Saturday: It’s
a plane. It’s a bird. No, it’s Supermoon! The biggest and brightest full moon
this year, 14% bigger and 30% brighter! This will lead to very high tides! And
an overuse of exclamation points! The Moon is full late tonight night meaning
the Earth, Moon, and Sun are in line with each other. That means the Moon and
Sun are both stretching the Earth along the same axis causing the ocean water
in line with the Sun and Moon to be pulled upward. In addition, the moon is at
perigee Saturday night. Peri- means close and –gee refers to the Earth so this
is the day of the month when the moon is closest to the Earth. Tonight is the
closest the full moon gets all year, which accentuates the upward pull on the
water and makes the tides really high. For more information about Supermoon!,
go to http://goo.gl/6tGGC.
Sunday: 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.
Monday: Today
is Saint John’s Day, an ancient festival to celebrate midsummer. In some
cultures, the solstice marked the middle of summer, not the beginning.
Tuesday: “If
you don’t maneuver more carefully, we are going to crash.” How often do you
hear that while driving? Well, the Milky Way Galaxy is going to hear that a lot
over the next four billion years. After carefully analyzing the motion of the
Andromeda Galaxy, astronomers have determined that the Andromeda and the Milky
Way are on a collision course. To locate the Andromeda Galaxy before it ends
up in your backyard, first find the Great Square of Pegasus. At midnight, the
left hand corner of the square is about one fist 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. Go
to http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/ to read
more about the upcoming collision.
Wednesday:
Saturn is three fists above the south-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.
Thursday: Mars
is about a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 this morning.
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.
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