The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of December 28, 2019

Today: Say goodbye to one of the bright summertime stars. Fomalhaut, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus or the southern fish, is a half a fist above the south-southwestern horizon at 7:00 p.m.

Sunday: Is your favorite someone lamenting that she didn’t get that space-related calendar that she wanted? Are you sad that you ran out of money and can’t fulfill her last-minute wish? Do you wish you could spend more quality time with her? Worry not. NASA has a free English or Spanish language calendar available for download at https://eospso.nasa.gov/publications/25.  Spend many hours reading about NASA scientists and projects.

Monday: “Far out, man. Astronomers just discovered the farthest out object in the Solar System and nicknamed it Farout.” This Kuiper Belt object is more than 100 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, more than twice as far as Pluto is. For more information about Farout, go to https://goo.gl/YtGsRE. Look in the early morning sky for some not so far out objects. If you care more about the nearest objects, call them “near-bys”, look for Venus, our nearest and brightest neighbor, is about one and a half  fists above the southwestern horizon at 5:00 p.m. The waxing crescent Moon, our nearest neighbor, is low in the south-southwestern sky.

Tuesday: The bright star Regulus is one and a half fists above the eastern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Today is the day we celebrate the anniversary of something new – a new classification of celestial objects. Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres [pronounced sear’-ease], the first of what are now called “asteroids”, on January 1, 1801. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. At first, Piazzi thought it was a star that didn’t show up on his charts. But, he noted its position changed with respect to the background stars from night to night. This indicated to him that it had to be orbiting the Sun. The International Astronomical Union promoted Ceres to the status of “dwarf planet” in August of 2006.

Thursday: Has it been tough to wake up this past week? It should have been because the sunrise has been getting a little later since summer started. I know. I know. December 21 was the shortest day of the year. But, because the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical and not circular, the Earth does not travel at a constant speed. It moves faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is farther away. This leads to the latest sunrise occurring in early January and the earliest sunset occurring in early December, not on the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year. On the first day of winter, however, the interval between sunrise and sunset is the shortest. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/SJC5r.

Friday: Late tonight and early morning’s weather forecast: showers. Meteor showers, that is. The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks late tonight and early tomorrow morning between midnight and dawn. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. That makes this shower mysterious because there isn’t any constellation with this name now. The shower was named after Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation found in some early 19^th century star atlases. These meteors appear to come from a point in the modern constellation Draco the dragon. This point is about three fists above the northeast horizon at 1 a.m. This year, the waning gibbous Moon will set well before dawn so you may be able to see many meteors in the hours before sunrise. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Most meteors are associated with the path of a comet. This shower consists of the debris from an asteroid discovered in 2003. Keeping with the comet-origin paradigm, astronomers think the asteroid is actually an “extinct” comet, a comet that lost all of its ice as it passed by the Sun during its many orbits. For more information about the Quadrantid meteor shower, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=4287.   

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 December 21, 2019

Today: At 9:20 p.m., Pacific Standard Time, the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky with respect to the background stars. This point is called the Winter Solstice. During the day that the Sun reaches this point, your noontime shadow is longer than any other day of the year. Also, the Sun spends less time in the sky on the day of the Winter Solstice than any other day making this the shortest day of the year. Even though it is the shortest day of the year, it is not the day with the latest sunrise or the earliest sunset. The latest sunrise is during the first week in January and the earliest sunset is during the second week in December. The Sun is at its southernmost point with respect to the background stars on the day of the winter solstice. This means the Sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon on that day. But, the Sun rise and set time depends on more than its apparent vertical motion. It also depends on where the Sun is on the analemma, that skinny figure-8 you see on globes and world maps. During the second week in December, the Sun is not quite to the bottom of the analemma.  But, it is on the first part of the analemma to go below the horizon. During the first week in January, it is on the last part of the analemma to rise above the horizon.

Sunday: I know you’re staying up late to train yourself to wait up for Santa. So look out a south-facing window tonight at 12:41 a.m. and see Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, as high as it ever gets in the sky. It is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south.

Monday: Are you disappointed because you are not going anywhere for Christmas? Why not take a (virtual) trip to outer space using Google’s new visualization tool called 100,000 Stars. It shows the stars in our neighborhood in a very good 3-D simulation. The Sun is initially at the center. If you zoom in, you can click on neighboring stars and learn more about them. Go to http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/ for the simulation. It works best on a Chrome browser.

Tuesday: At 5:00 p.m., Saturn is a half a fist above the southwestern horizon and the much brighter Venus is nearly one and a half fists above the southwestern horizon. If you are getting up early tomorrow to open presents, look outside and find Mars nearly two fists above the southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m.

Wednesday: Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw Jupiter being eclipsed by the Moon in the east and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2, Bruce Palmquist version, informed by Michael Molnar). There are many theories as to the physical explanation of the Star of Bethlehem, the celestial object that guided the wise men to the location of Jesus. Some people think it was a recurring nova, a star that explodes. Some think it was a close alignment of bright planets. Some think it was a miracle that requires no physical explanation. In 1991, astronomer Michael Molnar bought an ancient Roman Empire coin that depicted a ram looking back at a star. Aries the ram was a symbol for Judea, the birthplace of Jesus. The Magi, or “wise men”, who visited the baby Jesus practiced astrology and would have been looking in that region of the sky for the king prophesied in the Old Testament. Molnar, a modern day wise person, used sky simulation software to model the positions of planets and the Moon in the region of Aries. According to his model, Jupiter was eclipsed, or blocked, by the Moon on the morning of April 17, 6 BC. A book written by the astrologer of Constantine the Great in 334 AD supports Molnar’s theory. The book describes an eclipse of Jupiter in Aries and notes a man of divine nature born during this time. See https://goo.gl/o89A4o for more information.

Only Aries make an appearance in the Christmas sky this year. At 8 p.m., the dim constellation Aries is six and a half fists above due south. Jupiter is lost in the glare of the Sun. The Moon is in the New phase so the illuminated side is facing away from Earth.

Thursday: Did you get a new telescope for Christmas? The next item on your list should be a sky watching app for your phone. These apps will help you to get familiar with the constellations and bright stars. Then you can zoom in to an area of interest and learn about objects that are visible through your telescope. I like SkySafari, a free app for iPhones. But there are many other good ones to choose from for little or no money. Go to https://goo.gl/t1DX7R for fifteen short reviews. The first object you should look at is Mars. It is bright, easy to find and out in the early evening sky so you can share the experience with children. Mars is four fists above the south horizon at 6 p.m.

Friday: So, you are not into virtual vacations like the Google Simulation, hmmm? How about a vacation to the recently discovered Super Earth sized planet orbiting the closest single star to our Sun? Astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory discovered that Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf star only 6 light-years away, has a planet about three times the mass of the Earth. Even though Barnard’s Star is very dim, it is heavily studied because it is the star with the largest proper motion. It moves through the night sky more than any other star.  Don’t expect a warm vacation. This planet receives only 2% of the energy from its star as we receive from the Sun. For more information about the discovery, and to possibly book a trip, go to http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/news/view/658855/.  Barnard’s Star is about one fist above due east at 7:00 a.m., to the lower left of the fairly bright star Cebalrai.

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 December 14, 2019

Today: Warrant, the American glam metal band (as labeled by Wikipedia) was singing about carbon stars in its 1991 hit “I Saw Red”. The lyrics for the astronomy version are “Then I saw red, when I looked up in the sky, I saw red, Orion’s bright star it was by.” R Leporis, also known as Hind’s Crimson Star, is one of the reddest stars in the sky. It is a star near the end of its life that has burned its helium nuclei into carbon. Convective currents, like those in a pot of boiling water, bring this carbon to the surface. There it forms a layer of soot that scatters away the light from the blue end of the visible spectrum leaving the light from the red end of the spectrum to reach our eyes. For more information about Hind’s Crimson Star and a list of other deep red stars, go to http://goo.gl/EnhRe4. Hind’s Crimson star is one fist to the lower right of Rigel, the brightest star in Orion. You’ll need binoculars or a small telescope to see it Hind’s Crimson star. But you can easily spot Rigel two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due southeast at 9:00 p.m.

Sunday: Last week we learned that the early December evenings are getting darker earlier than any time of the year. While the sky is getting darker earlier, the nighttime sky is actually getting brighter due to the greater use of low energy LED bulbs. While these bulbs use much less energy that incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs, researchers think that people and communities are using more of the bulbs and leaving them on longer. This is increasing light pollution near cities. You can get more illumination on the subject at https://goo.gl/1CdqcH. 

Monday: Today is Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival in honor of their god Saturn, the god of agriculture and time. The holiday featured a break from work and school, a public banquet, and private gift giving. Some of these customs influenced the secular aspects of Christmas celebrations. After Sheldon hugged Penny on The Big Bang Theory, Leonard said, “It’s a Saturnalia miracle.” See the miracle on YouTube. It would not be a miracle if you saw the planet Saturn today. It is about a fist above the southwestern horizon at 5:00 p.m., just to the lower right of the much brighter Venus. It would be a near miracle if you saw Jupiter, which sets right after the Sun, at 4:45 p.m.

Tuesday: Winter is not the best time to see the Sun in the sky. So see the Sun on your computer screen instead. NASA just released a short video about the Parker Solar Probe has learned about the solar wind. Find it at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasas-parker-solar-probe-sheds-new-light-on-the-sun. 

Wednesday: Columbia the dove, representing the bird Noah sent out to look for dry land as the floodwaters receded, is perched just above the ridge south of Ellensburg. Its brightest star Phact is about one fist above the southern horizon at midnight.

Thursday: Just before Christmas, you look for junk to clean out of your closets so you can re-gift it. I mean, so you can throw it out or recycle it. NASA’s Meter Class Autonomous Telescope on Ascension Island is a key tool in a program tracking about 22,000 pieces of space junk. Some of this junk is dangerous. The International Space Station occasionally performs debris avoidance maneuvers to keep is panels and sensitive instrument safe. For more information about the project, go to http://goo.gl/Kxgihd.

Friday: Mars is nearly two fists above the southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m. Mercury will be much harder to find, just above the southeastern horizon, hiding in the glare of the soon-rising Sun.

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.