Skylights featured three times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
Photo of the Week.. Venus and Mars visit in twilight
early in 2003. Venus is the bright "morning star" at right, while
Mars is just above its namesake, Antares of Scorpius (whose three-star "head" is near the upper
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, May 2, 2003.
We begin the week with the Moon just barely past its new phase.
The evening of Friday, May 2, the thin crescent will be just
visible low above the horizon in twilight below the Pleiades of Taurus. The night of Saturday May
3 will provide a better view, as the slim but growing crescent will
lie up and to the right of Aldebaran and the Hyades. Watch then for the Moon to
split the horns of Taurus the night of Sunday the 4th, when it will
also be down and to the right of Saturn
. Then as our companion makes its journey around us, look for
it northeast of bright Jupiter
the night of Thursday, the 8th.
Little Mercury makes the biggest news of the week, as not only
is it in inferior conjunction with the Sun (when it lies in between
us and the Sun) but the alignment is exact, causing the planet to
transit" the solar surface, and be seen in relief against the
solar disk, the event taking place on Wednesday, May 7th.
Unfortunately for most of North America, the transit occurs too
early in the morning to be visible, and is over before sunrise.
However, those on the east coast and a bit inland north of Florida
will see the transit in progress and nearing its ending at sunrise.
It will be visible in eastern-to-mid-western Canada and from all of
Alaska as well. Note that the only way to see it is by projection
of the image through a telescope, which requires some prior
experience. Under no circumstances should anyone try to see it
directly. The planet will appear as a small black dot creeping
across the solar disk. Usually, at inferior conjunction Mercury
will pass either above or below the Sun. But in intervals of 7 and
14 years, on November 9 or May 7, the planet can cross the ecliptic
(the apparent solar path) at the time of conjunction, and we may
get to see a transit. The next one will take place in November of
2006. Much rarer are transits of
Venus. While the next one will occur on June 8, 2004, there
were none in the twentieth century at all.
The giant planets, as witnessed by the Moon's passage against them,
are still nicely visible, Saturn lowering in the west, Jupiter
still high. The morning sky still sees Venus rising about an hour
before sunrise, while in between rides Mars. Now low to the south in
Capricornus, the red planet rises around 2 AM Daylight Time.
The Big Dipper is now riding
high and nearly overhead for northerners. The Dipper is an
"asterism," an informal constellation that is part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, the bowl
of the Dipper making the Bear's hindquarters, the handle the tail.
To the south you can see three pairs of stars that make the Bear's
feet. Different cultures, however, see things differently. To the
ancient Arabs, the Bear's feet were the "leaps" of the gazelle.