Ed Brayton, in his Dispatches from the Culture Wars, picks up on the opening of the Creation Museum and its planetarium “proving” the earth and the universe is only 6,000 years old. And I thought quantum mechanics was hard to understand. This stuff doesn’t make any sense at all.
13.7 billion years give or take, is good enough for me.
The full moon this Thursday night (May 31st) is by some accounts a blue moon. It ain’t gonna be blue! According to Wikipedia, there are four definitions of a blue moon. To be short about it, in the first definition, blue moons are as rare as hen’s teeth. In the second definition the moon appears really blue due to smoke or volcanic ash in the atmosphere. The third, from the old Maine farmer’s Almanac, it is the third of four full moons in a quarter. This full moon qualifies. The forth and most popular now a days is the second full moon in a calendar month. This full moon qualifies on that count too, but only for those west of Greenwich, whose time zones are less than UT minus 1 hour.
As for me, the only good full moon is a eclipsed full moon!
Kalkaska amateur astronomer Scott Anttila captures this famous chain of galaxies called Markarian’s Chain just northwest of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 in the heart of the Virgo Cluster. They are located about 60 million light years away. The two bright galaxies on the right end of the chain, are from the right, M84 and M86.
Click on the image above for a larger version.
Beniamin Egishevich Markarian (1913-1985) was an astronomer of the old Soviet Union. He cataloged a great list of galaxies, many unusual and those with an excess output in the ultraviolet. More on the Markarian galaxies, Google here.
On the evening of Saturday May 19th members of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society (GTAS) will set up their telescopes on the sidewalk somewhere in downtown Traverse City, if it’s clear, to participate in the first annual International Sidewalk Astronomy Night. On tap will be the beautiful conjunction of Venus and the crescent moon plus the greatest telescopic planet of all Saturn. The telescopes should be set up by sunset, which will be about 9 p.m. You won’t be able to miss the telescopes, some of which look like large stovepipes pointing at the sky.
As of this time, it looks like there may be as many as 5 telescopes available. One of the viewing spots may be the northeast corner of State and Park streets. If you have a telescope join in!
Up on the Ephemeris web site now is May’s GTAS Stellar Sentinal main article A Hairy Constellation or a Tale of Two Clusters.
As I said on the Ephemeris program Monday: May is the month when the promise of spring is finally fulfilled. That’s at least how it is here in Northern Michigan. Hopefully the two snow storms we had in April are but a memory. In the evening sky, when it finally gets dark, is practically devoid of the Milky Way as you can see below in this all sky chart for 11 p.m. on May 15th.
Looking up and we are looking directly out of the Milky Way. There’s lots of other Milky Ways or galaxies out there, and one nearby star cluster Coma Berenices, right above the “Com” near the center of the chart. Three planets are also visible if you stay up long enough: Venus and Saturn in the western sky, and Jupiter rising low in the southeast. mercury will become visible in the second half of the month, with a first good look at it on the 17th with the crescent moon pointing the way.
The above chart was created using Stellarium. Stellarium doesn’t do a good job on small thin lunar crescents. Two nights later, the 19th, the moon will move over to Venus for this spectacular conjunction:
The above chart is another where I used Stellarium.
The meteor shower of note this month is the Eta Aquarids, visible shortly before dawn coming from low in the southeast. The shower is expected to peak on the morning of May 6th. There’ll be a bright moon out to drown out all but the brightest meteors. The meteors in this shower are the caused by bits of Halley’s Comet, shed on past returns to the neighborhood of the sun, as they cross earth’e orbit on their way out to the outer solar system. below is a chart of the position of the radiant at 5 a.m. may 6th:
The top chart and this chart were produced using my own program “Looking Up”. It may not be a slick as other programs, but I do have better control of it.