The Sky This Week, 2013 September 24 - October 1

The Moon greets early risers this week as she passes nearly overhead
among the stars of the Great Winter Circle. Last Quarter occurs on the
26th at 11:55 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Look for Luna close to the
bright star Aldebaran before dawn on the 25th. Three mornings later
she will be five degrees south of bright Jupiter. By the end of the
week she will be in the vicinity of ruddy Mars and the bright star
Regulus in Leo, the Lion. This is a good time to take advantage of the
late sunrises and generally calm air available in the morning hours to
take a look at the Moon before heading off to work or school. It's a
chance to see many of the features that many of us are familiar with
during the Moon's waxing phases in a completely different light. This
is often the best time of the day for close-up observing since the
turbulence in the atmosphere is usually at its minimum after a night
of radiating ground heat into space. You can also observe the Moon
until well after sunrise. Snap a picture of the Moon with your smart
phone to explain to your boss or teacher why you're a little
bleary-eyed in the morning!

As the Moon moves into the morning sky we once again have a chance to
explore the wonders of the "deep sky" along the star clouds of the
Milky Way. At the end of evening twilight, which now occurs at around
8:30 pm EDT, the splendor of this faint band of ghostly light may be
seen bisecting the sky from southwest to northeast if you're well away
from city lights. Directly overhead you'll find the three bright stars
of the Summer Triangle, Vega, Deneb, and Altair, and if you look near
the middle of these three stars you'll see the Milky Way appear to
split into two distinct branches. The dark rift that seems to cause
the split is actually part of the vast cloud of cool gas and dust
that's distributed along the Galaxy's rotational plane, and it's
blocking the light of more distant star clouds behind it. Under very
dark skies you can trace out dozens of smaller eddies and blobs of
similar darkness as you sweep from overhead down to the "teapot"
asterism of Sagittarius with binoculars. Examination of some of these
spots with a telescope shows them to be almost totally devoid of
stars, but hidden within their depths are the embryos of new stars yet
to shine. Eventually the new stars will become luminous and drive away
the dark clouds, revealing a cluster of bright young stars similar to
the dozens of others sprinkled along the Milky Way's length.

Evening twilight is still the best time to see the brilliant glow of
Venus, but the dazzling planet is now gradually beginning to make
inroads into the darker post-twilight sky. Venus is still located in
the southwestern sky, and this week she is beginning to draw a bead on
the ruddy star Antares in the constellation of Scorpius. You may
recall that she passed slowpoke Saturn last week and has now left the
ringed planet far back in her wake. If you want to catch a last
glimpse of Saturn you'd better hurry; he sets by 8:30 pm.

My mornings are starting much earlier than usual these days thanks to
the lure of observing Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky. Fortunately if I'm
up by 5:30 I have a solid hour to enjoy the giant planet in my
telescope before the sunrise washes out the view. Jupiter's cloud
belts are well-defined and prominent so far this apparition, and the
famous Great Red Spot seems to be a bit greater and redder than it was
last year. This feature, which is thought to be a huge storm in Old
Jove's atmosphere, has persisted for some three centuries with varying
degrees of prominence. For the past few decades it has been rather
pale and indistinct, but it has become much easier to see in small
telescopes in the last few years. It will be awhile before it reaches
the deep brick-red color that characterized it in the late 1800's, but
it's heading in the right direction!

Mars offers another pre-dawn target for the telescope, but it is not
going to rival Jupiter any time soon. The red planet is still on the
other side of the Sun from us, so he offers little more than a small
pink-hued disc in the high-power eyepiece. However, by the end of the
week a comet known as C/2012 S1 (ISON) will pass close to Mars and
could be quite a spectacular sight in the martian sky. It will be the
subject of intense scrutiny by several spacecraft orbiting and roving
the planet's dusty surface. Comet ISIN may even become a naked-eye
object in our sky by late fall and early winter, but more on that in a
future edition.



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