The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 4/27/19

Saturday: As the rock group Journey once thought of singing, “Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’. Know where the Dipper’ll be tomorrow.” Every night, the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia make a wheel in the sky that turns around the North Star in a counter clockwise direction. Every year on April 27 at 10 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Every year on April 28 at 10 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Every year on April 29 at 10 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Every year on April 30 at 10 p.m., well, you get the idea. Of course, there are subtle charges in the position from night to night. Each northern constellation moves about one degree counterclockwise from one night to the next. But this is not going to change their position in the sky drastically over a few days. So, if you know where the Big Dipper is tonight, you DO know where it’ll be tomorrow. If you are really struggling to understand this concept, Don’t Stop Believin’ in yourself. Just keep studying Faithfully.

Sunday: Do you wish you could archive your own lunar images but you don’t have a camera for your telescope? Why not go old school and actually sketch your observations? Visual artist Bettina Forget will be giving a workshop on Facebook Live called Sketching the Moon during which she’ll give you some tips for drawing lunar features. So, gather up some paper, sharpen your pencils, and go to  https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/astroarts/4682-sketching-the-moon.html for more information. The workshop starts at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Monday: Saturn is two fists above the south-southeast horizon at 5 a.m. Neptune is a much bigger binocular observational challenge at this time. It is a half a fist above the Moon. First find the Moon with your binoculars and put the Moon at the bottom of your field of view. There should be a triangle-shaped clump of stars to the upper right of the moon, a solitary star of similar brightness near the center of your field of view, and a solitary star of similar brightness near the top of your field of view. Neptune is to the left of the star at the top of your field of view.

Tuesday: Mars is two and a half fists above the west horizon at 9 p.m.

Wednesday: Winter must be over because the winter constellations are becoming less visible. Orion is setting in the west starting at about 9 p.m. At this time, Orion’s belt is one fist above the west-southwest horizon and Betelgeuse is nearly two fists above the west horizon. By mid-May, Orion will be lost in the glare of the Sun.

Thursday: Jupiter rises at 11:30 p.m. By 4 a.m., it is two fists above due south. It looks so peaceful up there. But life is not peaceful for Jupiter. According to a recent study by astronomers, Jupiter gets hit by a 5-20 meter in diameter asteroid 10 to 65 times a year. For comparison, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 was 20 meters in diameter. Earth gets hit by a 20-meter asteroid about once every 50 years. For more information, go to https://goo.gl/RxPc5G.

Friday:  The CWU Physics Department is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 p.m. STEM Teaching major McKenzie Bailey will give a show called Solar System Travels. You will learn about a few key missions to explore the Solar System. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show 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.

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 4/20/19

Saturday:  Sometimes you get to your car and realize that you are missing your keys or your sunglasses. The asteroid/dwarf planet Ceres is missing craters. Astronomers thought there would be many large, old craters marking the surface of Ceres. Instead, close-up images from NASA’s Dawn mission shows that Ceres is covered with numerous small, young craters. Possible explanations include the relatively soft icy surface smoothing out over time or that eruptions from ice volcanoes, called cryovolcanoes, buried the older craters. Ceres is visible in small telescopes or even 10x50 binoculars. But you’ll need to get up early to observe it highest above the horizon. At 4:00.m., it is two and a half fists above due south. First find Jupiter, the brightest point of light in the southern sky. It is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southern horizon. Then find Sabik, the medium bright star one fist to the upper right of Jupiter. With Sabik in the upper right hand portion of your binocular field of view, Ceres will be in the lower right, beneath a group of stars shaped like a backwards letter “C”.

Sunday: Mars is two and a half fists above the west horizon at 9 p.m.

Monday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight through tomorrow morning. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. This year, the Moon is in the waning gibbous phase so it will provide enough light to obscure the meteors during the prime viewing time after midnight. Typically, this is one of the least interesting major meteor showers of the year. However, it is also one of the most unpredictable. As recently as 1982, there were 90 meteors visible during a single hour. In addition, the Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C. As your 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. For more information, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158735.

Tuesday: Try to fit your pinky between the Moon and Jupiter this morning. Just try. You can’t do it because Jupiter is only a half a degree below the Moon at 5:30 a.m., two fists above the south-southwest horizon. At this same time, Saturn is nearly two fists above the south-southeast horizon and Venus is less than a half a fist above the east horizon. If you were up at 1 a.m. reading, you may have noticed that Jupiter was three times farther from the Moon in the sky. Over the course of a night, the Moon moves noticeably eastward.

Wednesday: Are you getting bored with our Solar System? Looking to move but don’t like the available options? Last year, astronomers announced the discovery of a system of three Super-Earths orbiting a star located only 100 light-years away. Of course, we have no way of travelling that far yet. But, you can dream. And your dreams should involve two of the planets being in the size range in which planets could be either rocky like Earth or gas planets like Neptune. Also, no need to dress warm because all three of the planets likely have surface temperatures over 400 degrees Celsius (760 degrees Fahrenheit). Once the James Webb Space Telescope is operational in about 2022, it will be able to study the atmosphere of these planets. For more information and to start planning your trip, go to https://goo.gl/eSpmJx.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at 11:45 p.m..

Friday: The Space Shuttles have been retired. But NASA is still making plans about the future of space flight. Here is a small NASA poster summarizing the future of American Human spaceflight: https://goo.gl/Gd3q9q. It is interesting to compare the sizes of these real spaceships to the dozens of fictional spacecraft summarized on a poster found at http://goo.gl/F95aEL. Next time you are in Seattle, go see the Full Fuselage Space Shuttle Trainer at The Museum of Flight (http://www.museumofflight.org/).

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 4/13/19

Saturday:  In 1979, The Police released the song called “Walking on the Moon”. Today at 1:00 p.m., The Virtual Telescope project will host an online lunar observing session to allow you to virtually walk on the Moon. This is your opportunity to see the Moon close-up. Go to https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/online/4693-walking-on-the-moon.html to access the observing session.

Sunday: The Stargate movies and TV shows have access to a portal to other planets. Harry Potter has access to a portal to the Chamber of Secrets. You have access to a Portal to the Universe. This portal is not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom but on the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/. It is a repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts.

One recent feature highlights the first direct image of a black hole. You probably saw the now famous donut-shaped image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope in the news last week. NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory obtained a much wider field of view of the same black hole, showing the giant jet of high energy particles launched by the strong magnetic and gravitational fields. This jet is more than 1,000 light years long. For more images, go to http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2019/black_hole/.

Monday: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks next week. But there will be increased meteor activity for the next ten days in the vicinity of the constellation Lyra. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists above the east-northeast horizon at midnight and close to straight overhead near dawn.

Tuesday: Saturn is one and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 5 a.m.

Wednesday: The early modern astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote about the “music of the spheres”, exploring the relationship between planetary orbits and musical intervals. It turns out there is no actual relationship. On the other hand, Italian pianist and composer Giovanni Renzo gets inspiration from astronomy videos and photos from around the world to put on the Cosmic Concert. Original music and videos will flow together to form one coherent work of art. Listen and watch the concert starting at today noon Pacific Daylight Time by going to

https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/astroarts/4647-cosmic-concert-10th-edition.html.

Thursday: Tonight’s full Moon is in the constellation Virgo. The bright star Spica remains to the lower right of the Moon throughout the entire night.

Friday: Astronomers are often fascinated with large objects. Planets that could fit 1000 Earths (Jupiter). Stars that would fill up the entire inner Solar System (Betelgeuse). Galaxies with 400 billion stars (Milky Way). But what about the smallest objects? One of the smallest stars is Proxima Centauri, the closest known star other than our Sun. It is about 12% of the mass of the Sun. Three years ago, astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting Proxima Centauri indicating that even very small stars can have planets. The smallest theoretically possible star would be about 7.5% of the mass of the Sun. Any smaller and it could not support the nuclear reactions characteristic of stars. For more on small stars, go to http://goo.gl/EHBdOX.

Jupiter, the object that will fit 1000 Earths rises at 12:30 a.m. and is two fists above due south at 5 a.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 4/6/19

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 and STEM Teaching major Katy Shain will give an overview of the night sky and Solar System. The show is free and open to all ages. Today’s show is likely to fill up because the official planetarium dedication ceremony will follow at 1:15. There will be a show 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: International Dark Sky Week is just ending https://www.darksky.org/. But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore our obligation to minimize stray light for the next 51 weeks. Lights that are aimed upward illuminate the atmosphere and obscure dim objects. Having too much light shining where it shouldn’t is considered light pollution. And just like other forms of pollution, light pollution can be hazardous to our health and the health of other animals. That’s right. Harmful. Watch this episode SciShow for more information: https://youtu.be/_nlFcEj41Xk.

Monday: Tonight at 9 p.m., the Moon forms a quadrilateral with three other prominent objects in the western sky. The open star cluster called the Pleiades is one fist to the upper right of the Moon. Mars is less than one fist above the Moon. The bright star Aldebaran is one fist to the upper left of the Moon. The center of the quadrilateral is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due west. Did you look up the word quadrilateral yet? “Quad” or “quadri” is Latin for “four” and “laterus” is Latin for “sides”.

Tuesday: Deneb is about one finger-width above due north at 8:33 p.m. It almost looks like a bright yard light or streetlight many kilometers away.

Wednesday: You probably didn’t know this but several British New Wave bands were really into astronomy. Take the band “Dead or Alive” (please). The original lyrics to their song “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) were actually: “You spin me right round, baby, right round, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, right round, round, round.” (Well, that’s what I thought they were.) The Whirlpool Galaxy was the first galaxy observed to have a spiral shape. Since then, astronomers have discovered many galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, have a spiral shape. Go to http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0506a/ for more information about the Whirlpool Galaxy. Go to your small telescope to find the Whirlpool Galaxy in the night sky. It is in the constellation Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. At 10 p.m., find Alkaid, the end star of the Big Dipper handle, six fists above the north-northeast horizon. The Whirlpool Galaxy is two fingers to the upper right of Alkaid.

Thursday: At 6 a.m., Jupiter is two fists above the south horizon, Saturn is two fists above the south-southeast horizon and Venus is a half a fist above the east horizon.

Friday: Art and science mix at noon today in Opticks, a live Networked Performance between the Earth and Moon. Media artist Daniela de Paulis and her collaborators convert images to radio waves and transmit them to the Moon. The waves bounce off of the moon, return to Earth and are converted back into optical images. The effect is sort of like painting your image as seen in a dirty mirror. For more information, go to https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/astroarts/4674-opticks-echoes-from-the-moon.html.

In 1979, The Police released the song called “Walking on the Moon”. Tomorrow at 1:00 p.m., The Virtual Telescope project will host an online lunar observing session. This is your opportunity to see the Moon close-up. Go to https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2019-programs/online/4693-walking-on-the-moon.html to access the observing session.

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.