Today:
Mnemonics are helpful for remembering astronomy facts. (Similarly, “Johnny
Mnemonic”, the 1995 cyberpunk film, was helpful in getting Keanu Reeves’ career
going.) After all, school children all around the country are learning the
order of the planets by remembering, “My very excellent mother just served us
nine….” Oops, I guess that one needs updating. Well, here’s one that will not
need updating for tens of thousands of years: the order of the stars in the Big
Dipper. Because the nighttime stars are so far away from us, their actual
motion through the sky, called their “proper motion” is not noticeable over
even thousands of years. That is why the constellations have remained the same
since ancient times. But two stars in the Big Dipper have a proper motion large
enough such than in 100,000 years; the stars will no longer make a dipper
shape. You can see this simulated at the American Museum of Natural History
video found at https://youtu.be/sBfUBtdo8yo. Until then, you
can remember the names of the seven dipper stars in order from handle to cup by
remembering this helpful advice for teens: “AM, ask mom. PM, dad”. The stars
are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phad, Merek, and Duhbe. The Big Dipper is
one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the northern horizon at 11 p.m.
Sunday: Jupiter is
about one and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 8:00 p.m. Jupiter
is a good naked eye object, a great small telescope object and a fantastic
Hubble Space Telescope object. Embrace the fantastic by visiting https://tinyurl.com/y2b7p5h2 and looking at the
intricate detail in Jupiter’s clouds and the vivid Great Red Spot.
Monday: Saturn is
exactly two fists above due south at 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday: Since
Halloween is later this month; the stores are filled with bags of candy
clusters. Instead, take time to look at a star cluster. 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. Aldebaran, nearly two and a half fists above the eastern horizon at
midnight, is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.
Wednesday: Mars is
nearly a half a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 a.m.
Thursday: To the
people of Ancient Greece, the stars that are about five and a half fists above
the east-northeastern horizon at 10 p.m. were known as Cassiopeia and Andromeda, a
mythological queen and her daughter. But not all cultures imagined the same
pictures in the sky. To the people of Polynesia, the stars of Cassiopeia and
Andromeda represented a dolphin, called Kwu. Cassiopeia formed its tail, the
brightest stars of Andromeda formed its fins, and its fainter stars outlined
the dolphin’s body.
Friday: The CWU
Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First
Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 pm in the CWU Lydig
Planetarium. Bruce Palmquist will give a presentation about what can be seen in
the autumn sky. Shows are free and open to all ages. There will be a show at
noon on the first Saturday of every month during 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.
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