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Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. We hope you enjoy it!

   

Major Events in 2011

Occultations of planets and bright stars are by the Moon unless noted otherwise. General locations are given for these occultations. For observers outside these locations, close conjunctions of the Moon and objects may be observed.

All times are given in Universal Time (UT). To calculate the time for your location, use the following table. Take the UT time and add the time in the table for your time zone.

Time Zone Conversion Table

Time Zone Standard Time Daylight Saving Time
Eastern Standard Time (EST) –5 hours -4 hours
Central Standard Time (CST) –6 hours -5 hours
Mountain Standard Time (MST) –7 hours -6 hours
Pacific Standard Time (PST) –8 hours -7 hours

January

Date Time (UT) Event
2 13 Jupiter 0.6° S of Uranus
3 19 Earth at perihelion (closest to Sun): 147 million km
4 1 Quadrantid meteor shower peaks: 120 meteors per hour
4   Partial solar eclipse: Europe, Africa, Asia
8 16 Venus greatest elongation W (47°)
9 15 Mercury greatest elongation W (23°)
15 13 Moon 1.3° S of Pleiades (M45)

February

Date Time (UT) Event
11 22 Moon 1.4° S of Pleiades (M45)
28 0 Vesta occultation: Antarctica, S Pacific Ocean

March

Date Time (UT) Event
1 4 Venus 1.6° S of Moon
11 5 Moon 1.7° S of Pleiades (M45)
12 10 Juno at opposition
13   Daylight Saving Time begins
16 17 Mercury 2° N of Jupiter
20 23 Spring equinox in N Hemisphere, autumn equinox in S Hemisphere
23 1 Mercury greatest elongation E (19°)
27 0 Venus 0.1° S of Neptune
28 7 Vesta occultation: Iceland

April

Date Time (UT) Event
4 0 Saturn at opposition
7 11 Moon 1.9° S of Pleiades (M45)
19 8 Mercury 0.8° N of Mars
22 18 Venus 0.9° S of Uranus

May

Date Time (UT) Event
1 11 Mars 0.4° N of Jupiter
7 19 Mercury greatest elongation W (27°)
8 3 Mercury and Venus 1.4° apart
10 22 Mercury 2° S of Jupiter
11 9 Venus 0.6° S of Jupiter
18 8 Mercury and Venus 1.4° apart
20 1 Mercury 2° S of Mars
22 15 Venus 1.1° S of Mars

June

Date Time (UT) Event
1   Partial solar eclipse: high Arctic
15   Total lunar eclipse: Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia
21 17 Summer solstice in N Hemisphere, winter solstice in S Hemisphere
28 6 Pluto at opposition
28 7 Moon 2.0° S of Pleiades (M45)
28 19 Mars 1.7° S of Moon

July

Date Time (UT) Event
1   Partial solar eclipse: Antarctic Ocean
4 15 Earth at aphelion (farthest from Sun): 152 million km
12 22 Neptune’s first birthday
20 5 Mercury greatest elongation E (27°)
27 17 Mars occultation: Polynesia, S America
29 14 Pallas at opposition

August

Date Time (UT) Event
1 11 Mercury 1.5° N of Moon
5 10 Vesta at opposition
13 6 Perseid meteor shower peaks: 90 meteors per hour
22 23 Neptune at opposition

September

Date Time (UT) Event
3 6 Mercury greatest elongation W (18°)
9 2 Mercury 0.7° N of Regulus
16 17 Ceres at opposition
23 9 Autumn equinox in N Hemisphere, spring equinox in S Hemisphere
26 0 Uranus opposition
29 23 Venus and Saturn 1.3° apart

October

Date Time (UT) Event
28 2 Mercury occultation: Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia
28 5 Venus 1.8° N of Moon
29 2 Jupiter at opposition

November

Date Time (UT) Event
2 0 Mercury and Venus 2.0° apart
6   Daylight Saving Time ends
10 4 Mars 1.4° N of Regulus
10 5 Mercury 1.9° N of Antares
13 5 Mercury and Venus 2.0° apart
14 9 Mercury greatest elongation E (23°)
18 4 Leonid meteors peak: 15 meteors per hour
25   Partial solar eclipse: South Africa, New Zealand, Antarctica
26 10 Mercury 1.7° S of Moon

December

Date Time (UT) Event
10   Total lunar eclipse: Asia, Australia, N America
22 5 Winter solstice in N Hemisphere, summer solstice in S Hemisphere
23 3 Mercury greatest elongation W (22°)

Source: RASC Observer's Handbook 2011

More Events - Download these PDFs

Geoff Gaherty
Geoff has been a life-long telescope addict, and is active in many areas of visual observation; he is a moderator of the Yahoo "Talking Telescopes" group.

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Educator's Corner: The Earth at Perhelion

January 1 marks the beginning of a new year for a large percentage of the world’s population. And since the date changes at midnight in the local time zone, folks in London welcome the New Year five hours before those living in New York.

Thus there is no obvious astronomical significance to the moment the new year begins, but that is not the case about three days later.

Since the Earth’s orbit about the Sun is an ellipse, there is a point, called perihelion, where the Earth is closest to the Sun. And this point is reached on Jan 3, 2011.

At that time, Earth is approximately 147,106,000 km from the Sun. Because the Earth’s orbit is nearly circular, the greatest distances from the Sun (aphelion) is only about 3% greater than the perihelion distance. It is a common misconception that this difference causes the seasonal variations in mean temperature. Check out a future issue of Starry Night Times to discover the reason for the seasons.

In Starry Night, the perihelion point in each orbit is marked by a small “stick” which can just be seen above the Earth in the graphics.

But examine the situation two thousand years ago as shown below.

Once again, the Earth is at perihelion but the date is now December 2! The date of perihelion has regressed an entire month in about two thousand years. Quite clearly the position of perihelion has changed with respect to the stars as can be seen by comparison with he relatively fixed star HIP 30853. Apparently the orbit of the Earth rotates in space and sometime in the past (and in the future) perihelion will occur in the summer.

Further Study

When would you expect Earth to reach aphelion in 2011?

Answer to last month’s question: The Moon’s orbit has two nodes. Decembers eclipse occurred at the descending node and this June’s eclipse occurs at the ascending node.

Herb Koller

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Starry Night® File of the Month

3D Shadows

Press the Run Time Forward button in the Toolbar to view the Moon’s shadow moving across the surface of the Earth during a total solar eclipse.

Press the Run Time Forward button in the Toolbar to view the Moon’s shadow projected on the Earth during a total solar eclipse.

Press the Run Time Forward button in the Toolbar to view a shadow transit by one of Jupiter’s moons, Io. Hold down the SHIFT key and click-drag your mouse cursor around Jupiter to change your perspective and see the shadows from different angles.

Pedro Braganca
Education & Content Director
Starry Night® Education

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Constellation in Focus: Orion

Constellation Map: Orion

Visible towards the southern horizon from winter through spring in the northern hemisphere, Orion is one of the most easily recognizable and beloved constellations.

By far, the most popular celestial gem in the constellation of Orion is M42, The Great Orion Nebula. Although it is 1500 light-years away, M42 is a great target to view in small telescopes. This is due not only to its brightness, but also to its wonderful cloud structure, which in telescopes takes on a clearly three-dimensional shape.

Observers new and old come back to M42 time and time again because of the wealth of detail visible: pinpoint stars hang among uncanny, ghostly tendrils of glowing hydrogen that stream across space for trillions of miles.

Astronomers call M42 a stellar nursery; when you look at this giant gas cloud you are seeing what our own solar system might have looked like billions of years ago. The nebula's reddish coloration (visible only in photographs) betrays the ionized hydrogen that predominates the composition of the cloud, but carbon monoxide and other complex molecules have also been detected. When viewed through a large telescope, the cloud takes on a wonderful greenish hue.

Constellation Map: Orion TrapeziumThe energy that keeps the nebula glowing so bright comes from the very hot, young stars in the brightest part of the cloud. Known as the Trapezium, this formation of four stars (from west to east: A, B, C, and D) is visible in most backyard telescopes.

A fun challenge for amateur astronomers is to "bag" the two 11th magnitude E and F stars, shown here in green. Their proximity to far brighter stars makes them difficult to separate on nights of so-so seeing. On great nights, discerning the E and F stars is a good test of your telescope's optics.

More Targets

The Horsehead Nebula was made famous from its beautiful photographs – it really does resemble what its name implies! The Horsehead can be found just below Alnitak (the leftmost/easternmost star in Orion's belt). The Horsehead is an extremely difficult target for medium aperture telescopes, and requires steady and dark skies to be seen even in a larger telescope.

A far easier nebular target in the same area can be found above Alnitak: Located above Orion's belt, M78 belongs to the same large cloud of gas and dust as the main Orion nebula (M42). It has 2 companion nebulae (NGC 2067 & 2071). All 3 are reflection nebulae, and M78 is in fact the brightest reflection nebula. It is visible in binoculars but best seen through a telescope.

NGC 2022 is a bright planetary nebula: a dying sun peeling off its outer shell. Because planetary nebulae are best viewed at high magnification, you should start out low (40x) to find the object, and then try 100x and 200x. The name "planetary" is misleading, as these objects are not planets at all but stars at the end of their life cycle. However, they do look something like cloudy planets, and this fact confused earlier observers whose incorrect naming convention has stayed with us to this day.

NCG 2174 is a bright but diffuse emission nebula, a cloud of hydrogen gas very close to a young hot star (or multiple stars). In such clouds, energy from the stars heats up the hydrogen to 10,000°K until it glows with the distinctive red color one can see in long-exposure photographs.

Betelgeuse is the only red star in Orion. Not only does this make it easy to identify, it also tells us we are looking at a giant star.

Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle juice by most astronomers) derives its name from an Arabic phrase meaning "the armpit of the central one."

The star marks the eastern shoulder of mighty Orion, the Hunter. Another name for Betelgeuse is Alpha Orionis, indicating it is the brightest star in the winter constellation of Orion. However, Rigel (Beta Orionis) is actually brighter. The misclassification happened because Betelgeuse is a variable star (a star that changes brightness over time) and it might have been brighter than Rigel when Johannes Bayer originally categorized it.

Betelgeuse is an M1 red supergiant, 650 times the diameter and about 15 times the mass of the Sun. If Betelgeuse were to replace the Sun, planets out to the orbit of Mars would be engulfed!

Betelgeuse is an ancient star approaching the end of its life cycle. Because of its mass it might fuse elements all the way to iron and blow up as a supernova that would be as bright as the crescent Moon, as seen from Earth. A dense neutron star would be left behind. The other alternative is that it might evolve into a rare neon-oxygen dwarf.

Betelgeuse was the first star to have its surface directly imaged, a feat accomplished in 1996 with the Hubble Space Telescope.

On the western heel of Orion, the Hunter, rests brilliant Rigel. In classical mythology, Rigel marks the spot where Scorpio, the Scorpion stung Orion after a brief and fierce battle. Its Arabic name means the Foot.

Rigel is a multiple star system. The brighter component, Rigel A, is a blue super giant that shines a remarkable 40,000 times stronger than the Sun! Although 775 light-years distant, its light shines bright in our evening skies, at magnitude 0.12.

Telescope observers should be able to resolve Rigel’s companion, a fairly bright 7th magnitude star.

A heavy star of 17 solar masses, Rigel is likely to go out with a bang some day, or it might become a rare oxygen-neon white dwarf.

Don’t forget to compare the colors of Betelgeuse and Rigel on your next outing under the stars!

Sean O'Dwyer, Starry Night® Times Editor
Pedro Braganca, Content Director, Starry Night®

Sean O'Dwyer
Starry Night® Times Editor

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JAN 2011

YouTube

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Greenwich Observatory
in the United Kingdom

Download a new panorama landscape Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom. SN Pro 4.x and higher users: simply download the archive, unzip, and place the resulting files in your Sky Data/Horizon Panoramas Folder.
   

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Trouble downloading? PC users, use a right-click to save the files to your disk. Mac users, use a ctrl-click to save the files to your disk. Don't forget to unzip the file before adding it to your Sky Data folder.

Pedro Braganca
Education & Content Director
Starry Night® Education

   

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Starry Night 6.4 Feature Walk through

A step-by-step walk through of some of the features found in Starry Night 6.4.

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Sky Events
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Moon Phases

Tue., Jan. 4
New Moon, 4:03 a.m.

The Moon is not visible on the date of New Moon because it is too close to the Sun, but can be seen low in the east as a narrow crescent the morning before, just before sunrise. It is visible in the low southwest the evening after New Moon.

Wed., Jan. 12
First Quarter Moon, 6:31 a.m.
The First Quarter Moon rises around 11 a.m., and sets around 2 a.m.

Wed., Jan. 19
Full Moon, 4:21 p.m.
The Full Moon of Jan. is usually known as the Old Moon. In Algonquian it is called Wolf Moon. Other names are Moon After Yule and Ice Moon. In Hindi it is known as Paush Poornima. Its Sinhala (Buddhist) name is Duruthu Poya. The Full Moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the Moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the Moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky.

Wed., Jan. 26
Last Quarter Moon, 7:57 a.m.
The Last or Third Quarter Moon rises around 1 a.m. and sets around 11 a.m. It is most easily seen just after sunrise in the southern sky.

Observing Highlights

Sun., Jan. 2, 8 a.m.
Uranus 0.6° north of Jupiter
Jupiter and Uranus have been dancing with each other for months, but make their closest approach today. This happens before they rise in daylight in North America, but they will still be very close when they become visible just after sunset.

Tue., Jan. 4, midnight–dawn
Quadrantid meteor shower
This should be the best meteor shower of 2011, because there will be no Moon in the sky. The other two reliable showers, the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December, both coincide with bright Moons, which will cut down on the visibility of faint meteors.

Tue., Jan. 4
Partial solar eclipse
Visible at sunrise in northwest Africa and most of Europe, midday in northern Africa and the Middle East, and at sunset in central Asia.

Sat., Jan. 8, 11 a.m.
Venus at greatest elongation west
Venus will exhibit its “half Moon” phase as it reaches its greatest apparent distance from the Sun.

Sun, Jan. 9, 10 a.m.
Mercury at greatest elongation west
Mercury will be at its farthest from the Sun, making for a pair of “morning stars” with Venus.

Mon. Jan. 24, 6:51 p.m.
on Jupiter’s satellites
A remarkable series of events will take place tonight with Jupiter’s satellites:

6:51 p.m. EST/3:51 p.m. PST Io will begin a transit of Jupiter’s disk

7:04 p.m. EST/4:04 p.m. PST Ganymede will also begin to transit Jupiter

7:58 p.m. EST/4:58 p.m. PST Io’s shadow will begin to cross Jupiter’s face

9:05 p.m. EST/6:05 p.m. PST Io will end its transit

10:07 p.m. EST/7:07 p.m. PST Ganymede will complete its transit

10:10 p.m. EST/7:10 p.m. PST Io’s shadow will end its transit

11:45 p.m. EST/8:45 p.m. PST Ganymede’s shadow will begin to transit Jupiter

Observers on the east coast will miss the end of these events because Jupiter will have set. Observers on the west coast will miss the beginning of these events because of skylight. Everyone should be able to catch some of them.

Planets

Mercury will be an “morning star” for the first half of the month, but will be too close to the Sun to observe for the rest of the month. This will be a poor apparition for observers in the Northern Hemisphere, but a good one for observers in the Southern Hemisphere. Venus is a brilliant “morning star” all month. It reaches greatest elongation west of the Sun on Jan. 8. Mars is lost in evening twilight, on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter is well placed in the early evening evening, dominating the southern sky. It is in the constellation Pisces all month. It sets around 10 p.m. Saturn rises around midnight and is visible the rest of the night in Virgo. Its rings have returned to their usual glory after being on edge for the last two years. Uranus is in Pisces all month. It has its third, and closest, close encounter with Jupiter on Jan. 2. Neptune is too close to the Sun to be observed.

Geoff Gaherty

Data for this calendar have been derived from a number of sources including the Observer's Handbook 2010 of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Starry Night® software, and others. Only events with a reasonable possibility for Northern Hemisphere observers, or those events with some other significance, are given. All times shown are U.S. Eastern Time.
   

To read the rest of this article, click here.

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Starry Night® gives you and your students engaging stimulations and easy-to-follow lesson plans that teach the critical space science concepts in the NCLB science assessments.

Written by teachers, for teachers, each unit includes interactive and hands-on activities that will spark your students' curiosity.

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