Posted: 06/03/2014 06:44:48 AM MDT
Updated: 06/03/2014 06:49:27 AM MDT
In the search for the best and the brightest and the most beautiful inhabitants of June's night skies, skywatchers can neglect dimmer celestial objects that can be far more interesting.
It is the grand spectacles, of course, that motivate one to venture out-of-doors in the first place.
Saturn is high in the south-southeast sky at nightfall, and well positioned for skywatchers with or without optical aid. Coming off opposition last month, the eighth planet from the sun will be up all night all month between bright stars Spica of Constellation Virgo, 'the ear of wheat from the goddess Demeter-Ceres,' and Antares of Constellation Scorpius, 'the heart of the scorpion.' Check out the pink and gray ring system, tilted 21 degrees against our line of sight while it cast its shadow upon the pale yellow hydrogen/helium atmosphere.
Saturn, in Constellation Libra, 'the weighing scales of law, fairness and civility,' moves against the backdrop of the stars and closer to Libra's laboriously named alpha star, Zubenelgenubi. The asterism Libra is commonly depicted as a triangle atop several dangling lines. The trio is composed of Alpha Librae on the right, beta star Zubeneschamali at the top, and gamma star Zubenelakrab on the left.
The subgiant HD 140283 in Libra is considered by some astronomers to be a leading contender as the oldest known star, clocking in at 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years. Note that the age of the universe itself is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years, so the uncertainty of the star's age indicates that it formed a mere few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Helios, the sun, is 4.5 billion years old by contrast.
HD 140283, nicknamed the Methuselah Star, is challenging at 7.2 magnitude but a cerebral delight once located. Using binoculars, find the top star of Libra's triangle, and then scan about five degrees toward the southeast to find the orange giant star 37 Librae. Continue in that same direction a few degrees more to settle on the unimaginably timeworn star.
Methuselah, which is at the very earliest stage of expanding into a red giant, is an interloper in Libra, hurtling along its elliptical orbit through the Milky Way at a staggering 800,000 mph.
At a relatively close 190.1 light-years away, this isn't an instance of peering back through the spatiotemporal fabric, pressing the limits of some crazy powerful space telescope. Rather, you're observing a superlatively ancient star as it appeared 190 years ago, and with binoculars.
Be sure to sweep your gaze over to Mars in the south about halfway up the sky in Virgo at dusk. This month is the last for several years that skywatchers can easily enjoy many of the Red Planet's surface features like the shield volcano Olympus Mons, the dwindling polar ice cap and the Valles Marineris canyon system.
For a challenging yet awe-inspiring exercise, take up the case of the dwarf ice planet Pluto, the brightest of all Kuiper Belt objects at magnitude 14.1.
Pluto's eccentric and highly inclined orbit off the ecliptic will continue to transport it ever more southerly until 2030, and it will continue to fade until 2112. For contemporary skywatchers living in the mid-northern latitudes, there will never again be a better time to see it as now.
Fortunately, Pluto is approaching opposition on July 4, will be near the naked-eye object Sagittarius Teaspoon in Constellation Sagittarius, 'the centaur-archer,' and thus easy to spot. Easy that is, if you've got a 12-inch or larger telescope banging about the place.
Locate the brightest star on the tip of the teaspoon, 29 Sagittarii, and the plutino called Pluto will be to its west-northwest in a grand, spectacular field of the best, of the brightest and of the most beautiful in June's night sky.
The summer solstice is at 4:51 a.m. June 21, marking the northernmost advance of the sun in the celestial sphere for the year and the first moment of summer.
The moon is full at 10:11 p.m. June 13, and is called the Full Strawberry Moon.
Entities 0 Name: Libra Count: 6 1 Name: Pluto Count: 4 2 Name: Saturn Count: 2 3 Name: Zubenelakrab Count: 1 4 Name: Olympus Mons Count: 1 5 Name: Red Planet Count: 1 6 Name: Scorpius Count: 1 7 Name: Methuselah Star Count: 1 8 Name: Alpha Librae Count: 1 9 Name: Sagittarii Count: 1 10 Name: Virgo Count: 1 11 Name: Full Strawberry Moon Count: 1 12 Name: Spica Count: 1 13 Name: Methuselah Count: 1 14 Name: Antares Count: 1 15 Name: Valles Marineris Count: 1 16 Name: Zubeneschamali Count: 1 17 Name: Zubenelgenubi Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1oQPo4J Title: Red Dwarfs Could Sterilize Alien Worlds of Life Description: astroengine (1577233) writes "Red dwarf stars - the most common stars in the galaxy - bathe planets in their habitable zones with potentially deadly stellar winds, a finding that could have significant impacts on the prevalence of life beyond Earth, new research shows. About 70 percent o...
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