I started out my July article with the following: “Well, we’ve certainly had awful skies this entire spring, awful for astronomy, that is. I love it when it rains, and we had a lot of rain in April, May, and early June. However, that has meant very few nights of clear skies.”
I wrote that about June 15 for the Boerne Star. Then, almost immediately, the rain just stopped -- and we all wished it hadn’t. This has provided me with lots of cloudless nights since, and I’ve been stocking up on photographs to share with you.
The accompanying is a 60-minute exposure (4 second subs) of M16, the Eagle nebula in upper Sagittarius, to the left of Scorpius. You can clearly see the “Pillars of Creation” in the center of the image which was made famous a few years ago by the Hubble space telescope.
My little telescope is no Hubble but it’s amazing what can be done with a small telescope and a bit of high tech these days. I enlarged this to 11 inches by 11 inches for my office wall. It’s 7,000 light years distant from the Earth.
Right now, at this very moment, we are all traveling through space -- and “space” is only 62 miles above the surface of the Earth. Our planet revolves around the sun at 66,000 mph. That pales in comparison to the speed of the sun, which orbits the Milky Way in one galactic year (about 225 million Earth years) at 483,000 mph.
Still not fast enough? The Milky Way itself is traveling through space at an astounding 1.3 million mph. Do you have motion sickness yet? No? That’s because we’ve evolved to our world’s gravity, thank goodness. We are all traveling through space and everything we know and love is held in place by gravity.
Here is a quote from Christa McAuliff e , teacher and astronaut who was killed in the Challenger explosion on Jan 28, 1986: “Space is for everybody. It’s not just for a few people in science or math, or a select group of astronauts. That’s ‘our’ new frontier out there and it’s everyone’s business to know about space.”
Here’s what’s happening in our August night skies: * The annual Perseid meteor shower, probably the most reliable of the year, will peak in the early morning hours of Aug 13. The best time for viewing will be between 1 and 5 am. The sweet spot is probably 4 a.m.
You’ll want a lawn chair that reclines. Face the east or southeast. The further away from streetlights and artificial skyglow the more you’ll see.
The moon will be a waning crescent, 10% illuminated, making it a great year for viewing the shower providing it’s not cloudy. If you’re away from the city, you might see between 40 and 60 per hour. According to NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network, the Perseids have more fireballs (very bright meteors) than any other shower.
* Moon phases. We’ll have a full moon Aug 1. First quarter will be Aug 8, the new moon on Aug. 16, last quarter moon on Aug. 24, and a second full moon on Aug 30.
When we have two full moons in a single month, it’s called a Blue Moon. This one will be a super moon also which means it’s somewhat closer to the Earth, enough so you can tell it looks larger and somewhat brighter.
Like all things in the solar system, it doesn’t orbit in a perfect circle; rather, it’s a very mild ellipse. The moon will be rising with Saturn, separated by only 5 degrees. It will appear as a bright star nearby.
* Red, bright Antares, to the south in our summer sky, will be eclipsed by the last quarter moon on Aug. 24. This is an event worth watching in binoculars and photographing with a telescope.
From Boerne, the eclipse will start at about 9:30 p.m., making it ideal for all to see. This is one of those celestial events that does not require you to leave your backyard. Antares is a close double star. The primary is a red giant and the secondary is a small, green star, though you need a telescope to see it.
The moon will occult the secondary first, followed moments later by the bright primary.
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