Download Mon Apr 23, 2012 CRESCENT MOON ABOVE JUPITER The moon

Mon Apr 23, 2012
CRESCENT MOON ABOVE JUPITER
The moon has returned to our evening skies: it’s a thin crescent low in the west after sunset. Last night it was just above
the planet Jupiter, which appears as a bright star-like object near the western horizon. Tonight the moon is higher in the
sky, and within the borders of the constellation Taurus the Bull. If you have binoculars you may want to watch the moon
tonight; after you’ve found the moon, aim your binoculars slightly to the right of it, and you’ll discover the Pleaides, also
called the Seven Sisters, because with the unaided eye you can see a half-dozen or more stars here. But with those
binoculars, you should be able to see dozens of stars in this very pretty open star cluster. In mythology the Pleaides were
the daughters of Atlas, the guy who held the world on his shoulders, and for which the atlas, a book of maps, is named.
Tue Apr 24, 2012
ASTRONOMY CLUB MEETING, MOON AND VENUS
Tonight the new crescent moon can be found in the western sky after sunset. Just to the right and slightly above the moon
is a brilliant star-like object, actually the planet Venus. Both are in the constellation Taurus the Bull, and its brightest star,
Aldebaran, is down below and to the left of the moon. Aim a telescope at the moon, and you can see its craters and
mountains – the moon is another world, just a couple of hundred thousand miles away. Aim a telescope at Venus, and
you’ll discover that it’s actually a small disc, and that it goes through phases, like our moon. But through a telescope, the
star Aldebaran appears simply as a bright, slightly orange-pinpoint of light. Also tonight the Treasure Coast Astronomical
Society will meet here on the Fort Pierce campus of Indian River State College, in room N135 of the Science Center. The
meeting’s at 7:30 pm, and the public is invited to attend.
Wed Apr 25, 2012
MOON AND ORION
The waxing crescent moon is well-placed in the southwestern sky after sunset this evening. It appears above the head of
the constellation of Orion the Hunter. In Greek mythology, Orion was a hunter, the son of Poseidon, and he was in love
with Artemis, the goddess of the moon and of the hunt. Now Artemis had a brother, Apollo, the sun god, and he didn’t
like Orion – not good enough for his sister, he decided. One day while Orion was swimming in the ocean, Apollo found
his sister and pointed to Orion, who appeared as just a little dark speck way out at sea. He bet Artemis she couldn’t hit
such a small target. And so she shot the far-off target with an arrow, not realizing it was Orion’s head. But Orion was a
hero, so he was given immortality as a constellation of the night. Once a month the moon travels through this part of the
sky, and to the storytellers this was a time when Artemis could visit with her old hunting companion.
Thu Apr 26, 2012
SHAPLEY-CURTIS DEBATE
On April 26th in the year 1920, a great debate took place concerning the earth's place in our Milky Way Galaxy. Some
astronomers such as Heber Curtis thought we were at the center of our galaxy, for when you looked along the milky band
of stars that defines the galactic disc, you saw roughly the same number of stars throughout. Curtis also thought that spiral
nebulae were distant galaxies, like our Milky Way, but very far away. Other astronomers, notably Harlow Shapley,
suggested that interstellar dust clouds blocked our view of the galactic center, and that a concentration of star clusters in
the direction of the constellation Sagittarius was where the true center of the galaxy was. It turns out that our solar system
is not at the center of the Milky Way, but about halfway out, in one of its spiral arms. And those other spiral nebulas –
they really are other galaxies, other island universes, far, far away.
Fri Apr 27, 2012
SUN IN ARIES
The earth revolves about the sun, which causes the sun to slowly drift through our sky from west to east. The sun has now
entered the constellation Aries, the Ram. This means that because of the earth’s revolutionary motion, the sun is now
directly between us and the stars which make up Aries. This obviously is a bad time to be looking for the constellation of
the Ram, because the bright sun blocks our view of this part of space. If today’s your birthday, you may have been told
that you’re a Taurus, meaning the sun was in Taurus when you were born. But the sun isn’t in Taurus, it’s in Aries, and
will be for the next several weeks. When astrology was in its heyday thousands of years ago, the sun would have been in
Aries, but because there’s a very slow wobble in the earth’s rotational axis, all the zodiacal signs have been offset by one
constellation, turning bulls into sheep, sheep into fish, and so on.