Editor’s Note: There’s always something going on in the night sky, and summer is a wonderful time to head out and do some stargazing. Each week here on Now Habersham, we’ll give you a glimpse of the night sky. Weather forecaster and astronomer, Tyler Penland, will highlight major celestial events as well as a handful of specific sky objects you can view both with and without a telescope. So keep your eyes on Now Habersham for our new weekly feature, “Watch the Skies.”
We’re starting off our Watch the Skies series with a very exciting week.
Partial lunar eclipse: A lunar eclipse will be visible on Wednesday morning. For the western 2/3 of the country, a total eclipse will be ongoing as the moon sets. For us on the east coast, we will only be able to see the partial stages of the eclipse.
The eclipse begins at 5:45 AM when the moon is around 7 degrees above the horizon. When the moon sets around 6:25 on Wednesday morning it will be roughly 50% covered by the Earth’s shadow. Since this eclipse is occurring so close to moonset you’ll have to have a low, unobstructed view to the west during these wee morning hours.
The next lunar eclipse will be a nearly total, 97% coverage on November 19 of this year and finally another total lunar eclipse next May.
Evening planet show: Venus, Mercury, and Mars are all hanging out in the evening sky this week putting on a show. Mercury recently reached its farthest point from the sun, allowing it to briefly become naked-eye visible against the glare of twilight. It’s very easy to find right now as it is located just slightly above Venus.
Venus is very bright and is slowly marching upwards from the sun. With sunset coming around 8:30, Venus stays bright (magnitude -3.9) for upwards of an hour after sunset. For those with a telescope or strong binoculars Venus will appear not quite round, but just slightly gibbous. This is because, just like the moon, Venus has phases. During parts of its orbit it appears as a crescent, and others as a full disc.
Mars is also making an appearance during the evening and appears as the red dot up and left of Venus and Mercury. It is currently shining brightly at magnitude 1.7.
Jupiter and Saturn both rise during the early morning hours around 2 AM and 1:30 AM respectively. By dawn, they are located high in the sky so look for them as you head out to work or school in the pre-dawn hours this week. They have grown quite far apart since their conjunction this past December.
Featured naked eye object of the week — Regulus: Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo. It is currently located high in the sky during the early overnight hours. Its technical name is Alpha Leonis, but its common name of Regulus means “little king”.
Regulus has stood out to stargazers for thousands of years, but those early astronomers could never have guessed that it is just one of at least 3 interacting stars. A pair of small white dwarfs can be seen through a large telescope that orbit Regulus roughly every 130,000 years.
Regulus is also a bizarre star because it rotates extremely quickly, almost quickly enough to tear itself apart. It appears blue-white to our eyes and can be easily picked out in “the sickle,” or a part of the constellation Leo the lion that looks like a backwards question mark. It is the 21st brightest star in the sky making it a good target for binoculars, telescopes, or just your eyes! Be sure to take a peek at this strange object in the evening this week.
Featured telescope object of the week — Beehive Cluster: As we move deeper into the summer months many of the best telescope objects will be coming into view. Many of the dimmer objects will be blocked out by the bright glare of the moon which is up nearly all night, but there are still plenty of great telescope targets to be found.
This week we’ll take a look at an object located well away from the glare of the moon: the beehive cluster. Also known as M44 or Messier 44, it is an open cluster of stars located in the constellation of Cancer. When the sun goes down you can find this cluster up and left of the planet Mars, quite near to the naked eye object of the week Regulus. It is visible to the naked eye as a small, nebulae-like area but appears as a beautiful collection of closely packed stars through even a pair of strong binoculars.
Galileo has the first documented cataloging of this as a cluster, though it was observed since ancient times. It was later included in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of faint night sky objects. Galileo was able to see at least 40 distinct stars but modern large telescopes reveal somewhere around 1,000 stars all gravitationally bound. Where the name “beehive” comes from is unknown, but it certainly evokes that emotion when viewed through binoculars or a strong telescope.
Be sure to get out this week and take advantage of the dry weather.
And as my old astronomy professor Dr. Joseph Jones says: Watch the skies!
