Mon Aug 26, 2024 ORION AFTER MIDNIGHT
Orion the Hunter has been absent from our evening skies for a couple of months now. If you want to find him tonight, you’ll have to go out long after midnight. He rises out of the east around 3 am, and climbs up into the southeastern sky as dawn approaches. If you’d rather see Orion during the evening hours, then you’ll have to wait until October, and even then it won’t be just after sunset, but in the late evening. This slow seasonal drifting of the constellations happens as our planet changes locations as it revolves about the sun. Now if you do find yourself outdoors looking up into the predawn sky tomorrow morning, look off to the east, and you’ll find the fat old crescent moon above Orion, with a couple of bright stars between them – the planets Jupiter and Mars!
Tue Aug 27, 2024 TCAS MEETING
There will be a meeting tonight of the Treasure Coast Astronomical Society. It will be held at 7:30 pm at the Brinkley Science Center on the Massey Fort Pierce campus of Indian River State College. This evening there will be an astronomy talk by one of the club members, as well as a conversation about one of the eighty-eight official constellations in the sky. The club is gearing up for another busy season of telescope operations that will be open to the public, both here at the Hallstrom Planetarium as well as at many other places along Florida’s Treasure Coast. You don’t have to be a member of the club to attend this get-together, you don’t even need to own a telescope! But if you’re interested in telescopes or even just looking up into the night sky, then this is the club for you. That’s tonight at 7:30 pm at the Science Center.
Wed Aug 28, 2024 THE CRAB NEBULA
On the night of August 28th, 1758 the Crab Nebula was discovered with a telescope. The nebula's discoverer, Charles Messier of France, thought at first that it was a comet, which when seen far out in space, resembles a small fuzzy splotch of light. But unlike comets, this fuzzy object didn't move against the starry background. Hour after hour, night after night, the thing refused to budge. Disappointed, Messier catalogued this object as Messier #1, or M-1, and from then on, whenever he saw it, he moved on to more promising candidates. But when bigger telescopes were invented, we found that M-1, the Crab Nebula, is most impressive: it is the exploded remains of a star that went supernova. Tonight M-1 can be found, with a telescope, low in the east northeast, a little after 1 AM, behind the forward horn tip of Taurus the Bull.
Thu Aug 29, 2024 HOW TO SEE A BLACK HOLE
In the summer evening sky, there are three bright stars high overhead which are known as the Summer Triangle. Inside this triangle, in the neck of the constellation Cygnus the Swan, there is a great mystery. It is a black hole called Cygnus X-1. We can't see it directly because its gravity field is so intense that light can't escape it. But we know that it is there, because we've discovered an incredible amount of x-rays pouring out of this part of the sky. Cygnus X-1 is part of a binary star system. Gas from its companion, a massive blue giant, is being pulled from it to feed the accretion disc surrounding the hole; it’s here that the x-rays are being made, just outside the black hole's event horizon - its point of no return, about 2500 parsecs, or a little less than 48 quadrillion miles from Earth.
Fri Aug 30, 2024 LONG MONTH, BLAME CAESAR
August used to be only thirty days long; now it’s 31. Back in 46 BC, our calendar got a major overhaul when Julius Caesar re-set the beginning of spring to March 25th (it had slid over into May). He also introduced the leap year, which gave February an extra day every fourth year. Then he was assassinated (probably no connection here,) and eventually Julius’ step-son Caesar Augustus took over. To honor dear old dad, Augustus changed the name of the 31-day month Quintillis, and it became July. Then Augustus thought that he ought to have a month too, so he changed the next month, Sextillus, re-naming it August. But it had only 30 days, so the emperor tacked on another day to make it just as long as his father’s, and that’s why this month is so long, and that’s also why politicians should never be left in charge of calendars.
