The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/26/14

Saturday: 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 held upright and at arm’s length 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.

Sunday: Altair, at one corner of the Summer Triangle, is four fists above the southeast horizon at 11 p.m. Altair is one of the closest bright stars, so close that fictional astronauts visited a planet orbiting Altair in the 1956 movie “Forbidden Planet”.

Monday: At 9:30 p.m., Mars is one and a half fists above due southwest. Saturn is a fist and a half to the upper left of Mars and more than two fists above the south-southwest horizon.

Tuesday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks tonight and early tomorrow morning with a higher than normal concentration of meteors being visible throughout the next week. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. “Hi de hi de hi de hi”, these meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. “Ho de ho de ho de ho”, this point is about one and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 1 am tomorrow morning. (The well-known scat singer Cab Calloway must have had an interest in this star.) 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. The best time to view the shower is after midnight between moonset and dawn. The next two weeks will bring excellent meteor watching conditions because the moon will be below the horizon during the prime viewing times after midnight. For more information about this year’s shower, go to http://goo.gl/Uoxvda. 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.

Wednesday: 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 10:03 p.m. It looks like a bright light on a pole on the north ridge because is only about one degree above the horizon.

Thursday: Venus is one fist above the east-northeast horizon at 5 a.m.

Friday: 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.

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 sky for the week of 7/19/14

Saturday: Do you ever wonder who comes up with the official names for objects in the Solar System? Names such as Sedna, Haumea, and Makemake? The International Astronomical Union (IAU) does. What about all of those planets that have been discovered orbiting other stars? The IAU will name those as well… but with your help. They are starting a contest at http://nameexoworlds.org/ in which individuals and clubs can propose names for a limited number of objects. The number of objects on the list depends on how many individuals and clubs are interested. So go to http://nameexoworlds.org/#planets, look at the big list of planets, and start to feel at inspiration.

Sunday: Take a two and a half hour walk. Too long, you say? Forty-five 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 astronauts would use to return to Earth.

Monday: Mars is the reddish object exactly two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon and Saturn is the orangeish object two fists to the left of it. Speaking of –ish, the star Spica is the bluish less than a half a fist to the lower right of Mars.

Tuesday: Hot enough for you? If not, astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space telescope think they have discovered a molten planet orbiting a star almost right next door on an astronomical scale – only 33 light years away. This planet is about two-thirds the diameter of Earth and is VERY close to its parent star – about 2% of the Earth-Sun distance. The star, GJ 436, is a dim red dwarf star. For more information about this discovery, read the NASA press release at http://goo.gl/9nY8w.

Wednesday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks for the next few weeks with the greatest concentration of meteors being visible next week. 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 tonight. 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. The best time to view the shower is after midnight between moonset and dawn. The next two weeks will bring excellent meteor watching conditions because the moon will be below the horizon during the prime viewing times after midnight. For more information about this year’s shower, go to http://goo.gl/Uoxvda. 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.

Thursday: Venus, Mercury, and the waning crescent moon are crowded low in the northeastern sky this morning. At 4:30 a.m., the moon is a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon and Venus is a half a fist to the upper left of the moon. Mercury will be a challenge to find, one fist to the lower left of Venus.

Friday: Now that Pluto’s two newest moons have been named Kerberos and Styx, the dwarf planet system is probably going to release a Styx tribute album featuring these songs. Blue Color Plan(et): “I’ll take those long nights, impossible cold, keeping my eye for the spacecraft. If it takes nine years to show me in the cam. Well, I’m gonna be a blue color plan(et)”. Too Much Time on my Hands: “Is it any wonder I take two-fifty years? Is it any wonder I’m made of hail? Is it any wonder I’ve got too much time on my hands”. The New Horizons spacecraft, on a nine year journey to reach Pluto in 2015, even has a contribution to the album: “Babe, I’m leaving, I must be on my way. Pluto is drawing near.” You can’t see Pluto with binoculars or even a small telescope. But you can read about the New Horizons spacecraft, which is less than a year out from Pluto. Go to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/ 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 sky for the week of 7/12/14

Saturday: Today’s full moon isn’t a normal full moon. It’s a supermoon. Since the moon’s orbit around the Earth is elliptical, it is not always the same distance away from the Earth. When it is closer to the Earth, the moon looks larger than when it is farther away. One popular definition of a supermoon is a new or full which occurs when the moon is at or near its closest approach to the Earth for a given orbit. Also a supermoon has an alter ego that people don’t recognize despite being the same size, having the same voice, and never being in the same place at the same time as its super hero version. Read more about the supermoon and the radioactive spider that bit it at http://goo.gl/NQaWDl.

Sunday: Would you like to take the small finger test? First, find Mars and Spica at 10 p.m., two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon. Mars is the redder and brighter of the two. If you can fit your finger between Mars and Spica, you pass the test. They’ll be moving apart over the next few nights so keep taking the test until you pass.

Monday: Mercury is near Venus in the morning sky for the next few days. Look for Mercury to move toward Venus until Wednesday morning when they’ll be about a half a fist apart, low in the east-northeast sky at 4:30 a.m.

Tuesday: 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 three fists above the west horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Wednesday: The long summer days remind us to 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 just moving away from a sunspot maximum so the Sun has been very active lately. 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.

Thursday: Say "Cheese". 164 years ago today, 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: Saturn is about two 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. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg sky for the week of 7/5/14

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. Hmmm. R.A.B. Regulus A. Black perhaps? Summer is a great time to read the books. Just seeing the movies is not good enough.

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 p.m. The bright star Spica and Mars are halfway between Arcturus and the southwest horizon and about a fist from each other. Mars is the brighter object on the upper right within the pair. Saturn is in the neighborhood, about the same distance to the left of the moon as Spica and Mars are to the right.

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. She’s hiding in the glow of the Sun right now. We’ll look for her next month.

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: Fred and George Weasley are the best-known twins in the Harry Potter universe. Venus is sometimes called Earth’s twin. After all, both have a surface temperature of about 860 degrees Fahrenheit, both have thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, both have a chest crushing atmospheric pressure, both have…. Wait. Earth doesn’t have any of those. How can they be “twins”? Venus is called Earth’s twin because they have about the same mass, radius, gravitational pull, and are similar distances to the Sun. Venus is a fist above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 a.m. If you have the observational skills of a wizard (or a pair of binoculars), you may be able to spot Mercury a half a fist to the lower left of Venus. If Venus is in the upper right hand portion of your binocular field of view, Mercury will be in the lower left portion.

Friday: Not every woman in the Black family is evil. Let’s focus on the good. 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 an 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 one and a half 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. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.