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04/12/2012 – Ephemeris – The constellation Virgo the virgin
Ephemeris for Thursday, April 12th. The sun will rise at 7:02. It’ll be up for 13 hours and 21 minutes, setting at 8:24. The moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 3:02 tomorrow morning.
Tonight in the sky: to the left of the constellation of Leo the lion, which lies in the south at 10 p.m. is the next constellation of the zodiac: Virgo the virgin, seen in the south southeast. Virgo is a large constellation of a reclining woman holding a stalk of wheat. The bright star in the center of the constellation, Spica, is the head of that spike of wheat; and as such ruled over the harvest in two of Virgo’s guises as the goddesses Persephone and Ceres. The planet Saturn is also in Virgo this year to the left of Spica. Virgo is also identified as Astraea the goddess of justice. The constellation of Libra, the scales, is found just east of her a couple of hours later, not yet risen at 10 p.m. Early Christians saw Virgo as the Virgin Mary.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Virgo 2012. Created using Stellarium.
The sun is staying active – Check out the skies for the northern lights for the next few nights
Solar flares erupting from AR (Active Region) 1429, the big sunspot group now seen on the face of the sun, are sending clouds of charged particles toward the earth. Three flares in the last three days will provide an enhanced chance for auroral displays over the next few nights.
That’s both aurora borealis, northern lights and auroral australis, southern lights for or southern hemisphere friends.
Keep checking www.spaceweather.com for the latest information.
Also keep checking the western sky after sunset for Jupiter and Venus passing each other. These are the two brightest planets.
Good possibility of seeing northern lights tonight
We’ve got a full moon tonight, so that will affect visibility somewhat. But what we really need is clear skies!
Check out http://www.spaceweather.com for more information.
02/14/2012 – Ephemeris – St. Valentine’s day
Ephemeris for St Valentine’s Day, Tuesday, February 14th. The sun will rise at 7:44. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 24 minutes, setting at 6:09. The moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 2:43 tomorrow morning.
As I said before today is St. Valentine’s day. However one of the symbols of this Christian Saint’s day, beside the red hearts, is the pagan Roman god of love Cupid, the cute counterpart of the erotic Greek god Eros. Cupid supposedly made people fall in love by shooting them with little love darts with his bow. One of those darts is in the sky as the constellation Sagitta the arrow which is visible on summer evenings and now in the early morning. The Roman goddess of love is represented, brilliantly, in the evening sky as the planet Venus. On St Valentine’s Day, 2000 the NEAR spacecraft entered orbit of the asteroid Eros, and soft landed on it 364 days later. They say love is in the air. Apparently love is in space too.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Six views of asteroid 433-Eros in February 2000. Images from NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft.
Sagitta the arrow represents Cupid’s dart in the summer sky.
Delphinus, Sagitta and the Coat hanger. Diagram created using Stellarium.
Look for an aurora tonight
On Thursday the 19th a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) erupted from the sun headed earthward. Generally these things take about 2 days give or take to get to the earth. When they do they tangle with the earth’s magnetic field and cause huge currents to flow toward the earth’s magnetic poles causing among other things the aurora or northern and southern lights.
So check the skies tonight, especially northward if you are in the northern hemisphere or southward if you’re in the southern.
The higher your latitude the better your chances of seeing it. But who knows. Check out http://spaceweather.com/.
12/13/11 – Ephemeris – Comet Lovejoy and Kreutz sungrazing comets
Tuesday, December 13th. The sun will rise at 8:10. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 51 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 3 days past full, will rise at 8:21 this evening.
Comet Lovejoy which will pass close to the sun Thursday is not alone. It belongs to the Kreutz sungrazing group of comets. They are named after Heinrich Kreutz the 19th century astronomer who discovered some of the great comets of history were sungrazers and had similar orbits. Astronomers , trying to backtrack the comets, think the original comet broke up maybe in the 4th century AD into two unequal fragments, that have continued to fragment during close approached to the sun. The SOHO spacecraft can detect these comets toward the sun. Over 1,500 Kreutz sungrazer comets have been found on SOHO photographs. Comet Lovejoy should enter SOHO’s LASCO C3 image frame starting tomorrow morning. Google SOHO and NASA to locate the site on the internet.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
Addendum
Here’s something like what we’ll see in the next two days.
A Kreutz Sungrazer in 1996 seen by SOHO. Credit: LASCO, SOHO Consortium, NRL, ESA, NASA
Scott Anttila got a great shot of the lunar crater Theophilus
This is cool. My Monday post on the moon talked about the crater Theophilus. My old astronomy friend Scott Anttila was able to get a great image of this crater. It compare’s favorably with the Virtual Moon Atlas image. First, here’s his image:
The Crater Theophilus. Credit: Scott Anttila.
I had to flip the image to match the map below.
Here’s my Virtual Moon Atlas Image from Monday:
Waning Gibbous Moon 11/14/11 9 p.m. Created with Virtial Moon Atlas.
Thanks Scott!
See why I love that crater?
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,900 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 95 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 47 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was September 20th with 172 views. The most popular post that day was 9/20/10 – Ephemeris – Mercury and Jupiter.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, ephemeris.bjmoler.org, search.aol.com, obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, and search.conduit.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for comet hartley 2 ephemeris, comet hartley ephemeris, hartley 2 ephemeris, jupiter 9/20/10, and biggest dog bone.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
9/20/10 – Ephemeris – Mercury and Jupiter September 2010
1 comment
10/04/10 – Ephemeris – Comet Hartley 2 October 2010
12/20/10 – 12/21/10 Live eclipse blogging December 2010
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12/20/10 – Ephemeris – Total lunar eclipse tomorrow morning December 2010
The biggest dog bone I’ve ever seen. November 2010
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I’m Baaack! Since Network Solutions couldn’t handle my Blog I moved it to where is software lives…WordPress. So here we go!
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 