The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of July 30, 2022

Saturday: The Perseid meteor shower peaks next week. But there will be an increased number of meteors over the next two weeks. If the Moon is out when you want to look, position yourself so you are in the Moon’s shadow. The meteors appear to come from a point just below the W of the constellation Cassiopeia. This point is about two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northeast horizon at 11:00 p.m. By dawn, this point is about seven fists above the northeast horizon. If you fall asleep or forget to set your alarm, you will be able to observe this shower from about 11 p.m. to dawn for the next two weeks in about the same location in the sky. Early this week is the best time for viewing because the moon will not be bright enough or out long enough to obscure the dimmer meteors.

The Perseid shower is one of the longest lasting showers. For tips about optimizing your viewing this year, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=165416  As your Mother might say, dress warm and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. These meteors are sand to pea-sized bits of rock that fell off of Comet Swift-Tuttle. They are traveling about 40 miles per second as they collide with the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Sunday: Jupiter and Saturn have made their way to “don’t have to stay up super late” viewing. Saturn rises a little after 9:00 p.m. and Jupiter rises a little before 11:00 p.m. By 11:30 p.m., Saturn is nearly two fists above the southeastern horizon and Jupiter is more than a half a fist above the eastern horizon.

Monday: Venus is one fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m. Mars is four and a half fists above the southeastern horizon. Uranus is about a thumb width to the upper left of Mars. You’ll need binoculars to see it. For most binoculars, when Mars is near the center of your field of view, Uranus will be in the upper left portion of your field of view. It is the second brightest object in the area of the sky near Mars after Mars, itself.

Tuesday: Have you ever planned a vacation to a place because it was supposedly the up-and-coming locale? Then, when the vacation time finally arrives, you find out the place doesn’t live up to its billing? Five years ago this month, astronomers strengthened earlier findings that the star Tau Ceti, one of our closest neighbors at 12 light years away, has four planets classified as “super-Earths”. Two of the planets are in the so-called habitable zone where the temperature is just right for having liquid water on their surface. Time for a va-ca-tion! Well, not so fast. Astronomers have only a lower limit to the planet masses so they may be too massive for complex life to form. And the Tau Ceti system has ten times as much mass in dust and rocks as our own solar system. So you’ll want to do some research before you travel there. Tau Ceti is two and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon at 4:30 a.m., midway between the horizon and very bright Jupiter. For more information about the discovery, go tp https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/four-exoplanets-may-orbit-nearby-sun-like-star/.  

Wednesday: It is not winter yet. But Orion, thought of as a winter constellation, is just above the east-southeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m. By the actual winter, it will be visible in the evening sky. 

Thursday: Mizar is a well-known binary star in the constellation Ursa Major. You can find it at the bend in the Big Dipper handle, four fists above due northwest at 11:00 p.m. Its name is Arabic for waistband. Mizar has an optical double called Alcor, which is less than a pinky width away and can easily be seen with the naked eye. Optical doubles are stars that are close together in the sky but do not orbit a common center of mass as true binary stars. Not wanting to deceive sky gazers who call Alcor and Mizar a binary star, two stars that DO orbit a common center of mass, Mizar actually is a binary. It was the first binary star system discovered using a telescope. Mizar A and Mizar B are about 400 astronomical units apart from each other and about 80 light years from Earth. 400 astronomical units is about 10 times the distance between the Sun and Pluto.

Friday: Mercury is just above the west-northwestern 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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of July 23, 2022

Saturday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower peaks this week and on into mid-August. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeastern horizon at 1:00 am tonight. You can follow this point throughout the night, as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky. The Moon is approaching the new moon phase this week meaning it will not be not for many hours each night. For more information about this year’s shower, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=159138. 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.

Sunday: Uranus is either the dimmest naked-eye planet or the brightest non-naked-eye planet, depending on the darkness and quality of the surrounding sky. The vast majority of people need binoculars and a bright sky marker to find Uranus. Mars provides the bright sky marker over the next two weeks. Mars is about four fists above the southeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m. Aim your binoculars so Mars is in the far right of your field of view. Uranus will be at the far left of a typical binocular field of view. There is a star approximately the same brightness as Uranus about midway between Mars and Uranus in the sky. As the days go by, Mars will move to the lower left compared to Uranus and the background stars. Mars and Uranus will be much closer together in the sky by the weekend.

Monday: What you see with the naked eye isn’t all that can be seen. While astronomers can learn a lot from observing the sky in the visible wavelengths, many celestial objects radiate more light, and more information, in wavelengths such as radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray. In 2012, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to study objects that radiate in the infrared range such as asteroids, cool dim stars, and luminous galaxies. For an interesting comparison of how different wavelengths show different aspects of celestial objects, go to http://goo.gl/nvuax. If it weren’t for infrared telescopes such as WISE, astronomers would not know about the significant amount of dust in galaxies. We also wouldn’t know how much brighter than the Sun red supergiant stars are. Antares is a red supergiant star, currently sitting at one and a half fists above the southern horizon. In the visible wavelengths, Antares shines 10,000 times brighter than the Sun. But since Antares is much cooler than the Sun, its energy distribution peaks in the infrared. So across all wavelengths of light, Antares shines 60,000 times brighter than the Sun. The new James Webb Space telescope is also an infrared telescope.

Tuesday: At 5:00 a.m., Venus is less than a half a fist to the lower right of the waning crescent moon. Venus doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth does. But that doesn’t mean that its surface is static. Planetary scientists have been studying a Venus lowland that moves like blocks of ice on a frozen lake. While more data is needed, this seems to be a type of crust activity that is between a solid crust and a planet with plate tectonics. For more information about this, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/venus-surface-is-fragmented-like-pack-ice/.

Wednesday: Zubenelgenubi, the second brightest star in the constellation Libra. The name means "southern claw", a holdover from the time when this part of the sky was associated with the neighboring constellation of Scorpius the scorpion. Zubenelgenubi is a binary star system, easily seen with binoculars as a white and yellow pair. To a person living on a planet orbiting the dimmer of the two stars, the brighter star would be nearly as bright as the full Moon appears from Earth. Zubenelgenubi is one and a half fists above due southwest at 10:30 p.m.

Thursday: Tonight the moon is new, meaning it is between the Earth and Sun. The side that is being illuminated by the Sun is facing away from us meaning we can’t see the moon and the moon is not creating light pollution. Use this time to observe the Southern Delta Aquariid meteors between midnight and dawn for the next few nights.

Friday: At 11:30 p.m., Jupiter is a half a fist above the eastern horizon and Saturn is one and a half fists above the southeastern horizon.

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 July 16, 2022

Saturday: Let’s learn about Capella. It is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the most northerly bright star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 10:30 p.m., Capella is less than a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above due north. You can also use the Big Dipper to find it.  First, find the two “cap” stars on the cup of the Big Dipper, the stars on the top of the cup. Draw a line from the “cap” star closest to the handle to the cap star farthest from the handle. Then, continue that line to the next very bright star, which is Capella. Thus, you can “cap” to Capella. If you can’t “cap” tonight, don’t worry. Capella is the brightest circumpolar star meaning it is the brightest star that never goes below the horizon from our point of view in Ellensburg.

Sunday: Say "Cheese". 172 years ago today, Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, became the first star ever photographed. The photograph was taken at the Harvard Observatory using the daguerreotype process. Vega is the third brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg, behind Sirius and Arcturus. Vega is nearly straight overhead at 11:00 tonight. 

Monday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower has a long gradual peak for the next few weeks into mid-August. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeast horizon at 3 am early this morning. You can follow this point throughout the night and for the next few weeks, as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky. Read about the shower, at https://earthsky.org/?p=159138.  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.

Tuesday: Jupiter is about a half a fist to the upper right of the Moon at 4:30 a.m. Mars is about three fists to the lower left of the Moon. Venus is even farther to the lower left, about one fist above the east-northeastern horizon.

Wednesday: Take a two and a half hour walk today. Too long, you say? Fifty-three years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first ever walk by humans on another world. They spend two and a half hours setting up scientific instruments and collecting rocks for study back on Earth. Their colleague Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the spacecraft the astronauts would use to return to Earth. While everyone seems to know about Armstrong and Aldrin, spend some time learning more about Collins by reading https://time.com/5624528/michael-collins-apollo-11/.

Thursday: The Gemini twins, first Castor and then Pollux, rise just before the Sun. They are both about a fist above the northeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m. Pollux is the brightest star, as measured from Earth, with a confirmed planet in orbit. It is likely that there are brighter stars with undiscovered planets.

Friday: Saturn is one fist above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 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.