12/14/11 – Ephemeris – Where are the bright planets this week?
Wednesday, December 14th. The sun will rise at 8:11. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 51 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 9:29 this evening.
It’s Wednesday and time again to take a look at the whereabouts of the bright planets. The planet Venus is prominent in the southwestern twilit sky after sunset setting at 7:12[, and should be visible by 5:45]. Jupiter is now the most prominent planet of the evening sky located in the high in the southeast to south and is seen against the stars of the constellation Aries. It will pass due south at 9:04 p.m. It will set at 3:48 a.m.. Mars will rise at 11:41 p.m in the east northeast and will be in the constellation Leo. [Mars will be due south at 6:17 a.m.] It is 111 million miles away and closing. Saturn will rise at 3:22 a.m. just to the left of the bright star Spica in the east southeast. Remember Comet Lovejoy will enter SOHO’s LASCO C3 frame today.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. Text in brackets deleted from the program due to time constraints.
Update 6:16 a.m.
Comet Lovejoy entering at the bottom of the LASCO C3 frame. Courtesy SOHO, ESA, NASA. Timestamp on image.
Click to enlarge.
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
12/12/11 – Ephemeris – The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
Monday, December 12th. The sun will rise at 8:09. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 52 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 7:15 this evening.
Most of this week will be on the topic of Comet Lovejoy which will pass a hundred thousand moles of the sun’s surface Thursday evening our time. It should be visible to the SOHO spacecraft orbiting the sun a million miles sunward of the earth starting Wednesday. Normally a spacecraft inside the earth’s orbit will orbit the sun in less time than the earth and move away from the earth. However SOHO is placed at a unique spot called L1, kind of a equilibrium point between the earth and sun SOHO means Solar and Heliospheric Observatory was launched in 1995 and has served as an early warning sentinel for solar storms approaching the earth pretty much ever since. It is with SOHO that we’ll see if Comet Lovejoy survives its plunge near the sun.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
12/09/11 – Ephemeris – Glimpse a piece of a lunar eclipse tomorrow morning
Friday, December 9th. The sun will rise at 8:07. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 5:02, the earliest sunset of the year. The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 8:08 tomorrow morning.
There will be an eclipse of the moon tomorrow, however we will get a chance to spot the very beginning of the partial phase. The eclipse will be best seen in the western United States, Australia and most of Asia. The partial phase starts at 7:46 a.m. with the moon low in the west northwest. The sun will rise about the time the moon will set. That will occur at 8:09 a.m., give or take a few minutes depending where you are in northern Michigan. It will have to be really crystal clear to see this at all. Next year we’ll see the tail end of an eclipse of the sun as it sets on May 20th. And we’ll see partial eclipse of the moon on June 4th. The next evening we’ll have the rare transit of Venus which won’t reoccur for over 100 years.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
Addendum
More Information here: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHfigures/OH2011-Fig06.pdf
Update
Lunar Eclipse at 8 a.m. December 10, 2011. Created using Stellarium.
12/08/11 – Ephemeris – RIP Phobos-Grunt
Thursday, December 8th. The sun will rise at 8:06. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 2 days before full, will set at 7:14 tomorrow morning.
November was the month to send spacecraft to Mars for its close approach in 2012. On November 8th the Russian’s launched Phobos-Grunt a mission to Mars’ moon Phobos to land and return a soil sample. On the way it was to release a Chinese satellite to orbit Mars. Making the round trip was a tiny capsule from the Planetary Society containing freeze-dried microbes to see if they could survive the long trip in interplanetary space. The rocket performed flawlessly, but the Phobos-Grunt package did not ignite its engine to escape earth and head out to Mars. Subsequent attempts by the Russians and Europeans have failed to correct the situation. On the 26th NASA’s Curiosity was launched and is now heading to Mars to land August 5th next year.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
12/07/11 – Ephemeris – Where are the planets this week?
Wednesday, December 7th. The sun will rise at 8:05. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 57 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 3 days before full, will set at 6:16 tomorrow morning.
It’s Wednesday and time again to take a look at the whereabouts of the bright planets. The planet Venus is low in the southwestern twilit sky sunset setting at 6:57, and should be visible by 5:45. Jupiter is now the most prominent planet of the evening sky located in the high in the southeast and is seen against the stars of the constellation Aries. It will pass due south at 9:33 p.m. In a telescope it will be accompanied by its 4 brightest moons. It will set at 4:18 a.m.. Mars will rise at 11:55 p.m in the east northeast and will be in the constellation Leo. Mars will be due south at 6:34 a.m. It is 117 million miles away and closing. Saturn will rise at 3:46 a.m. just to the left of the bright star Spica in the east southeast.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
12/06/11 – Ephemeris – Jupiter will appear close to the moon tonight
Tuesday, December 6th. The sun will rise at 8:04. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, half way from first quarter to full, will set at 5:16 tomorrow morning.
This evening the planet Jupiter will appear to the lower right of the moon. They will appear at their closest at 2 p.m., but that’s before they rise. Jupiter is the largest of the planets and three of its four largest moons that we can see in small telescopes, are larger than our moon. Last month I spent a day at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank West Virginia. One of the studies they were doing was a radar study of the Jovian moon Europa to see if the suspected ocean that separates the moon’s core from its surface would cause the surface to slip a bit and show that Europa’s not completely solid. Radar pulses would be sent from Aricebo in Puerto Rico to be received by their GBT 100 meter telescope.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
Addendum
Jupiter and the moon the evening of December 6, 2011. Created using Stellarium
12/05/12 – Ephemeris – Comet C/2011W3 (Lovejoy)
Monday, December 5th. The sun will rise at 8:03. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 59 minutes, setting at 5:02. The moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 4:16 tomorrow morning.
Four days ago an amateur astronomer discovered a new comet. These discoveries by amateur astronomers are getting rarer these days with all the near earth asteroid searches going on now. This comet was discovered by Australian Terry Lovejoy. It turns out that Comet Lovejoy is a sun-grazing comet which will come only 110,000 miles from the sun’s surface on the 16th of this month. At that distance it’s a good bet that the comet will be vaporized. There have been over 2,000 comets discovered by observers studying the SOHO satellite’s images of the vicinity of the sun, Lovejoy. found the comet when it was just inside Venus’ orbit Looks like SOHO’s LASCO C3 images will be the place to view the passage of the comet by the sun. Google SOHO and NASA to locate the site on the internet.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
Bad Astronomy Link to the story: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/04/amateur-astronomer-discovers-sungrazing-comet/
Update 9:27 p.m.
More from NASA: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/old/03dec2011/. It contains the expected path of the comet as seen from the earth and SOHO
The comet should enter the field of SOHO’s LASCO C3 imager early on December 14th!
Latest (Real time L)ASCO C3 images are here: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/
In the LASCO C2 and C3 images the face of the sun is covered by an occulting disk. The white circle in the center is the actual size of the sun.
12/02/11 – Ephemeris – Astronomy events this weekend
Friday, December 2nd. The sun will rise at 7:59. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 5:03. The moon, at first quarter today, will set at 1:14 tomorrow morning.
This evening yours truly will present one of his biannual Christmas programs, Biblical Cosmology, at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory starting at 8 p.m. It is the monthly meeting of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society. In the Bible, in Genesis and elsewhere we have descriptions of the earth and the heavens. We’ll look at what the ancient Hebrews thought of the structure of the universe from the Bible and other writings. Tomorrow evening we will also have a Public Viewing Night from 8 to 10 p.m. This will be the last viewing night of the year. If it’s clear we’ll look at the moon and Jupiter. The observatory is located south of Traverse City on Birmley Road between Garfield and Keystone roads.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
12/01/11 – Ephemeris – December preview
Thursday, December 1st. The sun will rise at 7:58. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 4 minutes, setting at 5:03. The moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 12:12 tomorrow morning.
December is the month with the shortest daylight hours. Winter will officially arrive at the winter solstice on the 22nd at 12:30 a.m. There will be little movement in the sunset times: In the Traverse City/Interlochen area this will be from 5:03 tonight, down to 5:02 and then advancing to 5:11 at the end of the month. There is more movement in the sunrise times which will advance from 7:58 tomorrow to 8:19 on the 31st. There is also little movement of daylight hours. The noontime sun will dip from 23 ½ degrees to a bit less than 22 degrees above the southern horizon on the 22nd, before ascending to 22 1/3 degrees on New Years Eve. For the straits area the sun will be a degree, or two sun widths lower than these.
* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.
