Monthly Archives: May 2012

astronomy, Mars, planets, saturn

Planet Viewing

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They’re Up There: You Can’t Miss Them

 

The May night skies, with Saturn and Mars.

 

 

The planets Mars and Saturn are gleaming up there in the sky these May nights.  Saturn is in the constellation Virgo, not far from the bright star Spica. I’ve seen a lot of images people are posting of Saturn, and the rings are standing out. So, if you have a decent pair of binoculars, or even better, a small telescope, you can spot those rings yourself.

When I was a kid, one of the first images of a planet I saw was of Saturn. Those rings absolutely mystified me. They were the most alien thing I could think of “out there” and I often wondered how such things could form. Astronomers knew the rings were made up of particles, but it wasn’t until the Voyager mission to Saturn that they knew just how complex the system really is. And, of course, the Cassini Mission is taking their understanding to new heights.  You can find some gorgeous views of Saturn from Cassini at the mission Web site, and I think they’ll whet your appetite to see the planet for yourself.

Mars is close to the bright star Regulus, in the constellation of Leo the Lion. It’s a reddish-looking blob of light and if you have a fairly powerful backyard telescope, you can make out some of the surface markings (dark and light) on the planet.  Of course, the best way to look at Mars (after you’ve spotted it in your night sky) is to surf over to NASA’s Mars site, or ESA’s Mars Express page.  There, you’ll find many fascinating images of the Red Planet taken by spacecraft visiting the planet “up close and personal”.

Go out these May nights and check out the planets. They’re not hard to find and they’ll pique your curiosity. I guarantee it!

 

 

alcor and mizar, asterism, big dipper, binary stars

Double Your Viewing

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Test Your Eyes with Alcor and Mizar

The Big Dipper as seen from Kalalau Valley, Hawai'i. Courtesy User: gh5046; used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License. on Wikipedia.

The Big Dipper is one of those constellations we all learn (in the Northern Hemisphere) pretty early on. It’s easy to spot, it’s a shape that most of us recognize — even if some of us in Europe and other regions call it a Plough. It’s a pattern that we use to teach people how to find other things in the sky, such as the star Arcturus or the North Star (Polaris).

Of course, the Big Dipper is part of a larger constellation called “Ursa Major” which is Latin for “Greater Bear”.  The Dipper forms the back and tail of the Bear, and there are tales across many of the world’s cultures about this Bear and its exploits.  Most of us don’t look for all the stars of the bear, preferring to concentrate on the Dipper itself.

If you look at the Big Dipper’s handle, there’s a double star you can spot with your  naked eye (provided you have a good dark viewing area).  If you live in a city, you can probably spot the double with binoculars or a small telescope.

Those two stars are called Alcor and Mizar and for many years, people would use the ability to spot these two without magnification as a test of their eyesight.  They lie about a light-year apart and they are moving together through space as part of a larger group of stars called the Ursa Major Moving Group.

As it turns out, when you look at Alcor and Mizar, you’re looking at a six-star system. Alcor itself is actually two stars called Alcor A and B, and Mizar is really a system of two binary stars (making four total stars for Mizar).   It’s worth checking out and the weather this time of year is great for kicking back and seeing if YOU can make out Alcor and Mizar with your naked eye. (You won’t find the other stars without some major magnification, but that’s okay.  The objective here is to see what you can find just by taking a gander at the bend in the Dipper’s handle. Check it out!