Cha Cha Cha

This week is very similar to last week, we still can’t see Mercury or Mars, but Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are still putting on a show, and Uranus if you know where to look, which shining a very pleasant blue/green 2 and half degrees to the west of Jupiter.

Venus is still extremely bright, it shines as the "Morning Star" in the southeast before and during dawn. If your up and the sky’s clear, you can’t miss it.

Jupiter shines in the southwest as the stars come out. It sinks lower later and sets around 9 or 10 p.m.

Saturn a lot dimmer then either Jupiter or especially Venus, in rises in Virgo around 11 p.m. but is best seen the South before dawn, the the storm is still rising. The rings are way passed edge on at the moment and are showing well with a little magnification. To find it have a look at the star map for Scilly, next door.

As we lose the moon over the course week, it may be time to see some of the dimmer naked eye objects in the sky. The Andromeda Galaxy is the brightest deep sky object we can see. Though saying that it’s not that deep sky, in fact’s next door at a mere 2 and half million light years, some galaxy’s are knocking 14 billion years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, but not the closest galaxy overall. It is visible with the naked eye from Earth as a faint smudge on a moonless night.. It gets its name from the area of the sky in which it appears the Andromeda constellation. Andromeda is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which consists of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It has up to a trillion stars whereas the milky way has up to about 400 million.

So I’d better tell you where it is, it’s just off the knee of the Andromeda stick figure. The brighter, sharper bottom-point of the Cassiopeia "W" points to it. Again look on the blog for a little guidance.

The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are expected to collide in perhaps 4.5 billion years. By then the sun will be on its last legs, and the BBC will still be repeating the two Ronnies.

Andromeda

And in case you’re wondering, which your not, there’re are loads more stars than there are grains of sand. Apparently there are at least 100 stars for every grain of sand on earth, presumably that’s an estimate.

And next week the stars will be on Tuesday, because it seems that’s when the jingle says it’s on.

And that was your night’s sky for the week ending on the 50^th anniversary of Ham the Chimp travelling on Mercury Redstone II. He returned 16 minutes later with a slightly bruised nose. He’s sadly dead, January 1983, so he had a good life .His real name was Chop-Chop Chang, and he was so endearing in his lovely NASA helmet, here's ape icture.

Ham aka Chop-Chop Chang

Young Fishmonger of the Year

Not a huge cavalcade of excitement for you this week, though you may have heard about Kepler 10b, a new planet about 4 and half times the mass of the earth about 560 light years away, so we’re not likely to see much of it. It orbits very close to its Sun, and has a surface temperature which will melt rock, but if there's one rocky planet out there there will be others. If your interested here it is, Kepler 10b.

Nearer home, Mercury is having an excellent morning apparition. Look for it low in the east-southeast, far to the lower left of bright Venus, it rises at about 7pm in the E S E, but won’t be all that bright being so close to the rising sun.

Venus considerably brighter balazes as the "Morning Star" in the south east before and during dawn. In fact Venus rises some two hours before the first glimmer of dawn  a weird UFO of a thing low in the east-southeast. Look for Saturn and Spica very far to Venus's upper right in the south, and Arcturus even higher above Venus.

Mars as usual is lost behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.3, at the Pisces-Aquarius border) shines high in the south as the stars come out, then lower in the southwest later in the evening. Jupiter is the brightest starlike point in the evening sky, but it sets by 10 or 11 p.m. now. In a telescope it has shrunk to only 38 arcseconds wide as Earth rounds to the far side of the Sun from it.

Saturn rises around midnight but is best seen in a telescope high in the south before dawn (far upper right of brilliant Venus). Don't confuse Saturn with Spica below or lower left of it. And Saturn has a bit of a storm that must be a good 40,000 miles long raging across its northern hemisphere, with winds over a thousand miles an hour, at about 130 degrees below. With pellets of ammonia and ice moving like bullets, true sailing is dead.

Saturn's rings, meanwhile, have widened to 10° from edge-on, the widest they've appeared since 2007.

Uranus remains less than 1½° from Jupiter this week, and should be easily spotted in binoculars.

On Saturday, the gibbous Moon shines between Aldebaran and the Pleiades, high above Orion in early evening. Look below Orion for Sirius.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 591^st anniversary of King Naresuan of Siam killing Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, which is why this date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day. Which strangely is largely ignored in the UK.