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

Saturday:  This week is International Dark Sky Week. Check out the schedule of events at https://idsw.darksky.org/, including many presentations that are broadcast live so you can interact with the presenter.  But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore our obligation to minimize stray light for the next 51 weeks. Lights that are aimed upward illuminate the atmosphere and obscure dim objects. Having too much light shining where it shouldn’t is considered light pollution. And just like other forms of pollution, light pollution can be hazardous to our health and the health of other animals. That’s right. Harmful. Watch this episode of SciShow for more information: https://youtu.be/_nlFcEj41Xk.  

Sunday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower peak starts late tonight with the peak of the peak coming early Wednesday morning. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to look is just before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. This year, the Moon is near the New Moon phase so it won’t be around to obscure the dimmer meteors. Typically, this is one of the least interesting major meteor showers of the year. However, it is also one of the most unpredictable. As recently as 1982, there were 90 meteors visible during a single hour. In addition, the Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C. As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. For more information, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158735.

Monday: Venus is nearly three fists above the western horizon at 9:00 p.m. It is the only planet visible in the evening sky because Jupiter does not rise until about 2:30 a.m.

Tuesday: The Space Shuttles have been retired. But NASA is still making plans about the future of space flight. Here is a small NASA poster summarizing the future of American Human spaceflight: https://goo.gl/Gd3q9q. It is interesting to compare the sizes of these real spaceships to the dozens of fictional spacecraft summarized on a poster found at http://goo.gl/F95aEL. Next time you are in Seattle, go see the Full Fuselage Space Shuttle Trainer at The Museum of Flight (http://www.museumofflight.org/).

Wednesday: While you are up looking at the Lyrid meteor shower, check out the naked eye planets, as well. At 5:00 a.m., bright Jupiter is about one and a half fists above the south-southeastern horizon. Saturn is a half a fist to the left of Jupiter and Mars is about one and a half fists to the lower left of Saturn.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at midnight.

Friday: The Moon and two open star clusters, the Pleiades and the Hyades, make a triangle low in the western sky at 9:00 p.m. The 100 million year old Pleiades cluster is less than a fist to the upper right of the Moon. The 600 million year old Hyades cluster is one first to the upper left of the Moon.

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.