Mo and I

Pretty much same old same old this week. Which is not necessarily bad, Venus is still there in the North West soon after sun set, getting brighter all the time a little to the left of the Pleiades which are we about to lose until next autumn. During the next 10 days as the moon ages and shifts further toward the dawn sky, Venus may be bright to cast a shadow, if its dark enough. Venus along with the moon, the sun, the occasional very bright comet, and the even rarer super nova are the only celestial bodies capable of casting a shadow, we shall see.

Anyway I’ve been covering for Spider while he’s off on the mainland attending his gran’s funeral. And on Monday night I picked up Mo Widdop and before taking her own I drove down the mermaid car park to see Venus, and there it was, incandescent, the planet of love, and me and Mo, it was a very touching moment. And as an aside when Denis passes away, hopefully in many, many years to come Mo will become the widow Widdop, which I hope will be some consolation for her.

The summer constellations are beginning to appear in the dawn sky, Scorpio is there now with the full moon around an hour before Sunset, see the blog, because you won’t be up for it. Scorpio as you may know runs from 23 of October to 22 of November when it rises and sets with the sun. At the moment we’re in Taurus which sets a little after Venus at the moment but by the end of May it will be firmly attached to the Sun, and then it will be Gemini’s turn.

Tomorrow we have a full moon, which will give us fairly big tides for the upcoming weekend tedium. And a low tide for Sunday’s barbeque so hopefully it won’t come in and put the fire out hours before the end this year.

Mars, dimming farther into the distance, is high in the southwest during the evening. It's in Cancer east of the Beehive Star Cluster.

A bright Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 60 to 45 minutes before sunrise. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

A not overly bright Saturn is high in the south during evening. Use the star map for Scilly on the blog to find it. In binoculars you should be able to Titan, which is Saturn’s largest moon, and is actually larger than Mercury.

That was your Night Sky over for the week ending on the 165th anniversary of William Walker departing from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

Mo and I

Pretty much same old same old this week. Which is not necessarily bad, Venus is still there in the North West soon after sun set, getting brighter all the time a little to the left of the Pleiades which are we about to lose until next autumn. During the next 10 days as the moon ages and shifts further toward the dawn sky, Venus may be bright to cast a shadow, if its dark enough. Venus along with the moon, the sun, the occasional very bright comet, and the even rarer super nova are the only celestial bodies capable of casting a shadow, we shall see.

Anyway I’ve been covering for Spider while he’s off on the mainland attending his gran’s funeral. And on Monday night I picked up Mo Widdop and before taking her own I drove down the mermaid car park to see Venus, and there it was, incandescent, the planet of love, and me and Mo, it was a very touching moment. And as an aside when Denis passes away, hopefully in many, many years to come Mo will become the widow Widdop, which I hope will be some consolation for her.

The summer constellations are beginning to appear in the dawn sky, Scorpio is there now with the full moon around an hour before Sunset, see the blog, because you won’t be up for it. Scorpio as you may know runs from 23 of October to 22 of November when it rises and sets with the sun. At the moment we’re in Taurus which sets a little after Venus at the moment but by the end of May it will be firmly attached to the Sun, and then it will be Gemini’s turn.

Tomorrow we have a full moon, which will give us fairly big tides for the upcoming weekend tedium. And a low tide for Sunday’s barbeque so hopefully it won’t come in and put the fire out hours before the end this year.

Mars, dimming farther into the distance, is high in the southwest during the evening. It's in Cancer east of the Beehive Star Cluster.

A bright Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 60 to 45 minutes before sunrise. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

A not overly bright Saturn is high in the south during evening. Use the star map for Scilly on the blog to find it. In binoculars you should be able to Titan, which is Saturn’s largest moon, and is actually larger than Mercury.

That was your Night Sky over for the week ending on the 165th anniversary of William Walker departing from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

Fireballs

I suppose the big event of this and last week has passed with the meteorite crashing into the sea off Tolman point. It could have been an isolated pebble but it is far more likely to part of the dust left in a comets trail. The most likely contender for this is comet Thatcher which has nothing to do with the iron lady. When we pass through its tail between the 16th and 26th of April fire balls are quite common. They seem to radiate from the constellation Lyra. But Lyra rises a bit later than the meteorite was seen, in the North East at about 9:30, and the fireball appeared in the South. So we’ll never know but after 10 if you look to North East where you’ll see a brightish star Vega, you should see 10 to 20 meteors an hour. The shower should peak tomorrow on the 22nd but they should show for a few days either side.

Tonight, the First-quarter Moon shines below Mars shines over the Moon.

From Friday through Sunday Venus and the Pleiades fit within a 5° binocular field of view in the west soon after sunset. With binoculars you should be just able to see Venus as a crescent leaning toward the setting sun. On Saturday a milky yellow Saturn shines to the Moon's upper left.

Mercury is fading and dropping out of sight in the sunset, after pairing with Venus for the first half of April. And I know quite a lot of you saw the elusive little rock, well two of you anyway, buts it’s well on the way back into the sun again now.

Venus shines very brightly in the west-northwest during twilight, getting a little higher and more obvious every week.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.5, shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon. Near it binoculars show the big Beehive Star Cluster, M44.

Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 45 minutes before your sunup. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

Saturn is high in the southeast to south during evening. Not overly bright or easy to find, so have a look at APL star map for Scilly on the blog.

But enough of this frippery, not much has been heard of the black shadow recently, but she has been busy, very busy, while her alto ego Barbara Simpson has been gleaning feel good stories the length and breath of the islands, the black shadow has been hard at it. You may have heard of quantitative easing, well my mole in the US federal reserve tells me that, through a diabolically cunning scheme, to difficult for me to understand let alone explain, the Black Shadow has siphoned more than 650 billion dollars that had been intended to kick start the world economy, its all stashed in her hide away deep in the bowels of Mt Moorwell. What sinister use she will put it too, remains to be seen.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 51st anniversary of the last Canadian missionary being booted out of the People's Republic of China.

Mercury.

Mercury

We have an unusual contender for this week’s main attraction, tiny little Mercury. Not that its overly bright, but for once its easy to, in fact this is as good an apparition as often-elusive Mercury ever puts on and with Venus lighting the way to it, you could hardly ask for Mercury to be any easier. Look to the WNW soon after sunset and you’ll very quickly be able to spot an extremely bright Venus, if you look a little to its right you be able to see Mercury.

Yesterday evening at around 8:45 I caught the pair of them at the same time in binoculars. Venus is many times brighter than Mercury but they were the only two objects visible in that part of the sky. Venus was visible from around 8 until about 10:30 when it sank over Mincarlo, looking from the garrison.

It was a bit of a red letter day for me because it was the first time I could ever say I’d definitively seen Mercury, though I must have seen it from the plane window 6 weeks ago when it was completely over shadowed by Venus. The little planet is dimming rapidly now it was magnitude -.8 on the second but by the next week it will be right down to magnitude 1.4. So the next few days will give you your best viewing window, possibly for the next 140,000 years, but I’m speculating here.

And here’s some stuff you probably have less than no interest in about Mercury, it’s a pretty miserable place that orbits as close as 30 million miles from the Sun so it gets as hot as a monkeys bum, it whacks around the sun every 88 days, and it has a 1400 hour day, one day on Mercury is 58 of ours, more or less 9 Mercurian months long. It only revolves at 6 miles an hour so if you could maintain a brisk walk at the equator, which you couldn’t then you’d never have see the sun come up, or set, depending on whether you like extreme cold -150 degrees, or heat 500 degrees, and nothing lives there. But on the plus side there are no elections

As for the other planets they’re all around at the moment. Venus will be bright after sunset in the wnw for a while yet.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.3, now, it shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1) is emerging very low in the glow of dawn. Look for it just above the eastern horizon about 40 or 30 minutes before sunrise.

Saturn (magnitude +0.6, in the head of Virgo) is two weeks past opposition. Look for it in the east-southeast at dusk, higher in the southeast by late evening, and highest in the south by 11 or midnight.

As usual have a look at the blog for guidance, which I guess you are doing.

That was your night sky for the week ending on the 40^th anniversary of an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploding.