The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of 1/27/18

Saturday: Listen; do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Whoa oh, oh. The Beatles certainly didn’t write this song about the Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona. Astronomers are studying this 50,000-year-old impact to learn more about our planet’s violent history as well as the physics of impacts throughout the solar system. If you’d like to be let in on some of these secrets, go to http://goo.gl/sqbBe. 

Sunday: At 7 a.m., Jupiter is two and a half fists above the south horizon, a little bit west of due south. Mars is a little more than a fist to the lower left of Jupiter. Saturn is one fist above the southeast horizon. 

Monday: There are about 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye. Soon there may be one more: The Humanity Star. This is not a nova or supernova. It is a highly reflective 65-panel geodesic sphere that was conceived by Peter Beck and launched by his private space launch company called Rocket Lab. The Humanity Star orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes. You can track its motion and read more about it at https://www.thehumanitystar.com/. 

Tuesday: At 10:30 p.m., the blue giant star called Adhara is one and a half fists above due south. It is one of the brightest stars in the sky. Currently over 430 light years away, Adhara was only 34 light years away five million years ago. That proximity made it the brightest star in the nighttime sky at the time. 

Wednesday: Full Moon. Super Moon. Blue Moon. Blood Moon. These sound like possible names for the children of The Who’s original drummer. In actuality, these describe the Moon this morning. Let’s take these names from least to most exciting. Tonight’s Moon is full. It is the second Full Moon of the month which makes it a Blue Moon. The Moon is Super because it is at its closest point to the Earth during the time that it is full. That means the sunlight is reflecting off of an object that appears about 30% larger than when the Moon is farthest from the Earth. 

But most exciting of all, there is a total lunar eclipse this morning. Total lunar eclipses are not as noticeable as total solar eclipses because light still reaches the Moon even when it is completely blocked by the Earth. That is because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens and bends rays of light toward the Moon that would normally miss the Moon. That doesn’t mean the Moon looks the same during a total lunar eclipse as it does during a normal full moon. 

Sunlight is white. White light is the sum of all of the colors in the visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Our atmosphere scatters the blue component of the Sun’s white light. That is why our sky is blue. (If our atmosphere consisted of different gasses, we would likely have a different colored sky.) When the Sun or Moon is near the horizon, the light passes through a lot of the atmosphere meaning a lot of the blue light is scattered and the Sun or Moon looks redder than when it is high in the sky. During a total lunar eclipse, sunlight passes through a large slice of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining light that reaches the Moon is reddish. Some people say the fully eclipsed Moon looks Blood Red! These people exaggerate. It arrears a dull reddish color. 

From our perspective in central Washington, the partial eclipse stage will start at 3:49 a.m. The Moon will slowly move into the Earth’s shadow and get dark from left to right. At 4:42 a.m., the Moon will be fully eclipsed. The total eclipse lasts until 6:08 a.m. The moon will be moving out of the earth’s darkest shadow or umbra until 7:11 a.m. After that, the moon will look white, just like a normal full moon. Thus, during the entire eclipse, the moon looks white, then black, then red all over. For more information about the eclipse, including information about the specific times for your location, go to https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2018-january-31.  

Thursday: Today is Groundhog Day. If Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow this morning, he is telling us that he follows the Chinese calendar and that spring starts early. On the Chinese calendar, equinoxes and solstices occur in the middle of their respective seasons. In order for the vernal equinox to occur in the middle of spring, spring must start on February 3 or 4, depending on the year. Thus, if Phil doesn’t see his shadow, legend is that spring will start on February 3 or 4 as on the Chinese calendar. If Phil sees his shadow, he is telling us he agrees with the western calendar and that there will be six more weeks of winter meaning spring will start near March 20. 

Friday: The good news is the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. The better news for most readers of this column is the farther north you go in the United States, the longer the days get. Here in Ellensburg, there is now one and a half more hours of daylight than on the first day of winter. In the southern part of the US, there is only 35 more minutes of sunlight. If you’d like to have your own fun with day lengths and other time questions, go to https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/. 

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 WA sky for the week of 1/20/18

Saturday: Look to the southwest sky at 6 p.m. What do you see? Of course, the Moon. Now dig out your binoculars. Put the Moon at the left side of your field of view. There will be a small triangle to the right of center. The red giant Hydor is at the right corner of the triangle. At the top of the triangle sits the orange giant 78 Aquarii, one fifth as bright as Hydor. At the left corner of the triangle sits the planet Neptune, one fifth as bright as 78 Aquarii.

Sunday: Winter is the best season for finding bright stars. And if you only want to set aside a few minutes, 10 p.m. tonight just might be the best time because the winter hexagon is due south. Starting at the bottom, find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, two and a half fists held upright and at arms length above the south horizon. Going clockwise, Procyon (6^th brightest star visible from Washington state) is about two and a half fists to the upper left of Sirius. Pollux (12^th brightest) is about two and a half fists above Procyon. Capella (4^th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Procyon and close to straight overhead. Going back to Sirius at the bottom, Rigel (5^th brightest) about two and a half fists to the upper right of Sirius. Aldebaran (9^th brightest) is about three fists above Rigel. Betelgeuse (7^th brightest) is in the center of the hexagon. Adhara (16^th brightest) is a little more than a fist below Sirius and Castor (17^th brightest) is right above Pollux. That’s nine of the 17 brightest stars visible in the northern United States in one part of the sky.

Monday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist above due north at 9:30 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the constellation, is at the lower left-hand corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.

Tuesday: At 7 a.m., Jupiter the bright point of light two and a half fists above due south. Mars is about a fist to the lower left of Jupiter. Finally, Saturn is about one fist above the southeast horizon.

Wednesday: Tonight’s first quarter Moon is in the constellation Cetus the sea monster. One fist to the left of the Moon is the red giant Menkar, a name derived for the Arabic word for nostril. However, according to many popular drawings, Menkar is in the jar of the sea monster.

Thursday: Let’s review three important sets of three cats. There’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody of Josie and the Pussycats. Felix, Tom, and Sylvester from old time cartoons. And, if you want to get away from the mind-numbing effects of television, there’s Leo the lion, Leo Minor, and Lynx in the night sky. Leo is by far the most prominent of these three constellations. Its brightest star called Regulus is nearly four fists above the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. The backwards question mark-shaped head of Leo is above Regulus and the trapezoid-shaped body is to the left of it. Leo Minor consists of a few dim stars right above Leo. Pretty wimpy. The long dim constellation spans from just above Leo Minor to nearly straight overhead. You and fellow stargazers won’t need to wear a long tail or ears for hats to enjoy these stellar cats.

Friday: The Moon is making its way through the Hyades open star cluster in tonight’s sky. The Hyades cluster is an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the universe. At 11 p.m., the bright star Aldebaran is less than a half a fist to the upper left of the Moon in the western sky. From the point of view of Alaska and northwest Canada, the Moon will actually occult, of block, Aldebaran.

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 WA sky for the week of 1/13/18

Saturday: Who can forget that memorable song by Three Dog Constellations Night, “The sky is black. The stars are white. Together we learn to find the light.” Well, maybe it didn’t go like that. Which is good. Because not all stars are white. Most stars are too dim to notice a color. But, two of the stars in the constellation Orion provide a noticeable contrast with each other. Betelgeuse, five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10:30 p.m. is a red giant. Rigel, the bright star about two fists to the lower right of Betelgeuse, is a blue giant.

By the way, the three dog constellations are Canis Major, the greater dog, found one and a half fists to the lower left of Orion; Canis Minor, the lesser dog, found two and a half fists to the left of Betelgeuse; and Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs, found low in the northeast sky. Canis Major contains Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: On these cold mornings, it is difficult to get going. You just want to plop into a chair and sit still. But, are you really sitting still? You’re moving at about 700 miles per hour due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and 66,000 miles per hour due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. If that’s not enough, the entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at a whopping 480,000 miles per hour! So while you may be sitting still with respect to your living room (and all of the over achievers in your house), you are NOT sitting still with respect to the center of the galaxy. For more information about this concept, go to http://goo.gl/lPVPS. Before you barf from all of that motion, go outside at 7 a.m. and observe the planets. Jupiter, the brightest point of light in the sky, is two and a half fists above the south horizon. Reddish Mars is a half a fist to the lower left of Jupiter. Saturn and Mercury are each a little less than a half a fist above the southeast horizon. Mercury is the brighter of the two and is to the lower left of Saturn.

Monday: Vega is one fist above the northwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Tuesday: Have you ever planned a vacation to a place because it was supposedly the up-and-coming locale? Then, when the vacation time finally arrives, you find out the place doesn’t live up to its billing? A little over five years ago, astronomers discovered that the star Tau Ceti, one of our closest neighbors at 12 light years away, has five planets. They claimed two of the planets are in the so-called habitable zone where the temperature is just right for having liquid water. Time for a va-ca-tion! Well, not so fast. Astronomers have only a lower limit to the planet masses so they may be too massive for complex life to form. And the Tau Ceti system has ten times as much mass in dist and rocks as our own solar system. So you’ll want to do some research before you travel there. Tau Ceti is two and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 7 p.m. For more information about the discovery, go to https://goo.gl/RTn92w.

Wednesday: You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above the northern horizon at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Do you see a hunter when you look at Orion? Betelgeuse and the bright star one fist to the right of it are the broad shoulders of the hunter. Rigel and Saiph, the bright star to the left of Rigel, represent the knees.  The Maya saw the equilateral triangle formed by Rigel, Saiph, and the left-most belt star as the “Three Stones of the Hearth”. The Orion Nebula is in the center of the hearth and it represents the flame, called K’ak.

Friday: The whale’s tail is about two fists above the south-southwest horizon at 6 p.m. Deneb Kaitos, “whale’s tail” in Arabic, is one of the brightest x-ray sources within 100 light years of Earth. High x-ray activity typically indicates that a star recently moved off the main sequence and towards its death. But the chemical composition of Deneb Kaitos suggests it moved off the main sequence long ago. This shows that even our nearest celestial neighbors have a lot to teach us.

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 WA sky for the week of 1/6/18

Saturday: How do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal shelter, care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle of a star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a minute. Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead, they study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and piece together the information from those different stars. What they do is like studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of star life.

First, find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short-lived existence, is three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. It was not, is not, and never will be like our Sun. However, about one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The middle “star” is really a star-forming region called the Orion nebula. There you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and one fist down from Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star. Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life that started out life a bit larger than the Sun.

Sunday: Jupiter and Mars are neighbors in the morning sky all this week. Look two and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 7 a.m. Jupiter, the brighter planet, is about the diameter of the full Moon above Mars. For an added challenge, look for Mercury and Saturn low on the southeast horizon. Mercury is a half a fist above the horizon and Saturn is about a thumb width above the horizon at 7 a.m. As the week goes on, these two planets will move closer together in the sky.

Monday: A new year leads us to contemplate our future. Let’s take some time to contemplate the Sun’s future. The Sun has spent a few billion years as a stable star fusing hydrogen into helium. Once that easily fusible hydrogen is gone, the Sun’s outer layer will puff up like a hot air balloon, getting larger, cooler, and redder. The star Aldebaran, in the constellation Taurus looks like what our Sun will look like in a few billion years. Hear more about Aldebaran and the Sun’s future at https://stardate.org/radio/program/moon-and-aldebaran-25. At 9:30 p.m., Aldebaran is almost exactly 60 degrees, or six fists, above due south.

Tuesday: January is the coldest month of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace. Fornax the furnace is one fist above due south at 7 p.m.

Wednesday: Have you ever looked down on the ground and spotted a penny? In Yakima? While you were standing in Ellensburg? If you have, then you may be able to see the star Hamal as more than just a point of light. It has an angular diameter that can be directly measured from Earth. Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries the ram, has the same angular diameter as a penny 37 miles away. (For comparison, the moon is about half the diameter of a penny held at arm’s length.) Hamal is three and a half fists above due west at 11 p.m.

Thursday: This morning, the Moon joins Jupiter and Mars in the south-southeastern sky. The two planets are less than a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon at 7 a.m.

Friday: Mercury and Saturn are side by side in the morning sky; about a half a fist above the southeast horizon at 7 a.m. Mercury is the brighter of the two planets and is on the 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 https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.