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.