Photo of the Week. A blue autumn sky embraces its
wildflowers.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, October 27, 2006.
The Moon begins our week in the late stages of the waxing
crescent, and then passes first quarter on Sunday, October 29th, in the
middle of North America's afternoon: look for it in daylight as it rises in the southeastern
sky. It then spends the rest of the week in the waxing
gibbous phase as it heads towards full on November 5. During
the week's trip through the Zodiac, the waxing gibbous first
passes to the south of Neptune on Monday the 30th, then just barely south of
Uranus on the morning of Wednesday, November
1. Not that you will be able to see the events, since the bright
Moon will blot out these faint outer planets.
In other invisible events (at least we know they are happening), Venus passes superior conjunction with the Sun
(going around in back of the Sun) on Friday the 27th. Only a day
later, Mercury
passes conjunction with Jupiter deep in evening twilight as both also head
for solar conjunction. Neptune then ceases
retrograde (westerly) motion against the stellar background on
Sunday the 29th. At least we have Saturn to
admire, though only if one is willing to stay up late or get up
early, as the ringed planet does not rise until just after 1 AM Daylight
Time (midnight Standard Time: don't forget that we revert to
Standard on Sunday the 29th). By dawn, find it high to the
southeast, with Regulus (in Leo) to the east of it.
The morning hours this week feature a lesser-known "double" meteor
shower emanating from Taurus
(the Bull), the
Taurids, the Northern and Southern Taurids combining to give us
10-15 meteors per hour. Moonlight, however, will hinder the view
as the week rolls on.
As the Earth rotates on its axis, the sky seems to turn about its
two rotation poles, the North and South
Celestial Poles, which lie above their terrestrial
counterparts, the northern celestial pole in Ursa Minor (of Little Dipper fame), the southern in
faint Octans (the Octant).
Circling on opposite sides of the northern pole are Ursa Major (with its Big Dipper), now falling into the
northwest in the evening, and Cassiopeia (the Queen), now rising in the northeast.
The brightest counterpart in the southern hemisphere is Crux (the Southern Cross), which
along with Alpha and Beta Centauri in southern evenings
lies beneath the Southern Pole. More or less opposing them and
high in southern skies is fainter and larger Hydrus, the Water Snake.
