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AUGUST 2013 ASTRONOMY From the Trackman Planetarium at Joliet Junior College Venus dominates the western sky after sunset. At mid-August, Venus is 6 times brighter than the brightest star (Sirius) and will continue to move to the east and brighten until November. Saturn is a yellow-colored star low in the southwestern sky after dark. Venus is moving toward Saturn and will be within 4 degrees of the ringed planet at mid-September. Mars and Jupiter rise before the sun in the morning. Jupiter will be back in the evening sky in November. Mars won’t be back in the evening sky until next spring. Mercury is in the morning sky and will cross behind the sun on August 24th. ¶ We are halfway through astronomical summer. The Celtic cross quarter day of Lughnasadh is on August 1st although August 6th is halfway between the first day of summer and the first day of fall. So, as to be expected, the summer sky is directly overhead at mid-evening during August. Directly above are three bright stars that form the summer triangle. They are Deneb, Altair, and the brightest of the three, Vega. The Milky Way runs between these three stars and down to the horizon at Sagittarius - a constellation that looks like a teapot. At the spout of the teapot is the black hole that is in the center of our galaxy. To the right of Sagittarius is Scorpio which looks like a scorpion. The Big Dipper has moved around and is now in the western sky after sunset. In the northeastern sky is the “W’ that marks the constellation of Cassiopeia. To the right of Vega is Hercules and the Hercules globular cluster. The globular cluster is hundreds of thousands of stars in a tight group. It appears as a fuzz ball in binoculars. The star Deneb in Cygnus is one of the summer triangle stars and is a huge star that is more than 108 times larger than our sun. Distance estimations vary, but 1,700 light years is about average. That means if you were on Deneb with a telescope large enough to see Earth, you would see what was going on in the year 313. The light reflecting off Earth, along with the light reflected off people and things on the Earth’s surface in the year 300, is just arriving at Deneb. Low in the summer sky is the constellation of Ophiuchus. Between November 30th and December 17th, the sun is in Ophiuchus and yet it doesn’t appear on any astrological charts. Therefore, if you were born between November 30th and December 17th you don’t have a horoscope. ¶ The Perseid Meteor shower peaks on the evening of August 12th. The meteor shower should be active for a week before and a few days after the August 12th peak. The Perseids are left over debris - normally about the size of a grain of sand - from the last passing of Comet Swift Tuttle in 1992. In clear skies you can expect to see 60 to 80 meteors per hour. The meteors are small pieces of rock and/or stone that enter the Earth’s atmosphere at 70 to 100 miles above the surface. When they encounter the atmosphere they are traveling at about 132,000 mph and the friction causes them to burn. Occasionally a large meteor will enter the atmosphere and create a fireball as it crosses the sky. It was a fireball that exploded above Chelyabinsk in Russia last February. (Trivia - some of the gold medals to be awarded at the 2014 Winter Olympics will have a piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite embedded in the gold.) The Perseid Meteor Shower peaks after midnight and the best time to look is between 10:30 pm and 4:00 am on the 13th. Look low in the northeast after dark. The waxing crescent moon will set about 10 pm and won’t interfere with meteor watching. If you go out to see the meteors on the night of the 11th, look for the International Space Station crossing low in the northwest sky at 8:50 pm. ¶ The full moon is on August 20th. The August full moon was called the Sturgeon moon by the Native Americans because the large sturgeon fish of the Great Lakes and other major lakes were more easily caught at this time of year. ¶ Neptune will be at opposition - its farthest from the Earth - on August 27th. Neptune will be 2.7 billion miles from us. Neptune is barely visible in a medium size telescope. ¶ The sun starts August in the constellation of Cancer and on August 10th it moves into Leo. ¶ The first public show of the new season is on September 3rd at 7:30 pm. The show is about the seasonal sky. If the skies are clear, we will go outside after the show and tour the real sky. ¶ The number of sunspots peaks every 11 years and we are at the peak for sunspot activity this year. Unfortunately - and unexplainably - this has been the lowest sunspot maximum in over 100 years. ¶ Art Maurer Director -Trackman Planetarium Joliet Junior College ([email protected])