The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of May 30, 2020

An alien was in control of my brain last week when I said there would be a Virtual Planetarium Show this week. It is next Saturday.

Saturday:  Cygnus the swan flies tonight. Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation, whose name means “tail” in Arabic, is about two fists held upright and at arm's length above the northeastern horizon at 10:00 p.m. Cygnus’ wings make a vertical line one half a fist to the right of Deneb. Its head, marked by the star Albireo, is two fists to the right of Deneb. While Deneb is at the tail of Cygnus, it is at the head of the line of bright stars. It is 160,000 times more luminous than the Sun making it one of the brightest stars in the galaxy. It does not dominate our night sky because it is 2,600 light years away, one of the farthest naked eye stars. If Deneb were 25 light years away, it would shine as bright as a crescent moon. Compare that to Vega, which is 25 light years away. Vega is three and a half fists above the east-northeastern horizon at this time.

Sunday: The questions who, what, where, and when can only be asked with a “W”. At 9:30 p.m., the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia is about one and a half fists above due north. The middle star in the W was used as a navigation reference point during the early space missions. The American astronaut Gus Grissom nicknamed the star Navi, his middle name Ivan spelled backwards. After he died in the Apollo 1 fire, the star name was kept as a memorial.

Monday: The month of June is named after Juno, the queen of the Roman gods and the mythological protector of the Roman state. In ancient Rome, the month began when the crescent moon was first seen in the evening sky from Capitoline Hill in Rome. If we still started months this way, June would start on a different day each year. This year, the month would have started about a week and a half ago on the day of the last New Moon. Tonight the Moon is in the waxing gibbous phase, nearly four fists above due south at 10:00 p.m. The bright star Spica is less than a fist below the Moon. Juno’s husband, Jupiter, rises at about midnight. By 12:30 a.m., it is about a half a fist above the southeast horizon.

Tuesday: The bright star Arcturis is six fists above due south at 10:30 p.m. Cor Caroli is the medium bright star about three fists to the upper right of Arcturus, halfway between Arcturus and the Big Dipper Cup. About halfway between Arcturus and Cor Caroli is M3, an eight billion year old globular cluster of 500,000 stars. You’ll need binoculars to find it. It looks like an out-of-focus star right next to an in-focus star just below it. For more information about M3, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/hello-messier-3/.

Wednesday: Two years ago, NASA picked the Jezero Crater as the landing site of the Mars 2020 Rover, called Perseverance. The edge of the crater contains a dried river delta that flowed into the crater on and off over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. If the sediments from the dry periods were buried quickly, any organic materials would have been buried with the sediments. These would be the clues of life that Perseverance will be looking for.  For more information about Jezero Crater, visit https://tinyurl.com/ybuwp4qx. Mars is about two fists above due southeast at 4:30 a.m.

Thursday: As the weather warms up, people start thinking about swimming in a nice cool body of water. Recently, astronomers have discovered evidence of an ocean about 20 miles beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. NASA’s Cassini probes measured variations in how the moon’s gravity pulled on the orbiting spacecraft. These variations can be explained by a large amount of liquid water under one section of the ice because liquid water is denser than an equal volume of ice. While you need a very large telescope to see Enceladus, Saturn is less than a half a fist above the southeast horizon at 12:30 a.m., just to the left of the much brighter Jupiter. They are both two fists above due south at 4:30 a.m.

Friday: The CWU campus is closed. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU professor Bruce Palmquist will host the Intergalactic Planetarium Short “Film” Festival. You’ll see a variety of short Worldwide Telescope Tours created by CWU Astronomy and Douglas Honors College students featuring videos about the Solar System, star formation, and Harry Potter astronomy. Stay at home, practice good physical distancing, and visit https://cwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuduChqz8jGdQ86cUyKBKmR2K_jdcEqSx- to register for the Virtual tour.

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 May 23, 2020

Saturday:  Moon, Mercury, Venus make a small triangle low in the west-northwestern sky right after sunset. Mercury if the dimmest of the three objects, at the top of the triangle.

Sunday:  In 1979, the group Foreigner recorded the song “Head Games”. They could have been singing about the constellations Hercules and Ophiuchus when they said “head games, it’s just you and me baby, head games, I can’t take it anymore” because the heads of these two constellations have been right next to each other in the nighttime sky for all of human history. And just to make it easy for you, a star that bears an Arabic name that means “the head” represents each head. In Hercules, it's Ras Algethi (head of the kneeler); in Ophiuchus, Ras Alhague (head of the serpent charmer). At 11 p.m., Ras Alhague, the brighter of the two, is three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-southeast horizon. Ras Algethi is about a half a fist to the upper right of Ras Alhague.

Monday: In 1982, the British group Bow Wow Wow first sang, “I Want Candy”. In May 2019, NASA finally granted that wish by releasing images of Mars’ moon Phobos looking like candy.  The thermal imaging camera on NASA’s long lived Odyssey orbiter took a series of images of the full phase of Phobos. The resulting composite, looking like a many layered jaw-breaker, shows how the temperature varies throughout the small moon. This temperature distribution, in turn, can help astronomers determine what the moon is made of. For more about this yummy treat, go to https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7398. Mars is one and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 4:00 a.m.

Tuesday: It looks so peaceful up there. But life is not peaceful for Jupiter. According to a recent study by astronomers, Jupiter gets hit by a 5-20 meter diameter asteroid 10 to 65 times a year. For comparison, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 was 20 meters in diameter. Earth gets hit by a 20-meter asteroid about once every 50 years. For more information, go to https://goo.gl/RxPc5G. Jupiter is two fists above the south horizon at 4:30 a.m. Saturn is a half a fist to the left of Jupiter.

Wednesday: Antares is a half a fist above the southeastern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Thursday:  Altair, the lowest star in the Summer Triangle, is one fist above due east at 11:00 p.m.

Friday: The CWU campus is closed. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show Saturday, June 6 from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU professor Bruce Palmquist will host the Intergalactic Planetarium Short “Film” Festival. You’ll see a variety of short Worldwide Telescope Tours created by CWU Astronomy and Douglas Honors College students featuring videos about the Solar System, nebulas, and Harry Potter astronomy. Stay at home, practice good physical distancing, and visit https://cwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuduChqz8jGdQ86cUyKBKmR2K_jdcEqSx- to register for the Virtual tour.

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 May 16, 2020

Saturday:  Every year near the summer solstice, the orbital path of the International Space Station (ISS) is aligned with the Earth’s day-night terminator line, meaning the ISS is illuminated by the Sun for its entire orbit. Since the ISS just takes about 90 minutes to orbit the Earth, it will be visible about five times a night from many locations. For more information about the ISS’s orbit and when to see it, go to https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/watch-international-space-station/. You can see the ISS tonight in central Washington state rising in the western sky at 9:46 pm, 11:22 pm, 1:00 am, 2:37 am, and 4:14 am.

Before your long night of ISS observations, look to the northwest right after sunset. Mercury has made its way into the evening sky. It is less than one fist above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m., about halfway between the horizon and the much brighter Venus.

Sunday: Did you get up early to spot the ISS? At 4:30 a.m., just after the last ISS pass of the night, look two fists above the south-southeastern horizon. Bright Saturn is less than a half a fist to the left of the very bright Jupiter.

Monday:  Are you thirsty? I'll wait while you get some water. I will NOT wait while Corvus the crow gets you some water. The Greco-Roman god Apollo made this mistake. He sent Corvus the crow to get some water in the cup known as Crater. Some figs distracted Corvus and he waited for them to ripen so he could eat them. When Corvus got back late, Apollo put Corvus and Crater in the sky with the gently tipping cup just out of the reach of the perpetually thirsty crow. Corvus is a trapezoid-shaped constellation about two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 9:30 p.m. Crater is just to the right of Corvus.

Tuesday: You can set your watch tonight by carefully observing Navi, the center star in the W-shaped Cassiopeia. It will be due north at exactly 10:06 p.m. However, another star in Cassiopeia is causing astronomers to doubt whether or not they can use neutron stars as the most precise known clocks in the universe. Neutron stars have such a precise spin rate that they are used to set clocks on Earth. However, in 2013, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope noticed that the neutron star called 1E 2259+586 exhibited a spin glitch that had never been seen before. The spin rate of about eight times a minute decreased by 2.2 millionths of a second. Read more about this at http://goo.gl/C4V8R1. In 2016, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope observed the slowest rotating neutron star, once every 6.5 hours. What is it with using a telescope named Swift to make discoveries about something slowing? Maybe that slow developing question will be answered at https://tinyurl.com/y6ag6g7c.  

Wednesday: Are you thirsty when you get up in the morning? I know you are not waiting for Corvus. That’s okay because the Big Dipper is positioned to hold water in the morning sky. Look three fists above the northwest horizon at 4:30 a.m. You’ll see three stars that make a bent handle and four stars that make a cup.

Thursday: Mercury is about a pinky-width below Venus low in the west-northwestern sky at 9:15 p.m.

Friday: Are you up at 1:59 a.m., looking due north and thinking you see a UFO coming to take you away? That's no UFO. It's the bright star Capella, a circumpolar star that never goes below the horizon as viewed from Ellensburg. 

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 May 9, 2020

Saturday:  You know Metis and Thebe and Adrastea and Amalthea. Io and Ganymede and Callisto and Europa. But do you recall? There are 79 Jovian moons in all.  Just 60 years ago, Jupiter was thought to have only 12 moons. But, astronomers are red-nosed with delight that the advent of supersensitive electronic cameras has caused the number of discovered moons to rapidly increase. Jupiter’s 79 moons range in size from Ganymede, the largest in the Solar System with a diameter of 5,262 kilometers, to numerous moons with diameters of only one kilometer. Recently, Saturn moved into first in the moon race with 82. Uranus is next with 27. Then comes Neptune with 14, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. Our moon is the fifth largest in the Solar System, with a diameter of 3,475 kilometers. (One kilometer is 0.62 miles.) Even dwarf planets have moons. Pluto has 5, Eris has 1, Haumea has 2, and Makemake has 1. Eris is an outer solar system object that was discovered in 2005 and named in September of 2006. Because astronomers thought it was larger than Pluto, people called it the tenth planet for a while. (More recent measurements show Eris to be a little smaller in diameter than Pluto.) Haumea, the newest dwarf planet with a moon, was discovered in 2004 and officially named a dwarf planet on September 17, 2008. Go to https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/ for more information about Solar System moons.

Sunday: So you think your mother has problems on Mother’s Day because she has you as a child? Her mother issues can’t be as bad as Cassiopeia’s issues. First, she was chained to a chair for boasting about her beauty. Second, she has to revolve around the North Star night after night. Third, her daughter Andromeda was nearly killed by a sea monster. Look for poor Cassiopeia about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northern horizon at 10:00 p.m. Cassiopeia looks like a stretched out “W”.

Monday: Monday: Give me an “M”. Give me a “3”. What does that spell? “M3.” “Big deal,” you say. It was a big deal to French comet hunter Charles Messier (pronounced Messy A). M3 was the 3^rd comet look-alike that Messier catalogued in the late 1700s. M3 is a globular cluster, a cluster of over 100,000 stars that is 32,000 light years away. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye but is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Arcturus six fists above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m. Move your binoculars up one binocular field of view so two stars of nearly identical brightness are in your field of view. When the top star is in the lower left part of your field of view, there should be a fuzzy patch near the center of your field of view. This is M3. 

Tuesday: The Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn are very close together in the south-southeastern sky from the time they rise at about 1:30 a.m. until Sunrise. But why limit yourself to nighttime observing. Using binoculars, and with the Moon as your guide, you should be able to see Jupiter and Saturn.  First, find the Moon with binoculars and move the Moon to the bottom of your field of view. Jupiter will be easily visible to the upper right of the Moon and Saturn will likely

Wednesday: Venus is one and a half fists above the west-northwest horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Thursday: Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, are not visible in typical backyard telescopes. But they are an interesting study. The former view among astronomers was that both moons are captured asteroids. That makes sense given Mars’ proximity to the asteroid belt. But recent findings by European astronomers indicate that Phobos is very porous and made of material similar to the surface of Mars. This implies that Phobos may consist of chunks of Martian debris that was blasted off by numerous impacts and gravitationally bound together. Unfortunately, the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe launched late 2011 to collect material from Phobos crashed to Earth after malfunctioning. For more information about this recent model of Phobos’ formation, go to https://sci.esa.int/web/mars-express/-/31031-phobos. For more information about Mars, look two fists above due southeast at 5:00 a.m., right next to our Moon.

Friday: Comet SWAN may save the day! Although Comet ATLAS broke up and will not be the bright fuzzball we all expected, Comet SWAN will likely be easily visible with binoculars and may be visible with the naked eye. Look for it at 4:30 a.m. about one fist above the east-northeastern horizon. First find Hamal, the brightest star in the area, a little less than one fist above the east-northeastern horizon. With Hamal in the lower left portion of your binocular field of view, Comet SWAN will be in the center to upper right portion of the field of view. For more information, including a finder chart, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/comet-swan-expected-to-put-on-a-splendid-show/

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.