The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of January 18, 2025

Saturday: Saturn is just to the lower left of the very bright Venus, two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due southwest at 6:00 p.m. And this is just the start of Solar System neighborliness, also called a planetary alignment. Neptune is about a fist to the upper left of Venus. Neptune is difficult to find, even with binoculars. Also visible with binoculars is Uranus. However, it is easier to find than Neptune for two reasons. First, it is about seven times brighter. Second, it is close to an easy-to-find object. First find the bright open star cluster called the Pleiades, a tiny cup-looking object nearly six fists above the southeastern horizon. With the Pleiades on the far left of your binocular field of view, there will be a little arch of four stars of similar brightness near or just outside the right of your field of view. Under this arch is a point of light that is a little dimmer. This point of light and the arch make an ice cream cone shape. The point of light at the bottom is Uranus. You’ll know you’ve found the correct point of light if it moves a tiny bit compared to the neighboring stars over the next few weeks. The next planet is easy to see - Jupiter - nearly six fists above due southeast. Finally, Mars is nearly three and a half fists above due east.

Sunday: Winter is the best season for finding bright stars. And if you only want to set aside a few minutes, 10:00 p.m. tonight is a great time because the winter hexagon is due south. Starting at the bottom, find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, two and a half fists above the southern horizon. Going clockwise, Procyon (8^th brightest star in the night sky) is about two and a half fists to the upper left of Sirius. Pollux (17^th brightest) is about two and a half fists above Procyon (and right above the planet Mars). Capella (6^th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Procyon and close to straight overhead. Going back to Sirius at the bottom, Rigel (7^th brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Sirius. Aldebaran (14^th brightest) is about three fists above Rigel (and right below the planet Jupiter). Adhara (22nd brightest) is a little more than a fist below Sirius and Castor (24^th brightest) is right above Pollux. Betelgeuse (10th brightest) is in the center of the hexagon, five fists above due south. That’s nine of the 24 brightest stars visible in the night sky congregated in one small section of the sky.

Monday: Spica is less than a fist to the right of the moon in the southwestern sky at 7:00 a.m. Tomorrow at this time, it will be a half a fist to the right of the moon, providing a great way to determine how much the moon appears to move in the sky over one day.

Tuesday: This week is, on average, the coldest of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace. Fornax the furnace is one fist above due south at 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Wintertime weather in the northern USA can be crazy cold. Astronomers have recently discovered some brown dwarf stars have crazy hot weather. Brown dwarfs and small stars that are not massive enough to fuse hydrogen atoms and fuse hydrogen. But they are active enough to have a toxic chemical atmosphere that is as hot as a candle flame with clouds of hast moving silicate particles. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have the most detailed “weather map” of brown dwarfs ever. Read more about them at https://www.reuters.com/science/webb-telescope-reveals-wild-weather-cosmic-brown-dwarfs-2024-07-15/. 

Thursday: Do you ever take photos to spy on your neighbors? The Hubble Space Telescope does. In 2019, Hubble scientists released the best image of the Triangulum Galaxy, the second closest spiral galaxy to Earth. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys weaved together 54 separate images to provide enough detail to see 10 million individual stars out of the estimated 40 billion stars in the galaxy. See the pictures at https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1901/. At 8:00 p.m., the Triangulum Galaxy is six and a half fists above the southwestern horizon. It is barely visible with binoculars. First find the Great Square of Pegasus, centered four fists above the western horizon. It is tripped so it appears to be balanced on a corner. Go to the top star in the tilted square, called Alpheratz. Move your binoculars about one binocular field of view, about a half a fist above the corner star. You’ll see a pair of stars of similar brightness in that field of view. Then move your binoculars up another field of view to two stars that are a little brighter and a little farther apart than the previous pair. The brighter of the two is named Mirach. About one binocular field of view, or about a half a fist to the right of Mirach is the largest galaxy in our neighborhood and the brightest in the sky: the Andromeda Galaxy. About one binocular field of view, or about a half a fist to the left of Mirach is the Triangulum Galaxy, also known as Messier 33 (M 33). The Triangulum is much more challenging to see with binoculars, which makes the Hubble image even more impressive.

Friday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But the constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist above due north at 9:30 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the constellation, is at the lower left-hand corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically correct 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.