11/9/2022 0 Comments Red light center 2 beta![]() That's the case in the illustration above, drawn for 40° N. If you live north of 33° N (Los Angeles, Atlanta, the Nile delta, Shanghai), Betelgeuse will be higher than Rigel. Orion's tilt while rising depends on your latitude. Orion is clearing the eastern horizon as shown above, depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. As night grows darker, look to its right by about three fists at arm's length for the frosty little Pleiades cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. ■ We're two thirds of the way through fall, so Capella is shining in the northeast as soon as the stars come out. Watch this line of three planets shorten for the next three weeks. Saturn glows dimmer less than halfway from Jupiter to Venus. Venus is low in the southwest Jupiter is high in the south. ■ Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest celestial objects after the Sun and Moon, continue to blaze this week during and after twilight. (And as always in these scenes, the Moon is drawn about three times its actual apparent size.) The Moon is plotted here for well after dark in the Central time zone, so on Friday the 19th it has already crossed the Pleiades-Aldebaran line. Watch the Moon move farther east of this line hour by hour through the night, as it creeps eternally eastward in its orbit around Earth. Holding up a ruler or a pencil to the sky, how accurately can you time the Moon's passage across this line? To mark the center of the Pleiades, pick Alcyone, the cluster's brightest star. The Moon is precisely in line between them around the end of twilight for much of North America's East Coast. ■ The Moon, just past full, shines in early evening almost exactly halfway between the Pleiades above it and Aldebaran below it, depending on your location. They're 89, 120, and 230 light-years away, roughly typical for run-of-the-mill naked-eye stars. ![]() ![]() Nunki, 225 light-years away, is 30 million times farther than Venus at 4 light-minutes.īinoculars may also show the other three stars of the Teapot handle in the same field of view. ![]() Bring binoculars Nunki is only 1/500 as bright as Venus. Just 0.2° to its left, if you're viewing from North America, is the brightest star of the Sagittarius Teapot handle: 2nd-magnitude Nunki (Sigma Sagittarii). As twilight deepens toward dark this evening, spot dazzling Venus low in the southwest. ![]()
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