Part of this post is from some of the Ephemeris programs to be presented this month.
Venus
Venus is now in the morning sky as the brilliant Morning Star. It will reach its greatest brilliancy on the 23rd. It’s a brilliant crescent in telescopes.
Milky Way to the southwest
The Sagittarius teapot about to set. The photograph is aligned to the Milky Way. The horizon is seen in the lower left corner, so the image should be tilted to the left about 30 degrees to be correct up and down.
Look to the south southwest this month to the left of the bright planet Jupiter and you will see the stout little teapot of eight stars that is Sagittarius the Archer. It’s tipping its spout to pour out on the southwestern horizon. The Milky Way appears like steam from its spout. Being as far south as it is Sagittarius is accessible in the evening for a couple of months. During one night that amounts to only four hours, tops. The constellations farther north, like Lyra the Harp and Cygnus the swan stay up over 12 hours and are visible in the evening 6 months or more. Sagittarius and the area a little above is teeming with fuzzy objects for binoculars, some of which resolve into beautiful star clusters. Others are nebulae from which star clusters will be born.
The Milky Way Overhead
The Summer Triangle with Vega in Lyra on the top, Deneb in Cygnus in the lower right, and Altair in Aquila on the right. You can see the Great Rift running through the middle of the Milky Way.
High overhead the Milky Way is seen passing through the Summer Triangle of three bright stars. Here we find the Milky Way split into two sections. The split starts in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan or Northern Cross very high in the east. The western part of the Milky Way ends southwest of the Aquila the eagle. This dark dividing feature is called the Great Rift. Despite the lack of stars seen there, it doesn’t mean that there are fewer stars there than in the brighter patches of the Milky Way. The rift is a great dark cloud that obscures the light of the stars behind it. Sometimes binoculars can be used to find the edges of the clouds of the rift, as stars numbers drop off suddenly. This is especially easy in Aquila.
To the northeast
The ‘W’ shape of Cassiopeia lies in the northeast in the evening. Below and left can be spotted the Double Cluster. To the lower left the Great Andromeda Galaxy can be seen. The image is tilted about 45 degrees to the right from what it should appear in the sky.
The constellation of Sagittarius in the shape of a stout little teapot slowly pours itself out and sinks in the southwest in the late evening We look to the opposite part of the sky, to the northeast where the letter W shaped constellation of Cassiopeia is. Cassiopeia represents a queen, and never sets for us in northern Michigan. For most of the summer Cassiopeia spent the evenings near the northern horizon. Now it is rising higher in the northeast. The Milky Way crosses the sky from Sagittarius in the southwest, through Cygnus the swan, also known as the Northern Cross overhead to Cassiopeia in the northeast. There are several star clusters in it plus the spectacular double cluster below it. So check out the letter W in the northeast.
Autumnal equinox
The sun will cross the celestial equator, which is above the earth’s equator at 5:51 a.m. EDT (09:51 U.T.) on September 23th. Autumn will begin in the northern hemisphere, spring in the southern.
Tags: Events, Observing by Bob Moler
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