Photo of the Week.. Mars climbs through the trees
last March, led by the Sickle of Leo
above it. Regulus is up and to
the right of Mars, while Denebola is near the lower right
edge.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, October 26, 2012.
Our Moon brightens the sky this week. Starting off in its waxing gibbous phase, it goes through full during the daylight hours in North
America on Monday, October 29. The night of Sunday the 28th, it
will therefore rise just shy of full shortly before sunset, while
the evening of Monday the 29th, it will rise a bit past the exact
phase and slightly later than sunset. It then spends the remainder
of the week fading in the waning gibbous
phase.
The only lunar encounter of note, and it is a good one, is with Jupiter. Look
the night of Wednesday the 31st to see the Moon nicely to the west
of the bright planet with the star Aldebaran a bit south of a line
between them. The following night, that of Thursday, November 1,
the Moon and Jupiter will be dramatically closer, but with the Moon
flipped to the other side, to the east of the planet. The two will
rise very close together with Jupiter on top. Shortly before the
rising, the Moon will actually have occulted the planet as seen
from part of South Africa. An encounter of little note is with Uranus on
Saturday the 27th, the Moon going several degrees to the north of
the seventh planet from the Sun. Leaving
the Moon, note only that it passes its apogee from
Earth on Thursday the 1st.
With that as an introduction, Jupiter is now placing itself
beautifully in the evening sky by rising around 8 PM Daylight Time
in pretty much its usual place in central Taurus, retrograding (moving to the west against the
background stars) a bit to the west and closer to Aldebaran and the
Hyades, which lie to the
southwest of it. Jupiter then dominates the sky until around 4:30
AM, when brighter Venus launches
itself above the eastern horizon, by which time Jupiter has crossed
the meridian to the south (though not
by that much). Moving rapidly to the east against the background,
Venus finds itself near the celestial
equator in western Virgo
well to the southeast of Leo's Regulus as it slowly catches up with
the Sun. Back in the evening, Mars remains
nearly invisible but steady, setting its usual half hour after the
end of twilight, just about as Jupiter rises. While Mercury passes
its greatest eastern elongation to the Sun on Friday the 26th, the
ecliptic is so flat against the horizon that the planet is
practically invisible (as is Saturn).
Though the bright Moon blots out the fainter stars, you can still
see such prominent figures as Cassiopeia, as her "W" stands nearly overhead in late
evening. And of course there is faithful Polaris, which you can find due
north at an angle above the horizon equal to your latitude. Then
well to the south, look for "November's Star," bright but lonely Fomalhaut, "the Fish's Mouth (of
Piscis Austrinus, the Southern
Fish), a true harbinger of the chilly days to come.
