Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, July 11, 2014.
We start our week quite nicely on Friday, July 11, with the Moon
rising just short of its full phase,
which is reached the morning of Saturday the 12th about the time
of Moonset in North America. Early risers will see it as a
glowing globe in the southwest as it pursues its track just north
of the ecliptic. Since the
Sun has
recently passed the Summer
Solstice in classical Gemini, the full Moon will fall just to the east of
the Winter Solstice in Sagittarius, and be a pretty
sight indeed. From there, the Moon wanes in its gibbous phase, which quits at third quarter on Friday the 18th shortly
before Moonrise. There are no significant planetary passages
unless you want to count those with
Neptune on Tuesday, July 15, and
Uranus on the morning of Friday the 18th, the Moon over just
over a degree north of the distant planet, which orbits
twice as far from the Sun as Saturn. The Moon passes perigee
, where it is closest to the
Earth, the morning of Sunday the 13th.
It's a real treat to have two bright planets so close in the
evening sky. Though fading as the Earth pulls away from it, at
magnitude zero, Mars still
dominates the early southwestern sky. Just look for the brightest
starlike object you can see. In rapid direct easterly motion
against the background stars, reddish Mars has been closing in on
Spica in Virgo, and finally passes just 1.4 degrees north of
the blue-white star on Saturday the 12th, the pair making a fine
color contrast. Not far to the east, Saturn sits in the pans of
Libra, the Scales, to the
northeast of Zubenelgenubi, the
"Southern Claw" of Scorpius. Mars
finally sets shortly after midnight Daylight time, Saturn about an
hour later. The morning sky hosts the two inner planets.
Venus rises right at the start of dawn, just before 3 AM
Daylight Time. Mercury then comes up half an
hour later, the little planet reaching greatest elongation to the
west of the Sun (by 21 degrees) on Saturday the 12th.
The upside-down Big Dipper is
now starting to fall into the northwest. It's the tail and
hindquarters of Ursa Major, the
Great Bear. The snout is out in front of the Dipper, while south
and west of it are three pairs of
unrelated stars that represent three of the Bear's feet. The
ancient Arabs called the trio "the leaps of the gazelle," which
have nothing to do with a bear at all. The population of the sky
all depends on local culture and the state of imagination.
