What’s Up This Fourth Week of October

This week’s forecast is indicating very warm temperatures with perhaps a clear night or two around Thursday. This clear night might in fact overlap with one of this week’s spectacles you won’t want to miss! The moon is still in its waxing phase and sets just a few hours after sunset. Sunset is around 6:40 PM now and it will continue to get earlier and earlier. This is the time of year when you might get sad to see the sun and light of day leave so early but the early sunset makes stargazing more accessible and amateur astronomers excited with the additional hours of nighttime.  

This week brings us the peak of the Orionids meteor shower, a close meet between Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon, and the dwarf planet Ceres at a standstill.

The peak of the Orionids meteor shower this year is early morning Wednesday (between about midnight and dawn), although you might be able to spot some before or after this as the meteor shower is active between October 2nd and November 7th. The Orionids appear to be originating from near the famous Orion constellation which consists of the three “belt” stars and bright red Betelgeuse forming Orion’s right shoulder. This meteor shower will produce an estimated 10-20 meteors per hour, but these will only be visible in darker locations. These meteors come from tiny particles left behind from the famous Halley’s comet (which is set to return in the year 2061). The meteors produced by the Orionids are not as bright as the Perseids, but they are notoriously fast meteors. These sand sized particles slam into Earth’s atmosphere at around 41 miles per second! All of this energy ionizes the air that the meteor passes through and because of this a trail is left behind in the sky that may last a second or two after the meteor itself has vaporized.

A composite image of the Orionid meteor shower, with the constellation Orion, from which they appear to radiate, in the background. APOD-NASA

On Thursday the moon will pass very close to Saturn and Jupiter in our skies. These two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, hang in the southern skies and are among the first “stars” to appear after sunset. They are so bright that they can easily be mistaken for airplanes, except they aren’t moving quickly, nor do they have blinking lights. On the 22nd, the moon will pass within 5° of both planets such that all three bodies almost form an equilateral triangle in the sky. This is an ideal time to check these celestial bodies out with the naked eye or with binoculars or a telescope.

The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn, as seen in the south on the evening of October 22.

On Friday the dwarf planet Ceres will be at a standstill as it completes its retrograde loop. Ceres can be found by first locating the moon around 8:30 PM then moving about 25° (2.5 fists at arm’s length) to the left and about 3° downwards. Ceres does not stand out too much since it shines a faint 8.5 magnitude. This dwarf planet can only be seen with the aid of binoculars or a telescope.

This week may be the last warm week of 2020. Hopefully the weather holds out for us sky enthusiasts, although, Ohio weather has the infamous reputation for throwing surprises. Sunset is very early which means you don’t need to stay up to 9:30 PM just to see the first stars! The full sky and all of its wonders are now visible about an hour after sunset, roughly 7:30 PM. Grab a lawn chair and a pair of binoculars or a telescope and explore the vastness of the cosmos. For meteor watching I suggest bringing a blanket (or something comfortable to lay on) instead of a chair to prevent neck strain. Enjoy this week’s crescent moon and dark nights.

Clear Skies!

This week is bringing some promising opportunities for stargazers and amateur astronomers. The forecast ahead indicates some clear or partially clear nights (although weather is very difficult to predict). The temperatures are relatively warm during the day and don’t even drop below the frost point at night. The moon is also transitioning into its new moon phase so you won’t have to worry about the moon’s blinding glow washing out the starscape. This week brings us the opposition of Mars, a close pass between the moon and Venus, the new moon, an easy viewing of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, and an opportunity to view the dusty arms of the Milky Way galaxy.

Mars has been making some headlines recently and that’s not for any plain reason. Every 15 or so years the opposition of Mars coincides with its perihelion to within a week or two. That’s what all the hype is about for the opposition on Tuesday.

You may be asking “So what if its perihelion coincides with opposition?” Well, since orbits are elliptical (thank you, Kepler) each planet has a perihelion and an aphelion or, in English, each planet has a moment when it is closest to the sun and a moment when it is furthest from the sun in its orbit cycle. Mars’s perihelion is 26 million miles closer than its aphelion! Opposition occurs when a planet is in line with the Earth and the Sun (its closest point to Earth). Combining these two happenings means the Red Planet will be especially close and especially bright this time around. Mars shines an unmissable orange-red color and is a brilliant magnitude -2.6 in the eastern skies starting around 7:20 PM.

The new moon occurs on Friday (at 3:31 PM EDT, to be exact) but there is another interesting sight to catch before the new moon. On the early morning hours of Wednesday around 6 AM, Venus will appear very bright in the eastern skies and the 8% illuminated moon will be no more than 5° away.

The Moon and Venus appear close to one another on Wednesday Morning.

On Thursday between roughly 7 PM and 9:30 PM, all four of Jupiter Galilean moons will appear to be on the same side of the planet.  These moons are so bright that they can easily be resolved with a pair of binoculars.

All four of the Galilean moons will be on the same side of Jupiter on the Thursday evening.

Since the moon is hidden most of the night and the weather is promising, now is a perfect time to visit a dark location to see the Milky Way with your naked eyes. The core of the Milky Way is best seen during the summer but the long arms of the Milky Way are still visible for most of the year. The arm can be seen starting around 8 PM by looking at the south west horizon. This line of dust and stars stretches all the way to the north eastern horizon although it is much fainter in that direction. In addition to the Milky Way arms, there are a few other things that are easy to see with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars/telescope. The Pleiades might catch your eye near the ENE horizon around 9 PM. It might appear as a fuzzy patch in the sky, but that is just the tight collection of seven bright stars (the “Seven Sisters”). This open cluster is very impressive through binoculars. If you find yourself outside after midnight, then the true symbol of winter will be peering over the eastern horizons - the Orion constellation.

I closeup view of the Pleiades, similar to what can be seen in a good pair of binoculars.

This week is a rare opportunity with decent temperatures, a new moon, and promising clear-sky forecasts. Find some time to venture outside and explore the cosmos and all of its wonders with your naked eye or perhaps a pair of binoculars or a telescope. This week in particular it seems that the planets are stealing the show, but there are many deep sky objects that will also steal your attention in the weeks and months to come.

Clear Skies!

This week marks the official start of “Spooky Season”, October. It brings with it the type of weather you would associate with October: a little chilly and cloudy.

This week there is a cold front passing through. It may be a few days before we get some clear skies. If there are gaps in the clouds or clear skies later in the week, here are a few things to look for: The bright full moon, the planet Mercury, Saturn at standstill, and a bright double star, Albireo.

On the nights that are clouded over you can partake in an easy and fun citizen science project that helps classify deep-space galaxies, “Galaxy Zoo”, or you can probe the universe in other wavelengths of astronomy through various websites!

This week the moon will slowly increase in brightness until Thursday evening when it reaches its full phase. This full moon alone will highly limit what deep-sky objects are visible since they are so faint. Thursday evening also marks Mercury’s greatest elongation, or in simpler terms, the furthest distance that Mercury appears from the sun. Despite the small inner planet being at its greatest elongation, it is only a few degrees above the western horizon after sunset, so don’t miss it!

Monday night Saturn will appear to stand still relative to the stationary background stars. The gas giant is coming out of its retrograde loop and the relative motions of the Earth and Saturn give the illusion of a standstill ringed planet.

Roughly 30 minutes after sunset the brightest stars will begin appearing. You may notice three bright stars directly overhead that form a large triangle. These stars are Deneb, Altair, and Vega. Together they form the Summer Triangle. Right in the middle of this stellar triangle is a beautiful and bright double star, Albireo. One can resolve the two stars and their colors in a good, steady pair of binoculars. One star shines a noticeably blue color while the other star shines a vivid red/orange color.

On cloudy nights there are plenty of fun astronomy resources for exploring the universe. One of my personal favorites of these resources is called “Galaxy Zoo”. It is a website that has images taken from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey telescope and picks out thousands and thousands of galaxies that it sees. It then falls to us, the website users, to describe each galaxy with a few simple multiple choice-like questions that take only a minute or two to answer. The work of Galaxy Zoo users aids morphological and evolutionary studies of galaxies. To top it all off, you are likely seeing a galaxy that has never before been seen by another pair of human eyes…you’re the first! (Here’s the link: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo)

From the comfort of your computer desk, you can help contribute to science by becoming a user of Galaxy Zoo.

Did you know that some telescopes can be used on cloudy days? Most of the telescopes that we are used to look at things in the visible spectrum of light, which is what our eyes are sensitive to. Clouds block a lot of the visible light (hence why it’s darker outside when it’s cloudy) but do not block other parts of the spectrum such as light in the radio wavelengths (so radio telescopes can be used on cloudy days). The visible spectrum is only a SMALL fraction of the total electromagnetic spectrum. Different wavelengths can show us things that we otherwise would not be able to see, for example, thermal cameras see mostly infrared light and show us heat signatures. Viewing the universe in lots of different spectra can reveal lots of invisible features such as large gas structures and high energy objects. You can visit this website: http://www.chromoscope.net/ to view the galaxy and deep-space in nine different spectra to reveal and probe our own galaxy’s hidden objects and structure.

The universe as seen in H-alpha light- the light of glowing hydrogen. Explore the universe through different frequencies at Chromoscope.net.

Hopefully the weather works out for us stargazers at least by the end of this week. With sunset just after 7 PM, now is a perfect time to step outside just after dinner hours for a brief look into the cosmos. Bring out with you a pair of binoculars or just your eyes and perhaps a jacket and look up in any direction and be humbled.

Clear Skies!

This upcoming week will perhaps offer a few clear nights (most likely Monday night) and reasonable temperatures. The daytime temperatures this week will be up in the 60’s and 70’s, but beware, the nighttime temperatures will drop into the 40’s and 50’s. The smoke from the western forest fires this week will likely be much less dense than last week.

A great weather tool for stargazers (in addition to the Weather Channel or the National Weather Service apps) is the “Clear Sky Chart” website. This site displays forecasted cloud coverage, transparency, seeing, and darkness for your location. Some things to look for in the upcoming nights include Mars, the first quarter moon, and some International Space Station (ISS) passes. This website has a link to the Clear Sky forecast for JGAP on the home page.

Sunset will be approaching 7:20 this week as the Fall is officially upon us. The Autumnal equinox falls precisely at 9:31 AM EDT Tuesday. This is when the Sun passes through the celestial equator and the length of day and night are just about the same, hence the name “equinox”.

As the sun sets, your eye will first be drawn to the moon hanging in the middle of the sky. The moon reaches its first quarter phase on Wednesday. This phase of the moon is an ideal time for binocular and telescope viewers to observe the lunar surface. Since the sun will be hitting the part of the moon facing us on Earth at such a shallow angle there are very pronounced shadows on the lunar surface. These shadows add contrast to surface details and make for a great photograph opportunity! Here is a composite image I took during a first quarter moon last year.

A composite image taken by jared May, processed to bring out detail in the shaded side of the moon, and reveal the stars behind. No single image could capture both, but a composite image like this one can combine elements from regions of widely varying brightness.

Mars is also making a grand entrance into the starscape now peaking its head above the eastern horizon just after 8:30 PM. It will be easily distinguishable from other stars due to its color. Mars shines a brilliant red or orange against the black backdrop of space. The details of the surface, can only be seen with higher power telescopes.

For seeing details of other planets your attention should turn southwards towards Saturn and Jupiter which both outshine all nearby stars. A small telescope and good vision can resolve the red stripes found in Jupiter’s atmosphere and the ring system circling the gas giant, Saturn.

This week will also have a few good opportunities to catch sight of the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is a science lab that is as long as a football field and circles the Earth 254 miles above the surface traveling about 4.7 miles/second (one full orbit in 90 minutes). It is big enough that it can reflect large amounts of sunlight back for us to see. Here are the details of some of the passes for this week: Monday 9:07 PM appears 15° above NW visible for three minutes, Tuesday 8:19 PM appears 19° above NW visible for three minutes, Thursday 8:21 PM appears 11° above NW visible for three minutes. With a long focal length scope and an attached camera with a fast shutter speed it is possible to image the ISS from the ground! Here was my attempt at this four years ago (notice the brown spots are the solar panels and the brighter spots are the main body where the astronauts and experiments live).

A small telescope can reveal the International Space Station something more than a pinpoint of light, if you can keep it in view. Image: Jared May

If the weather holds out for Ohio this week it will be a great time to grab your binoculars or telescope and peer into the cosmos. All that is visible to your eyes from your backyard appear flat and projected against a dome but are actually separated by anywhere from a few hundred miles to upwards of 15 quintillion miles (ex. Andromeda galaxy – quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeros!). Get outside to enjoy the clear skies and be humbled at all that it offers.

Clear Skies! 

The week ahead is forecasted to have a few clear nights, including Monday and Tuesday night. The midday temperatures are still following the warm summer trend, but the nighttime temperatures are revealing of the season to come. A jacket is almost necessary in order to observe the night sky comfortably with air temperatures dropping into the 50’s. Of course, there’s all that smoke from the unprecedented western wildfires, making even “clear” skies difficult to see through. So be sure to look up before setting out. If the smoke blows away from us, it should be uncommonly clear.

This week brings us the new moon (as promised from last week’s blog), a chance to see the zodiacal lights (if the smoke goes away), and a great chance to be a part of a citizen science group for variable stars!

The moon will rise in the very early morning hours this week just before the sun does. The official new moon occurs Thursday at 7:00 AM EDT. The clear night skies will be even darker this week without the moon’s white glow. On Tuesday morning the moon will be relatively close to Earth’s twin, Venus. They will be separated by roughly 12° in the eastern skies.

Venus and the moon in the Morning skies on Tuesday morning.

Venus, the brightest “star” in the sky, will be passing by the bright and beautiful open star cluster M44 (also known as “The Beehive Cluster”).  Scanning the sky just a few degrees above Venus with binoculars will reveal the brilliant collection of young stars.

Messier 44, the “Beehive” cluster in Cancer. Visible in the morning skies at this time of year, when the air is clear, it appears as a faint fuzzy patch to the naked eye.

Since the moon’s light will be absent for most of the nights this week it is a perfect opportunity to observe something called the zodiacal light. This light appears as a soft triangular glow the extends from the Sun and runs through the ecliptic (the plane that the planets lie in) caused by dust scattering sunlight. The dust here is not the normal kind that floats around in your house or that settles on old books, it is actually dust that floats around in the solar system. Some of the early material that eventually coalesced to form the inner planets, including the Earth, is still floating around out there. It is normally very difficult to see the zodiacal light because of light pollution or the overpowering glow of the moon, so this week is perfect with an approaching new moon and clear nights in the forecast.

Any time of the year can be a good time to observe variable stars, although, it may be difficult to pick them out since many variable stars fluctuate in brightness over the course of many days or months. “Variable star” is an umbrella term than encapsulates many different types of stars that vary in brightness. There are Cepheid variables, eclipsing binaries, RR Lyrae variables, and more, each with their own unique properties, periods, and implications. The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an organization that not only has the world’s most comprehensive variable star database, but gathers data largely from volunteer citizens!

https://www.aavso.org

What’s great about this effort is that you do not need to be a professional caliber amateur astronomer to take part. In fact, you can make observations and take data with as little as a pair of binoculars or even just you unaided eyes.

The brightness fluctuations of a variable star. Magnitude (brightness) is measured in by a curious system where lower numbers mean a brighter object.

Professional astronomers do not have the time nor the equipment to take such massive surveys of night-to-night changes of so many variable stars. When you sign up to get involved you can specify what equipment you have and since it is completely voluntary, you can observe anywhere from several times a week to only few times a year. There are lots of resources through this organization some of which include classes on observing and software, mentors, and tutorials. I am personally involved in data collection on a variable star in the constellation of Cassiopeia.

With the number of warm nights left questionable, take advantage of the surprisingly decent weather outlook for this week and enjoy the dark clear skies of summer’s end. Nighttime observing is becoming more “accessible” now with sunset approaching 7:30 PM. Bring a telescope, binoculars, or even just your eyes to dive deep into the wonders of the cosmos.

Clear (smoke free) Skies!

With the moon rising later in the night, earlier sunsets, and more reasonable temperatures, this upcoming week is a perfect opportunity for both people in a hurry and dedicated amateur astronomers to look up at the sky. Since sunset is right around 7:50 PM, the first stars and planets will start revealing themselves around 8:20 PM. After the sun disappears below the horizon the temperatures will drop very quickly. This week temperatures will go from mid/upper 70s to mid/low 60s, so make sure to bring a jacket if you plan on being outside for more than a few minutes. This week brings us the third quarter moon, Mars passing into retrograde, and the easy viewing of a nearby photogenic and binocular-friendly galactic neighbor.

Wednesday will be the third quarter moon, meaning the moon is exactly three quarters of the way through its month-long orbit (starting from “new moon.). The moon will rise around 11 PM on Monday, giving plenty of time before this to view a night sky unhindered by the moon’s blinding glow. It may be apparent to people who track the moon’s position regularly, but there is a pattern to the moon’s cycle if you don’t already know. Notice the resemblance between these two words, “moon” and “month”, well that is no coincidence. The moon takes 29.5 days, almost exactly one month, to make a full orbit around the Earth (each quarter phase is separated by just a bit more than seven days). So next week you can count on me reporting the new moon!

Wednesday will also display a stationary Mars as the red planet transitions into its retrograde motion. That’s right, over the next 70 days or so Mars will appear to move in the opposite direction to what it normally does. This is only an optical illusion and it’s fairly subtle to notice since the planets move relatively slow night to night. This retrograde illusion is caused by the relative motions of both Earth and Mars in comparison to fixed background stars. It is difficult to explain in words without a demonstration so I encourage you to watch this brief informative video explaining how Mars (and Mercury) appears to change its direction in the sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtV0PV9MF88 .

Image published on the Astronomy Picture of the Day, a great website for daily astronomical images: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Over the coming months, our nearest large galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy ( (2.5 million light years away) will be in plain sight starting around 8:30 PM (for this week). Andromeda is one of the brightest deep-sky objects, in fact, it’s one of only a few that are naked eye visible (in darker locations). If you look or point your binoculars/telescope 40° above the east/northeast horizon you should hunt for a soft fuzzy glow that stands out from the background sky. This fuzzy glow is actually a collection of roughly 1 trillion stars circling a supermassive black hole at around 130 miles per second all on a collision course with our own galaxy. Do not worry about the collision part though, because that will happen in about 4.5 billion years and the odds of any stars colliding in the collision between the two galaxies is 1.1 x 10-19% (basically 0%). Andromeda is not only very easy to find with binoculars and telescopes, but it is perhaps one of the most photogenic deep-sky objects. Even a DSLR camera mounted to a tripod with a long exposure (30 seconds is sufficient sometimes) is able to resolve one of Andromeda’s own satellite galaxies, M32. That’s right, we can easily see a galactic companion of another galaxy!

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161227.htm

Image NASA’s APOD

The forecast ahead, however uncertain, is predicting a few clear nights this week. Go outside prepared with a jacket, a pair of binoculars or a telescope, and a lawn chair to prevent neck strain. The sky holds many spectacles that are both easily visible with the unaided eye and many that will only be revealed through the magnified view of a telescope. Enjoy the early sunsets and comfortable temperatures of summer’s end. Clear Skies!

We are entering September, the month where summer ends and fall begins (also the season of new deep sky objects). Sunset this week is hovering right around 8 PM, almost a full hour earlier than two months ago in early summer.

The weather this week for most of central Ohio is not looking conducive for stargazing with lots of cloudy days and nights in the forecast ahead. If there is a break in the clouds or perhaps a surprise clear night, there are a few night sky objects and events that are worth a look. Some for this week include the full moon, a close pass between the moon and mars, and some seasonal constellation that have some hidden treasures in them.

This Tuesday is the full moon and if the skies near the eastern horizons are clear around 8:30 PM, the moon will have a very unique appearance to it. There will be two things that will stand out about the moon’s appearance around this time: its color and its size. When the moon is low and near the horizon it may appear to be a brilliant red or orange. This is simply because the moon’s light must travel through substantially more atmosphere to reach our eyes than when it is high in the sky. As the light passes through all the air, blue colors tend to get scattered more than red colors allowing more red light to reach our eyes. If the moon is observed near the horizon it may also appear to be surprisingly large. This is because your eyes are seeing it with familiar references, like rooftops or electric lines. When we do have those references nearby, our brains can actually understand and perceive the apparent size of the moon! When the moon is high in the sky we have no references for size and we cannot accurately judge how big the moon is just by looking at it. When this big red moon appears near autumn, it is referred to as the Harvest Moon.

The Full Moon rising beyond the under-repair Washington Monument.

On Saturday around 10:30 PM, peer over the eastern horizons to see the moon passing right beside the red planet, Mars. They will be roughly 1° apart (about the width of your pinky held at arm’s length). This is a perfect viewing opportunity for naked-eye observers, as well as binocular and telescope users. In some cases, the moon may appear to entirely cover up a planet in the sky and this is called an occultation. 

Two seasonal constellations that have some interesting stars within them are Cygnus the Swan and Cassiopeia. Cygnus the Swan can be found almost directly overhead with the star Deneb (one of three stars of the Summer Triangle) forming the tail. This region of the sky is not just home to bright hydrogen alpha emissions (for you narrowband astrophotographers) but it also has some brilliant x-ray sources and contains one of the largest stars discovered, NML Cygni. This red hypergiant is found just off the tail and shines with a faint apparent magnitude of 16.6. NML Cygni is around 5,300 light-years away from Earth and is between 1,600 and 2,800 R☉ (solar radii) meaning if it were placed at the center of our solar system, the surface of this star would be somewhere out past the orbit of Jupiter or Saturn!

The well-known constellation Cygnus is seen passing nearly straight overhead- at the zenith.

The constellation of Cassiopeia can be found in the north eastern skies as an unmissable sideways “W”. This constellation contains supernova remnants, the brightest radio source in the sky (above 1 GHz), some hypergiants, and a naked-eye variable star. This variable star, gamma Cassiopeiae, is a bright and easy target for citizen scientists involved in the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO, and they are always looking for new members!). It fluctuates between magnitudes 1.6 and 3 and can be recorded with anything from a trained set of eyes to an advanced telescope setup.

The sky is filled with stars, nebulae, constellations, and other asterisms that each have a unique history and story to them. Many of these deep-sky radio sources or hypergiants may not even be visible to trained optical telescope users, but regardless, looking at them even with the naked eye and knowing that something that amazing is out there is awe inspiring. Get outside and enjoy the night skies with anything from your naked eyes to a telescope and explore.

Clear Skies!

The weather for this upcoming week is not looking too promising for stargazers. Ohio weather has, however, been known to have surprises. The sunset this week is around 8 PM meaning you don’t necessarily have to be a night owl to see some of what the sky has in store this week. The first stars and planets begin to pop out from the sky background around 30 minutes after sunset. The first noticeable objects include the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, the Summer Triangle stars, and Antares. In addition to these bright objects, this week also holds a unique time to view the first ever discovered asteroid (now dwarf planet), Ceres. This week is also a perfect time to use some binoculars or a telescope to observe the famous double star system of Albireo.

On Tuesday the moon will pass through its first quarter phase. This is where only half of the side facing us is illuminated by the sun. first/third quarter and the crescent phases are my personal favorite times to observe the lunar surface with binoculars or a telescope. During these phases there is lots of contrast on the surface and many craters can be seen right along the moon’s terminator (where the illuminated side meets the unilluminated side).

Jupiter and Saturn can both be seen relatively close to each other in the south/southeast skies just after sunset as two distinctly bright looking “stars”. A telescope with a moderately long focal length will be able to resolve the red and tan stripes found in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Point this telescope 8° further east to find Saturn and you will easily see the ovular appearance of the planet. This is due to the planet’s massive ring system that is about 240,000 miles wide! If seeing conditions are good and the telescope’s focus is sharp, the Cassini division can be seen in the rings. This is a small part of the rings that appear darker because most of the material for the rings in that orbit is actually missing. This “missing” material was just displaced by Saturn’s moon Mimas.

Saturn is one of the most engaging sights through small telescopes.

These next few objects are very close to the zenith (directly overhead). This puts them in a very good position for viewing, yet a very inconvenient position. The atmosphere distorts light that passes through it (example, stars twinkling) and the zenith is where there is the least atmosphere that star light must travel through to reach our eyes. It is inconvenient, however, because unless you are laying down or have a reclining chair you must crane your head back which may become uncomfortable after several minutes. The summer triangle is a constellation that now hangs directly overhead. It consists of three bright stars: Vega, Altair, and Deneb. Together they form a very easily seen triangle in the sky that stretches nearly 35° from the zenith. Right in the middle of the summer triangle is the famous double star, Albireo. It can be seen with most binoculars and telescopes. Albireo will stand out as it consists of two rather bright stars: a very red star and a very blue star (appears slightly smaller relative to the red star). This double star system is around 400 light-years away and the two stars orbit each other once every 214 years – a little too slow to notice over the course of a single night.

While you have your binoculars or telescope out, stay outside until about 10 PM when the dwarf planet Ceres rises above the horizon. It was the first asteroid ever discovered (before getting promoted to dwarf planet status in 2006), found in the year 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi. Ceres reaches opposition on Thursday and shines a faint magnitude 9 low in the southeastern skies.

An illustration of Ceres based on imagery from NASA’s DAWN probe. The bright patch confounded astronomers for many months before it was discovered that the material were salts, deposited as salty water sublimated away into space, leaving dissolved minerals behind.

Many of these objects and events are not exclusive to this week, so it’s not a total loss if the weather doesn’t work out in our favor. Be on the lookout for those clear nights and grab a lawn chair, some binoculars or a telescope, some bug spray, bring a curious mind and get outside to relax and enjoy the cosmos.

Clear Skies!

This upcoming week is going to greet us with increasingly warm weather and potentially many clear nights!  With the bright light moon out of the way, it is a great time to observe the universe beyond our home solar system.  After this Saturday (The summer solstice), the days will begin to get shorter and nighttime will grow longer. Grab yourself a pair of binoculars or a telescope, a set of seeing eyes, and a lawn chair because this week brings many interesting night-sky objects to observe.

Even without any binoculars or telescopes, there are some brilliant nighttime spectacles to be seen. As the sun is setting, the sky and the clouds tend to get darker as they fall into night. Noctilucent clouds, however, brighten as the sun sets. They shine greatest during astronomical twilight, which begins and ends when the sun is 12° and 18° below the horizon respectively (roughly 10:20 PM to 11 PM). They are bright clouds made of ice crystals that form at roughly 250,000 feet, more than 10 times higher than typical clouds.    The dust that is spread throughout the Earth’s upper atmosphere by small meteorites often seeds these clouds.

Noctillucent clouds are somewhat rare and are visible only during the warm months, so be on the lookout!

If you are lucky enough to live in a more rural or less light-polluted environment, then the Milky Way has a treat for you. It rises around 9:30 PM and becomes visible around 10:30 PM when it is fully dark out. The Milky Way stretches from SSE to NNE and passes through the Summer Triangle. The heart of our galaxy, the part with the densest collection of stars, gas, and dust is most visible in the southern direction.

The Milky-Way as seen soon after sunset on June evenings.

Comet PanSTARRS will passing by some notable cosmic landmarks. On June 16, the magnitude 9 comet (fairly faint in a set of binoculars) will pass very close to M109, a barred spiral galaxy located very near the star, Phecda, in the Big Dipper. Around June 23, comet PanSTARRS will be passing by another well-known object near the Big Dipper, M106, another galaxy that can be found by hopping from Dubhe to Phecda to M106, all equidistant.

How to find M109 and M106, where which comet PANSTARRS will be passing near this week.

The majority of stars form as a binary system, so not surprisingly, there are many nearby and bright stars that share the stage with a nearby companion. There are many “optical illusion” binary star systems that are not actually binary stars, but are instead called double stars. All binary stars are double stars, but not all double stars are binary stars. Some bright double stars are sometimes just two bright stars that are very far apart but appear very close to each other in the sky from Earth. One of the more famous true binary stars is Albireo. It is a bright blue star that has a bright red companion and is seen best with a telescope. It is located between Vega and Altair, the two southern-most stars in the Summer Triangle, and forms the “beak” of Cygnus the Swan. (Indeed, the word “alberio” is Arabic for “the beak”.)

Another great double star can be found in the Big Dipper. The second, or middle, star of the handle is actually a bright binary pair, Alcor and Mizar. They were the first binary pair ever to be known and can even be resolved without binoculars or telescope.  However, through a telescope, the brighter of the two, Mizar, is seen to itself be a double.  And, not visible at the eyepiece, each of those stars are themselves an unresolved pair.   The Mizar/Alcor system is like a fairground ride.

The skies will continue to hold many wonders that rise and fall with the seasons. Hopefully the weather holds out for us sky-watchers for the upcoming few days. Until next week, clear skies!

One of the best meteor showers each year is the Perseid meteor shower.  Stay up late Sunday Night (they're best viewed after midnight) to see this elusive show. 

We will be shutting the observatory at midnight to enjoy the shower.

Gates close at 10:00 p.m.

Mars is a tiny world, tantalizingly small in telescopes, but it has inspired the imaginations of countless generations of astronomers before the age of space exploration.  Come see the Red Planet as observers like Percival Lowell or Sciaparelli saw it in the late 19th century!"

Gates close at 9:00 p.m.

Mars is a tiny world, tantalizingly small in telescopes, but it has inspired the imaginations of countless generations of astronomers before the age of space exploration.  Come see the Red Planet as observers like Percival Lowell or Sciaparelli saw it in the late 19th century!

Mars is a tiny world, tantalizingly small in telescopes, but it has inspired the imaginations of countless generations of astronomers before the age of space exploration.  Come see the Red Planet as observers like Percival Lowell or Sciaparelli saw it in the late 19th century!

Mars is a tiny world, tantalizingly small in telescopes, but it has inspired the imaginations of countless generations of astronomers before the age of space exploration.  Come see the Red Planet as observers like Percival Lowell or Sciaparelli saw it in the late 19th century!