Report for 2004-03-19

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

Contents

Astronomical Times (Mountain Standard)

Viewing Outlook

Messier Marathon

It's that time again. Messier Marathon time that is. The March new moon is the only time during the year where you can see all of the objects on the Messier list in one evening. Checkout our special Messier Marathon Report for more information. 

Skies are looking clear for our "mini-marathon". I say mini-marathon because we won't be viewing ideal terrain. By my quesstimate, we should be able to bag about 70 - 80 objects. We'll tell you about our results in a future report.

Astronomers Discover 10th Planet

Scientists announced the discovery of what may be our solar systems 10th planet orbiting some 3 billion kilometers beyond the orbit of Pluto. Temporarily named Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, the planet is described as an an icy, rocky world with a diameter of roughly 2000km. This is just a tiny bit smaller than 9th planet, Pluto. Sedna's small size is sure to rekindle the debate over exactly what the classification of a planet should be. NASA officials have scheduled a news conference to discuss the finding. Checkout CNN.com/SPACE for more details on this discovery.

In this artist's illustration of Sedna, note the distant star to the right edge of the frame. This is our Sun. Because Sedna is so far away, our star appears simply as a bright star against a starry background... not a huge glowing disk capable of warming the planet. Current indications are that Sedna is on a highly elliptical orbit.. and that even at its great distance... it is currently about as close to the sun as it gets. When it swings away, it will move some 10x further out... to the very edge of our solar system.

Martian Sand Dune

Planetary Alighment

For the next several evenings, you'll be able to see all 5 naked eye planets in the sky shortly after sunset. Working up from the western horizon, you'll encounter tiny Mercury... struggling to overcome the glare of the Sun. Brilliant Venus... blazing unrivaled above it. Mars.. a shadow of it's former self. Saturn... almost overhead and as bright as the brightest stars in the sky... and towards the east... Jupiter... second only to Venus in brilliance. 

As if all this excitement wasn't enough :-) by Monday night (3/22) we'll be adding a tiny crescent moon to the list. The moon will be visible between Mercury and Venus on Monday and Tuesday night... then pose alongside Venus on Wednesday... and pull up real close to Mars on Thursday night. In fact, the Moon and Mars will be only about 0.2° apart at that point.

Checkout our Conjunctions Page for more images like this.

The accompanying 5 planet alignment was captured on May 1st, 2002 by Anthony Arrigo of Utah Skies.

Comet C/2002 T7 Linear

Checkout this recent shot of comet C/2002 T7 Linear...  taken on February 16th, by Michael Jäger and Gerald Rheman.

The comet is now about mag5.2... making it a fairly easy target for most binoculars and small telescopes. The primary difficulty in coming weeks will be the comets sinking location in the western sky. Your best bet for spotting the comet will be from a dark site with an unobstructed western horizon. 

As we've mentioned previously, the comet is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on May 19th, 2004 when it passes only 0.27AU from Earth. AU or Astronomical Units are the approximate average distance between the Earth and the Sun. The comet is expected to brighten to between mag0 & mag1... making this an easy naked eye comet for springtime observers. Needless to say... views through a telescope or binoculars ought to be absolutely incredible by then! 

The comet is currently cruising through southeastern most portion of the constellation Pegasus, which is high in the southwestern sky shortly after dark. Now would be a great time to get out and observe the brightening comet. Click here for ephemeris to help you find the comet... or here for analysis of the comets journey... or here for a sky map.

Solar System

Sunspot activity on our star continues to wax and wane. Giant sunspot #570 can be seen exiting towards the right edge of the picture. A string of lesser, but still large sunspots are working their way into the picture from the right.

The sun is a fascinating subject. It's appearance changes from day to day. In fact, it is the only star in the sky that we can see any details on at all! If you'd like to observe our star, make sure you do so safely. Checkout these Safe Viewing Techniques.

Spring and Fall are the prime times for seeing the northern lights. This is because geomagnetic storms tend to be more intense this time of year. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

This gorgeous shot was taken by Jesper Eriksen of Fairbanks, Alaska on the nights of March 9th. Sweet!

Planetary Report

Mercury, the 1st Planet

Mercury has moved back into the evening sky. It continues to distance itself from our star and is very close to reappearing above the western horizon shortly after sunset in the coming days. Even better... when it does so... all 5 of the naked eye planets will be visible in the night sky at once. This type of alignment happens periodically... and is always interesting to see.

This beautiful image of Mercury's South Pole was taken by the Mariner 10 Spacecraft in 1974.

Venus, the 2nd Planet

Venus is now rising just over two hours after the sun. You should now be able to find it easily in the evening sky shortly after sundown. In fact, now would be a good time to start watching Venus. Why? Well, because Venus is getting ready for some major changes. It is currently 63% illuminated... making its phase quite apparent As it climbs higher in the sky over the coming months, it will grow considerably in size and brightness... while shrinking just as considerably in phase. By early spring Venus will only be 1/2 illuminated, but will be almost half again as bright. See if you notice the change.

This image of the 2nd Rock was taken by Utah Skies own Don Brown on Wednesday afternoon. Yes... afternoon. Don's trusty Takahashi mounted on a GP-DX was able to track down Venus during broad daylight. Venus is currently about 57% illuminated... and shrinking.

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

Earth, the 3rd Planet

Lunar Phase

The moon will be new tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, we'll be under a waning crescent phase with a mere 2% of the visible lunar surface illuminated when it rose around 6:15am. Ok.. This is absolutely my favorite phase... the moon is completely missing from the sky :-) 

Interested in how and why we see the lunar phases we do? Checkout this animation.

The accompanying image of a 5% illuminated crescent moon was taken by Utah Skies own Anthony Arrigo on Thursday morning (3/18/04) using a Sony DSC-F717 digital camera shooting eyepiece projection through a 120mm f/5 refractor.

Visit our Lunar Information Page for even more great images and information

Mars, the 4th Planet

How's this for an interesting shot of the Martian surface? Sure, there's a nice outcropping of rock near the top, but... the really interesting feature is the "bunny ears" near the bottom. What is it? Good question. :-)  NASA scientists plan to take a closer look. Even more interestingly, the ears appear to move in this series of exposures taken over several minutes... as if swaying in a gentle Martian breeze. Hmmm..... very interesting.

Jupiter, the 5th Planet

 

Rising:		5:05 pm
Visual Magnitude:		-2.47
Visual Diameter:		44"
Distance:		4.46 AU
Constellation:		Leo

 

Checkout this sweet animation. It was taken by Utah Skies own Anthony Arrigo from his driveway this past Wednesday evening (3/17). Skies were particularly clear that night... and pretty steady too... probably an 8 out of 10. We were able to crank the magnification up close to 400x during periods of particularly good seeing. The rest of the night, skies easily handled 250-300x. 

Saturn, the 6th Planet

Saturn is now rising in the early afternoon. This has it well placed for observation as soon as it gets dark out. The ringed planet can be found currently cruising through the southern portion of the constellation Gemini. As you can see in the accompanying shot, Saturn is brighter than any of the surrounding stars... making it an easy target to the aided and unaided eye. With a small telescope, the beautiful ring system can be seen and enjoyed.

This beautiful shot of the ringed planet was taken by Tai Wei Leong of Singapore using a Celestron C11 telescope...

Uranus, the 7th Planet

Neptune, the 8th Planet

Pluto, the 9th Planet

Astronomers made a surprising discovery about Pluto recently. As Pluto begins to move away from the Sun... towards the beginning of it's winter... things are actually heating up on the distant planet instead of cooling down. Checkout CNN.com/SPACE for more details

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 NGC6309 aka The Bug Nebula. I viewed The Bug this past weekend, so... photons from Pluto must have hit my retina :-) At magnitude 13.9, Pluto is basically out of reach of smaller telescopes... Even in the big scope... it's difficult to be sure that you've seen Pluto. 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  image was 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  

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