The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of November 9, 2019

Saturday: 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 10-12. For more information, visit http://goo.gl/0hwFQf or visit MIT. In addition, challenge yourself to find a similar alignment in your neighborhood. If you are not up for a challenge, just go outside tonight at 5:30 p.m. Jupiter is easily visible nearly one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southwestern horizon and Saturn nearly two fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Sunday: The Northern Taurid meteor shower peaks tomorrow night, November 11/12. These are slow moving meteors that result in the occasional fireball. The Taurid meteor showers produce a few bright meteors every hour. The nearly full Moon will obscure many meteors. These meteors appear to come from a point in Taurus the bull, near the open star cluster called the Pleiades. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 8 p.m. You can follow this point throughout the night, as it will remain one fist above 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. For more information, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=51946. 

Monday: This morning, Mercury will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, looking like a little black spot as it transits the Sun. Mercury will be close to mid-transit at west coast sunrise. The transit will be over at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Do not look directly at the Sun unless you have a safe solar telescope. Not so coincidentally, the CWU physics department will set up safe solar telescopes to view the transit from 8:30-10:00 a.m.. These will be between Discovery Hall the the SURC, E-11 on the map found at http://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map. If you can’t get to CWU, you can watch The Virtual Telescope Project’s live web viewing of the transit. Go to https://tinyurl.com/y4elbpll for more information. The next Mercury Transit won’t be until 2032. The next one visible in the USA won’t occur until 2049!

Tuesday: Did you open your Martinmas gifts yesterday? 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. Also, according to an agricultural calendar, November 11 marks the practical beginning of winter.

Wednesday: Deneb Kaitos, Arabic for whale’s tail, is two and a half fists above due south at 9:15 p.m. This is the brightest star in the constellation Cetus the sea monster. Or, if you are less prone to hyperbole, Cetus the whale.

Thursday: Mars is one fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 6:00 a.m.

Friday: Venus is almost a half a fist above the southwestern horizon at 5:00 p.m. Jupiter is about one fist to the upper left of Venus and Saturn is another two fists away.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of November 2, 2019

Today:  You’ll be getting an extra hour this weekend. What are you going to do with it? I suggest you learn some astronomy. The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show today from noon to 1 p.m. Former CWU professor and current Walla Walla Community College professor Tony Smith will give a show called Stories in the Sky. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month during the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig Planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

Before you fall back on to your bed tonight, 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 in the evening 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. Also, 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: “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 light years 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 8 p.m. The much brighter Fomalhaut is a fist and a half below Skat. And, it’s not fun being below Skat. 

Monday: At 5:15 p.m., Venus is barely above the southwestern horizon. Jupiter is a fist above the southwestern horizon and Saturn is two fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Tuesday: Did you look up Carolyn Porco and Christiaan Huygens based on last week’s Halloween costume suggestion? Carolyn Porco is an American astronomer who led the imaging team on the Cassini project, the first probe to study the Saturn system. She was the first person to describe the “spokes” in Saturn’s rings and to provide explanations about some of the moons of Uranus and neptune shepherded those planet ring systems. Learn more about her work in this woefully under-watched video: https://youtu.be/5usqdjsr6Vw. Christiaan Huygens was one of the greatest physicists of all time. He invented the pendulum clock, discovered Saturn’s moon Titan, and proposed the first comprehensive model of the rings of Saturn.

Wednesday: Mars and Spica are one fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 6:00 a.m. Spica is the lower of the two, brighter, and whiter.

Thursday: What do Justin Bieber and Betelgeuse have in common? Both are superstars. One will shine brightly for about a few hundred thousand more years. The other will only seem to be around for that long. “Sorry” Beliebers. “If you Love Yourself”, you and your “Boyfriend” need to learn more about Betelgeuse, the real supergiant star that is big enough to hold about one million Suns. “What Do You Mean” you don’t know where to look? For more information about Betelgeuse, go to http://goo.gl/0MyfHT. You’ll find it one fist above due east at 11 p.m.

Friday: Mercury is not visible in the night sky this week or next. That’s because it will be passing between the Earth and the Sun next week. “Big deal, this happens about three times a year,” you say. This year is special because on November 11, Mercury will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, looking like a little black spot as it transits the Sun. The transit will start before sunrise on the west coast, 4:35 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. Mercury will be close to mid-transit at west coast sunrise. The transit will be over at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Do not look directly at the Sun unless you have a safe solar filter. The Virtual Telescope Project will be hosting a live web viewing of the transit. Go to https://tinyurl.com/y4elbpll for more information.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 26, 2019

Saturday:  Halloween is this week 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 10:00 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. 

Sunday: At 6:30 p.m., Jupiter is about a fist above the southwestern horizon and Saturn is about two fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Monday: 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 7 p.m. The handle is on top and the spout is touching the horizon ready to pour that last cup of tea. Saturn is riding the teapot, about one and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon.

Tuesday: Mars is one fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m.

Wednesday: Venus is just above the west-southwestern horizon at 6:15 p.m. For an added challenge, try to spot Mercury right below it.

Thursday: Halloween. The pumpkins. The candy. The children going door-to-door dressed up as their favorite Saturnian astronomers: Carolyn Porco and Christiaan Huygens. 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 Saturn fans come to your door tonight night, honor the Celts and give them a wintry treat. If they ask you for a trick, point out Mars, two and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 7:00 p.m.

Friday: Happy Celtic New Year! Many historians think that November 1, 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.

The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 p.m. Former CWU professor and current Walla Walla Community College professor Tony Smith will give a show called Stories in the Sky. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig Planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 19, 2019

Saturday:  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 the evening sky, it is east of the Sun and this occurrence is called the greatest eastern elongation. This evening, Mercury is just above the southwest horizon at 6:30 p.m., to the left of the much brighter Venus. Over the next few weeks, Mercury will move toward the Sun in the sky. By mid-November, it will be visible in the morning  sky.

Sunday: Jupiter is about one fist held upright and at arms length above the southwest horizon at 7:00 p.m. At this same time, Saturn is two fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Monday: The Orionid meteor shower consists of the Earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks after midnight for the next two nights. This is not a meteor shower that typically results in a meteor storm. There will be about 15-20 meteors per hour, many more meteors than are visible on a typical night but not the storm that some showers bring. Also, the Last Quarter Moon will out most of the night and obscure the dimmer meteors with its light. The best time to observe will be near dawn, after moonset. 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 one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due east at midnight. 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. For more information, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=2147 

Tuesday: Mars is half a fist above the east-southeastern sky at 6:30 a.m.

Wednesday: Last week, the Hubble Space Telescope got the first close-up view of a comet from another star system. Comet 2I/Borisov was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady on August 30, 2019 as the second interstellar object ever confirmed. 2I is the new official designator for the second interstellar object. Astronomers know it is from another star system because it is going way too fast, 110,000 miles per hour, to be gravitationally bound to the Sun. Read and watch more about the discovery at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-observes-1st-confirmed-interstellar-comet.

Thursday: Rho Cassiopeiae is the most distant star that can be seen with the naked eye by most people. It is about 8,200 light years away. That means that the light that reaches your eyes from that star left over 8,000 years ago, before the beginning of time according to the Byzantine calendar. Rho Cassiopeiae is six fists above the northeast horizon at 8 p.m., just above the zigzag line that marks the constellation Cassiopeia.

Friday: Along with the not-so-subtle drug reference in their name, The Doobie Brothers could have made an astronomy reference in their song lyrics if they would have written: “Old Earth water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shining on me.” Astronomers now think that some of the water on Earth may be older than the Solar System. The chemical signature of the water indicates it came from a very cold source, just a few degrees above absolute zero. The early Solar System was much warmer than this meaning the water came from a source outside the Solar System. For more information about the old Earth water, go to http://goo.gl/QsEu5P.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. 

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 5, 2019

Saturday: The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its first Saturday planetarium show today from noon to 1 pm in the CWU Lydig Planetarium. Bruce Palmquist will give a presentation about what can be seen in the autumn sky. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month during the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

Sunday: Saturn is less than a half a fist to the right of the Moon throughout the night. They are two fists above due south at 7:00 p.m. At this same time, Jupiter is one and a half fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Monday: The Draconid meteor shower peaks for the next three nights with tomorrow night being the best. The meteors appear to come from a point in the head of Draco, the dragon constellation. This point is nearly straight overhead at 7 p.m. tonight. This point remains near the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco throughout the night. Unlike most meteor showers, this one is best observed in the early evening rather than after midnight. Call this the “early to bed” meteor shower. Draconid meteors are slow moving which means you will have an easy time differentiating true Draconid meteors, from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, from the stray grains of dust that happen to enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day and night. Could this be the year for a great show by the Draconids? The Moon is approaching the gibbous phase so it will obscure the dimmer meteors throughout most of the night. For everything you need to know about the Draconid meteor shower, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=3669. 

Tuesday: The CWU Astronomy Club is coming up and getting the Star Party started tonight at 8:30 p.m. The party starts with a presentation in the CWU Lydig Planetarium called Time Travel Facts vs. Fiction. It continues on the roof with telescopes and observing the night sky, weather permitting. The CWU Lydig planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

Wednesday: While you are resting after looking for Draconid meteors this past weekend, start thinking about the Orionid meteor shower. This shower, which consists of the earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail, peaks on October 19 through the 21st but produces meteors from now until early November. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about two fists above the southeast horizon at 1 a.m. tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain near the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. For more information about the Orionids, go to https://goo.gl/ikAodW.

Thursday: Mars is half a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Friday: Coffee. First scientists say it’s good for you. Then they say it is bad for you. Recently, the same argument was applied to an exomoon, a moon orbiting a planet outside our Solar System. No, astronomers are not debating whether exomoons are good for you. Of course they are. But there are conflicting reports over whether the initial exomoon observation shared a year ago was real or just a blip in the data. Astronomers studied the light of a star as a Jupiter-sized planet and then its Neptune-sized moon blocked it. This transit method is one of the most popular ways to observe exoplanets… and maybe exomoons. Read more about the debate at https://www.sciencealert.com/the-first-known-exomoon-is-called-into-question-in-follow-up-studies.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of September 28, 2019

Today:  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 tens of thousands of 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. You can see this simulated at the American Museum of Natural History video found at https://youtu.be/sBfUBtdo8yo. 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. The Big Dipper is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the northern horizon at 11 p.m. 

Sunday: Jupiter is about one and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 8:00 p.m. Jupiter is a good naked eye object, a great small telescope object and a fantastic Hubble Space Telescope object. Embrace the fantastic by visiting https://tinyurl.com/y2b7p5h2 and looking at the intricate detail in Jupiter’s clouds and the vivid Great Red Spot.

Monday: Saturn is exactly two fists above due south at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday: Since Halloween is later this month; 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 and a half fists above the eastern horizon at midnight, is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.

Wednesday: Mars is nearly a half a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Thursday: To the people of Ancient Greece, the stars that are about five and a half fists above the east-northeastern horizon at 10 p.m. were known as Cassiopeia and Andromeda, a mythological queen and her daughter. But not all cultures imagined the same pictures in the sky. To the people of Polynesia, the stars of Cassiopeia and Andromeda represented a dolphin, called Kwu. Cassiopeia formed its tail, the brightest stars of Andromeda formed its fins, and its fainter stars outlined the dolphin’s body. 

Friday: The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 pm in the CWU Lydig Planetarium. Bruce Palmquist will give a presentation about what can be seen in the autumn sky. Shows are free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month during the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.