The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of May 15, 2021

Saturday: You know Metis and Thebe and Adrastea and Amalthea. Io and Ganymede and Callisto and Europa. But do you recall? There are 79 Jovian moons in all.  Just 60 years ago, Jupiter was thought to have only 12 moons. But, astronomers are red-nosed with delight that the advent of supersensitive electronic cameras has caused the number of discovered moons to rapidly increase. Jupiter’s 79 moons range in size from Ganymede, the largest in the Solar System with a diameter of 5,262 kilometers, to numerous moons with diameters of only one kilometer. Recently, Saturn moved into first in the moon race with 82. Uranus is next with 27. Then comes Neptune with 14, Mars with 2, and Earth with 1. Our moon is the fifth largest in the Solar System, with a diameter of 3,475 kilometers. (One kilometer is 0.62 miles.) Even dwarf planets have moons. Pluto has 5, Eris has 1, Haumea has 2, and Makemake has 1. Eris is an outer solar system object that was discovered in 2005 and named in September of 2006. Because astronomers thought it was larger than Pluto, people called it the tenth planet for a while. (More recent measurements show Eris to be a little smaller in diameter than Pluto.) Haumea, the newest dwarf planet with a moon, was discovered in 2004 and officially named a dwarf planet on September 17, 2008. Go to https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/ for more information about Solar System moons.

Tonight, Mars is about a finger-width to the left of our own Moon, three fists held upright and at arm’s length above due west at 9:00 p.m.

Sunday: Mercury will be as far away from the Sun in the sky as it will get this orbital cycle. This "farthest away" point is known as the planet's greatest elongation. Since Mercury is in the evening sky, it is east of the Sun so this occurrence is called the greatest eastern elongation. This evening will be the best evening to observe Mercury for the next few weeks. Mercury is nearly a fist and a half above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m. Over the next few weeks, Mercury will move toward the Sun in the sky. By July, it will be barely visible in the morning sky. Venus is to the lower right of Mercury… and much brighter.

Monday: Are you thirsty? I'll wait while you get some water. I will NOT wait while Corvus the crow gets you some water. The Greco-Roman god Apollo made this mistake. He sent Corvus the crow to get some water in the cup known as Crater. Some figs distracted Corvus and he waited for them to ripen so he could eat them. When Corvus got back late, Apollo put Corvus and Crater in the sky with the gently tipping cup just out of the reach of the perpetually thirsty crow. Corvus is a trapezoid-shaped constellation about two fists above due south at 10:00 p.m. Crater is just to the right of Corvus.

Tuesday: You can set your watch tonight by carefully observing Navi, the center star in the W-shaped Cassiopeia. It will be due north at exactly 10:12 p.m. However, another star in Cassiopeia is causing astronomers to doubt whether or not they can use neutron stars as the most precise known clocks in the universe. Neutron stars have such a precise spin rate that they are used to set super accurate clocks on Earth. In 2013, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope noticed that the neutron star called 1E 2259+586 exhibited a spin glitch that had never been seen before. The spin rate of about eight times a minute decreased by 2.2 millionths of a second. Read more about this at http://goo.gl/C4V8R1. In 2016, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope observed the slowest rotating neutron star, once every 6.5 hours. What is it with using a telescope named Swift to make discoveries about something slowing? Maybe that slow developing question will be answered at https://tinyurl.com/y6ag6g7c.  

Wednesday: Are you thirsty when you get up in the morning? I know you are not waiting for Corvus. That’s okay because the Big Dipper is positioned to hold water in the morning sky. Look three fists above the northwest horizon at 4:30 a.m. You’ll see three stars that make a bent handle and four stars that make a cup.

Thursday: At 4:30 a.m bright Jupiter is two fists above due southeast.  Saturn is about two fists to the upper right of Jupiter.

Friday: Are you up at 2:23 a.m., looking due north and thinking you see a UFO coming to take you away? That's no UFO. It's the bright star Capella, a circumpolar star that never goes below the horizon as viewed from Ellensburg. 

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 May 8, 2021

Saturday: Give me an “M”. Give me a “3”. What does that spell? “M3.” “Big deal,” you say. It was a big deal to French comet hunter Charles Messier (pronounced Messy A). M3 was the 3rd comet look-alike that Messier catalogued in the late 1700s. M3 is a globular cluster, a cluster of over 100,000 stars that is 32,000 light years away. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye but is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Arcturus five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due southeast at 10:30 p.m. Move your binoculars up one binocular field of view so two stars of nearly identical brightness are in your field of view. When the top star is in the lower left part of your field of view, there should be a fuzzy patch near the center of your field of view. This is M3. 

Sunday: So you think your mother has issues on Mother’s Day because she has you as a child? Her issues can’t be as bad as Cassiopeia’s issues. First, she was chained to a chair for boasting about her beauty. Second, she has to revolve around the North Star night after night. Third, her daughter Andromeda was nearly killed by a sea monster. Look for poor Cassiopeia about one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the northern horizon at 10:00 p.m. Cassiopeia looks like a stretched out “W”. 

Monday: Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, are not visible in typical backyard telescopes. But they are an interesting study. The former view among astronomers was that both moons are captured asteroids. That makes sense given Mars’ proximity to the asteroid belt. But recent findings by European astronomers indicate that Phobos is very porous and made of material similar to the surface of Mars. This implies that Phobos may consist of chunks of Martian debris that was blasted off by numerous impacts and gravitationally bound together. Unfortunately, the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe launched late 2011 to collect material from Phobos crashed to Earth after malfunctioning. For more information about this recent model of Phobos’ formation, go to https://sci.esa.int/web/mars-express/-/31031-phobos. For more information about Mars, look two fists above the western horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Tuesday: You’ve likely heard of Superman. You’ve probably heard of the Super Moon. Last month’s Full Moon was a Full Super Moon and this month’s Full Moon on May 26 will be a Full Super Moon. Between two Full Moons is a New Mini Moon. Thus, tonight’s Moon phase is a New Mini Moon. We can’t see any New Moon because the sunlight is illuminating the back side of the Moon so we won’t see a difference. But the oceans will feel the difference because a Mini Moon is farther from the Earth than average so the tides are lower.

Wednesday: Venus is about a thumb width to the lower right of the one day old waxing crescent moon at 9:00 p.m. They are just above the west-northwestern horizon right after sunset.

Thursday: Tonight the Moon has moved up next to Mercury in the sky. Mercury is less than a fist to the lower right of the two day old waxing crescent moon at 9:00 p.m. They are one fist above the west-northwestern horizon right after sunset.

Friday: The other day in class, we talked about the effort to protect the Earth from risky asteroids. We couldn’t do anything about them. But the European Southern Observatory (ESO) can. They are dedicating their La Silla telescope to detect and track thousands of near-Earth asteroids. Or more information, go to https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2107/. 

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 May 1, 2021

Saturday:  CWU encourages physical distancing. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department and STEM Teaching Program is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show today from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU STEM Teaching planetarium interns Grace Warren and Kendra Gardner will be presenting their project called Kepler Space Program: Mission to Mars, a multi-media astronomy lesson. In addition, they will also present a mission-simulation curriculum that Kendra and others developed last summer. Finally, CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist will give a general overview of Mars and the May sky. There is a virtual planetarium show on the first Saturday of nearly every month of the school year. Register at http://tiny.cc/oohwtz. 

Sunday: The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on May 5. Since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, you should start looking before dawn this morning. Light from the last quarter to waning crescent Moon phase will obscure some of the dimmer meteors. 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 held upright and at arm’s length 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. 

Monday: Read carefully now. The daytime is bright and the nighttime is dark. Place the Earth and its atmosphere in fairly close orbit around any star and the daytime rule would still apply. But put the Earth and its atmosphere in orbit around a star at the center of a globular cluster and the night sky would never be dark. Astronomers estimate that the sky would be 10 to 20 times brighter than Earth’s sky when our Moon is full. One of the brightest globular clusters, M3, is six and a half fists above due southeast at 10:45 p.m. It is a little more than one fist above the bright orangeish star Arcturus. It will look like a fuzzy patch in your binoculars. For a hypothetical view of what the night sky would look like at the center of this or a similar globular cluster, go to https://tinyurl.com/yyp88w7x.

Tuesday: Mother’s Day is this Sunday. What are you going to get her? Get her a Gem(ma). The star Gemma, also known as Alphekka, is the brightest star in the constellation Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Gemma, Latin for jewel, is the central gemstone for the crown. It is four fists above the eastern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Mars is three and a half fists above due west at 9:00 p.m. For more of a challenge, look for Mercury a little less than a fist above the west-northwestern and Venus just above the west-northwestern horizon.

Thursday: At 5:00 a.m., Jupiter is about one and a half fists above the southeast horizon. Saturn is one and a half fists to the upper right of Jupiter. You’ll need binoculars for any chance to see Neptune, less than a fist to the upper left of the crescent Moon. First get the Moon in the lower right portion of your binocular field of view. Then move the binoculars up and to the left until you see a sideways “L” made up of three stars of similar brightness. Neptune is just to the left of that “L”.

Friday: This weekend, celebrate Mother’s Day with the big mom of the sky, Virgo. Ancient Greeks and Romans associated this portion of the sky with their own goddess of the harvest, either Demeter (Greeks) or Ceres (Roman). Demeter was the mother of Persephone and Ceres was the mother of Proserpina. According to myth, each of these daughters was abducted causing their mothers great grief. The first star in Virgo rises in the afternoon. Spica, the bright bluish star in the constellation rises at 7:00 p.m. and is three fists above the south-southeastern horizon at 10:00 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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 24, 2021

Saturday: 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 counter clockwise 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. 

Sunday: Orion stands low in the southwestern sky. At 9:00 p.m., the middle of Orion’s belt is one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length 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.

Monday: Venus and Mercury are just above the west-northwest horizon at 8:30 p.m. These objects are two of our closest celestial neighbors. One hundred 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 actually 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.

Tuesday: 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.

Wednesday: Bright Jupiter is a little more than one fist above the southeast horizon at 5:30 a.m. Saturn is a fist to the upper right of Jupiter.

Thursday: The bright star Antares is a half a fist below the Moon, low in the southwestern sky at 5:30 a.m. It will be a challenge to find it in the morning twilight.

Friday: CWU encourages physical distancing. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department and STEM Teaching Program is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU STEM Teaching planetarium interns Grace Warren and Kendra Gardner will be presenting their project called Kepler Space Program: Mission to Mars, a multi-media astronomy lesson. In addition, they will also present a mission-simulation curriculum that Kendra and others developed last summer. Finally, CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist will give a general overview of Mars and the May sky. There is a virtual planetarium show on the first Saturday of nearly every month of the school year. Register at http://tiny.cc/oohwtz. 

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 April 17, 2021

Saturday:  Do you miss public astronomy events? The virtual telescope project is having a virtual star party today at noon Pacific Daylight time. Go to https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/ for more details and the link to the event.

Sunday: Remember the old saying: April showers bring… meteors. The Lyrid meteor shower peaks this week, with the peak of the peak occurring Thursday 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 held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at midnight tonight and close to straight overhead near dawn. The best time to look is a few hours before dawn since that is when the radiant, or point from which the meteors appear to come, is high in the sky. This year, the Moon is trending towards the waxing gibbous phase meaning it will be above the horizon until after midnight. 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.

Monday: The Twins are next to the Moon tonight. Pollux, the brighter of the two main stars in the constellation Gemini the Twins, is a half a fist to the upper right of the Moon at 9:00 p.m. Castor is another half a fist to the upper right of Pollux.

Tuesday: Mars is nearly four fists above the western horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday: 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.

Thursday:  While you are up looking at the Lyrid meteor shower, check out the naked eye planets, as well. At 5:00 a.m., bright Jupiter is exactly one fist above the east-southeastern horizon. Saturn is one and a half fists to the upper right of Jupiter.

Friday: The Stargate movies and TV shows have access to a portal to other planets. Harry Potter has access to a portal to the Chamber of Secrets. You have access to a Portal to the Universe. This portal is not in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom but is on the web at http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/. It is a repository of up-to-date astronomy news, blogs, and podcasts. A recent story highlights how Jupiter might be an excellent dark matter detector. Dark matter got its name because it has gravity, like matter does, and it can’t (yet) be seen, like something dark. But dark matter isn’t something that is only located in exotic, far away places. The Earth’s gravity attracts dark matter. But only a little. Jupiter is massive enough to capture a lot of dark matter. And it is cool enough so the dark matter would not have evaporated away. Read more about Jupiter: the Goldilocks of dark matter, at https://www.universetoday.com/150824/jupiter-could-make-an-ideal-dark-matter-detector/. 

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 April 10, 2021

 Saturday: “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.

Sunday: Jupiter is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the east- southeast at 5:35 a.m. Saturn is about a fist and a half to the upper right of Jupiter.

Monday: It is often said that Earth is a water world because about 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. What would it look like if all that water on the surface were gathered up into a ball? That “ball” would be about 700 km in diameter, less than half the diameter of the Moon. The Astronomy Picture of the day shows us right here https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120515.html.

Tuesday: 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. Three years ago, astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized 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.

Wednesday: In this busy world, it is important to know what time it is. We have many devices that give us the time. A phone. A computer. A watch. But who has time to build a phone, computer or even a watch. Not you. But everyone has enough time to build a simple Sun Clock. All you need is a pencil, a compass and a print out of the clock template. Go to https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/sunclock.html for more information. 

Thursday: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday. 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 three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeast horizon at midnight and close to straight overhead near dawn. Go to https://earthsky.org/?p=158735 for more information.

Friday: Mars is less than a half a fist to the upper left of the Moon at 10:00 p.m. Even next to the crescent Moon, Mars will be easy to see. Give yourself an added challenge and try to find Mars during the day. First find the Moon at 7:00 p.m., about five fists above the southwest horizon. Then hold your fist up so the bottom of your fist is against the upper left portion of the Moon. Mars  will be near the middle of your fist. If you need help finding it, first use binoculars. Orient your binoculars so the Moon is in the lower right hand portion. Mars will be in the upper left or just outside the upper left of your field of view. Once you find it with binoculars, lower your binoculars while looking in the direction of Mars. For information on how to photograph Mars and the Moon, as well as a place where you can upload your Mars and Moon photo, go to https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/global-astronomy-month/mars-moon. 

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 April 3, 2021

Saturrday:  CWU encourages physical distancing. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show today from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist will give a show called “What's up in the Spring Sky”, a tour of spring planets, constellations, and other interesting celestial objects. There is a virtual planetarium show on the first Saturday of nearly every month of the school year. Register at https://rebrand.ly/April2021FirstSaturday.

Sunday: This week is International Dark Sky Week. Check out the schedule of events at https://idsw.darksky.org/, including many presentations that are broadcast live so you can interact with the presenter.  But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore our obligation to minimize stray light for the next 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. 

Monday: 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 has just 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 http://tiny.cc/qcjvtz to download the map.

Tuesday: Jupiter, Moon, and Saturn make a right triangle at 6:00 a.m., one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the southeastern horizon.

Wednesday: 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/.

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: Mars is four fists above the western horizon at 9:00 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.