The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 29, 2025

Saturday: Some people in town today for the Yakima River Canyon Marathon may have been looking for a little running inspiration. While nothing can take the place of a 20-mile run for marathon preparation (I know), certain objects in the night sky are inspiring. In the Bible, Job specifically mentions the star Arcturus, or the bear keeper, to his friend as a sign of God's majesty. He describes God as that "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers (constellations) of the south" (Job 9:9, King James Version). Whatever your religious beliefs, it is clear that Job was impressed with this very bright star. See the star that inspired Job about two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 10:30 p.m. Also, Orion is two fists above the southwestern horizon and Pleiades is two fists above the western horizon.

Sunday: The Global Astronomy Month (GAM) of April starts this week. Go to https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/global-astronomy-month for more information about events. If you want to take a chance on a spur of the moment event, visit their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/astronomerswithoutborders/

Monday: At 9:30 p.m., Jupiter is nearly four fists above the western horizon and Mars is six fists above the southwestern horizon.

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 five and a half fists above the eastern horizon at 6:00 a.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: Venus is just above the eastern horizon at 6:15 a.m.

Thursday: Last week you looked at something fuzzy, the Milky Way. So, reward yourself tonight by looking at something sharp and detailed. The OSIRIS-REx mission sent back the highest resolution global map of any Solar System object, the asteroid Bennu. Using pictures taken from just three to five kilometers above the surface, the map has a resolution of five centimeters per pixel, the most detailed map of any object other than Earth. Go to https://www.asteroidmission.org/bennu_global_mosaic/ to download the map.

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. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 22, 2025

Saturday: At 9:00, Jupiter is four and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon and Mars is six and a half fists above

Sunday: Signs of spring: flower buds, leaves on the trees, beetle larvae, and the Spring Triangle. The bright stars Regulus, Arcturus, and Spica rise as evening starts. By 10:00 p.m., Regulus is five and a half fists above the south-southeast horizon, Arcturus is two and a half fists above due east, and Spica is one fist above the east-southeast horizon. For more on the Spring Triangle, go to https://www.livescience.com/space/vernal-equinox-how-to-see-spring-begin-just-by-looking-at-the-stars.

Monday: Because the Earth slowly wobbles like a spinning top, the vernal equinox is slowly moving into the constellation Aquarius. By the year 2597, the vernal equinox will reach the constellation Aquarius, and the “Age of Aquarius” will begin. Until then, we’ll be in “the age of Pisces.”

Tuesday: The red supergiant Antares is one and a half fists above due south at 5:20 a.m.

Wednesday: The brightest star in the head of Draco the dragon is called Eltanin, based on the Arabic At-Tinnin or “great serpent.” It is currently about 150 light years away. Eltanin is moving towards our Solar System. In 1.5 million years, it will be only 28 light years away and the brightest star in the night sky, nearly as bright as Sirius is currently. Eltanin is three fists above the northeastern horizon at midnight.

Thursday: Venus is about a finger width above the eastern horizon at 6:10 a.m., just ahead of the rising Sun.

Friday: The Milky Way is easy to spot in the early spring sky. Just look up. Everything you see in the sky, including that bird that just startled you, is in the Milky Way. But even the path of densely packed stars in the plane of our galaxy that look like a river of milk is easy to find. Face due west at 9:00 p.m. in a fairly open area. The fuzzy Milky Way path starts due south, moves upward past the bright star Sirius, near Mars, towards the bright star Capella, through W-shaped Cassiopeia and down to due north where the bright star Deneb sits just above the horizon.

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 March 15, 2025

Saturday: Mercury and Venus, the brighter of the two, are about a half a fist above the western horizon at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday: If you want to put somebody off, tell her or him to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon. At 10:05 p.m., it will be as close as it gets to the horizon, about two degrees above due north. Watch it reach this due north position about 4 minutes earlier each night.

Monday: Ask someone which day in March has the same duration day and night. Go ahead, ask someone. Why are you still reading this? I can wait. If that person said the first day of spring, they are wrong. Today, a few days before the first day of spring, is the date in which day and night are closest in duration in central Washington. There are two main reasons for this. First, the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is already below the horizon. This makes the Sun appear to rise before it actually rises and appear to set after it actually sets. Second, spring starts when the center of the Sun passes through the point called the vernal equinox. But the Sun is not a point. The upper edge of the Sun rises about a minute before the center of the Sun and the lower edge sets a minute after the center of the Sun. Thus, even if we didn’t have an atmosphere that bends the sunlight, daytime on the first day of spring would still be longer than 12 hours.

Tuesday: Many artists have sung the song “Blue Moon.” But few have sung the song “Blue Planet.” It goes, in part “Blue Planet, you saw me standing with 28 others. Rolling around like a barrel. Without close sisters or brothers.” It’s about the planet Uranus, which orbits the Sun in a rolling motion and has 28 moons. 25 of Uranus’ moons are named after characters in works by William Shakespeare and three are from the poem “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope. Uranus is two and a half fists above due west at 9:30 p.m. It is a half a fist below the Pleiades open star cluster.

Wednesday: At 8:30 p.m., Mars is nearly seven fists above the southern horizon and Jupiter is five fists above the west-southwestern horizon.

Thursday: Look up in the sky. It’s a plane. It’s a bird. No, it’s the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox!? Spring starts at 1:59 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The first day of spring is often called the vernal equinox. This label for the day is misleading. The vernal equinox is actually the point in the sky where the Sun’s apparent path with respect to the background stars (called the ecliptic) crosses the line that divides the stars into northern and southern celestial hemispheres (called the celestial equator). This point is in the constellation Pisces the fishes. At the vernal equinox, the Sun is moving from the southern region of background stars to the northern region.

Friday: If you know exactly where to look in the sky, you can see a few bright planets when the Sun is out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is always watching the sky when the Sun is out… because it is always watching the Sun! Most of the SOHO images are filtered images of the Sun’s photosphere, the top of the visible layer. But two images, the LASCO C2 and C3, place a mask over the Sun to observe the Sun’s corona as well as solar system objects that pass near the Sun. For the next few days, For more about using SOHO to observe Solar System objects, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/planets-and-comets-cant-hide-from-sohos-eye/.

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 March 8, 2025

Saturday:  Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight for the annual ritual called daylight savings. Daylight savings originated in the United States during World War I to save energy for the war effort. But a recent study by two economists shows that switching to daylight savings time may actually lead to higher utility bills. When the economists compared the previous few years of energy bills in the section of Indiana that just started observing daylight savings, they discovered that switching to daylight savings cost Indiana utility customers $8.6 million in electricity. In an even more important consequence of daylight savings, Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia discovered a 7% jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after we "spring ahead". Blame it on the lost hour of sleep. And sky watchers will lose even more sleep because the sky stays light for an additional hour.

Sunday: The bright planet Venus is about a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon at 8:00 p.m. Mercury is a half a list to the lower left of Venus.

Monday: Avast ye matey. Swab the poop deck. Pirates love astronomy. In fact, the term “poop” in poop deck comes from the French word for stern (poupe) which comes from the Latin word Puppis. Puppis is a constellation that represents the raised stern deck of Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. Argo Nevis was an ancient constellation that is now split into the constellations Puppis, Vela and Carina. The top of Puppis is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south and about a fist and a half to the left of the bright star Sirius at 9:45 p.m. Zeta Puppis, the hottest, and thus the bluest, naked eye star in the sky at 40,000 degrees Celsius, is about a half a fist above due south at this time.

Tuesday: “Oooo, they’re little runaways. Orion’s stars moved fast. Tried to make a getaway. Ooo-oo, they’re little runaways,” sang Bon Jovi in his astronomical hit “Runaway. At least that’s what I hear when I listen to the song. After all, it fits the recently calculated trajectory of AE Aurigae, Mu Columbae, and 53 Arietis. Extrapolating the actual motion of these three stars back in time, they were all in the location of the star-forming region called the Orion Nebula a few million years ago. What kicked these stars out? Not paying rent? Excessive partying? No, it was simply gravitational interactions with near-by stars. Find out more about the eviction at http://goo.gl/UeLwKQ. The Orion Nebula is visible with the naked eye from a very dark site, about two and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Wednesday: At 9:00 p.m., Jupiter is five fists above the southwestern horizon and Mars is nearly seven fists above due south.

Thursday: There is a total lunar eclipse tonight. Total lunar eclipses are not as noticeable as total solar eclipses because light still reaches the Moon even when it is completely blocked by the Earth. That is because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens and bends rays of light toward the Moon that would normally miss the Moon. However, that doesn’t mean the Moon looks the same during a total lunar eclipse as it does during a normal full moon.

Sunlight is white. White light is the sum of all the colors in the visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). Our atmosphere scatters the blue component of the Sun’s white light. That is why our sky is blue. (If our atmosphere consisted of different gasses, we would likely have a different colored sky.) When the Sun or Moon is near the horizon, the light passes through a lot of the atmosphere meaning more of the blue end of the spectrum is scattered and the Sun or Moon looks redder than when it is high in the sky. During a total lunar eclipse, sunlight passes through a large slice of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining light that reaches the Moon is reddish. Some people say the fully eclipsed Moon looks Blood Red! These people exaggerate. It appears a dull reddish color.

From the perspective of Ellensburg in the Pacific Time Zone, the partial eclipse stage will start at 10:09 p.m. The Moon will slowly move into the Earth’s shadow and get dark from left to right. By 11:26 p.m., the Moon will be fully eclipsed. The total eclipse lasts until 12:31 a.m. The moon will be moving out of the earth’s darkest shadow or umbra until 1:47 a.m. After that, the moon will look white, just like a normal full moon. Thus, during the entire eclipse, the moon looks white, then black, then red all over. For more information about the eclipse, including information about the specific times for your location, go to https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2025-march-14.

Friday: “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 bad spy movie dialogue is to remind you that Corvus had a 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 9:30 p.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.