The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 27, 2021

Saturday:  Two of the best, and certainly the most available, “tools” for viewing the night sky are your eyes. Your eyes let you see the entire sky in just a few seconds. Your eyes can read star charts, decipher astronomy apps, and spot meteors while your friend is still setting up her tripod. Your naked eyes are not as effective as gathering light. They work well when the light source is comparatively bright and the detailed features are fairly large. It’s best to practice on a special Solar System body known scientifically as the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. Artists such as Jan van Eyck and Leonardo da Vinci produced the first realistic naked eye depictions of the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. This week you can use your own eyes to observe evidence of violent collisions and ancient lava flows. For more information on how to observe the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness, better known as the Moon, go to http://goo.gl/JLhraO.

Sunday: According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the March full moon is called the Full Worm Moon, either after the earthworms that appear in the warming spring soil or the beetle larvae that emerge from tree bark leaving winter dormancy. Follow up on last night’s viewing by looking for the man on the moon. Or the rabbit on the moon. Read about what many other cultures “see” at http://tiny.cc/4r8vtz. 

Monday: Signs of spring: flower buds, leaves on the trees, beetle larvae, and the Spring Triangle. The bright stars Regulus, Arcturus, and Spica rise as evening starts. By 10:00 p.m., Regulus is five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southeastern horizon, Arcturus is two and a half fists above due east, and Spica is one fist above the east-southeastern horizon and about a half a fist to the upper right of the Moon. For more on the Spring Triangle, go to http://tiny.cc/ep7vtz. 

Tuesday: Mars is four fists above the west-southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday: The Milky Way is pretty easy to spot on the early spring sky. Just look up. Everything you see in the sky, including that bird that just startled you, is in the Milky Way. But, even the path of densely packed stars in the plane of our galaxy that look like a river of milk is easy to find. Face due west at 9:00 p.m. in a fairly open area. The fuzzy Milky Way path starts due south, moves upward past the bright star Sirius, towards the bright star Capella, through W-shaped Cassiopeia and down to due north where the bright star Deneb sits just above the horizon.

Thursday: At 6:00 a.m., Saturn is one fist above the southeastern horizon. The much brighter Jupiter is less than a fist above the east-southeastern horizon.

Friday:  CWU encourages physical distancing. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist will give a show called “What's up in the Spring Sky”, a tour of spring planets, constellations, and other interesting celestial objects. There is a virtual planetarium show on the first Saturday of nearly every month of the school year. Register at https://rebrand.ly/April2021FirstSaturday.

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 March 20, 2021

Saturday:  Look up in the sky. It’s a plane. It’s a bird. No, it’s the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox!? Spring starts at 2:40 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The first day of spring is often called the vernal equinox. This label for the day is misleading. The vernal equinox is actually the point in the sky where the Sun’s apparent path with respect to the background stars (called the ecliptic) crosses the line that divides the stars into northern and southern celestial hemispheres (called the celestial equator). This point is in the constellation Pisces the fishes. At the vernal equinox, the Sun is moving from the southern region of background stars to the northern region. 

Because the Earth slowly wobbles like a spinning top, the vernal equinox is slowly moving into the constellation Aquarius. By the year 2597, the vernal equinox will reach the constellation Aquarius and the “Age of Aquarius” will begin. Until then, we’ll be in “the age of Pisces”.

Sunday: Many artists have sung the song “Blue Moon”. But few have sung the song “Blue Planet”. It goes, in part “Blue Planet, you saw me standing with 27 others. Rolling around like a barrel. Without close sisters or brothers.” It’s about the planet Uranus, which orbits the Sun in a rolling motion and has 27 moons. Every one of Uranus’ moons is named after characters in works by William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. Uranus is one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due west at 8:30 p.m., easily visible with binoculars. First find Hamal and Sheratan, two stars of similar brightness, two fists above the west-northwestern horizon and stacked vertically a half a fist apart from each other. With Sheratan at the right side of your field of view, there will be a small triangle pointing upward on the left side of your field of view. Now move your binoculars until the triangle is on the right side of your field of view. Uranus will be near the left side of your field of view. Return to this same spot for the next few nights. If the point you are looking at moves compared to the neighboring points of light, you are looking at Uranus.

Monday:  If you know exactly where to look in the sky, you can see a few bright planets when the Sun is out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is always watching the sky when the Sun is out… because it is always watching the Sun! Most of the SOHO images are filtered images of the Sun’s photosphere, the top of the visible layer. But two images, the LASCO C2 and C3, place a mask over the Sun in order to observe the Sun’s corona as well as solar system objects that pass near the Sun. For the next few days, Venus passes right below the Sun and is visible in one or both of the LASCO images. It is the bright spot with the long streak on either side due to overexposure. For more about using SOHO to observe Solar System objects, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/planets-and-comets-cant-hide-from-sohos-eye/.

Tuesday: If you want to put somebody off, tell her or him to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon. At 9:35 p.m., it will be as close as it gets to the horizon, about two degrees above due north. Watch it reach this due north position about 4 minutes earlier each night.

Wednesday: The Perseverance Rover landed on Mars a few weeks ago to look for evidence of past life in the rocks and regolith. In November 2018, the InSight mission landed on Mars and also started digging to study the geology of Mars. While geology isn’t life, many scientists think there is a relationship between geologic activity and the favorability for life to evolve. When InSight landed, its thrusters pushed a small rock along the ground. Astronomers named that rock Rolling Stones Rock after the legendary band. For more on Rolling Stones Rock, go to https://go.nasa.gov/MarsRocks. Mars is about four and a half fists above the western horizon at 9:30 p.m. 

Thursday: Regulus is a half a fist to the lower right of the Moon. They are five fists above the southeastern horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Friday: Global Astronomy Month (GAM) starts next week. While many astronomy experiences come from looking at something, you can also experience astronomy by creating something. GAM has numerous arts initiatives including AstroArts and AstroPoetry. Go to https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/global-astronomy-month for more information about events.

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 March 6, 2021

Saturday: Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight for the annual ritual called daylight savings. Daylight savings originated in the United States during World War I to save energy for the war effort. But a recent study by two economists shows that switching to daylight savings time may actually lead to higher utility bills. When the economists compared the previous few years of energy bills in the section of Indiana that just started observing daylight savings, they discovered that switching to daylight savings cost Indiana utility customers $8.6 million in electricity. In an even more important consequence of daylight savings, Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia discovered a 7% jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after we "spring ahead". Blame it on the lost hour of sleep. And, sky watchers will lose even more sleep because the sky stays light for an additional hour.

Sunday: Avast ye matey. Swab the poop deck. Pirates love astronomy. In fact, the term “poop” in poop deck comes from the French word for stern (poupe) which comes for the Latin word Puppis. Puppis is a constellation that represents the raised stern deck of Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. Argo Nevis was an ancient constellation that is now split into the constellations Puppis, Vela and Carina. The top of Puppis is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south and about a fist and a half to the left of the bright star Sirius at 9:00 p.m. Zeta Puppis, the hottest, and thus the bluest, naked eye star in the sky at 40,000 degrees Celsius, is about a half a fist above due south at this time.

Monday: “Oooo, they’re little runaways. Orion’s stars moved fast. Tried to make a getaway. Ooo-oo, they’re little runaways,” sang Bon Jovi in his astronomical hit “Runaway.  At least that’s what I hear when I listen to the song. After all, it fits the recently calculated trajectory of AE Aurigae, Mu Columbae, and 53 Arietis. Extrapolating the actual motion of these three stars back in time, they were all in the location of the star-forming region called the Orion Nebula a few million years ago. What kicked these stars out? Not paying rent? Excessive partying? No, it was simply gravitational interactions with near-by stars. Find out more about the eviction at http://goo.gl/UeLwKQ. The Orion Nebula is visible with the naked eye from a very dark site, about three fists above the southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday: Arcturus is two fists above the eastern horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Ask someone which day in March has the same duration day and night. Go ahead, ask someone. Why are you still reading this? I can wait. If that person said the first day of spring, they are wrong. Today, a few days before the first day of spring, is the date in which day and night are closest in duration in central Washington. There are two main reasons for this. First, the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is actually below the horizon. This makes the Sun appear to rise before it actually rises and appear to set after it actually sets. Second, spring starts when the center of the Sun passes through the point called the vernal equinox. But, the Sun is not a point. The upper edge of the Sun rises about a minute before the center of the Sun and the lower edge sets a minute after the center of the Sun. Thus, even if we didn’t have an atmosphere that bends the sunlight, daytime on the first day of spring would still be longer than 12 hours.

Thursday: Jupiter is a half a fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 6:30 a.m. Saturn is about a fist to the upper right of Jupiter.

Friday: Mars is a half a fist to the right of the Moon throughout the night. They are five fists above the southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

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.