The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of September 3, 2022

Saturday: Jupiter and Saturn line up in the southeastern sky at 11:00 p.m. Saturn is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southern horizon and Jupiter is two and a half fists above the eastern horizon. 

Sunday: “Excuse me, do you have the time?”

“No, but the Big Dipper does.”

You can use the orientation of the Big Dipper to tell time with a precision of about 15-30 minutes. First, find the two stars at the far end of the Big Dipper cup, the stars that do not touch the handle. Draw an imaginary line segment starting at the North Star and passing through the two Big Dipper cup stars. Now, draw a big circle around the North Star. Your circle is a 24-hour clock. Number the circle from 0 hours at the top, counterclockwise to 12 hours at the bottom of the circle, and back up to 24 hours at the top. (O hours and 24 hours are the same on this clock because the day is 24 hours long.) The hour number on the big circle closest to where your imaginary line intersects this circle is called your raw time. Due to the location of the Big Dipper compared to the rest of the stars, the time nearest the intersection (the raw time) is correct for March 6. For any other night, subtract two times the number of months the current date is after March 6 from the raw time. For example, let’s say the imaginary line between the North Star and the Dipper stars is pointed to the right. That means the raw time is 18 hours or 6 p.m. If you made this observation tonight, which is six months after March 6, you would subtract two times six or 12 hours from the raw time.  Don’t forget to convert for daylight savings time if needed. For a more complete explanation on how to do the Big Dipper clock math, go to http://goo.gl/02HmA. If you prefer a more visual tool, and a fun project to do with your kids, there is a simple “star clock” template and instructions at https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/make-a-star-clock/. Use this paper star clock whenever your watch is broken. The Big Dipper is in the northwestern sky at 9:00 p.m. tonight.

Monday: Labor Day was the brainchild of labor unions and is dedicated to American workers. The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882. The Greek mythical hero Hercules probably wished there was a Labor Day to commemorate his work. As punishment for killing his family while he was temporarily insane, he had to perform twelve nearly impossible tasks such as killing monsters or stealing things from deities. Hmmm. Maybe we shouldn’t commemorate his labors. But we can enjoy his constellation. The keystone asterism representing the body of Hercules is six fists held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon at 10:00 p.m. For more information about the Labors of Hercules, go to http://goo.gl/ozVF5.

Tuesday: The asteroid Juno is in opposition tonight. That doesn’t mean that Juno says “no” when you say “yes”. Opposition means that Juno is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. When an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the day. Thus, opposition is typically the best time to observe an asteroid or planet. Pallas is three fists above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m. First find Jupiter and Saturn two and a half fists above the southeastern and southern horizon.

Wednesday: School starts this week so it is time for a little geometry review. A square is a regular quadrilateral. This means it has four equal sides, four equal angles, and wears old fashioned clothing. Go outside at 10:00 p.m. tonight with a notebook in hand to sketch one. The Great Square of Pegasus is balancing on its corner three fists above the eastern horizon. The top corner of the square is two fists above the bottom corner. The other two corners are to the left and right of the line segment connecting the top and bottom corners. 

Thursday: Geometry review, part 2. Go outside at 10:00 p.m. tonight with a notebook in hand. (Good teaching involves a little repetition.) A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three line segments as sides. A good example is the Summer Triangle made up of the bright stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. Altair is five fists above the southern horizon. Vega, the brightest star in the triangle, is seven fists above the western horizon. Deneb is a little bit east of straight overhead.  

Friday: Mars is about a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 11:30 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 August 27, 2022

Saturday: Jupiter and Saturn line up in the southeastern sky at 10:00 p.m. Saturn is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeastern horizon and Jupiter is one fist above the eastern horizon. Astronomers discovered volcanoes spewing water vapor on Saturn’s moon Enceledus back in 2005. Just two years ago, scientists published findings of similar activity on Jupiter’s moon Europa. It’s not possible to see Enceladus with a small telescope. But you can see Europa using a small telescope.  If you look at 10:00 p.m., you’ll see all four large moons: three on one side and Europa on the other, about four Jupiter diameters from Jupiter. For more information about Europa’s geysers, go to https://earthsky.org/space/europa-water-vapor-geysers-goddard. 

Sunday: Mars is about a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon at midnight.

Monday: Had the script been written a little differently for a well-known Robin Williams movie, we might have heard Mr. Williams shout, “Goooood Morning Orion the hunter”. Orion is typically thought of as a winter constellation. But, it makes its first appearance in the early morning summer sky. The lowest corner of Orion’s body, represented by the star Saiph (pronounced “safe”), rises at 2:00 a.m. By 5:30 a.m., Orion’s belt is three fists above the south-southeastern horizon. 

Tuesday: Need a caffeine pick-me-up? Make it a double. Need an astronomy pick-me-up? Make it a double double. Find Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, nearly straight overhead at 9:00 tonight. Less than half a fist to the east (or left if you are facing south) of the bright bluish star Vega is the “star” Epsilon Lyra. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through binoculars, it looks like two stars. If you look at Epsilon Lyra through a large enough telescope, you will notice that each star in the pair is itself a pair of stars.  Each star in the double is double. Hence, Epsilon Lyra is known as the double double. The stars in each pair orbit a point approximately in the center of each respective pair. The pairs themselves orbit a point between the two pairs.

Wednesday: While you were looking through your underwear drawer for clean socks, some citizen scientists were looking through sky maps obtained by robotic telescopes to find brown dwarfs. The project, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, allows anyone with a computer and internet connection to search through thousands of images to find these strange objects that are midway between being classified as large planets and small stars. Some brown dwarfs can have surface temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius, the recently discovered ones are cooler than the boiling point of water and may even have clouds of water vapor! Read more about the discovery and how you can participate in this project at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-159. 

Thursday: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout. The galactic center, I pour it out.” (I’m a Little Teapot, astronomy version, 2021.) Despite its great size and importance, the center of our Milky Way galaxy and its giant black hole remains hidden to the naked eye behind thick clouds of gas and dust. By plotting the orbits of stars near the middle of the galaxy, astronomers have determined that the black hole’s mass is equal to about 4.5 million Suns. While you can’t see the actual galactic center, you can gaze in the direction of the center by looking just to the right of the teapot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius. This point is about one fist above the south-southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Friday: One of the most important lessons to learn in science class is to always save your data. Even if the data looks “wrong” or you don’t think it contains important information, you never know what future researchers might find in it. Two years ago, Kepler space telescope scientists reanalyzed older data and discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its host star. It turns out the previous computer algorithm misidentified it. Maybe there are other Earth-cousins hiding in the data somewhere. Read more about it at https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/earth-size-habitable-zone-planet-found-hidden-in-early-nasa-kepler-data.

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 August 20, 2022

Saturday: “The sky is black (or light polluted), the stars are white (or red or orange or yellow or blue), the whole world gazes upon the sight (except where there are too many city lights or people are lazy.” Wow. It is difficult to write a flowing set of lyrics when there are so many parenthetical thoughts. Most people think of the sky’s blackness as a lack of stars. But dark patches in the Milky Way are actually massive clouds of dust that are blocking the stars behind them. Two of the most prominent are dark nebulae B142 and B143 in the constellation Aquila the eagle. These are easy to find and enjoy with binoculars. First find the bright white star Altair, five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeastern horizon at 10 p.m. Then move your binoculars up a little bit to the next bright star Tarazed, about one fifth as bright. B142 and B143 are to the upper right of Tarazed. They make an “E” shape in the sky; fitting because American astronomer E. E. Barnard first proposed that these were dust clouds and not simply big spaces between the stars. For more information about dark nebulae, including many more to look at with binoculars, go to https://goo.gl/9tiqdh.  

Sunday: Arcturus is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon at 10:00 p.m. This star, whose name means bear watcher, is the brightest in the sky’s northern hemisphere. It follows Ursa Major, the Great Bear, around the North Star. Arcturus is the closest giant star to Earth. It is one of the few stars whose diameter can be measured directly rather than being inferred from its density and mass, which themselves are derived from other parameters. 

Monday: Saturn is two fists above the southeastern horizon at 10:30 p.m. Jupiter is one fist above the eastern horizon at this time.

Tuesday: Deneb is straight overhead at 11:30 p.m. When you look at Deneb, you are seeing light that left Deneb about 2,600 years ago.

Wednesday: All stars rotate. Our Sun takes a little less than one Earth month to rotate once on its axis. Astronomers studied the relationship between mass, stellar rotation, and planetary formation by aiming NASA’s recently retired Kepler space telescope toward the Pleiades open star cluster. All 1,000 stars in this group are nearly the same age, 125 million years old. Since all of the stars are the same age and formed from the same set of materials, astronomers have the ideal “laboratory” to isolate the role star mass plays on star rotation and evolution. Read more about the findings at http://goo.gl/osijIY. See the Pleiades for yourself, a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 11:15 p.m.

Thursday: Seventeenth century astronomers documented the appearance of a new star, or “nova”, in 1670. However, as modern astronomers studied the records of the star, called Nova Vulpeculae 1670, they realized it didn’t have the characteristics of a typical nova because it didn’t repeatedly brighten and dim. It brightened twice and disappeared for good. Turning their telescopes to the region, they discovered the chemical signature to be characteristic of a very rare collision of two stars. For more information about this discovery, go to http://goo.gl/rJnC2G. Nova Vulpeculae 1670 is right below the binary star system Alberio, the head of Cygnus the swan. Alberio is seven fists above due south at 10:15 p.m.

Friday: Mars is finally rising at a semi-reasonable hour. It is a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon at midnight.

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 August 13, 2022

Tickets go on sale this week for Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience in New York. According to a press release about the experience, “mesmerizing lights will transform the landscape into a magical outdoor trail”. If you can't make it to New York to see the whomping willow, read your local newspaper instead.

Saturday: One minor Harry Potter character actually has two well-known star names: Regulus Arcturus Black, the brother of Sirius Black who is Harry Potter’s godfather. Regulus Black was a former follower of Voldemort, the bad guy of the Harry Potter series. However, Regulus tried to dissociate himself from Voldemort and was killed. In the sixth book, Harry found an important note written by someone known only by the initials R.A.B. Hmmm. R.A.B. Regulus Arcturus Black perhaps? Regulus the star is right in line with the Sun at this time of year so it is not visible. Arcturus, the second brightest star visible in the nighttime sky in Washington and at Hogwarts, is three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Sunday: In The Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter takes his astronomy O.W.L. (Ordinary Wizarding Level) and claims to see Venus in the sky. Unfortunately, Venus was not up in June of 1996 when Harry would have been observing. Luckily, Venus is above the horizon for us now. It is a half fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m. Mars is five fists above the east-southeastern horizon at this time.

Monday: Bellatrix Lestrange is Sirius Black’s cousin. But, certainly not kissing cousins. They are killing cousins. Bellatrix kills Sirius in a fight at the Ministry of Magic. Bellatrix the star is the third brightest star in the constellation Orion the hunter. It is three fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m.

Tuesday: Of course, Bellatrix is in cahoots with “he who must not be named”. Now, that’s a poorly written sentence, using an obscure synonym for “conspiring” and a vague reference to someone. I must be under the curse “writicus dreadfulium”. Clearly this is the work of Tom Riddle, whose mother is named Merope Gaunt. Merope is a star in the Pleiades, an open star cluster about five and a half fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 5:00 a.m.

Wednesday: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter’s young nemesis, is related to Sirius Black. Draco’s mother, Narcissa Black (Sirius’ cousin), helped develop a plan to trap Harry at the Ministry of Magic in the fifth book. Draco’s namesake, the constellation Draco the dragon, is one of the largest constellations in the sky, winding around the North Star. Draco’s head is a four-sided figure nearly straight overhead at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, is one and a half fists above the south-southwestern horizon at 10:30 p.m. Draco Malfoy was so impressed with this constellation name that he used it for the first name of his son. At this same time, Jupiter is a little less than a half a fist above the eastern horizon and Saturn is a half fists above the moon.

Friday: Not every woman in the Black family is evil. Let’s focus on the good. Andromeda Black, Bellatrix’s sister, is a good witch and the mother of Tonks, a young witch from the last few Harry Potter books. (If these Harry Potter references are confusing, you better start reading the books.) Andromeda the constellation is an interesting one. It contains the Andromeda galaxy, the most distant object visible with the naked eye from a dark site. To locate the Andromeda Galaxy, first find the Great Square of Pegasus. At 11:00 p.m., the left hand corner of the square is four fists above the eastern horizon. Less than two fists to the left and down a little bit is another star the same brightness as the star at the corner of the square. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light known as the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of about one trillion stars and is 2.5 million light years away. If you are having trouble seeing the Andromeda Galaxy, shoot for an easier target.

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 August 6, 2022

Saturday: Antares is a half a fist to the lower left of the moon. They are one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southwestern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Sunday: Jupiter is about a half a fist above the eastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Monday: The Gemini Twins are rising right before the Sun. At 5:00 a.m., Pollux is one and a half fists above the east-northeastern horizon. Slightly dimmer Castor is a half a fist above it. Pollux is the brightest star, as observed from Earth, known to have a planet orbiting it. The planet, creatively called Pollux b, has about twice the mass of Jupiter. Very bright Venus is right below the Gemini Twins, a half a fist above the horizon.

Tuesday: At 5:00 a.m., Mars is nearly five fists above the southeastern horizon. Uranus is about a half a fist to the upper right of Mars. With your binoculars, move Mars to the lower left portion. Uranus will be in the upper right portion. You won’t be able to see it without binoculars/

Wednesday: You’ve seen all of the top 100 lists: top 100 ways to chew gum, top 100 Eritrean restaurants in Washington, etc. Now get excited for tomorrow night’s full Moon by reading about and finding some of the lunar 100. Go to http://goo.gl/ldGvH6. This list describes 100 interesting landmarks on the Moon that are visible from Earth. They are listed from easiest to see, starting with the entire moon itself at number 1, to most difficult (Mare Marginis swirls, anyone?). Stay up all night to binge watch the moon or just make a few observations a month. It’s your decision. It’s our moon. Start your viewing tonight at 10:00 p.m. when the Moon is a half a fist above due southwest. I suggest starting with Mare Crisium, the circular, dark, basaltic plain in the upper right-hand portion of the moon. Items such as Crisium were named "Mare" by early astronomers who mistook them for seas, instead of the hardened lava beds that they really are. 

Thursday: Saturn is a half a fist above the nearly full moon, low in the southeastern sky at 10:00 p.m.

The Perseid meteor shower peaks over the next two late nights/early mornings. The Full Moon will obscure the dimmer meteors. In case you decide to stay in bed this week, the shower is active until about September 1 so you may still enjoy an increased number of meteors later. The meteors appear to come from a point just below the W of the constellation Cassiopeia. This point is about three fists above the northeast horizon at 11:00 p.m. By dawn, this point is nearly straight overhead. 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.

Friday: If you want to show your loved ones a celestial sign that they should hang up their clothes, show them Brocchi's Cluster, commonly known as the Coat Hanger cluster because of its resemblance to an upside down coat hanger. The cluster is six fists above due south at 11:00 p.m., midway between Altair and Vega, the two brightest stars in the Summer Triangle. You'll need binoculars to make out the shape. First find Altair five fists above the southern horizon. Slowly move your binoculars up toward Vega. You will run into the coat hanger along the way. And while you are at it, put away your shoes.

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.