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In the Sky This Week – August 21, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  21 Aug 2018

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This entry is part 109 of 248 in the series In the Sky This Week

Eastern sky

The constellations Orion, Gemini and Taurus rise earlier each morning in the eastern predawn sky. When I see this, I cannot help but think “Winter is coming.”

Eastern sky The constellation Orion in the predawn sky to the east on Aug. 21, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The southern sky continues to have a beautiful splash of planets, and will make for good observing this week; deep-sky objects may be washed-out by the nearly full Moon, which will be visible almost all night this week.

Southern sky The Moon, Saturn and Jupiter in the south-southwestern sky shortly after 10:00 PM, Aug. 21 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Mars and Saturn are high in the southern sky at midnight, the Moon joining them between August 22-24.

Southern sky The Moon, Mars and Saturn in the southern sky at midnight, Aug. 22 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Jupiter moves slowly westward towards Venus, as Venus appears lower in the southwestern sky each evening.

Southwestern sky Jupiter and Venus in the southwestern sky at dusk, Aug. 21, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Southern Hemisphere:

From Cape Town, South Africa the splash of planets that appear on my southern horizon are nearly directly overhead at 8:00 PM.

Overhead from Cape Town Overhead at 8:00 PM from Cape Town, South Africa, Aug. 21, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon

The Moon is a waxing gibbous heading towards full on August 26th. Afterwards the Moon will be a waning gibbous.

Moon The Moon from Aug. 21-27, 2018. Visualizations by Ernie Wright

The Moon may or may not be a good observing target this week – the fires across the west have spread haze across the U.S. and Canada; if you can see the Moon, it may have an odd orange-red hue to it.

Our golden orange Smoke Sky Moon fading to burnt red as She moved from blue sky to Moinset last night above Calgary! #yyc #yycweather #yycsmoke pic.twitter.com/TReWqRL4jb

— Joy Daniels (@JoyousBounce11) August 17, 2018

Observing Target: The Garnet Star

From Wikipedia:
“Mu Cephei (μ Cep, μ Cephei), also known as Herschel’s Garnet Star, is a red supergiant star in the constellation Cepheus. It appears garnet red and is located at the edge of the IC 1396 nebula. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as the M2 Ia standard by which other stars are classified.

Mu Cephei is visually nearly 100,000 times brighter than the Sun, with an absolute visible magnitude of Mv = −7.6. Summing radiation at all wavelengths gives a luminosity of around 283,000 L☉ (bolometric magnitude −8.8), making it one of the most luminous red supergiants in the Milky Way. It is also one of the largest known stars with an estimated radius over 1,000 times that of the sun (R☉), and were it placed in the Sun’s position it would reach between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn.”

Herschel’s Garnet Star. Credit: Flamsteed Astronomical Society

I saw the Garnet Star from the Warren Astronomical Society’s Stargate Observatory – it’s red color is quite striking!

Herschel's Garnet Star Location of Herschel’s Garnet Star. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Sun

The Sun has a spot! A very small spot, hard to see spot, but enough to reset the “spotless days” counter. You can see sunspot AR2719’s location in the animation below – rotating towards the center of the Sun’s disk with a small amount of coronal loop activity.

The northern coronal hole has another long tendril stretching down past the equator. A hole has re-formed at the south pole, and there is a relatively large couple of holes near the equator. The solar wind speed is 603.9 km/sec, with a density of 4.3 protons/cm3. (That’s pretty darn fast!)

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/08/20/20180820_1024_0193.mp4

SpaceWeather.com says: “A stream of high-speed solar wind is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field, sparking bright auroras around the Arctic Circle. The gaseous material is flowing from a wide hole in the sun’s atmosphere–so wide that Earth could remain inside the stream for days to come. NOAA forecasters estimate 50% chance of polar geomagnetic unrest on Aug.21st.”

A couple medium-sized prominences appeared on the Sun for last couple days… I would have loved to show them on Sunday at the Michigan ComicCon, but the skies were uncooperative all weekend. AR2719 appears as the bright orange region on the left of the animation below.

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/08/20/20180820_1024_0304.mp4
You can view the Sun in near real-time, in multiple frequencies here: SDO-The Sun Now.
You can create your own time-lapse movies of the Sun here: AIA/HMI Browse Data.
You can browse all the SDO images of the Sun from 2010 to the present here: Browse SDO archive.

STEVEs

While I was at SpaceWeather.com this morning, I saw a post there about “STEVEs” – they’re NOT aurora!

“Our results verify that this STEVE event is clearly distinct from the aurora borealis since it is characterized by the absence of particle precipitation,” say the researchers. “Interestingly, its skyglow could be generated by a new and fundamentally different mechanism in Earth’s ionosphere.”

I’ll post more about these after I’ve read a couple research papers: “On the Origin of STEVE: Particle Precipitation or Ionospheric Skyglow?” and “New science in plain sight: Citizen scientists lead to the discovery of optical structure in the upper atmosphere.”

Steve “Steve.” Taken by Greg Ash on May 5, 2018 @ Ely, Mn

Asteroids

Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2018 PN20
2018-Aug-15
15.3 LD
11.4
32
2018 PY23
2018-Aug-15
1.3 LD
25.1
9
2018 PM20
2018-Aug-16
8 LD
9
19
2018 PT23
2018-Aug-16
5.6 LD
15.8
46
2018 PL10
2018-Aug-18
19.4 LD
12.5
134
2018 PO22
2018-Aug-18
8.9 LD
11.1
86
2018 PK20
2018-Aug-18
7.9 LD
8.3
24
2018 QE
2018-Aug-20
2.8 LD
4.5
10
2018 PK9
2018-Aug-22
17 LD
9
33
2018 PW7
2018-Aug-23
11.3 LD
10.6
47
2018 PU23
2018-Aug-23
7.8 LD
1.5
8
2018 PR9
2018-Aug-24
18.1 LD
14
46
2018 LQ2
2018-Aug-27
9.4 LD
1.5
39
2016 GK135
2018-Aug-28
16.8 LD
2.8
9
2016 NF23
2018-Aug-29
13.2 LD
9
93
1998 SD9
2018-Aug-29
4.2 LD
10.7
51
2018 DE1
2018-Aug-30
15.2 LD
6.5
28
2001 RQ17
2018-Sep-02
19.3 LD
8.3
107
2015 FP118
2018-Sep-03
12.3 LD
9.8
490
2018 QA
2018-Sep-03
17.5 LD
20.4
73
2017 SL16
2018-Sep-20
8.5 LD
6.4
25
2018 EB
2018-Oct-07
15.5 LD
15.1
155
2014 US7
2018-Oct-17
3.2 LD
8.7
19
2013 UG1
2018-Oct-18
10.4 LD
13.4
123
2016 GC221
2018-Oct-18
8.7 LD
14.4
39

Notes: LD means “Lunar Distance.” 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. Table from SpaceWeather.com

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) discovered this month: 103, this year: 1075, all time: 18627.
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1912 (as of August 21, 2018)
Minor Planets discovered: 779,736 (as of July 31, 2018)

Fireballs

On Aug. 20, 2018, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 10 fireballs.

Fireball Orbits In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point–Earth. Source: Spaceweather.com

The Solar System

This is the position of the planets and a couple spacecraft in the solar system:

Inner Solar System Position of the planets in the inner system, Aug 21 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Middle Solar System Position of the planets in the middle system, Aug 21 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

Exoplanets

Confirmed Exoplanets: 3,777 (8/16/2018)
Multi-Planet Systems: 625 (8/16/2018)
Kepler Candidate Exoplanets: 4,496 (8/31/2017)
TESS Candidate Exoplanets: 0
Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive

@NASA’s @NASA_TESS satellite has started collecting science data. Over the next two years, it will look at almost the entire sky, searching for evidence of new planets: https://t.co/afvUqnIu4s pic.twitter.com/H4z9tRRnYa

— NASA_TESS (@NASA_TESS) July 27, 2018


Apps used for this post:

Stellarium: a free open source planetarium app for PC/MAC/Linux. It’s a great tool for planning observing sessions.
NASA Eyes on the Solar System: an immersive 3D solar system and space mission simulator – free for the PC /MAC.
I maintain the unofficial NASA Eyes Facebook page.

NASA 60th Anniversary 2018 is NASA’s 60th anniversary!

P.S. My cat Deimos was trying his hardest to make it difficult for me to write this post…

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More Posts in this Series:
"In the Sky This Week"

78  |  What Do We Lose When We Sacrifice Science?

By Br. Guy Consolmagno  |  27 May 2021  |  Sacred Space Astronomy

69  |  To err is human… to admit it, is science

By Br. Guy Consolmagno  |  25 Mar 2021  |  Sacred Space Astronomy

108  |  In the Sky This Week – August 14, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  14 Aug 2018

110  |  In the Sky This Week – June 26, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  26 Jun 2018

111  |  In the Sky This Week – August 28, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  28 Aug 2018

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