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.