The star Antares is fairly bright and, as a red giant, shines with a reddish hue. It has passed through it's prime of shining white hot, and having burned most of it's fuel is burning cooler and redder.
Posted on 05/02/2018 7:26:11 AM PDT by BenLurkin
That bright “star” is actually a planet, the king of them all as far as our Solar System is concerned: Jupiter. May also ushers in Jupiter observing season, as the planet reaches opposition on May 9th, rising in the east opposite to the setting Sun to the west. Jupiter now joins Venus in the dusk sky, ending the planetary drought plaguing many an evening star party.
Shining a magnitude -2.5 near opposition, you can even pick Jupiter out against the deep blue daytime sky… if you know exactly where to look for it. The Moon visits Jupiter once every orbit, and the next time to try this feat of visual athletics is on May 27th, just before sunset.
Jupiter is 4.4 astronomical units (658 million kilometers) distant at opposition this year, and presents a disk 45” across.
At the eyepiece, Jupiter presents a roiling upper atmosphere, completing an amazing rotation once every 9.9 hours. This is not only fast enough to give Jove a noticeable equatorial bulge at its equator, but you can also observe and image Jupiter in its entirety in just one clear evening.
One of the first things that becomes apparent observing Jupiter at low power are its retinue of four Galilean moons. These are, from interior outward: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Speedy Io takes just 1.8 days to orbit Jupiter once, while outermost Callisto takes a leisurely 16.7 days to make one circuit around Jupiter. Not only is it fun to note the changes in configuration of Jupiter’s major moons from night to night, but it’s interesting to watch them cast shadows onto Jupiter’s cloud tops and alternately disappear and reappear in and out of Jupiter’s shadow.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Hope to get some time in with Jupiter either this weekend or next.
There is also this:
How could you see it in daytime if it's at opposition to the Sun?
Interesting!
Hope to get some time in with Jupiter either this weekend or next.
There is also this:
Trump will destroy the opposition!
Dang it.
I miss Jack Horkheimer, a great man by today’s standards.
He was the one who got me interested in the stars.
Gustav Holst - The Planets - Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo
Jupiter is 4.4 astronomical units (658 million kilometers)
How many leagues is that?
Here is the distance in miles: 408,862,244 miles
More than 20,000?
Nice!
The star Antares is fairly bright and, as a red giant, shines with a reddish hue. It has passed through it's prime of shining white hot, and having burned most of it's fuel is burning cooler and redder.
bttt
Through the night Saturn and Mars will rise and follow Saturn across the sky.
To the left, or east, of Antares is the teapot in the constellation Sagitarius.
When you look at the teapot you are looking in the direction of the center
of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is a region rich in star producing nebulae.
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