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Not really into #football? Skipping the game? Yeah, same here. How about instead, we have a little #SuperSunday #StarParty?
Let's head out tonight and look for a few things in the skies tonight.
1 (West): Just after dusk, let's see if we can spot the planets #Venus, the "It burns it burns it burns!!!" one, and a little higher up, #Jupiter, the "92 moons one," just above the horizon after sundown. As we watch, we're looking at the two brightest things in the sky after the Sun and #Moon.
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2 (South): Let's check in with #Orion a bit. Start with the three stars at his belt: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mitanka from left to right. With those in sight, we can hit icy blue-white Rigel at his foot, and orange #Betelgeuse at his shoulder. Then, for a challenge see if we can spot Meissa, at his head.
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3 (South & West): Did you know you can see deep sky star clusters with the naked eye? It's true. Meissa (see above) is part of a cluster called Caldwell 69. Then if you draw a line through Orion's belt toward the west, you'll hit the V-shaped #Hyades, and then the tiny-dipper-shaped #Pleiades cluster. These are what we call "open clusters," which means they're kinda loose collections of stars but they're gravity holds them to each other and they travel the night together.
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4 (Southwest): See that bright red dot at the top of the triangle made by the Hyades and Pleiades? That's #Mars, the "crawling with robots" one. If you keep an eye on it, you'll easily see it move relative to the background stars, just like the ancients did.
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5 (Northeast): When's the last time you checked in with the #BigDipper / #Plough? Around mid-evening, it's in the northeast sky, with its handle hanging downward toward the horizon. This time of year it's almost like a giant question mark, asking us all something enormous and unanswerable.
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6 (top of the dome): Only a couple of the night's brightest stars cross very close to the top of the northern hemisphere's sky. Let's look for brilliant yellow Capella way up in neck-ache territory. Capella's actually four stars that are zipping around each other in two pairs, but the 45 years from us to it makes them look like just one dot in the night to us.
Whatever you do, have a great night and clear skies, everyone!
#lookup #space #astronomy
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