Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Friday, August 16th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 8:46, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:48. The Moon, 3 days before full, will set at 3:34 tomorrow morning.

The dark matter that holds the clusters of galaxies together in the universe may be made of weakly interacting massive particles which astronomers have dubbed WIMPs. These particles would be more massive than the particles that ordinary matter is made of, but do not interact with ordinary matter or give off or absorb light. They are detected by the influence of their gravitational force alone. An alternative idea is Massive Compact Halo Objects or MACHOs. These may be made-up of ordinary matter. Since there are many more low mass stars, like red dwarfs, than there are high mass stars, perhaps there’s the creation of planet sized bodies like brown dwarfs. These are planets more massive than Jupiter, but not massive enough to become stars. As such, they should be practicably invisible.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT–4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

For more information on Dark Matter search for it on the internet. One Article I found is here: https://sciencenotes.org/what-is-dark-matter/. They dismiss MACHOs by not mentioning them at all, concentrating on the much more likely WIMPs.