Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, July 12, 2013.
It's rather a short week. In the metaphorical sense. It still has
seven days in it (the number of days in the week probably coming from
the seven moving bodies of the sky, the Moon and Sun plus the five
bright planets). But not much is to happen, which is quite
appropriate for lazy summer days. We do, however, get to see a
convenient and bright Moon that begins as a fat waxing crescent that moves easterly against
the stars toward first quarter, which is
hit the night of Monday, July 15, when it will pass very close to
Spica in Virgo
The following evening, after the Moon has entered
its waxing gibbous phase, it will glide
three degrees south of Saturn. The
growing gibbous then runs through the rest of the week, full Moon not taking place until next week,
on Monday the 22nd.
Ever so slowly,
Venus is working its way upward in the western evening twilight
sky, but still sets half an hour before the sky is fully dark,
making it yet a difficult find. On the other side of the sky,
though getting higher in the east in dawn's light, Jupiter and
Mars are still washed out by brightening morning twilight. So
once again, we are left with Saturn, which of course is not so bad.
Quite obvious in the southwest in early evening and still a dozen
degrees to the east of Spica, the ringed planet is with us until it
sets at local midnight (1 AM Daylight Time), following which the
sky is planetless until dawn. That is, unless you count the two
outer planets, Uranus and
Neptune, plus Pluto,
which bridge the gap. In Pisces
to the east of the Vernal
Equinox, Uranus begins its
retrograde motion on Wednesday the 17th.
Look nearly overhead around midnight for bright Vega, the luminary of small but lovely
Lyra, the Lyre or Harp, which is
defined by an exquisite parallelogram to the southeast of the star.
Lyra is sandwiched between Hercules
to the west and Cygnus (with first
magnitude Deneb) to the east, Vega,
Deneb, and Altair (in Aquila, the Eagle, to the south)
making the famed Summer
Triangle. Dropping to the south of Hercules we pass through Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer) and
then to Scorpius, the eponymous
Scorpion, which in one legend killed Orion, who will not appear until Scorpius has gone
down. In the other direction, the Little Dipper of Ursa Minor stands high in early
evening while the Big Dipper of
Ursa Major begins its descent into
the northwest.
