Archive
10/24/11 – Ephemeris – The Constellation Aquarius
Monday, October 24th. The sun will rise at 8:09. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 6:43. The moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 6:41 tomorrow morning. | One of the constellations of the zodiac is in the south southeastern sky at 9 in the evening. It’s the constellation of Aquarius the water bearer. The image that is supposed to be depicted in the stars is that of a hapless fellow spilling a stone jar of water across the sky. Aquarius is fairly hard to spot because it is made of faint stars. One part of him is easy to spot, the Water Jar, an asterism or informal constellation. It’s a distinctive small nearly equilateral triangle of stars with another star in the center. Stars to the right depict the stream of water being spilled. The body of Aquarius is below, a misshapen balloon of stars that is seen above the bright star Fomalhaut, low in the south.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addenda
Aquarius as visualized by Cartes du Ciel.
Aquarius as visualized by Stellarium
10/21/11 – Ephemeris – Star Party at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Friday, October 21st. The sun will rise at 8:05. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 43 minutes, setting at 6:48. The moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 2:52 tomorrow morning. | Tonight if it’s clear The Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will be holding the last Star Party of the year at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This time we’ll be at Stop 3 on the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive starting at 7 p.m. Parking will be at Picnic Mountain, adjacent to Stop 3, which is a cul-de-sac off the main drive. Celestial wonders that will be visible include the planet Jupiter and three of its moons, shy Io will be hiding behind the planet til after 9. Some of the northern summer wonders including the great globular star cluster in Hercules are still visible. Rising, while we’re viewing will be the Pleiades the Seven Sisters, better seen in binoculars than a telescope, actually, and many more autumn wonders will be visible..
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/20/11 – Ephemeris – The Orionid meteor shower
Thursday, October 20th. The sun will rise at 8:03. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 46 minutes, setting at 6:50. The moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 1:40 tomorrow morning. | The Orionid meteor shower will reach its peak tomorrow morning. Like most meteor showers, this is best seen just before dawn. As the name suggests the so-called shooting stars will seem to come from the constellation Orion the hunter. They will appear to come from above the rectangular torso of the giant. These meteors actually have nothing to do with Orion, but they are the light flashes from bits of rock that were once part of Halley’s comet, as they burn up in the earth’s atmosphere. In Halley’s many passes close to the sun, much of its solid material has been liberated by the evaporating gasses, leaving a trail of litter in its orbit. The earth passes through this debris every May and now, in October.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Orionid Radiant
10/19/11 – Ephemeris – The bright planets visible this week
Wednesday, October 19th. The sun will rise at 8:02. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 6:51. The moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 12:31 tomorrow morning. | Well it’s Wednesday and time again to take a look at the whereabouts of the bright planets. The planet Venus is still rather close to the sun in the evening setting 42 minutes after the sun and not really visible. Jupiter is now the prominent planet of the evening sky after it rises at 7:15 p.m. in the east northeast and is seen against the stars of the constellation Aries. It will move due south at 2:07 a.m. In a telescope it will be accompanied by its 4 brightest moons, and as the planet rises higher Jupiter’s image becomes sharper, and its cloud bands will become visible. The moons and planetary features change from night to night and sometimes while you watch. Mars will rise at 2:01 a.m also in the east northeast and is going through the constellation of Cancer heading to Leo.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/18/11 – Ephemeris – The Pleiades or Seven Sisters
Tuesday, October 18th. The sun will rise at 8:01. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 52 minutes, setting at 6:53. The moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 11:25 this evening. | A marvelous member of the autumn skies can be found rising in the east at 9 in the evening. It is the famous star cluster called the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. I might also add the ‘Tiny Dipper’. Many people can spot a tiny dipper shape in its six or seven stars, and mistake it for the Little Dipper. As nearsighted as I am, though corrected, I’ve never been able to see more than a few stars and a bit of fuzz. However with binoculars, even I can see over a hundred stars appear along with the dipper shape of the brightest. The fuzz I saw was unresolved stars, but in photographs the Pleiades actually contains remnant wisps of the gaseous cocoon they were born from a hundred million years ago. In Greek mythology the sisters were daughters of the god Atlas.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The Pleiades, about what you'd see in binoculars.
10/17/11 – Ephemeris – The constellation of Cassiopeia
Monday, October 17th. The sun will rise at 7:59. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 6:55. The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 10:25 this evening. | The stars of the autumn skies are replacing the summer stars from the east. Look in the northeastern sky by 9 p.m. and you can find the W shaped constellation of Cassiopeia the queen. Cassiopeia is so far north that it never sets for us in Michigan. It is opposite the pole star Polaris from the Big Dipper. There’s a dim star that appears above the middle star of the W which turns the W into a very crooked backed chair. Above and left of Cassiopeia is a dim upside down church steeple shaped constellation of Cepheus the king. The Milky Way flows through a corner of Cepheus and Cassiopeia toward the northeastern horizon and through the constellation of Perseus the hero, which kind of looks, to me, like a chicken, but that’s another story.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The constellation Cassiopeia and its neighbors. Created using Stellarium.
10/14/11 – Ephemeris – The Neutrino problem
Friday, October 14th. The sun will rise at 7:56. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 4 minutes, setting at 7:00. The moon, 3 days past full, will rise at 8:04 this evening.
The news came out a couple of weeks ago that some nuclear physicists apparently measured that neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light. This needs to be corroborated before it is accepted by the physics world. We do have one good example of neutrinos traveling close to but not faster than the speed of light. That is a supernova in 1987 which was about 168 thousand light years away. The neutrinos arrived 3 hours before the light of the supernova arrived. The reason for the slightly earlier arrival time is that the neutrinos sailed from the core of the star like it wasn’t there. The light, however couldn’t escape until the explosion could push its way to the surface of the star. Neutrinos are wonderful and strange sub atomic particles. Check them out in Wikipedia.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/12/11 – Ephemeris – The bright planets this week
Wednesday, October 12th. The sun will rise at 7:53. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 7:03. The moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 7:00 this evening.
It’s Wednesday and time again to take a look at the whereabouts of the bright planets. The planet Venus is rather close to the sun in the evening setting 38 minutes after the sun and not really visible. Jupiter is now the prominent planet of the evening sky after it rises at 7:45 p.m. in the east northeast and is seen against the stars of the constellation Aries. It will move due south at 2:34 a.m. In a telescope it will be accompanied by its 4 brightest moons, and as the planet rises higher Jupiter’s image becomes sharper, and its cloud bands will become visible. The moons and planetary features change from night to night and sometimes while you look. Mars will rise at 2:09 a.m also in the east northeast and is entering the constellation of Cancer.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/11/11 – Ephemeris – The Hunters Moon and libration
Tuesday, October 11th. The sun will rise at 7:52. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 13 minutes, setting at 7:05. The moon, at full today, will rise at 6:34 this evening.
Tonight’s full moon is the hunter’s moon, and it has some of the characteristics of last month’s Harvest Moon. That is the moon rises less than the average 50 minutes later each night. Tomorrow the moon will rose 26 minutes later than tonight. The moon rotates in the same time that it orbits the earth. Only the moon’s rotation is constant, but its orbit around the earth is elliptical, and is not at a constant speed. That causes the moon to wobble a bit. Tonight the south end of the moon is tilted a bit toward is as is the east or left edge. This tilt is called libration. I usually track libration by checking out the position of the small gray sea at the moon’s upper right quadrant called the Sea of Crises. It’s distance from the moon’s limb or edge is a good indicator of this libration.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
10/10/11 – Ephemeris – What happened with the Draconids last Saturday?
Columbus Day (observed), Monday, October 10th. The sun will rise at 7:51. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 16 minutes, setting at 7:07. The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:31 tomorrow morning.
Last Saturday nights International Observe the Moon Night coincided with the Draconid meteor shower. The Draconids are a periodic shower, not good most years, and when they do appear the shower, or rather meteor storm doesn’t last very long. The bright moon didn’t help, and the peak was predicted to occur in the afternoon our time. The meteors did appears, and right on time, too early for us to have seen it. The best way to detect them with a bright moon is with radio. And using that technique the estimated the peak of Draconid meteors was over 200 per hour. The responsible comet, Giacobini-Zinner, will pass our orbit next February, and may give us a chance to spot the Draconids in darker skies next year.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
