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'Mars Update' shows NASA mission results
By David L. Richards
Special to the Beacon Journal
Published on Monday, Jul 28, 2008
You might want to catch up on your sleep so you can stay up late on Monday, Aug. 11. Astronomers are forecasting a particularly good Perseid meteor shower, with up to 100 an hour streaking across the night sky.
The reason the Perseids are so predictable and numerous is that Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest known object to make repeated passes near Earth, leaving a trail of debris that falls to the Earth as the Perseids. The meteors will appear to come from the constellation Perseus in the northeast, right below the easily found ''W'' of Cassiopeia. The waxing gibbous moon will set about 2:40 a.m. on Aug. 12 in the southwest, so the early dawn hours of Tuesday will be the most productive.
This is one event where telescopes and binoculars are of no help. Just take a blanket out to a good dark spot, lie back, get comfortable and watch the show.
Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Mars line up in the west in August after sunset. Unfortunately, while Mercury and particularly Venus (at magni
tude -3.8) might be conspicuous, Saturn and Mars might be lost in the glare of the setting sun. Your best opportunity to catch all four might be on Aug. 12 at 8:45 p.m. with a pair of binoculars.
See if you can spot the 10-hour-old waxing crescent moon, right to the west of Venus on Saturday in the constellation Leo. Saturn, also in Leo, will become lost in the sun's glare by mid-month. Jupiter shines brightly all month in the constellation Sagittarius.
The battle of the Red Spots continues in the Jovian atmosphere. The Great Red Spot is a storm twice as wide as our planet and was first seen more than 350 years ago. In 2005, Red Junior emerged to join the Great Red Spot. In May of this year, yet a third — dubbed Little Red — appeared.
It now looks like Great Red is absorbing Little Red. Red Junior remains, but it too might eventually disappear into Great Red. These storms can be seen in an amateur telescope with an objective of 5 to 6 inches in diameter.
If you happen to be visiting Niznevartovsk, Novosibirsk, or Bijsk, Siberia, on Friday, at 4:23 p.m., you will have the good fortune to witness a 2-minute, 23-second total solar eclipse. Shorter and partial eclipses can be seen from Greenland to Shanghai, so go to http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html for information.
Q&A
Q: What's the new planet found by astronomers? R.H., Akron
A: Around Easter 2005, Caltech found a large Kuiper Belt Object and designated it 2005FY9. Just recently, the International Astronomical Union named the object Makemake (pronounced ma-ki-ma-ki) after the creator in Easter Island's Rapa Nui mythology.
Slightly more than half the size of Pluto, Makemake is considered a plutoid, along with Pluto and Eris. This new plutoid is also a dwarf planet, in addition to Pluto, Eris and Ceres, the largest asteroid.
Program
The Hoover-Price Planetarium is showing Mars Update. The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been a tremendous success for NASA and have provided us with an amazing amount of new and sometimes confounding information about the Red Planet.
Presentations are at 1 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Weekday planetarium shows are at 1 p.m. The planetarium is included with admission to the Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum. Call 330-455-7043 for information.
David L. Richards is director of the Hoover-Price Planetarium at the Wm. McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, 800 McKinley Monument Drive N.W., Canton, 44708, http://www.mckinleymuseum.org. He can be reached at 330-455-7043 or e-mail hooverpriceplanetarium@hotmail.com.
You might want to catch up on your sleep so you can stay up late on Monday, Aug. 11. Astronomers are forecasting a particularly good Perseid meteor shower, with up to 100 an hour streaking across the night sky.
Get the full article here.
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