![]() ![]() ![]() (The Moon in these illustrations is always shown three times its actual apparent size.) The Moon is always waxing gibbous when it visits the Pleiades and Aldebaran in January. Here, you're looking precisely outward away from the galaxy's center. How about the galactic anticenter, high in the winter evening sky? Pinpoint its location at the Taurus-Auriga border, near Beta Tauri, using binoculars and Matt Wedel's diamond-shaped asterism with his Binocular Highlight column in the January Sky & Telescope, page 43. You may know where the center of our Milky Way galaxy is: in Sagittarius by the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud.Below it by 7° (less than a fist at arm's length), can you see Alpha Ceti, magnitude 2.5? If so, can you detect the star's reddish orange tint? It's a giant of spectral type K7. The Moon shines high due south shortly after dark.Its handle is very low and its bowl is to the upper right.Īnd Cassiopeia, a flattened letter M, is nearly overhead in the north-northwest, just beginning to tilt. The Big Dipper, meanwhile, is creeping up low in the north-northeast. In this very coldest time of the year, the dim Little Dipper hangs straight down from Polaris in early evening - as if, per Leslie Peltier, from a nail on the cold north wall of the sky.In early evening the Moon is about a fist at arm's length left of Mars. First-quarter Moon (exactly so at 1:46 a.m.For the next few mornings, Venus forms a roughly equilateral triangle with Jupiter to its lower left and fainter Antares more directly below it.Mars is actually about twice as large as the Moon, but it's currently 240 times farther away. Now Mars is only 5° or 6° to the Moon's upper right in the evening, as shown here.Down below, the Belt points to where Sirius rises around the time twilight fades away. The Belt points up toward Aldebaran and, even higher, the Pleiades. But when the stars come out he's still lower, and his three-star Belt is still nearly vertical. Orion is on display in the southeast these evenings, higher every week.As twilight fades this evening, how soon can you detect Mars glimmering above the Moon? They're about 18° apart (in early evening for North America).A week later, Jupiter is closing right in on Venus. Day by day, Jupiter and Antares are moving up toward Venus in the dawn. Watch the thick waxing crescent Moon step past Mars. See Bob King's Guide to January’s Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse, or the cover story of the January Sky & Telescope. The eclipsed Moon will be high in a dark sky. Plan ahead for the total eclipse of the Moon over the Americas late on the night of Sunday the 20th. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |