Mon Aug 18, 2025 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 this constellation 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 is caused by our planet changing its location 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 old crescent moon just to the northeast of Orion, along with three planets – Venus, Jupiter and Mercury!
Tue Aug 19, 2025 MOON, VENUS AND JUPITER IN PREDAWN
Tomorrow morning before sunrise there will be a very pretty gathering of the moon and a couple of planets. It will happen over in the eastern sky around 5 in the morning. The first thing you’ll notice is the moon, a slender crescent with its bow pointing downwards toward the horizon. You’ll probably also see at the same time a brilliant, solid-looking star immediately to the south of it. That incredibly bright star is actually the planet Venus. Above Venus and the moon are two real stars – Pollux and Castor in the constellation Gemini. Now to the west of them is another star, another planet, not as bright as Venus, but still pretty bright. That’s the planet Jupiter. Finally, if you have a clear view down toward the eastern horizon, you should be able to draw a line from Jupiter to Venus and extend it down until you discover another star-like object, the planet Mercury.
Wed Aug 20, 2025 MARDUK BRINGS ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
Ancient Babylonians described the early Universe as a watery chaos they called Mammu. Out of Mammu came a monstrous dragon named Tiamat. Tiamat then spawned the Babylonian gods, but in time she decided to destroy them. Her grandson Marduk fought and defeated her, using her body to serve as a framework for the cosmos. Half of her became the sky, where Marduk set the god Anu; the other half was made into the foundations of the earth, and Marduk made Ea its god. Marduk became the principle sky god, like Zeus in ancient Greece, and gave other gods responsibilities for the southern and northern skies and their constellations, while Marduk reserved the planets and stars of the zodiac for himself. And old Tiamat? You can see a vestige of her in the constellation Draco the Dragon, winding between the Big and Little Dippers tonight.
Thu Aug 21, 2025 SUN FACTS
It’s at this time of year that I really understand the power of the sun, especially here in Florida when the sun is very high in our sky in the middle of the day. The sun’s diameter is about 865,000 miles. That’s over a hundred times the diameter of the Earth. And in terms of volume, a million Earths could fit inside it. The Sun's mass is 333,434 times the mass of our planet. The sun contains 99.86% of the mass of the entire solar system! Its surface temperature is over 10 thousand degrees Fahrenheit, while its core temperature is 27 million degrees! The thermonuclear fusion processes that take place there, as hydrogen is converted into helium, supply us with pretty much all of our light and energy. So even though we’re 93 million miles away from the sun, it’s big enough, and hot enough, to keep things sizzling here in sunny Florida!
Fri Aug 22, 2025 RAY BRADBURY AND MARS
The science fiction and fantasy writer Ray Bradbury was born on August 22nd, 1920. He began his career by writing short stories for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Planet Stories and Galaxy Science Fiction. He also wrote, “Fahrenheit 451,” “R is for Rocket,” and “The Golden Apples of the Sun.” His book, “The Martian Chronicles,” came out in 1950; it was a series of related short stories about the colonization of the planet Mars, something which is very much in the news these days. Bradbury envisioned terraforming Mars, also being discussed lately. While building pressure domes and living underground on Mars is perhaps achievable, trying to restore a viable Martian atmosphere is still well beyond our current technology. But if you’d like to see the red planet, you’ll find Mars over in the southwest after sunset this month. And, like Bradbury, we can dream!