Skylights featured four times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
.
Photo of the Week.. A rising cloud begins to sport
an anvil. Perhaps a thuderstorm will follow.
Astronomy news for short week starting Friday, May 30, 2003.
We begin the week in the "dark of the Moon," a rather arcane phrase
that means "no moon," "darkness at night," the new Moon, which
cannot be seen and that does not illuminate the nighttime
landscape, the phase
taking place the night of Friday, May 30, after sunset in the
Americas. The night of Saturday, May 31, the Moon will technically
be visible, but almost impossible to find without great dedication
in north-northwest evening twilight. By Sunday, June 1, the Moon
will be more obvious as a slim waxing crescent above Saturn
, which is disappearing into twilight and will be quite
difficult to find. The following night, on Monday, June 2, the
growing crescent will be obvious and planted smack in the middle of
Gemini below Castor and Pollux, which stare back at us like
a pair of celestial eyes. Then look the night of Tuesday the 3rd
to find our lunar companion in a line and to the left of the two
stars. By the night of Wednesday the 4th, the Moon will appear to
the northwest of bright Jupiter, and on Thursday the 5th well to the northeast of
the giant planet and nicely nestled within the Sickle of Leo. This new Moon will produce
an
annular solar eclipse, the partial portions visible in
Europe, Asia, parts of Canada, and Alaska (the latter on
Friday the 30th)
Outside of the Moon, Jupiter now dominates the evening sky, not
setting until just before local midnight (around 12:30 AM Daylight
Time). It is then replaced by Mars
, which on Sunday June 1st officially makes the transition to
evening by rising almost exactly at local midnight (1 AM Daylight),
the brightening red planet obvious in the southeast amidst the
stars of Capricornus. In the
morning sky, Venus
and
Mercury still make a nice pair, rising about an hour before
sunrise, Venus to the left of the smaller planet. Mercury achieves
its greatest western elongation the morning of Tuesday the 3rd,
though the small planet will be hard to see in twilight's
glare.
Among the fine sights of warm spring skies is the great
constellation of Bootes, the
Herdsman, whose bright orange star Arcturus (the brightest star of the
northern hemisphere) follows the Big
Dipper of Ursa Major around the
pole. By the end of evening twilight, kite-shaped Bootes is preparing to cross the
meridian to the south for northern-hemisphere observers. Then
follows a stream of wonderful figures at about the same northerly
position, first Corona Borealis
(the Northern Crown), Hercules, Lyra (the Lyre or Harp) with
brilliant white Vega (the star just
barely fainter than Arcturus), and finally, a bit more northerly,
Cygnus (the Swan), which has fine
white Deneb at its northern end.
To the south of Hercules lies another human figure, the huge
constellation of Ophiuchus, the
Serpent Bearer, forever wrapped by Serpens, the Serpent.
