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.