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Morning Planets, Milky Way
The Galaxy >
The happening heavenly hot spots in the coming weeks aren’t up in the sky so much as they are around the edges.
Those visible planets which got all the hot press a couple weeks ago are
officially finished with their alignment. They’re tanned and rested
and preparing to make public appearances again.
A couple of them are opting to show themselves in the morning twilight
to those of us who are early to rise - very, very early to rise...
Earth’s trek around the sun has now put us in such a position that
the very distant cousins, Jupiter and Saturn, are on the morning (west)
side of the sun. For people up this early a glance toward our eastern
horizon about a half hour before sunrise will reveal one very bright “star”
- Jupiter - and his dimmer but very close companion - Saturn. Watch them
over the next couple months as they rise earlier and earlier and earlier.
Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, continues its forever breakneck
sprint around the sun and appears on the eastern side of the sun, the
sunset side. Look for a tiny, dim, star-like critter following the sun
down into the horizon.
Because Mercury is in such a hurry - its “year” being only 88
days long - you’ll only have the next couple of weeks to catch it.
After that the little guy will bolt in front of the sun again and disappear
into the glare.
Where’s bright and shiny Venus? Being the second planet out, Venus
isn’t in as much of a hurry to orbit the sun as Mercury. Right now
she is behind the sun and won’t move out far enough to be seen until
late summer, when she will again claim “evening star” status.
The most magnificent horizon hugger now in our evening skies is the Milky
Way itself; the great band of light which later, during summertime, will
stretch across the skies overhead from horizon to horizon. What is the
Milky Way, you may ask? Good question!
Our sun is just one of over 100 billion stars held in a gigantic, spiral
disk of stars more than 700,000 trillion miles wide. This is the galaxy
we call home. We are looking at that monstrous, star-soaked disk edge-on
when we observe the Milky Way.
Because it’s around the horizon in the evening, don’t bother
looking for it; viewing any sky object along the horizon is very difficult
at best. But as the night progresses the great band will swing over us
like a celestial jumprope until by 4 AM it will be directly overhead.
By looking straight up in the sky during the early evening, when the Milky
Way still circles us roundabout, you are looking up to the stars that
are, more or less, traveling with us in our 260 million year orbit around
the center of the galaxy. They are fellow pilgrims in our grand journey.
Sadly, none of those stars you see will circumnavigate the galaxy even
once. But that’s a sad star story for another day.
Images and movies of the planets and the Milky Way are waiting for you
at http://firstlightastro.com/icolumn.html
Until next time, clear skies!
First week of June: AM - Jupiter
& Saturn
Milky Way movie: how it moves through the night (390K)
Posted by Administrator at 2000.05.28 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
