In the Sky This Week – March 12, 2019

Tonight, my wife Connie, who is also a volunteer NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, is running a huge Astronomy Night event at her school; she takes two days to transform the first floor into an astronomy wonderland with posters. We have a 100-foot “Walk the Solar System” down one hall with BEAUTIFUL 3-foot square color posters posters we just printed at the Macomb Intermediate School District’s teacher workshop. We were at the MISD for almost three days straight printing those posters…

We’re having several lecturers from the Warren Astronomical Society give talks, and we’re opening up the computer lab where I’ll be showing a Virtual Reality fly-over of Saturn’s rings, and allowing attendees to play with space software like NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System and Kerbal Space Program. My wife will be at a table with meteorites, and we’ll hopefully have clear skies so we can set up telescopes outside. I also have a couple posters shamelessly plugging the Vatican Observatory Foundation, and some VOF bookmarks to hand out. I expect Connie and I will both sleep well tonight after we tear-down and get back home.

The star Arcturus is high in the eastern sky at midnight.

The star Arcturus is high in the eastern sky at midnight. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Planets continue to be splashed across the south-southeastern predawn sky all week.

Planets splashed across the south-southeastern predawn sky Mar. 12, 2019. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon will appear between Mars and the star Aldebaran high in the southwestern sky after dark on Mar. 12^th.

The Moon will appear near the star Aldebaran after dark on Mar. 12th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon will appear between the star Pollux and Procyon after dark on Mar. 16^th.

The Moon will appear near the star Pollux after dark on Mar. 16th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Horsehead Nebula

Horsehead nebula and NGC2023 in Orion (B33). RCOS 20″ carbon truss. Credit: Ken Crawford

I’m actually cheating here… I asked a fellow member of the Warren Astronomical Society if I could see the Horsehead Nebula in my 8 inch Dobsonian telescope, and he laughed! He said you need a much larger diameter ‘scope, with very dark skies to get a good look at the Horsehead Nebula.

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33) is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion’s Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The nebula was first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming on a photographic plate taken at the Harvard College Observatory.

The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of its resemblance to a horse’s head. – Wikipedia

The Horsehead Nebula looks much different when seen in infrared light; this image is one of the posters we have on the wall at our Astronomy Night event.

This image shows two different views of the Horsehead Nebula. On the right is a view of the nebula in visible light, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile (eso0202a). The new image on the left shows the nebula in the infrared, using observations from Hubble’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI); ESO

The Moon is a waxing crescent, visible toward the southwest in early evening. The first quarter Moon occurs on Mar. 14^th, it will be visible high in the southern sky in early evening. After the 14^th, the Moon will be a waxing gibbous, visible to the southeast in early evening, and up for most of the night.

The Moon from Mar 12-18, 2019. Visualizations by Ernie Wright / NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

That small region of roiling activity in the northern hemisphere last week did indeed form into sunspot AR2734 – which is now rotating out of view. There is a small coronal hole at the north pole, and the hole at the south pole remains open, with tendrils stretching up toward the equator.

SpaceWeather.com says: “A pair of CMEs expected to graze Earth’s magnetic field on March 11th did not. Either they are approaching much more slowly than expected or, more likely, they missed. The solar storm clouds were not hurled directly toward Earth, and they appear to have sailed wide of our planet.”

Small prominences appear all over the Sun’s limb for the past couple days

The solar wind speed is 350.2 km/sec (↓), with a density of 3.1 protons/cm³ (↑).

Animated LASCO C2 Coronograph showing the solar corona above the Sun’s limb (the white circle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sun News

A couple days late for #SunDay, but I wanted to say that I use the animation in this Tweet as the opening screen for my Sun lecture!

Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

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

On Mar. 11, 2019, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 sporadics)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits from Mar. 11, 2019 intersect at a single point–Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue).Source: Spaceweather.com

Well THIS looks exciting!

Asteroid or Comet?

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

Crewed SpaceX Dragon Capsule Splashes Down After Successful Mission to the International Space Station!

OSIRIS-REx – Celebrates International Womens Day

Mars InSight – Rocks Causing Problems

Climate

-Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Exoplanet Artwork by Bob Trembley

Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star. Credit: Space Engine / Bob Trembley.

I am not a physicist or astrophysicist; I’d actually not given any thought to neutrinos being created in the Big Bang – I wonder what that flux must have been like? With all the stars in the universe creating neutrinos throughout their lives… that’s a LOT of neutrinos flying about – I wonder what effect they might be having now, and on the evolution of of the Universe deep into the future?

Apps used for this post:

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.
Stellarium: a free open source planetarium app for PC/MAC/Linux. It’s a great tool for planning observing sessions.
Space Engine: a free 3D Universe Simulator for the PC.

Section header image credits:
The Sky – Stellarium/ Bob Trembley
Observing Target – Turn Left at Orion / M. Skirvin
The Moon – NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Sun – NASA/JPL-Caltech
Asteroids – NASA/JPL-Caltech
Fireballs – Credited to YouTube
Comets –Comet P/Halley, March 8, 1986, W. Liller
The Solar System – NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Spacecraft News – NASA Eyes on the Solar System / Bob Trembley
Exoplanets – Space Engine / Bob Trembley
The Universe – Universe Today

July 20, 2019 is the 50^th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.