The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of November 2, 2019

Today:  You’ll be getting an extra hour this weekend. What are you going to do with it? I suggest you learn some astronomy. 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. Former CWU professor and current Walla Walla Community College professor Tony Smith will give a show called Stories in the Sky. The show is 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.

Before you fall back on to your bed tonight, set your clock back one hour to the real time. Daylight savings ends early Sunday morning at 2 a.m. This means one more hour of sky watching at in the evening because the Sun will set one hour earlier. Ben Franklin proposed the idea of “saving daylight” by adjusting our clocks way back in 1784. Daylight savings time was first utilized during World War I as a way to save electricity. After the war, it was abandoned. It was reintroduced during World War II on a year-round basis. From 1945 to 1966, some areas implemented daylight savings and some did not. Also, it was not implemented with any uniformity as to when it should start and stop. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 codified the daylight savings rules.

Sunday: “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” Constellations can be considered neighborhoods in the nighttime sky. But, the stars in those constellations are not necessarily neighbors in real life. For example, the bright stars in the constellation Cassiopeia range from 19 light years to over 10,000 light years away from Earth. One constellation that consists of real neighbors is Ursa Major. Or, more specifically, the Big Dipper. Five stars in the Big Dipper are all moving in the same direction in space, are about the same age and are all about 80 light years from Earth. “Please won’t you be my neighbor?” Skat, the third brightest star in the constellation Aquarius is a neighbor to these five Big Dipper stars, all of which are about 30 light years from each other. They are thought to have originated in the same nebula about 500 million years ago. Just like human children do, these child stars are slowly moving away from home. Skat is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 8 p.m. The much brighter Fomalhaut is a fist and a half below Skat. And, it’s not fun being below Skat. 

Monday: At 5:15 p.m., Venus is barely above the southwestern horizon. Jupiter is a fist above the southwestern horizon and Saturn is two fists above the south-southwestern horizon.

Tuesday: Did you look up Carolyn Porco and Christiaan Huygens based on last week’s Halloween costume suggestion? Carolyn Porco is an American astronomer who led the imaging team on the Cassini project, the first probe to study the Saturn system. She was the first person to describe the “spokes” in Saturn’s rings and to provide explanations about some of the moons of Uranus and neptune shepherded those planet ring systems. Learn more about her work in this woefully under-watched video: https://youtu.be/5usqdjsr6Vw. Christiaan Huygens was one of the greatest physicists of all time. He invented the pendulum clock, discovered Saturn’s moon Titan, and proposed the first comprehensive model of the rings of Saturn.

Wednesday: Mars and Spica are one fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 6:00 a.m. Spica is the lower of the two, brighter, and whiter.

Thursday: What do Justin Bieber and Betelgeuse have in common? Both are superstars. One will shine brightly for about a few hundred thousand more years. The other will only seem to be around for that long. “Sorry” Beliebers. “If you Love Yourself”, you and your “Boyfriend” need to learn more about Betelgeuse, the real supergiant star that is big enough to hold about one million Suns. “What Do You Mean” you don’t know where to look? For more information about Betelgeuse, go to http://goo.gl/0MyfHT. You’ll find it one fist above due east at 11 p.m.

Friday: Mercury is not visible in the night sky this week or next. That’s because it will be passing between the Earth and the Sun next week. “Big deal, this happens about three times a year,” you say. This year is special because on November 11, Mercury will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, looking like a little black spot as it transits the Sun. The transit will start before sunrise on the west coast, 4:35 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. Mercury will be close to mid-transit at west coast sunrise. The transit will be over at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Do not look directly at the Sun unless you have a safe solar filter. The Virtual Telescope Project will be hosting a live web viewing of the transit. Go to https://tinyurl.com/y4elbpll for more information.

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.