Photo of the Week. From out of the Atlantic Ocean, a not-
quite-full Moon rises above evening's rising
Earth shadow. (This photo has been
added to Moon Light.)
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, April 4,
2008.
We begin the week with the invisible Moon just shy of its
new phase, which is reached the night of Saturday, April 5. Then
watch a delightful show as the waxing crescent climbs out of
evening western dusk. It will first be visible as a very thin crescent very low above the western
twilight horizon the night of Monday the 7th. The following
evening (Tuesday the 8th), the somewhat higher Moon makes a lovely
pass just to the north of the Pleiades cluster of Taurus. Since the Moon will not be very bright at this
point, the juxtaposition will be especially viewable and pretty.
Binoculars will help. In the far northeast, observers can even see
the crescent covering some of the stars. The night of Wednesday
the 9th finds the fattening crescent up
and to the right of Aldebaran
and the Hyades. Two days after
new, the Moon passes
perigee, where it is closest to the Earth, resulting in
especially high tides
at the coasts.
The evening is enhanced by the fine visibility of Mars as
it moves noticeably through central Gemini to the southwest of Castor and Pollux. Already to the west of the
meridian as the sky darkens, the red
planet is so far north that it does not set until around 2:30 AM
Daylight Time just a few minutes before much brighter Jupiter lofts
itself above the southeastern horizon. The giant of the Solar
System then dominates the morning to the east of the Little Milk Dipper of Sagittarius, remaining visible well
into modest twilight. In a dark sky, with the Moon out of the way,
Jupiter presents a fine sight just to the east of the brightest
part of the Milky Way. More or
less between Mars and Jupiter, still in Leo to the east of Regulus (where it will reside for
some time) lies
Saturn, which transits rather high to the south around 10:30 PM
Daylight.
The great winter constellations that surround Orion (Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Canis Minor and Major)
now slip ever so slowly to the west and into twilight. Riding down
the ecliptic and the Zodiac to the east of Gemini lie
Cancer (the Crab), Leo (the Lion, with Saturn), and,
holding the autumnal equinox, Virgo (the Maiden). Then pick them
up in the morning to find Libra
(the Scales), Scorpius (the
Scorpion), and Sagittarius (the
Archer): and we are back to Jupiter.
