But outer Space, At least this far, For all the fuss, Of the populace, Stays more popular, Than populous. – Robert Frost
Stargazers,
It appears that we will need to set the star party for next week, Saturday, September 19th at Stonebridge Golf Course. We will begin at sunset.
Hard to believe but September 22nd is the first day of Autumn. This is the Autumnal Equinox, equal day and night. Many stand eggs on their end in celebration of this celestial event. Interesting notion, if you think about it….. mmmmm.
It is true that over time, the planets not only change their positions, relative to the stars, but they change in their appearance. They change in how bright appear and they change in how large they appear.
There are two factors that affect a planet’s size and brightness. For this discussion, we are ignoring the Earth’s atmosphere and particulate matter that is suspended in the atmosphere (clouds, dust, and pollution). The factors are: how far the planet is from Earth and how much of the lit surface of the planet is facing the Earth.
The further a planet is from Earth the smaller it will appear. Mars is a classic example of this fact. During August before last, Mars was as bright and large as it ever gets because it was as close to Earth as it ever gets. Since Mars is an outer planet, for all intents and purposes, it is always full, that is, we can see its fully lit surface.
One characteristic of an outer planet is, they do not go through phases, like the Moon. For this discussion, we will say that we can always see its fully lit surface. So for outer planets, size and brightness is determined by distance from Earth alone.
For the inner planets, the distance from Earth makes a difference but also the phase of the planet is important. As was just mentioned, the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) go through phases, as they travel around the Sun, relative to Earth. It stands to reason that the smaller the portion of the lit side of the planet we can see, the dimmer the planet will appear. The odd thing about the inner planets is, the less we can see of the lit surface of that planet, the closer it is to Earth. The more we can see of its lit surface, the further it is away from Earth.
If we consider these two conflicting pieces of information, the more of the lit surface we can see the further away it is and less of the lit surface we can see the closer it is, we find it hard to make a hard and fast rule about the planets’ brightness. Obviously, the further way the planet is from Earth, the smaller it will appear. To get the actual data about the planets, you can go to magazines such as Astronomy and Sky&Telescope.
This globular cluster is nicely positioned about 5º south of the tail portion of the small constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin, (del-FIE-nus). Being so small you might expect that there aren’t any deep sky objects to look at within Delphinus, but this small, 9th-magnitude, globular cluster about 2 minutes in diameter, is visible through a small telescope. Some have reported seeing it with just a pair of binoculars. This globular cluster is located about 54,000 light years from Earth.
The constellation that this cluster is in will fit within the field of view of your pair of binoculars. To some, this constellation looks more like a small kite with a short tail draping generally toward the south. I have even had some friends confuse this small constellation with the Little Dipper.
This constellation has an interesting history that goes with the names of its two brightest stars: Alpha Delphini (Sualocin) and Beta Delphini (Rotanev). These names were first published in 1814 by the Palermo Observatory guide. It was originally thought that both names had no meaning. That is, until much later when someone noticed that the letters of the star names reversed spelled the Latinized from of the name Nicolaus Venator, the assistant to the director of the Palermo Observatory! It turns out that the director of the Palermo Observatory bestowed the honor of naming the two stars after his assistant.
It is also interesting to note that there are only three stars named after modern time persons. The two already mentioned and Cor Caroli (Alpha Canum Venaticorum) which was named after King Charles II of England.
While in this area of the sky, you might want to pan northward and look at the objects in Sagitta as well.
September 14, 1959: The Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed into the lunar surface.
September 15, 1965: The TV series “Lost in Space” premiered. The storyline concerned the $40 billion launch of the Gemini 12 on October 16, 1997. The world’s first space family was selected to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. The family was headed by Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams), his wife Maureen (June Lockhart) and their children, Judy, Penny and Will (played by Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Billy Mumy, respectively). Major Don West (Mark Goddard) was the spaceship’s pilot. They would all be frozen in suspended animation for a 98-year journey.
It is interesting to note that for years there has been some confusion about the name of the robot in the series. The original television series *never* gave the robot a name, so it is simply referred to as “Robot.” Dick Tufeld provided the voice and actor Bob May actually “worked” the Robot from inside (and to this day, he is the only one who is allowed to appear in the Robot’s body/costume in public.)
Many folks, including me, though that the robot was called “Robby” – which, as any diehard sci-fi buff will remember, is the name of the robot from the 1956 movie “Forbidden Planet” — which was an adaption of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The confusion is understandable because both robots were designed by the same man — Robert Kinoshita. For more on this you can go to http://www.lostinspacetv.com/.
September 15, 1967: Mariner 4 was cruising the dark emptiness between Earth and Mars after having made the first successful flyby of Mars in ’65. Without enough fuel to turn around and go back to Earth, there was nothing else to do but drift around. All was quiet. Fuel was running low. Soon, Mariner 4 would fade into history. That’s when the meteor storm hit. “For about 45 minutes the spacecraft experienced a shower of meteoroids more intense than any Leonid meteor storm we’ve ever seen on Earth,” according to Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. The impacts ripped away bits of insulation and temporarily changed the craft’s orientation in space. “It was a complete surprise.” or almost 40 years the source of the shower remained a mystery. But now, meteor expert Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario may have cracked the case. The culprit, he believes, is a “dark comet” named D/1895 Q1 (Swift) or “D/Swift” for short.
September 17, 1962: U. S. space officials announced the selection of nine new astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, who became the first man to step on the moon.
September 17, 1976: NASA unveiled the space shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, California. Enterprise was the first Space Shuttle Orbiter and was originally to be named Constitution (in honor of the U.S. Constitution’s Bicentennial). However, viewers of the popular TV Science Fiction show Star Trek started a write-in campaign urging the White House to rename the vehicle to Enterprise. While at the Dryden Research Facility it underwent much testing, including powerless flight tests. Finally on Nov. 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried to Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., and became the property of the Smithsonian Institution. If you wonder why you never heard of an Enterprise shuttle mission, it is no wonder, the Enterprise was built as a test vehicle and is not equipped for space flight.
On September 19, 1959: Physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published the first scientific article on searching for radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life.
For a great website to locate the planets, go to www.nightskyinfo.com. This site will tell you about the planets and give you a good star map to locate them (116).
Sunset Sky: (Sunset until 11 p.m.)
Well, Mercury has set in the west so it is not visible. Saturn has set in the west as well. In fact, Saturn is in conjunction with the Sun on September 18th.
At sunset, the brightest planet visible to the naked eye is, Jupiter, the Gaseous Giant. It is high in the southeast as the sky darkens. You can also spot Uranus low in the east at this time as well if you know where to look and have good clear, dark skies.
Don’t forget to look for Neptune at this time as well. It will take a pair of binoculars or a small telescope but it is easily within reach if you know where to look.
Late Evening (11 p.m. until 4 a.m.):
Since Jupiter transits around 10 p.m., it will not set in the west until around 3 a.m. or so. You can also see Uranus and Neptune to the east of Jupiter, following it in a short parade of planets from the east to the west.
Predawn Sky: (4 a.m. until sunrise)
The early morning sky holds Mars, high in the south east. Look for its beautiful amber hue. Next you will unmistakably see Venus, the Morning Star. Venus is easily the brightest object in the eastern sky before sunrise. If you have the equipment, look at it through a small telescope to see that it is in a gibbous phase.
It is interesting to note the Venus and Mercury are the only planets that go through the phases like the Moon.
Sunday (13th), the Moon passes 1.1 degrees north of Mars at noon EDT
Wednesday (16th), the Moon will be in perigee, its closest distance to the Earth, (226,212 miles) at 3:56 a.m. EDT
Wednesday (16th), the Moon passes 3 degrees south of Venus at 2 p.m. EDT
Friday (18th), the Moon is New at 2:44 p.m. EDT.
No, the tail does not always trail the comet. To understand how this can be so, you must first understand what causes the tail of the comet. First, a comet is composed of two parts, the core and the tail. The core is a lump of frozen gas, pebbles, dust, and other interstellar stuff, sometimes described as a large, dirty snowball. This “snowball” travels around the Sun in an elliptical orbit.
That means that the comet travels in a long, narrow oval shaped orbit with the Sun close to one end of the oval. When the comet is far away from the Sun it travels relatively slowly and is extremely cold and frozen. As it continues in its orbit, it eventually returns close to the Sun at an extremely rapid rate of speed, swinging around the Sun and whipping back out to the distant regions of the Solar System again. Some Comets have orbital periods of hundreds, even thousands of years.
Comet Halley
As the comet approaches the Sun, it begins to warm up and give off gases and small particles that form the comet’s tail. These gases and small particles are slowly pushed away from the comet’s core by “solar wind” or the pressure of light shinning from the Sun. As the comet approaches the Sun, its tail will appear to stream behind the comet like a vapor trail of an airplane. On the other hand, as the comet recedes back out into deep space, the comet’s tail will appear to lead the comet, as the tail is pushed along by the sunlight.
In any case, the tail of a comet always streams away from the Sun, on the opposite side of the comet from the Sun. One last point I wish to make here. It is this debris trail left behind the comet’s passing that produces a meteor shower. What happens is, the Earth, moving in its orbit about the Sun, happens upon the comet debris trail and cuts through it. The debris left behind by the comet burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere, producing a meteor shower, as the Earth collides with it.
One of my favorite objects in the sky is the Summer Triangle. For me it symbolizes the coming of cooler weather and clearer skies and it has been slowly rising in the early evening skies over the past several months. Now is the prime time to enjoy this beautiful asterism made up of Deneb, in Cygnus, Altair, in Aquila, and Vega, in Lyra.
There are plenty of objects within it boundary, including the constellation Sagitta. Appropriately, Sagitta is Latin for “Arrow.” Even though this is the third smallest constellation (only Equuleus and Crux are smaller) it has been recognized since classical times.
One reason for it being so well recognized is because it can be seen from both hemispheres due to it proximity to the celestial equator.
Seemingly unusual for many constellations, this one looks just like what it is called, an arrow. During classical times it represented many arrows. It is the arrow that Hercules used to kill the eagle that Zeus sent to punish Prometheus, it is also the arrow shot by Heracles at the Stymphalian Birds, it is the one which Apollo used to slay the Cyclops, and it is said to represent Cupid’s arrow.
While, because of its size, there are not many deep sky objects within Sagitta’s boundary there is one beautiful globular cluster right in its center that can be seen with a pair of binoculars, M71. This globular cluster is about 13,000 light years distant, and is a little more than 7 minutes of arc in diameter (not quite as large or as bright as the famous Hercules cluster).
September 1, 1979: Pioneer 11 is first Earth based spacecraft to fly past Saturn.
September 3, 1976: The unmanned spacecraft, Viking 2, landed on Mars to take the first close-up color photos of that planet.
September 3, 2006: SMART-1 spacecraft was intentionally crashed into the Moon. It was a Swedish-designed European Space Agency satellite orbited around the Moon. It was launched on September 27, 2003 at 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. “SMART” stands for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology. On September 3, 2006 (05:42 UTC), SMART-1 was deliberately crashed into the Moon’s surface, ending its mission. Scientists hope that the impact would kick up enough fresh lunar “soil” that they may study its composition.
September 5, 1977: Voyager 1 was launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan IIIE Centaur rocket. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is an 815-kilogram unmanned probe of the outer solar system and beyond and is currently operational. It is the farthest human-made object from Earth. The Voyager 1 spacecraft has moved into the solar system’s final frontier, a vast area where the Sun’s influence gives way to interstellar space. At 14 billion kilometers (95 astronomical units or 8.8 billion miles) from the Sun, signals from Voyager 1 take more than thirteen hours to reach its control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California. By the way, this was this probe that the movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, featured near its conclusion.