The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 7/2/16

Saturday: Look straight up at midnight. The head of Draco the dragon will be looking straight down on you. The brightest star in the head is called Eltanin. If you chose to wait a VERY long time, Eltanin will be the brightest star in the night sky. Currently 154 light years away, it is moving towards Earth and will be only 28 light years away in about 1.3 million years, claiming the title as brightest star.

Sunday: Jupiter is nearly two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west horizon at 10 p.m. So is the NASA Juno spacecraft because tomorrow it reaches its destination after a nearly five-year trip to Jupiter to study the giant planet’s core, atmosphere, and magnetic field. By learning more about Jupiter, astronomers hope to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. If the latest blockbuster, Independence Day: Regurgitate disappointed you, watch the more engaging sci-fi-film-like trailer about the Juno mission at https://youtu.be/SgEsf4QcR0Q.

Monday: Hot enough for you? Don’t blame the Earth-Sun distance. Surprisingly, the overall temperature of the Earth is slightly higher in July, when the Earth is farthest from the Sun, than in January, when it is closest. That’s because in July, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun. (This is the real cause of the seasons.) The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, in July, the large amount of Northern Hemisphere land heats up the entire Earth about two degrees Celsius warmer than in January. In January, the watery Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun. But, water does not heat up as fast as land so the Earth is a few degrees cooler. The distance between the Earth and Sun is its greatest today, 152.1 million kilometers. This is called aphelion from the Greek prefix “apo” meaning “apart” and Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.

Tuesday: Tonight, while you are taking a break from looking at an explosion of fireworks, the NASA Kepler spacecraft is taking a break after finding an “explosion” of exoplanets. In May, astronomers announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets, more than doubling the number of planets discovered by Kepler. 550 of those are small and possibly rocky. Nine of those are in the habitable zone of their host star. And this is only the beginning. The Kepler spacecraft is monitoring the brightness of over 156,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus the swan and Lyra the lyre. This region is midway between the bright stars Deneb and Vega. It is about the size of your hand held at arm’s length and is about six fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 11 p.m. For more information about this find, go to http://goo.gl/Hll9pI.

Wednesday: Mars is two fists above due south at exactly 9:21 pm. The bright reddish star Antares is one and a half fists above due south at exactly 10:30 pm. Saturn is two fists above due south at exactly 10:37 pm. I still love formulaic writing. Notice that these times are about a half hour earlier than when these same objects were above due south eight days ago. In general, distant objects rise earlier from night to night. Stars rise about four minutes earlier each night, as evidenced by our observation tonight and last Tuesday.

Thursday: Last week, I wrote about Mizar. This week, I need to warn you not to confuse Mizar with its rhyming brother Izar in the constellation Bootes. Izar is also a binary star with about the same apparent brightness. And both were featured in different episodes of Star Trek. Izar was featured in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy” from the original series. It is the base of Fleet Captain Garth, a former big shot in the federation and one of Kirk’s heroes before he went insane. Garth kidnaps Kirk and Spock before eventually being out smarted. Mizar doesn’t play as big a role in its episode. It is the star of the home world of one of the alien species in The Next Generation episode “Allegiance”. Izar is one fist above the bright star Arcturus and seven fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m. Mizar is seven fists above the northwest horizon at this time.

Friday: Venus is just above the northwest horizon at 9:15 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 http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 6/25/16

Saturday: “Mom, I can’t sleep. It is too light out!” A poor excuse you say? Good astronomy skills, I say. The latest sunset of the year happens this week. Surprisingly, the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not both happen on the longest day of the year, the day of the summer solstice. The earliest sunrise occurs just before the longest day and the latest sunset occurs just after the longest day. This phenomenon relates to the angle of the Sun’s path near rising and setting. In Ellensburg, that angle is about 66 degrees near the first day of summer. Because of the Earth’s orbit, which causes the Sun’s apparent motion, the angles are not symmetric. The asymmetries in orbital angles leads to the asymmetry in rise and set times. By the way, picking a specific night to give you the “can’t sleep because it is too light out” line may just be an excuse because the sunset times change by only a few seconds each day in June. This year, the sun sets between 9:01 and 9:02 p.m. between June 21 and July 2.

Sunday: Jupiter is about two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Monday: Don’t wait until a week from today 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 20^th most luminous star in the sky, a whopping 550,000 times more luminous than the Sun.

Tuesday: Mars is two fists above due south at exactly 9:51 pm. The bright reddish star Antares is one and a half fists above due south at exactly 11:01 pm. Saturn is two fists above due south at exactly 11:00 pm. I love formulaic writing.

Wednesday: Star light. Star bright. The first star you see tonight might be Arcturus, six fists above the south horizon right after sunset. You’ll be able to see either Jupiter or Mars earlier but they won’t facilitate your wish coming true.

Thursday: Happy Asteroid Day (http://www.asteroidday.org/), the day we celebrate avoiding the destruction of the Earth by an undiscovered asteroid. There are a million asteroids in the Solar System with the potential to strike Earth and destroy a city. Astronomers have discovered only 1% of them. Asteroid Day is an effort to educate the public and encourage policy makers to fund this important effort. King Tut may have celebrated an ancient Asteroid Day by asking his assistants to make a dagger out of a broken-off asteroid that landed on Earth. Astronomers discovered that the blade of the knife contained much more nickel than is found in terrestrial iron, an amount consistent with iron meteorites, especially with one found 16 years ago in northern Egypt. For more information about the dagger, go to http://goo.gl/BHBivd.

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. For up to date information about the night sky, go to http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 6/18/16

Saturday: Father’s Day is tomorrow. Do you have a dad so great that you wish you could write his name in the galaxies? Now you can. UK astronomer Steven Bamford has developed a computer program that finds images of galaxies that resemble different letters. Just enter the words here http://mygalaxies.co.uk/ and the program spells it out in galaxies. Here’s the new Daily Record title page http://mygalaxies.co.uk/jh2m7m/.

Sunday: Tonight’s full moon is in the constellation Sagittarius the Archer. This month, Sagittarius may be thinking of shooting strawberries instead. Some Native American tribes call the June full moon the strawberry moon to honor (or remember) the short strawberry harvesting season. A more descriptive name is the Short Moon because the full moon is above the horizon for the least amount of time in June – only eight hours. Summer full moons are always above the horizon less than winter full moons. Since the full moon is on the complete opposite side of the Earth as the Sun, the full moon is going to be in the sky whenever the Sun is not in the sky, namely the entire night. During the summer, the nights are shorter so the full moons time above the horizon will also be shorter.

Monday: Today is the first day of summer, the day that the Sun reaches its highest declination (the official name for sky latitude) of 23.5 degrees above the celestial equator. The celestial equator is the line that divides the northern sky from the southern sky. In Ellensburg, the Sun is about seven fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 1:00 p.m. (noon standard time). Contrary to popular belief, the Sun is never straight overhead in Ellensburg or anywhere else in the 48 contiguous states. The northernmost portion of the world where the Sun can be directly overhead is 23.5 degrees north latitude. In ancient times, the Sun was in the constellation Cancer the crab on the first day of summer. Hence, 23.5 degrees north latitude has the nickname "Tropic of Cancer". Because the Earth wobbles like a spinning top, the Sun's apparent path through the sky changes slightly over time. Now, the Sun is in the constellation Taurus the bull on the first day of summer. However, citing the high cost of revising all of the science books, geographers are not changing the name of 23.5 degrees north latitude to "Tropic of Taurus". The first day of summer is often called the summer solstice. However, astronomers refer to the summer solstice as the point in the sky in which the Sun is at its highest point above the celestial equator. Thus, summer starts when the Sun is at the summer solstice point. This year, that happens at 3:34 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Tuesday: Saturn and Mars are both nearly exactly two fists above the south horizon at 11 p.m. Saturn is a little east of due south and Mars is a little west of due south.

Wednesday: When it is sitting low in the western sky, many people mistake the star Capella for a planet. It is bright. It has a slight yellow color. But, Capella is compelling on its own. It is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the most northerly bright star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 10 p.m., Capella is two fists above the north-northwest horizon. If you miss it tonight, don’t worry. Capella is the brightest circumpolar star meaning it is the brightest star that never goes below the horizon from our point of view in Ellensburg.

Thursday: Jupiter is two and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 10 p.m.

Friday: Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo viewed the Pleiades star cluster through his telescope and saw that the seven or so stars in the region visible to the naked eye became many more. There are two main types of star clusters. Open star clusters are groups of a few dozen to a few thousand stars that formed from the same cloud of gas and dust within our galaxy. Stars in open star clusters are young as far as stars go. Globular clusters are groups of up to a few million stars that orbit the core of spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way. One of the most well known star clusters is the globular cluster in Hercules, an object that is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Vega, the bright bluish star five fists above the east horizon at 11 p.m. Two fists above Vega is a keystone shape. Aim your binoculars at the upper left hand star of the keystone. The globular cluster is one third of the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this stuff”.

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 http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellesnburg WA sky for the week of 6/11/16

Have you bought your favorite CWU graduate a graduation gift yet? Why not get her or him a star? I don’t mean from one of those organizations that offers to “register the name of YOUR star with the U.S. Patent Office”. No company owns the right to name stars after people. Besides, the stars those companies “name” are so dim you can’t find them. In this column, I’ll pick a constellation and representative star for each of the four colleges at CWU. Then, I’ll briefly tell the story of the constellation and relate that story to the aspect of public service CWU graduates from that college are uniquely qualified to engage in based on my version of sky interpretation. If different couples can have “their” song, then your favorite college graduate can have her or his star

Saturday: Jupiter is a half a fist to the right of the Moon at 10 p.m.

Sunday: College of Arts and Humanities: You are the people who interpret the world in unique ways. Then, you share those ways with others. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed everyone he met when he played the lyre or harp. After his wife died tragically, he journeyed to the underworld to charm its inhabitants in an effort to win his wife back to the living world. Your service reminder: use your talent to bring joy to others. The constellation Lyra and its bright star Vega should remind you of the power of the arts. Vega is five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east horizon at 11 p.m.

Monday: College of Business. You are the future movers and shakers. The future CEOs. The future big donors to Central. Auriga represented a king of Athens who happened to be mobility impaired. Instead of sitting around waiting for others to transport him, he took the initiative to invent the four-wheeled chariot. He solved a problem for a special need. Your service reminder: address the problems of those in the most need. To remind you of that, look to the constellation Auriga. Its bright star Capella is about a half a fist above the north-northwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Tuesday: Constellation light, constellation bright. The first constellation I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, recognize these stars in ten million nights. The orientations of the stars provide an effective backdrop to help us remember stories because these orientations are relatively unchanging. Stars are so far away that their positions do not change over thousands or, in some cases, millions of years. But a few bright stars are close enough or do move fast enough to change the shapes. For example, in about 30,000 years, the Little Dipper will no longer hold very much water. (Luckily, it comes with a lifetime warranty.) For more information about the future of some of your favorite constellations, go to http://goo.gl/qP2BR3.

Wednesday: College of Education and Professional Studies. You are the teachers. The craftspeople. The facilitators of learning in a diverse world. Bootes, the herdsman, was such a person. Bootes’ job was to guide the northern constellations to the feeding place and the watering hole. He and his dogs were especially in charge of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the greater and lesser bears. Your service reminder: guide others to a better place in life. Look to the constellation Bootes and its bright star Arcturus to remind you of this. Arcturus is five and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m.

Thursday: College of the Sciences. You are the people who will systematically study how the world works. Agriculture is an important scientific application. Each year, farmers must use the findings of science to be successful. Who better to represent the College of the Sciences than Virgo, the goddess of the harvest? Virgo looms large in the sky holding an ear of wheat in her hand. Your service reminder: study the practical aspects of the scientific world. The ear of wheat, and your service reminder, is represented by the bright star Spica. Spica is two and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 11 p.m. Tonight; you’ve got a warrior’s spirit, as well, because the planet Mars, which represents the Roman god of war, is one fist to the right of Spica.

Friday: The Moon, Mars, and Saturn make a large triangle low in the southern sky tonight. At 10 p.m., Saturn is a fist to the lower left of the Moon and Mars is a fist to the lower right.

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 http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

The Ellesnburg WA sky for the week of 6/4/16

Saturday: Tomorrow morning, Mercury will be as far away from the Sun in the sky as it will get this orbital cycle. This "farthest away" point is known as the planet's greatest elongation. Tomorrow morning will be the best morning to observe Mercury for the next few weeks. Even this “best” viewing is not very good because Mercury is less than a half a fist above the east-northeast horizon at 4:30 a.m. Over the next few weeks, Mercury will move toward the Sun in the sky. By mid-July, it will be visible in the evening sky.

Sunday: The next sighting of the thin waxing crescent Moon marks the start of Ramadan on the Islamic calendar. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, which is based on the Sun, the Islamic calendar is based on the 29.5-day period of the Moon’s revolution around the Earth. That means that months on the Islamic calendar move forward by about 11 days each year. (Since the lunar month is about one day shorter than the Gregorian calendar month, each Islamic month moves ahead a little less than a day leading to the 11-day difference per year.) Therefore Ramadan falls on a different month from year to year. Adherence to the teaching of the Qur’an requires that Muslims fast during daylight hours. The requirement will be especially taxing this year because Ramadan includes the longest day of the year. There are many more hours of daylight this Ramadan than a Ramadan that falls in the Gregorian calendar month of December.

Another interesting aspect of Islamic months is that they start when the thin waxing crescent Moon is visible from your locale. For most of the world, that is June 6 but for part of South America, it’s June 5. For more information about the visibility of the crescent Moon, go to http://astro.ukho.gov.uk/moonwatch/nextnewmoon.html.

Monday: As the weather warms up, people start thinking about swimming in a nice cool body of water. Recently, astronomers have discovered evidence an ocean about 20 miles beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceledas. NASA’s Cassini probes measured variations in how the moon’s gravity pulled on the orbiting spacecraft. These variations can be explained by a large amount of liquid water under one section of the ice because liquid water is denser than an equal volume of ice. While you need a very large telescope to see Enceledas, Saturn is one and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 10 p.m.

Tuesday: Did you notice that really bright object near Saturn last night? That’s Mars, at its brightest and closest position for the year. Mars is two fists above due south at 11:30 p.m.

Wednesday: The bright star Spica is three fists above due south at 9:15 p.m. Try to make that your wishing star tonight, the first star you see.

Thursday: Summer is nearly here. How do I know? Because the days are very long. Because the temperature is rising. Because kids are getting out of school. Also, because the Summer Triangle is fairly high in the eastern sky at 10:30 p.m. Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg, is about five fists above the east horizon. Deneb, at the tail of Cygnus the swan is about three and a half fists above the northeast horizon. The third star in the triangle, Altair, in Aquila the eagle is two fists above the east horizon.

If you want to put somebody off, tell her or him to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon.

Friday: Jupiter is one fist to the upper left of the Moon 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 http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.