Report for 2003-06-27

Brought to you from beautiful Park City, "View-tah".

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

Star party

Viewing Outlook

Mission Update

Destination Mars

On Tuesday, 6/10, a Delta 2 rocket carrying the Mars rover Spirit, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida to begin its seven month journey to the red planet, Mars. For more information, checkout CNN.com/SPACE 

Solar System

Space Weather Update

The Sun in 3D

Checkout this awesome 3D shot of the Sun taken by The new Swedish 1m Solar Telescope 

Planetary Report

Mercury, the 1st Planet

Venus, the 2nd Planet

Venus is now rising less than an hour before the sun. If you'd like to check it out... do it soon. Venus will disappear from the morning sky during the summer months and reappear in the evening sky this fall. As it sinks, it grows in phase and shrinks in overall size and brightness. At this point, it is considerably past its maximum size and brightness now. It has shrunk from over 1' in diameter to only 11"... less than 1/5 of it's largest. It has also dimmed from over mag-4.6 to under mag-3.9...  How's this for an interesting view of the surface of Venus? Taken by the Russian Venera Landers, one of only a few spacecraft to actually reach the surface of the second rock.

Need to no more about Venus? Checkout this article by The Planetary Society.

Earth, the 3rd Planet

 
Crescent Earth

This gorgeous shot of crescent Earth was taken by the orbiting Geostationary Operational Envirionmental Sattelite (GOES-8) in June 22nd, 1996 ... the night of the northern summer solstice.. 

Lunar Phase

The moon will be new Sunday afternoon. Tonight, we'll be under a waning crescent moon with a mere 4% of the moon's visible surface illuminated moon when it rises shortly after 4am. The moon's late arrival on the scene should give ample opportunity to explore the beautiful summer Milky Way.

This beautiful shot of Crater Clavius was taken by former Utah Skies Astrophotographer of the Month, Ed Grafton.

Visit our Lunar Information Page for even more images and information

Mars, the 4th Planet

Mars continues to grow at an incredible rate. In apparent size and brightness the changes from week to week are simply amazing.  Mars now spans over 14”… this is over 50% larger than at the start of May. Mars has also brightened to mag –0.80… making it the brightest object in the morning sky. I got several chances to view The Red Planet Monday this past week. Predawn skies were fairly steady and ... details were definitely coming into view. Most impressive (from my point of view anyway) was that the Martian Polar Ice Caps were clearly visible. 

If you’d like to checkout Mars for yourself, all you need to do is look high and towards the south before sunrise. Mars is so bright that you just can’t miss it. Viewing Mars will grow easier too as Mars continues to grow throughout the remainder of the spring and into the summer... culminating in late August, when Mars will be bigger and brighter than at any time in over 70,000 years! Why is this you may be wondering... Earth and Mars both orbit the Sun on different paths and at different distances. This summer, both planets will be on the same side of the Sun. This type of alignment, known as Opposition, occurs about every 26 months. No big deal, right? Well... that depends because the separation at opposition varies considerably. On August 27th, that distance will be about 35 million miles. At the previous opposition in June of 2001, the distance was 41 million miles and in 1995 it was almost 70 million miles. So... what can you expect? Well.. only the best views of the Red Planet in your lifetime! Mars will shine at mag -2.9. This is about as bright as Jupiter ever gets! Additionally, Mars will have an apparent diameter of 25". That's about 2 times its current size. Still not convinced? Want even better views? Well, short of climbing aboard a spaceship (not completely out of the question nowadays) you'd have to wait until 2287 for a closer peak.

Since Mars will be closest to Earth this summer... what better time to launch a spacecraft to study the planet? Answer: There is no better time... that's why there'll be a total of 5 spacecraft launched in the coming months to study the Red Planet. The first of these, The Mars Express, took off on Tuesday. Carrying a space probe known as Beagle 2, the mission will dig into the Martian surface and analyze it's makeup for signs of life.

The accompanying animation which depicts the incredible growth of Mars from early June through its peak on August 27th was created by Frank Reddy. If you start viewing right now, you can jump in mid-stream and catch some of the most incredible views of the Red Planet ever! It'll be several hundred years before Mars approaches this summers size and brightness, so... Don't miss it :) 

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		9:30 am
Visual Magnitude:		-1.80
Visual Diameter:		32"
Distance:		6.07 AU
Constellation:		Cancer

 

Taking advantage of clear skies recently, Don and I viewed a shadow transit. When we setup, we saw three moons... We wondered where #4 might be...  after a bit of searching, we noticed the shadow. This of course meant that the 4th moon had to be transiting the planet. Shortly thereafter, we noticed a little bright pimple on the leftmost edge of the planet. Io had left the building :-)  These types of events happen fairly regularly. So, if you get out every once in a while, you should have no trouble viewing on yourself. Let me just tell you... viewing a shadow transit is pretty easy. Viewing one of the moons against the background of Jupiter on the other hand requires very steady skies and a telescope with good optics.

To find Jupiter look slightly west of overhead shortly after dark. Jupiter is the brightest star-like object in the night sky. Need a bit more help? Checkout this star chart.

Saturn, the 6th Planet

Saturn's rings are now tilted wide open to us... roughly 27° from edge-on. Over the next 15 years, they will move from wide open.. to edge-on to wide open revealing the other pole. This and next year will be the best time to study Saturn's beautiful ring structure for some time, so... get out there and do it.

Saturn is now rising about 6:00am and is pretty much lost for the season at this point. Saturn will return to the morning sky later this summer. Be sure to stay tuned.

Uranus, the 7th Planet

Neptune, the 8th Planet

Springtime on Neptune? Yup... that's what the latest observations seem to indicate. The southern portion of the 8th planet is having some spring like conditions.  Spring is always a fun time of year.. and that's a good thing, because spring last for over 40 Earth years on Neptune. 40 years? Yup... Because it takes Neptune 165 years to orbit the Sun, seasons last just a smidge over 40 earth years.

How's this for a cool shot of Neptune? This was taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it was passing the giant planet. Here we see Neptune and Triton as they can never be seen from Earth... in a crescent form. 

Similar to Jupiter, Neptune is categorized as a gas giant. Neptune is roughly 17 times more massive than the Earth. Neptune was first observed by Galle and d'Arrest on 1846 Sept 23 very near to the locations independently predicted by Adams and Le Verrier. Special thanks to Don Higgins for pointing our some inaccuracies which had crept into some of our previous reports on Neptune.

Pluto, the 9th Planet

Take this bit of planetary information either as an interesting side note, or an observing challenge. Pluto is in the constellation Ophiuchus, less than 1* southwest of planetary nebula NGC6309. At magnitude 13.9, Pluto is basically out of reach of smaller telescopes. One way to verify that you have found Pluto is to sketch the star patterns over several nights. If you have actually found Pluto, one of the the faint star-like objects will have moved over the course of a few nights. This is Pluto.

This high resolution image was created from images taken by The Hubble Space Telescope.

Need more information? Checkout the Pluto Home Page.

Deep Sky

Hubble Vision

If you are able to find all of these objects, you may be one of the few, the proud, the Deep Sky Obsessed. 
E-mail your findings to DeepSkyObservations@UtahSkies.org.

IDA-Utah Light Pollution Update

Stay up to date on astronomical happenings by regularly checking the Utah Skies website at http://www.UtahSkies.org