Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Friday, September 5th.  The sun will rise at 7:09.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 2 minutes, setting at 8:11.   The moon, half way from first quarter to full, will set at 4:07 tomorrow morning.

Tonight the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will hold their monthly meeting at he Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory at 8 p.m. featuring Dr. David Penney, who will talk about Supernovae, the brightest, at optical wavelengths anyway explosions in the universe.  These will either completely destroy a star or leave a neutron star or black hole remnant.  At 9 p.m. there will be a star party featuring the Moon, Saturn and Mars.  The observatory is located on Birmley road.  On Saturday the society will celebrate International Observe the Moon Night with telescopes set up on the 200 block of Front street in Traverse City.  That event starts around 9 p.m., but only if it’s clear.

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

Addendum

Remnant of SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light years away taken by the Hubble telescope’s WFPC2 camera on three occasions in 1994 and 1995. The outer rings are light echos of the explosions ionizing clouds ejected thousands of years before. Credit NASA.

Supernova 2014J in nearby galaxy M82, 12 million light years away. Credit NASA/Swift/P. Brown, TAMU.