Skylights featured three times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
.
Photo of the Week.. Leo, the Lion, was Jupiter's home for 2004, the bright
planet unmistakable.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, April 23, 2004.
The Moon grows during the week. It starts at waxing crescent,
passes through first
quarter on Tuesday the 27th near the time of Moonrise, and then
continues through waxing gibbous, when we see the lunar disk facing
us more than half lit.
The Moon then takes a bead on the bright planets. The early
evening of Friday the 23rd finds our companion almost directly
above Mars and up and
to the left of wonderfully bright
Venus, as these three with
Elnath (Beta
Tauri) make a delightful quartet. On the following night,
Saturday the 24th, the Moon will then pass several degrees to the
north (on the sky to the right) of Saturn
, which continues to hang out in southern Gemini not far from the Summer Solstice. Keep going through
the week to the night of Thursday the 29th, and watch the Moon pass
a few degrees to the north of Jupiter in southern Leo. As an aside, just a few hours
after the Moon passes Mars, it (the Moon) goes through apogee,
where it is farthest from the Earth.
For months now, Mars has been moving to the east against the stars,
but so has Venus, enough nearly to overtake the red planet. But it
does not quite get there. On the night of Sunday the 25th, the two
will approach to within just under six degrees of each other, not
quite coming into formal conjunction, whereupon Venus begins to
fall behind as it more quickly falls back toward the Sun. The
close approach will take place in northern Taurus with the nearly quarter Moon shining to the east
of Saturn high in northern Gemini and rather well to the north of
the ecliptic (the result of the five degree tilt of the
lunar orbit).
As twilight ends, the eastern end of Argo, the Ship, well down and to the left of Sirius, crosses the meridian and
begins to sail away to the west, appropriate since this portion of
Argo is the formal constellation of Vela, the Sails. To the south of it, and mostly out of
view of northerners is sprawling Carina, the Keel of the Ship, which holds the second
brightest star of the sky, Canopus. While the top three
brightest stars (Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Centauri) are all in the sky's southern
hemisphere, the next three are all in the northern: Arcturus (of Bootes), Vega (in Lyra), and Capella (in Auriga). And while orange Arcturus, one of spring's great
sights, is now seen rising in the east after sundown, Capella (the
most northerly of the first magnitude stars) disappears into the
northwest. Vega, following Arcturus by about four hours, calls out
the coming of summer.
