The Sky This Week, 2013 January 15 - 22 with McDonald Space Science

The Moon waxes in the evening sky this week, passing through autumn's
dim constellations before ending the week among the bright stars of
the Great Winter Circle. First Quarter occurs on the 18th at6:45 pm
Eastern Standard Time. Luna manages to avoid bright encounters until
the 21st, when she drifts less than a degree south of Jupiter during
the course of the evening. The pair will be closest at around 11:00
pm.
Moonlight will gradually start to flood the evening sky with light,
extinguishing all but the brightest stars as the Moon climbs toward
the winter constellations. Indeed, this will be one of the best times
ofthe year to examine Luna's rugged surface through the telescope. A
popular phrase among amateur astronomers is that the Moon is"looked
over, then overlooked" by new telescope owners and seasonedveteran
observers alike. However, she is also our closest neighbor in space,
and as such reveals lots of detail in even the smallest telescopes.
Each night offers viewsof new lunar vistas as the"terminator" that
divides the lunar sunrise line slowly creeps across the lunar
landscape from night to night. The Moon's features are dominated by
impact craters ranging in size from the vast lunar"seas" caused by
impacts from large asteroids in the early chaos ofthe solar system to
small "pit" craters that challenge the resolution of your telescope.
It is almost impossible to appreciate the scale of these formations,
though. The smallest craters we can routinely see in our 12-inch
refractor here at the Naval Observatory are comparable in size to the
famous Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is a very impressive formation
to see in situ. Most of the craters seen in amateur telescopes are
tens of kilometers across, and there are literally thousands of them.
The "southern highlands" of the Moon are a jumbleof craters and other
tectonic features which bear mute testamentto the violence of the
first billion years of solar system history. Careful examination will
show many different kinds of landforms as well, such as great isolated
mountain peaks jutting out of the smooth lava plains of Mare Imbrium
or vast cracks and sinuous rilles caused by expansion of lunar crust
over the eons. So give our only natural satellite a good look this
week. She is a fascinating companion.
The bright stars of the Great Winter Circle compete with the Moon and
Jupiter for your attention.Take the time to look at them, especially
if you have a pair of binoculars. You'll be surprised at how much a
little optical aid will bring out the colors of these bright stars,
from the gold glimmer of Capella to the ice-blue of Sirius andRigel
and the warm ruddy tint of Betelgeuse and Aldebaran. On chillynights
the view of Orion's belt starsalmost seems to shimmer in my view. The
middle star, Alnilam, is one of the most intrinsically bright stars in
the galaxy, shining with a luminosity of some 250,000 Suns across a
gulf of over 2000 light years. If Alnilam were located at the distance
of Sirius, just over 8 light years away, it would appear brighter than
the Full Moon in our nighttime sky!
Jupiter outshines all the other starsin the winter sky and after the
Moon is the most rewarding object for telescopic view. You'll have a
particularly good evening of exploration on the 21st, when the Moon
glides just south of the giant planet. Once again the sense of scale
is distorted if you view both objects in a low-power field.
Jupiterappears tiny compared to the pockmarked landscape of Luna, yet
its true size is miniscule compared to the distant planet. Jupiter's
fourlarge moons, discovered 403 years ago this month by Galileo, are
comparable in size to the Moon, butthey appear as tiny dots in all but
the largest telescopes. If you have a three-inch or larger aperture
telescope, you can watch the shadow of the largest moon, Ganymede,
drift across the southern edge of Jupiter's disc between 10:00 pm and
midnight EST on the night of the 17th.
Saturn now rises at around 1:30 amin the southeastern sky and nears
the meridian in the southeast as morning twilight begins to gather.
This planet is not as dynamic as Jupiter, but the dullness of his
discis more than made up for by the graceful arc of the planet's
famous rings. If you look carefully at the planet's vicinity before
the sky begins to brighten you should see several tiny pinpoints of
light that seemingly swarm around the planet.A good four-inch
telescope should reveal five of Saturn's icy moons, and an 8-inch
instrument should show enigmatic Enceladus when it is at elongation.
This latter moon isremarkable for the water-ice geysers that the
Cassini space probe discovered near its south pole.
USNO Master Clock Time
Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:45:41 +00:02:00 UTC ATOMIC CLOCK

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