Hello.
I'm Hudson Valley Community College astronomer Richard Monda.
Welcome to Eyes on the Sky, an update about current astronomy and space science
events.
This is Eyes on the Sky for the month of February 2017.
On the evening of February 1st, the moon is a thick crescent to the upper left of Venus
and Mars.
If you have a telescope, look along the line where the bright part of the moon meets the
dark part and you should see the mountainous terrain of the lunar surface.
This will be the last full month to see Venus as the brightest, star-like object in our
evening sky.
But to say that Venus is bright is an understatement and Venus will continue to brighten, right
though the middle of February.
It's also a good month to watch Venus through a telescope.
At the start of February, a telescope shows that Venus is in a wide crescent phase.
Watch Venus slim to a thin, yet larger crescent throughout the month.
On February 3rd, the moon is first quarter.
The next evening the moon is on the western side of the constellation Taurus the Bull.
By February 5th, the moon will be just to the east of Aldebaran, the red-orange star
that marks right eye of Taurus.
Then the moon glides through Gemini and Cancer and on February 10th, the moon is full and
seen against on the western stars of Leo the Lion.
That evening, we will have a special kind of lunar eclipse; a kind of lunar eclipse
that is usually not visible.
This time, however, given clear skies, conditions are good for us to see this eclipse.
What we usually think of as a lunar eclipse occurs when the moon goes into the dark shadow
that Earth casts into space.
But on February 10th, the moon will only glide through Earth's lighter shadow.
Typically, when this happens, this shading is so weak that we don't notice any difference
in the moon's brightness.
However, during this lunar eclipse we will see some shading on the northern part of the
moon.
This will take place because the moon will travel deep into the light shadow, which is
also called the penumbra.
Maximum eclipse will occur at 7:44 p.m. on the 10th with the moon in the eastern sky.
We should be able to notice some shading on the moon for at least an hour before and after
maximum eclipse time.
Two weeks after a lunar eclipse there can be an eclipse of the sun and in late February,
a solar eclipse will cut across South America and into the South Atlantic.
But the next eclipse of the sun is the Big One -- it's already being called The Great
American Solar Eclipse.
It's going to be the first total solar eclipse of the millennium to happen in the United
States.
On August 21st, the moon will completely block the sun in a roughly 60-mile wide path that
will race across North America at over 2000 miles per hour.
The total eclipse path will come ashore just south of Portland, Oregon.
Totality will then move over the Grand Tetons, through Casper, Wyoming, and then just south
of Omaha, Nebraska.
It will clip the northeastern part of Kansas, then go into Missouri, Kentucky, then pass
just north of Atlanta, just south of Charlotte, and then out into the Atlantic Ocean through
Charleston, South Carolina.
It's estimated that a 100 million people will see the sun completely eclipsed by the
moon and hundreds of millions more will view the associated partial solar eclipse.
Back in our current sky, on February 11th, the moon will be near Regulus, the King Star
of Leo the Lion and both will be in the western sky before sunrise.
On the 12th, the moon is further along in Leo and by February 15th, the moon is among
the stars of the constellation Virgo.
That morning, the moon will appear in the southwest with Jupiter and Virgo's bright,
blue-white star, the star Spica.
On the 16th, the moon will be further along to the east in Virgo.
Then Just after mid-month in the morning twilight, we will get to see the moon gliding through
the star pictures of the summer zodiac.
On February 19th, a wide lunar crescent appears above the constellation Scorpius and its reddish-orange
star, Antares.
Then on February 20th, the moon appears to the upper right of Saturn and the next morning,
it's to the lower left of the Ringed Planet.
Before sunrise on February 22nd, we'll see a thinning lunar crescent just to the east
of the constellation Sagittarius.
Then, over the next few mornings, the moon will appear lower and lower in the sky until
February 26th when it goes through its new phase.
After that, we'll see the moon back in our evening sky.
On February 27th, a thin crescent moon will appear very low in the west at dusk and you'll
probably need binoculars to help you find this moon in the bright twilight.
But on the last day of February, you will not have any difficulty seeing the moon; it
will be a beautiful crescent in the western, evening sky forming a triangle with Venus
and Mars.
I'm Hudson Valley Community College astronomer Richard Monda reminding you to Keep Your Eyes
on the Sky.
Eyes on the Sky is a production of Viking Video Technologies at Hudson Valley Community
College.
For more infomation >> Opel Corsa 1.3 CDTI Silverline - Duration: 1:00. 
For more infomation >> The Space Between Us
No comments:
Post a Comment