Orion Rising over Savage Farm, near Bluemont, VA Imaged with a Canon PowerShot A70 digital camera, 10s @ f/3.5, ISO 200, by Geoff Chester

This post is courtesy of The United States Naval Observatory

The Moon wanders back into the evening sky by the week’s end. New Moon occurs on the 26th at 2:55 am Eastern Standard Time. At this time, anyone who happens to find themselves awash in the vastness of the southern and eastern Indian Ocean will experience the first eclipse of the year. This will be an annular solar eclipse, one in which the Moon doesn’t completely obscure the Sun along the central path. This is a result of the Moon being close to its apogee (farthest from the Earth) and the earth being close to its perihelion (closest to the Sun). Most of the eclipse will occur over open water, except for portions of Sumatra and Borneo, where residents will see the fiery ring if the eclipse in the late afternoon.

Look for Luna’s slender crescent shortly after sunset (I saw it tonight at about 6:30pm Mr. G), low on the western horizon, on the evening of the 27th. Two nights later she finds her way to the company of Venus, appearing below the dazzling planet on the 29th and above her on the 30th.

This week is a good one to get acquainted with the constellation Orion (click here for information about Orion). This group of bright stars is probably the most distinctive in the entire sky, and with the possible exception of the Pleiades there’s probably more sky lore associated with Orion than any other constellation.

An interesting exercise for the beginning skywatcher is to simply count the number of stars that you can see within the trapezoidal outline of his four brightest stars. There will be a world-wide campaign this spring to make just such an observation. Known as “GLOBE at Night”, the objective is to use the number of Orion’s visible stars to characterize the brightness of the sky at different locations. The more stars you see, the darker your sky is. Virtually everyone can see his three bright “Belt” stars, but it takes some effort in urban skies to see more. However, it’s worth the effort, especially if you have binoculars or a small telescope.

A small group of three stars seems to hang from the left side of the “Belt”, and if you use the slightest optical aid on the middle member of these three “Sword” stars you’ll instantly see that something is different. This star seems to be surrounded by a faint glowing haze that takes on increasing complexity as you increase the size of your optics. The Great Nebula is actually a small part of an enormous cloud of interstellar gas and dust, a veritable stellar nursery, where infant stars are awaiting the final stages of their birth to visibility. There’s enough “stuff” out there to make over 10,000 stars like the Sun, and that’s just in the part we can see. Observers in truly dark sites can see a huge, faint nebulosity surrounding the entire constellation!

Bright Venus gets a visit from the waxing crescent Moon as the week ends. The dazzling planet is now a few weeks past her greatest elongation, and anyone with a small telescope can see that she now sports a fat crescent phase.

Baleful Saturn now rises at around 9:00 pm and is high enough to be easily seen in the east by 11:00. The ringed planet sports a soft amber glow in contrast to the icy-blue glint of Regulus, the bright heart of Leo, the Lion. The planet’s famous rings are just barely tipped toward our line of sight, and over the next several weeks they will very gradually open by a degree or two. Later this year the earth will cross the ring plane and they will effectively disappear in an event that happens once every 15 years.

You can also use the Earth Science Textbook Online. The user id is: “lms123″ without the quotes and the password is: “lakeview”. The information you need is in Chapter 23.

Thanks to new pictures from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, astronomers spotted a mysterious hot spot at Saturn’s chilly north pole. The spot is a spinning vortex of gases much hotter than its surroundings.

A similar spot was found earlier on Saturn’s south pole, currently bathed in sunlight. But astronomers were shocked to find a matching one on the wintry north pole, where the Sun hasn’t been shining since 1995.

The hot spots are likely due to currents plunging down into the troposphere or weather layer of the atmosphere from higher altitudes. As gas in the atmosphere moves down towards the poles, it gets …. (more)

Polar view showing hot spot and hexagonal ring at Saturn’s north pole.
NASA JPL.

Copyright 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved.

Tonight’s full Moon will be almost 12 percent bigger than some of the full Moons this year, according to NASA, setting up a fine viewing opportunity when it rises in the evening.

The reason: The Moon is near perigee, the point on its slightly out-of-round orbit that is closest to Earth. This Moon is called the Harvest Moon, owing to its timing of being nearest the…
..read more

Suddenly, every solar system poster hanging in every classroom around the world is out of date. After years of lively debate, astronomers announced some stunning news: Pluto is not a planet any more.

The International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) decision changes the list of planets for the first time since Pluto was discovered in 1930. From now on, poor Pluto will be considered a dwarf planet.

The change in Pluto’s status follows from the IAU’s new definition of a planet. To be a planet, a solar system body must be massive enough for its gravity to pull it into the shape of a ball. Secondly, the body must orbit the Sun. It also cannot share its “neighborhood” in space with any other bodies…. more…