The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 27, 2024

Saturday: The Globe at Night May campaign starts today. Globe at night is a citizen science project to quantify the impact of light pollution on our view of the night sky. Go to https://globeatnight.org/campaigns/ to learn more and participate.

Sunday: Mars is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the eastern horizon at 5:10 am. The ice giant planet Neptune is to the lower left of Mars in the sky. If you follow these two planets with binoculars over the next few nights, you’ll see Mars moving noticeably with respect to the background stars. Because Neptune is much farther away, you’ll have to look very carefully to observe barely moving with respect to the background stars. Saturn is much easier to spot to the upper right of Mars, one fist above the east-southeastern horizon.

Monday: The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on May 5 and 6. Since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, you should start looking before dawn every morning this week. The moon is close to the new moon phase near the peak, meaning that the dimmer meteors will be visible then. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. The meteors appear to come from a point in the constellation Aquarius near the star Eta. This point is about one fist above the east horizon at 4:00 a.m. The Eta Aquarid meteors slam into the Earth at about 40 miles per second. They often leave a long trail. The Eta Aquarid meteors are small rocks that have broken off Halley’s Comet. For more information about the Eta Aquarids, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158833.

Tuesday: Celebrate the ending of Global Astronomy Month by reading some poems and short stories submitted by astronomy fans at https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/astroarts/astropoetry.

Wednesday: Orion stands low in the southwestern sky. At 9:00 p.m., the middle of Orion’s belt is about one fist above the west-southwest horizon. And talk about belt tightening! Alnilam, the middle star in the belt, is losing mass at a rate of about 100 thousand trillion tons a day. That’s a 1 followed by 17 zeros tons per day.

Thursday: At 8:45 p.m., Jupiter is less than a half a fist above the west-northwestern horizon. Soon Jupiter will be lost in the glare of the Sun and then move into the morning sky. There won’t be any evening naked eye stars for two months once Jupiter moves to the morning sky

Friday: “Lately, I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep. Dreaming about the things that we could be. But baby, I’ve been, I’ve been praying hard, said no more counting dollars. We’ll be counting 9,096 stars, yeah, we’ll be counting 9,096 stars.” Luckily, artistic judgment prevailed over scientific precision in the OneRepublic hit “Counting Stars”. According to the Yale Bright Star Catalog, there are 9,096 stars visible to the naked eye across the entire sky if you are observing from a very dark site. In the northern United States, where a part of the sky is never visible, that number drops to about 6,500. In the middle of a small city at mid-latitudes, like Ellensburg, that number drops to a few hundred. No wonder someone has been losing sleep. Learn more about the star count at http://goo.gl/nt8d80.

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. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 20, 2024

Saturday: In the 1979 hit song, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. This week, the Devil Comet is going down to the west-northwestern horizon just after sunset. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, which gained the nickname “Devil Comet” in 2023 when an atmospheric disruption caused it to look like it has horns. It will be below Jupiter, which is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west-northwestern horizon at 8:30 p.m. Because a comet’s light is so spread out, it will be difficult to see even with binoculars so you may have to be satisfied with reading this article: https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/04/05/when-and-how-to-spot-the-devil-comet/.

Sunday: Two of the best, and certainly the most available, “tools” for viewing the night sky are your eyes. Your eyes let you see the entire sky in just a few seconds. Your eyes can read star charts, decipher astronomy apps, and spot meteors while your friend is still setting up her tripod. Your naked eyes are not as effective as gathering light. They work well when the light source is comparatively bright, and the detailed features are fairly large. It’s best to practice on a special Solar System body known scientifically as the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. Artists such as Jan van Eyck and Leonardo da Vinci produced the first realistic naked eye depictions of the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. I challenge you to use your unaided eyes to observe craters on the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness, better known as the Moon. For a guide to the most prominent craters, go to http://goo.gl/JLhraO.

Monday: The bright star Spica is just to the right of the moon at 9:00 pm, low in the southeastern sky. Throughout the night, the moon will move slightly eastward compared to Spica such that by moonset at about 5:00 a.m., the moon and Spica will be noticeably farther apart.

Tuesday: At 5:15 a.m., Saturn is a half a fist above the east-southeastern horizon. Mars is about a fist to the lower left of Saturn, closer to due east.

Wednesday: As the rock group Journey once thought of singing, “Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’. I know where the Dipper’ll be tomorrow.” Every night, the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia make a wheel in the sky that turns around the North Star in a counterclockwise direction. Every year on April 24 at 10:00 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Every year on April 25 at 10:00 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Every year on April 26 at 10:00 p.m., the Big Dipper is straight overhead and W-shaped Cassiopeia is low on the northern horizon. Oh, am I boring you? Of course, there are subtle charges in the position from night to night. Each northern constellation moves about one degree counterclockwise from one night to the next. But this is not going to change their position in the sky drastically over a few days. So, if you know where the Big Dipper is tonight, you DO know where it’ll be tomorrow. If you are really struggling to understand this concept, Don’t Stop Believin’ in yourself. Just keep studying Faithfully.

Thursday: Some open star clusters are easy to find and see, such as The Pleiades and The Hyades clusters in the constellation Taurus the bull. Some are difficult to see. M35, an open star cluster in the constellation Gemini the Twins, is in the middle. It doesn’t jump out at you, but it is easy to find if you have help. Mars helps you tonight. M35 is about a pinky thickness below Mars, three fists above the western horizon at 9:30 p.m. It is a family of a few thousand stars about 3,000 light years away. Open star clusters are young, this one being about 100 million years old. The cluster is best seen using binoculars or a small telescope.

Friday: One hundred four years ago, tonight, the astronomers Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley were debating the distances of some of our farthest neighbors: galaxies. Curtis argued that the universe consisted of many galaxies millions of light years away. Shapley thought that the spiral structures seen in telescopes were close by as a part of the Milky Way. They also had different views on the size of the Milky Way. Learn more about their debate, called the Great Debate, at https://stardate.org/radio/program/2020-04-24. Learn more about the Milky Way by watching the center of it rise over the southeastern horizon at about 1:00 a.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. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 13, 2024

Saturday: International Dark Sky Week was earlier this month.  But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore our obligation to minimize stray light for the other 51 weeks. Lights that are aimed upward illuminate the atmosphere and obscure dim objects. Having too much light shining where it shouldn’t is considered light pollution. And just like other forms of pollution, light pollution can be hazardous to our health and the health of other animals. That’s right. Harmful. Watch this National Geographic video for more information: https://youtu.be/V_A78zDBwYE. Learn about how you can help at https://darksky.org/.

Sunday: Jupiter is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the west-northwestern horizontal 9:00 p.m. Uranus is about a finger width above it. Jupiter will move up towards Uranus for the rest of the week, passing it on Sunday. If you follow the two planets with binoculars over the next week, you’ll see Jupiter moving a lot and Uranus moving only a little with respect to the background stars, That is because Uranus is much farther away.

Monday: “The crow rises in the southeast,” said spy number one. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that code,” replied spy number two. Spy one exclaimed, “That’s because it’s not a code, you idiot. I’m talking about the constellation Corvus the crow.” This very bad spy movie dialogue is to remind you that Corvus had a very bad life. According to one myth, Corvus brought the god Apollo the news that his girlfriend was seeing someone else. In a classic case of punishing the messenger, Apollo turned the formerly beautifully colored crow black. The box-shaped Corvus is one fist above the southeastern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday: Saturn and Mars are less than a half a fist above the east-southeastern horizon at 5:30 a.m. Saturn is to the right of Mars.

Wednesday: The moon is next to the head of Leo the lion tonight. The bright star Regulus is a half a fist to the lower left of the moon at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: Do people think you have a magnetic personality? The star Cor Caroli understands how you feel. Cor Caroli has one of the strongest magnetic fields among main sequence stars similar to our Sun. This strong magnetic field is thought to produce large sunspots that cause the brightness of Cor Caroli to vary. Cor Caroli is nearly straight overhead at midnight.

Friday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower peaks over the next week, with the peak of the peak occurring from Sunday night to Monday morning. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about three fists above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to observe meteor showers is between midnight and dawn. Typically, this is one of the least interesting major meteor showers of the year, with 10-20 bright, fast meteors per hour. However, it is also one of the most unpredictable. As recently as 1982, there were 90 meteors visible during a single hour. In addition, the Lyrid meteor shower has historical interest because it was one of the first ones observed. Chinese records say “stars fell like rain” in the shower of 687 B.C. 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. For more information, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158735.

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. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 6, 2024

Saturday: Jupiter is one and a half fists above the western horizon at 8:30 p.m.

Sunday: Astronomers are often fascinated with large objects. Planets that could hold 1000 Earths (Jupiter). Stars that would fill up the entire inner Solar System (Betelgeuse). Galaxies with 400 billion stars (Milky Way). But what about the smallest objects? One of the smallest stars is Proxima Centauri, the closest known star other than our Sun. It is about 12% of the mass of the Sun. Earlier this year, astronomers announced the discovery of a possible third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri indicating that even very small stars can have planets. The smallest theoretically possible star would be about 7.5% of the mass of the Sun. Any smaller and it could not support the nuclear reactions characteristic of stars. For more on small stars, go to http://goo.gl/EHBdOX.

Monday: The Great North American total solar eclipse happens today. The shadow path starts off the west coast of Mexico. It enters the United States in Texas and continues northeast through Maine and into the eastern provinces of Canada. The entire lower 48 states will at least see a solar eclipse. The moon will cover about 23% of the Sun from Ellensburg. The American Astronomical Society (AAS) and Big Kid Science have teamed up to make a simple and useful app that provides the exact time of the event in your location. The app, called Totality, it shows the path superimposed on a USA map. Go to https://eclipse.aas.org/totality for more information on how to download.

Tuesday: The stars in the Hyades Cluster are all young, as stars are judged, formed in the same cloud of gas and dust a few hundred million years ago. But just as children move away from home, the stars of the Hyades Cluster are slowly drifting apart. Millennia from now, future sky watchers will see these stars as random points of light in the sky and not as a family. I hope they at least call home every so often. For more information, go to https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/end-hyades-star-cluster/. The Hyades Cluster is two fists above due west at 9:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Saturn is a pinky width above Mars this morning. They are on the eastern horizon at 5:30 a.m.

Thursday: You probably didn’t know this but several British New Wave bands were really into astronomy. Take the band “Dead or Alive” (please). The original lyrics to their song “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) were actually: “You spin me right round, baby, right round, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, right round, round, round.” (Well, that’s what I thought they were.) The Whirlpool Galaxy was the first galaxy observed to have a spiral shape. Since then, astronomers have discovered many galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, have a spiral shape. Go to https://esahubble.org/images/heic0506a/ for more information about the Whirlpool Galaxy. Go to your small telescope to find the Whirlpool Galaxy in the night sky. It is in the constellation Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. At 10:00 p.m., find Alkaid, the end star of the Big Dipper handle, five and a half fists above the east-northeastern horizon. The Whirlpool Galaxy is two fingers to the upper right of Alkaid

Friday: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks later this month. But there will be increased meteor activity in the vicinity of the constellation Lyra until then. The meteors appear to come from a point to the right of the bright bluish star Vega in the constellation Lyra the lyre. This point is about one and a half fists above the northeast horizon at 10:30 p.m. and close to straight overhead near dawn. Go to https://earthsky.org/?p=158735 for more information.

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. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.