Have you noticed the change in the length of the shadows when you head out in the morning? We are getting closer to our spot where autumn officially begins. As our planet revolves our star, we are nearly three-fourths of the way to a complete circumference on September 22. Of course, your year begins on your birthdate so keep that in mind as another reason to celebrate when yours rolls around. Time is an arbitrary thing for us, marked by the motion of our planet, which creates the sun’s seeming to move across our sky throughout the year.
Star patterns in the north part of the sky appear to rotate around a pole star in a counter-clockwise motion throughout the night while the rest of the stars seem to emerge from the eastern horizon, cross the south, and sink into the western horizon eventually. The familiar constellations from the winter are now in the morning sky and will be stepping into the dark evening sky by December.
You may have noticed the sun appears later each morning and sets a bit earlier in the evening. This makes it easier to enjoy the night hikes that the Resaca de la Palma State Park and World Birding Center offers the last Friday of each month at dusk. The park prefers folks register for this event so that they can have enough trams available to accommodate everyone. There IS a $4 park entry fee.
From 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday (they DO start on time, LOL) the South Texas Astronomical Society Protostars group will be sharing family activities and information related to the James Webb Infrared Space Telescope discoveries at the main Brownsville Public Library on Central Boulevard. This initiative is planned to be for elementary-aged children and an adult family member. This particular one will be relevant to teens as well. The JWST is one of NASA’s great telescopes missions and is revealing prehistoric secrets of the universe.
What’s happening in the skies this week? Well, the moon is waxing gibbous and it will be full on Saturday. The night sky is occupied by Saturn by 9 p.m., with Jupiter following a few hours later. The faint stars of Capricorn are located just to the right of Saturn.
The Summer Triangle is moving overhead with Cygnus the Swan in the lead, accompanied by Aquila the Eagle and Lyra the Lyre. The ruddy star of the swan is called Albireo. Even a small telescope from a dark site will reveal colorful secrets in this beautiful double star. One star is blue, the other yellow. They are about 400 light years away and appear to be quite distant from one another.
I suspect every culture that has ever existed has named particular groups of stars. Perhaps some were named after insects. On your evening stroll have your thoughts been invaded by the loud chirrring of the cicadas lately? Perhaps your family would like to imagine some family star patterns to hand on to their children someday, much as the ancient civilizations have done for us to ponder. Over time new star groups were named while older ones were deleted. There are constellations for the fly and the microscope
Remember, the stars at night ARE big and bright deep in the heart of Texas when we are at a dark site, away from city and subdivision lights. KLU.
