This is the Dudley Observatory Skywatch Line for Monday and Tuesday, July 21st and 22nd written by Joe Slomka. The Sun sets at 8:27 PM; night falls at 10:31. Dawn breaks at 3:33 AM and ends with sunrise at 5:37. As the Sun sets, only two planets are visible. Mars appears in the southwestern sky. Mars continues to shrink in size and brilliance. It lies about four degrees East of Spica, in Virgo. Mars sets before Midnight. Saturn continues to inhabit Libra. Monday night, Saturn halts its retrograde motion westward. Tuesday, it resumes normal eastward (direct) movement. Saturn sets 1 AM. Nightfall reveals the asteroids Ceres and Vesta still sharing Virgo with Mars. They continue to appear very close to each other. Astronomy resources provide finder charts. They set about 12:30 AM. Neptune rises in Aquarius about 10 PM and remains up the rest of the night. Uranus rises at 11:33 PM in Pisces and also remains visible all night. The twenty-five-day-old Moon rises in Taurus after 2 AM both nights. Tuesday’s Moon lies close to the red star Aldebaran; Wednesday’s waning crescent is found near the head of Scorpius. Venus appears during civil twilight. It blazes fifteen degrees to the Moon’s lower left. While the Moon appears about 18 percent illuminated, Venus seems ninety percent. Mercury emerges eight degrees to Venus’ lower left. The elusive planet is also quite bright and looks as if about two-thirds illuminated. As appropriate for the racing season, two horses appear by midnight. The largest horse is, of course, Pegasus. The smallest is Equuleus. This dim constellation is easy to find. Pegasus flies upside down and is easily identified as a Great Square. Two thin chains sweep northward from the upper left. If one scans across the chain, binoculars expose a large hazy oval; this is revealed, in telescopes, to be the Andromeda Galaxy – about two and a half million light years distant. You can see it with the naked eye under rural skies. Pegasus’ neck flows from the lower right corner and angles up. Equuleus is the small angular line of stars West of the Pegasus’ nose. A globular star cluster, M 15, lies exactly halfway between Pegasus’ nose and Equuleus. This too is easily seen in binoculars.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 18:27:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015