The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 2/2/19

Saturday:  The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show today from noon to 1 p.m. CWU professor Cassie Fallscheer will give a presentation about star formation and evolution. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month of the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig Planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

Sunday: Are you going to watch the super bowl tonight? Is the bowl really that super? After all, half the night the bowl is tipped upside down, spilling out all of its contents. But don’t just focus on the functionality of the bowl. Think about how it inspires people all across the world to look at the night sky. In Mongolia, participants in the super bowl are known as gods. An Arabian story says the super bowl is a coffin. I encourage you go outside tonight at about 8 p.m., after whatever unimportant thing you have been doing since 3:30 p.m. Look low in the north-northwest sky and watch the super bowl, also known as the Big Dipper, balancing on the end of its handle, proudly displaying its large bowl.

Monday:  Are you interested in participating in astronomy research? You don’t need to go back to school. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting a fake degree from an online university. The scientists working on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would like your input on which objects they should target for close-up pictures. While you may think the scientists are just trying to build interest in their project by having people look at pretty pictures, there is a real scientific benefit to having many eyes searching for interesting targets. There aren’t enough scientists to carefully inspect all of the low power images. And surprisingly, computers are not nearly as effective as people in making nuanced judgments of images. So, go to https://www.uahirise.org/hiwish/ and click on the HiWish button. You’ll be on your way to suggesting close-up targets for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. If that is too much work for you, just go outside. Mars is four fists above the southwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Tuesday: The bright star Regulus, in the constellation Leo the Lion, is about one and a half fists above the east horizon at 8 p.m.

Wednesday: 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 almost 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/.

Thursday: Be on the lookout for three bright stars in the predawn sky. The brightest is Venus, a little more than a fist above the southeast horizon. Jupiter is nearly two fists to the upper right of Venus and Saturn, the dimmest of the three, is a fist and a half to the lower left of Venus.

Friday: Winter is a good time to see the thick band of the Milky Way galaxy. It arches high in the high in the early evening starting in the southeast by Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Climbing from Sirius through the "horns" of Taurus to the bright star Capella nearly straight overhead, it drops down toward M-shaped Cassiopeia in the north and the tail of Cygnus, the swan, in the northwest.

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 1/26/19

Saturday:  Mars is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 6:30 p.m.

Sunday: Venus and Jupiter will be neighbors in the morning sky all week. This morning they are a half a fist apart, with the much brighter Venus to the left of Jupiter. As the days go by, Venus will move away from Jupiter.

Monday: 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.

Tuesday: 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 overachievers 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.

Wednesday: If someone gives you a ring and says, “this ring symbolizes our eternal love, just like the rings of Saturn are eternal”, don’t doubt their love. But do doubt their astronomy knowledge. According to data recently analyzed from the Cassini Mission, Saturn’s rings may be only 10 to 100 million years old. As Cassini passed between Saturn and the rings, it was able to get the best estimate yet of the mass of the rings. Saturn’s rings are made mostly of ice and are still very bright and clean. Older rings would be darkened by debris. Also,  collisions over time pulverize the ring particles. If this relatively low mass of ring particles were older, they would have been destroyed by now. For more information about the lifespan of Saturn’s rings, go to Saturn’s rings https://www.universetoday.com/141272/saturns-rings-are-only-10-to-100-million-years-old/.

Thursday: Venus is about a finger’s width to the left of the Moon at 7 a.m. this morning.

Friday: Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, an important day for pop culture astronomers and Bill Murray movie fans. If you don’t want to travel to Pennsylvania to see Punxsutawney Phil, travel to the CWU campus to see a planetarium show. The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 p.m. CWU professor Cassie Fallscheer will give a presentation about star formation and evolution. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month of the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig Planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map.

If Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow tomorrow 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.

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 1/19/19

Saturday:  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.

Sunday: There is a total lunar eclipse tonight. What could be better than that? A supermoon total lunar eclipse. The Moon is near perigee meaning it is near its closest to Earth. 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. However, 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 the Pacific Time Zone, the partial eclipse stage will start at 7:34 p.m. The Moon will slowly move into the Earth’s shadow and get dark from left to right. At 8:41 p.m., the Moon will be fully eclipsed. The total eclipse lasts until 9:43 p.m. The moon will be moving out of the earth’s darkest shadow or umbra until 10:50 p.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://earthsky.org/tonight/supermoon-lunar-eclipse-january-20-21

Monday: Venus and Jupiter are neighbors in the sky all week. At 7 a.m., Jupiter is about two finger-widths below the much brighter Venus, about a fist and a half above the south-southeast horizon. As the days go by, Venus will be moving down and to the left, passing Jupiter this weekend.

Tuesday: 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., just to the right of the Moon. 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 called Lynx 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.

Wednesday: Mars is four and a half fists above the southwest horizon at 6 p.m.

Thursday: Do you see a hunter when you look at Orion, four fists above due south at 9  p.m.? The bright reddish star Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, the bright star one fist to the right of it are the broad shoulders of the hunter. The bright bluish star 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: 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.

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 1/12/19

Saturday:  Mars is less than a fist to the right of the Moon at 9 p.m. The sky is so wondrous. It makes me want to sing. 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, four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 9:00 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, halfway between the Big Dipper and the horizon. Canis Major contains Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: Venus, Jupiter and the bright star Antares make make a small triangle low in the south-southeast sky at about 7 a.m. every day this week. The very bright Venus is at the top of the triangle. Jupiter is to the lower left of Venus, one fist away this morning but getting closer everyday this week. Antares is one fist below Venus this morning.

Monday: Do you ever take photos to spy on your neighbors? The Hubble Space Telescope does. Last week, Hubble scientists released the best ever image of the Triangulum Galaxy, the second closest spiral galaxy to Earth. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys weaved together 54 separate images to provide enough detail to see 10 million individual stars out of the estimated 40 billion stars in the galaxy. See the pictures at https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1901/.

Tuesday: 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.

Wednesday: 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 six 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 dust 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.

Thursday: These next two weeks are the coldest 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.

Friday: Get ready for a total lunar eclipse this Sunday night as seen from the United States. Go to http://time.unitarium.com/events/eclipse/lunar/012019/ to determine when the eclipse will be visible in your location. In the Pacific Time Zone, the eclipse will be total from about 8:40 p.m. to 9:45 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 WA sky for the week of 1/5/19

Saturday:  The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show today from noon to 1 p.m. CWU professor Bruce Palmquist will give a presentation called “The sky in different wavelengths”. If you want the chance to say, “look at the pretty colors”, come to this show. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month of the school year hosted by different CWU astronomers and astronomy educators. The CWU Lydig Planetarium is room 101 in Science Phase II, just off the corner of 11th and Wildcat Way, H-11 on the campus map found at https://www.cwu.edu/facility/campus-map. 

If you are going to be in northeast Russia this afternoon, there will be a partial solar eclipse to view. For more information about this, go to the NASA solar eclipse website at https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearch/SEsearchmap.php?Ecl=20190106.  

Sunday: This morning is  Venus’ greatest western elongation. So what, you say? Not so what. This means Venus is far from the Sun in the sky. So what, you say? Not so what. This means that Venus is easy to observe. It is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southeast horizon at 7:15 am. It is the brightest point of light in that part of the sky. Jupiter, the second brightest point of light, is a fist and a half to the lower left of Venus and a fist and a half above the horizon. If you look carefully, you may be able to see Mercury a little bit above the southeast horizon. 

Monday: 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. 

Tuesday: A week ago today, the NASA probe called New Horizons sent back the first detailed image of Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) that formed in its current state about 4.5 billion years ago. Ultima looks like a 30-kilometer long reddish snowman spinning through space. Check out the newest images and the latest information at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/. Astronomers will be downloading and processing the data over the next 20 months. 

Wednesday: Mars, the more well-known red Solar System object, is four and a half fists above due south at 5 p.m. 

Thursday: January 10-13 is the worldwide celebration of 100 hours of astronomy. Of course, the CWU Physics Department started early with the First Saturday planetarium show earlier in the week. The Seattle Astronomical Society will have events in the South King County area Friday and Saturday night. Go to https://www.100hoursofastronomy.org and select “Events” for more information. 

Friday: 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. 

 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.