This evening the first quarter Moon is close to the star Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
Moon, Meets A Lion
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ISS This Morning
Earlier this morning the ISS, International Space station, flew over the midwest in a path that lasted 4 minutes and at its peak the ISS reached 85 degrees in altitude – nearly straight up. The path it followed took it from the southwest horizon across the summer triangle past the star Altair in Aquila the Eagle, towards the east northeast horizon.
I was hoping to catch the ISS as it flew past some interesting groups of stars like the two small constellations of Sagitta the Arrow and Delphinus the Dolphin however the sky was too bright at this early hour for those stars to show up against the brighter background.
In this sequence of images the sky at 0530 CDT was fairly bright and there were some high cirrus clouds but the ISS was as bright as Venus appears and was very easy to follow with my camera. The images are 2 second time exposures with an aperture setting of f4, and the lens was backed out to 18mm for a wide field of view.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
Some Sun Fun!
This morning I spent a few hours under the Sun with students from St. John Laland Catholic School in Blue Springs Missouri as part of their Science Fun Day event. Most of the activities were in the school Center where Mrs. Therese Keirsey’s 4th and 5th grade science class students led the many activities. Students from the school’s Pre-K through 3rd grade took part in the activities and many of them came outside where I had set up my ‘ancient’ Solaris Daystar telescope for Hydrogen Alpha filtered views of the Sun and also my trusty Edmund Astroscan. With the latter I aimed the Sun’s image onto a sheet of paper so there was a sort of group viewing of the Sun before they each took a look through the Daystar.
The highlight for many was seeing how to burn a leaf with the Astroscan telescope! One 1st grade student listened to my explanations and then proceeded to explain to other students what they were seeing – the Sun and several sunspot groups, and he also explained how the astroscan worked.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
Along the Ecliptic
Today the Sun, in its apparent eastward motion along the ecliptic, crosses the boundary between Aries and Taurus as it moves into the area of sky defined as the constellation Taurus the Bull. This is the true or Astronomical position of the Sun as opposed to the position of the Sun according to the pseudoscience of astrology.
Also this evening the waxing crescent Moon will be near the star Procyon in Canis Minor the Little Dog.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
A Diamond for Mom
About an hour after local sunset go outside and face south and look for the planet Saturn above the southeast horizon. Then look up to the right for the bluish-white colored star Spica.
Spica, a star in Virgo the Harvest Maiden, marks the lower corner of the asterism known as ‘the Diamond of Virgo’. To see the asterism look up to the left from Spica for the reddish star Arcturus in the kite-shaped constellation Bootes the Herdsman. Then look nearly straight up, the zenith, for the dimmest of the diamond stars, Cor Caroli in Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. Then look down to the right for the star Denebola, the tail of Leo the Lion.
This evening also treat her to a look at Venus, Jupiter, and the waxing crescent Moon over the western horizon. See my post from yesterday for more about this.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
Moon, Venus and Jupiter
Yesterday, Friday, was the start of another lunar cycle with the new Moon. This evening, Saturday, the very thin waxing crescent Moon will be just above Venus at sunset – both possibly too low and still close to the Sun to be seen. However, as the 3-part slide show below displays, over the next few days the waxing crescent Moon will not only increase in phase appearance and visibility, but the Moon will be close to the planet Jupiter on Sunday evening.
On Monday the 13th the Moon will be close enough to the open star cluster, M-35, and an even fainter NGC-2158, to be seen in the field of view of 7×50 binoculars, as the banner graphic at the top of the page shows.
The open star cluster M-35 (aka NGC 2168) contains around 2500 stars spread across an area about the size of the full Moon, and M-35 is located approximately 2800 light years from the Earth. Less than 1/2 degree from M-35 is the smaller appearing and more compact NGC-2158. This is an older open star cluster containing about the same number of stars as M-35, but NGC-2158 is several times farther – around 12,000 light years distant from the Earth.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
Solar Eclipse
Friday 10 May the new Moon will pass between the Earth and Sun setting up the circumstances for a solar eclipse. However this solar eclipse, is an annular eclipse, the type where at mid-eclipse the Moon does not completely cover the Sun as this animated graphic shows.
Most are probably familiar with a total solar eclipse as this graphic shows. The disk of the Moon has completely covered the disk of the Sun blocking out everything except the Sun’s corona. Typically during a total solar eclipse the apparent size of the Moon and Sun are essentially the same or the Moon appears larger than the Sun so that at mid-eclipse the sun is completely covered by the Moon.
The difference between these two solar eclipses has to do with the shape of the Moon’s orbit. It is elliptical and that means that the Moon is not always the same distance from the Earth were it following a circular orbit. Each month the Moon reaches apogee, the farthest it will be from the Earth that month, and perigee, when the Moon is closest. So, if the new Moon occurs at or near apogee, when the Moon is farthest from the Earth, the Moon will appear smaller than the apparent size of the Sun. And if this also happens when the three, Earth, Moon, Sun, are aligned then we have the settings for an annular solar eclipse.
The date for this eclipse has some personal meaning to me as did the solar eclipse last year that was also on May 10th so I wrote about the eclipse and something called the Saros Series in a recent Scope on the Skies column. Click here to download a copy of my April-May Scope on the Skies column about the eclipse and the Saros Cycle.
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.
