water, Comets are made of water ice. Some astronomers think they be the source of some, or even most, of Earth’s water. Jupiter’s Moon Europa has a crust of frozen water covering a large ocean containing more water than all of the Earth’s oceans. Even the Moon, thought to be dry as a bone, has frozen ice deep in its polar craters. Take a swim in the watery last quarter Moon this morning. Once you dry off, visit http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss/display.cfm?Year=2011&Month=4 to read more about solar system water.

Tuesday: 50 years ago this morning, Jupiter and Saturn were in line with the constellation Capricornus the sea goat. What does this mean for a person born on that day? Maybe they like swimming as symbolized by the water reference. Maybe they were raised in crowded conditions as symbolized by the two largest planets being in one constellation. Or maybe the location of the planets on the day you were born has nothing to do with what you become as an adult. Maybe you turn out to be a great person, loved by those close to you, because of the choices you make and the hard work that you do. That’s what I think. Take that, astrology!

Wednesday: Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, is one and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 8:30 p.m.

Thursday: Vega is one fist above the northeast horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Friday: Hydra the water snake rears its ugly head in the southwest sky at 10 p.m. First find Procyon. This bright star is two and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon. Next, find Saturn and Regulus right next to each other, five fists above the southwest horizon. Now, draw an imaginary line between Procyon and Regulus. Just below the midway point of that line, you should see a clump of stars that make the shape of a crooked house. This is the head of Hydra. The brightest star in the constellation, called Alphard, is three fists above the south horizon, midway between Regulus and the horizon. There are no other bright stars in the area. So it makes sense that the name Alphard means “the solitary one”.
As you may have noticed, Hydra is just below Corvus and Crater. Apollo put Hydra in the sky to keep Corvus from drinking the water from the cup.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/16/11

2011-04-13T23:28:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Saturn is a fist held out at arm’s length to the upper left of the Moon low in the southeast sky at 8 p.m. You may follow them throughout the night until they set at about 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. And if you can force yourself to stay awake or if you get up before sunrise or stay up very late any night this week, be on the lookout for meteors coming from nearly straight overhead near dawn. The Lyrid meteor shower is active this week.

Sunday: Do you like pop music? You don’t? So, so what. In the first draft of her biggest hit, the singer P!nk wrote “Waiter just took my full moon, and gave it to Jessica Simps”. Sit. Read about the April full Moon which occurs tonight. Some Native American tribes called the April full moon the full pink moon because its arrival coincided with the blooming of wild ground phlox, a pink wild flower.

Monday: Vega is two fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: The nighttime stars take little more than an instant to rise. The Moon takers about two minutes to rise. That’s absolutely speedy compared to the constellation Virgo which takes four hours to rise. The first star in Virgo rises at 4:30 in the afternoon today. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation, rises at 7:30. By 9 p.m., Spica is a fist and a half above the southeast horizon. The middle section of Virgo will be marked by the planet Saturn for the next few months. Saturn is three fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: How many of you know your 12 nearest neighbors? I thought so. Why don’t you go out and meet them right now. I’ll wait. Yes, of course bring them cookies. No, not those stale ones you hate.
Are you back already? That means you didn’t really go out and meet your 12 nearest stellar neighbors, did you? Including the Sun, there are 12 stars within 10 light years of Earth. The most well known are the Sun (obviously); Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than the Sun; Alpha Centauri, a bright binary star visible from the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere; and Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky. Sirius is the largest and most luminous star in our neighborhood. It is one and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower is typically active from tonight to April 27. 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 tonight and close to straight over head near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. This year, the light from the waning gibbous Moon will obscure the dimmer meteors. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. This is typically one of the least interesting major meteor showers of the year with about 10-20 bright meteors per hour. However, it is also one of the most unpredictable. As recently as 1982, there were 90 meteors visible during a single hour. In addition, the Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C.

Friday: Venus is less than a fist above the east horizon at 5:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/9/11

2011-04-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

Saturday: This month is Global Astronomy Month (www.gam-awb.org). Astronomers around the world want to reconnect people with the night sky, thus their slogan: One People, One Sky. For a summary of Global Astronomy Month events, click on “Events” at the top of the right-hand column. The feature event for this week, April 10-16, is Lunar Week. May I suggest OPTICKS, a live audio-video transmission performance between the Earth and the Moon? Amateur astronomers from around the world will bounce radio signals off of the Moon. These signals will be collected by a telescope in The Netherlands and webcast. The event starts tomorrow at 11 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time. For more information about lunar Week, go to http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/lunar.html.

Sunday: You probably didn’t know this but several British New Wave bands were really into astronomy. Take the band “Dead or Alive” (please). The original lyrics to their song “You Spin my Round (Like a Record) were thought to be: “ You spin me right round, baby, right round, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, right round, round, round.” (Well, that’s what I thought them to be.) The Whirlpool Galaxy was the first galaxy observed to have a spiral shape. Since then, astronomers have discovered many galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, have a spiral shape. Go to astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_apr.htm for more information about the Whirlpool Galaxy. Go to your small telescope to find the Whirlpool Galaxy in the night sky. It is in the constellation Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. At 10 p.m., find Alkaid, the end star of the Big Dipper handle, five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon. The Whirlpool Galaxy is two fingers to the upper right of Alkaid.

Monday: Tonight’s first quarter moon is six fists above due south at 8 p.m., midway between the bright stars Pollux above it and Procyon below.

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 in the south-southwest sky at 9 p.m. Rho Puppis, one of the brightest stars in the constellation, is about one and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at this time.

Wednesday: Venus is a half a fist above the east horizon at 6 a.m.

Thursday: Are you thirsty? Crater the cup is two and half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 10 p.m. Hopefully you are not too thirsty because the cup is nearly tilted on its side. Its opening is pointing toward Saturn and Spica, the brightest objects in that portion of the sky.

Friday: Saturn is three fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m., one fist above Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/2/11

2011-04-01T11:40:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Some people in town today for the Yakima River Canyon Marathon may be looking for a little running inspiration. While nothing can take the place of a 20 mile long run for marathon preparation (I know), certain objects in the night sky are inspiring. In the Bible, Job specifically mentions the star Arcturus, or the bear keeper, to his friend as a sign of God's majesty. He describes God as that "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers (constellations) of the south" (Job 9:9, King James Version). Whatever your religious beliefs, it is clear that Job was impressed with this very bright star. See the star that inspired Job about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 9 p.m.

Sunday: The bright star Deneb is a half a fist above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: Saturn is opposition tonight. That doesn’t mean that Saturn is a teenager. Opposition means that Saturn is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. When an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the day. Thus, opposition is typically the best time to observe a planet. Saturn is about four fists above the south horizon at 1 a.m. It is two fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.
If you remember this column from 2/23/2008, 3/8/2009, and 3/21/2010, you know that Saturn was also in opposition on those dates. Thus, it is in opposition about two weeks later each year. Two weeks is about one twenty-fourth of a year. This implies that it takes Saturn about 24 years to make one orbit around the Sun and get back in line with the same stars again. Saturn’s actual orbital period of 30 years matches this approximation quite well.

Tuesday: Give me a “W”. Cassiopeia, a W-shaped group of stars is two fists above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Wednesday: Orion is getting lower and lower in the nighttime sky. Its second brightest star Betelgeuse is only one and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: This April, the hot topic in the tabloids is anyone in the Kardashian family. During April 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, the “Hot Topic” Astronomy was galaxies and the distant universe. When Galileo turned his telescope to the seemingly continuous band of light in the sky, he discovered it consisted of countless faint stars. This extended our celestial neighborhood from a few thousand stars to millions of stars. This neighborhood configuration lasted until the 1920’s when Edwin Hubble discovered that there are other galaxies with millions, or even billions, of stars just like our own galaxy. We may lose interest in celebrity break-ups but galaxies are always hot. At 11 p.m., you can see the thick band of the Milky Way galaxy starting at the northeast horizon, moving west through the bright star Deneb, through Cassiopeia, just above Betelgeuse and the Moon, under the feet of Gemini, and settling into the southwest horizon near Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky. Follow this same track at this same time in a few nights when the Moon is not above the horizon to see the Milky Way even better.

Friday: Venus is a half a fist above the east horizon at 6 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 3/26/11

2011-03-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Say good bye to Jupiter. It is just above the west horizon at 7:45 p.m. You may need binoculars to find it hiding in the glare of the setting Sun. Over the next few weeks, Jupiter will move behind the Sun and show up in the early morning sky.

Sunday: Venus, the brightest planet, is a half a fist held upright and at arm's length above the southeast horizon at 6:15 a.m. Neptune, the dimmest planet, is just to the upper right of Venus. But, you'll need binoculars to find it. When Venus is at the center of your field of view, Neptune will be the dim point of light at the 2 o'clock position.

Monday: Mercury and its human-made moon are one fist above the west horizon at 8 p.m. The "moon", also known as MESSENGER or MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, orbits Mercury once every 12 hours, getting as close as 124 miles from the surface of the planet. For comparison, the International Space Station orbits about 200 miles above the Earth's surface. For more information about the MESSENGER mission, go to http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/.

Tuesday: Leo the lion prowls the sky in the late winter and early spring. Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation, is five fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: So far this week, I have written about Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune. Do you even care about these planets or does another planet really catch your fancy? If you’d like to learn what certain people’s favorite planet is, go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pluto/favorite.html and click on “Launch Interactive”. The public TV special called “The Pluto Files” has set up a website in which astronomers give a 30-second pitch for why a certain planet might be their favorite. After listening to the pitch, you may vote for your favorite planet. Of course, you may also do what most people do for political elections: vote for the candidate with the best name or the one with the most interesting campaign slogan. So whether you carefully consider each planet's merits or simply “Pick Uranus”, go to “The Pluto Files” and vote. Saturn will be holding a campaign rally tonight at 11 p.m., two fists above the southeast horizon.

Thursday: Venus is about a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon in the eastern sky at 6 a.m.

Friday: After a long journey through space, there is nothing will quench your thirst better than a few drops of refreshing Mars water. Wait! Is this an April Fool’s Day joke? No. Last year, after analyzing photos taken by the Mars Phoenix Lander, a group of astronomers discovered what they interpreted as drops of very salty liquid water on one of the Lander’s legs. But we are not going to travel 18 months to Mars just to lick a few drops of water off a metal leg. We want waterfront property if we are going all that way. The high resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken images of dark rivulets form, grow, and fade in the Martian southern hemisphere. Even though Mars is very cold, this liquid could contain enough salt to lower its freezing point by more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Mars and that refreshing water rises due east just before the Sun. For more information about liquid water on Mars, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/117806243.html.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 3/12/11

2011-03-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Don't forget to set you clocks ahead one hour tonight for the annual ritual called daylight savings. Daylight savings originated in the United States during World War I to save energy for the war effort. But a recent study by two economists shows that switching to daylight savings time may actually lead to higher utility bills. When the economists compared the last three years of energy bills in the section of Indiana that just started observing daylight savings, they discovered that switching to daylight savings cost Indiana utility customers $8.6 million in electricity. In an even more important consequence of daylight savings, Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia discovered a 7% jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after we "spring ahead". Blame it on the lost hour of sleep. And, sky watchers will lose even more sleep because the sky does not get dark for an additional hour.

Sunday: Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, is a half a fist above the west horizon at 8 p.m. Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, is a couple finger widths to the lower right of Jupiter.

Monday: The Moon is midway between the twin stars in Gemini and the little Dog Star. Procyon, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor, or the lesser dog, is one and a half fists below the Moon. Pollux and Castor are about a fist above the Moon. All of these objects are in the southern sky at 9 p.m.

Tuesday: Vega is a little more than a half a fist above the northeast horizon at 11:30 p.m.

Wednesday: This Saturday is Earth Sun day. For more information, go to http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2011/index.php.

Thursday: Mercury is the naked eye planet we know the least about. That may soon change because NASA’s Messenger probe is scheduled to start orbiting Mercury today. It will be the first visitor to the planet one Messenger scientist called the most under-appreciated planet since 1974. The number one question scientists hope to answer is why Mercury has such a large iron core compared to its size. The number one question you may be asking is “Why is Mercury in a different location with respect to Jupiter since Sunday?”. It is now about a finger width to the upper right of Jupiter. Since mercury is so close to the Sun, it moves very fast in its orbit so it changes positions in the sky much faster than an outer planet such as Jupiter.

Friday: Ask someone on which day in March the day becomes longer than the night. Go ahead, ask someone. Why are you still reading this? I can wait. If they said the first or second day of spring, they are wrong. Today, two days before the first day of spring, is the day in which there are more minutes of daylight than night. There are two main reasons for this. First, the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is actually below the horizon. This makes the Sun appear to rise before it actually rises and appear to set after is actually sets. Second, spring starts when the center of the Sun passes through the point called the vernal equinox. But, the Sun is not a point. The upper edge of the Sun rises about a minute before the center of the Sun and the lower edge sets a minute after the center of the Sun. Thus, even if we didn’t have an atmosphere that bends the sunlight, daytime on the first day of spring would still be longer than 12 hours.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 3/5/11

2011-03-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

Saturday: “The crow rises in the southeast” said spy number one. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that code” replied spy number two. Spy one exclaimed, “That’s because it’s not a code, you idiot. I’m talking about the constellation Corvus the crow.” This very bad spy movie dialogue is to remind you that Corvus had a very bad life. According to one myth, Corvus brought the god Apollo the news that his girlfriend was seeing someone else. In a classic case of punishing the messenger, Apollo turned the formerly beautifully colored crow black. The box-shaped Corvus is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: Jupiter is about a half a fist to the lower left of the Moon at 7 p.m. Enjoy Jupiter while you can because it is moving toward the Sun in the evening sky. Within a couple of weeks, it will be lost in the glare of the setting Sun.

Monday: 2009 was the International Year of Astronomy. Even though 2009 is long gone, astronomy lives on in the “Hot Topic” of the month. For March, the hot topic is observing at night… and in the day. Technology has expanded the amount of information astronomers can learn from observing the sky. Up until the mid 1900s, we studied the sky using a very narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum – visible light waves. It was like studying music by listening only to notes of medium pitch. The invention of the radio telescope opened up a new source of information, long wavelength radiation. It also opened a new time to observe the sky – the day time. Radio waves from outer space are not blocked by the sunlit sky like visible light from outer space is. For the past 50 years, astronomers have started gathering gamma ray, x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and microwave radiation. Finally, the entire symphony of wavelengths rather than just a few notes. But technology has also negatively impacted our view of the nighttime sky through light pollution. The dim light of a distant galaxy is facing more and more competition from businesses that use inefficient lighting that lights the sky as much as it lights the ground. Many communities, including Ellensburg, have passed or are working on ordinances to reduce this costly and sky-robbing stray lighting. Go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_mar.htm for more information about the March “Hot Topic”.

Tuesday: Some people dream of moving into a high-rise. Craters on Mars dream of being photographed by HiRISE, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, the largest telescope ever flown to another planet. It can see details down to one foot across. But, it didn't need much resolution on January 10 when it snapped a picture of twin craters, each about one mile across, connected on their side. The object that made the craters probably broke into two nearly equal sized objects in the thin Martian atmosphere and hit the ground at nearly the same time. For more information, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/117192413.html.

Wednesday: In this busy world, it is important to know what time it is. We have many devises that give us the time. Our phone, a computer, a watch. But who has time to build a phone, computer or evan a watch. Not you. But everyone has enough time to build a simple Sun Clock. All you need is a pencil, a compass and a print out of the clock template. Go to http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/sunclock.html for more information.

Thursday: Seven sisters are hanging out with the Moon tonight. The open star cluster known as the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, is less than a half a fist above the Moon at 7 p.m. Since the Moon is so much brighter than the stars in the cluster, it will be very difficult to see the sisters with the naked eye. Instead, aim your binoculars so the Moon is just below your field of view. The Pleiades will be near or below the middle of your field of view.

Friday: Saturn is three fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. The bright star Spica is below it. Note the difference in the colors of the two objects. Saturn is a yellowish-orange color because of the material in its atmosphere. Spica is a whiteish-blue color because it is glowing like an extra hot light bulb filament. Star color os related to the temperature of the star. Red stars have smaller energy level transitions so they are cool. Blue and whiteish-blue stars have larger energy level transitions so they are hot.

Wait a minute. We got all the way to the end of the week with no Moon phase summary? How can that be? There are 29.5 days between the same Moon phase in two different cycles. That means about 7.5 days between the phases new, first quarter, full and last quarter. Since a week is seven days, there are some weeks in which none of the main phases occur. This week, the Moon was always in the waxing crescent phase.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 2/26/11

2011-02-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday: How many stars can be seen in the constellation Orion? From tonight through March 6, you can help answer that question. The organization called GLOBE at Night is looking for people all over the world to count how many stars they can see in the constellation Orion. Participants use star charts found at http://www.globeatnight.org/ to observe Orion and compare what they see to the charts. After making the observations, participants can go to the website and add their findings to those of thousands of other observers. The main goal of GLOBE at Night is to research the pattern of light pollution across the globe. A secondary goal is to increase interest in observing and awareness of the night sky. You can find the middle of Orion three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m. In Orion, you’ll see four of the 30 brightest stars in the night sky: Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Alnilam.

Sunday: It’s getting dark. The last remnant of twilight has disappeared. Suddenly, you notice a large softly radiant pyramid of light in the western sky. The base of this ghostly triangle is along the west horizon and the peak stretches two or three fists above the horizon. It is not really a ghost. It is an effect called the zodiacal light. This light comes from sunlight reflecting off dust grains in our solar system. The effect is the most visible when the band of constellations called the zodiac makes a steep angle with the horizon. You need a clear dark sky with no haze or light pollution to see the zodiacal light. At its brightest, the zodiacal light rivals the light of the central Milky Way. Look for this light after twilight in the middle evening for the next few weeks.

Monday: Jupiter is one fist above the west horizon at 7 p.m.

Tuesday: Venus is a half a fist to the right of the thin, waning crescent Moon at 6 a.m.

Wednesday: If the National Enquirer was around in Galileo’s day, it may have featured the headline: “Saturn has love handles; Opis leaves him for a much thinner Mars”. When Galileo first observed Saturn through a telescope, he reported objects that looked like bulges on either side of Saturn’s midsection. He was actually seeing Saturn’s rings through less than ideal optics. Go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_mar.htm for more information about Saturn. Go to one and a half fists above the east-southeast horizon at 10 p.m. to see Saturn.

Thursday: You’ve seen the science fiction love story movies where humans travel to a comet in order to blow it up. Now watch the Valentine’s Day movies where human travel to a comet in order to study it. On February 14, the NASA Stardust spacecraft recorded its trip to within 115 miles of Comet Tempel 1. So get your significant other, go to http://www.universetoday.com/83368/movies-of-comet-tempel-1-flyby-by-stardust-next/ and enjoy the ride. It’s probably better than another Twilight movie and much for you to see.

Friday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen. This is why some people call this phase the “dark moon” and reserve the name “new moon” for the first visible waxing crescent after the Moon moves out from directly between the Earth and Sun.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 2/19/11

2011-02-16T22:40:00.000-08:00

Saturday: This President’s Day weekend, let’s remember Abraham Lincoln: 16th president, country lawyer, man on the penny, and astronomer. Astronomer? Well, maybe not an astronomer, but someone who used observational evidence from the sky to solve a problem. In 1858, Lincoln defended Duff Armstrong, a family friend who was accused of murder. The prosecution thought they had a strong case because their primary witnesses claimed to have observed the killing by the light of the nearly full moon. Let’s listen in on the trial courtesy of the 1939 film, Young Mr. Lincoln.
Lincoln: How’d you see so well?
Witness: I told you it was Moon bright, Mr. Lincoln.
Lincoln: Moon bright.
Witness: Yes.
(Dramatic pause as Lincoln reaches for something)
Lincoln: Look at this. Go on, look at it. It’s the Farmer’s Almanack (sic). You see what it says about the Moon. That the Moon… set at 10:21, 40 minutes before the killing took place. So you see it couldn’t have been Moon bright, could it?
Lincoln used the known information about Moon rise and set times for August 29, 1858 as evidence in a trial. You may confirm Lincoln’s findings on the Moon set time by going to http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php, the US Naval Observatory website, and filling out Form A. For more information about Lincoln’s “almanac trial”, go to http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/Almanac_Trial.pdf.

Sunday: The sky provides an effective lesson in geometry and in relative motions tonight. At 11 p.m., the moon, Saturn, and the bright star Spica form a small right triangle one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon. Saturn is to the upper left of the moon and Spica is to the lower left. By 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, this triangle as moved across the sky to about two fists above the southwest horizon. Saturn is now to the upper right of the moon and Spica is to the upper left. These are simply changes in their position in the sky due to the rotation of the Earth. But, because the moon is very close to the Earth, in an astronomical scale, we can observe the moon’s actual motion with respect to more distant objects. Thus, you will notice that the triangle tonight has a slightly different shape than the triangle tomorrow morning because the moon has moved eastward toward Spica in the sky.

Monday: 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 in the south-southwest sky at 10 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.

Tuesday: Venus is a little less than one fist above the southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

Wednesday: Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, is two and a half fists above the south horizon at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Jupiter is a little more than one fist above the west horizon at 7 p.m. By mid-March, Jupiter will be lost in the glare of the Sun. But that will not make Jupiter any less interesting. Jupiter’s dark Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB) disappeared for most of 2010, probably covered by lighter colored ammonia clouds in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. But recent photographs taken using an infrared wavelength camera show that the ammonia clouds may be starting to part, revealing the SEB once again. For more information, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/115941284.html.

Friday: Have you been to outer space lately? Neither have I. But the iron meteorite slice just acquired by the Central Washington University Astronomy club has. It made the trip from the inner Solar System asteroid belt long ago, landed on a farm near Uruaçu, Brazil in 1992 and now resides in a display case near the middle of the first floor in Lind Hall on the CWU campus. Thanks to NASA and the Night Sky Network for providing this slice of a coarse octahedrite meteorites are composed primarily of nickel-iron alloys

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 2/11/11

2011-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

Saturday: According to Greek mythology, the beautiful princess Andromeda was chained to a rock next to the ocean. Cetus the sea monster was about to devour her in order to punish her family. It seemed that all was lost. But, along came the great warrior Perseus, fresh off his defeat of the evil Gorgon, Medusa. The only similarity between Andromeda and Medusa was that Andromeda caused people to stand still and stares at her beauty while Medusa turned people to stone because of her ugliness. (And, you thought you looked bad in the morning.) Even though Perseus’ standing as the son of King Zeus and the slayer of Medusa was probably enough to win Andromeda under normal circumstances, Andromeda’s impending death-by-sea-monster was not a normal circumstance. So, Perseus drove his sword into the sea monsters neck and killed it. In a little known addendum to the story, Perseus carved “Percy (heart symbol) Andi” in the rock, thus originating the use of the heart symbol as a substitute for the word “love”.
You can find these lovers in the sky this Valentine’s Day. Just remember it is rude stare – and you never know when you might turn to stone. First, find the Great Square of Pegasus at 7 p.m. between one and a half and three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon. The lowest star in Andromeda is the top star in the square. This represents Andromeda’s head. Perseus is at her feet, nearly straight overhead. Mirphak, the brightest star in Perseus is about eight fists above the west horizon. Perseus’ body is represented by the line of stars to the left and right of Mirphak.

Sunday: Venus, the brightest point of light in the sky, is a little more than one fist above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Monday: Give your sweetheart a ring for Valentine’s Day. No, no, no. Don’t break the bank. Show your sweetheart Saturn, the ringed planet. It is one fist above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: February is named for the Roman word februum which means purification. Februa, the Roman festival of ritual purification was held on February 15 according to the Roman lunar calendar. Feb-hand-sanitizer-rua is the soccer mom ritual of pre snack purification. It is held every Saturday during the summer before the orange slices are handed out.

Wednesday: Jupiter is one and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Thursday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Leo the lion. You may have noticed that your calendar says the full moon is the 18th, not today. Why is that? Because your calendar lies. After all, the calendar says it is your spouse’s birthday and you know that it is not your spouse’s birth…. Oh no! It IS your spouse’s birthday. Run out and buy a gift before it… is… too… late. Oops, too late. You may as well read the rest of the column. The actual moment of the full moon, the time when the Earth is directly between the Moon and the Sun is Friday morning at 12:47 am. Thus, the moon spends most of its “close to full moon” time this evening, the 17th.

Friday: “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Pluto. Happy Birthday to you.” On this day in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, the solar system object formerly known as a planet.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 2/5/11

2011-02-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

Saturday: “E.T. phone Kepler 11”. This may be the iconic line of dialog if there is a sequel the hit movie “E.T.”. This past Wednesday, scientists working on the Kepler planet finding mission announced 1,235 planet candidates, 68 of which are approximately Earth-size. Five of the near Earth-size planets are in the habitable zone of their host star meaning the temperature is right for liquid water to exist in the surface. The most exciting find is the six planet (so far) system orbiting a Sun-like star dubbed Kepler-11. None of Kepler-11’s planets orbit in the habitable zone. But this is the largest group of planets ever discovered that transit their star. A transiting planet is one that passes between the Earth and its host star such that the host star’s light is dimmed a little bit. Kepler-11 is located about one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the northwest horizon at 7 p.m. It is much too dim to be seen with the naked eye but it is near the bright star Deneb in the sky. To learn more about the Kepler mission, go to http://kepler.nasa.gov/.

Sunday: Jupiter is a half a fist to the lower left of the Moon at 7 p.m.

Monday: Are you looking for a little romance in your sky? If so, go to the planetarium show “Romantic Myths” given tonight at 7:50, 8:30 and 9:10 by the CWU Astronomy Club. Here you will learn important tips for meeting your loved one such as saving them from a sea monster or casting them into the sky. The shows are in the SURC Ballroom, up on the second floor. Located on the CWU campus at the intersection of N Chestnut Street and E 11th Avenue, the SURC has ample free parking available most evenings.

Tuesday: Small bodies can make big impacts. Think babies. Gymnasts. Ferrets. Comets. Comets? While the typical comets we observe are much larger than those other small bodies I listed, they are some of the smallest objects in the Solar System. Yet they have a big impact on our understanding of the formation of the Solar System. Larger objects have processes such as weathering and volcanism that cover up evidence of the early Solar System’s history. But, NASA isn’t covering up any evidence on its Year of the Solar System website. Go to http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss/display.cfm?Year=2011&Month=2 to read more about how the small bodies have big impacts. And, no, I don’t mean bunny rabbits.

Wednesday: Winter is a good time to see think band of the Milky Way galaxy. It arches high in the high in the early evening starting in the southeast by Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Climbing from Sirius through the "horns" of Taurus high overhead, it drops down toward M-shaped Cassiopeia in the north and the tail of Cygnus, the swan, in the northwest.

Thursday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Aries the ram.

Friday: Saturn is one fist above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/29/11

2011-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

Saturday: The “Hot Topic” for February during the 2009 International Year of Astronomy was the Solar System. Even though 2009 has done the way of popular netbooks and a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, the Solar System lives on. Galileo’s discoveries about the Sun, the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter helped move us from a privileged spot in the center of the perfect heavens to one of billions of planets in the turbulent neighborhood known as the Milky Way Galaxy. Some may say that makes them feel small and insignificant. I say it makes me feel empowered. All those planets and very few, perhaps only one, inhabited by beings with the capability to comprehend their surroundings. It is better to understand your situation as one in a billion than to blindly and incorrectly think you are at the center of everything. Go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_feb.htm for more information about the Solar System. Go outside and look two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m. for more information about Jupiter.

Sunday: Venus is a half a fist above the Moon in the southeast sky at 6:30 a.m.

Monday: The bright star Arcturus is one fist above the east-northeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: The good news is the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. The better news is the farther north you go in the United States, the longer the days get. Here in Ellensburg, there is one more hour of daylight than on the first day of winter. In the southern part of the US, there are only 30 more minutes of sunlight. Of course, on the North Pole, the day length goes from zero hours to 24 hours.

Wednesday: Today is Groundhog Day. If Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow this morning, he is telling us that he follows the Chinese calendar and that spring starts early. On the Chinese calendar, equinoxes and solstices occur in the middle of their respective seasons. In order for the vernal equinox to occur in the middle of spring, spring must start on February 3 or 4, depending on the year. Thus, if Phil doesn’t see his shadow, spring may start on February 3 or 4 as on the Chinese calendar. If Phil sees his shadow, he is telling us he agrees with the western calendar and that there will be six more weeks of winter meaning spring will start near March 20.

Thursday: One year ago, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spotted its first of many never-before-seen near Earth asteroids. While there is no danger of this asteroid hitting Earth in the foreseeable future, the United States’ government is worried about the threat of a rogue asteroid hitting Earth. So much so that Congress mandated that by 2020, NASA must find 90% of all potential Earth-impacting asteroids down to 140 meters across. I may write a book about this search called “Going Rogue – An Asteroid Life”. Here is an excerpt.
I’d rather “stand with our North Korean allies” than be in the path of even a small asteroid streaking towards Earth. Would it be dangerous? You betcha! The asteroid that created the mile-wide impact crater in Arizona was only 25 meters in diameter and packed a wallop about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I say “Thanks but no thanks” to that kind of risk, even if this size impact occurs only once every few hundred years.

Friday: Saturn is one fist above the east-southeast horizon at 11:30 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/22/11

2011-01-19T20:41:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due north at 9 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the constellation, is at one corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.

Sunday: Jupiter, the brightest point of light in the evening sky, is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m. Uranus, one of the dimmest lights sometimes visible to the naked eye can be easily found using binoculars because it is very close to Jupiter in the night sky. First find Jupiter. Then, move your binoculars so Jupiter is in the upper left section. Uranus is in the lower right section. Notice how I wrote that they are very close in the night sky. In actuality, they are about 1.5 billion miles apart. This is 15 times farther than the Sun is from the Earth.

Monday: Deneb Kaitos, the "tail of the whale," tries to swim away from Jupiter in the southern sky tonight. The moderately bright orange star forms the tail of Cetus the whale. At 7 p.m., it appears about two fists above the southwest horizon and less than a half a fist to the lower left of Jupiter.

Tuesday: Venus is one fist above the southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

Wednesday: Saturn, the bright star Spica, and the last quarter Moon line up in the southern sky this morning.

Thursday: Are you interested in participating in astronomy research? You don’t need to go back to school. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting a fake degree from an online university. The scientists working on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would like your input on which objects they should target for close-up pictures. While you may think the scientists are just trying to build interest in their project by having people look at pretty pictures, there is a real scientific benefit to having many eyes searching for interesting targets. There aren’t enough scientists to carefully inspect all of the low power images. And, surprisingly, computers are not nearly as effective as people in making educated judgments of images. So, go to http://www.uahirise.org/ and click on the HiWish button. You’ll be on your way to suggesting close-up targets for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Friday: What is the number one threat to the peaceful use of space? Missiles from rogue nations? Nope. Aliens? You wish after seeing that beer commercial during NFL games. It is space junk. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk orbit the earth, most of it in the main human-made satellite region. The US Department of Defense is tracking over 21,000 objects greater than four inches across to assess the danger they pose. Go to www.heavens-above.com to find out what large pieces of that space junk is visible any night. You may select your location from a map, from a list, or enter it manually.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/15/11

2011-01-12T22:09:00.001-08:00

Saturday: Who can forget that memorable song by Three Dog Constellations Night, “The sky is black. The stars are white. Together we learn to find the light.” Well, maybe it didn’t go like that. This is good because not all stars are white. Most stars are too dim to notice a color. But, the stars in the constellation Orion provide a noticeable contrast. Betelgeuse, five fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10:30 p.m. is a red giant. Rigel, the bright star about two fists to the lower right of Betelgeuse, is a blue giant.
By the way, the three dog constellations are Canis Major, the greater dog; Canis Minor, the lesser dog; and Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. Canis Major contains Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: Jupiter is three fists above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Monday: Some objects we can observe every day lead to very difficult scientific questions. The star that we call Epsilon Auriga varies in brightness for a two year period every 27 years. Scientists were not sure of the exact cause of this dimming. The most recent episode started in the summer of 2009 and will end this year. But recent images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which sees infrared wavelengths, are helping scientists solve the puzzle. Epsilon Auriga is actually a binary system. The bright star in the Epsilon Auriga system is orbited by a smaller star which is surrounded by a huge cloud of sand grain-sized particles. This cloud, which is approximately the size of Jupiter’s orbit in diameter, causes the main star in the system, creatively called Epsilon Auriga A, to be only half as bright as its maximum. You can follow the cycle with the naked eye. Epsilon Auriga is about a fist to the upper right of Capella, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Capella is seven and a half fists above due east at 8 p.m.

Tuesday: How do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal shelter, care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle of a star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a minute. Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead, they study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and piece together the information from those different stars. What they do is like studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of star life.
First, find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short lived existence, is three and a half fists above due south at 9:30 p.m. About one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The middle “star” is really a star forming region called the Orion nebula. There you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and a little below Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star. Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life that started out life a bit larger than the Sun.

Wednesday: It’s cold. The snow is blowing in your face. Food is scarce. Packs of wild animals are wondering around howling. Does this describe your house after someone broke your window during your New Year’s party? It also describes wolf packs around Native American villages. That’s why many tribes call January’s full moon, which occurs this morning at 5:36 the Full Wolf Moon. It is also called the Moon after Yule.

Thursday: Saturn finally makes its way into the late evening sky. It is a half a fist above the east horizon at midnight.

Friday: Venus is one and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/8/11

2011-01-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

Saturday: One Family Affair explored the trials of well-to-do civil engineer and bachelor Bill Davis as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his luxury New York City apartment (as described on Wikipedia). Another family affair explores the set of planets, dwarf planets, comets, and asteroids that orbits our Sun. Just as studying your own family history can tell you about yourself, one reason astronomers study the rest of the solar system is to learn more about the Earth. Comets and asteroids hold many more detectable clues about the early solar system than the Earth does because the Earth’s surface is constantly changing. For more information about this Family Affair go to http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss/display.cfm?Year=2010&Month=1.

Sunday: Hit the road Mercury and Venus. And don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more. For the past few weeks in the case of Mercury or months in the case for Venus, these two planets have been hitting the road and moving away from the Sun in the morning sky. Today, both are as far away from the Sun as they will get in the morning this cycle. This is known as a planet’s greatest western elongation. Mercury is about a fist above the southeast horizon and Venus is about two fists above the south-southeast horizon at 7:00 a.m. Over the next few weeks, Mercury and Venus will move toward the Sun in the sky, eventually passing behind the Sun and appearing in the evening sky.

Monday: Another boring Monday night? Not this week. Go to the CWU Astronomy Club’s Monday Astronomy Event from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. We will meet in Lind Hall, room 215 for a brief introduction to the night sky and an impressive demonstration of the size of the galaxy. There will be numerous telescopes in use to view Jupiter and other interesting celestial objects. Dress warmly. If the sky is overcast, come anyway to hear a presentation about the Solar System. Lind Hall is on the corner of Chestnut Street and University Way. There is ample close free parking near Lind Hall at this time of night. If you are staying home, at least go outside and look for Jupiter, one fist held upright and at arm’s length below the Moon in the southwest sky at 8 p.m.

Tuesday: You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above due north at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: What you see with the naked eye isn’t all that can be seen. While astronomers can learn a lot from observing the sky in the visible wavelengths, many celestial objects radiate more light, and more information, in wavelengths such as radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray. Last year, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to study objects that radiate in the infrared range such as asteroids, cool dim stars, and luminous galaxies. For an interesting comparison of how different wavelengths show different aspects of a galaxy, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/different_universe.pdf. If it wasn’t for infrared telescopes such as WISE, astronomers would not know about the significant amount of dust in galaxies.

Thursday: January is the coldest month of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace. Fornax the furnace one fist above due south at 7 p.m.

Friday: Saturn is four fists above the south horizon at 6 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 1/1/11

2010-12-30T00:57:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Today is the day we celebrate the anniversary of something new – a new classification of celestial objects. Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres [pronounced sear’-ease], the first of what are now called “asteroids”, on January 1, 1801. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. At first, Piazzi thought it was a star that didn’t show up on his charts. But, he noted its position changed with respect to the background stars from night to night. This indicated to him that it had to be orbiting the Sun. In August of 2006, Ceres got promoted to the status of “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union.

Has it been tough to wake up this past week? It should have been because the sunrise has been getting a little later since summer started. I know. I know. December 22 was the shortest day of the year. But, because the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical and not circular, the Earth does not travel at a constant speed. It moves faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is farther away. This leads to the latest sunrise occurring in early January, tomorrow for 2011, and the earliest sunset occurring in early December, not on the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. On the first day of winter, however, the interval between sunrise and sunset is the shortest.

Sunday: Today’s weather forecast: showers. Meteor showers, that is. The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks over the next two nights. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. That makes this shower mysterious because there isn’t any constellation with this name now. The shower was named after Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation found in some early 19th century star atlases. These meteors appear to come from a point in the modern constellation Draco the dragon. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon at 1 a.m. In good years, careful observers can spot about 100 meteors per hour. Fortunately, 2011 is going to be a good year because the moon will be new during the peak nights meaning less ambient light to obscure the dimmer meteors. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Most meteors are associated with the path of a comet. This shower consists of the debris from an asteroid discovered in 2003. Keeping with the comet-origin paradigm, astronomers think the asteroid is actually an “extinct” comet, a comet that lost all of its ice as it passed by the Sun during its many orbits.

Monday: If the Sun looks big today, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. The Earth is at perihelion at about 11 a.m. If you dig out your Greek language textbook, you’ll see that peri- means “in close proximity” and helios means “Sun”. So, perihelion is when an object is closest to the Sun in its orbit, about 1.5 million miles closer than its average distance of 93 million miles. Since it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere now, the seasonal temperature changes must not be caused by the Earth getting farther from and closer to the Sun. Otherwise, we’d have summer when the Earth is closest to the Sun. The seasons are caused by the angle of the sunlight hitting the Earth. In the winter, sunlight hits the Earth at a very low angle, an angle far from perpendicular or straight up and down. This means that a given “bundle” of sunlight is spread out over a large area and does not warm the surface as much as the same bundle in the summer.

Tuesday: Jupiter is about three fists above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Wednesday: As a follow-up to the 1982 hit “Southern Cross”, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Palmquist are working on this: “When you see the Northern Cross for the first time. You’ll understand now why swans fly this way”. The Northern Cross, also known as Cygnus the swan, appears to standing up on the northwest horizon at 8 p.m. The bottom of the cross about one fist and the bright star Deneb at the top of the cross is three fists above the northwest horizon.

Thursday: The holidays are family time. Now that the time you have spent with your human family is over, spend some time with your solar system family. This year begins the International Year of the Solar System. Nearly each month has a different theme. The theme for January is “A Family Affair”. Your solar system family has some great 3-D pictures posted at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/slideshows/index.cfm?id=22&page=1. They’re a lot better than the pictures of your aunt’s dog and that stupid doggy sweater he wears.

Friday: Saturn is nearly four fists above the south horizon and Venus is nearly two fists above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/25/10

2010-12-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw Jupiter being eclipsed by the Moon in the east and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2, Bruce Palmquist version, informed by Michael Molnar). There are many theories as to the physical explanation of the Star of Bethlehem, the celestial object that guided the wise men to the location of Jesus. Some people think it was a recurring nova, a star that explodes again and again. Some think it was a close alignment of bright planets. Some think it was a miracle that requires no physical explanation. In 1991, astronomer Michael Molnar bought an ancient Roman Empire coin that depicted a ram looking back at a star. Aries the ram was a symbol for Judea, the birthplace of Jesus. The Magi, or “wise men”, who visited the baby Jesus practiced astrology and would have been looking in that region of the sky for the king prophesied in the Old Testament. Molnar, a modern day wise person, used sky simulation software to model the positions of planets and the Moon in the region of Aries. According to his model, Jupiter was eclipsed, or blocked, by the Moon on the morning of April 17, 6 BC. Molnar’s theory is supported by a book written by the astrologer of Constantine the Great in 334 AD. The book describes an eclipse of Jupiter in Aries and notes a man of divine nature born during this time. See http://www.eclipse.net/~molnar/ for more information.
Aries and Jupiter make an appearance in the Christmas sky tonight. At 7 p.m., the dim constellation Aries is about six fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon and Jupiter is three and a half fists above the southwest horizon.

Sunday: Columbia the dove, representing the bird Noah sent out to look for dry land as the flood waters receded, is perched just above the ridge south of Ellensburg. Its brightest star Phact is about one fist above due south at 11 p.m.

Monday: The rapper Lil Bow Wow, now known by his adult name, Bow Wow, has a new album coming out next year. The sky has its own lil bow wow coming out every night this winter. Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor, the lesser dog, is about three fists above the east-southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: Have you ever looked down on the ground and spotted a penny? In Yakima? While you were standing in Ellensburg? If you have, then you may be able to see the star Hamal as more than just a point of light. It has an angular diameter that can be detected from Earth. Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries the ram, has the same angular diameter as a penny 37 miles away. (For comparison, the moon is about half the diameter of a penny held at arm’s length.) Hamal is six and a half fists above due south at 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Are you celebrating New Year Eve eve by staying up late? If so, check out the ringed planet Saturn, one fist above the east-southeast horizon at 2 a.m.

Thursday: Venus is about a fist to the left of the crescent moon at 6 a.m.

Friday: Forget about that big bright ball in Times Square. You can mark the start of the new year with one of the sky’s own big bright balls. That perennial favorite New Year’s Day marker, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, rises to its highest point in the sky a little after midnight on January 1. Thus, when Sirius starts to “fall”, the new year has begun. Look for Sirius about two and a half fists above due south at midnight.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/18/10

2010-12-15T12:19:00.000-08:00

This week, we’ll all be reminded of the lyrics of the song Bonnie Tyler almost sang, Total Eclipse of the Moon. “Turn around. Twice a year I move into the shadow of Terra and I become very dark. Turn around. Five years out of ten I get a little bit tired of becoming red like blood from a shark.”

Saturday: Jupiter is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 6 p.m. It is by far the brightest point of light in the sky visible at this time.

Sunday: Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus, is about a fist to the lower right of the Moon at 7 p.m.

Monday: Tonight’s moon is full. Ho hum. A full moon happens every month. But, this month, the moon is very close to being in the same plane as the Earth and Sun. Not ho hum. That means there will be a lunar eclipse tonight. Even less ho hum. It will be a total lunar eclipse. Total lunar eclipses are not as obvious as total solar eclipses because light still reaches the Moon even when it is completely blocked by the earth. That is because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens and bends rays of light that would normally miss the moon towards the moon. That doesn’t mean the moon looks the same during a total lunar eclipse as it does during a normal full moon.
Sunlight is white. White light is the sum of all of the colors in the visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Our atmosphere scatters the blue component of the Sun’s white light. That is why our sky is blue. (If our atmosphere consisted of different gasses, we would likely have a different colored sky.) When the Sun or moon is near the horizon, the light passes through a lot of the atmosphere meaning a lot of the blue light is scattered and the Sun or moon looks redder than when it is high in the sky. During a total lunar eclipse, sunlight passes through a large slice of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining light that reaches the moon is reddish. Thus, the moon looks red during a total lunar eclipse.
From our perspective in central Washington, the moon will begin the partial eclipse stage at 10:32 p.m. The moon will slowly move into the Earth’s shadow and get dark from left to right. At 11:40 p.m., the moon will be fully eclipsed. The total eclipse lasts until 12:52 a.m. The moon will be moving out of the earth’s darkest shadow or umbra until 2:00 a.m. After that, the moon will look white just like a normal full moon. Thus, during the entire eclipse, the moon looks white, then black, then red all over. For more information, go to NASA’s eclipse website at http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html.

Tuesday: At 3:43 p.m., the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky with respect to the background stars. This point is called the Winter Solstice. During the day that the Sun reaches this point, your noon time shadow is longer than any other day of the year. Also, the Sun spends less time in the sky on the day of the Winter Solstice than any other day making this the shortest day of the year. Even though it is the shortest day of the year, it is not the day with the latest sunrise or the earliest sunset. The latest sunrise is during the first week in January and the earliest sunset is during the second week in December. The Sun is at its southernmost point with respect to the background stars on the day of the winter solstice. This means the Sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon on that day. But, the Sun rise and set time depends on more than its apparent vertical motion. It also depends on where the Sun is on the analemma, that skinny figure-8 you see on globes and world maps. During the second week in December, the Sun is not quite to the bottom of the analemma. But, it is on the first part of the analemma to go below the horizon. During the first week in January, it is on the last part of the analemma to rise above the horizon. For more information on this, go to http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/astronomical-information-center/dark-days.

Wednesday: Venus is two and a half fists above the southeast horizon. It is by far the brightest point of light in the sky visible at this time. Yes, I know I wrote this about Jupiter. Venus is brighter than Jupiter but it is not above the horizon in the evening this month.

Thursday: I know you’re staying up late to train yourself to wait up for Santa. So look out a south-facing window at 1 a.m. and see Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, as high as it ever gets in the sky. It is two and a half fists above sue south.

Friday: What would that special someone want to see on the back of Santa’s sleigh when she gets up early Christmas morning to eat one of Santa’s cookies? A fruit cake? No. A barbell? Maybe to work off the fruitcake. A subscription to The Daily Record? Of course. But what she really wants is a ring. And if she looks out a south-facing window, she’ll see her ring. Saturn the ringed planet, that is. Saturn is nearly four fists above the south horizon at 6:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/11/10

2010-12-08T22:15:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies on a hill overlooking Vantage, Washington. And the sky cuts loose three horses of its own: Pegasus, the flying horse; Equueus, the little horse; and Monoceros, the unicorn. The Great Square of Pegasus is easiest to find. The center of the square is nearly six fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 8 p.m. Equueus is about two fists to the right of the Moon and Monoceros is just rising due east.

Sunday: Jupiter is four fists above the south horizon at 7 p.m.

Monday: The Geminid meteor shower peaks at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning but will remain highly active throughout the night. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Gemini the twins. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at 9 p.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain near the bright star Castor, the right hand star of the “twin” stars Pollux and Castor. This shower is typically one of the best ones of the year producing bright, medium speed meteors with up to 80 meteors per hour near the peak. The Moon will have set for most of the night so the sky will be very dark meaning good viewing conditions. Yahoo! News is calling this the best meteor shower of 2010.
Most meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the orbital trail of a comet. The broken off comet fragments collide with the earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Astronomers had searched for a comet source for this shower since 1862 when the shower was first observed. Finally, in 1983, astronomers discovered the object that created the fragments that cause the meteor shower. To their surprise, it was a dark, rock that looked like an asteroid, not a shiny icy comet. Astronomers named this object Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. But, they still don’t know if it an asteroid or if it is a comet with all of its ice sublimated away by many close passes by the Sun. For more information about 3200 Phaethon, go to http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=2344.

Tuesday: On these cold mornings, it is difficult to get going. You just want to plop into a chair and sit still. But, are you really sitting still? You’re moving at about 700 miles per hour due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and 66,000 miles per hour due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. If that’s not enough, the entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at a whopping 480,000 miles per hour! So while you may be sitting still with respect to your living room (and all of the over achievers in your house), you are NOT sitting still with respect to the center of the galaxy. For more information about this concept, go to http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/71/howfast.html.

Wednesday: Venus is two and a half fists above the southeast horizon. Even though the dawn sky is well lit, Venus is still bright enough to be seen. Some people call Venus the “morning star”. I call it the “late sleepers’ planet”.

Thursday: When you were growing up, you may have heard “Don’t make waves.” The red supergiant star Betelgeuse must not have listened. According to data from the Japanese Akari satellite, Betelgeuse creates a shockwave as it moves through the surrounding cloud of gas and dust. If viewed through a telescope sensitive to infrared radiation, this shockwave would appear to be the size of the full Moon as seen from Earth. Betelgeuse is four fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Saturn is nearly four fists above the south-southeast horizon at 7 a.m. If you don’t want to get up so early, stay up until 2 a.m. and look for Saturn less than a fist above the east horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 12/4/10

2010-11-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

Saturday: The earliest sunset of the year occurs this week, about 4:17 p.m. This seems odd because the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, isn’t for about two more weeks. The Sun is at its southernmost point with respect to the background stars on the day of the winter solstice. This means the Sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon on that day. But, the Sun rise and set time depends on more than its apparent vertical motion. It also depends on where the Sun is on the analemma, that skinny figure-8 you see on globes and world maps. During the second week in December, the Sun is not quite to the bottom of the analemma. But, it is on the leading edge of the analemma, the first section to go below the horizon.

Sunday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen.

Monday: The young crescent Moon helps mark the location of two planets very low in the southwest sky right after sunset. The Moon is just above the southwest horizon at 4:45 p.m. Mars is about a pinky width to the lower right of the Moon and Mercury is about a half a fist to the upper left of the Moon.

Tuesday: “Hey baby! What’s your sign?”
“Ophiuchus, of course”
The Sun is in the same part of the sky as the stars of Ophiuchus from about November 29 to December 17. This is what astrologers mean when they say the Sun is “in” a constellation. Thus, if you were born between these dates, you should be an Ophiuchus. The fact that the horoscopes never list Ophiuchus is a major flaw of astrology. Astrology says that some of our characteristics are based on the location of the Sun at our birth. How can astrologers leave out three weeks from their system? That is like a scientist saying she can explain the results of her experiment every month of the year except early December. Ophiuchus was a mythical healer who was a forerunner to Hippocrates. According to myth, he could raise people from the dead. Maybe that is why he is ignored by astrology. Raising people from the dead is much less impressive than giving spot-on advice such as “Today is a good day to watch your finances.”
The bright stars of Ophiuchus rise just before the Sun. Rasalhague (pronounced Ras’-al-hay’-gwee), the brightest star, is about one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Wednesday: Venus is about two fists and Saturn is about three and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Thursday: When Galileo aimed his telescope towards the sky, he knew of only one Sun-like star: the Sun. By the early twentieth century, Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming and others had developed a scheme for classifying stars so astronomers could identify other Sun-like stars. But it wasn’t until the last few years that astronomers have discovered planets around some of those Sun -like stars. Some astronomers estimate that one out of every four stars like our Sun may be orbited by Earth-like planets. Of course, the definition of Earth-like typically means a rocky planet about the mass and radius of the Earth. So don’t start saving up for that interstellar vacation yet. But in the next few years, satellites such as Kepler will start imaging Earth-like planets. Not long after that, astronomers will be able to study the atmospheres of those planets and look for clues that the planet might have life. For more information about discovering new worlds, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_dec.htm.

Friday: Jupiter is four fists above the south horizon at 6 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/27/10

2010-11-23T19:34:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Jupiter is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at a little after 7:00 p.m.

Sunday: This morning’s last quarter moon is in the constellation Sextans the sextant. Sextans is a dim constellation below the constellation Leo that was originated by Johannes Hevelius in 1687. Hevelius continued to use a sextant for studying the sky long after telescopes were available making him the last major astronomer to do major work without a telescope.

Monday: Have you been shopping all weekend? Do you need an evening sky break? You deserve a big reward so make it a double. A Double Cluster, that is. 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 six and a half fists above the northeast horizon at 7 p.m., about a fist below the sideways “W” of Cassiopeia.

Tuesday: Are you cold? Tired of the blowing snow? Then get up this morning and look at Saturn, the bright point of light three fists above the southeast horizon. Saturn will not make you warmer. But thinking about its ice moon Enceladus might. Enceladus has numerous geysers that spew ice particles with an aggressiveness that makes the Ellensburg wind feel wimpy – up to 1000 miles per hour. To learn more about Enceladus and its geysers, go to http://www.astronomy.com/en/sitecore/content/Home/News-Observing/News/2008/02/Enceladus%20geyser%20findings.aspx. If you have a small telescope, you may be able to see Enceladus nearly touching the rings of Saturn this morning.

Wednesday: Do you like to look in a nursery and say “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”? Not me. I say, “it’s a star”. Of course, I like looking into a stellar nursery – a star forming region such as the Orion Nebula in the middle of Orion’s sword holder. The Orion Nebula looks like a fuzzy patch to the naked eye. Binoculars reveal a nebula, or region of gas and dust, that is 30 light years across. The center of the nebula contains four hot “baby” stars called the Trapezium. These hot stars emit the ultraviolet radiation that causes the Nebula’s gas to glow. The Orion Nebula is three fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. For more information about the Orion Nebula, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_dec.htm.

Thursday: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is more than one fist above due southeast at 11 p.m.

Friday: Venus is nearly two fists above the southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/20/10

2010-11-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

Saturday: The Nature of Night takes place today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Black Hall on the CWU campus. There will be planetarium shows, fun nature at night experiments, storytelling, telescopes, and much more. The event is free. The Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education at CWU and various community sponsors work together to put on this event.

Sunday: Well, it is late November. It is time to set the beaver traps before the swamps freeze so you have a supply of warm winter furs. You must be getting ready to do that because the November full moon is known as the full beaver moon. Or maybe you shop for winter coats at a fine Ellensburg business (shop local). If that is the case, you may think the name full beaver moon came about because the beavers, themselves, are preparing for winter. Setting their human traps for…. I guess I shouldn’t continue that thought. Look for an open star cluster called the Pleiades is a half a fist to the upper right of the full beaver moon at 8 p.m.

Monday: Jupiter is four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 8 p.m.

Tuesday: Saturn is three fists above the southeast horizon at 6:30 a.m. The much brighter Venus is almost two fists above the southeast horizon. Spica is less than a half a fist to the upper right of Venus.

Wednesday: Most constellations don’t look like the object their name refers to. Most constellations don’t have such a simple to object to emulate as Triangulum. As you probably guessed, Triangulum is shaped like a princess. Wait…. Just a second…. I read my book wrong. Triangulum is shaped like a thin isosceles triangle. Mothallah is the only named star in the constellation. In Latin it is called Caput Trianguli, the head of the triangle. Triangulum is seven fists above the south horizon at 9 p.m. It is pointing down and to the right with Mothallah being the southernmost star at this time of night. The Triangulum Galaxy can be seen with binoculars about a half a fist to the right of Mothallah.

Thursday: Some of us have a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. But, probably not as much as Andromeda had to be thankful for. According to Greek mythology, the beautiful princess Andromeda was chained to a rock next to the ocean. Cetus the sea monster was about to devour her in order to punish her family. Her mother Queen Cassiopeia and her father King Cepheus didn’t know what to do. It seemed that all was lost. But, along came Andromeda’s boyfriend, the great warrior Perseus. Even though Perseus’ standing as the son of King Zeus and the slayer of Medusa was probably enough to win Andromeda under normal circumstances, Andromeda’s impending death-by-sea-monster was not a normal circumstance. So, Perseus drove his sword into the sea monster’s neck and killed it. This was the first time in recorded history that a set of parents actually welcomed an uninvited Thanksgiving visit from the boyfriend. Perseus is about five fists above the east-northeast horizon and Andromeda is about seven fists above the east horizon at 7 p.m.

Friday: Are you thankful that you live in a solar system with multiple planets? You should be. A giant planet like Jupiter cleans up planetary debris that could have collided with Earth and hindered the formation of complex life. Any inhabitants of the planets orbiting Upsilon Andromedae are thankful for this, as well. Upsilon Andromedae, a star in the constellation Andromeda, was the first Sun-like star discovered to have multiple planets orbiting it. So far, all of its planets are giant planets like Jupiter. But, the system is likely to also contain smaller planets. The dim star, but certainly not its planets, is barely visible straight overhead at 9 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/13/10

2010-11-11T21:06:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Imagine Opie and Andy Taylor walking down the dirt path at night to that fishing hole in the sky. (No, that is not a euphemism for death.) They’d probably be looking to catch Pisces, the two fish already conveniently tied together with two ropes. The ropes are connected at the star Alrescha, Arabic for “the cord”. Alrescha is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. The fish are attached to lines of stars that branch out at one o’clock and three o’clock from Alrescha. By the way, “The Fishing Hole”, The Andy Griffith Show’s theme song was rated the 20th best TV theme song of all time by ign.com. That’s too low in my opinion.

Sunday: Jupiter is three and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Monday: Deneb Kaitos, the "tail of the whale," swims through the southern sky tonight (and many other nights, of course). The moderately bright orange star forms the tail of Cetus, the whale. At 9 p.m., it is three and a half fists above the south horizon, about a fist to the left of the much brighter Jupiter.

Tuesday: The Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight and tomorrow morning. These meteors appear to come from a point in Leo the lion. This point is about one fist above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night and into the morning as it will remain about one fist above the bright star Regulus. Even if the weather cooperates, this will not be a great night to see a lot of meteors because the sky will be illuminated by the waxing gibbous moon. The Leonid meteors are particles from the tail of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, a comet discovered by Ernst Tempel and Horace Parnell Tuttle around January 1, 1866. Go to http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021116.html to see a picture of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. This year’s shower is expected to be much more active than usual with up to 500 meteors per hour visible throughout the night. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Even if there are only a couple dozen meteors visible per hour, you’ll want to enjoy it.

Wednesday: While your family is lining up at 6 a.m. this morning to use the shower, two planets and a bright star are lining up in the southeast sky. Venus, the brightest point of light in the sky, is one fist above the southeast horizon. The star Spica is slightly to the upper right of Venus and Saturn is one and a half fists above Venus.

Thursday: Have you even seen a Black Hole? Neither have scientists. But they have seen the effects of a Black Hole. Black holes have a strong gravitational influence on anything that passes close to them, including light. Cygnus X-1, the first Black Hole candidate ever discovered, is four and a half fists above the west horizon, in the middle of the neck of Cygnus the swan.

Friday: I am guessing that some of you don’t like the line of reasoning from Thursday: that seeing the effects of a Black Hole is good enough to claim there are Black Holes. You have never seen the wind. But, you have seen the effects of the wind. And no Chicago resident doubts the existence of the wind.

Tomorrow, November 20, the Nature of Night takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Black Hall on the CWU campus. There will be planetarium shows, fun nighttime projects, storytelling, cookies and much more. The event is free. Call 963-2929 for more information. The Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education at CWU and various community sponsors work together to put on this event. When you are there, ask about the safe way to look at the Sun. Even though this is called Nature of Night, without day, there is no night. And without Gladys Knight, there are no Pipps.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 11/6/10

2010-11-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Don’t forget to “fall back” tonight. Before you fall back on to your bed, set your clock back one hour to the real time. Daylight savings ends early Sunday morning at 2 a.m. This means one more hour of sky watching at night because the Sun will set one hour earlier. Ben Franklin proposed the idea of “saving daylight” by adjusting our clocks way back in 1784. Daylight savings time was first utilized during World War I as a way to save electricity. After the war, it was abandoned. It was reintroduced during World War II on a year-round basis. From 1945 to 1966, some areas implemented daylight savings and some did not. But, it was not implemented with any uniformity as to when it should start and stop. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 codified the daylight savings rules.

Sunday: The North Taurid meteor shower peaks for the next few late nights and early mornings with the night of the 12th being the peak of the peak. This is not a prominent shower but it occasionally produces a couple of bright “fireballs”, larger rocks that take a few seconds to burn up in the atmosphere. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is nearly six fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain midway between the bright star Aldebaran (pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran) and the open star cluster, the Pleiades. If you miss the peak this week, don’t worry. Taurid meteor showers result in a slight increase on meteor activity from mid-October to the beginning of December.

Monday: Jupiter is four fists above due south at 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday: Did you look up Caroline Herschel and Clyde Tombaugh based on last week’s Halloween costume suggestion? Caroline Herschel was an 18th and 19th century astronomer who discovered three nebula and eight comets. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. They make much better, and more realistic, heroes than Lady Gaga, Ironman, and Christine O’Donnell.

Wednesday: Saturn is two fists above the east-southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

Thursday: We wish you a Merry Martinmas. We wish you a Merry Martinmas. We wish you a Merry Martinmas. And a happy Thursday. Martinmas is a holiday in many parts of the world commemorating Saint Martin of Tours. He was buried on November 11, 397. What does this have to astronomy? Not much except that the celebration on November 11 often doubles as a cross-quarter day celebration, a day that is halfway between an equinox and a solstice.

Friday: The constellation Lepus the hare is right under the feet of Orion. At 11 p.m., the middle of the hare is one fist above the southeast horizon. Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion, is just above the head of the hare.

Wait a minute. We got all the way to the end of the week with no Moon phase summary? How can that be? There are 29.5 days between the same Moon phase in two different cycles. That means about 7.5 days between the phases new, first quarter, full and last quarter. Since a week is seven days, there are some weeks in which none of the main phases occur. This week, the Moon was always in the waxing crescent phase.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/30/10

2010-10-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

What's up in the sky 10/30/10

Saturday: Dead October flowers lead to November meteor showers. While the Lyonid meteor shower is the big name of the month, the one or two bright fireballs per hour you can see during the typical Southern Taurid meteor shower may make it worth your while to say up. This shower reaches a maximum over the next few nights with a peak on November 5th and 6th. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull. This point is about four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist to the right of the Hyades Cluster with its bright star Aldebaran (pronounced Al-deb’-a-ran). Meteors are tiny rocks that burn up in the atmosphere when the Earth runs into them. These rocks are broken off parts of Comet 2P/Encke.

Sunday: Halloween. The pumpkins. The candy. The children going door-to-door dressed up as their favorite astronomers Caroline Herschel and Clyde Tombaugh. At least they should because Halloween is, in part, an astronomical holiday. Halloween is a “cross-quarter date”, a day approximately midway between an equinox and a solstice. Historically, the Celts of the British Isles used cross-quarter dates as the beginnings of seasons. For the Celts, winter began with Halloween. So when all those little Herschels and Tombaughs come to your door, honor the Celts and give them a wintry treat.

Monday: What sucks? Children with a lollipop. People with a lemon slice in their mouth. Your least favorite sports team. What doesn’t suck? Black holes. They are so massive; they PULL everything into them that gets too close, even light. Come to the CWU Astronomy Club’s First Monday Astronomy Event, learn Black Hole Survival and observe the night sky from 8:00 to 10:00 at Lind Hall 215. Lind Hall is on the corner of Chestnut Street and University Way. There is ample close free parking near Lind Hall at this time of night.

Tuesday: Happy Celtic New Year! Many historians think that this day, known for the festival of Samhain, was the ancient Celtic new year’s day. Samhain, Old Irish for “summer’s end”, was a harvest festival that may have contributed to some of the customs of our current “holiday” of Halloween.

Wednesday: Jupiter is nearly four fists above the south horizon at 9 p.m.

Thursday: The weather may be getting cold. But, NASA still has hot astronomy topics for each month. November’s topic is very hot. Starting at a few thousand degrees Celsius for most of their productive lives and moving on to 100,000 degrees Celsius for new white dwarf stars, stars can definitely heat up a room. (Not as much as an episode of CSI with all of those good looking forensic scientists but close.) Not all stars start at the same temperature or die the same way. The temperature of a star for most of its productive life can tell an astronomer a lot about how the star was formed and how it will end up. Four hundred years ago, Galileo would have never dreamed that the descendants of his telescope would see such a variety of stars, objects that many uninformed people still call little points of white light. For more information about the lives of stars, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_nov.htm.

Friday: Morning time is planet viewing time. At 7 a.m., Saturn is two fists and Venus is a half a fist above the southeast horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/23/10

2010-10-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday: “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” Constellations can be considered neighborhoods in the nighttime sky. But, the stars in those constellations are not necessarily neighbors in real life. For example, the bright stars in the constellation Cassiopeia range from 19 to over 10,000 light years away from Earth. One constellation that consists of real neighbors is Ursa Major. Or, more specifically, the Big Dipper. Five stars in the Big Dipper are all moving in the same direction in space, are about the same age and are all about 80 light years from Earth. “Please won’t you be my neighbor?” Skat, the third brightest star in the constellation Aquarius is a neighbor to these five Big Dipper stars, all of which are about 30 light years from each other. They are thought to have originated in the same nebula about 500 million years ago. Just like human children do, these child stars are slowly moving away from home. Skat is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. The much brighter Fomalhaut is a fist and a half below Skat. And, it’s not fun being below Skat.

Sunday: Jupiter is three fists above the southeast horizon at 8 p.m.

Monday: 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, available not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom but on the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/, is a repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts.

Tuesday: Saturn is a little less than a fist above the east horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Wednesday: A few stars appear to be a color other than white to the naked eye. The reddish Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion and the bluish Vega in the constellation Lyra come to mind. But if you look with binoculars, the star Mu Cephei appears to be more vividly colored than either of these - a surprisingly deep red. This star, named the Garnet star by the astronomer William Herschel, is eight fists above the north horizon, very close to being straight overhead, at 8 p.m. It is a red supergiant star that varies in brightness by about a factor of five over a two-year period. If our Sun were replaced by Mu Cephei, it would fill up the solar system out to halfway between Jupiter and Saturn.

Thursday: Pollux is about a fist to the upper left of the Moon at midnight. Castor, the Gemini “twin” of Pollux, is right above it at this time.

Friday: This weekend is Halloween so make sure you loead up on peanut clusters, almond clusters, and open star clusters. That last one will be easy (and cheap, actually free) because two of the most prominent open star clusters in the sky are easily visible in the autumn sky. The sideways V-shaped Hyades Cluster is two fists above due east at 10 p.m. Containing over 300 stars, the Hyades cluster is about 150 light years away and 625 million years old. The Pleiades Cluster, a little more than three fists above due east, is larger at over 1000 stars and younger. Compared to our 5 billion year old Sun, the 100 million year age of the Pleaides is infant-like.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg Sky for the week of 10/16/10

2010-10-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Did you say “good bye” last week? Mars is in the process of disappearing into the glare of the setting Sun so say “good night Mars” soon. Look a little less than one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon. You will probably need binoculars to pick it out of the bright twilight sky.

Sunday: 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 8:30 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.

Monday: Saturn is a half a fist above the east horizon at 7:30 a.m.

Tuesday: What time is tea time? Certainly not during an autumn evening. The constellation Sagittarius the archer, with its signature teapot shape, is sinking into the south-southwest horizon by 8 p.m. The handle is on top and the spout is touching the horizon ready to pour that last cup of tea.

Wednesday: Jupiter, the largest and usually the second brightest of the planets, was discovered as soon as people started looking up at the night sky. It probably could have been discovered by the trilobites but the fossil record shows they simply did not care for astronomy. But it was not until 1610 that Galileo discovered the four largest Moons of Jupiter. These moons can be seen with steady binoculars or a small telescope. Jupiter is four fists above due south at 10:30 p.m. From left to right in your binoculars, you’ll see Ganymede, Io, Jupiter, Europa, and Callisto. A telescope will likely flip the field of view. For more information about the location of Jupiter’s four largest moons at any day and time, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/javascript/3307071.html.

Thursday: The Orionid meteor shower consists of the Earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks this tonight into early tomorrow morning. This is not a meteor shower that results in a meteor storm. There will be about 15-20 meteors per hour, many more meteors than are visible on a typical night. However, the chance of seeing meteors this year is less than usual because the nearly full Moon will be out all night. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about three fists above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. If you fall asleep tonight, you can catch the tail end of the shower every night until early November.

Friday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Pisces the fish. Some years, the October full moon is known as the harvest moon because its rising time is fairly constant for a few days, giving farmers more time to harvest their crops. This year, the harvest moon was the first day of autumn, nearly as early as it has ever been.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/9/10

2010-10-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Mars is in the process of disappearing into the glare of the setting Sun so tonight is a good night to say “good night Mars”. Look a little less than one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon, about a half a fist to the upper right of the crescent Moon. You will probably need binoculars to pick it out of the bright twilight sky.

Sunday: Halley's Comet returns this month! In the form of little pieces of its tail, that is. The Orionid meteor shower consists of the earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks on the morning of October 21 but produces meteors from now until early November. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. As you Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment.

Monday: “She loves Jup yeah, yeah, yeah. And with a love like that, you know Jup should be glad.” In 1963, The Beatles released the song “She Loves Jup” to celebrate Jupiter being exceptionally bright. However, when they test marketed it, the astronomy reference was not understood by most people. So they did a hasty rewrite to “She Loves You” and it became a smash hit. This year, Jupiter is a smash hit in the night sky, being brighter than any time since 1963. Jupiter is three fists above the southeast horizon at 9 a.m.

Tuesday: Since Halloween is coming up, the stores are filled with bags of candy clusters. Instead, take time to look at a star cluster. The Hyades cluster is an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the universe. Aldebaran, nearly two fists above due east horizon at 11 p.m., is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.

Wednesday: Arcturus is one fist above the west-northwest horizon at 8 p.m.

Thursday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Sagittarius the archer. It is two fists above due south at 7 p.m.

Friday: Saturn has finally moved out from the glare of the Sun. It is less than a fist above the east horizon at 6:30 a.m. Right above Saturn is a kite-shaped set of stars that makes up part of the constellation Virgo. Near the top of the “kite”, one fist above Saturn is the star Zavijava. The bending of light from Zavijava by the Sun provided early experimental evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Einstein predicted that objects such as the Sun were so massive that they could noticeably bend light from a star. During a total solar eclipse in 1922, Zavijava was almost directly behind the Sun such that bits light would have to pass near the Sun on its way to the Earth. Astronomers measured its position on that day to be slightly different from its position on star charts meaning its light had been slightly deflected by the Sun. This morning the triangle is a fist above the east horizon at 6:30 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/2/10

2010-09-28T22:46:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Mnemonics are helpful for remembering astronomy facts. (Similarly, “Johnny Mnemonic”, the 1995 cyberpunk film, was helpful in getting Keanu Reeves’ career going.) After all, school children all around the country are learning the order of the planets by remembering, “My very excellent mother just served us nine….” Oops, I guess that one needs updating. Well, here’s one that will not need updating for nearly 100,000 years: the order of the stars in the Big Dipper. Because the nighttime stars are so far away from us, their actual motion through the sky, called their “proper motion” is not noticeable over even thousands of years. That is why the constellations have remained the same since ancient times. But two stars in the Big Dipper have a proper motion large enough such than in 100,000 years, the stars will no longer make a dipper shape. Until then, you can remember the names of the seven dipper stars in order from handle to cup by remembering “morning, morning, evening, death” or “amampmd”. The stars are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phad, Merek, and Duhbe. Morning, morning, evening, death is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Sunday: Astronomers, philosophers, and smart children have been contemplating the fate of the universe for centuries. Galileo, arguably the first modern astronomer, did not start that endeavor. But by turning his telescope toward the night sky, he opened a new source of evidence for determining that fate. To honor Galileo’s contribution to this question, the International year of Astronomy Hot Topic for October is “What is the fate of the universe?”. For more information, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_oct.htm.

Monday: For the first time in months, the evening sky has only one naked eye planet. But, what a planet it is. Jupiter, the king of planets, is three fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m. But don’t sit at home and look at it alone. Go to the CWU Astronomy Club’s First Monday Astronomy Event from 8:00 to 10:00 pm. We will meet in Lind Hall, room 215 for a brief introduction to the night sky. There will be numerous telescopes in use to view Jupiter and other interesting celestial objects. Dress warm. If the sky is overcast, come anyway to hear a presentation about the Solar System. Lind Hall is on the corner of Chestnut Street and University Way. There is ample close free parking near Lind Hall at this time of night.

Tuesday: Mercury is less than a half a fist above due east at 6:30 a.m.

Wednesday: Fomalhaut, the southernmost of the bright stars, is a little more than a fist above the south horizon at 10:30. It is in the constellation Piscis Austrinus or the southern fish.

Thursday: The Draconid meteor shower peaks tonight and tomorrow night. The meteors appear to come from a point in the head of Draco, the dragon constellation. This point is about five fists above the northwest horizon at 10 p.m. tonight. This point remains near the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco throughout the night. Typically, this is a minor shower. However, Draconid meteors are slow moving which means you will have a easy time differentiating true Draconid meteors, from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, from stray grains of dust that happen to enter the Earth’s atmosphere near where we see the constellation Draco. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment.

Friday: The bright star Arcturus is about two fists above the west horizon at 8 p.m. Some people may mistake it for a planet because it is bright and it is low in the western sky near sunset. But, you are not “some people”…. You are the one person who actually reads this column.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/25/10

2010-09-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday: “You know Aries and Cancer and Draco and Libra. Leo and Pisces and Virgo and Hydra. But, do you recall, the pointiest asterism of all? Triangulum, the three sided asterism, had a very pointy edge….” Sorry. Some stores have started putting up their Christmas decorations and that has put me in the mood to modify some Christmas songs. Anyway, Triangulum is a small constellation between the more prominent Andromeda and Aries. Its main feature is a skinny triangle oriented parallel to and nearly four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: Venus will really be negative for the next few nights. But, don’t feel bad for Venus. It is okay for a celestial object to be negative as long as we are referring only to its magnitude. The ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus developed a system for rating the apparent brightness of stars and planets in which lower numbers refer to brighter stars and planets. In his initial scheme, all points of light in the night sky were classified from first magnitude, meaning bright, to sixth magnitude, meaning very dim. Modern day astronomers have made this scale more quantitative. Tonight and tomorrow, Venus has a magnitude, or apparent brightness rating, of -4.6. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, has a brightness rating of -1.5. Venus will barely be visible right after sunset very low in the southwest sky. Sirius is two and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

Monday: Did you time the exact length of the day and night last Wednesday on the first day of autumn? They were not equal in duration. Many people think that the day and night are the same duration on the autumnal equinox. The day is a little longer than the night for two reasons. First, the Sun is an extended object so even when the middle part has set, the upper half is still above the horizon lighting the sky. The second, and more influential reason, is that the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is really still below the horizon. Day and night are closest in duration today.

Tuesday: Sometimes you find spare change in a chair or an old candy bar in your backpack. Last month, astronomers announced that they found 14 trans-Neptunian objects in old Hubble telescope data. While trans-Neptunian objects will not help you satisfy your hunger, they offer astronomers clues to the origin of the solar system. Pluto is the most well-known trans-Neptunian object. For more information, go to http://www.universetoday.com/73501/astronomers-find-14-new-trans-neptunian-objects-hiding-in-hubble-data/.

Wednesday: The International Year of Astronomy (IYA) is winding down. But the size of the objects being featured is not getting any smaller. This month’s Go Observe is the Andromeda Galaxy. On Saturday, I had you look for Triangulum. About one fist above Triangulum is a star twice as bright as the brightest star in Triangulum. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright as the bright star you just found. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light called the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of about 400 billion stars and is 2.2 million light years away. For more information about the Andromeda Galaxy, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_oct.htm.

Thursday: Jupiter is three fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Astronomers, philosophers, and smart children have been contemplating the fate of the universe for centuries. Galileo did not start that trend. But by turning his telescope toward the night sky, he opened a new source of evidence for determining that fate. To honor Galileo’s contribution to this question, the IYA Hot Topic for October is “What is the fate of the universe?”. For more information, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_oct.htm.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/18/10

2010-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Last Sunday, I gave you a very brief overview of how to use the Big Dipper as a clock. But, my explanation was helpful only for a late evening in the autumn or spring. Some of you go out other times of the year and need a way to tell time then. First, find the two stars at the far end of the Big Dipper cup, the stars that do not touch the handle. Draw an imaginary line segment starting at the North Star and passing through the two Big Dipper cup stars. Now, draw a big circle around the North Star. Your circle is a 24-hour clock. Number the circle from 0 hours at the top, counterclockwise to 12 hours at the bottom of the circle, and back up to 24 hours at the top. (O hours and 24 hours are the same on this clock because the day is 24 hours long.) The hour number on the big circle closest to where your imaginary line intersects this circle is called your raw time. Due to the location of the Big Dipper compared to the rest of the stars, the time nearest the intersection (the raw time) is correct for March 6. For any other night, subtract two times the number of months the current date is after March 6 from the raw time. For example, let’s say the imaginary line between the North Star and the Dipper stars is pointed to the right. That means the raw time is 18 hours or 6 p.m. If you made this observation on October 6, which is seven months after March 6, you would subtract two times seven or 14 hours from the raw time. Thus, the time for November 6 is 18 hours minus 14 hours or 4 hours. In other words, 4 a.m. Don’t forget to convert for daylight savings time if needed. For a more complete set of instructions, go to http://prdupl02.ynet.co.il/ForumFiles_2/24505461.pdf. There is a simple “star clock” template and instructions at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/letsgo/familyfun/Make_a_Star_Clock.html. Use this paper star clock whenever you watch is broken.

Sunday: Let me tell you the story of the ghostly white figure that rises early in the morning around Halloween. It appears to be a huge dim glow of white light that rises up from the east in the pre-dawn sky. No, I’m not writing about the ROTC student who has her first early morning physical training. I’m describing an effect called the zodiacal light. This light comes from sunlight reflecting off dust grains in our solar system. The effect is the most visible when the band of constellations called the zodiac makes a steep angle with the horizon. You need a clear sky with no haze or light pollution to see the zodiacal light which will be visible for the next week or so. At its brightest, the zodiacal light rivals the light of the central Milky Way.

Monday: Mercury is about a half a fist above the east horizon at 6 a.m.

Tuesday: Jupiter and Uranus are both in opposition tonight. No, that doesn’t mean they will disagree with everything you say. (You: “My, the sky is a pretty blue today.” Jupiter: “No, it’s a pretty yellow.” Uranus: “No, it’s a pretty red.”) Opposition means that a planet is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. An object is in opposition when it is due south 12 hours after the Sun. When an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the night. A planet in opposition shines brighter and appears larger in a telescope than any other night of its orbital cycle. Jupiter and Uranus are four fists above due south at 1 a.m. daylight savings time which is midnight standard time. If you’d rather not stay up so late,

Wednesday: At precisely 8:13 p.m. the center of the Sun crosses the celestial equator and passes into the southern sky. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that divides the sky into a northern and southern half. When the Sun is in the southern half of the sky, it appears to take a shorter path from rising to setting. It also does not get as high in the sky at noon. This leads to shorter days and longer nights. Since the Sun crosses the celestial equator today, there is an instant when it is equally in the northern and southern sky, called the north and south celestial hemispheres. This so-called “equal night” is given by the Latin word equinox. Thus, today is known as the Autumnal Equinox. However, the day and night are not of equal duration today. The sun rises at 6:45 a.m. and sets at 7:03 p.m. Day and night are of equal duration next Monday.

Thursday: If Venus was not the brightest planet, you’d have no hope of seeing it with the naked eye for a few weeks. Look for it this week just above the southwest horizon within 45 minutes after sunset. By next week, it will be lost in the glare of the Sun.

Friday: Christmas Eve is three months away which means it is time to start making your wish list of gifts and recipients. Perhaps someone on your list (maybe you?) wants a telescope. The Sky & Telescope website has a good article on choosing your first telescope. Thanks to improved materials, you can buy a high quality starter scope for under $250. People never outgrow their first small telescope if it is well made. Even people who own giant telescopes or have their own observatory sometimes only want to spend five minutes setting up a telescope to show the neighbor kids Jupiter’s moons. Go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/equipment/basics/12511616.html for more information.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/11/10

2010-09-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Orion's the hunter. Searching for love in these lonely skies again. (Apologies to my favorite 1980s heavy metal band, Dokken.) Orion is such a prominent constellation, there are many myths about it. Nearly all Greco-Roman myths involve Orion getting killed. In one myth, he is accidentally killed by his girlfriend Diana, the goddess of the moon and of hunting. She felt so guilty that she repaid her debt by pulling him across the sky each night in her moon chariot. In another myth, Orion is killed by the bite of Scorpius, the scorpion. Obviously, Orion wants to avoid Scorpius in the night sky so he does not get bit again. That is one story of why Orion sets just as Scorpius rises.
Notice that both of these stories have an element of truth. Orion really does cross the sky each night. Orion really does set as Scorpius rises. Many people think a myth is simply a fake story. Instead, a myth is a story used to communicate a message. Myths always have some truth in them. Try to create your own myth about Orion as you see its belt three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 5:30 a.m. The bright reddish star four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon is Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The bright bluish star three fists above the south-southeast horizon is Rigel.

Sunday: You can use the position of the Big Dipper as a clock. During the late evening in the autumn, the Big Dipper cup is facing up to hold water. During the late evening in the spring, the Big Dipper cup is facing down to produce those spring showers. The water-holding Big Dipper is one fist above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: Science is Central! This week, faculty, staff, and students in the College of the Sciences at CWU will kick off the start of the academic year by hosting a series of evening science lectures and demonstrations geared for all ages. All events are taking place on the CWU Ellensburg campus and all are free. The week kicks off tonight with Bruce Palmquist and Michael Braunstein from the Department of Physics presenting a night sky lecture from 6:30 – 7:30 pm in Lind Hall room 215 followed by a guided tour of the night sky with several telescopes. Check http://www.cwu.edu/~web/cwu_news/News.php?ArticleID=2760 for information about events for the rest of the week.

Tuesday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Ophiuchus (pronounced O-fee-u’-kus) the serpent-bearer. The Sun actually spends more days in line with Ophiuchus than with Scorpius the scorpion making Ophiuchus the thirteenth Zodiac constellation.

Wednesday: Astronomy is a field of science where amateurs can make a significant contribution. Amateur astronomer John Dobson is such a person. He developed a way to make the low-cost, easy-to-use, large aperture telescopes that millions of sky watchers around the world use to study and enjoy the nighttime sky. These devises, called Dobsonian telescopes by everyone but Dobson himself, are the best entry-level telescopes. John Dobson turns 95 years old today.

Thursday: Jupiter is two and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m. It is the brightest point of light in the sky at that time and very easy to see. The planet Uranus typically is not easy to find. But this week and next, Uranus is right above Jupiter in the sky. They are less than a pinky width apart in the sky and even close together in binoculars.

Friday: When you look up into the night sky and see all of those stars, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya punk? You would if you looked at the lucky stars in the constellation Aquarius. The two brightest stars are called Sadalmelik, the lucky stars of the king, and Sadalsuud, the luckiest of the lucky. Another star in the constellation is called Sadachbia meaning lucky stars of the tents. Sadalmelik is four fists above the south horizon at 11 p.m. Sadachbia is to the lower left of Sadalmelik. Sadalsuud is three and a half fist above due south at this time.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 9/4/10

2010-08-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Geometry review: part 2. School starts this week so it is time to continue our little geometry review from last week. Did you forget last week’s lesson? Well, go to the litter box, dig out last Saturday’s paper and review it. Then go outside at 9 p.m. with notebook in hand. Ready? A square is a quadrilateral with four sides of equal length and four right angle corners. A good example in the sky is the Great Square, an asterism (group of stars) consisting of three stars from the constellation Pegasus and one star from the constellation Andromeda. At 9 p.m., the bottom of the Great Square is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east.

Sunday: There is a lot to see at the Kittitas County Fair. But there is not a lot to see in the sky when you are at the fair because the fair lights, which are fairly bright, obscure most celestial objects. Jupiter is one of the few objects bright enough to be seen. As you are leaving the fair at 10 p.m., look for Jupiter about two fists above the east-southeast horizon. Luckily Galileo didn’t do his observing at the Kittitas County Fair because he would not have been able to see Jupiter’s moons. So what, you say? Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter provided strong evidence that objects other than the Earth could have satellites providing strong support for a Sun-centered solar system. For more information about Jupiter or observing Jupiter, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_sep.htm

Monday: Labor Day was the brainchild of labor unions and is dedicated to American workers. The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882. The Greek mythical hero Hercules probably wished there was a Labor Day to commemorate his work. As punishment for killing his family while he was temporarily insane, he had to perform twelve nearly impossible tasks such as killing monsters or stealing things from deities. Humm. Maybe we shouldn’t commemorate his labors. But we can enjoy his constellation. The keystone asterism representing the body of Hercules is six fists above the west horizon at 10 p.m. For more information about the Labors of Hercules, go to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html.

Tuesday: The calendar says summer is nearing an end. School starting tomorrow says summer is nearing an end. The summer triangle in the sky begs to differ as it is still high in the sky. Vega, the brightest star in the triangle, is a little bit west of straight overhead at sunset. Deneb is a little bit east of straight overhead and Altair is five fists above the south horizon.

Wednesday: Venus is less than a half a fist above the west-southwest horizon at 8 p.m. Mars is a half a fist to the upper right of Venus and the star Spica is a half a fist due right of Venus.

Thursday: Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, is one fist above the south-southeast horizon at 11 pm. It is the southernmost bright star visible from Ellensburg.

Friday: The bright star Capella is a half a fist above the north-northwest horizon at 9 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/28/10

2010-08-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday: School starts next week so it is time for a little geometry review. Go outside at 10 p.m. tonight with notebook in hand. Ready? A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three line segments as sides. A good example is the summer triangle made up of the bright stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. Vega, the brightest star in the triangle is a little bit west of straight overhead. Deneb is a little bit east of straight overhead and Altair is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon.

Sunday: Ah, the beauty of classification. A large three-sided figure such as the Summer Triangle is a triangle. Hence the name “Summer Triangle” and not “Summer Sandwich”. Although those little triangle-shaped sandwiches are quite tasty. Where was I? Oh yes, classification. Small three-sided figures are also called triangles. This week, the planets Mars & Venus and the bright star Spica make a tiny triangle low in the western sky right after sunset. At 8:30 tonight, Venus is at the bottom of the triangle, less than half a fist above the west-southwest horizon. Spica is a finger width to the upper left of Venus and Mars is about two finger widths to the upper right of Venus.

Monday: When Galileo looked at Venus nearly 400 years ago, he discovered that Venus goes through phases from new to quarter to full just like our moon does. Thanks to this and Galileo’s many other observations of moons and planets in our Solar System, support for an Earth-centered universe was greatly diminished. To commemorate these findings, NASA has made planets, dwarf planets, and moons this month’s “Hot Topic” for the International Year of Astronomy. For more information, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_sep.htm.

Tuesday: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout. The galactic center, I pour it out.” (I’m a Little Teapot, astronomy version, 2010.) Despite its great size and importance, the center of our Milky Way galaxy and its giant black hole remains hidden to the naked eye behind thick clouds of gas and dust. By plotting the orbits if stars near the middle of the galaxy, astronomers have determined that the black hole’s mass is equal to about 4.5 million Suns. While you can see the actual galactic center, you can gaze in the direction of the center by looking to the right of the teapot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius. This point is about one fist above the south-southwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: This morning’s last quarter moon is in the constellation Taurus the bull. While the quarter moon phases look smaller than the full moon at a glance, all phases are the same size. Recently, astronomers discovered that the moon has not always been the same size. It contracted about 0.2 km in diameter, out of a total diameter of 3,470 km, as it cooled over three billion years ago.

Thursday: Jupiter is one and a half fists above the east-southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: The Ellensburg Rodeo is a “Top-25” rodeo. What does it take to be a “Top-25” star? There are many ways to rank stars. The most obvious way for a casual observer to rank stars is by apparent brightness. The apparent brightness is the brightness of a star as seen from Earth, regardless of its distance from the Earth. Shaula (pronounced Show’-la) is the 25th brightest star in the nighttime sky as seen from Earth. It represents the stinger of Scorpius the scorpion. In fact, Shaula means stinger in Arabic. Shaula has a visual brightness rating of 1.62. Sirius, the brightest star has a visual brightness rating of -1.46. (Smaller numbers mean brighter objects.) The dimmest objects that can be seen with the naked eye have a visual brightness rating of about 6. There are approximately 6,000 stars with a lower visual brightness rating than 6 meaning there are 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye. Shaula is a blue sub-giant star that radiates 35,000 times more energy than the Sun. It is 700 light years away making it one of the most distant bright stars. Shaula is a challenge to find because it never gets more than a half a fist above the horizon. Look for it tonight about a half a fist above the south horizon, a little bit west of due south, at 8:30.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

Life on Mars?

2010-08-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

I just read an article called “It’s Alive” from the June 2010 issue of Discover Magazine. The author postulates that, according to some scientists, the case for life on Mars has already been settled. In 1976, the probe Viking I gathered samples of Martian dirt and tested for life. In one test, engineer Gilbert Levin put nutrients spiked with radioactive material in the dirt. If there were bacteria in the dirt, they would ingest the nutrients and exhale trace radioactive material. The first trial detected radioactivity. As a check, Levin did a second trial in which the dirt was superheated to kill off any bacteria before adding the radioactive nutrients. This trial did not detect any radioactive respiration. Since this was the only Viking test to support life on Mars, scientists assumed that some nonbiological reaction led to Levin’s results. However, in 1976, the assumption was that organic material is rare in the galaxy. Since then, astronomers have discovered organic material on Saturn’s moon Titan, on comets and meterorites, even in interstellar clouds 26,000 light years from Earth. After years of being overlooked, maybe someday Gilbert Levin will be proven right about life on Mars just like Alfred Wegener was proven right about continental drift after many decades. Lesson to all of us: stick by your conclusions if they are supported by evidence.

The Ellesnburg sky for the week of 8/21/10

2010-08-14T23:03:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Sometimes you find a quarter on the ground. Maybe you find a dollar in the lining of your jacket. But how often do you find a galaxy in a well-known part of the sky? The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a face-on spiral galaxy in the Coma Cluster of galaxies about 320 million light years away. This galaxy, called NGC 4911, contains regions of gas and dust as well as glowing newborn star clusters. The Coma Star cluster is in the constellation Coma Berenices, found two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 9 p.m. For more information about this newly discovered galaxy, plus a zoomable image, go to http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/24/.

Sunday: Venus is a half a fist above the west-southwest horizon at 8:45 p.m. Even though it is so low in the sky, it is highly reflective so you should easily be able to find it by the sunlight bouncing off if it. Use bright Venus to find its dimmer neighbors in the sky. Mars is about a finger’s width to the upper right of Venus. Saturn is about a fist and a half to the right of Venus.

Monday: You may have trouble holding in your water at midnight. But not the Big Dipper. The cup of the Big Dipper is facing upward in a water-holding orientation about two fists above the north horizon at midnight.

Tuesday: When the Moon is full, it is difficult to see dim objects in the sky because of the sky glow. But why struggle to find dim objects when there is so much to see on the big, bright object in front of you? The lunar crater called Tycho is best seen during a full Moon. Tycho was formed about 109 million years ago when an asteroid struck the Moon, leaving a crater over 50 miles in diameter and ejected dust trails that radiate out hundreds of miles in all directions. For more lunar highlights, go to
http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/ObserveMoon.pdf, a resource of the Night Sky Network.

Wednesday: Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg and the entire northern section of the United States, is nearly straight overhead at 9 p.m.

Thursday: The Sun is finally moving out of it period of having few or no sunspots. But while the Sun was inactive, astronomers were studying sunspots on other stars such as Corot-2a, a star that is similar to the Sun but much younger. Astronomers noticed that the brightness drop of Corot-2a was slightly different every time its planet Corot-2b passed in front of it. They thought it should be the same since the same planet was passing in front of it. So, the astronomers concluded the variation in brightness was due to sunspots on Corot-2a. For more information about this, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/49444867.html.

Friday: Jupiter is two fists above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. It is about a fist to the right of the Moon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/14/10

2010-08-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

What's up in the sky 8/14/10

Today: It’s a moonless August morning. The first remnant of dawn has not appeared yet. Suddenly, you notice a large softly radiant pyramid of light in the east sky. The base of this ghostly triangle is along the east horizon and the peak stretches two or three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the horizon about two hours before sunrise. Don’t be scared. It’s not really a ghost. It is an effect called the zodiacal light. This light comes from sunlight reflecting off dust grains in our solar system. The effect is the most visible when the band of constellations called the zodiac makes a steep angle with the horizon. You need a clear dark sky with no haze or light pollution to see the zodiacal light. At its brightest, the zodiacal light rivals the light of the central Milky Way. This is one of the best times of year to see the zodiacal light in the morning.

Sunday: Mars, Venus, and Saturn are close together low in the western sky all week. Venus is by far the brightest of the three planets. It is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon, a little bit south of west, at 9 p.m. Mars is about a finger’s width to the upper left of Venus and Saturn is less than a fist to the right of Venus.

Monday: It’s time to sing along with a holiday classic: “Oh, the weather on the Sun is frightful. But the aurora is so delightful. Well, the Sun is active and hot. Let it spot, let it spot, let it spot.” The Sun seems to finally be waking up from its sunspot slumber. On August 1st, the sunspot region 1092 triggered a huge coronal mass ejection (CME) that shot out from the Sun at a speed of more than 600 miles per second. A CME is plasma consisting mainly of electrons and protons. When these charged particles interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, they produce the colorful phenomenon known as the aurora. Basically, increased solar activity means a more active Sun which produce more CME which leads to increased aurorae.

Tuesday: Antares is about a finger’s width to the lower right of the Moon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: Mars is still about a finger’s width from Venus and a half a fist above the west horizon at 9 p.m. But notice that they have both moved eastward away from Saturn with Venus having moved a little more.

Thursday: This evening, Venus is as far away from the Sun in the sky as it will get this orbital cycle. What is this "farthest away" point is known as the planet’s greatest eastern elongation. As you have noted all week, Venus is a half a fist above the west horizon at 9 p.m. Over the next two months, Venus will move toward the Sun in the sky. By the end of September, it will be lost in the glare of evening twilight.

Friday: Fomalhaut, the bright star in the Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fishes, is about one fist above the southeast horizon at midnight. It is the southernmost bright star visible from Ellensburg and other locations near 47 degrees north latitude.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 8/7/10

2010-07-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

The Perseid meteor shower peaks this week. Expect nearly moonless skies and increased meteor activity ever late night and early morning this week.

Saturday: If the 1970s group The Knack were bigger fans of astronomy, they may have sang: “Oo, my little pretty one, pretty one. When you gonna give me some time, Corona?” The constellation Corona Borealis is a pretty one. Depending on what source you read, the myth associated with the constellation can be happy or sad. Bacchus, Roman god of wine, presented his bride, Ariadne, with a golden crown set with seven diamonds. Some sources say Bacchus tossed the crown in the air out of joy when he married Ariadne. Other sources say he threw the crown into the sky after Ariadne died because it reminded him of her. In either case, his friends among the gods thought the crown was beautiful and hung it in the sky to show it off. You can see if you agree with the Roman gods by looking for Corona Borealis tonight. Seven stars represent the seven diamonds. Look about five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon or two fists above the bright star Arcturus at 11 p.m. The seven stars form a bowl.

Sunday: Venus, Saturn, and Mars make a little triangle low in the western sky at nightfall all week. They are less than one fist above the west horizon at 9:30 tonight. In order of increasing brightness and apparent size are Venus, Saturn, and Mars. Mars and Venus will move to the left throughout the week providing evidence that they are much closer to the Earth than the nighttime stars.

Monday: Many big city dwellers never see the milky white, nearly continuous band of stars known as the Milky Way. As cities grow and add more lights, it has become harder to see the bulk of the Milky Way galaxy, our home in the universe. But, there are two easy ways to see the Milky Way. The first way is to look in the mirror. You are part of the Milky Way. The second way is to look from due north through the point straight overhead (called the zenith) to due south from 10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. for the next two weeks. This is the time of year when the Milky Way is highest in the sky and away from the city lights on the horizon.

Tuesday: As a public service, I am going to review iPhone etiquette. Talking on your iPhone in a crowded room: bad. Checking for public astronomy events on your iPhone: good. Here’s how to be good. Go to the App Store and download the free app called Go StarGaze. This app allows users to search for public astronomy events in their area that are being put on by a Night Sky Network astronomy club such as the CWU Astronomy Club.

Wednesday: Jupiter is one fist above the east horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: The Perseid meteor shower peaks late tonight and early tomorrow morning. The meteors appear to come from a point just below the W of the constellation Cassiopeia. This point is about two and a half fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m. By 4 a.m., the peak time, this point is about seven fists above the northeast horizon. If you fall asleep or forget to set your alarm, you will be able to observe this shower from midnight to dawn for a few days before and after tonight in about the same location in the sky. The Perseid shower is one of the longest lasting showers. You may be able to see up to 60 meteors per hour in the late night and early morning hours all week thanks to the nearly moonless sky at these times. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. These meteors are sand to pea-sized bits of rock that fell off of Comet Swift-Tuttle. They are traveling about 40 miles per second as they collide with the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. For more tips about meteor watching, go to www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/meteors/3304061.html.

Friday: Deneb is about seven fists above the east horizon at 10 p.m. When you look at Deneb, you are seeing light that left Deneb about 1,800 years ago.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/31/10

2010-07-26T23:31:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Mars and Saturn are neighbors in the sky all week. They are one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 9:30 p.m. Saturn is on top, the brighter of the two. They will easily fit into the field of view of typical binoculars. The much brighter Venus is a fist to the lower right of Mars and Saturn.

Sunday: In Scotland, August 1 was known as Lammas, the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. You can remember this by looking at Spica, named for the Latin word for “ear of wheat”, one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west-southwest horizon at 9:30 p.m. It is also called a cross-quarter day, a day approximately half way between an equinox and a solstice.

Monday: When you think of the Solar System, the main objects that come to mind are the planets and the Sun. But much of the evidence of how the Solar System formed comes from meteors, comets, and asteroids. Scientists have been analyzing the small chunks of rocks and ice that fall to Earth. More recently, astronomers have been studying the rocks and ice in outer space with telescopes and space probes. For example, in July, 2005, the NASA mission Deep Impact smashed into a comet to study its structure. For more information about this rather cold “Hot Topic”, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_aug.htm.

Tuesday: What are some of the signs of August? 1. Hot weather. 2. Back to school sales. 3. A chain email saying Mars will look as big as a full moon this month. The first two are true. The third one never was and never will be. In August of 2003, Mars was as close to Earth as it had been in all of written history. With the right telescope magnification, it could look as large as the moon without magnification. But, even then, Mars did not appear even as large as Jupiter always does. This year, Mars is about half its maximum apparent size. Compare it with Saturn in a small telescope. Mars and Saturn are still one above the west horizon at 9:30 p.m. Mars apparent diameter is much less than Saturn’s.

Wednesday: Had the script been written a little differently for a well known Robin Williams movie, we may have heard Mr. Williams shout, “Goooood Morning Orion the hunter”. Orion is typically thought of as a winter constellation. But, it makes its first appearance in the summer sky. The lowest corner of Orion’s body, represented by the star Saiph (pronounced “safe”), rises at 4:30 a.m., well before the Sun. By 5 a.m., Orion’s belt is about one fist above the east-southeast horizon.

Thursday: Jupiter is a fist above the east-southeast horizon at 11:30 p.m.

Friday: Need a caffeine pick-me-up? Make it a double. Need an astronomy pick-me-up? Make it a double-double. Find Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, nearly straight overhead at 11:00 tonight. Less than half a fist to the east (or left if you are facing south) of the bright bluish star Vega is the “star” Epsilon Lyra. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through binoculars, it looks like two stars. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through a large enough telescope, you will notice that each star in the pair is itself a pair of stars. Each star in the double is double. Hence, Epsilon Lyra is known as the double-double. The stars in each pair orbit a point approximately in the center of each respective pair. The pairs themselves orbit a point between the two pairs.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/24/10

2010-07-22T21:08:00.001-07:00

Saturday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks for the next few nights and early mornings with the greatest concentration of meteors being visible Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 1 am tomorrow morning. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky. Unfortunately, the nearly full moon and waning gibbous moon will be out most of the night and obscure the dimmer meteors. As you Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Sunday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Capricornus the sea goat.

Monday: We read a lot about how kids nowadays are heavier than they used to be. You don’t read that about stars… until now. Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory just discovered the most massive stars in the universe using their Very Large Telescope (yes, that’s its real name). These two stars are about 300 times more massive than the Sun or twice as massive as the largest known stars. In addition to being very massive, they are several million times brighter than our Sun. Their brightness compared to the Sun is the same as the Sun’s brightness compared to the full moon. Neither of these stars is visible from Ellensburg. For more information, go to http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/news/view/67492/.

Tuesday: Speaking of meteor showers, the Perseid meteor shower is NASA’s “Go Observe” object for August. The Perseid meteor shower is typically the most easily visible shower of the year for Northern Hemisphere observers. This year, moonlight will interfere with the dimmer meteors during the peak evenings of August 12 and 13. Luckily, Perseid meteors are visible from about the last week in July until the last week in August so you can start watching the Perseid meteor shower this week. The meteors appear to come from a point just below the W of the constellation Cassiopeia. This point is about two fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m. tonight. For more information, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_aug.htm.

Wednesday: Venus is a little less than a fist above the west horizon at 9:30 p.m. Mars and Saturn are a fist to the upper left of Venus. Saturn is the upper and the brighter of the two.

Thursday: Say "Cheese". 159 years ago this month, Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, became the first star ever photographed. The photograph was done at the Harvard Observatory using the daguerreotype process. Vega is the third brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg behind Sirius and Arcturus. Vega is nearly straight overhead at 11:00 tonight.

Friday: Jupiter is a little less than a fist above the east horizon at 11:30 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/17/10

2010-07-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Being in a coma is a bad thing. Looking at the Coma Star Cluster is a good thing. The Coma Star Cluster is an open cluster of about 50 stars that takes up more space in the sky than 10 full Moons. It looks like a fuzzy patch with the naked eye. Binoculars reveal dozens of sparkling stars. A telescope actually diminishes from the spectacle because the cluster is so big and the telescope’s field of view is so small. The Coma Star Cluster is in the faint constellation Coma Berenices (ba-ron-ice’-ez) or Queen Berenice’s hair. Queen Berenice of Egypt cut off her beautiful hair as a sacrifice to the gods for the safe return of her husband Ptolemy III from battle. The Coma Star Cluster is about four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Sunday: There is a small herd of planets moving along the ecliptic low in the western sky tonight. The what? You know, the west. The direction where the Sun sets. Oh wait. You know that word. The word “ecliptic” is the new word for you. The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun takes through the background stars. Since the planets orbit the Sun, they can also be found along the ecliptic. Look at 10 p.m. Venus is a half a fist above the west horizon, a little bit north of west. Mars is a fist above the west horizon, a little bit south of west. Finally, Saturn is a fist and a half above the west-southwest horizon.

Monday: Take a two and a half hour walk. Too long, you say? Forty-one years ago tomorrow, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first ever walk by humans on another world. They spend two and a half hours setting up scientific instruments and collecting rocks for study back on Earth. Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the spacecraft the three astronauts would use to return to Earth.

Tuesday: What are you going to do tonight? Certainly not watch the junk on TV. Clean the garage? Yeah, like that’s going to happen. No, you want to go to the astronomy celebration at Lind Hall on the Central Washington University campus from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. The evening starts in Lind Hall, room 215 with a brief astronomy lecture. At 9:30, we’ll start observing a variety of celestial objects. Dress warm and be ready to be edutained.

Wednesday: If you want to show your loved ones a celestial sign that they should hang up their clothes, show them Brocchi's Cluster, commonly known as the Coat Hanger cluster because of its resemblance to an upside down coat hanger. The cluster is six fists above the southeast horizon at 10:30 p.m., midway between Altair and Vega, the two brightest stars in the Summer Triangle. You'll need binoculars to make out the shape. First find Altair four fists above the southeast horizon. Slowly move your binoculars up toward Vega. You will run into the coat hanger along the way. And while you are at it, put away your shoes.

Thursday: Jupiter is about a half a fist above the east horizon at midnight.

Friday: Do you wish it was easy to find due north? After all, a compass points to magnetic north which is a few degrees off of true geographic north. Well, tonight’s your night. Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer, is due north at exactly 10:14 p.m. It looks like a bright light on a pole on the north ridge because is only about one degree above the horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/10/10

2010-07-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday: The little king, also known as the bright star Regulus, is feeling a hunka hunka burnin’ love for the bright planet Venus. Less than a pinky width held at arm’s length separates them tonight. They are one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 10 p.m. They will love each other tender for the entire week as they remain close together in the evening sky.

Sunday: After watching the movie “South Pacific” and honoring its well-known song by “washing that man right out of your hair”, go to the real South Pacific Ocean to view a total solar eclipse. This morning, the residents of the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Easter Island, as well as small sections of southern Chile and Argentina will see the Moon completely cover the Sun for a total solar eclipse. During a total solar eclipse, the new Moon is directly between the Earth and Sun. For people watching from the path of totality, the Sun disappears and it is possible to see the nighttime stars. The next eclipse visible in Ellensburg, as well as the entire United States, is a total lunar eclipse on the night of December 20 and 21.

Monday: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter’s young nemesis, is related to Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black. Draco’s mother, Narcissa Black (Sirius’ cousin) helped develop a plan to trap Harry at the Ministry of Magic in the fifth book. Draco’s namesake, the constellation Draco the dragon is one of the largest constellations in the sky, winding around the North Star. Draco’s head is a four-sided figure nearly straight overhead at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: Saturn is one and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: The Andromeda galaxy, the most distant object visible with the naked eye from a dark site, has moved into the evening sky. To locate the Andromeda Galaxy, first find the Great Square of Pegasus. At 11:00 p.m., the left hand corner of the square is about two fists above the east-northeast horizon. Less than two fists to the left and down a little bit is another star the same brightness as the star at the corner of the square. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light known as the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of about 400 billion stars and is 2.2 million light years away.

Thursday: Mars is less than a half a fist to the upper right of the Moon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Jupiter is a little less than a half a fist above due east at midnight tonight. Just before dawn tomorrow morning, it will be four fists above the south-southeast horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/3/10

2010-07-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Tomorrow night, while you are looking at an explosion of fireworks, the NASA spacecraft Kepler may be looking at an “explosion” of exoplanets. So far, Kepler has found evidence of more than 700 stars being dimmed by their planets crossing in front of them and blocking light. Astronomers still need to compare the pattern of dimming with the potential pattern of star wobble caused by being tugged on by one or more planets before that can say for certain that have actually found planets orbiting these stars. But if even half of these stars show the characteristic wobble, it will nearly double the number of planets known to orbit other stars, also known as exoplanets. And this is only the beginning. The Kepler spacecraft is monitoring the brightness of over 156,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus the swan and Lyra the lyre. This region is midway between the bright stars Deneb and Vega. It is about the size of your hand held at arm’s length and is about six fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 11 p.m.

Sunday: This morning’s last quarter Moon is in the constellation Pisces the fish.

Monday: Mars and Saturn are moving towards each other in the night sky. At 10 p.m., Mars is one and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon. Saturn is a fist to the upper left of Mars and a little more than two fists above the southwest horizon.

Tuesday: Hot enough for you? Don’t blame the Earth-Sun distance. Surprisingly, the overall temperature of the Earth is slightly higher in July, when the Earth is farthest from the Sun, than in January, when it is closest. That’s because in July, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun. (This is the real cause of the seasons.) The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, in July, the large amount of Northern Hemisphere land heats up the entire Earth about two degrees Celsius warmer than in January. In January, the watery Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun. But, water does not heat up as fast as land so the Earth is a few degrees cooler. If you are one of those people who measures twice and cuts once, the Earth-Sun distance is 152.1 million kilometers today. The Earth-Sun distance is 152.1 million kilometers. Now cut.

Wednesday: Last week, I speculated about which planet Regulus, the “little king” star in the constellation Leo, would chose to hang out with in the sky. Over the next few nights, you’ll see that choice and it is Venus. Venus and Regulus will be side-by-side, one fist above the west horizon at 10 p.m., for the rest of the week.

Thursday: Ripped from the headlines: The Moon wakes up with seven sisters this morning! The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades, is a bright open star cluster in the constellation Taurus. However, you’ll need binoculars to get a good view of the Pleiades this morning since its stars will be obscured by the moon glow. The Pleiades is about a finger width above the moon at 4 a.m. See, getting up early allows you to start rumors.

Friday: Jupiter is finally rising in the evening sky… if you define evening as 11:56 p.m. Still, you don’t have to stay up extremely late to see it. By 1 a.m., it is one fist above the east horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/26/10

2010-06-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Don’t wait until the 4th of July to go to those wimpy firecracker shows. Find the hypergiant star Rho Cassiopeiae. Astronomers think that Rho Cassiopeiae will likely go supernova (explode) in the near future. Of course, for stars, near future might mean today. It might mean 20,000 years from now. Rho Cassiopeiae is in the constellation Cassiopeia the queen. At 11:00 tonight, Cassiopeia looks like the letter “W” about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon. Rho Cassiopeiae is about a finger’s width to the right of the rightmost star in the “W”. Once you find it you’ll be thinking, “Big deal, I can hardly see it.” Although it is barely visible to the naked eye, it is actually very bright. It is the 20th most luminous star in the sky, a whopping 550,000 times more luminous than the Sun.

Sunday: Ah, the continuing dilemma for any king, even a little one: love or war. Regulus, the 20th brightest star in the night sky, Latin for “little king”, is midway between the planets Mars, named for the god of war, and Venus, named for the god of love. At 10 p.m., Regulus is one and a half fists above due west. Mars is about a fist to its upper left and Venus is about a fist to its lower right. Of the two, I pick love. It is much brighter.

Monday: Saturn is two fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10:30 p.m. If you look through a small telescope at this time, you’ll be able to see its two largest moons, Titan and Rhea, off to its side. Titan is the 10th largest and Rhea is the 20th largest object in the solar system. For more information on identifying Saturn’s moons in a small telescope, go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/javascript/3308506.html.

Tuesday: Two of the dogs in the sky have set: Canis Major and Canis Minor. Both are represented by stars that are very close and very bright. Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, is the brightest nighttime star and the 8th closest. Procyon, in the constellation Canis Minor, is the 7th brightest nighttime star and the 20th closest. But, canines are still represented in the sky by Canes Vanatici, the hunting dogs. They are four fists above the west-northwest horizon at midnight, underneath the Big Dipper handle.

Wednesday: The constellation Cepheus the king (husband of Cassiopeia the queen) is about four fists above the northeast horizon at 11 pm. Cepheus is about one and a half fists above Cassiopeia. Cepheus looks like a house on its side with the roof peak pointing towards the west. Cassiopeia and Cepheus revolve around the North Star every night like a happy couple going through life together.

Thursday: When people find out that you read this column, they may ask you all sorts of tough astronomy questions such as “Where can I see the Milky Way?” That one is easy. Just look in the mirror. We are all part of the Milky Way. The center of the Milky Way galaxy is in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, about one and a half fists above due south at 11:30 p.m. The Milky Way is NASA’s “Go Observe” object for July. For more information, go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_jul.htm.

Friday: You won’t be able to see Jupiter unless you either stay up late or get up early. Jupiter is about a half a fist above the east horizon at 1 a.m. By 4 a.m., it is three fists above the southeast horizon.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/19/10

2010-06-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Summer is nearly here. How do I know? Because my kids are home from school. Also, because the Summer Triangle is fairly high in the eastern sky at 10 p.m. Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg, is about five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon. Deneb, at the tail of Cygnus the swan is about three and a half fists above the northeast horizon. The third star in the triangle, Altair, in Aquila the eagle is two fists above the east horizon.
If you want to put somebody off, tell them to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon.

Sunday: Venus, the brightest planet, looks like it is in danger of being stung by a bee tonight. It is right above the open star cluster known as the Beehive Cluster. This cluster is about 600 million years old and is about 600 light years away. (Oops, I guess the bees can’t fly that far. Also, there is nothing for them to beat their wings against in space. Finally, there are no bees in the Beehive Cluster. Well, that storyline failed.) Venus is the bright point of light one fist above the west-northwest horizon at 10 p.m. The cluster will be easily visible in binoculars below Venus.

Monday: Today is the first day of summer, the day that the Sun reaches its highest declination (the official name for sky latitude) of 23.5 degrees above the celestial equator. The celestial equator is the line that divides the northern sky from the southern sky. In Ellensburg, the Sun is about seven fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 1:00 p.m. (noon standard time). Contrary to popular belief, the Sun is never straight over head in Ellensburg or anywhere else in the 48 contiguous states. The northernmost portion of the world where the Sun can be directly overhead is 23.5 degrees north latitude. In ancient times, the Sun was in the constellation Cancer the crab on the first day of summer. Hence, 23.5 degrees north latitude has the nickname "Tropic of Cancer". Because the Earth wobbles like a spinning top, the Sun's apparent path through the sky changes slightly over time. Now, the Sun is in the constellation Taurus the bull on the first day of summer. However, citing the high cost of revising all of the science books, geographers are not changing the name of 23.5 degrees north latitude to "Tropic of Taurus". The first day of summer is often called the summer solstice. However, astronomers refer to the summer solstice as the point in the sky in which the Sun is at its highest point above the celestial equator. Thus, summer starts when the Sun is at the summer solstice point. This year, that happens at 4:36 a.m.

Tuesday: Summer is the season of the horse and rider here in Ellensburg. But every night of the year is the season of the horse and rider in the Ellensburg sky. Mizar and Alcor, two stars at the bend of the Big Dipper’s handle, were known to the ancients as the horse and rider because dim Alcor “rides” just above brighter Mizar in the sky. Since the Big Dipper is circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude, it never goes below the horizon. Tonight, Alcor and Mizar are seven fists above the northwest horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Jupiter is two and a half fista above the southeast horizon at 4 a.m.

Thursday: Saturn is two and a half fists above the west-southwest and Mars is one and a half fists above the west horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Friday: A few days ago, I wrote about Mizar. Don’t confuse it with its rhyming brother Izar in the constellation Bootes. Izar is also a binary star with about the same apparent brightness. And both were featured in different episodes of Star Trek. Izar was featured in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy” from the original series. It is the base of Fleet Captain Garth, a former big shot in the federation and one of Kirk’s heroes before he went insane. Garth kidnaps Kirk and Spock before eventually being out smarted. Mizar doesn’t play as big a role in its episode. It is the star of the home world of one of the alien species in The Next Generation episode “Allegiance”. Izar is one fist above the bright star Arcturus and seven fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m. Mizar is seven fists above the northwest horizon at this time.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/12/10

2010-06-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

Have you bought your favorite college graduate a graduation gift yet? Why not get her or him a star? I don’t mean from one of those organizations that offers to “register the name of YOUR star with the U.S. Patent Office”. No company owns the right to name stars after people. Besides, the stars those companies “name” are so dim you can’t find them. In this column, I’ll pick a constellation and representative star for each of the four colleges at a typical university. Then, I’ll briefly tell the story of the constellation and relate that story to the aspect of public service graduates from that college are uniquely qualified to engage in. Just like a couple can have “their” song, your favorite college graduate can have her or his star.

Today: Just as gyms and stadiums have been crowded with smart people for many evenings for the past few weeks, the eastern sky will crowded with bright planets for the next few weeks. Tonight at 10 p.m., right as your graduation party is getting started, you can see Venus, the brightest planet, more than one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west-northwest horizon. Three fists above the west-southwest horizon, you’ll see the planet Mars to the upper left of the star Regulus. They are about the same brightness as each other. Finally, Saturn is three and a half fists above the southwest horizon. Over the next few weeks, these planets will move towards each other in the sky.

Sunday: College of Arts and Humanities: You are the people who interpret the world in unique ways. Then, you share those ways with others. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed everyone he met when he played the lyre or harp. After his wife died tragically, he journeyed to the underworld to charm its inhabitants in an effort to win his wife back to the living world. Your service reminder: use your talent to bring joy to others. The constellation Lyra and its bright star Vega should remind you of the power of the arts. Vega is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: What’s better than waking up to a new job offer? Waking up to a comet. Well, maybe not better but still pretty interesting. Comet C/2009 R1, also known as McNaught, is visible in the northeast sky at 4 a.m. First find Mirphak two and a half fists above the northeast horizon. Comet C/2009 R1 will be about a half a fist below Mirphak. You may need binoculars to see it. However since this is the first time Comet C/2009 R1 has entered the inner Solar System, its maximum brightness is difficult to predict.

Tuesday: College of Business. You are the future movers and shakers. The future CEOs. The future big donors to the university. Auriga represented a king of Athens who happened to be mobility impaired. Instead of sitting around waiting for others to transport him, he took the initiative to invent the four-wheeled chariot. He solved a problem for a special need. Your service reminder: address the problems of those in the most need. To remind you of that, look to the constellation Auriga. Its bright star Capella is about one fist above the north horizon at 11 p.m.

Wednesday: College of Education and Professional Studies. You are the teachers. The craftspeople. The facilitators of learning in a diverse world. Bootes, the herdsman, was such a person. Bootes’ job was to guide the northern constellations to the feeding place and the watering hole. He and his dogs were especially in charge of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the greater and lesser bears. Your service reminder: guide others to a better place in life. Look to the constellation Bootes and its bright star Arcturus to remind you of this. Arcturus is six fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: College of the Sciences. You are the people who will systematically study how the world works. Agriculture is an important scientific application. Each year, farmers must use the findings of science to be successful. Who better to represent the College of the Sciences than Virgo, the goddess of the harvest? Virgo looms large in the sky holding an ear of wheat in her hand. Your service reminder: study the practical aspects of the scientific world. The ear of wheat, and your service reminder, is represented by the bright star Spica. Spica is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Friday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Virgo, about a fist below Saturn at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 6/5/10

2010-06-04T07:35:00.001-07:00

Saturday: In 1979, the group Foreigner recorded the song “Head Games”. They could have been singing about the constellations Hercules and Ophiuchus when they said “head games, it’s just you and me baby, head games, I can’t take it anymore” because the heads of these two constellations have been right next to each other in the nighttime sky for all of human history. Each head is represented by a star bears an Arabic name that means "the head." In Hercules, it's Ras Algethi (head of the kneeler); in Ophiuchus, Ras Alhague (head of the serpent charmer). At 11 p.m., Ras Alhague, the brighter of the two, is a little more than four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon. Ras Algethi is about a half a fist to the upper right of Ras Alhague.

Sunday: For the next few months, Uranus and Jupiter will be neighbors in the sky. For the next couple of months, you’ll have to either get up early or stay up late to see them. At 4:30 a.m., they are two and a half fists above the southeast horizon. Jupiter is the brightest point of light in the area. You’ll need binoculars to see dim Uranus just to the upper left of Jupiter. This morning, Jupiter and Uranus are joined by the Moon

Monday: Mars is near Regulus in the sky for the next few nights. Tonight, Regulus, the dimmer of the two is less than a pinky width to the lower right of Mars. They are three fists above the west-southwest horizon tonight.

Tuesday: Mizar is a well known binary star in the constellation Ursa Major. You can find it at the bend in the Big Dipper handle, nearly straight overhead at 10 p.m. tonight. Its name is Arabic for waistband. Mizar has an optical double called Alcor which is less than a pinky width away and can easily be seen with the naked eye. Optical doubles are stars that are close together in the sky but do not orbit a common center of mass as true binary stars. Not wanting to deceive sky gazers who call Mizar a binary star, two stars that DO orbit a common center of mass, Mizar actually is a binary. It was the first binary star system discovered by telescope. Mizar A and Mizar B are about 400 astronomical units apart from each other and about 80 light years from Earth. 400 astronomical units is about 10 times the distance between the Sun and Pluto.

Wednesday: Saturn is four fists above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Thursday: Venus lines up with the Gemini twins, Pollux and Castor, for the next couple of nights. Tonight Venus is about one fist above the west-northwest horizon. Pollux, the brighter of the “twins” is a half a fist to the right of Venus and Castor is another half fist to the right of Pollux.

Friday: Vega, probably the second star you’ll see tonight, is four fists above the east-northeast horizon at 9:30 p.m. Last week I wrote that Arcturus, high in the southeast sky, is most likely the first star you’ll see tonight. You DO remember me writing that, don’t you?

Wait a minute. We got all the way to the end of the week with no Moon phase summary? How can that be? There are 29.5 days between the same Moon phase in two different cycles. That means about 7.5 days between the phases new, first quarter, full and last quarter. Since a week is seven days, there are some weeks in which none of the main phases occur. This week, the Moon was always in the waning crescent phase.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/29/10

2010-05-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Jupiter is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-southeast horizon at 4:30 a.m. It will be easy to find since it is the brightest object in that portion of the sky. Uranus typically is not so easy to find. But for the next few mornings, Uranus will be about a pinky width to the left of Jupiter and be easy to spot with binoculars. It will look like a pale blue star compared to Jupiter.

Sunday: There are so many bright planets visible in the early evening sky, they deserve a tribute song. Since the movie “Grease” is being re-released this summer, how about this song sung to the tune of “Sandra Dee”: “Look at me, I’m evening sky. Lousy with planets moving by. Won’t go to bed ‘til my planet needs are fed. I can’t, I’m evening sky.” Those planet needs can be fed at 10 p.m. when Venus is one fist above the west-northwest horizon, Mars is three and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon and Saturn is four fists above the southwest horizon.

Monday: “Hey baby! What’s your sign?”
“Ophiuchus, of course”
The Sun is in the same part of the sky as the stars of Ophiuchus from about November 29 to December 17. This is what astrologers mean when they say the Sun is “in” a constellation. Thus, if you were born between these dates, you should be an Ophiuchus. The fact that the horoscopes never list Ophiuchus is a major flaw of astrology. Astrology says that some of our characteristics are based on the location of the Sun at our birth. How can astrologers leave out three weeks from their system? That is like a scientist saying she can explain the results of her experiment every month of the year except early December. Ophiuchus was a mythical healer who was a forerunner to Hippocrates. According to myth, he could raise people from the dead. Maybe that is why he is ignored by astrology. Raising people from the dead is much less impressive than giving highly personal advice such as “Today is a good day to be careful in love.”
Rasalhague (pronounced Ras’-al-hay’-gwee), the brightest star in Ophiuchus, is four fists above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. Its name comes from the Arabic words for “head of the serpent charmer” or Ras Alhauge. The rest of Ophiuchus spreads out down and to the right of Rasalhague.

Tuesday: The month of June is named after Juno, the queen of the Roman gods and the mythological protector of the Roman state. In ancient Rome, the month began when the crescent moon was first seen in the evening sky from Capitoline Hill in Rome. If we still started months this way, June wouldn’t begin until about two weeks from now.

Wednesday: Although Venus is brighter, Arcturus is probably the first star you’ll see tonight. It is nearly six fists above the southeast horizon at 9:15 p.m.

Thursday: Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo viewed the Pleiades star cluster through his telescope and saw that the seven or so stars in the region visible to the naked eye became a couple dozen. Now we know there are about 100 stars in this open star cluster. There are two main types of star clusters. Open star clusters are groups of a few dozen to a few thousand stars that formed from the same cloud of gas and dust within our galaxy. Stars in open star clusters are young as far as stars go. The stars in the Pleiades are about 100 million years old, much younger than our five billion year old Sun. Globular clusters are groups of up to a few million stars that orbit the core of spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way. June’s “Hot Topic” for astronomy is star clusters. Go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/topics_jun.htm for more information.

Friday: One of the most well known star clusters is the globular cluster in Hercules, an object that is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Vega, the bright bluish star five fists above the east horizon at 11 p.m. Two fists above Vega is a keystone shape. Aim your binoculars at the upper left hand star of the keystone. The globular cluster is one third of the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this stuff”. Go to http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_jun.htm for more information about the Hercules globular cluster.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/22/10

2010-05-18T19:43:00.001-07:00

Saturday: Saturn is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the Moon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: Ophiuchus (pronounced O-fee-u’-kus) the serpent holder rises just before sunset this evening. By 11, p.m., the leading star, Yed Prior or “the preceding star of the hand” is three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon.

Monday: Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, is about one fist above the Moon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: The constellation Aquila the eagle is starting its migration across the summer evening sky this month. Aquila, marked by its bright star Altair, rises above the east horizon at about 11 p.m. Not all animal migrations are fully understood by scientists. We might be inclined to attribute bird migrations to instinct. This answer certainly did not satisfy the theologian C. S. Lewis. In his short work “Men Without Chests”, he wrote “to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way”. In science (and theology), Lewis is telling us to look for real causes and not simply labels such as instinct. The cause for Aquila’s migration is the Earth orbiting the Sun. As the Earth moves around the Sun, certain constellations move into the evening sky as others get lost in the glare of the setting Sun.

Wednesday: Mercury is at greatest western elongation this morning. This means Mercury is farthest from the Sun in the morning sky for this orbit. Typically, that means it is a good time to view Mercury. But, Mercury still remains low in the morning sky for this western elongation. It is less than a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon at 5 a.m.

Thursday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Scorpius the scorpion. Since this is the time for “May flowers”, the May full moon is called the Full Flower Moon. At 11 p.m., the bright star Antares is about a finger width to the right of the Moon.

Friday: Cygnus the swan flies tonight. Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation, whose name means “tail” in Arabic, is two fists above the northeast horizon at 10 p.m. Cygnus’ wings make a vertical line one half a fist to the right of Deneb. Its head, marked by the star Albireo, is two fists to the right of Deneb. While Deneb is at the tail of Cygnus, it is at the head of the line of bright stars. It is 160,000 times more luminous than the Sun making it one of the brightest stars in the galaxy. It does not dominate our night sky because it is 2,600 light years away, one of the farthest naked eye stars. If Deneb were 25 light years away, it would shine as bright as a crescent moon. Compare that to Vega, which is 25 light years away. Vega is three and a half fists above the east-northeast horizon at this time.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/15/10

2010-05-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Venus is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length to the upper left of the Moon at 9 p.m. While the planet was named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty, it is not a loving place. The surface of the planet is 460 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough to melt lead. The barometric pressure on the surface is over 90 times greater than on Earth’s surface. Most missions to Venus have failed either before sending back data or after only a few minutes of sending back data. Not a very neighborly attitude from our nearest planetary neighbor. The next planned Venus explorer is the Japanese mission called Akatsuki, still in development. For an effective introduction to Venus and many other significant solar system objects including the eight planets, Pluto and the Sun, go to http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/.

Sunday: Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, is known as the Horn Mansion one of 28 mansions, or constellations, in the Chinese sky. Spica is about three fists above the south horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: Late spring and early summer is a good time to look for star clusters. Last week, you learned about M3, the third object cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier over 200 years ago. One of the best clusters is the globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, also called M13. (Hummm. Guess what number that object is in Messier’s catalog.) Globular clusters are compact groupings of a few hundred thousand stars in a spherical shape 100 light years across. (For comparison, a 100 light year diameter sphere near out Sun would contain a few hundred stars.) The globular cluster in Hercules is six fists above due east at 11 p.m. First find Vega, the bright bluish star about four fists above the east-northeast horizon. Two fists to the upper right of Vega is a keystone shape. Aim your binoculars at the two stars that form the uppermost point of the keystone. The globular cluster is one third of the way south of the uppermost star on the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this stuff”.

Tuesday: When it is sitting low in the western sky, many people mistake the star Capella for a planet. It is bright. It has a slight yellow color. But, Capella is compelling on its own. It is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the most northerly bright star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 10 p.m., Capella is two fists above the northwest horizon. If you miss it tonight, don’t worry. Capella is the brightest circumpolar star meaning it is the brightest star that never goes below the horizon from our point of view in Ellensburg.

Wednesday: Mars, looking like a bright orange star, is about a half a fist above the Moon at 10 p.m. They are four fists above the west-southwest horizon.

Thursday: The first quarter Moon is in the constellation Leo the lion, about a half a fist below the bright star Regulus.

Friday: Jupiter is two fists above the east-southeast horizon at 5 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/9/10

2010-05-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Say good bye to the nice doggy. “Good bye doggy. We’ll see you in a few weeks in the morning.” Sirius, the Dog Star, is less than a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m. As the Earth revolves around the Sun, different groups of stars are in line behind the Sun. Soon Sirius and the rest of the constellation Canis Major will be lost in the glare of the Sun. As the Earth continues its revolution, those constellations behind the Sun move into the early morning sky.

Sunday: Jupiter is a half a fist to the lower right of the moon. They are about a fist above the east horizon at 5 a.m. That’s right. You have to get up early to see the morning sky objects in the mid to late spring and summer.

Monday: Give me an “M”. Give me a “3”. What does that spell? “M3.” “Big deal,” you say. It was a big deal to French comet hunter Charles Messier (pronounced messy a). M3 was the 3rd comet look-alike that Messier catalogued in the late 1700s. M3 is a globular cluster, a cluster of over 100,000 stars that is 32,000 light years away. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye but is fairly easy find with binoculars. First find Arcturus five and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m. (See Wednesday’s entry to learn how to find Arcturus.) Move your binoculars up a little so two stars of nearly identical brightness are in your field of view. When the top star is in the lower left part of your field of view, there should be a fuzzy patch near the center of your field of view. This is M3.

Tuesday: Mars is four and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Wednesday: This is a good time of the year to find the Big Dipper. It is nearly straight overhead at 10 p.m. The cup is to the west and the handle is to the east. You can always use the Big Dipper to find some other bright stars. First, follow the curve, or arc, of the Big Dipper down three fists into the southern sky. This is the bright star, Arcturus, the second brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg. Next, continue on a straight line, or spike, another three fists down toward the south horizon to the star Spica. Spica is the tenth brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg. You now know how to use the Big Dipper handle to “arc” to Arcturus and “spike” to Spica.

Thursday: Tonight’s Moon is new. Don’t bother looking for it. The new moon is the phase where the Moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun. Hence the side of the Moon facing Earth is not receiving any sunlight and cannot be seen. The term “new” comes from the moon seeming to be reborn with light every lunar cycle.

Friday: Saturn is four and a half fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 5/1/10

2010-04-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

What's up in the sky 5/1/10

Saturday: The Kittitas Environmental Education Network (KEEN) invites you to “Get Intimate with the Shrub Steppe” (GISS) at Helen McCabe Park this morning and early afternoon. The CWU Astronomy club will have opportunities for safe solar viewing as well as information about the sky. Go to http://www.kittitasee.net/events/giss2010.html for more information about the entire event. I invite you to Get Intimate with Super Spectacular Saturn (GISSS) tonight. Saturn is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10 p.m. With a small telescope, you can see the rings of Saturn and at least one of its moons – Titan. With a good pair of 10X50 binoculars and a tripod, Titan will be visible. The “10X” in 10X50 indicated the binoculars have a magnification of ten times. The “50” means that the diameter of the lenses on the front are 50 millimeters. 10X50 is a common size for binoculars.

Sunday: Wake up early this morning for a nice spring shower – a meteor shower. The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on Thursday morning. But since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, there will be many more meteors than in the typical pre-dawn sky throughout the week. 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 above the east horizon at 4 a.m. Although dawn is starting to light the sky, you could be rewarded with a few bright, fast meteors. 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.

Monday: Jupiter is a little less than one fist above the east horizon at 5 a.m. Yes, 5… A… M. No one said sky watching was for the faint hearted.

Tuesday: Are you a henpecked husband? King Cepheus was. He was so captivated by his wife Cassiopeia’s beauty that he let her rule their home. You can tell who is boss by looking in the northern sky at 10 p.m. Cassiopeia is the prominent W-shaped grouping of stars two fists above the north horizon. Cepheus is the much dimmer house-shaped grouping of stars about a fist to the right of Cassiopeia.

Wednesday: Happy Birthday dear Hubble Telescope. Happy birthday to you. The Hubble Space Telescope turned 20 years old last week. NASA is celebrating by introducing a new website with a Hubble timeline, movies and an album of iconic Hubble pictures - http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Hubble20/.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at 10:30 p.m.

Friday: Mars is four and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/24/10

2010-04-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 4/17/10

2010-04-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday: Mars is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 10 p.m. Less than a pinky width below Mars is the Beehive Cluster, an open star cluster of about 50 stars, all about 570 light years from Earth. The Beehive Cluster is a great object to look at through binoculars because it is big, taking up as much space in the sky as nine full moons. For the next few nights, Mars is an excellent marker.
If you get up before sunrise or stay up very late any night this week, be on the lookout for meteors coming from nearly straight overhead near dawn. The Lyrid meteor shower is active this week.

Sunday: The nighttime stars take little more than an instant to rise. The Moon takers about two minutes to rise. That’s absolutely speedy compared to the constellation Virgo which takes four hours to rise. The first star in Virgo rises at 4:30 in the afternoon today. Spica, the brightest star in the constellation, rises at 7:30. By 9 p.m., Spica is a fist and a half above the southeast horizon. The northern section of Virgo will be marked by the planet Saturn for the next few months. Saturn is three and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 9 p.m.

Monday: How many of you know your 12 nearest neighbors? I thought so. Why don’t you go out and meet them right now. I’ll wait. Yes, of course bring them cookies. No, not those stale ones you hate.
Are you back? That means you obviously didn’t meet your 12 nearest stellar neighbors. Including the Sun, there are 12 stars within 10 light years of Earth. The most well known are the Sun (obviously); Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than the Sun; Alpha Centauri, a bright binary star visible from the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere; and Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky. Sirius is the largest and most luminous star in our neighborhood. It is one and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m.

Tuesday: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks over the next two nights. 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 tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. For most of the next two nights, the nearly first quarter Moon will be below the horizon meaning the sky will be dark enough to see dim meteors. This shower produces about 15 meteors, tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere, every hour during the peak. The Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C.

Wednesday: Vega is two fists above the northeast horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: This month, Astronomers Without Borders is organizing “30 Nights of Star Peace” to promote staring the night sky across national borders, one section of the world at a time. For the next three nights (4/22-4/24), 108 to 144 degrees west longitude is celebrating Star Peace. Ellensburg is 120 degrees west longitude. If the only thing you do is look up at the night sky and spot Mars six fists above the southwest horizon at 9 p.m., please recognize that some of your neighbors in Canada and Mexico are doing the same thing. Go to http://www.starpeace.org/ for more information.

Friday: Jupiter is just creeping out of the glare of the rising Sun. It is about a half a fist above the east horizon at 5:15 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week.