Be
VERY CAREFUL NOT TO OBSERVE SUN DIRECTLY!
INSTANT BLINDNESS CAN OCCUR!!!
Instruments can explode!!! Cease viewing before Sun actually rises if you're using binoculars or telescope!!!
Hubble Space Telescope imaged newly found Moon of Pluto this June and July, designated P4 temporarily. Estimated 13 to 34 KM diameter, 31 day orbit.
PLANET and SKY INFORMATION: (updated December 16th, 2011) PLANETS: Mercury briefly appears in eastern predawn sky. Venus hangs higher in the SW just after sunset. Venus is the brightest dot in the sky, third to only the Sun and Moon. Mercury is yellowish, gives itself away by obvious change in position evening to evening. Mars rises in the east around midnight, Jupiter is up all night, the bright dot high in eastern sky as soon as the sky darkens each evening. Saturn rises in the east around 400 AM.
Uranus and Neptune are in the SW sky in the evening. Uranus has slipped back into Pisces, Neptune is near the border of Aquarius and Capricornus. The lack of bright stars in both of these constellations makes starhopping to these planets a real challenge.
Asteroid, Vesta, is still readily visible in SW evening sky, in SW Capricornus.
Advance Alert for Spring Sky Event: by March, Jupiter will appear to have caught up with Venus in the evening sky, the pair will appear close together for several days, and of course the Moon will sweep by for a few nights. If you're teaching Astronomy, you might want to align your unit with this event, use Stellarium or other software to view simulation of what will happen in March.
BE AWARE OF THE CAUTIONS MENTIONED LAST FALL AND ABOVE ABOUT NOT LETTING SUNLIGHT GET INTO YOUR EYES, INSTANT BLINDNESS!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eclipses? See Fred Espanak's NASA Eclipse site for details. Next total lunar eclipse visible from Eugene will be in 2014. Start planning for total solar eclipse visible in Oregon in 2017! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROMINENT STARS and CONSTELLATIONS in late Fall sky:
The Summer Triangle, stars
Vega, Deneb, and Altair, is setting in the west shortly after dark. The Big Dipper has swung very low to the north, the Dipper's lowest position in our sky. Why doesn't the Big Dipper set? It's within the Circumpolar Circle, the part of the sky that's always visible even though its stars circle Polaris, those stars are within 45 degrees of Polaris, so don't dip below the horizon in Oregon.
Faint, fuzzy, greenish Comet Garradd is visible in binoculars as a smudge toward the keystone of Hercules, on the Vega side, use the finder chart at SkyHound website to track the comet's position night by night. You'll need dark sky and no Moon in order to pick out this faint object.
Continuing around to the
South, we find the dim "watery" theme constellations, starting with Capricornus toward the west, then Aquarius and Pisces, along with Cetus, and several southern constellations of the ancient Argo Navis group. The only bright star in that area of the sky is Fomalhaut, low in the SE, to the right of Jupiter. Wave to Fomalhaut, it has a planet, we actually have an image of this planet (a dot), changing position over two years' time as it orbits Fomalhaut.
Directly above Jupiter in the early evening is the great square of Pegasus, with the Andromeda galaxy hanging above the trail of Andromeda's stars off the east side of Pegasus. The giant W of Cassiopeia lies nearby.
In the east, orange Aldebaran to the lower right of brilliant yellow Capella herald the appearance of the Winter constellations. Note the fuzzy Pleiades star cluster just above Aldebaran, examine this cluster in binoculars, then sweep upward toward the K of Perseus, and find the Double Cluster between Perseus and Cassiopeia.
Soon, Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion rise, along with Castor and Pollux, the two key stars of Gemini, the twins, rise to the north of Orion. Canis Minor and Canis Major rise, they contain the bright stars, Procyon, near Pollux, and Sirius, to the lower left of Orion, respectively. Sirius is the brightest star we can see from Oregon..why?...It's the closest major star (there may be a few dim red dwarfs lurking closer that we haven't yet discovered). Sirius is about eight light years away. Think where you were when the light from Sirius that you see tonight left there, eight years ago.
Trace the circle of bright Winter stars, they all sit in the Orion arm of the Milky Way, just beyond where we are located. We look outward in that direction in the middle of winter (in Summer we look the opposite way, inward, toward the star clusters and nebulae of Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way). Winter circle - Bright Stars: Aldebaran, Capella, Castor, Pollux, Procyon, Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse.
If you stay up all night, or rise early, can you find Leo rising just ahead of the Sun? Remember how Leo set in the west just a month ago? See why ancient people realized the circularity of Earth and the cycles of the sky, hence could use the sky as a timekeeping device?
Hubble Space
