Star Talk : Keep looking into the sky
Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/63307/
Ah, summer ! Most readers would know that the summer solstice occurred June 21 and that we are now officially in the summer season. We are having a very rainy and stormy period, and this can make sky-gazing a challenge, but there are certainly sights in the night sky worth getting outdoors at night to see.
In the summer, the sun does not set, nor the sky really start to get dark until after 9 p. m. local time. However, once the sky gets dark, look for Mars, Saturn and Regulus, a bright star, nearly in a row in the western sky. You might find this trio by noting that the crescent moon will be to the lower right of Mars, Saturn and Regulus on July 5 and left of them on July 6. Soon now, Saturn and Mars will disappear from the sky as evening objects and will be visible only in the early morning hours.
Even if Mars and Saturn disappear for convenient viewing, mighty Jupiter, 10 times the size of Earth and a thousand times the mass of Earth, appears later in the evening, and by July 9, it will rise around sunset. To see Jupiter advantageously, though, you are better off looking for it around 9 p. m. in the southeast because Jupiter needs to rise out of the turbulence, dust and light pollution near the horizon to be seen at all well. Jupiter will be that bright, slightly-bigger-thanstar-like object lying near the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius.
By July, if the intrepid night sky observer stays up a bit late and puts on the bug repellent, he or she can see the glorious summer Milky Way. This will be a band of hazy and very faint stars running irregularly from the northern horizon to the south. It really will look milk-like and will vary in the number of stars and intermittent patches of dusty lanes as one scans it. Binoculars help immensely when examining the Milky Way. In fact, one can spend a wonderful hour, lying on something soft, simply letting the binoculars travel up and down these vast reaches.
Modern astronomers have identified the presence of about 240 planets around nearby stars. While no Earthlike planets have yet been discovered, this is only because of present limitations in technology. More planets will be discovered, though even the closer ones are very far away indeed enormously far from our own solar system. As you contemplate the millions of stars anyone can see in the Milky Way, it is interesting to imagine how many other beings, living on planets far from us that circle stars in the Milky Way, might be looking out into the universe on much the same splendorous scene we see. Will some of them look in our direction ? Will they do this the same night we are looking at them ? Perhaps the universe is empty of any other intelligent beings except us. Or, and much more likely, the universe is teeming with other beings, given as much curiosity as we have, wondering as we do are we alone ? While humans travel effortlessly in starships of the future in science fiction movies, this is still, and forever may be, beyond our technology. Yet, the mind can travel anywhere the imagination can take it. Keep looking into the sky at night a source of unending pleasure and mystery !
David Cater is a professor at John Brown University in Siloam Springs and has been an avid stargazer for more than 45 years. He can be reached at dcater @ jbu. edu.