There’s a new Comet McNaught in town (well, in the sky, actually) and it might actually be visible to the naked eye. (Comets can be unreliable, so no one knows for sure.) Look for it low in the northeastern sky before dawn, in the constellation Perseus. This coming weekend should be a good time to check it out, because there’ll be a new moon on the 12th. More info on Comet McNaught, pictures and star charts here at Universe Today.
Not many people have seen the planet Mercury. It’s easy to find Venus and Mars and Jupiter and even Saturn, but Mercury’s small and close to the sun and elusive. According to Renaissance gossip (and I do love Renaissance gossip) Copernicus himself never saw Mercury.
However! Now’s your chance! For the next couple of weeks Mercury and Venus will appear unusually close together (they’re actually on opposite sides of the sun, but stargazing is tricksy like that). Because Venus is one of the brightest objects in the night sky you can use it as a marker to help you find Mercury. Just look in the lower western sky about an hour after sunset. The brightest star you see? That will be Venus. Look down and to the right for Mercury. Have a pair of binoculars or a small telescope? Even better. They’ll appear closest together on April 3rd and 4th, and the conjunction will continue through about April 10th.
Why bother? Well, Mercury, the planet of communication, is going into retrograde again around the middle of April. Communication snafus, here we come. So at least this time we can look Mercury straight in the eye and say, “Not with my queries/submissions/revisions, you don’t.”
The Leonid meteor shower has produced some of the most spectacular meteor displays in history; in fact, the Leonid display of November 1833 was so brilliant it produced the science of meteor astronomy (no pun intended) overnight.
The Leonids generally begin on November 13th and end on November 21st, with the largest numbers of observable meteors generally streaking across the sky during the night of November 17th/18th. This year the new moon falls on the 16th so there will be virtually no moonlight to impede viewing.
Bundle up and plan your Leonid-viewing party now! You can find everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the Leonids at meteorshowersonline.com.
I haven’t posted a beagle picture for a while, so here’s one from this morning: Boudin, sleeping peacefully in front of the back door, striped by the morning sun. He’s lying in one of his favorite spots, the space created by the three legs of my telescope tripod. Boo, the stargazing beagle! What next?
5-6 August: The August full moon is the Sturgeon Moon, so called because the mighty sturgeon, which lurks in the Great Lakes and other large bodies of water, is supposedly most easily caught this month. Fish for dinner, to celebrate!
11-12 August: The Perseid Meteor Shower reaches its peak. A great night to lie out in the back yard and wish on each meteor streak. The meteors are called Perseids because their radiant, the point they appear to come from, lies in the constellation Perseus—look to the east-northeast between midnight and dawn.
All month: the Summer Triangle. If you look straight overhead, you’ll see an almost perfect triangle of bright stars, with the Milky Way sweeping through it from the northeast to the southwest. The brightest of the triangle is Vega, brilliant white, in the constellation Lyra, the lyre. To the left of Vega as you look up is the white supergiant Deneb, marking the tail of Cygnus, the swan. Looking down toward the horizon is the white dwarf Altair, the heart of Aquila, the eagle.
For a star map of the Summer Triangle’s stars and their associated constellations, go here.
A beautiful dawn this morning. I was up unusually early because Cressie decided to bark and bark and bark—she was bored and wanted someone to play with. So we went out into the back yard together. The sky was just lightening, slate blue shading to gray, with feathery brushstrokes of pink-gold clouds. High over the treetops swam the waning, almost-new moon, the thinnest of silver-gold crescents, with bright Venus glimmering beside it.
Cressie quartered the yard, inspected the fence and garden, sniffed all the delicious early-morning smells and stopped by every few minutes to touch her little muzzle to my leg—“Just checking in, Mama.” I watched the sun come up, and the moon and Venus fade into the light. There is an unsettling combination of delight and sorrow in my life right now, and looking out into the sky helps me keep it all in balance.
That delicate touch of a beagle girl’s muzzle against my leg doesn’t hurt, either.
June’s a morning kind of month this year—if you’re not an early riser you’ll miss most of the stargazing fun. If you like to stay up late, well, you could always just stay up till dawn.
The Flower Moon of May 2009 will have lots of starry (and planet-y) companions. On the evenings of the third and fourth, look for Saturn close to the Moon. On the sixth, the bright star close to the Moon at nightfall is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, representing the sheaf of wheat in the virgin’s hand. (“Spica” means “ear of grain” in Latin.)
On the tenth, the Moon moves from virgins to scorpions—it will rise together with Antares, the vibrant reddish brightest star in the constellation Scorpio. On the sixteenth and seventeenth, on the other hand, the Moon will team with Jupiter, which looks like a bright yellow-white star.
And as if the Moon hasn’t been fickle enough so far, on the twentieth and twenty-first it will line up with Venus and Mars first thing in the mornings. Venus is the morning star this month and so bright you can’t miss it. Mars is fainter and redder. Look for it just below the Moon on the morning of the twenty-first.
On the twenty-ninth, Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo, is just to the upper right of the Moon. If you want to amaze your friends with your astronomical knowledge, explain that what we see as the star Regulus is actually a system of four stars, the blue-white Regulus A and its white-dwarf companion, plus another pair, Regulus B and Regulus C.
In addition to being called the Flower Moon—April showers having theoretically brought May flowers—the full Moon of May also called the Milk Moon and the Corn Planting Moon. Look for it on the ninth.
Could anything be more irresistible? It seems an international team of astronomers have discovered what’s called an extended Lyman-Alpha blob so far away that what they’re seeing (given the speed of light) is something that happened at the dawn of the universe. It doesn’t look like much but to astronomers it’s a mysterious and fascinating object.
It has been named Himiko, after a queen in ancient Japan, said to be a sorceress. Quoted from Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories: Later Han Through Ming Dynasties by Tsunoda Ryusaku, tr. 1951:
She occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people. Though mature in age, she remained unmarried. She had a younger brother who assisted her in ruling the country. After she became the ruler, there were few who saw her. She had one thousand women as attendants, but only one man. He served her food and drink and acted as a medium of communication. She resided in a palace surrounded by towers and stockades, with armed guards in a state of constant vigilance.
Even more intriguing:
When Himiko passed away, a great mound was raised, more than a hundred paces in diameter. Over a hundred male and female attendants followed her to the grave. Then a king was placed on the throne, but the people would not obey him. Assassination and murder followed; more than one thousand were thus slain. A relative of Himiko named Iyo, a girl of thirteen, was [then] made queen and order was restored.
Makes me want to write a young-adult historical with the shaman princess as the heroine.
And speaking of stargazing: this month the Moon finds its way from planet to planet, with a star cluster thrown in for good measure; and the Lyrids return.
Happy sky-watching!
