The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of January 25, 2020

Saturday:  Venus is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwestern horizon at 6:00 p.m. For the next few days, you can use Venus, a very bright object, to find Neptune, a very dim object. First find Venus using a pair of 10X50 binoculars and put Venus in the lower right hand portion of the field of view. There should be a medium bright star in the center to upper left portion. Neptune is a very dim point of light between Venus and the medium bright star.  Venus will move upward for the next few weeks. On Monday evening, Venus will have moved upward a little bit such that Neptune will be right below Venus in the field of view. They will even be in the same field of view for small telescopes.

Sunday: Do you ever take photos to spy on your neighbors? The Hubble Space Telescope does. Last week, Hubble scientists released the best ever image of the Triangulum Galaxy, the second closest spiral galaxy to Earth. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys weaved together 54 separate images to provide enough detail to see 10 million individual stars out of the estimated 40 billion stars in the galaxy. See the pictures at https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1901/. 

Monday: Mars is one and a half fists above the south-southeastern horizon at 6:30 a.m. It rival Antares is one fist to the east of Mars. By using the term “rival”, I am not trying to drum up controversy. The name “Antares” literally means “rival to Mars” because of their similar colors and brightness. And just like real rivalries, the similarities are deceiving. Mars is red because of an abundance of iron oxide, the same material as in rust. Antares is red because its surface glows with a light energy corresponding to red, like the coils of an electric stove. Mars is bright because it is a nearby object reflecting the light of a nearby object. Antares is bright even though it is far away because it is huge, about the same size as Jupiter’s orbit.

Tuesday: At 10:30 p.m., the blue giant star called Adhara is one and a half fists above due south. It is the 22nd brightest star in the sky. Currently over 430 light years away, Adhara was only 34 light years away five million years ago. That proximity made it the brightest star in the nighttime sky at the time.

Wednesday: On these cold mornings, it is difficult to get going. You just want to plop into a chair and sit still. But, are you really sitting still? You’re moving at about 700 miles per hour due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and 66,000 miles per hour due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. If that’s not enough, the entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at a whopping 480,000 miles per hour! So while you may be sitting still with respect to your living room (and all of the overachievers in your house), you are NOT sitting still with respect to the center of the galaxy. For more information about this concept, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/HowFast.pdf. 

Thursday: If someone gives you a ring and says, “this ring symbolizes our eternal love, just like the rings of Saturn are eternal”, don’t doubt their love. But do doubt their astronomy knowledge. According to data recently analyzed from the Cassini Mission, Saturn’s rings may be only 10 to 100 million years old. As Cassini passed between Saturn and the rings, it was able to get the best estimate yet of the mass of the rings. Saturn’s rings are made mostly of ice and are still very bright and clean. Older rings would be darkened by debris. Also, the ring particles get pulverized by collisions over time. If this relatively low mass of ring particles were older, they would have been destroyed by now. For more information about the lifespan of Saturn’s rings, go to Saturn’s rings https://www.universetoday.com/141272/saturns-rings-are-only-10-to-100-million-years-old/. Saturn is just above the southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m., to the lower left of the much brighter Jupiter.

Friday: The CWU Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting its monthly First Saturday planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1 p.m. The CWU Planetarium Outreach and Research Group - the PORGs - will be doing a Valentine’s show about love 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 of 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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of January 18, 2020

Saturday:  Winter is the best season for finding bright stars. And if you only want to set aside a few minutes, 10 p.m. tonight just might be the best time because the winter hexagon is due south. Starting at the bottom, find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southern horizon. Going clockwise, Procyon (6^th brightest star visible from Washington state) is about two and a half fists to the upper left of Sirius. Pollux (12^th brightest) is about two and a half fists above Procyon. Capella (4^th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Procyon and close to straight overhead. Going back to Sirius at the bottom, Rigel (5^th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Sirius. Aldebaran (9^th brightest) is about three fists above Rigel. Adhara (16^th brightest) is a little more than a fist below Sirius and Castor (17^th brightest) is right above Pollux. Betelgeuse (21st brightest) is in the center of the hexagon. That’s nine of the 21 brightest stars visible in the northern United States in one part of the sky. This list used to be nine of the 17 brightest. But Betelgeuse has dimmed from the 7th to the 21st brightest star in the sky. For more information about this dimming, go to https://youtu.be/FosDJOVaKFc. 

Sunday: Mars is on the south-southeastern sky, less than a half a fist to the lower left of the waning crescent Moon at 7:00 a.m. Jupiter is just above the southeastern horizon.

Monday: Let’s review three important sets of three cats. There’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody of Josie and the Pussycats. Felix, Tom, and Sylvester from old time cartoons. And, if you want to get away from the mind-numbing effects of television, there’s Leo the lion, Leo Minor, and Lynx in the night sky. Leo is by far the most prominent of these three constellations. Its brightest star called Regulus is three and a half fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 11 p.m. The backwards question mark-shaped head of Leo is above Regulus and the trapezoid-shaped body is to the left of it. Leo Minor consists of a few dim stars right above Leo. Pretty wimpy. The long dim constellation called Lynx spans from just above Leo Minor to nearly straight overhead. You and fellow stargazers won’t need to wear a long tail or ears for hats to enjoy these stellar cats.

Tuesday: Venus is two fists above the southwestern horizon at 6:00 p.m.

Wednesday: You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above the northern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist above due north at 9:30 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the constellation, is at the lower left-hand corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.

Friday: The moon is almost directly between the Earth and the Sun today. That means you won’t be able to see it. But that does not mean it doesn’t exist. Contrary to the belief of toddlers and immature politicians, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (Note a double negative statement followed by a triple negative statement. I’m not unsorry about that.) Now, back to the science. What would happen to the earth if the moon really didn’t exist? In that 2013 blockbuster Oblivion, aliens destroy the moon and Tom Cruise survives. But the long-term effects on the earth would be devastating to life as we know it. The moon stabilizes the spin axis of the earth keeping the seasons fairly uniform over time. For more information on what would happen to the earth if the moon were destroyed, goto https://www.popsci.com/what-would-happen-if-moon-suddenly-disappeared/. For more information on Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Cruise.

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 January 11, 2020

Saturday:   Last Saturday's planetarium show had some technical difficulties. So, we will be redoing the show today from noon to 1 p.m. CWU physics graduate and future science teacher Jessica Kisner will give a show about the winter sky. The nights are long and the sky is (sometimes) crisp and clear. So you ought to know what you are looking at. The show is free and open to all ages. There will be a show at noon on the first Saturday of every month of 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.

Sunday: How do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal shelter, care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle of a star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a minute. Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead, they study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and piece together the information from those different stars. What they do is like studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of star life.

First, find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short-lived existence, is three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 10 p.m. It was not, is not, and never will be like our Sun. However, about one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The middle “star” is really a star-forming region called the Orion nebula. There you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and one fist down from Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star. Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life that started out life a bit larger than the Sun. Betelgeuse has been in the astronomy news lately because it has fallen from the 10th brightest star to the 21st brightest star in the night sky. Supergiant stars such as Betelgeuse are unstable and vary in size and shape over their years as a supergiant. These variations lead to variations in brightness. Astronomers think that a few different variation patterns that lead to slight changes in brightness individually are all happening at the same time, leading to a larger drop in brightness. For more information, go to https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/fainting-betelgeuse. 

Monday: When someone is angry, they may say “I’m seeing red.” For the next few days, people who  observe the morning sky will also see red. Mars and its rival Antares are neighbors in the sky for the next few days. Lest you think I am drumming up a fake rivalry, the prefix “ant” means “against”, “opposite”, or “rival”.  Ares is the Greek counterpart to the Roman god of war, Mars. So Antares literally means “rival to Mars”. At 7:00 a.m., Antares is one fist above the south-southeastern horizon and Mars is half a fist above it.

Tuesday: Venus is one and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 6:00 p.m.

Wednesday: These next two weeks are the coldest of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace. Fornax the furnace is one fist above due south at 7 p.m.

Thursday: Have you ever looked down on the ground and spotted a penny? In Yakima? While you were standing in Ellensburg? If you have, then you may be able to see the star Hamal as more than just a point of light. It has an angular diameter that can be directly measured from Earth. Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries the ram, has the same angular diameter as a penny 37 miles away. (For comparison, the moon is about half the diameter of a penny held at arm’s length.) Hamal is three fists above due west at 11:00 p.m.

Friday: Jupiter is finally starting to come out of the glare of the Sun in the morning sky. It is just above the southeastern horizon at 7:00 a.m. You’ll need a flat and clear horizon to see it.

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.