Saturday: 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 3rd 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 five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due southeast at 10:30 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.
Sunday: So you think your mother has issues on Mother’s Day because she has you as a child? Her 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: 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 the western horizon at 10:00 p.m.
Tuesday: You’ve likely heard of Superman. You’ve probably heard of the Super Moon. Last month’s Full Moon was a Full Super Moon and this month’s Full Moon on May 26 will be a Full Super Moon. Between two Full Moons is a New Mini Moon. Thus, tonight’s Moon phase is a New Mini Moon. We can’t see any New Moon because the sunlight is illuminating the back side of the Moon so we won’t see a difference. But the oceans will feel the difference because a Mini Moon is farther from the Earth than average so the tides are lower.
Wednesday: Venus is about a thumb width to the lower right of the one day old waxing crescent moon at 9:00 p.m. They are just above the west-northwestern horizon right after sunset.
Thursday: Tonight the Moon has moved up next to Mercury in the sky. Mercury is less than a fist to the lower right of the two day old waxing crescent moon at 9:00 p.m. They are one fist above the west-northwestern horizon right after sunset.
Friday: The other day in class, we talked about the effort to protect the Earth from risky asteroids. We couldn’t do anything about them. But the European Southern Observatory (ESO) can. They are dedicating their La Silla telescope to detect and track thousands of near-Earth asteroids. Or more information, go to https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2107/.
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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