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.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/23/10
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Ellensburg Sky for the week of 10/16/10
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Ellensburg sky for the week of 10/9/10
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)