Taurus the Bull winter constellation

The cold weather might seem like a deterrent to winter stargazing but it can actually be quite enjoyable and rewarding with just a little preparation. Before going outside, check out the locations of the objects you want to observe. That will help you find them quickly and easily. Star dome charts and star maps are readily available online, or you can get night sky software that allows you to customize the view for your location and time.

Also, remember the first rule of observing: Make yourself comfortable! Plenty of warm clothing (especially thin, warm gloves for handling cold metal binoculars or telescope eyepieces). Occasional breaks for hot cocoa (Earl Grey works for me!). A red-filtered flashlight for reading charts outside. And position your viewing spot so that bright lights are blocked by trees, buildings, etc.

Ok so now that you’re all comfy, what are your celestial rewards? The three stars of Orion’s Belt are making their appearance in the eastern sky, making for one of the best “pointers” in the winter sky. Draw them upward and to the right and you’ll find Aldebaran, the fiery orange eye of Taurus the Bull. But keep that imaginary line going still higher and you’ll find the most famous winter star cluster of all – the Pleiades (commonly known as “The Seven Sisters”). There are many legends connected to the Pleiades, but one of my favorites come from the Chippewa People called “The Seven Dancing Brothers.” We will retell this story in the show.

What are the Pleiades in actual outer space? What about Venus and Jupiter? What else is in the January sky? Come join us for “Gateway to the Stars” Saturday, Jan. 7 at 6:45 p.m. and see for yourself!

Tickets for this presentation are $1 at the ticket window or $2 online. Members are free.

August 1st each year marks a traditional ‘cross-quarter day’ known as the Day of Lammas. It is when the first loaves are baked from the first wheat harvest, and marks the beginning of the harvest season. I don’t grow wheat, but I have enjoyed several peppers and zucchini from my garden already, and we are  preparing for a busy canning season in the near future.

Cross-quarter days are the midpoint days between a solstice and an equinox. It is on these days that we begin to sense or anticipate a changing in the seasons. For the Day of Lammas, we start to plan for the new school year, hurry to get that last camping trip in, or prepare for the fall sports season (can’t say much about the NBA, but the NFL is back on…)

For most people, the mindset of fall begins long before September 22nd, the date of the autumnal equinox. We expect the temperatures to cool down a bit and the Sun sets a little earlier now.

The actual midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox for 2011 is Sunday, August 7th, but the Day of Lammas is recognized on August 1st each year. Other cross-quarter dates are Groundhog Day, May Day, and Halloween.

There’s still plenty of summer left! Maybe I’ll get in the pool this evening…

June 1st: The New Moon is on June 1st, occurring at 3:03 pm, MDT. With no moon in the sky in the evenings, stargazing and deep sky observing with binoculars is a great activity on these warmer late-spring nights.
June 1st: There is a partial solar eclipse on June 1st, but it is only visible from the extreme northern parts of Canada and Alaska.
June 8th: 1st Quarter Moon occurs at 8:11 pm, MDT. The 1st Quarter Moon is basically due south at sunset. This may wash out some early evening observing, but the moon will be gone around midnight.
June 15th: Full Moon occurs at 2:14 pm, MDT. June’s full moon is the Strawberry Moon. From the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Strawberry Moon is named for short season where strawberries ripen. A full moon rises as the Sun sets and doesn’t set until sunrise the next morning, making night sky observations difficult.
June 15th: There is a total lunar eclipse associated with this full moon, but, alas, it is an eastern hemisphere event.
June 21st: The summer solstice (in the northern hemisphere) occurs at 11:16 am, MDT. On this day the Sun is at its highest point in the sky as it crosses the meridian of the sky. The Sun also rises its furthest north of east and sets its furthest north of west on this day. The longest day and shortest night also occur with the solstice. In the southern hemisphere seasons are reversed. This is the shortest day of the year and winter is beginning.
June 23rd: 3rd Quarter Moon occurs at 5:48 am, MDT. Nighttime observing is good as the moon doesn’t rise until midnight. Note that the moon is due south at sunrise during 3rd quarter.
July 1st: The lunar cycle begins anew, with New Moon at 2:54 am, MDT on July 1st.

The Planets-
Saturn is visible throughout the month in the nighttime sky. It is in the constellation Virgo, and at 1st magnitude should be easy to spot. Don’t confuse Saturn, slightly yellow in color, with the bright blue star Spica, 15 degrees to the east. Saturn is very close (a quarter of a degree) to  Porrima, the third brightest star in Virgo, at magnitude 3.

Saturn in June, visible throughout the night

Early morning viewers can catch Jupiter, in Aries, and Venus, in Taurus, before sunrise over in the east.

Jupiter & Venus, June 15th early morning

Be sure to come back and read additional blog posts later in the month for more details and night sky observing projects.

The International Dark Sky Association (IDA) is an organization that works with manufacturers, planners, legislators, and citizens to use our light more efficiently. They promote one simple idea: Light what you need, when you need it.

Pete Strasser, Senior Technical Advisor for The International Dark Sky Association, will be conducting a free presentation on November 15, 2010 at 7:00pm. The presentation will be held at the Park City Library and Education Building (1255 Park Avenue, Park City, UT.) This presentation is sponsored by Wasatch Back Environmental Alliance, Park City Chamber/ Bureau and Park City Municipal Corporation.

It began in 2009 when NASA centers in Maryland and California hosted events to celebrate the successful arrival of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft into lunar orbit. These events provided opportunities for the public to observe the Moon.  The overwhelming public response inspired them to do the event again on a much larger scale. Other astronomy organizations have joined in making it an international effort.

So, join in and observe the Moon on September 18th! Look for it in the southeast at sunset. Use binoculars or a telescope if you have them. Try to identify several of the roundish darker regions. These are large impact basins that have been filled by dark lava. When observing through a telescope, the best place to look is near the day-night line, called the terminator. Here, long shadows allow surface details like mountains and craters to stand out.

Don’t have a telescope? The Salt Lake Astronomical Society will host a free public star party (weather permitting) at the Stansbury Park Observation Complex (SPOC) on Saturday September 18. (They will also hold a “sneak preview”, the night before at the Taylorsville Harmons, 5454 S Redwood Road). Both observing sessions run from dusk to 11:00 p.m. Directions to SPOC

Cassiopeia was the Queen of Ethiopia. She is commonly depicted as a lady on a throne, upside down for part of the year. From our latitude (northern Utah), the constellation is circumpolar, meaning that it never sets. It is close enough to the north celestial pole that, if we could hide the Sun, we would see Cassiopeia simply circling the north star over a 24-hour period.

10 pm, MDT, from Salt Lake City, image credit: Starry Night Pro software

It may be difficult to see a lady on a throne in the stars, so I see Cassiopeia as a lazy ‘w’ shape, currently in the northeastern sky at 10 pm, MDT. Using the image below, we can find the ‘w’ shape on its side, about 1/3 of the way up the sky from the northeastern horizon. The distance between the  two end points of the ‘w’ is about 15 degrees. The distance from the bottom of the ‘w’ to Andromeda is also about 15 degrees.

Use the 'w' of Cassiopeia to find M31, the Andromeda Galaxy

M31 is difficult to see from a city or suburb–the darker the sky, the better. Nevertheless, it can be seen without the aid of binoculars or a telescope. This galaxy contains around one trillion stars and is about 5 times the size of our Milky Way galaxy. It is over 2.5 million light years away.

Most of the stars you can see individually in the night sky are all pretty close to us–within a couple thousand light years. The Milky Way, that streak of cloudy light we see across the sky, is a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of light years away. Our entire Milky Way galaxy, containing around 200 billion stars, is probably 100,000 light years across. The Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to us, is over 2.5 million light years away, and there is a lot of nothing between us and it.

Space is a great big empty…

Regardless of the predicted peak hour, the best time to watch for meteors is during the pre-dawn hours (after midnight), your local time, when your position on the Earth is moving into the meteoroid stream. Meteors (commonly called ’shooting stars’ or ‘falling stars’) are actually little more than grains of sand, dust and small pebbles that burn up high in the atmosphere as they fall down to Earth at very fast speeds. The Perseids are traveling at around 60 kilometers per second (130,000 miles per hour!).

Meteor showers are the result of a passing comet. Comets are mountain-sized objects made of frozen gasses, water, and dirt. As the comet approaches and rounds the Sun, it sublimates (turns from a solid directly into a gas, like dry ice), creating a cloudy sphere, called the coma, around the nucleus. The solar wind pushes on the coma forming the long comet’s tail, which always points away from the Sun. It is the gritty particle material of the comet that we see as meteors when the Earth passes through this debris field left behind long after the comet has passed. The comet may not come back for many years, but we will enjoy the meteor shower at about the same time every year. The Perseids are the result of comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed the Sun in 1993 and won’t be back for another 118 years.

The name ‘Perseids’ comes from the comet Perseus. As you watch Perseid meteors, all over the sky, you can trace backward the familiar streak of light seen. No matter which direction the meteor is headed, the streak of light can be traced backward toward the constellation Perseus. Doing this for several meteors will show that there is a point of convergence for all these backward-traced paths. This point, called the ‘radiant,’ which will be in Perseus.

No need for a telescope or binoculars. Just get comfortable, get out of the city if you can, and enjoy the Perseid meteors this week.

Mercury will be  the most difficult to see, setting a few minutes before 10 pm. It is in Leo at magnitude +0.2.
Venus will be the brightest at magnitude -4, and sets just after 10:30 pm.
Mars sets at about 11 pm, and has a reddish color to it.
Saturn sits atop Mars, and is less than 2 degrees away by the coming weekend.

4 planets at 9:30 pm, MDT, July 30th, 2010

Jupiter rises shortly after 11 pm at a very bright magnitude -2.7. Look for a waning Gibbous Moon 6 degrees from Jupiter on Friday night.

This nice planetary grouping will continue into the next week, but the grouping gets closer and closer to the horizon, making it more difficult to see.

In mid-August a young Moon will join the trio in a spectacular site.

Mercury will be  the most difficult to see, being only about 20 degrees away from the Sun at the beginning of the week, and 23 degrees away from the Sun by end of week. However, it is a bright magnitude 0 object.
Venus will be the brightest at magnitude -4, and will be about 20 degrees away from Mercury throughout the week. Note that Mercury will be about halfway between Venus and the setting Sun.
Mars is about 12 degrees away from Venus, and easily found by noting its reddish color.
Saturn is close to Mars at 5 degrees away, with Mars closing in on Saturn as the days progress. By month’s end, they will be less than 2 degrees apart.

July 23rd, 2010, 9:00 PM MDT

By finding these four planets, one can easily see the ecliptic plane, especially when extended to the Moon over in the southeast this week. The ecliptic is formally defined as the plane generated by Earth’s orbit, or as the path of the Sun across the sky. It is also known as the plane of the solar system, and all major planets and Earth’s Moon are found near the ecliptic.

Beginning June 5, 2010 at 6:45 p.m., “Gateway to the Stars”  will highlight some of the most prominent objects in the night sky each month, using them as examples to teach observing techniques that will help maximize the stargazing experience.

Audiences will learn to navigate using basic techniques involved in stargazing and finding their way around the night sky by becoming familiarized with stars and constellations, planets and other galactic objects visible to the naked eye. Viewers will also learn to explore deep sky objects like double stars, star clusters, nebulas and galaxies to gain insight and perspective on the different components of our universe.

This innovative and interactive experience combines the most recent technology, space imagery and current night sky information to give viewers a truly out of this world experience.  “Gateway to the Stars” begins on Saturday, June 5, at 6:45 p.m.

Tickets for the lecture series are free for Clark Planetarium members. Tickets for the general public are just $1 each or $2 0nline. “Gateway to the Stars” will be featured the first Saturday of every month in the Hansen Dome Theatre at 6:45 p.m.  Additional information and tickets can be found online.