Wednesday, January 31, 2018
The Sky This Week - Thursday February 1 to Thursday February 8
The Last Quarter Moon is Thursday, February 8.
Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (that is 60 minutes before sunrise, click to embiggen).
Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time
Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (that is 60 minutes before sunrise, click to embiggen).
Morning sky on Saturday February looking north as seen from Adelaide at midnight ACDST the asteroid Ceres is between the sickle of Leo and the bottom star of the constellation of Cancer, the crab.
Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).
The large circle represents the field of view of 10x50 binoculars.
The asteroid 1 Ceres is relatively easily visible in binoculars until around the middle of this month, it fades during this time but interference from Moonlight is reduced by mid-month.
Ceres is relatively easy to find. It is above the northern horizon at midnight , and is just between Kappa Leo, The brightish star the is the tip of the sickle of Leo (see charts, if you centre your binoculars on Kappa Leo Ceres will be just below it) and Iota Cancerii (the bottom brightish star of Cancer. You may need to watch night to night as the asteroid moves to be sure of its identity.
Venus is lost in the twilight.
Jupiter climbs still higher in the morning sky and is moving away from Mars. On the 8th the Last Quarter Moon is close to Jupiter.
Mars is in the head of Scorpius the scorpion. At the beginning of the week Mars is very close to the moderately bright star beta1 Scorpii (Acab). It then begins to move closer to Antares (the rival of Mars)
Mercury is lost in the twilight.
Saturn climbs higher in the morning sky. It is within binocular range of several attractive clusters and nebula, including the Lagoon nebula nd the bright globular cluster M22.
The bright planets form a line in the morning sky with the bright stars Antares and Spica, this will look quite attractive.
The long period variable star Mira is fading from peak brightness, but is still easily visible to the unaided eye, even in Moonlight. The circle marks the location of Mira in the rambling constellation of Cetus. The Arrow shaped head of Taurus the bull points almost directly at Mira. This is a good time to see this iconic variable star
Similar views will be seen elsewhere in Australia at the equivalent local time (90 minutes after sunset). (click to embiggen).
Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEST, Western sky at 10 pm AEST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.
Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.
Here is the near-real time satellite view of the clouds (day and night) http://satview.bom.gov.au/
Labels: weekly sky
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:42 am 
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
