Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, August 28th.  The sun will rise at 7:00.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 24 minutes, setting at 8:25.   The moon, 3 days before full, will set at 4:54 tomorrow morning.

The southernmost star of the Summer Triangle is Altair, high in the south. The other two stars of the triangle are Vega nearly overhead, and Deneb high in the east. Altair is the closest of the three at a distance of 16.8 light years away. One light year is nearly 6 trillion miles. Altair is 10 times the brightness of the sun. If seen at Altair’s distance, the sun would only be as bright as one of the two stars that flank it. What is rather different about Altair is it’s rapid rotation. While its almost twice the sun’s diameter, it rotates once in only 9 hours, and has a decidedly squashed appearance when seen close up. There are techniques that can actually accomplish this.  Our sun’s a slow poke, taking nearly a month to rotate once.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The constellations Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila. Created using Stellarium.

Check out Altair to the lower right.