SKYLIGHTS
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, October 26, 2001.
The Moon passes through its full and brightest phase this week the
night of Wednesday, October 31. This one, more than the last full
Moon of October 2, deserves to be called the "Hunter's Moon," as
the early evening around the time of the full Moon is still
dominated by moonlight. As a result of various misinterpretations,
the second full Moon in a month is sometimes called a "blue Moon."
This full Moon is curious in that the technical full phase occurs
on the morning of Thursday, November 1, at 5 hours 41 minutes
Greenwich Time (better known as Universal Time), and therefore does
not qualify, nor does it in Eastern Time, which is 5 hours behind
Greenwich. However, for the remainder of the Americas (Central
Standard Time, 6 hours behind Greenwich, and west), this one is
indeed a "blue Moon," as it takes place at 11:41 PM CST. Such
timing differences can also confound the much more important date
of Easter, which falls on the first Sunday following the first full
Moon after the Sun passes the vernal equinox in Pisces.
The big news of the week, however, involve a remarkable interplay
between Mercury and Venus. If you have never seen Mercury, now is
the time, as brilliant Venus, which now rises in the east just as
dawn starts to light the sky, shows the way. On Monday the 29th,
Mercury reaches its greatest western elongation from the Sun. From
Saturday, October 27th until Wednesday November 7, Venus and
Mercury will be within a degree of each other, an extraordinary
event that is rarely repeated. Just find Venus, which is hard to
miss as it will be the brightest body in eastern morning twilight,
and the next brightest thing close to it will be Mercury! What
makes the close pass even rarer is that the two are never in formal
conjunction, wherein one planet lies due north of the other. Of
much lesser interest, since it cannot be seen (not in Moonlight
anyway), is an event that involves Uranus, which begins its
retrograde motion within the confines of dim Capricornus on the
night of Monday, October 29.
On the morning of Sunday October 28, Daylight Savings Time ends in
the UK, Canada, and the US, that is, we drop back an hour to our
own Standard Time rather than using the one to the east of us. The
sky darkens an hour earlier (a strictly artificial event, as it is
the clock changing, not the sky), but we gain daylight back in the
morning. Look to the south now about 8 PM STANDARD Time, and you
will see the bright star Fomalhaut crossing the meridian. If you
are far enough south, from just above 40 degrees north on down
(sorry Canada), you can see -- once the Moon is out of the way --
the modern constellation Grus, the Crane, which, unlike most of the
constellations in the sky, rather looks like what it is supposed to
be, a great bird walking along the southern horizon -- providing
your horizon is clear of trees, corn, or even soybeans.
