Archive
08/05/2016 – Ephemeris – Star party at NMC’s Rogers Observatory tonight
Ephemeris for Friday, August 5th. The Sun rises at 6:34. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 28 minutes, setting at 9:02. The Moon, 3 days past new, will set at 10:31 this evening.
There will be a star party this evening at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory hosted by the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society and the NMC Astronomy Club starting at 9 p.m. On tap, if it’s clear, will be Jupiter and the Moon early, then Mars and Saturn. Mars will appear quite small. As it gets darker the stars will appear. Some will show companion stars, while between the stars, what we call deep sky objects will be seen. Clusters of stars, and nebulae which can be either the birthplaces of stars or markers of dying stars. While other galaxies can be spotted our eyes are dazzled by our galaxy, the Milky Way spanning the sky from northeast to the south, in which these other objects dwell. The months of August and September are the months when the heart of the Milky Way is best seen.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The Milky Way from the Sleeping Bear Dunes last August by Mark Stewart.
This year Saturn and Mars will be in the picture. In this picture Saturn is low and to the right.
08/04/2016 – Ephemeris – Mars’ lookalike star
Ephemeris for Thursday, August 4th. The Sun rises at 6:32. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 30 minutes, setting at 9:03. The Moon, 2 days past new, will set at 10:01 this evening.
As it gets dark this evening a bright reddish star will appear low in the south. It will appear to twinkle mightily. It is not the planet Mars, which is brighter and to the right of it, but its rival the star Antares in Scorpius the scorpion. The star’s name, Antares, notes the rivalry. “Ant” means anti, while “Ares” is the Greek name for the Roman god Mars. Antares literally means “Rival of Mars”. Antares appears red due to its cool surface temperature of 3,600 Kelvin, much cooler than the sun’s 6,000 Kelvin, while Mars is red due to rust. Watch nightly as Mars slowly approaches Antares, and will pass it on the 24th. Being always low in the sky, Antares’ spectacular twinkling has sparked more than a few emails about a strange light in the sky.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Animation of Mars approaching Antares from August 4 to the 24th, 2016 at 10 p.m. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
08/03/2016 – Ephemeris – Jupiter is slipping toward the setting Sun
Ephemeris for Wednesday, August 3rd. The Sun rises at 6:31. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 9:05. The Moon, 1 day past new, will set at 9:29 this evening.
Venus and Mercury are in the evening sky but too close to the Sun to be easily seen. Check below for more information on the apparent interactions between the two. Jupiter will join the fray later this month. Jupiter is in the west in the evening. It will set at 10:44 p.m. Mars starts the evening in the south-southwestern sky, moving to the southwest. It’s right of its dimmer look-a-like star Antares, whose name means Rival of Mars. The Red Planet is back in Scorpius. The planet will set at 1:07 a.m. Mars is resuming its rapid eastward motion against the stars. The ringed planet Saturn is low in the south. It’s to the left of Mars. Saturn will pass due south at 9:25 p.m. and will set at 2:02 a.m.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Venus, Mercury the day old Moon (not really visible) and Jupiter at 9:25 p.m. (20 minutes after sunset), August 3, 2016. Created using Stellarium.
Spotting the Moon and these planets requires a Lake Michigan horizon and may be futile. The farther one is to the south the greater the angle that the line of planets make with the horizon. This is not a good apparition of Mercury for us, but a good one for folks in the southern hemisphere.
The planets and constellations at 10 p.m., August 3, 2016. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter and its satellites at 10 p.m., August 3, 2016. It will be close to the horizon and fuzzy in telescopes. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
Saturn and its moons at 10 p.m. August 3, 2016. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
Planets at sunset and sunrise of a single night starting with sunset on the right on August 3, 2016. The night ends on the left with sunrise on August 4. Actually all the naked eye planets are in the evening sky. If you are using Firefox right-click on the image and select View Image to enlarge the image. That goes for all the large images. Created using my LookingUp program.
08/02/2016 – Ephemeris – The Scorpion has visitors this year
Ephemeris for Tuesday, August 2nd. The Sun rises at 6:30. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 35 minutes, setting at 9:06. The Moon is new today, and won’t be visible.
There’s a large constellation located low in the south as it gets dark about 10:30 tonight It’s Scorpius the scorpion. Its brightest star is Antares in its heart, a red giant star whose name means “Rival of Mars”. From Antares to the right is a star then a vertical arc of three stars that is its head. The Scorpion’s tail is a line of stars running down to the left of Antares swooping near the horizon before coming back up and ending in a pair of stars that portray his poisonous stinger. This year the planet Saturn appears almost directly above Antares. Tonight Mars is right of Antares. On the 23rd of this month Mars will pass just above
Antares, between it and Saturn, making line of three bright objects. Mars is currently brighter than Antares.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Scorpius with Mars and Saturn at 10:30 p.m. August 2, 2016. Created using Stellarium.
The red lines are the official constellation boundaries by the International Astronomical Union. From the look of some of the boundaries, astronomers apparently gerrymander as well as our politicians.
For those unfamiliar with gerrymandering put “gerrymander” in your favorite search engine or Wikipedia.
08/01/2016 – Ephemeris – Previewing August skies
Ephemeris for Monday, August 1st. The Sun rises at 6:29. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 9:07. The Moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 6:19 tomorrow morning.
Let’s look ahead at the month of August in the skies. Daylight hours will decrease from 14 hours and 38 minutes today to 13 hours 15 minutes on the 31st. The altitude of the sun at local noon, that is degrees of angle above the horizon will decrease from 63 degrees today to just over 53 degrees on the 31st. Straits area listeners can subtract one more degree from those angles. Local noon, when the sun is due south, is about 1:43 p.m. The big event of the month will be in the early morning sky: The Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak on Friday morning the 12th. However you’ll have to wait until after 1:30 a.m. for the moon to set. But that will allow viewing of the shower up to 3 hours of the peak. I’ll have more then.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
August Star Chart
Star Chart for August 2016. Created using my LookingUp program. To enlarge in Firefox right-click on image then click View image.
The planets and stars are plotted for the 15th at 10 p.m. EDT. That is chart time. Note, Traverse City is located approximately 45 minutes behind our time meridian. (An hour 45 minutes behind our daylight saving time meridian.) To duplicate the star positions on a planisphere you may have to set it to 1:45 earlier than the current time if you are near your time meridian.
Evening nautical twilight ends at 10:23 p.m. EDT on the 1st, increasing to 9:26 p.m. EDT on the 31st.
Morning nautical twilight starts at 5:14 a.m. EDT on the 1st, and decreasing to 5:58 a.m. EDT on the 31st.
Add a half hour to the chart time every week before the 15th and subtract a half hour for every week after the 15th. Before the 13th also subtract an hour for Standard Time.
For a list of constellation names to go with the abbreviations click here.
- Pointer stars at the front of the bowl of the Big Dipper point to Polaris the North Star
- Follow the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper to the star Arcturus
- Extend the arc to a spike to point to Spica.
- The Summer Triangle is outlined in red. Vega in Lyra (Lyr), Deneb in Cygnus (Cyg) and Altair in Aquila (Aql).
Calendar of Planetary Events
Credit: Sky Events Calendar by Fred Espenak and Sumit Dutta (NASA’s GSFC)
To generate your own calendar go to http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SKYCAL/SKYCAL.html
Times are Eastern Time.
Date Time Event Aug 01 Mo Venus: 15.3° E 02 Tu 16:45 New Moon 04 Th 02:19 Moon-Venus: 3.1° N 04 Th 18:12 Moon-Mercury: 0.6° N 05 Fr 03:48 Moon Ascending Node 05 Fr 07:57 Venus-Regulus: 1° N 05 Fr 23:28 Moon-Jupiter: 0.2° N 09 Tu 20:05 Moon Apogee: 404300 km 10 We 14:21 First Quarter 12 Fr 08:10 Moon-Saturn: 4° S 12 Fr 08:26 Perseid Shower: ZHR = 90 14 Su 09:05 Moon South Dec.: 18.5° S 16 Tu 16:59 Mercury Elongation: 27.4° E 18 Th 05:27 Full Moon 19 Fr 10:14 Moon Descending Node 20 Sa 01:34 Mercury-Jupiter: 3.8° N 21 Su 21:20 Moon Perigee: 367000 km 24 We 01:09 Mars-Antares: 1.8° N 24 We 21:11 Mars-Saturn: 4.3° N 24 We 23:41 Last Quarter 25 Th 12:21 Moon-Aldebaran: 0.2° S 27 Sa 07:17 Moon North Dec.: 18.5° N 27 Sa 17:53 Venus-Jupiter: 0.1° N 28 Su 16:09 Mercury-Venus: 5° N Sep 01 Th Venus: 23.5° E
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 