Naked Eye Astronomy: What’s That Bright Thing?

So, all Summer you’ve been looking at the Southern night sky and wondering what the heck that bright thing is. OK, so maybe you haven’t. Maybe you have a life. Maybe you watch your shoes and try not to step in freshly dropped, recycled dog food. But I’m going to tell you what it is anyway.

Jupiter. King of the planets. Number 5 on the “out from the sun” list. To find it, simply look south for the brightest thing in the night sky. It will be due south around 10pm local time. Up and to the right is the bright star Altair (alpha Aquila). Further up and to the right is Vega (alpha Lyra). Remember the move Contact with Jodie Foster? Vega was where she went to meet the aliens.

The current backdrop for Jupiter is the unimpressive constellation Capricornus. If you look to the right of Capricornus, you’ll see the much more impressive constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpius. Go out around 8pm local time and this will be due south.

Sagittarius, on the left, is identifiable by it’s tea kettle shape, currently tipping out on the scorpion’s tail. Scorpius contains the impressive red star Antares. Antares means “the other Mars” (anti-Ares, get it?). Its red color is why the Greeks gave it its enduring name. You’ll need to get out soon to see Sagittarius chase Scorpius because the chase will soon be below the night horizon.

But Jupiter will be ruling the early night sky for a few more months. If you can get your hands on a small telescope get a bead on him and be awed. At least look up every once in a while. There are whole worlds up there. It might be worth taking your eyes off your shoes for a night. It might even be worth stepping in a steamer. Naw, probably not.

Naked Eye Astronomy: February Sky Pretty Reminder

Just a reminder for you early risers, 16-18 February 2009 is a great time to catch Mars and Jupiter in close conjunction with Mercury in the area to boot. You’ll have to get out just before sunrise and have a clear eastern horizon, but it’s worth the effort.

Full details in my post from 29 Jan 2009. Share it with someone you love. It’s a great opportunity to introduce the kids to astronomy and start their education early before they have to go to school where everything is dumbed down.

Naked Eye Astronomy: Early Riser Sky Pretty

For February’s sky pretty, you’re going to need a couple of things: a good, clear eastern horizon and an alarm clock. A hot pot of coffee wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Your window of opportunity is 16-18 February 2009. Your target is the eastern horizon just before sunrise. Your payoff is a close conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Mars with Mercury in the neighborhood for good measure.

Your local sunrise will be around 6am, but the key to seeing this treat is getting out before the rising sun overpowers the sight. The sun will be following only 5^° behind. Get your coffee brewed and get a seat by 0540, local time. It is important the your chosen vantage point have an unobstructed view of the horizon.

You’ll first spot Mercury 5^° above the horizon. Five degrees is about a thumb’s width at arm’s length. Mercury is shining brightly at -0.17 magnitude. On the 16^th Mars and Jupiter will rise side-by-side about 0543, local time. Red Mars will be on the right at +1.58 magnitude and -1.58 magnitude Jupiter is less than one degree left of Mars.

If you miss the sixteenth’s sky pretty, try again on 17 Feb. when Mars will be slightly lower than Jupiter, but separated by less then 1/2^°. On the 19^th, Mars will be one degree directly below Jupiter. From then on, Jupiter will be on a rapid escape from Mars and the Sun. If you get up five minutes earlier on 24 Feb., you’ll catch Jupiter and Mercury just ¾^° apart.

If you’re an earlier riser, this sky pretty was made for you. If you’re not, get the coffee pot ready the night before. This is one sight worth the effort. Besides, when’s the last time you enjoyed a sunrise?

Jupiter, courtesy of JPL/NASA

Naked Eye Astronomy The Winter Sky: Chauffeurs, Twins, and Unicorns

Set your eyes SE at 21:00 local time for our last installment of the Winter sky. As of today, the near-full moon is in Cancer blotting out many of the dimmer stars. You may want to wait until the 15th of January when the moon is below the horizon to see some of what I’m writing about today. Locate our red friend Betelgeuse (alpha Ori) as your starting point. From there, tonight’s journey will take us to the charioteer, the twins, and the unicorn.

Need a ride?
From Betelgeuse, look north (up) and east (left). The 0.05 magnitude star you’ll run into is Capella (alpha Aur). The constellation Auriga is derived from the Latin word for “charioteer” or, in modern terms, “chauffeur.” Auriga’s ring of stars is supposed to represent the charioteer’s helmet.

Capella is a quadruple stars system about 42 light-years from earth. The two primary stars are type G giants and are accompanied by two red dwarfs. For sci-fi and Star Trek fans, Capella is the fictional setting for “Friday’s Child,” a season-two episode of the original Star Trek series which first aired 1 Dec 1967.

Just down and to the left of Capella, you’ll run into Menkalinan (Beta Aur. Menkalinan is a 1.90 magnitude trinary system with two white sub-giants and a red dwarf all about 85 light-years from earth.

Gemini a naked-eye dream
Let’s return to Betelgeuse base and draw a mental line due east (left). The first bright start we encounter is Alhena (gamma Gem). Continue along your mental straight line to find Pollux. Pollux (beta Gem) breaks the tradition of designating the brightest star in a constellation “alpha” since it’s brother Castor (alpha Gem) bears that distinction. Castor is the bright star right above Pollux. These two stars are the traditional twins, but astronomically-speaking, they have little in common. Castor is a quadruple system made up of two binary pairs. Pollux is a sextuple system with an orange giant taking prominence. Pollux’s primary has a radius almost nine times that of our sun’s. It also has a planet, designated Pollux-b with a mass about 2.3 times that of Jupiter’s, orbiting every 590 days. Pollux-b was discovered in June 2006 so don’t say there is nothing new in astronomy.

The stars of Gemini range about 30 light-years to 1100 light-years from earth. With twelve stars brighter than 4 magnitude, Gemini is a naked-eye dream. It is the exact opposite of our next destination.

Dim, lonely Monoceros’ secrets
Monoceros, the unicorn, lies south of Gemini between the dogs. From Betelgeuse, trace a triangle down to Sirius and left to Procyon. The seemingly empty space of that region is the constellation Monoceros. The unicorn is outlined by stars not much brighter than a 4 magnitude which makes it difficult to see with the moon nearby or from any lighted population centers. Monoceros is indeed one of the least favorite naked-eye destination. Even with a good telescope it doesn’t give up its secrets easily. But the wonders are there.

Beta Monoceros, a 4.60 magnitude neighbor eclipsed by its proximity to Sirius, is a beautiful trinary system which appears fixed from earth. It consists of three B type stars nearly 700 light-years away. In 1781, William Herschel took the first close look at Beta Mon and declared it “one of the most beautiful sights in the heaven.”

Alpha Monoceros is located about halfway between Sirius and Procyon (and slightly south). It is a G type star not very different from our own sun. If you can see it, you’re getting a good idea how our own sun looks from 144 light-years away, small, dim, and unassuming. I wonder if someone on a planet around Alpha Monoceros is starring back.

There is one last, non-naked-eye object in the unicorn. At magnitude 15.74, V838 is invisible to all but the best telescopes. About 20,000 light-years from earth, V838 went unnoticed until 2002 when it underwent a violent outburst. Originally thought to be going nova, astronomers have since put forth several non-nova theories about its sudden activity. One theory involves a star on its last leg. Another theory speculates that two stars are colliding. Regardless of which is right, the Hubble telescope image of the star is a thing of beauty.

This concludes our tour of the winter sky, my favorite part of the night sky. Hopefully, I’ll return to the old blog with something new from Associated Content this week. Until then, take something hot to drink when you go out under the wonderful winter sky.

Naked Eye Astronomy: Birthday Edition

I know I promised that the next installment of Naked Eye Astronomy would be about unicorns, but y’all have indulged me so far. Please grant me this one birthday gift. Let me talk about the zodiac today. The zodiac is simply the twelve constellations through which the sun appears to move during the tropical year. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m going to try not to sound rantish, but you see where this is going.

I sometimes write about astronomy. The stars, planets, comets, asteroids, planetoids, and all things astronomical have fascinated me since I was a child. I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon when I was 6 and the memory is as clear today as it was in 1969. I turned my childhood enthrallment into a hobby, amateur astronomy. I don’t want to put down anyone’s hobby, but astronomy is not astrology. Astronomy is a scientific approach to studying the heavens. Astrology is at best a funny, back page newspaper filler. At worst, astrology is a giant waste of time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I probably insulted some true believer out there. Someone will probably want to argue/debate the merits of astrology with me. Let me save you the trouble…don’t bother. It’s a crock. A big steaming crock of crap. I wrote an article about that topic a long time ago and I’m kicking myself for not leaning on one point more heavily. I touched on it under the heading “Stuck in the past” in the article, Debunking Astrology: Myth in the Modern Era. What is the one, biggest, glaring, conspicuous reason astrology is so very, very bogus? Stellar drift.

It hit me again today like the blazing sun in my astronomy software, Stellarium. I’m a Sagittarius who was born a Capricorn. Four thousand years of stellar drift have bumped all the astrological signs back one month. The sun won’t even enter Capricornus until the 18th of January 2009. As it is today, as it was on my birthday, the sun is squarely in Sagittarius.

Those moldy Babylonians did a great job mapping out the sky and spinning some fanciful tales, but they didn’t factor in stellar drift. No one since has bothered to adjust the astrological houses. No one bothers to point to all the fancy birth charts and say, “Um…no. The sun is in the wrong house for me to be a Capricorn.”

I’m sorry if that offends someone, but stellar drift is a fact. I don’t care if you believe in God or gods or fate or karma. I don’t care if you think the flying spaghetti monster in the sky directs your daily footsteps. What snaps my garters is when people take something simple like gravity, twist it into some all-encompassing system, and try to relieve their minds of personal responsibility.

Just so we’re clear: 4,000 years ago astronomy helped plant crops. Then some joker got the idea that crop fertility equals human fertility and tried to apply that fancy new calendar to babies. Astronomy is not astrology. Stars are giant fusion reactors and do not control our fates. Planets follow Newtonian laws and not the laws of Marduk.

I was conceived under a “Do Not Disturb” sign and born under a stop sign. So happy birthday to me. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Consider that your annual sacrifice…er…present.

Naked Eye Astronomy: The Winter Sky, Bulls, Sisters, and Dogs

In the last installment of Naked Eye Astronomy, I concluded with a few questions. It’s time to answer those and continue the exploration of my favorite sky, the winter sky.

Last time, I told you how to find Orion the hunter by looking for his belt and four bight stars, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph. You’ll need to find him again because we’re going to use Orion as the starting point to locate some other wonders of the winter sky.

What is Orion Hunting?
You can make a case for just about anything, but I think like Momie Tullottes did in her comment. Orion is hunting Taurus the bull. The fact that Orion is always following Taurus through the heavens gives this story a little validity.

Face south around 11 PM local time and locate Orion’s belt. Follow the line of the belt from left to right (east to west). The first bright orange star you come to is the eye of the bull, Aldebaran (alpha Tau). Aldebaran’s orange glow is streaming across 65 light years to reach us and is still bright at magnitude 0.85. Aldebaran appears so bright after its lights’ long trip to earth because it is nearing the end of its life and has expanded to 44 times the size of our sun.

Can we see any of our relatives up there?
Aldebaran means “follower” in Arabic. Who is Aldebaran following? The seven sisters. Didn’t know you had sisters in the sky, did you? In the lore of the Dakota Sioux, Alderbaran is hunting the white buffalo, but we’ll stick to the Western/Greek lore and call the Pleiades, the seven sisters. If you want to geek your friends out, rattle off the sisters’ names, Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone. Throw in their parents, Atlas and Pleione for good measure. From Aldebaran, just look up the line you traced from Orion’s belt to find the Pleiades. Ever wonder why the car maker Suburu has that funky star symbol? In Japan, the Pleiades are called Suburu.

Where are Orion’s hunting dogs? Where in the winter sky can we find one of our nearest star neighbors?
Orion has two dogs following him on his hunt. They trail just left (east) of him. Go east from the red giant Betelgeuse and the next bright star you’ll find is Procyon, (alpha CMi), the 0.40 magnitude star of Canis Minoris, the little dog. Procyon’s owes its brightness to the relative closeness to our solar system. It’s only about 11 light years away. Now go south, below Orion and about half-way back west to Orion and you’ll find the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, Sirius. Alpha Canus Majoris, is also know as the Dog Star since it is the brightest star of the Big Dog constellation. Sirius appears so bright for two reasons. One, it is about 25 times brighter than our sun. Two, it is one of our closest neighbors at only 8.6 light years.

Sirius has great stories scattered in almost every culture. The ancient Egyptians kept track of Sirius because its heliacal rising coincided with the Nile flood. The Greeks called the month after Sirius’ heliacal rising the Dog Days of Summer because they believed Sirius was adding its heat to the Sun’s to make us all sweat. This also explains why Sirius Radio chose a dog as its logo and why J. K. Rowling named her werewolf character Sirius Black.

So after all these thousands of years, why hasn’t Orion caught that bull?
I blame his dogs. In the right angle, east of Sirius and south of Rigel, is the constellation Lepus. While Orion is trying to catch the bull, his dogs have been distracted by the rabbit under his feet. To the naked eye, Lepus the hare is fairly unremarkable. Arneb (alpha Lep), the brightest star in the constellation went supernova thousands of years ago, probably before there were humans to give the stars names. You can get some idea of what is left of Arneb when you consider the 2.55 magnitude object we see today is 1284 light years away.

I hope that answers the questions I posed last time. There is plenty more to explore in this part of the sky. Next time well talk about chauffeurs, twins, and unicorns.

Naked Eye Astronomy: The Winter Sky, My Favorite Sky, Orion

The (Northern) Winter Solstice happened yesterday, December 21, 2008 at 12:04 UT. Yeah, I’m sure you didn’t notice, but the days are getting longer from here on out. My longest night was spent with the best sleep I’ve had in a week. Now begins what I consider the best part of the night sky, the Winter constellations.

Right after sunset, Piscis Austrinus (PsA) is low on the SSW horizon. The reason I like PsA is Fomalhaut (alpha PsA). The magnitude 1.15, class A star has the distinction of being the first star where we tiny earthlings saw an extrasolar planet in the visible light spectrum, thanks to the Hubble telescope. Though not visible to the naked eye, Fomalhaut has a 25 AU debris disk circling at about 133 AU that emits a stunning amount of infrared radiation.

Right now, Venus is hanging around just west of Formalhaut. A month from now, on 21 Jan 2009, Venus will be in conjunction with Uranus. Watch for it.

Around 11pm local time, Orion, the naked-eye astronomer’s dream, is due south. The reddish Betelgeuse (alpha Ori) and blue Bellatrix (gamma Ori) mark the Hunter’s shoulders. bright blue Rigel (beta Ori) and the dimmer Saiph (kappa Ori) mark his feet. You can spend an entire evening lost in the wonders of Orion. Betelgeuse’s impressive 0.45 magnitude is more impressive when you know that it is 427 light years away. Not to be out done, Rigel’s 0.15 magnitude comes across 772 light years to brighten our winter sky.

Orion is one of the easiest constellations to find. Simply look for Orion’s belt, the three evenly spaced stars, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, in a diagonal line. Look down and hanging from Orion’s belt is his sword. At first glance, Orion’s belt looks like three fuzzy stars, but if you look closely (you may need binoculars), some of the fuzziness will clear. The middle star, theta-1 Ori C, is blurred by the Great Nebula in Orion.

So what is Orion the hunter hunting? Where are his hunting dogs and what are they after? Where in the winter sky can we find one of our nearest star neighbors? Can we see any of our relatives up there? All this in our next installment of the winter sky unless you want to throw out your guesses in the comments.

Naked Eye Astronomy: Sky Pretty Late November 2008

Whether your an amateur astronomer or just a casual star-gazer, right now is a beautiful, near conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in the constellation Sagittarius. What I like to call a sky pretty. Here’s a chance to get your kids interested in astronomy or just impress your date with a little sky knowledge.

Where to look
South West (SW), right about where the sun is setting or better, just has set. The scene should be the same for anyone in the 30^°N latitudes.

When to look
Just as the sunsets. As of this posting that should be just around 1730 hours (5:30 PM) local time.

What to look for
The two bright objects about a hand’s width above the horizon. You really can’t miss them.

What you are seeing
The brighter object, closer to the horizon is the planet Venus, Earth’s nearest neighbor. She has magnitude of -4.02 and is the third brightest object in our sky, out shown only by the Sun and the Moon. Just above Venus is our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter. The king of the planets has a magnitude of -1.59.

This close conjunction is taking place in the constellation Sagittarius, the hunting centaur. The magnitude 2.05 star below Venus is Nunki (sigma Sgr). This sky pretty is bright enough to be enjoyed with the naked eye. Using a good pair of binoculars may reveal some of the Jovian details, but don’t count on Venus showing you what lies beneath her skirt. One reason Venus is so bright is her highly reflective, dense atmosphere which masks any surface details. If you have access to even a small telescope, you’ll have no trouble seeing the four Galilean moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

While you’re out, look around for these other bright objects. Up and to the right (slightly west) of Venus and Jupiter, is the star Altair (alpha Aql). Altair is the brightest star (mag. 0.75) of the constellation Aquila, the eagle. Continue west and slightly higher than Altair to find Vega (alpha Lyr) the zero magnitude and brightest star in the tiny constellation Lyra, the lyre.

Continue turning north and you may be able to spot the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) about half way between Vega and the horizon while facing due north. Alpha Umi, is more commonly known as Polaris, the North Star.

This sky pretty will peak on 1 December 2008 when the two planets will be closest together and joined by the crescent moon. Keep your eyes on the sky.

Dang it Sassy

I got the binoculars out and put them by the door. I was all set for the big meteor shower. Then suddenly, without warning, I fell asleep. Missed it completely. But I did have a dream last night. Like most dreams it made no sense, but somewhere in the dream was a meteor shower. So, in a way, I got to see the Leonoids last night.