Saturday: 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 19th 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 1:00 a.m. This year, the last quarter Moon will illuminate the sky and make it more difficult to see the dimmer meteors. Lucky for you, this shower is active until about January 12 so you’ll make more opportunities over the next week and a half. 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=155137.
Sunday: Has it been tough to wake up these past two weeks? The sun is still rising later. I know. I know. December 21 was the shortest day of the year. The interval between sunrise and sunset is the shortest. 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. Neither of these happen on the first day of winter. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/SJC5r.
Monday: Venus is a half a fist above the southeastern horizon at 7:15 a.m.
Tuesday: Last month, we had the “Great Conjunction”. This month we have two “Good Conjunctions”. Mercury is moving away from being in line with the Sun and towards Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky. Tonight, Mercury is just above the southwestern horizon at 5:00 p.m. By the weekend, it will be next to Jupiter and Saturn in the sky. Learn more about Great, Good, and So-so celestial conjunctions at tonight’s virtual “Science on Tap”. For more information about this Zoom presentation, given by CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist, go to https://www.cwu.edu/campus-notices/virtual-science-tap-january-5th.
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 10:30 p.m.
Thursday: Do you look into a nursery and say, “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”? Not me. I say, “It’s a star”. Of course, I like looking into a stellar nursery – a star-forming region such as the Orion Nebula in the middle of Orion’s sword holder. The Orion Nebula looks like a fuzzy patch to the naked eye. Binoculars reveal a nebula, or region of gas and dust, that is 30 light years across. The center of the nebula contains four hot “baby” stars called the Trapezium. These hot stars emit the ultraviolet radiation that causes the Nebula’s gas to glow. The Orion Nebula is nearly four fists above due south at 10:30 p.m.
Friday: Mars is five and a half fists above the southern horizon at 7:00 p.m. Uranus is a half a fist to the left of Mars, invisible to the naked eye but not to binoculars. With Mars at the far right of your binocular field of view, Uranus will be at the far left.
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.
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