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.
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