Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia

        I have completed my one month study into the phases of the moon. I will now start to look at different constellations in the night sky. I will spend the next two months reporting what constellations I have been able to pick out. I will then compare and also aid my study with Stellarium.  Tonight I am going to start off with a constellation that should not be difficult to find. I am going to look for Ursa Minor which is commonly known as the little dipper. This should realistically be easy to find because one of the stars that make up this constellation is Polaris. Polaris is also known as the northern star. This star is easy to find because it is a bright star in the night sky and with the aid of a compass one can find it. This is the northern star. Once this star is found I will have found the little dipper.

Figures were obtained from Stellarium

        The diagrams that are above were reproduced by Stellarium. As once can see it can be difficult to see these constellations when there are so many stars in the night sky. It would be a wonderful world if the sky would highlight each of the constellations just like Stellarium does for us inexperienced stargazers.

Figures were obtained from Stellarium

         I was successful in finding Ursa Minor so I decided to see if I could locate Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia is to the right of Ursa Minor and looks like a sideways W.  I was able to spot both of these constellations on my last outing. The two diagrams above show what Cassiopeia looks likes. One would think that all of these stars that make up the constellations would be close to each other. However this is not the case they can be light years away from Earth. In Cassiopeia the closet star is 54.46 light years away and the star that is the furthest from Earth is at a distance of 613.08 light years. There are hundreds of light year differences between them.  Stay tuned for more constellation next week.

First Quarter Moon

Over the past three entries I have made my way through some of the phases of the moon. According to the figure above I should observe the first quarter moon tonight. Last week I observed the new moon and as mentioned before the moon goes through close to 2 phases a week. This means I should see the first quarter moon. This phase of the moon rises at noon and will be highest in the sky at 6 pm and will set at midnight. I chose to view the moon at around 8pm on Sunday night. When I observed the moon it was not yet a full half illuminated it was closer to the first quarter moon phase as opposed to the waxing crescent phase. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

           This figure above is close to what I observed when looking at the moon on Sunday night. As you can see the full quarter of the moon is not illuminated and thus it is not quite in the first quarter phase. I compared my observation to Stellarium which agreed. I then fast forward to the next day on Stellarium and recorded the phase of the sun. For the figure below one can see that a quarter of the moon is illuminated. This means that the moon on Sunday was closer to the first quarter phase. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

         This will be my last blog on the phases of the moon. Next week the moon will be back to the same phase that it was when I started my blog. I am going to now concentrate on certain constellations that are in our sky every weekend. Hope you enjoyed the phases of the moon.

New Moon

           From the lunar phase diagram that is part of my last post I can predict what the next phase of the moon will be on Sunday. Knowing as stated before that in a week span the moon will complete approximately two phases.  It follows that if the moon was in the third quarter phase that in one week it will pass through the waxing crescent phase. When I observe the moon on Sunday it will be in the new moon phase. This phase is highest in the sky at noon and cannot be seen because of the alignment of the earth’s sun and moon. Thus we cannot see the half of the moon that the sun is lighting up. Interestingly one may think that there should be a solar eclipse every new moon because the moon is between the Earth and Sun. This does not occur because the moon orbits the Earth and a slight angle and prevents the solar eclipse. To have a solar eclipse the moon, sun and earth have to line up exactly. When I observed the moon at around 12 noon on Sunday there was just a sliver of the moon that I could see. This portion of the moon that I saw can be explained because the new moon will occur on Sept. 27 which is two days after my observations. This is closer to the new moon phase as opposed to the waxing crescent phase. The figure that is shown below shows what Stellarium the computer program gave for the phase of the moon on Sunday at noon. This backs up my prediction as well as my observations. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

            To prove that the true new moon would occur on the Tuesday I have used Stellarium to give a picture of what the new moon should look like. This is represented in the figure below. Stay tune for the next phase of the moon. 

This Figure was obtained by Stellarium

The Third Quarter Moon

Figure obtained by: http://kimbasangels.com/moon.html

               The figure that is shown above will allow me to set a prediction of what I will see in the sky this morning. If we take a look at the figure and know that the moon goes through all of its phases in approximately a month we can see that the moon will go through two phases each week.  Last week when I was observing the moon it was very close to being in the full phase, this means that this Sunday I will expect to see the moon in the third quarter phase (last quarter).  One thing that did not occur to me until I started to look at the night sky is that each night the moon does not rise or set at the same time. I think like most I did not stop and the take the time to look up.  On the previous Sunday the moon started to rise at 6 pm it was highest in the sky at 12 pm and set at 6 am. This however as I have recently found out will not be the same for this Sunday. From the use of this figure and Stellarium I found that the best time to see this phase high in the sky. From Stellarium I found that the moon will start to rise at midnight and will be highest at six in the morning and set at noon.  I chose to check my prediction at around 6am on Monday morning.  The moon looked to be half full this narrows the phases to the first and third quarter moon, from looking at the figure we can see that when the left side of the moon is bright then it is the third quarter moon. Therefore my prediction and what was observed were the same. Next week we can predict to see nothing at all; this is the new moon phase. Stay tuned for my observation next week!

Figure was obtained from Stellarium

The Full Moon

There are benefits to being in a small town. One of which is the ability to see the night sky without all of the light pollution that accompanies big cities. Therefore, I will use this as an advantage to take weekly drawings of the moon and then compare them to lunar charts for the first month. When I become more equated with the night sky I will then try to find constellations each week that I have previously located on Stellarium. The use of Stellarium is to allow me to look up into the night’s sky and to compare what I see on the computer with what I see in the sky.  On my first night of watching the night’s sky, which was Sunday September 11^th at 9:30pm, the moon appeared to be completely full. The farmer’s almanac reported that the next full moon would take place on September 12^th 2011 at 6:27 am. When my results from the sketch were compared to the data above one can see that my sketch and data were close to a match. Therefore, I was close in predicting that the moon was almost full when I was looking at the night’s sky. I will make another sketch next week and record the changes that have occurred.

Sasha