Skylights featured three times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
.
Photo of the Week.. Clouds -- lacy cirrus far above the low
curmulus -- go wild across a striking
blue sky.
Astronomy news for the eight day period starting Friday,
October 15, 2004.
The next Skylights will appear Saturday, October 23.
The Moon begins the week in its waxing crescent
phase, then passes through first
quarter the evening of Wednesday, October 20, when it is seen
gliding low above the southern horizon about the time of Sunset in
North America and to the east of Sagittarius. Three days before, it passes perigee,
the point at which is closest to the Earth. The nights of Saturday
the 16th, and Sunday the 17th, the Moon will present a pretty sight
with twilight Scorpius, to the
right of Antares the 16th, to the
left the 17th.
As the Moon waxes through gibbous toward
full (reached the night of Wednesday, October 27, when there will
be an excellent total lunar eclipse), it will pass to the
south of Neptune (in
central Capricornus) on Thursday
the 21st, then south of Uranus (in Aquarius) the night of Friday the
22nd.
For real beauty, check out the morning sky, which is still
dominated by brilliant Venus.
Though the planet has been rising later (now around 4 AM Daylight
Time), sunrise and morning twilight fall later too as the Sun heads
south, such that Venus has seemed to maintain nearly the same
altitude above the horizon as the sky brightens. Though twilight
is slowly catching up with our "sister planet" (so-called only
because it is about the same size as ours, and in spite of its
extreme surface conditions of heat and high atmospheric pressure),
Venus will not rise as twilight begins until the end of the year.
Saturn
, now rising in Gemini
before midnight Daylight time, lies well above Venus, while
Jupiter, far below Venus, is just beginning to be visible.
While admiring Venus, be sure to look to the south for Orion, Sirius, and the rest of the gang that
make the stars of evening winter. The morning of Thursday the 21st
marks the peak of this year's Orionid meteor shower, which will not be marred by
Moonlight. Along with May's Eta Aquarids, the Orionids are the
flaked-off debris of
Halley's Comet, picked up as the Earth comes close to its
orbit. They typically produce about 20 meteors a minute that,
because of perspective effects, seem to come from the direction of
that constellation.
In early evening, Cygnus the Swan,
nearly overhead, flies down the soft path of the Milky Way, which streams from the
northeast out of Cassiopeia,
through Cygnus and Aquila, and
then brightens in the star-cloud of the modern constellation, Scutum (the Shield). The Milky Stream
really then takes on its glory within Sagittarius, best seen from the climes of the southern
hemisphere.
