Date: March 28, 2012
Title: Night Sky Observing Highlights for April through June
Podcasters: Katie Peterson
Organization: Adler Planetarium
Links: www.adlerplanetarium.org ; www.adlerplanetarium.org/podcasts
Description: There’s a whole lot happening in the night sky over the next few months. Larry and Katie of the Adler Planetarium talk about what to look for and how to find it. Of particular note, the Transit of Venus is June!
Bio: The Adler Planetarium – America’s First Planetarium – was founded in 1930 by Chicago business leader Max Adler. The museum is home to three full-size theaters, including the all-digital projection Definiti Space Theater, the Grainger Sky Theater featuring a ultra-high resolution digital planetarium, and the Universe 3D Theater. It is also home to one of the world’s most important antique instrument collections. The Adler is a recognized leader in science education, with a focus on inspiring young people, particularly women and minorities, to pursue careers in science.
Sponsor: This episode of the “365 days of Astronomy” is sponsored by —
Transcript:
Katie
Welcome to a special edition of the Adler Planetarium’s bi-weekly podcast, Adler Night and Day. Adler Night and Day provides with a glipse of what you can see in the night sky, as well as updates on recent solar weather and riveting conversation. For the 365 Days of Astronomy we’re going to focus on the riveting conversation. Without further ado, I’m your host Katie and I’d like to welcome Larry Cuipik of the Adler Planetarium, welcome Larry.
Larry
Glad to be here, Katie.
Katie
We are thrilled you’re here. We’re going to be talking about the big observing events for the next couple of months. So, we’re going to be talking specifically about April, May, and June. W’ve got a lot of really cool stuff and we’re ecstatic you’re here.
Larry
I’m glad to be here and I’m excited to talk about it.
Katie
Excellent, so let’s get started, how about April?
Larry
So, April…April is a fun month. It turned out that March we had the opposition of Mars, which means that Mars this month is actually really good and so Mars is going to be around the Moon the 3rd and the 4th of April. And so you can see Mars near the waxing gibbous Moon in the south during the pre-dawn hours. So what you might want to do is actually go out there before sunrise and watch Mars on either of those two mornings. Then a few days later, it’s pretty interesting because Saturn will be next to the Full Moon. So, that is on the night of the 6th and the 7th.
Katie
I love it when we have planets in the night sky, close to the Moon. It makes it really easy for people to know that they’re for sure looking at a planet. If night sky observing isn’t something you’ve done a lot of it’s a great opportunity to really get to see those planets.
Larry
And not only that but Mars and Saturn, they’re not so easy to distinguish from stars. And so this time, what you can do is look at the Moon region in the sky and then you can see if there’s something relatively bright nearby that doesn’t twinkle much, so that’s how you can tell it’s a planet. It doesn’t twinkle very much because it’s actually a tiny disc in the atmosphere and so instead of being so far away as a star is, where it’s a point of light, you end up where it’s a disc of light coming into the atmosphere and so those waves of atmosphere even out so you don’t see the twinkling so much. Especially when it’s above the horizon more than twenty to thirty degrees. Okay, so then Saturn, in the middle of April. That famous date, April 15th!
Katie
Every American’s favorite day!
Larry
Saturn is at opposition. So that means it’s rising at sunset and setting at sunrise and visible all night. It’s the best time to see Saturn all year. Throughout April actually, is the best time. The beginning of April til the end of April is a great time to see Saturn. But it is still there for several months at least. Okay, so Venus comes back again, near the Moon on the 24th of April. So you can look for Venus near the waxing cresent Moon, low in the West. Venus is either very low in the West or very low in the East. In the West, it’s always when it’s near sunset. In the East it’s always when it’s near sunrise. At this particular time, on the night of the 24th, it’s in the west. So every time it’s in the West then it will be about sunset, a little after sunset.
Katie
And it’s pretty typically very bright.
Larry
It’s really bright and in fact quite often around here we see aircraft coming in to land at O’Hare and both Venus and Jupiter look about as bright as aircraft landing lights. So they’re especially bright and this time Venus is the actor. And then the 30th of April, Mars is near the waxing gibbious Moon during that night so you can find Mars again even though you may have been watching at other times, it’s actually good on the 30th of April near the waxing gibbous Moon.
Katie
So, now that we… that’s quite a bit in April. So, let’s talk about May. What do we have in store for us in May?
Larry
Well, Mars is the end of April and it’s also the beginning of May, so May first again you can look for Mars near the waxing gibbous Moon and then on the 4th and 5th it’s Saturn again! So, remember the Moon is moving a little bit each night compared to where it was before and so that’s how over about a monthit get’s to be all the way back to where it started from going all the way around the Earth once as it orbits the Earth. So, the 4th and the 5th you can look for Saturn near the waxing gibbous Moon. And then, all the way to the end of the month, we have… Look for Mars near the first quarter Moon in the Southwest in the evening hours after sunset. So we’re skipping those couple of middle weeks of May. Nothing really spectacular happening at that point.
Katie
So, so, we make our way through May. May is a little bit of an easy month and then we hit warm weather and…
Larry
We do have one more and that is the 31st. It’s look for Saturn. So Saturn is near the waxing gibbous Moon. So we had the 28th were Mars was near the first quarter Moon. After first quarter all the way until full, you have it waxing and waxing even more and so by the 31st, Saturn is then next to the Moon.
Katie
Okay, so we have a big deal in June.
Larry
Oh, this is a huge deal!
Katie
Yes!
Larry
For some it might be an opportunity to be careful with the Sun as well. So be careful because the Sun is a draw. Every time there’s an event around the Sun, and in this particular case it’s kind of a mini-eclipse, if you will, it’s called a transit. We’ll get to that but the 1st of June, Saturn is still near the waxing gibbous Moon so the 31st of May, the 1st of June, that’s when Saturn is visible easily near the Moon. But the 5th of June is the biggest time and it’s amazing because we’re not going to see this event again in our whole life span. So even the youngest children seeing it won’t be seeing it again! So, unless some sort of miracle happens, so this isn’t going to happen again until 2117, not 2017, 2117!
Katie
And it just happened a few years back, correct?
Larry
Yes, they happen in cycles. So, every 12 years you can have a combination of events. So, I think it was 2004 or 2005 that it happened last. So, this transit starts at 5:04pm for Chicagoland, that’s Central Daylight Time and it lasts until it sets so what happens is that this is an event where Venus passes in front of the Sun and it’s called a Transit, so it’s very unusual in one way but it’s also a great opportunity to think about planets outside the solar system. We’re discovering them by the same method. They pass in front of a star and they then are a new planet discovered making that star dim a little bit. But for Venus, the Sun doesn’t dim much so if you don’t have a special optical aid and a special filtration system, you will not even know this is going to happen. So, imagine that you’re looking at the Sun but you’ve got to do it safely so you’ve got hto have a special filter. So with a special filter, over your binoculars, or you can project it with a camera or binoculars on a screen. I meant a telescope or binoculars on a screen. Then you can see the Sun’s disc
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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