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A Start for Winter Skywatching
Observing >
December is a special month for astronomers. Not, certainly, because of the cold temperatures and poor weather. It's special for the length of the days, or more precisely, the length of the nights.
We are now in a part of our orbit where we are tilted away from the sun and thus enjoy longer nighttimes and fewer hours of daylight. This greatly pleases astronomers. You, too, can benefit from the extra darkness.
In the skies this dark month are two of the most aesthetically pleasing lights in the Solar System --- Jupiter and Saturn. And thanks in part to the extended darkness they are both up at reasonable, pre-midnight hours for your viewing pleasure. Saturn is first up. It rises around sunset and crawls up the sky until at midnight it is almost directly overhead.
If
you can find Orion, you can easily find Saturn. Find Orion's Belt, the
three pretty stars all in a row in the southeastern skies in the early
evening. Just to their left are his two bright shoulders. And to the left
of his shoulders shining like the point of a grand triangle is golden
Saturn.
Grab even a lower power telescope and check out Saturn's beautiful ring system. When you're finished being awed, take a look a Jupiter.
The Great One doesn't rise in the east until the 9 o'clock hour and doesn't really get into a good position to view through a scope until a couple hours later. But if you have the time and scope, he's worth a look.
Around Mighty Jove ride the four Galilean satellites, first discovered by Galileo more than three centuries ago and twinkling still like four little stars around a parent.
While you're absorbing the beauty of the stellar scenery, take a look just below Orion's Belt at a famous fuzzy area, the Orion Nebula, a very busy stellar maternity ward. Here stars are being birthed left and right. An older family of child stars is just above the whole Orion constellation, the well-known Pleiades star cluster.
Now for those of you up for an astronomical challenge, I challenge you to find a red beast of a star near the Pleiades. This star is as bright as almost 6000 suns, and over 200 times bigger! Should be easy to find, right? Sorta.
This giant is also over 65 light years away. That's about 350 trillion miles if you're planning a trip. That great distance means a great dimming of its light. But it is still prominent and still reddish in color. Can you find it?
Like
its neighbors, the Pleiades, it is in the constellation Taurus the Bull.
Find the lone, bright pinkish star between Orion and the Pleiades.
That is our star, Aldebaran, the red eye of the Bull. It is giant and red precisely because it's at that stage of its life called --- surprise! --- the Red Giant stage.
Red Giants are stars gasping their last breaths. They have used up their hydrogen fuel and are now desperately burning other elements in an attempt to beat back the inward crush of gravity.
Alas! Gravity will beat Aldebaran in the end. Go see it now because in several million years there will be no Aldebaran.
That's just a start for winter skywatching, friends. Peering around with binoculars you can see dozens of other beauties --- star clusters and nebulae and binary systems.
Commit yourself now to take advantage of our extended darkness and get to know the glorious winter skies.
Mark Ritter has helpful star charts to help you find these objects at http://firstlightastro.com and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com
Posted by Administrator at 2002.12. 7 02:15 PM | Comments (0)
