Saturday: Venus
is about a fist above the southwest horizon at 6:30 p.m. The bright star
Antares is more of a challenge to find, about a half a fist to the lower right
of Venus.
Sunday: 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 but not the storm that some showers bring. In addition, the nearly
full moon will illuminate the sky and obscure the dimmer meteors. 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. For more
information, go to http://goo.gl/35wHaN.
Monday:
Halloween is next 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 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. The moon will help you find these clusters. This
morning at 6:30 a.m., the Pleiades cluster is less than one fist to the upper
right of the moon and the Hyades cluster is about one fist to the upper left of
the moon. Tomorrow morning, the moon sits in the “V” of the Hyades cluster.
Tuesday: The
wintertime constellation Orion is making its way into the evening sky. Nearly
the entire constellation has risen by 11:30 p.m. and its bright star Betelgeuse
is one fist above due east at 11:20 p.m. You may still see an occasional
Orionid meteor for the next two weeks in this region of the sky.
Wednesday:
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 above the southwest horizon. As you started
your visual journey, you may have noticed Jupiter rising above the
east-northeast horizon.
Thursday: Jupiter
is less than a fist above the east-northeast horizon at 11 p.m.
Friday: “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 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.
The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week.
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