Category Archives: sky

Happy Spring Equinox!

Get out!

The Sky This Week, 2014 March 18 – 25 — Naval Oceanography Portal

The Vernal Equinox will occur on the 20th at 12:57 pm EDT despite any appearances to the contrary. At that instant the center of the Sun’s disc crosses the celestial equator above a spot located over the southern reaches of Colombia in South America. If the sun were a pinpoint of light and the Earth was a perfect sphere with no atmosphere all parts of the planet would experience exactly 12 hours of daylight and night; but the Sun subtends a disc of about 30 arcminutes’ diameter, the Earth is kind of lumpy, and we have an atmosphere. All of these factors combine to produce days and nights of “equal night” that fall a few days before the equinox, depending on location. Here in Washington our “equal night” fell on St. Patrick’s Day, so despite the snow storm daylight will exceed night from now until a few days after the autumnal equinox. We know that warmer weather will soon follow!

The Sky This Week, 2014 March 18 – 25 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Happy Crow Moon!

The Sky This Week, 2014 March 11 – 18 — Naval Oceanography Portal

The Moon brightens the overnight hours this week, waxing to her Full phase on the 16th at 1:08 pm Eastern Daylight Time. The Full Moon of March is variously known as the Worm Moon, Crow Moon, Sap Moon, or Lenten Moon. Since it occurs near the point in the sky that marks the autumnal equinox, it is one of the few Full Moons in the year that is visible from the entire surface of the Earth.

The Sky This Week, 2014 March 11 – 18 — Naval Oceanography Portal

We’re all there in the sky …

Taurus the Bull (mjh), Lepus the Hare (MRudd), with Canis Major (Luke) and Canis Minor (Autumn).

Monthly Sky Watch

February Sky Map

Astronomer Jeff DeTray has created the sky map below to help you navigate the [February] sky. Visit Jeff’s site at AstronomyBoy.com

This month’s highlight: The Hunters and the Hunted.

Orion the Hunter is considered to be the most easily recognizable constellation in the sky. February evenings are the best time of year to see that Orion is surrounded on all sides by animals of many kinds. For those of us in the northern hemisphere that means bundle up to stay warm!

Looking due south on February evenings, you’ll find the Orion standing tall and bright. In fact, Orion is the brightest constellation that is visible from the northern hemisphere, with seven stars of magnitude 2 or brighter. Two of Orions stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel, are among the top ten brightest stars in the sky. If you compare this month’s sky map to the actual sky you will soon learn to spot Orion at a glance. Three bright stars form Orion’s belt. Four more—Betegeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph—mark his two shoulders and his two knees. To the right, the dimmer stars of one arm hold forth a shield. High above his head, Orion wields a club for dispatching his prey.

With Orion clearly in sight, you are ready to search out the wildlife in his vicinity.

Every hunter needs companions, and Orion is accompanied by two of man’s best friends, Canis Major and Canis Minor. These are the Greater and Lesser Dogs, assisting Orion in his search for prey. Each of the dogs is home to a very bright star, Sirius in Canis Major, and Procyon in Canis Minor.

Located above Orion’s shield is Taurus the Bull. The bright star Aldebaran marks one of the Bull’s eyes, glaring down at Orion. It appears that Orion is about to strike Taurus with his upraised club. Compare the color of Aldebaran to that of Betelgeuse and Rigel. Both Aldebaran and Betelgeuse have a faint orangish hue, while Rigel is bright white. Star colors are very subtle, so don’t expect the color differences to be blindingly obvious.

Beneath Orion’s feet is Lepus the Hare being chased by Canis Major, who has also flushed Columbia the Dove from its hiding place near the horizon. Canis Minor is going after larger game, Monoceros the Unicorn. The stars of Monoceros are faint, so you’ll need a very dark location to perceive its outline.

Elsewhere in the southern sky, there are five more animal figures to be seen, if your sky is dark enough. Far to Orion’s left are Cancer the Crab and Hydra the Water Snake. To the right are Ares the Ram, Pisces the Fishes, and Cetus the Whale. These five constellations are dim and therefore challenging to spot. Don’t be discouraged, though. Even if you only learn to find Orion, his dogs, and Taurus, you’ll know more about the night sky than most people!

FEBRUARY Sky Map: Click to View PDF

February 2014 Sky Map

Sky map produced using Chris Marriott’s Skymap Pro

Monthly Sky Watch

Howl at the Wolf Moon on 1/15!

The Sky This Week, 2014 January 7 – 14 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Full Moon falling on the 15th at 11:52 pm (EST).  January’s Full Moon is popularly known as the Moon After Yule, the Old Moon, or the Wolf Moon.  I particularly like the latter name as it conjures images of wolf packs patrolling the frozen ground by its pale light reflected off the snow.  Look for Luna near the Pleiades star cluster on the evenings of the 10th and 11th.  On the 11 she is also just four degrees northwest of the bright star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull.  On the 14th she’s five degrees south of bright Jupiter.

The Sky This Week, 2014 January 7 – 14 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Using Orion to identify the Great Winter Circle — get out!

Full moon, dogs, and Taurus — must be my time of year.

The Sky This Week, 2014 January 7 – 14 — Naval Oceanography Portal

If you draw an imaginary line through Orion’s belt stars and extend it to the southeast, you’ll run into the night’s brightest star, Sirius.  Although the literal translation of the name means “The Scorcher”, this star is popularly known as The Dog Star due to its location in the constellation of Canis Major, the Greater Dog.  If you imagine Sirius as a jewel in a dog’s collar, you can more or less trace out the figure of a faithful canid leaping up at the heels of his master, Orion. 

From Sirius, sweep your gaze to the northeast to find a more solitary star, Procyon, brightest star in Canis Minor, the Little Dog. 

Continue upward from here to spot the Gemini Twins, Castor and Pollux.  Gemini is currently hosting the planet Jupiter, who overshadows all of his stellar neighbors. 

Now turn your view to the northwest of the Twin Stars and look for the bright golden glow of Capella, the lead star in the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer.  This star is actually a “quadruple” system, with two red dwarf stars orbiting a more massive pair of yellow giants.  The yellow stars were the first pair to be resolved using a technique called “interferometry”. 

Heading southwest from Capella, we encounter Aldebaran, a rose-tinted star that marks the right “eye” of Taurus, the Bull.  Aldebaran appears to be a member of a large V-shaped group of stars called the Hyades, but in reality it lies at about half the distance to this cluster. 

Finally, sweeping southeast from Aldebaran, we land on Rigel, the brightest (usually) star in Orion. 

Collectively these stars are known as the Great Winter Circle, and within their bounds you’ll find nine of the 25 brightest stars in the sky.

The Sky This Week, 2014 January 7 – 14 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Latest sunrise of the year

I forgot to note yesterday that it was the latest sunrise of the year (01/04/14). Although the days have been getting longer since the solstice, only now is dawn a tiny bit earlier each day. Enjoy!

Happy Solstice — summer is coming

The Sky This Week, 2013 December 17 – 24 — Naval Oceanography Portal

The winter solstice falls on the 21st at 12:11 pm EST.  This is the moment when the Sun reaches an ecliptic longitude of 270 degrees, which also happens to be the time when it reaches its most southerly declination.  At this moment the Sun stands directly over the Tropic of Capricorn about 500 miles off the west coast of Chile.  The day of the solstice is the shortest for residents of the Northern Hemisphere….The duration of daylight on the solstice will be just 9 hours 26 minutes here in Washington.

The Sky This Week, 2013 December 17 – 24 — Naval Oceanography Portal

WFO ABQ Winter Solstice Feature

[W]hile the solstice is the shortest day of the year, with 9 hours and 47 minutes of daylight in Albuquerque, it is just seconds shorter than days on either side of the solstice.  In fact, the U.S. Observatory lists the length of daylight in Albuquerque (in 2013) as 9 hours and 48 minutes from December 16th through 20th and December 22nd through 26th.

WFO ABQ Winter Solstice Feature

Safe to say Abq is farther south than DC — we get 21 extra minutes of daylight (plus about 200 days more). I wonder if you can calculate just how much farther south using that time difference.

The year’s earliest sunset is 12/7

The Sky This Week, 2013 December 3 – 10 — Naval Oceanography Portal

December 7th marks the beginning of the series of phenomena associated with the winter solstice. This is the evening of the year’s earliest sunset, which in the Washington, DC area occurs at 4:46 pm EST. From this evening onward Old Sol will set a little bit later on successive nights. The change is very incremental at first, but by the time the solstice occurs on the 21st sunset will be four minutes later. By the end of the year sunset will occur at 4:58 pm. The trade-off comes with the time of latest sunrise. That won’t occur until January 4th, 2012, when the Sun peeks over the horizon at 7:27 am. The shortest day of the year still falls halfway between these dates on the solstice itself, marking the astronomical beginning to the winter season. The reason for this seeming discrepancy has to do with the “equation of time”, which is the formula used to correct “sundial” or “apparent” solar time to “mean” solar time. This is graphically displayed on Earth globes as the “figure-8” diagram, the “annalema”, that’s usually printed over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The rate of change of the equation of time reaches its maximum near the time of the winter solstice, causing the times of sunrise and sunset to be “skewed” in the weeks surrounding the solstice itself.

The Sky This Week, 2013 December 3 – 10 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Look up and be thankful

The Sky This Week, 2013 November 26 – December 3 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the winter holiday season for many of us. We’re now entering the weeks when we experience the year’s earliest sunsets and nightfall seems to come well before we’re ready to end our day. It is a time of great seasonal shifts in both the climate and the sky…

The northernmost star in the Great Winter Circle reaches prominence as the midnight hour approaches. This yellow-hued star, known as Capella, is nearing the meridian at this time, and its transit is entirely appropriate for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Capella is one of the few bright stars whose name does not have Arabic origins. It derives from the Latin word for a female goat, and if you have keen eyes or a pair of binoculars you can see a small triangle of stars tucked close to the bright yellow beacon. These stars form an asterism known as “The Kids”. In Roman mythology Capella represented the she-goat Amalthea, which suckled the infant Jupiter. The young god, evidently a rambunctious little boy, accidentally snapped off one of Amalthea’s horns, which became the “Cornucopia”, or “Horn of Plenty”. In turn the Cornucopia has become associated with our observance of Thanksgiving and the feasting that goes along with it. Amalthea has also been recognized by giving her name to the fifth moon of Jupiter, discovered by the keen-eyed American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in 1892 on his first night of observing with the then-new 36-inch refracting telescope at Lick Observatory, the largest in the world at the time. This was the last moon in the solar system to be found visually. Thanks to Earth-based and spacecraft photography we now know that Jupiter has some 64 moons!

Venus continues to brighten the early evening sky, attracting quite a bit of attention to the southwest as twilight deepens.

The Sky This Week, 2013 November 26 – December 3 — Naval Oceanography Portal

Storm leaves a mess across New Mexico | ABQJournal Online

Our yard didn’t get more than a dusting, even though it snowed off and on over more than 24 hours. Albuquerque frequently has extremely strong winds blowing from East to West through Tijeras canyon. This creates the “snow hole.” Surrounding areas — especially the mountains — may get massive amounts of precipitation while Abq gets little or none.

Storm leaves a mess across New Mexico | ABQJournal Online

Snow totals
Snowfall totals from around the state, Wednesday evening to Sunday afternoon:
Albuquerque: up to 2 inches
Farmington: up to 2.1 inches
Santa Fe: up to 9.5 inches
Roswell: up to 3.3 inches
Clovis: up to 7.5 inches
Source: National Weather Service

Storm leaves a mess across New Mexico | ABQJournal Online

You should look for the International Space Station

Tonight, I went out a little early to look for the ISS. I was lucky enough to see a slow orange meteor drop from the zenith toward the northwest. Very cool. Twenty minutes later, the ISS drifted steadily across the sky from NW to SE, taking about 6 minutes. According to my cellphone app, during the time I watched it, the ISS flew more directly over Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and on into Mexico. (It was over Tokyo when I saw the meteor.) Not so long ago, you had to be a scientist to have this kind of information at your disposal. We live in an amazing Age.

Watching the ISS isn’t a breath-taking spectacle, but it is very cool. You’re looking at one of our machines (bigger than a 5 bedroom house) with human beings on the edge of space. And you’ll see more than just the ISS when you spend a few minutes looking up.

NASA – Spot The Station

Chaco national park recognized for night skies | ABQJournal Online

Chaco national park recognized for night skies | ABQJournal Online

Chaco is the 12th park to receive the designation worldwide and only the fourth in the national park system.

The acting park superintendent, Larry Turk, says as light pollution becomes more common, people are seeking out places like Chaco so they can get a glimpse of the stars.

Due to Chaco’s remote location, the park’s night sky is nearly pristine.

Chaco national park recognized for night skies | ABQJournal Online