Saturday: Today is a great day to Get Intimate… Get Intimate with the Shrub-Steppe. This annual event put on by the Kittitas Environmental Education Network includes many outdoor educational activities, with most of them taking place in the Yakima River Canyon just south of Ellensburg. There are also planetarium shows at 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00 p.m. at the CWU Lydig Planetarium on the CWU campus. Go to https://www.ycic.org/giss-and-birdfest for more information about all of the events. The planetarium shows are free. The planetarium is in Discovery Hall, found here: https://map.concept3d.com/?id=1342#!m/412895.
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 because she boasted 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: At 10:00 p.m., bright Venus is two fists above the
west-northwestern horizon and Mars is three fists above due west.
Tuesday: Have you ever seen a Black Hole? Neither have
scientists. But they have seen the effects of a Black Hole. Black holes have a
strong gravitational influence on anything that passes close to them, including
light. Cygnus X-1, the first Black Hole candidate ever discovered, is two fists
above the east-northeastern horizon at 7:00 p.m., in the middle of the neck of
Cygnus the swan. NASA launched the Chandra X-ray observatory in 1999 to study
black hole candidates and other high-energy events.
Wednesday: This morning, the moon occults, or blocks, the
planet Jupiter for most of the United States, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and
far northern Europe. As viewed from Ellensburg and much of the Pacific
Northwest, Jupiter will appear to pass just above the moon. See them both low
in the eastern sky at 5:00 a.m.
This is a great opportunity to prove to yourself that you
can see planets during the day. Follow the moon throughout the morning. Jupiter
will be to the right of the moon, appearing to move successively farther away
as the day goes by. You might need to first find it with binoculars, then move
the binoculars away to see it with the naked eye.
Thursday: If someone gives you a ring and says, “this ring
symbolizes our eternal love, just like the rings of Saturn are eternal”, don’t
doubt their love. But do doubt their astronomy knowledge. According to data
recently analyzed from the Cassini Mission, Saturn’s rings may be only 10 to
100 million years old. As Cassini passed between Saturn and the rings, it was
able to get the best estimate yet of the mass of the rings. Saturn’s rings are
made mostly of ice and are still very bright and clean. Older rings would be
darkened by debris. Also, the ring particles get pulverized by collisions over
time. If this relatively low mass of ring particles were older, they would have
been destroyed by now. For more information about the lifespan of Saturn’s
rings, go to Saturn’s rings https://www.universetoday.com/141272/saturns-rings-are-only-10-to-100-million-years-old/.
Saturn and its young rings are one and a half fists above the southeastern
horizon at 4:30 a.m.
Friday: I am guessing that some of you don’t like the line
of reasoning from Tuesday: that seeing the effects of a Black Hole is good
enough to claim there are Black Holes. You have never seen the wind. But, you
have seen the effects of the wind. And no Ellensburg resident doubts the
existence of the wind.
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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