Saturday: Every
year near the summer solstice, the orbital path of the International Space
Station (ISS) is aligned with the Earth’s day-night terminator line, meaning
the ISS is illuminated by the Sun for its entire orbit. Since the ISS just
takes about 90 minutes to orbit the Earth, it will be visible about five times
a night from many locations. For more information about the ISS’s orbit, go to https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/watch-international-space-station/. To see the ISS,
go outside tonight (in Washington state) and look to the south-southeast at
9:35 pm, 11:10 pm, 12:47 am, 2:24 am, and 4:02 am.
Sunday: Are you
thirsty. I’ll wait while you get some water. I will NOT wait while Corvus the
crow gets you some water. The Greco-Roman god Apollo made this mistake. He sent
Corvus the crow to get some water in the cup known as Crater. Some figs
distracted Corvus and he waited for them to ripen so he could eat them. When
Corvus got back late, Apollo put Corvus and Crater in the sky with the gently
tipping cup just out of the reach of the perpetually thirsty crow. Corvus is a
trapezoid-shaped constellation about two fists held upright and at arm’s length
above due south at 9:30 p.m. Crater is just to the right of Corvus.
Monday: Jupiter is
less than a half a fist to the left of the nearly full Moon at 5 a.m. The
latest plan is for humans to return to the Moon by 2024. Watch this video to
get excited about the upcoming trip https://youtu.be/vl6jn-DdafM.
Tuesday: You can
set your watch tonight by carefully observing Navi, the center star in the
W-shaped Cassiopeia. It will be due north at exactly 10:02 p.m. However,
another star in Cassiopeia is causing astronomers to doubt whether or not they
can use neutron stars as the most precise known clocks in the universe. Neutron
stars have such a precise spin rate that they are used to set clocks on Earth.
However, in 2013, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope noticed that
the neutron star called 1E 2259+586 exhibited a spin glitch that that had never
seen before. The spin rate of about eight times a minute decreased by 2.2
millionths of a second. Read more about this at http://goo.gl/C4V8R1. In 2016,
astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope observed the slowest rotating
neutron star, once every 6.5 hours. What is it with using a telescope named
Swift to make discoveries about something slowing? Maybe that slow developing
question will be answered at https://tinyurl.com/y6ag6g7c.
Wednesday: Saturn
is about a half a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 5 a.m.
Thursday: Are you
thirsty when you get up in the morning? I know you are not waiting for Corvus.
That’s okay because the Big Dipper is positioned to hold water in the morning
sky. Look three fists above the northwest horizon at 4:30 a.m. You’ll see three
stars that make a bent handle and four stars that make a cup.
Friday: Are you up
at 1:59 a.m., looking due north and thinking you see a UFO coming to take you
away? That's no UFO. It's the bright star Capella, a circumpolar star that
never goes below the horizon as viewed from Ellensburg.
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.
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