The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 13, 2020

 

Even though the CWU commencement ceremony will be virtual this year, your graduate deserves a gift. Why not get her or him a star? I don’t mean from one of those organizations that offer to “register the name of YOUR star with the U.S. Patent Office”. No company owns the right to name stars after people. Besides, the stars that those companies “name” are so dim you can’t find them. In this column, I’ll pick a constellation and representative star for each of the four colleges at CWU. Then, I’ll briefly tell the story of the constellation and relate that story to the aspect of public service CWU graduates from that college are uniquely qualified to engage in based on my version of sky interpretation. If different couples can have “their” song, then your favorite college graduate can have her or his star. Celebrate with your favorite CWU 2020 graduate at the virtual ceremony shown here: http://www.cwu.edu/commencement/. 

Today: College of Arts and Humanities: You are the people who interpret the world in unique ways. Then, you share those ways with others. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed everyone he met when he played the lyre or harp. After his wife died tragically, he journeyed to the underworld to charm its inhabitants in an effort to win his wife back to the living world. Your service reminder: use your talent to bring joy to others. The constellation Lyra and its bright star Vega should remind you of the power of the arts. Vega is five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the eastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Sunday: "Do I have to wake up yet? It's so early!" This next week gives us the earliest sunrises for the northern part of the United States, including Ellensburg.  "Wait, I thought this happened on the longest day of the year, which hasn't occurred yet." Because the Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, the sunrise and sunset time is not symmetric so the earliest sunrise occurs before the longest day and the latest sunset occurs after the longest day. Go to http://earthsky.org/?p=4027 to read more about this phenomenon. 

Monday: College of Business. You are the future movers and shakers. The future CEOs. The future big donors to Central. Auriga represented a king of Athens who happened to be mobility impaired. Instead of sitting around waiting for others to transport him, he took the initiative to invent the four-wheeled chariot. He solved a problem for a special need. Your service reminder: address the problems of those in the most need. To remind you of that, look to the constellation Auriga. Its bright star Capella is about a half a fist above the north-northwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Tuesday: College of Education and Professional Studies. You are the teachers. The craftspeople. The technical experts. Bootes, the herdsman, was such a person. Bootes’ job was to guide the northern constellations to the feeding place and the watering hole. He and his dogs were especially in charge of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the greater and lesser bears. Your service reminder: guide others to a better place in life. Look to the constellation Bootes and its bright star Arcturus to remind you of this. Arcturus is five and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Jupiter and Saturn are about one fist above due southeast at midnight. Jupiter is by far the brighter of the two.

Thursday: College of the Sciences. You are the people who will systematically study how the world works. Agriculture is an important scientific application. Each year, farmers must use the findings of science to be successful. Who better to represent the College of the Sciences than Virgo, the goddess of the harvest? Virgo looms large in the sky holding an ear of wheat in her hand. Your service reminder: study the practical aspects of the scientific world. The ear of wheat, and your service reminder, is represented by the bright star Spica. Spica is two and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m. 

Friday: It is usually very difficult to see any celestial objects in the sky just a few minutes before sunrise. Binoculars and using the Moon as a guide really help. This morning, Venus is less than a half a fist to the upper right of the waning crescent Moon at 5:00 a.m. For an added challenge, try to find Aldebaran, a half a fist below the Moon and a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon. A few minutes after sunrise, you should still be able to spot Venus, even though it is daylight. For an added challenge, use your binoculars to keep scanning the sky to the right of the Moon for Venus throughout the day. Observers in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada will be able to see Venus emerge from behind the Moon. For more information about this Moon-Venus conjunction, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/watch-moon-pair-venus-june-19th/.

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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 6, 2020

Saturday:  The CWU campus is closed. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department and the College of the Sciences is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show today from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU professor Bruce Palmquist will host the Intergalactic Planetarium Short “Film” Festival. You’ll see a variety of short Worldwide Telescope Tours created by CWU Astronomy and Douglas Honors College students featuring videos about the Solar System, star formation, and Harry Potter astronomy. Stay at home, practice good physical distancing, and visit https://cwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuduChqz8jGdQ86cUyKBKmR2K_jdcEqSx- to register for the Virtual tour.

Sunday: Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon line up left to right, low in the southeastern sky at midnight. By 4:00 a.m., they are two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south.

Monday: According to an Australian Aboriginal legend, a young man was undergoing an initiation rite that required that he avoid contact with women. But the two wives of his brother liked him so they seduced him. When his brother found out, he set fire to the house they were in. The young man and the two women escape by casting a spear into the Milky Way and pulling themselves into the sky. What does this have to do with astronomy? In the legend, the man becomes a bright, pulsating red star and the women become two dimmer white stars above and below him.  What does this have to do with you? You can see the bright red pulsating star called Antares making its way into the evening sky. It is one fist above the south-southeastern horizon at 10 p.m. What stands out about this story is that aboriginal culture must have been paying attention to variations in star brightness long before the “official” discovery of variable stars in the late sixteenth century. For more about aboriginal star observations, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/aboriginal-australians-observed-red-giant-variability/. 

Tuesday: The stars Pollux and Castor, along with the planet Mercury, make a small downward-pointing triangle centered about one fist above the west-northwest horizon. Pollux and Castor are at the top of the triangle, representing the heads of the Gemini twins. Mercury is between the hips of the twins.

Wednesday: Summer is nearly here. How do I know? Because the days are very long. Because the temperature is rising. Because the school year is ending. (Wait. How can we tell that with all of the kids at home?) Also, because the Summer Triangle is fairly high in the eastern sky at 11 p.m. Vega, the third brightest star visible from Ellensburg, is about five fists above the east horizon. Deneb, at the tail of Cygnus the swan is about four fists above the east-northeast horizon. The third star in the triangle, Altair in Aquila the eagle, is two fists above the east horizon.

If you want to put somebody off, tell her to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon.

Thursday: I hope that you have never been in a collision. It can be scary and dangerous. The biggest collision in our celestial neighborhood will occur in a few billion years when our Milky Way Galaxy will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy. Here’s an article about what it will look like:

https://www.universetoday.com/141750/this-is-what-itll-look-like-when-the-milky-way-and-andromeda-galaxies-collide-billions-of-years-from-now/. If you can’t stay up a few billion years to see the collision, stay up until late at night to see the Andromeda Galaxy. First find the Great Square of Pegasus. At 3:00 a.m., the left hand corner of the square is about three fists above the east-northeast horizon. Less than two fists to the left and down a little bit is another star the same brightness as the star at the corner of the square. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light known as the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of nearly a trillion stars and is 2.2 million light years away.

Friday: The Moon and Mars are two fists above the southeastern horizon at 4:00 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.