Anticipation of the successful landing on Mars by Perseverance and Ingenuity has space aficionados on edge. The nail-biting waiting for the 7 minutes of terror from the time the entry, through the rapid descent, and landing is completed with a message saying “I’m here on the surface-all systems go” is received at JPL.
So much effort, energy, and money is involved with each of the missions sent into space and it all comes down to those last 7 minutes. I can hardly wait until February 18.
In the meantime, we can hope for clearing skies so that we can watch the regularly scheduled nighttime display of the constellations, passing satellites or the International Space Station, and a scattering of intriguing lights that we cannot identify.
From a clear dark site, the Hyades and Pleiades stars that are ahead of Orion, heading west now as Earth swings around the Sun in its elliptical orbit. The Pleiades lie about ten degrees northwest of Taurus. The group is often called The Seven Sisters by western astronomy catalogs but other cultures had different names for them, including the swarm of golden bees in the form of a small dipper. Photographic images of the cluster show misty swirls surrounding multiple stars.
Most of the stars of the Pleiades are blue white stars. The brightest star of the group is called Alcyone which is 1400 times more luminous than our sun and 15 times more massive. Yet is classified as a dwarf star. The Hyades cluster, Taurus, has about 100 stars that include red and yellow giant stars. Both clusters are members of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Seeing colors in the sky are one of the pleasures of star-gazing. Of course, human eyes detect colors differently and when we are looking at the sky, our sun appears yellow, but it is actually classified as a white star. The dust in the atmosphere is what bends the light from the sun which gives it the yellow hue.
When sunlight passes through a prism or a crystal it separates the light into the colors that create white; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
If you are an early riser then you may enjoy watching the Scorpion with Antares gleaming in his heart. You may remember this constellation was up in the summer months with the ruddy star rivaling Mars for dominance of the space. Now Mars is faint, barely noticeable high overhead at full dark. For many months we were able to enjoy the spectacle of Mars moving from brilliance to almost invisible against the background of the shades of night. It rises currently about 11:00 AM and sets about 1:00 AM. To find out what time planets rise and set you could use the following website: https://in-the-sky.org/whatsup_times.php You might be drawn into wanting to learn more about them.
By the end of February, we will be able to see Saturn and Jupiter in the morning sky after months of watching them in the evening; they aren’t gone from view entirely, just in a different location and time.
This week is the New Moon phase and a good time to begin moon-watching, especially if you have a steady telescope or binoculars to search the terminator line and explore the craters along the shadow line. As the light increases across the lunar surface there will be more to explore. I encourage you to get a sketchbook and explore.
Until next week, do let some stars get in your eyes.
