« What's the Obsession with Water? | Main | The Siberian Shake-Up of 1908 »
At last, summer...
Observing >
At last, summer. Not that many of us are looking forward to the hot weather, the most likely higher gas prices, and the escalating political rhetoric.
Many of us look forward to the nighttime skies above our heads, and all the glories of the summer heavens.
Sadly, the summer skies come late and leave early. Our tilt, now fully towards the sun, means that it will not get dark until after nine, a late start for many.
But the summer skies are worth it. Let's look a little closer at some things you may want to try and see.
The most obvious summer addition is the summer Milky Way. It's a beauty. Of course how much it inspires pretty much depends on dark skies, a phenomenon going the way of cheap oil. The Milky Way is visible sometime during the night all year long, but what makes the Summer version so pretty is that we are now facing the civic center of our galaxy.
In that direction stars are more concentrated, there are more nebulae and clusters, and there is our dense center. The diamonds-over-the-head view, the one that extends from south to north, doesn't really kick in at reasonable hours until later in the summer. But if you stay up until after midnight, you can see it now.
If you haven't yet, why not try and make this the summer you see nebulae and star clusters. Nebulae are huge luminous gas clouds where stars are being created. Clusters, open are globular, are exactly what they say - clusters of star, sometimes hundreds of thousands strong. There are many located in the southern skies, near the center of the Milky Way.
Alas, Saturn is in its last weeks of visibility, but Jupiter always puts on a fine show. It won't be until July that Jupiter makes a reasonable, pre-midnight showing. But it is worth getting out an old scope to take a look at the big guy, with his striped atmosphere, great red spot, and Galilean Satellites.
You will notice that since we are tipped so much toward the sun, that we end up being tipped away from our nighttime neighbors. So the planets and the Moon won't exactly be hovering over our heads where they are best seen. That's part of the compromise observers make all the time.
In August, specifically around the 12th, we will get our annual Perseid meteor shower. The Moon may mess things up a bit until the predawn hours when it goes below horizon, and which is the best time to see these critters anyways. This year the west coast seems favored to get the best show so it may be worth waking up early to go see these fireballs.
There are all kinds of wonderful things to explore in the summer skies, and the fact that the weather is usually nice here in Southern California helps a lot. I would suggest getting a recent copy of Sky & telescope or Astronomy magazines if you are seriously considering checking out the skies. They have detailed and easy-to-read sky charts in there for nailing down those clusters and clouds and planets. It would be a fine season maybe just to spend the time relaxing and try to "de-stress" by getting a map, some binoculars, a lounge chair - and just looking up. The effects are amazing.
Posted by Mark Ritter at 2008.06.15 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
