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10/16/2012 – Ephemeris – Autumn wonders for binoculars or small telescope: The Pleiades
Ephemeris for Tuesday, October 16th. The sun will rise at 7:59. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 6:55. The moon, 1 day past new, will set at 7:33 this evening.
The most magnificent star cluster of the autumn sky is the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. At 10 p.m. It will appear as a close group of stars of a nebulous fuzz, depending your eyesight or sky conditions low in the east. It is the perfect binocular object, showing under good conditions a hundred more than the 7 brightest stars. Some mistake it for the Little Dipper because the stars do make a nearly handle less dipper. I tend to call it the Tiny Dipper. The stars in the Pleiades are less than half the age of the stars in the Double Cluster I talked about yesterday. The stars in the is cluster are about 100 million years old. Compared to the sun, these guys aren’t out of diapers yet. I’ll have lots more to to talk about the Pleiades as autumn wears on.
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.
Pleiades and Jupiter at 10 p.m. October 16, 2012. Created using Stellarium.
04/02/2012 – Ephemeris – Venus will pass the Pleiades tonight
Ephemeris for Monday, April 2nd. The sun will rise at 7:20. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 51 minutes, setting at 8:11. The moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 5:14 tomorrow morning.
This evening Venus starts a pass by the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades is also known as the Seven Sisters and soon it will disappear in the twilight glow. The next time it will be seen in the evening is in next October. Venus will head back toward the sun, which it will pass directly in front of on June 5th. The sun will pass the Pleiades in mid May, so Venus will never quite make it back to the Pleiades this go around anyway. Though Venus is beginning to head back to the sun, it is still moving eastward against the stars, though a little slower than the sun. Right now Venus is mostly heading toward us. Around the 16th of May Venus will finally stop its eastward motion with respect with the stars and will head westward.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Venus passing the Pleiades April 2 - 4, 2012. Created using Cartes du Ciel.
In the real sky Venus is a heck of a lot brighter than you see here. And with binoculars, you’ll see a lot more stars in the Pleiades.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 