Rain to dampen sky views

Rain in the forecast and that dampens opportunities for star gazing, but the internet does have some great sites to learn more about astronomy per se.

Sky & Telescope magazine has an online version as well as a print and offers great information here:https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/stargazing-basics/how-to-start-right-in-astronomy/The McDonald Observatory in west Texas has an excellent resource called StarDate:https://stardate.org/ and there is another online site https://www.planetary.org/night-sky/astronomy-for-beginners that is very helpful.

I also enjoy the magazine Astronomy for current information because I really like paper in my hand instead of a computer or cell phone.

But they also have an online version at https://astronomy.com/

This time of the year the magnificent fishhook shape of Scorpius is high in the southern sky after dark. This huge group of stars which seem to be about the same distance from a viewer in South Texas are actually widely distant from each other.

The reddish star where the scorpion’s heart rests is Antares, at 550 light-years from us. This is a good thing, because the star is 18 times the size of our sun and at least ten thousand times brighter!

Shaula is the second brightest star in this constellation, at the end of the tail curve. It is 700 ly distant and 26 times as large as our sun, and less than 2,000 times as bright as our sun. There are 27 stars in this constellation that have planets around them for a total of 34 planets. Three of these are in the so-called habitable zone and one even has a moon.

Scorpius is close to the Milky Way and harbors many Messier Objects in its environs. These include the Butterfly Cluster, M6. This open cluster is 1,600 ly away and is 6 ly from side to side. (In contrast to the much smaller (only 80 stars) open clusters of stars, our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 ly from side to side.)

The lovely Jewel Box cluster is with Scorpius, the Cat’s Paw nebula, the War and Peace nebula and the Butterfly nebula as well. The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day has a beautiful image of the Butterfly nebula. The address is too long; just enter the name and you will get lots of images of it.

To an observer facing east, the Summer Triangle asterism is gracing the sky by full dark. Vega, Altair, and Deneb are the three bright stars marking the vertices of the triangle that may be seen if the sky is clear and dark. The stars are from three constellations, Lyra the Harp, Aquila the Eagle, and Cygnus the Swan.

The brightest star in the group is Vega. The three constellations that comprise the Summer Triangle’s recognizable shapes include a trapezoid, Lyra; a cross or sword, Cygnus; and a flattened triangle, Aquila.

Above the Summer Triangle is Hercules, a frog-shaped group of stars at the zenith almost directly overhead. Although the stars are faint, if you are fortunate to be in an area where the skies are not light polluted you can see it.

Beneath the Summer Triangle is a delicate little trapezoid of stars that comprise a very small dolphin leaping in the starry sea. Delphinus is sometimes mis-identified as the Little Dipper by casual sky watchers.

The Little and Big Dipper asterisms are only found in the north and are circumpolar constellations. Currently they are on the western side of the meridian where Polaris is situated. Polaris is the last star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. On the east side of the meridian is the crooked little house that is King Cepheus and below him is his Queen Cassiopeia.

Until next week, KLU.