StarWatch: Moravian College Astronomy

StarWatch for the greater Lehigh Valley

MAY 2008

MAY STAR MAP | STARWATCH INDEX | MOON PHASE CALENDAR

Print Large Sky Charts For 10 p.m. EDT: NORTH | EAST | SOUTH | WEST | ZENITH

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Current Moon Phase

611a MAY 4, 2008: Mercury, Moon Highlight Evening Sky: In the never overly spectacular spring sky, the planets and the moon continue to steal the spotlight. Although Mercury is highest in the sky on May 13, this week probably affords the best opportunity for viewing the smallest of the official planets. Its brightness will be decreasing during May as Mercury continues to move towards inferior conjunction on June 7, a location that puts it between the Earth and the sun, where the hemisphere of Mercury facing Earth is in darkness, just like a new moon. Look WNW about 45 minutes after sundown. Scan the horizon using binoculars, slightly above and to the left of the brightest region of horizon glow. Mercury should be obvious as a bright and slowly twinkling starlike object about one full binocular field above an unobscured horizon. Mercury is really an equal opportunity planet, successfully observed from a rural or an urban setting. Since there is usually a substantial amount of twilight glow still visible in the sky when Mercury sightings are made, city dwellers who live in high rise apartments with a WNW exposure can also partake of the Mercury experience if they use binoculars. If you’re anxious to identify Mercury, you simply cannot beat this Tuesday evening if the sky is cooperative. Look for Mercury just two degrees below a razor thin crescent moon, a fine pairing worthy of capturing digitally. Make sure that your camera is tripod mounted because you will need to exposure its sensor to light for several seconds. I would suggest setting your ASA between 400 and 800. If you can adjust the F-stop of your camera, try F/5.6. Don’t forget to set your distance to infinity, and examine your images to make sure they are sharp. The trick will be not to let the horizon glow overpower your image, allowing the moon, Mercury, and the sky to be equally represented.

611b MAY 7, 2008: Crescent Moon Heads Towards Mars: In the never overly spectacular spring sky, the planets and the moon continue to steal the spotlight. Although Mercury is highest in the sky on May 13, this week probably affords the best opportunity for viewing the smallest of the official planets. Its brightness will be decreasing during May as Mercury continues to move towards inferior conjunction on June 7, a location that puts it between the Earth and the sun, where the hemisphere of Mercury facing Earth is in darkness, just like a new moon. Look WNW about 45 minutes after sundown. Using binoculars, scan the horizon slightly above and to the left of the brightest region of horizon glow. Mercury should be obvious as a bright, slowly twinkling, starlike object about one full binocular field above an unobscured horizon. Mercury is really an equal opportunity planet, successfully observed from a rural or an urban setting. Because a substantial amount of twilight glow is usually visible in the sky when Mercury sightings are made, city dwellers who live in high rise apartments with a WNW exposure can also partake of the Mercury experience if they use binoculars. On Tuesday evening, Mercury appeared below a razor thin crescent moon, an exceptional sight for those who were able to find an unobscured WNW horizon. During the next several days, follow the eastward path of the moon across the sky as it waxes, and you’ll see that it is headed for three stars almost in a straight line. By Friday, the moon will lie just under Pollux of the Gemini Twins. To the right will be brother Castor, and to Pollux’s left will be reddish Mars, which has become fainter over the past several months as Earth has pulled away from the Red Planet. On Saturday, Luna stands above and left of Mars passing just under a star cluster called the Beehive during the early evening hours.

612 MAY 11, 2008: Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?: I have always been intrigued with elementary students. I recently taught third graders from Jefferson School, located at 750 St. John Street in Allentown. Their orientation session preparing them for their planetarium visit had occurred in early February. Then through a number of transportation snafus and Allentown School District regulations regarding field trips during the ramp-up period prior to and during the PSSA testing, they were unable to have their planetarium program until just last week. The children were absolutely amazing, remembering information that I had taught them months ago. Undoubtedly, part of the credit is due to Jefferson’s fine teaching staff, but recognition must also be given to the insatiable appetite of kids to ask questions and simply “suck in” facts and ideas as efficiently as an Electrolux vacuum cleaner sucks up dirt. So when Fox’s Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader debuted 14 months ago, it was bound for a singular kind of success. There is nothing like being humiliated by a kid in front of 24 million viewers. In Allentown, fifth grade teams from across the District will soon be battling each other in what has become a planetarium tradition, The Planet Quiz Show. The program is on-line at the URL posted below, and by just clicking on the PQS banner, you can be magically transported to the questions that fifth graders will be competing to know. Just be careful because a lot has changed in the last few years. When I was asked in third grade to name the planets in their correct order, I chose to start with Pluto and recite them backwards. My teacher began consulting with me about other astronomical facts, and a career in astronomy was probably forged in that classroom at Jefferson Elementary—graduating class of 1962.

613 MAY 18, 2008: Phoenix: It's All About Water: Unlike the Egyptian Phoenix which rose from its own ashes every 600 years, NASA is betting that its renamed Phoenix Mars Lander will not “crash and burn” when it sets down on the northern Martian polar cap on May 25. Its predecessor, the Mars Polar Lander, crashed near the Martian South Pole on December 3, 1999 when spurious signals generated during deployment of its lander legs shut down the spacecraft’s engines prematurely. Phoenix will touch down in the water rich northern arctic plains of the Red Planet at a latitude similar to northern Alaska, and at a site where the Mars Odyssey, a NASA orbiter, discovered a reservoir of subsurface ice. Phoenix’s mission is all about water, the key ingredient for the chemistry of life, and the key to the future human exploration of Mars. When Phoenix lands, it will be springtime in the northern hemisphere, and the icy polar cap will be retreating, sublimating carbon dioxide and some water into the atmosphere, a process which drives the Martian climate as these gases move southward to frost over and create the southern polar cap. Phoenix hopes to understand these processes better and even gain insights into Mars’s climatic history through direct observations of these events. Because the polar zones of Mars are water-rich, Phoenix will dig up subsurface soil samples and look for carbon compounds in the Martian permafrost. These samples will be heated in ovens onboard the spacecraft to release their volatile carbon compounds which Phoenix hopes to detect. During the yearlong spring and summer in the Martian polar regions, the sun is visible for most of the day, affording ample solar energy for establishing seasonal bases and the water necessary for the sustenance of life and the creation of fuel and oxygen for breathing.

614 MAY 25, 2008: Bat Attack: During the mid-1970s I spent summers traveling in the Southwest with a wonderful friend from NYC, Allen Seltzer. One of our favorite stamping grounds was Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. Arches is a fantasyland of towering rock pinnacles, porticos, fins, and hiking trails. Enjoying the dry desert heat by day and the star-drenched heavens by night, we’d camp there for a week around new moon. On one of those perfect evenings, I had readied my telescope to photograph the heavens. All was quiet and peaceful when a bewildered voice with a Brooklyn accent screeched, “Becka, what was that?” My flashlight beam swung around just in time to catch an erratically diving, winged creature skim the top of Allen’s head. Allen tittered for a moment, tripped over a rock, and fell into the sand. My Gosh, it looked like a mammalian version of “The Birds,” a BAT ATTACK! I peeled my scope from its mount. Allen was up but hobbling. Soon there were two beams of light skirting brush and sky. Bats were swooping everywhere. We hastily retreated to my ’67 Ford sedan. Protected by steel and glass, my flashlight illuminated my lonely telescope perched on the picnic table. More bats lunged from the dark. Would this nightmare never end? An hour passed. I pressed my flashlight to the glass and turned it on. A bat swooped nearly hitting the pane. We were doomed while the rest of the campground slept peacefully. Exhausted from our night’s ordeal, we trooped next morning into the visitor center and I instantly connected with a young, gorgeous ranger. “Bats,” she exclaimed with eyes widening. I was entranced. “They love to grab insects attracted by flashlights. There were some guys just last week…” Thanking her politely, I knew that I had just crashed and burned, and felt pretty stupid to boot.

[May Star Map]

[May Moon Phase Calendar]