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In the Sky This Week – July 3, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  3 Jul 2018

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This entry is part 102 of 248 in the series In the Sky This Week

Southern sky at midnight, July 4, 2018

Bright stars and planets are splashed across the southern sky at midnight; Jupiter and Saturn are both great observing targets all night long!

Southern sky at midnight, July 4, 2018 Southern sky at midnight, July 4, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Mars shines bright red in the southern sky before sunrise; Saturn sets in the southwest with the sunrise.

0400 July 3 2018 - South Mars and Saturn in the southwestern sky at 4:00 AM on July 3, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Venus continues its vigil in the west as the evening star; you may be able to catch a glimpse of  Mercury shortly after sunset.

2237 July 3 2018 - West Venus and Mercury in the western sky after sunset, July 3, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The star Regulus will appear very near Venus after sunset on July 9th.

Conjunction of Venus and the star Regulus, July 9, 2018 Conjunction of Venus and the star Regulus in the western sky after sunset, July 9, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon

The Moon is a waning gibbous heading towards third quarter on July 6th, after which it will be a waning crescent.

Moon Week of July 3-July 9 2018 The Moon from July 3-July 9, 2018. Visualizations by Ernie Wright

The waning gibbous Moon will appear in the southern sky with Mars on the 3rd and 4th.

0400 July 3 2018 - Southeast The Moon and Mars the southeastern sky at 4:00 AM on July 3, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

A thin waning crescent Moon will appear in the eastern sky with the Pleiades star cluster before sunrise on July 9th.

0400 July 9 2018 - East The Moon and Pleiades star cluster in the eastern sky at 4:00 AM on July 9, 2018. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Observing Target: Albireo

At the head of Cygnus the swan is Albireo, a star whose name it seems, I will always spell wrong…

Location of Double Star Albireo Location of Double Star Albireo in the constellation Cygnus. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Albireo when viewed through a small telescope appears as a double star with a gold and a striking blue component.

Double Star Albireo Double Star Albireo, Credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons: CC BY-SA 3.0

In light-polluted skies, a trick to see the star’s colors better is to slightly de-focus the telescope:

Albireo Unfocused Albireo unfocused in a small telescope. Credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons: CC BY-SA 3.0 / Bob Trembley

It is unknown if Albireo is a true double star system (as in the image below), or an optical binary – where the two components are not gravitationally bound, and can be physically quite far apart. If Albireo is a true binary, the pair will orbit around a common center-of-gravity called a barycenter, and have an orbital period of around 100,000 years.

Albireo Barycenter Double Stars orbit around their center of mass – called a Barycenter. Credit: Space Engine / Bob Trembley.

I’m hopeful stellar census data collected the GAIA mission will resolve the issue of Albireo as a binary star.

The Sun

The Sun as been spot-free for 6 days. The coronal hole at the south pole from last week seems to have closed up, only to be replaced by a large hole at the Sun’s north pole.

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/07/02/20180702_1024_0193.mp4

SpaceWeather.com says: that “the featureless solar disk is a sign that Solar Minimum is coming…” The solar wind speed is 315.4 km/sec, with a density of 10.1 protons/cm3.

To make up for the lack of sunspots, there have been small prominences everywhere on the Sun’s limb over the last couple days

https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/dailymov/2018/07/02/20180702_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 LT6
2018-Jul-01
11.6 LD
12.9
126
2018 LJ1
2018-Jul-01
13.9 LD
2.7
18
2018 MB7
2018-Jul-04
2.8 LD
11.6
63
2018 LQ2
2018-Aug-27
9.4 LD
1.5
41
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

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: 0, this year: 886, all time: 18436.
Potentially hazardous asteroids: 1912 (as of July 3, 2018)
Minor Planets discovered: 779,736 (as of July 3, 2018)

Fireballs

On July 2, 2018, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 27 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 July 3 2018 Position of the planets in the inner solar system, July 3, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Middle Solar System July 3 2018 Position of the planets in the middle solar system, July 3, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.
Inner Solar System July 3 2018 Alternate view of the position of the planets in the inner solar system, July 3, 2018. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

As I was generating these solar system images, it occurred to me that most of the planets are (more or less) on the same side of the Sun if viewed from a certain angle along the plane of the ecliptic:

Side view of the solar system July 3 2018 Side view of the solar system, July 3, 2018. Order from left-to right: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn. Credit: NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley.

Exoplanets

Confirmed Exoplanets: 3,735 (5/31/2018)
Multi-Planet Systems: 614 (5/31/2018)
Kepler Candidate Exoplanets: 4,496 (8/31/2017)
TESS Candidate Exoplanets: 0
Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Exoplanet of the Week: Kepler-16b

Kepler-16b is a Saturn-mass planet orbiting binary star Kepler-16 with a period of 229 days. Kepler-16b was the first confirmed example of a circumbinary planet– a planet orbiting a binary star pair.

Exoplanet Kepler-16b

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.
Space Engine is realistic 3D space simulator; you can travel from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy

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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

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101  |  In the Sky This Week – August 1, 2017

By Robert Trembley  |  1 Aug 2017

103  |  In the Sky This Week – July 10, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  10 Jul 2018

104  |  In the Sky This Week – July 17, 2018

By Robert Trembley  |  17 Jul 2018

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