The Sky This Week, 2009 October 13 - 20

The Moon is best seen just before sunrise this week as she wanes to a thin crescent in the pre-dawn sky.  New Moon occurs on the 17th at 9:33 pm Eastern Daylight Time.  Luna, Venus, and Saturn form an attractive grouping on the morning of the 16th.  Her slender waxing crescent should be visible low in the southwestern sky shortly after sunset on the 20th.
 
This week we continue with the Great Worldwide Star Count.  All people are encouraged to see as many stars in a constellation as their sky will allow.  This event runs through the 23rd, and will help increase global awareness of light pollution and sky degradation.  On the 17th, the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club will host its 27th annual NOVAC Star Gaze at C.M. Crockett Park near Warrenton, Virginia.  The keynote speaker will be Bill Readdy, former NASA astronaut.  He is a veteran pilot astronaut, with three space shuttle flights.  He has logged 672 hours in space.  Bill is also a former naval aviator and test pilot.  At NASA headquarters, he served as Associate Administrator, with oversight of Kennedy, Johnson, Marshall, and Stennis Space Centers.  Also at NASA, he had program oversight for the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle.  This will be a rain-or-shine event beginning at 3:00 pm.  There will be lots of things for visitors to see and do, with safe solar observing during the daytime and dozens of members’ telescopes to peer through after dark.  Best of all, the event is free!

Jupiter will be the prime target at the Star Gaze, which should provide a great opportunity to see what the planet can reveal to telescopes of different apertures.  Old Jove is a planet that rewards the user of almost any kind of optical aid.  Some extremely keen-eyed folks can actually see his largest moon Ganymede when it reaches elongations east or west of the planet.  Small telescopes easily show his other bright Galilean moons and his two prominent dark equatorial cloud belts.  Bigger instruments will show more detail in the ever-changing pattern of clouds that sheath his face, and if the weather cooperates the view through some of the club’s bigger telescopes will almost make you feel like you’re a passenger on the now-defunct Galileo orbiter!

As the dim stars of the autumn sky are replaced by the rising luminaries of winter, skywatchers can see the ruddy glow of Mars rising in the east after midnight.  The red planet will come to opposition in late January of next year, and you can watch his small disc gradually increase in apparent size between now and then.  This will not be his best opposition in terms of the apparent size of his disc, but he will be placed high in the northern sky for our viewing convenience.  He’s currently drifting eastward between the stars of Gemini and Cancer, and is brightening toward zero magnitude, comparable to most of the bright stars in his vicinity.

Shortly before sunrise you can watch dazzling Venus pull away from dimmer golden Saturn in the morning twilight.  They start the week barely a degree apart, but Venus adds about one degree of separation each day as she speeds away from the pokey ringed planet.  The waxing crescent Moon joins the duo on the morning of the 16th for a nice photo opportunity.