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.
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