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In the Sky This Week – August 7, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  7 Aug 2018

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This entry is part 107 of 253 in the series In the Sky This Week

Eastern predawn sky Aug. 7, 2018

Fall stars have appeared in the eastern predawn skies; the constellation Orion is low in the east, a thin waning crescent Moon near it for the next few days. Over the coming weeks, Orion will appear a bit higher each morning as it moves slowly towards the southeast.

Eastern predawn sky Aug. 7, 2018 The waning crescent Moon and the constellation Orion are in the early morning sky to the east on August 7, 2018. The Moon also be visible in the early morning sky all week. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Mars and Saturn continue to be a great observing targets in the southern skies for weeks to come!

Southern sky Aug. 7 2018 Mars and Saturn in the early morning sky to the south on Aug. 7, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Jupiter crawls slowly westward as the Earth continues to pull away from the giant planet; Jupiter will continue to dim over the next several weeks, and will set earlier each evening.

Planets in the southern sky Jupiter and Saturn in the southern sky at 10:00 PM, Aug. 7 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Venus is catching up with the Earth, and appears lower each evening in the western sky at dusk. The current half-phase of Venus is quite obvious in telescopes.

Southwestern sky at dusk, Aug. 7, 2018 Venus and Jupiter are in the southwestern sky at dusk, Aug. 7, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Southern Hemisphere:

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, the waning crescent Moon and Orion appear in the east-northeastern sky predawn sky. The Moon and Orion appear flipped from how I see them in Michigan – the Moon appearing as it does to me in a waxing crescent phase at dusk in the west.

Eastern predawn sky from Buenos Aires The Moon and Orion in the eastern predawn sky as seen from Buenos Aires, Aug 7 2018/ Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

On overhead view from Buenos Aires after dusk is simply a spectacular splash of planets across a sky bisected by the disk of the galaxy. Seeing the sky from the southern hemisphere is high on my “bucket list.”

You guys get all the cool skies The southwestern and overhead sky after dusk as seen from Buenos Aires, Aug 7 2018/ Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon

The Moon is a waning crescent visible in the eastern predawn sky. The Moon will be new on August 11th, and will return as a waxing crescent, visible in the western sky at dusk later in the week.

Moon The Moon from Aug. 7-14, 2018. Visualizations by Ernie Wright

Observing Target: Jupiter

Jupiter Jupiter in an 8 inch Dobsonian telescope. Credit: Bob Trembley, Jan. 10, 2010

Jupiter won’t be around much longer, so catch a glimpse of it now while you can! I’ve shown Jupiter to many people in recent weeks – it’s always a treat!

At a recent meeting of the Warren Astronomical Society, a member mentioned seeing a dark storm in the northern latitudes.

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged Jupiter and its moons many times over the couple decades

Jupiter Constituent Image for Jupiter/Ganymede Compass and Scale Image. Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)
Jupiter This dazzling Hubble Space Telescope photo of Jupiter was taken when it was comparatively close to Earth, at a distance of 415 million miles. Hubble reveals the intricate, detailed beauty of Jupiter’s clouds as arranged into bands of different latitudes, known as tropical regions. These bands are produced by air flowing in different directions at various latitudes. Lighter colored areas, called zones, are high-pressure where the atmosphere rises. Darker low-pressure regions where air falls are called belts. The planet’s trademark, the Great Red Spot, is a long-lived storm roughly the diameter of Earth. Much smaller storms appear as white or brown-colored ovals. Such storms can last as little as a few hours or stretch on for centuries. Credits: NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (NASA Goddard)

NASA’s Juno mission is in orbit of Jupiter; citizen scientists have been processing raw data returned from Juno and producing some truly spectacular images:

J-J-J-Juno and the Jets. See a jet stream speeding through #Jupiter’s atmosphere in this new view from my latest flyby. https://t.co/G6sDOuCuUd pic.twitter.com/GM2wHQvraS

— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) May 31, 2018

#Jupiter image of a high-altitude cloud formation surrounded by swirling patterns in the #atmosphere of Jupiter's North North Temperate Belt region. Image taken by #NASA #Juno spacecraft in its 14th close flyby, processed by Jason Major @JPMajor. Congrats! pic.twitter.com/VkYJGOzrEG

— Xavi Bros (@Xavi_Bros) July 24, 2018

The Perseid Meteor Shower

“The Best Meteor Shower of the Year“™ happens this week. The Perseid meteor shower happens on August 12th. Observatories, museums and venues around the planet will be hosting star parties. Here’s hoping you catch a nice fireball!

Perseids Radiant The Perseid meteor showers appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus. Perseus is visible in the northern sky soon after sunset this time of year. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Sun

The Sun as been spot-free for 4 days – two active regions with coronal loop activity are facing Earth. The huge coronal hole at the north pole from last week remains, and a couple small equatorial holes are near the center of the Sun’s disk

The solar wind speed is 362.4 km/sec, with a density of 26.2 protons/cm3  that’s the thickest I’ve seen the wind!

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/08/06/20180806_1024_0193.mp4

SpaceWeather.com says: “The sun has been without sunspots for 38 of the past 41 days. To find a similar stretch of blank suns, you have to go back to 2009 when the sun was experiencing the deepest solar minimum in a century. Solar minimum has returned, bringing extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun’s atmosphere, and strangely pink auroras.”

There appear to be small prominences all over the Sun the last couple days; one active region will soon be rotating out of view as another, larger one rotates into view.

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/08/06/20180806_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.

Asteroids

Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2018 OZ
2018-Aug-06
7 LD
9.7
37
2018 PC
2018-Aug-06
12.1 LD
9.3
54
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
13.3 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
2017 SL16
2018-Sep-20
8.5 LD
6.4
25

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: 1, this year: 973, all time: 18525.
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1912 (as of July 31, 2018)
Minor Planets discovered: 779,736 (as of July 31, 2018)

Fireballs

On Aug. 6, 2018, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 75 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 solar system – a few days after Mars opposition – Aug 7, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Middle Solar System Position of the planets in the middle solar system, Aug. 7, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

Exoplanets

Confirmed Exoplanets: 3,774 (7/19/2018)
Multi-Planet Systems: 625 (7/19/2018 )
Kepler Candidate Exoplanets: 4,496 (8/31/2017)
TESS Candidate Exoplanets: 0
Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive


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!
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