Skylights featured three times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
.
Photo of the Week.. A panoramic view of the western
morning sky sees the Earth's shadow setting in the west, a prelude
to Sunrise.
Astronomy news for the short week starting Saturday, September
27, 2003.
Skylights will resume its regular schedule on Friday, October 3.
Having passed its new phase on Thursday, September 25, the Moon
waxes through its crescent
phase the early part of the week toward its first
quarter, which will be reached on Thursday, October 2 about the
time of Moonrise in North America. With the Sun just having passed
the autumnal equinox in Virgo,
this first quarter will be just past the winter solstice in Sagittarius. Given the tilt of the lunar orbit that
now sends the Moon below the ecliptic (just as it sent the last
third quarter above it), this first quarter will be not only the
most southerly of the year, but even lower (from the North American
viewpoint) than usual.
Other than the Moon, the evening sky is still dominated by Mars, which is
well up in the southeast in twilight, its orange-red color playing
nicely against a fading blue-grey sky. Now crossing the meridian
to the south at 10:30 PM Daylight Time, the red planet is now
setting before 4 AM. In the act of fading some as the Earth pulls
away from it, Mars also ceases its
retrograde motion on Monday, September 29, and begins once
again to move in its normal easterly direction against the starry
background of southwestern Aquarius, not far from the Capricornus border. A little over an hour after Mars
transits, Saturn
comes up over the horizon within the confines of Gemini. The other bright planets
bookend the evening. Venus might be barely glimpsed in the west southwest in
bright evening twilight, while Jupiter, in Leo, is now
rising over an hour before dawn. Closer to the horizon, one might
even see Mercury.
Beginning October is a perfect time for Cygnus (the Swan), which around 9 PM flies directly
overhead for mid-northerners, with first magnitude Deneb at its tail, fainter Albireo at its head. Tip the Swan
upside down to see it as the Northern Cross, the boreal counterpart
to the austral Southern Cross
(Crux), which is really decently visible only from south of the
Tropic of Cancer.
