Mon Feb 7, 2022 SIRIUS
There are many bright stars in winter’s early evening sky; most of them can be found in the south, in and near the constellation Orion. The very brightest star is in the southeast, and it’s called Sirius, a name derived from the Greek “seirios,” which means, scorching, or sparkling. So you could say Sirius is the star you meant when you recited “Twinkle, Twinkle” as a kid. This brilliant white star does twinkle, owing to the effects of our earth’s atmosphere, which cause its image to dance and flash. Sirius is also called the Dog Star, because it's supposed to mark the nose of the Big Dog in the sky, Canis Major. Stars have different brightnesses. Some are bright because they're close to us; others are bright because they're either hotter or bigger. In the case of Sirius, it's a little of both - a big, white-hot star, very close to us – only nine light years, or 54 trillion miles away.
Tue Feb 8, 2022 JULES VERNE
The French science fiction writer Jules Verne was born on February 8th, 1828. He wrote of journeying to the earth’s center, and of circumnavigating the world in a submarine; and he also wrote, "From the Earth to the Moon," all about an "impossible" voyage of a three-man "space capsule" to our lunar neighbor. In his novel Verne envisioned the launch taking place in Florida. After rounding the moon the space travelers splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, where a ship picked them up - all this a hundred years before we actually went there. In a sense, traveling to the moon has once again become an impossibility. The last manned moon mission was in 1972. In 2006, NASA’s Constellation project was established to return men, and women, to the moon by the year 2020, but in 2010 that mission was cancelled two administrations ago; now, finally, it looks like we’re going back to the moon.
Wed Feb 9, 2022 CLYDE TOMBAUGH
Clyde Tombaugh, born on February 4th, 1906, was just 24 years old in 1930, when he discovered a planet beyond Neptune, dubbed Planet X. He found it on one of thousands of photographs of starfields, in Gemini the Twins. This constellation is visible in the east after sunset tonight, but Planet X has since wandered off into the other half of the sky, and can now be found along the eastern border of the constellation Sagittarius. After Tombaugh’s discovery, a naming contest was held: the winning entry for the newly found world was Pluto - in mythology, the brother of Jupiter and god of the far-flung underworld. Tombaugh died in 1997, just nine years before the New Horizons probe was launched to Pluto, and the same year – 2006 - that the International Astronomical Union voted to downgrade Pluto to dwarf planet status. New Horizons reached Pluto in July, 2015 and sent back incredible pictures of this distant world, as well as its five moons.
Thu Feb 10, 2022 KEPLER THE HITCHIKER
On February 4th in the year 1600, a poor math teacher from the town of Gratz was dropped off in front of the home of a wealthy nobleman. Johannes Kepler had hitched a ride with Baron Hoffman, Councilor to Rudolph the Second, Emperor of Bohemia. Kepler had been invited by the astronomer Tycho Brahe to work with him at his observatory in the Castle of Benatek outside Prague. Brahe was also a nobleman who had been kicked out of his island observatory in Denmark. Before that happened, though, he had amassed a lot of really good observations of star and planet positions. Kepler stayed with Brahe for about a year and a half. Then in October of 1601 Brahe died and Kepler acquired his observations. The data collected on the planet Mars enabled him to discover the elliptical nature of its orbit. And all this from a shared carriage ride that ended 422 years ago.
Fri Feb 11, 2022 PLANETARIUM SHOW: THE PLANETS
Tonight, February 11, and tomorrow afternoon, February 12, Indian River State College’s Hallstrom Planetarium will present, “The Planets,” which is narrated by Kate Mulgrew, who portrayed Captain Kathryn Janeway in the TV series, “Star Trek: Voyager.” You would need a starship to cover the distances we travel in this 40-minute program – all the way from the earth, beyond Saturn, beyond Pluto to the region of comets in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, as much as five trillion miles from home. And then we go to the stars, searching for other solar systems, and pointing out familiar star patterns like Cassiopeia, Pegasus and Orion, but also identifying faint stars like Epsilon Eridani, around which the fictional planet Vulcan orbits. If skies are clear tonight, the Treasure Coast Astronomical Society will be outside the Planetarium, giving folks telescopic views of the moon and the stars. Call the IRSC Box Office at 462-4750 for tickets!
