What's Up In The Sky

What's up right now? If you're a backyard astronomer, particularly one who is just starting out (old timers don't use Google Sky and don't need my advice), this thread is aimed at you. Maybe even those of you with nothing but your naked eye will be able to find something useful too.

The two brightest objects you see setting in the west right now are Venus and Jupiter. Venus is kind of boring through a telescope, but Jupiter is awesome. You can see the equatorial bands and four of it's moons even with a small telescope. You'll want to observe it when it's as high in the sky as possible. (The atmosphere closer to the horizon affects it quite a bit.) You don't need to wait until full dark for Jupiter, get out there right when the sun goes down. It's getting lower each night and will disappear by next month. So get out there tonight!

By the way, the horizontal line at the bottom is the horizon. The next one up is 30° above the horizon, and the top one is 60°. Saturn is technically in Libra, but I use the more recognizable Scorpius constellation to find it. As mentioned before, if you can stay up late wait until it gets nice and high in the sky. Planets are far more subject to atmospheric conditions than Deep Sky Objects (DSO's) but all objects look better way up there, due to less light pollution.

Other cool targets: M57, the Ring Nebula, in Lyra is an easy one. M13, a globular cluster, in Hercules is also an easy target for beginners. 

Have fun, and Dark Skies!


Whats Up 61115.kmz (815 B)

Images from Stellarium - animation by Gregg

Over the next few evenings Jupiter and Venus will appear to be on a collision course, from our Earth-bound perspective. (In reality they will be separated by about 500 million miles.) On the evening of June 30th they will be at their closest angular proximity, at 17 arcminutes apart (about a quarter of a degree).

You'll be able to observe this with the naked eye but binoculars or a telescope will give you a very cool view.

First: a nod to Hill for reminding me of this...

The Perseid meteor shower is coming to a sky near you (that is if you live in the northern hemisphere). Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which they radiate, so this one radiates from Perseus. It will peak around August 11th (or from 8/9 to 8/13). You can start watching for them tonight though.

See this link. You can set your own location on that page. (For me it automatically went to Palm Springs which is close enough.)

Attached Below is an image of Perseus from my location at 1:00 am on 8/12. That will give you a good idea where to look.

It was unexpected
I feel very interesting