Saturday: Since Halloween is a month away, the stores are filled with bags of candy clusters. Use this reminder to take time to look at a star cluster. The Hyades cluster is an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the universe. Aldebaran, about one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m., is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.
Sunday: Jupiter is less than a half a fist to the lower
right of the Moon at 10:00 p.m. They are in the east-northeastern sky. At this
time, Saturn is three fists above the south-southeastern horizon.
Monday: Tonight, the Moon is partying with Seven Sisters.
The open star cluster called Pleiades, Subaru, or the Seven Sisters is about a
finger’s width above the Moon at 9:00 p.m. They are in the east-northeastern
sky.
Tuesday: Coffee. First scientists say it’s good for you.
Then they say it is bad for you. Recently, the same argument was applied to an
exomoon, a moon orbiting a planet outside our Solar System. No, astronomers are
not debating whether exomoons are good for you. Of course they are. But there
are conflicting reports over whether the initial exomoon observation shared a year
ago was real or just a blip in the data. Astronomers studied the light of a
star as a Jupiter-sized planet and then its Neptune-sized moon blocked it. This
transit method is one of the most popular ways to observe exoplanets… and maybe
exomoons. Read more about the debate at https://www.sciencealert.com/the-first-known-exomoon-is-called-into-question-in-follow-up-studies.
Wednesday: Venus, the brightest point of light in the night
sky, is about two and a half fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 6:00
a.m. Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo, is less than a half
a fist to the lower left of Venus.
Thursday: Tonight at 6:00 p.m., I’ll give a presentation
about solar eclipses at the Hal Holmes Community Center in downtown Ellensburg.
There will be educational diagrams, engaging activities, and specific
information about the October 14, 2023 annular solar eclipse and the April 8,
2024 total solar eclipse. Both of these eclipses will be partial solar eclipses
as seen in Ellensburg. Everyone who attends will get a free pair of solar
eclipse glasses for safe eclipse viewing. For more information about the
presentation, go to https://www.facebook.com/events/6736370389775583/.
For more information about the eclipses, go to https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/.
Friday: In 1987, the rock group Def Leppard sang “Pour some
sugar on me, in the name of love. Pour some sugar on me, come on, fire me up”.
In 2012, some European astronomers “found some sugar near stars, they were very
young. Found some sugar near stars, out where planets formed.” Astronomers
observed molecules of glycolaldehyde, a simple form of sugar, in the disk of
gas and dust orbiting young binary stars. This is the first time astronomers
have found this simple sugar so close to a star indicating that organic
molecules can be found in planet-forming regions of stars. For more
information, go to http://goo.gl/tfwy1.
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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