The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 29, 2022

Saturday: The CWU Pumpkin Drop is this weekend. Register and drop off your decorated pumpkin to Discovery Hall, room 302 on the CWU campus (https://www.cwu.edu/map). If you don’t have any decorating ideas or materials, show up to Discovery Hall at 2:00 to purchase a pumpkin and decorating supplies. All funds collected go to support the organizing clubs’ activities, outreach and fund scholarships.

Sunday: What’s big and orange and goes “splat”? A pumpkin participating in the CWU annual Pumpkin Drop. The 2022 Pumpkin Drop & Trashcano Event will be held today beginning at 12 pm noon and ending when the last trashcano erupts and the last pumpkin falls! The event features trashcanoes erupting on the north side of Discovery Hall and pumpkins being dropped from the roof on the south side of Discovery Hall.The Pumpkin Drop and Trashcano event is an annual fundraiser sponsored by CWU’s Society of Physics Students (SPS), Astronomy and Geology clubs. All funds collected go to support club activities, outreach and fund scholarships. There are many opportunities to actively participate or passively enjoy. There is a special planetarium show following the event. Go to http://www.cwu.edu/physics/PumpkinDrop for more information about the entire event.

Monday: Last week, you learned how to find 40 Eridani A. Today is Halloween. If you need costume ideas for Halloween, look to 40 Eridani A, a popular presence in science fiction. Vulcan, Mr. Spock’s home planet in Star Trek, orbits it. Two main planets in the Dune Universe orbit it. If you are interested in recent science fiction, the main alien character in Andy Weir’s new book Project Hail Mary comes from a planet that orbits 40 Eridani. Weir, also author of The Martian, is known to use a lot of actual science in his books. The planet in the book shares many characteristics with the actual planet orbiting 40 Eridani, discovered in 2018. For more about 40 Eridani in fiction, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#40_Eridani.

Tuesday: Happy Celtic New Year! Many historians think that November 1, known for the festival of Samhain, was the ancient Celtic New Year’s Day. Samhain, Old Irish for “summer’s end”, was a harvest festival that may have contributed to some of the customs of our current “holiday” of Halloween.

Wednesday: At 7:00 p.m., the moon is in the middle of three bright objects in the south-southeastern sky. Jupiter is three fists to the left of the moon, Saturn is one and a half fists to the right of the moon, and the bright star Fomalhaut is one and a half fists below the moon. 

Thursday: Did you know that moons and dwarf planets can share similar features? The five largest moons of Uranus have the same heat signatures as the largest dwarf planets such as Pluto and Eris. That means they are relatively dense and don’t immediately radiate away all of their daytime-absorbed heat at night. Read more about Uranian moons at https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/uranian-moons-are-like-dwarf-planets/.

Friday: Mars is four and a half fists above the west-southwest horizon at 7:00 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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 22, 2022

Saturday: Halloween is early next week so make sure you load up on peanut clusters, almond clusters, and open star clusters this week. That last one will be easy (and cheap… actually free) because two of the most prominent open star clusters in the sky are easily visible in the autumn sky. The sideways V-shaped Hyades Cluster is two fists held upright and at arm’s length above due east at 10:00 p.m. Containing over 300 stars; the Hyades cluster is about 150 light years away and 625 million years old. The Pleiades Cluster, a little more than three fists above due east, is larger at over 1000 stars and younger. Compared to our 5-billion-year-old Sun, the 100-million-year age of the Pleiades is infant-like.

Sunday: Three years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope got the first close-up view of a comet from another star system. Comet 2I/Borisov was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady on August 30, 2019 as the second interstellar object ever confirmed. 2I is the new official designator for the second interstellar object. Astronomers know it is from another star system because it is going way too fast, 110,000 miles per hour, to be gravitationally bound to the Sun. Read and watch more about the discovery at http://tiny.cc/mhh0tz.

Monday: At 10:00 p.m., Saturn is about two fists above the south-southwestern horizon, Jupiter is exactly four fists above the south-southeastern horizon, and Mars is about one fist above the east-northeastern horizon.

Tuesday: At about 4:00 am Pacific Daylight Time, the moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun. But because they are not perfectly lined up, the moon will only partially block the Sun, resulting in a partial solar eclipse. Read more about the eclipse at https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2022-october-25, including information on watching a livestream. If you’d like to see the eclipse live, you’ll have to travel to Europe, northeast Africa, the Middle East, or western Asia.

Wednesday: What time is teatime? Certainly not during an autumn evening. The constellation Sagittarius the archer, with its signature teapot shape, is sinking into the south-southwestern horizon by 7:00 p.m. The handle is on top and the spout is touching the horizon ready to pour that last cup of tea. 

Thursday: At 6:30 p.m., the bright star Antares is about two finger-widths to the left of the young crescent moon. They are just above due southwest.

Friday: Halloween weekend is a great time to celebrate the dead. Dead stars, that is. Black holes are and neutron stars are the end result of super massive stars. But intermediate mass stars such as our Sun end up as white dwarfs. After fusing hydrogen into helium for most of its life and fusing helium into heavier elements for a relatively brief period at the end of its life, the Sun will end up with a core of carbon and oxygen that no longer produces energy through nuclear fusion. Without the outward radiation pressure from fusion resisting the inward pull of gravity, the Sun will end up as a super-dense sphere of atoms in which the electrons are squished onto the nuclei. It will be an object with nearly all its mid-life mass but in a volume about the size of the Earth. The easiest white dwarf to see is in the triple star system called Keid, from the Arabic word “qayd” meaning eggshells. Learn more about Keid, also called 40 Eridani, including map of how to find it at https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/trick-or-treat-with-white-dwarfs/. At midnight (scary), Keid is a little more than two fists above due southeast. You’ll need a small telescope to see it. First find Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion. It is one and a half fists above the east-southeastern horizon. Then use binoculars to find the right area. With Rigel at the bottom of your field of view. There should be a star near the top of your girls of view that is about one sixth as bright. This star is called Cursa. Next, move your binoculars up and to the right about one and a half field of view diameters. Look for two stars close together, each about one third as bright as Cursa. Finally, move your binoculars straight over to the right about one and a half field of view diameters. The lower of these two stars is Keid or 40 Eridani A. You’ll need a telescope to see the white dwarf, called 40 Eridani B.

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 October 15, 2022

Saturday: Jupiter is nearly four fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southeastern horizon at 10:00 p.m. That means that Jupiter’s moons can be seen here, as well. Last month, NASA’s Juno spacecraft sent back some of the most detailed images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. For more about the images and the rest of Juno’s mission, go to https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-gets-highest-resolution-close-up-of-jupiters-moon-europa. 

Sunday: Mercury is about a half a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 a.m.

Monday: Rho Cassiopeiae is the most distant star that can be seen with the naked eye by most people. It is about 8,200 light years away. That means that the light that reaches your eyes from that star left over 8,000 years ago, before the beginning of time according to the Byzantine calendar. Rho Cassiopeiae is six fists above the northeastern horizon at 8:00 p.m., just above the zigzag line that marks the constellation Cassiopeia.

Tuesday: The constellation Vulpecula, the fox, stands six fists held upright and at arm’s length above due southwest at 9 p.m. It is in the middle of the Summer Triangle, which is defined by the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair. The fox is so faint that you need dark skies to see it. 

Wednesday: At 10:00 p.m., Saturn is two fists above the southwestern horizon and Mars is a two fists above the east-northeastern horizon.

Thursday: The Orionid meteor shower consists of the Earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail. This shower peaks after midnight tonight and tomorrow night. This is not a meteor shower that typically results in a meteor storm. There will be about 15-20 meteors per hour, many more meteors than are visible on a typical night but not the storm that some showers bring. The Moon is nearly new, meaning it will not obscure the dimmer meteors. The best time to observe will be near dawn. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about one fist above due east at midnight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain one fist above the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. If you fall asleep tonight, you can catch the tail end of the shower every night until early November. For more information, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=27937. 

Friday: Along with the not-so-subtle drug reference in their name, The Doobie Brothers could have made an astronomy reference in their song lyrics if they would have written: “Old Earth water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shining on me.” Astronomers now think that some of the water on Earth may be older than the Solar System. The chemical signature of the water indicates it came from a very cold source, just a few degrees above absolute zero. The early Solar System was much warmer than this meaning the water came from a source outside the Solar System. For more information about the old Earth water, go to http://goo.gl/QsEu5P.

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 October 8, 2022

Saturday: The Draconid meteor shower peaks for the next three nights with tomorrow night being the best. The meteors appear to come from a point in the head of Draco, the dragon constellation. This point is nearly straight overhead at 7:00 p.m. tonight. This point remains near the trapezoid-shaped head of Draco throughout the night. Unlike most meteor showers, this one is best observed in the early evening rather than after midnight. Call this the “early to bed” meteor shower. Draconid meteors are slow moving which means you will have an easy time differentiating true Draconid meteors, from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, from the stray grains of dust that happen to enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day and night. Unfortunately, the moon is nearly full, meaning most of the dimmer meteors will be obscured. For everything you need to know about the Draconid meteor shower, go to https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-draconid-meteor-shower/. 

Sunday: The October full moon is called the Full Hunter's Moon. The traditional Northern Hemisphere harvest time has ended so this is the month that many groups of people turned to hunting to build up their food supplies before winter. Also, since the Moon is full, it lights the sky the entire night, extending the time for night time activities.

Monday: It is good to plan ahead while you have meteors on your mind so start thinking about the Orionid meteor shower. This shower, which consists of the earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail, peaks on October 20 and 21 but produces meteors from early October until early November. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southeastern horizon at 1:00 a.m.. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain near the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. For more information about the Orionids, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=27937. 

Tuesday:  Mercury may be difficult to see, less than a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 a.m.. But it is in full view of BepiColombo, the European-Japanese collaboration that sent back to Earth its first pictures of the innermost planet a year ago this month. See https://tinyurl.com/phdkn33t for the first images.

Wednesday: At 10:00 p.m., Saturn is two and a half fists above the southern horizon, Jupiter is three and a half fists above the southeastern horizon, and Mars is a half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon.

Thursday: Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a dolphin. A dolphin? The constellation Delphinus the dolphin is nearly six fists above due south at 8:00 p.m. The constellation’s two brightest stars are called Sualocin and Rotanev, which is Nicolaus Venator spelled backwards. Venator worked at the Palermo Observatory in Italy in the mid nineteenth century. He slipped these names into Giuseppe Piazzi’s star catalog without him noticing. The Daily Record (shop Ellensburg) would never let anything like that get into their newspaper. Their editing (shop Ellensburg) staff is too good. Nothing (pohs grubsnellE) evades their gaze. 

Friday: The Milky Way makes a faint white trail from due northeast through straight overhead to due southwest at 9:00 p.m. Starting in the northeast, the Milky Way “passes through” the prominent constellations Auriga the charioteer, Cassiopeia the queen, and Cygnus the swan with its brightest star, Deneb, nearly straight overhead. After Cygnus, you’ll see Aquila the eagle with its brightest star Altair about four and a half fists above the southwest 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. 

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 1, 2022

Saturday: Since Halloween is later this month; the stores are filled with bags of candy clusters. Use this reminder to take time to look at a star cluster. The Hyades cluster is an open star cluster that represents the V-shaped face of Taurus the bull. It is one of the biggest and nearest star clusters with about 200 stars 150 light years away. The Hyades cluster was the first cluster to be the subject of detailed motion studies. These studies allowed astronomers to pinpoint the distance to the Hyades and provide important information about the scale of the universe. Aldebaran, nearly two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the eastern horizon at midnight, is a foreground star and not a part of the Hyades cluster.

Sunday: According to the “One world, group hug, love everyone” philosophy, political borders are human-made and can’t be seen from space so why can’t we all just get along. According to real world pragmatic discoveries, some human-made political borders CAN be seen from space. Since 2003, India has illuminated its border with Pakistan to prevent illegal crossings. In 2011, astronaut Ron Garan took a picture of that border from the International Space Station. For more information, including the photo, go to http://goo.gl/mY8xG.

Monday: At 10:00 p.m., Uranus is two fists above due east and two fists below the bright, orange-ish star Hamal. You’ll know you have found the planet in your binoculars when you revisit that location for the next few nights and see that the point of light has moved up and to the right.

Tuesday: Coffee. First scientists say it’s good for you. Then they say it is bad for you. Recently, the same argument was applied to an exomoon, a moon orbiting a planet outside our Solar System. No, astronomers are not debating whether exomoons are good for you. Of course they are. But there are conflicting reports over whether the initial exomoon observation shared a year ago was real or just a blip in the data. Astronomers studied the light of a star as a Jupiter-sized planet and then its Neptune-sized moon blocked it. This transit method is one of the most popular ways to observe exoplanets… and maybe exomoons. Read more about the debate at https://www.sciencealert.com/the-first-known-exomoon-is-called-into-question-in-follow-up-studies.  

Wednesday: Saturn is less than a fist to the upper right of the Moon at 10:00 p.m. in the southern sky. At this same time, Jupiter is nearly three and a half fists above due southeast and mars is rising above the east-northeastern horizon.

Thursday: In 1987, the rock group Def Leppard sang “Pour some sugar on me, in the name of love. Pour some sugar on me, come on, fire me up”. In 2012, some European astronomers “found some sugar near stars, they were very young. Found some sugar near stars, out where planets formed.” Astronomers observed molecules of glycolaldehyde, a simple form of sugar, in the disk of gas and dust orbiting young binary stars. This is the first time astronomers have found this simple sugar so close to a star indicating that organic molecules can be found in planet-forming regions of stars. For more information, go to http://goo.gl/tfwy1.

Friday: Mercury is a fist above the eastern horizon at 6:30 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.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of September 24, 2022

Saturday: Saturn is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south at 9:30 p.m. At this time, Mars is just rising above the east-northeastern horizon.

Sunday: Ask someone which day in September has the same duration day and night. Go ahead, ask someone. Why are you still reading this? I can wait. If that person says the first day of autumn, they are wrong. Today, three days after the first day of autumn, is the date in which day and night are closest in duration. 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 actually below the horizon. This makes the Sun appear to rise before it actually rises and appear to set after it actually sets. Second, fall starts when the center of the Sun passes through the point called the autumnal 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 autumn would still be longer than 12 hours.

Monday: Jupiter is in opposition tonight. That doesn’t mean that Jupiter is a teenager. Opposition means that Jupiter is on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun. When an object is in opposition, it is at its highest point in the sky during the darkest time of the day. Thus, opposition is typically the best time to observe a planet. Jupiter is four fists above due south at 1 a.m., midnight non-daylight savings time. If you don’t want to stay up so late, you can see it three fists above due southeast horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Tuesday: To the people of Ancient Greece, the stars that are about five and a half fists above the northeastern and eastern horizons, respectively, at 10:00 p.m. were known as Cassiopeia and Andromeda, a mythological queen and her daughter. But not all cultures imagined the same pictures in the sky. To the people of Polynesia, the stars of Cassiopeia and Andromeda represented a dolphin, called Kwu. Cassiopeia formed its tail, the brightest stars of Andromeda formed its fins, and its fainter stars outlined the dolphin’s body. 

Wednesday: You discovered Cassiopeia last night. The astronomer Caroline Herschel discovered an open star cluster that looks like a rose over 200 years ago. This cluster, called Caroline’s Rose, is about 6,500 light years away and consists of about 1,000 stars that are one third the age of the Sun. Through binoculars, it looks like a fuzzy patch. At 10:00 p.m., find the star at the top of the sideways “W” known as Cassiopeia. When that star is in the lower left portion of your field of view, Caroline’s Rose is in the center to upper right. For more information about Caroline’s Rose, go to http://tiny.cc/i0zxsz and have the story read to you.

Thursday: Mnemonics are helpful for remembering astronomy facts. (Similarly, “Johnny Mnemonic”, the 1995 cyberpunk film, was helpful in getting Keanu Reeves’ career going.) After all, school children around the world are learning the order of the planets by remembering, “My very excellent mother just served us nine….” Oops, I guess that one needs updating. Well, here’s one that will not need updating for tens of thousands of years: the order of the stars in the Big Dipper. Because the nighttime stars are so far away from us, their actual motion through the sky, called their “proper motion” is not noticeable over even thousands of years. That is why the constellations have remained the same since ancient times. But two stars in the Big Dipper have a proper motion large enough such that in 100,000 years; the stars will no longer make a dipper shape. You can see this simulation at the American Museum of Natural History video found at https://youtu.be/sBfUBtdo8yo. Until then, you can remember the names of the seven dipper stars in order from handle to cup by remembering this helpful advice for teens: “AM, ask mom. PM, dad”. The stars are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phad, Merek, and Duhbe. The Big Dipper is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above the northern horizon at 11:00 p.m. 

Friday: “There’s water in them thar craters”, frozen water, that is. There has been speculation since the 1960s and indirect evidence since the 2000s of water on the Moon. Three years ago, astronomers studied data from four earlier missions. They noticed that the  light reflecting off the bottom of craters near the lunar South Pole showed characteristics of light reflecting off pure ice. The water likely came from comet impacts or other solar system objects with trace amounts of water ice. Last week, NASA announced the landing site for its new Volatiles Investigating Polar Explorer Rover or VIPER, the mission that will take a close-up view of Nobile crater near the Moon’s South Pole. For more information about the upcoming mission, watch the video at https://youtu.be/bd7ekqMrHkg.

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 September 17, 2022

Saturday: Jupiter is one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-southeastern horizon and Saturn is about two fists above the south-southeastern horizon at 9:00 p.m. Jupiter is the much brighter of the two. When you are looking at this part of the sky, you are looking in the direction of more than just the two planets. You are also looking in the direction of their moons. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is easily visible with a small telescope, about six “ring diameters” to the side of Saturn at this time. Jupiter’s four largest moons are also visible with a small telescope. Callisto, Ganymede, and Io are one one side of Jupiter, with Callisto appearing the farthest away, Ganymede in the middle, and Io closest. Europa is visible in the other. Last year, a team of Canadian astronomers analyzed images of Jupiter from 2010 and estimated that Jupiter could have 600 moons at least 800 meters, a half mile, in diameter. They didn’t actually discover these moons. They just formulated a possible model of the Jovian system. For more on this, go to https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/jupiter-could-have-600-moons/.

Sunday: Two years ago, astronomers announced that they detected phosphine, a possible biosignature of life, in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Although the surface of Venus is inhospitable, astronomers have long speculated that the upper atmosphere could harbor life. Not Cloud City life from The Empire Strikes Back but maybe microbial life. Last year, astronomers concluded that the original scientists found the signature of sulfur dioxide, not life. Last month, the private company Rocket Lab published details about the first privately funded mission to another planet - their trip to Venus, scheduled to launch as soon as May 2023. This Venus storyline is an excellent example of science at work. In less than two years, science went from “we may have found a marker for life on Venus” to “it is unclear if we found a marker for life” to “we probably didn’t find a marker for life” to “let’s visit Venus to closely study the thing we thought was a marker for life”. Do an internet search of the words venus and phosphine and read the articles to follow the story. To get yourself in the mood, go outside at 6:15 a.m. Venus is just above the eastern horizon at this time.

Monday: The bright star Vega is about five fists above the western horizon at 11:00 p.m. Its fellow Summer Triangle star Deneb is about two fists above it. Altair, the third star in the triangle, is about four fists above due southwest.

Tuesday: The bright star Capella is two fists above due northeast at 11:00 p.m.

Wednesday: The Beehive Cluster is less than a half a fist to the lower right of the waning crescent Moon at 5:00 a.m. They are about three fists above due east.

Thursday: At 6:06 p.m. PDT, the center of the Sun crosses the celestial equator and passes into the southern sky. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that divides the sky into a northern and southern half. When the Sun is in the southern half of the sky, it appears to take a shorter path from rising to setting. It also does not get as high in the sky at noon. This leads to shorter days and longer nights. Since the Sun crosses the celestial equator today, there is an instant when it is equally in the northern and southern sky, called the north and south celestial hemispheres. This so-called “equal night” is given by the Latin word equinox. Thus, today is known as the Autumnal Equinox. However, the day and night are not of equal duration today. The sun rises at 6:49 a.m. and sets at 6:59 p.m. in the northern latitudes of the United States. At these latitudes, day and night are closest to equal duration on Sunday.

Friday: The bright star Sirius is two fists above the south-southeastern horizon at 6:00 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.