Spring SkyLights

Hello fellow SkyWatchers:

Well, it has certainly been a while since I posted, and for that I apologize. I have seen the stars very little since my last post, as we have had one of the wettest, coldest and cloudiest winters in several decades.

Now that Spring is here, things are getting better. Spring officially began at 12:32 P.M. Central Daylight Time on Saturday, March, 20th. Spring begins at the Vernal Equinox, when the Sun crosses the Plane of Earth's equator moving from South to North. On that day, the day and night will be almost exactly the same length (measured from sunrise to sunset, and vice-versa.) The term equinox actually means "equal night".

At this time of year Mars is the obviously reddish object high in the sky after sunset, near the zenith and close to Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, the twins. Click on the pictures below to see sky charts for the objects we are discussing here.



At the same time extremely bright Venus will be setting in the West, preceded by dim Mercury. To see Mercury, you will need a very low western horizon, and probably binoculars.



Also just after sunset you will find ringed Saturn rising in the East.



Saturn will be the first object you can see low in the East just after sunset. If you have clear dark skies you will notice that it has a beautiful buttery yellow color once it has risen higher in the sky. With even a small telescope the rings are quite obvious, and you will probably be able to see Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

I hope you will go out and look up to take advantage of the spring evenings.

Steve

Autumn skies.

Hello again fellow SkyWatchers. I hope you have had better weather, but I haven't seen any stars, including our Sun, for over a week. However, things should get better very soon. Autumn is my favorite time for looking at the sky, and it officially begins Tuesday, September 22nd at 4:19 p.m. Central Daylight time (5:19 p.m. Eastern). Here in West Arkansas/East Texas October and November are great times for viewing the heavens. Sunset will be getting earlier, the weather begins to cooperate for clear skies in the evenings (and mornings, too), the cooler weather is more comfortable, mosquitoes are usually not a problem, and it hasn't gotten too cold to want to be outside at night. Having lived in Florida for three years, my tolerance for cold is even less that it was before.

There are some interesting sights coming up in the next few days. If you are out about an hour before sunrise Sunday morning, September 20th, look low in the East. Venus will be the very bright star like object, and only 1/2 degree from the bright star Regulus, the heart of Leo the lion. For comparison, the field of view of my binoculars is 7 1/2 degrees wide, so the separation of Venus and Regulus will be only 1/15 of the width of the view in my binoculars. In fact, you may have to look closely to see Regulus. Even though Regulus, at magnitude 1.35, is one of the brighter stars, Venus, at magnitude -3.73 on that morning, will be roughly 100 times brighter. Depending on your seeing conditions, with them so close together Regulus may be lost in Venus' glare. Your binoculars should give you a great view of both.

While you are out, check out Mars, which is still above and to the left of Venus. There are still two very red, bright objects in the morning sky in the East (see my earlier post). The one on the right is Betelguese in Orion, and the one on the left is Mars. The two bright stars to the left of Mars are Castor (higher up) and Pollux (lower down), the heads of the twins in the constellation Gemini.

During the first week of October, Venus, Mercury and Saturn will all be very close together and very low in the East just before sunrise, with Mars very high and almost directly above them. Mercury will be at its farthest ahead of the rising Sun on October 6th. I still usually have to use my binoculars to find it unless the sky is perfectly clear and still.

The bright highlight of the evening sky is still Jupiter. Look for it fairly low in the South Southeast after sunset. October evenings are also a great time to view the Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way Galaxy's closest large neighbor and virtual twin. Look in the Northeast after dark and find the zigzag shape of Cassiopeia (double click on the image above for a sky chart). Cassiopeia looks like a W, or sometimes an M, often tilted to one side. The sharper of the two points of the M points almost directly at M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. With clear, dark skies you can see it without binoculars or a telescope. Under light polluted skies, you can often still find it with binoculars, and with a telescope you can see its shape.

A few of the coming events for the next few weeks:

Tonight will be a moonless night since the Moon is new.

On September 28th the Moon will be at apogee, its farthest from Earth in it's orbit, 251,302 miles.

On October 13th the moon will be at perigee, its closes to Earth in its orbit, 229,328 miles. Since this is also the date of the Full Moon, the moon will look unusually big and bright.

Enough for now. Go out and look up. I wish you clear skies and good luck.

Steve

Red, White and Blue before dawn.

Hello again, fellow SkyWatchers:

For the early risers, there are some special treats in the East before dawn. At around 5 or 5:30 am you will find Orion lying on his side in the East. (Click on the image to see a larger version of the sky chart.) Most people recognize him by the three bright stars in a straight, even row making up Orion's belt. The three stars in the belt make a line that points down toward the horizon at white Sirius in Canis Major (the big dog), the brightest star in our night sky. The bright red star to the left of the belt is Betelgeuse (Orion's right shoulder) and the bright blue star to the right of the belt is Rigel (Orion's left knee). Directly above Betelgeuse you will find another bright, red star. This is Aldebaran, the right eye of Taurus the bull. The three stars in Orion's belt point almost directly at it in the direction opposite of Sirius. Then, to the left of Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, and making an equilateral triangle with them, the other bright red object is not a star at all. It is Mars, the red planet.

Look down and to the left of the triangle of red stars and you will find an extremely bright, white object. This is Venus, Earth's twin sister. Below, and to the right of Venus, the bright star near the horizon (and left of Sirius) is Procyon in Canis Minor (the little dog). The two fairly bright stars just to the left and above Venus are Castor (the higher one) and Pollux, the heads of the twins in Gemini.

If you don't wait too long, and have a low enough visual horizon, you can turn the other way and look West. The very bright object about to set in the west is Jupiter.

So, get the sleep out of your eyes and get outside early. And as always, try looking up!

The Persied Meteor Shower

Hello again, fellow SkyWatchers.
One of the easiest, and occasionally most spectacular, night sky observing activities is observing meteors. On any clear night, if you lie down and look up at the sky you will eventually see one or more streaks of light moving quickly across the sky and then fading rapidly. If you have a wide visual horizon and a dark observing area away from city lights, you will see even more. These steaks of light are the result of particles of dust and/or ice impacting Earth's upper atmosphere at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour. The energy released heats the air and strips electrons off the atoms of the atmosphere creating a glowing plasma 6o + miles up and usually vaporizing the meteor. Most are only as large as a grain of sand, and are often the debris left from a comet that passed by Earth's orbit long ago.

When Earth passes through a part of space near where a comet passed, it encounters a stream of debris which results in a large number of visible meteors. This is called a meteor shower. Every year in August we pass through the debris stream from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The resulting meteor shower can be spectacular. Earth is currently passing through this debris stream, and the annual Persied meteor shower is now under way. The predicted peak is this Tuesday night, August 11/12. Unfortunately, the gibbous Moon will wash out the fainter meteors. But, we may pass through a particularly dense trail of debris left by the comet in 1610, which could produce as many as 200 meteors per hour some time after midnight.

Keep in mind that predicting meteor shower activity is notoriously difficult. But if you have clear skies you should see some, and Perseid meteors are often bright, seem to move fairly slowly, and sometimes leave glowing trails. The meteors can appear any place in the sky, but all the streaks will point back toward the constellation Perseus.

For more detailed information about this year's Perseid meteor shower:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/31jul_perseids2009.htm?list896164
or
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090807-perseid-meteors.html
or
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/52204947.html .

and for more info on meteors in general,

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteors-ez.html.

So, here is just another reason to try looking up!

Steve

Hello again, fellow Skywatchers. Here we are in the dog days of summer. In some ways, this time of year is not the best for viewing the night sky. The heat, humidity, mosquitoes, humidity haze, and evening clouds combined with late sunset and early sunrise all make it less more difficult, and not as much fun, as cooler times of the year. However, when it is clear in the evenings, this time of year can offer some of the steadiest seeing (lack of atmospheric turbulence). In addition, there are some spectacular objects for the hardy and determined.

Saturn is almost lost to us for this year. It is very low (about 15 degrees above the horizon) and almost due West in Leo below the lion's hips at dusk. Good telescope views of Saturn will now have to wait late fall or winter (in the morning sky). If you look even lower to the horizon and to the right of Saturn, you may be able to spot Mercury. Binoculars help.

Fortunately, mighty Jupiter is here to take Saturn's place as the highlight of the night sky. Rising in the East just after sunset, the largest planet in our solar system presents a great target for telescopes all night long. Even small telescopes can see color bands in the cloud tops and the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. You can spot these four moons in a good pair of binoculars if you can hold them steady enough. Larger telescopes in good viewing conditions can reveal the Great Red Spot, a hurricane like storm three times the size of Earth. If you have a telescope and look in the next couple of weeks, you may be able to see the new dark spot created when a yet unidentified object slammed into Jupiter recently.

If you have, or can get to a dark sky on a clear night, the summer Milky Way is a beautiful sight, arching from the South in Scorpius and Sagittarius across the sky to Cassiopeia and Perseus in the North. About midway it passes through Cygnus, which is directly overhead around midnight.

If you get up early, you can easily find Mars and Venus in the West before sunrise. Venus is the very bright "star" in the East. A little above Venus there are two fairly bright reddish colored objects. The lower of the two is Mars, and the other one which is slightly higher and to the right is Aldebaran, the right eye of Taurus the bull.

Enough for now. Get out and look up!

Steve

Getting Started (Again)

Hello fellow SkyWatchers. After a couple of months away from blogging, I thought it was time to get started again. This is a big month in astronomy, both historically and currently. Just to name a couple of big items:

40 years ago this week, humans first walked on the Moon
and

This morning, the longest total solar eclipse in this century happened across India, China and the west Pacific ocean. Because of its path across highly populated areas, this eclipse may well have been the single most observed total solar eclipse by humans, ever.

As for some things we can see here in the US:

In the evening after sunset, you can catch Saturn low in the west. Jupiter rises in the east-southeast a little later. Venus and Mars are in the East before sunrise. Venus is the brightest object up at that time and is almost due East. Mars is the faint red spark above it and to the right, a little more than half way between Venus and the Pleiades star cluster (also known as the Seven Sisters). At the same time Jupiter is the bright object in the southwest.

After sunset, the bright, reddish star due south is Antares, the heart of Scorpius the scorpion. To the left of that you will find the teapot asterism in Sagittarius. If you look at the blank area between the spout of the teapot and the stinger of the scorpion, you will be looking at the center of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. It looks like there aren't many stars in that direction, but there are lots and lots. Dust and gas clouds block the light from most of the stars in that direction. You can't see it, but you will be looking toward the supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy. It is an object with approximately 4 million times the mass of our Sun packed into a space about the size of our solar system. So much matter in so little space that it has so much gravity that light itself can't escape.

Around midnight the band of the Milky Way is about directly overhead, but you will need a dark sky away from city lights to see it. This time of year the days are long and the nights are short, but when the sky is clear the night sky offers a lot to see.