Check the real thing with yesterday’s posted Stellarium chart. You can also pick out Regulus and earthshine on the moon. This was taken with my el-cheapo digital camers. Not too bad. Click on the image for a larger display.
This is probably the last chance this year to spot Saturn in the evening. It’s pointed to by the crescent moon and Venus low in the west. This chart, below, is for 10 p.m. from northern Michigan. Observers farther west will see the moon farther to the upper left, those to the east will see the moon to the lower right.
This chart was created using the free astronomy program Stellarium.
Richard Kuschell called me this evening near 10 p.m. trying to get some of us GTAS members to set telescopes out on the last night of the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City to show the planets to festival goers on their way to and from the fireworks display. We set up on State and Cass, he with his 4 inch refractor and my 11″ Dobsonian.
Richard was already set up when I got there at about 10:30. I got my telescope set up and went looking for a parking space, which I found closer than expected. We had a fine time till about 12:30 a.m. We got lots of folks interested is seeing Jupiter. Richard had some luck with Venus earlier. We even had some of Traverse City’s finest check out the celestial sights. We had two motorcycle patrolman stationed nearby to handle the traffic gridlock after the fireworks.
All in all it was a very enjoyable experience.
At about 8 pm EDT July 6th the earth will be at its greatest distance from the sun. The point is called aphelion. Earth’s closest point to the sun is perihelion and occurs in the first few days of January. The sun is 94 and a half million miles away today. That’s about 3 million miles farther than the sun was last January. It doesn’t make much difference in the amount of heat we get from the sun, though the earth would be cooler if it stayed at this distance all the time. The height of the sun during the day time and the length of daylight greatly over compensate for the greater solar distance, giving us our warm summers. One bonus for the sun’s greater distance is that the earth moves slower, making summer the longest season at nearly 94 days.
We don’t notice it much in northern Michigan, but winter only lasts 89 days, nearly 5 days shorter. We can get snow as early as October and as late as May.
Looks like the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society’s viewing night at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory will see clear, but breezy skies Saturday July 7th, if the forecasts holds. Our open time at 9 p.m. will start before sunset. The planets Venus, Saturn and Jupiter will be the featured attractions. Only after about 10:30 can we turn the telescopes onto the fainter wonders of the evening sky. However we’ve got some cool double stars to view before then.