Rather Cold

The sky at this time of year is as good as it gets, the summer constellations which pale in comparison with the winter stars are firmly lodged in the daylight sky, and we have Orion, Taurus Gemini and the little Pleiades star cluster dominating the southern sky all night. To the north is Polaris, the great and little bears and Cassiopeia much higher and looking much brighter than they do in the summer. And with the cold nights there’s less atmospheric distortion, but there’s the rub it’s to cold to stand around looking even with a Radio Scilly Winter Weight Hoody. And going out to set up a telescope is a lost cause. So most of us at this time of year only see the sky when walking between one warm environment and another.

One New Years Day there was a spectacular tilted Rhombus, that’s a diamond shape, in the South Eastern Sky, Betelgeuse the red giant on Orion’s shoulder making one point, brilliant Procyon, I can pronounce it now, making the lower point, Mars very bright now in the East the furthest point and Pollux in Gemini the upper point suitably embellished with the almost full moon in the middle. Of course the moons moved on now, but the loop sided diamond is still there in the S eastern sky, becoming ever more loop sided as Mars moved further to the west.

We’re down to 3 visible planets again now, Mercury and Venus are hidden behind the sun, Venus will appear again in the Sunset in late February. Mars (a bright magnitude –0.8, in Leo) rises in the east-northeast around 7 or 8 p.m. local time, far below Castor and Pollux and a bit to the left. About an hour later, dimmer Regulus rises about a fist-width beneath it. By 2 or 3 a.m. Mars and Regulus are highest in the south, now lined up horizontally.

In a telescope Mars is 13 arcseconds wide, nearly as large as it will become during this apparition. The north polar cap is in good view, bordered by a wide dark collar.. Mars will pass closest to Earth on January 27th, when it will be 14.1 arcseconds wide.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1, at the Capricorns-Aquarius border) shines brightly in the southwest in twilight, but lower after dark. It sets around 8 p.m. With binoculars you will be able to see up to 4 of the giant planets 63 named moons.

Saturn in the head of Virgo rises in the east around 11 and stands highest in the south before dawn. Saturn’s rings are narrow, tilted 5° from edge-on to us, their maximum tilt until next August, but it’s still pretty dim.

And remember its January 6th today, so you’d better take down your decorations or something dreadful may happen, maybe all the doom and gloom predicted in Island Parish will come true, than we’ll all have to go live on the mainland, if anything survives the snow that is.

That was your Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 237th anniversary of the opening of the first public Colonial American museum in Charleston, South Carolina.