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Wayne Wooten: January Skies Of The Gulf Coast

For January 2020, the Quadrantid meteor shower will peak on the morning of Saturday, January 4 about 2 a.m.  Expect perhaps 20 to 30 meteors per hour coming out of the northeast.  Unlike most meteor showers made of decaying comets, this one’s origin is the “clay comet” asteroid Phaeton, which as its name implies, gets so close to the Sun its surface melts and sputters into space.  We have recently learned the asteroid Bennu, now orbited by NASA’s Orisis-REX, also has such surface activity!  The first quarter moon, setting about midnight, will not interfere, so bundle up.

After the “Wolf” full moon on January 10, the waning moon is third quarter on January 17.  The crescent in the dawn is above Mars on the morning of January 20, just west of Jupiter on January 22.  It is new on January 24, and beneath Venus in the evening twilight on January 27.

Venus is the only evening planet, dominating the soithwest twilight for the next several months.  Mars is the dawn sky in Scorpius, and Jupiter in Sagittarius returns to the southeast horizon by month’s end.  Saturn still lies behind the Sun in January.

While the naked eye, dark adapted by several minutes away from any bright lights, is a wonderful instrument to stare up into deep space, far beyond our own Milky Way, binoculars are better for spotting specific deep sky objects.  For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, visit the Skymaps website and download the map for January 2020.

The constellation Cassiopeia makes a striking west in the northwest.  Her daughter, Andromeda, starts with the northeast corner star of Pegasus’’ Square, and goes northeast with two more bright stars in a row.  It is from the middle star, beta Andromeda, that we proceed about a quarter the way to the top star in the west of Cassiopeia, and look for a faint blur with the naked eye.  M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the most distant object visible with the naked eye, lying about 2.5 million light years distant.  Almost overhead as darkness falls, this fine shot of the Milky Way’s twin in space is by EAAA member Marc Glover.  

Credit Marc Glover
EAAA member Marc Glover captured this shot of Milky Way’s twin in space. Note the two companion galaxies, M-32 (on top) and M-110 (below)

Overhead is Andromeda’s hero, Perseus, rises.  Between him and Cassiopeia is the fine Double Cluster, faintly visible with the naked eye and two fine binocular objects in the same field.  Perseus contains the famed eclipsing binary star Algol, where the Arabs imagined the eye of the gorgon Medusa would lie.  It fades to a third its normal brightness for six out of every 70 hours, as a larger but cooler orange giant covers about 80% of the smaller but hotter and thus brighter companion as seen from Earth.

Look at Perseus’ feet for the famed Pleiades cluster; they lie about 400 light years distant, and over 250 stars are members of this fine group.  East of the seven sisters is the V of stars marking the face of Taurus the Bull, with bright orange Aldebaran as his eye.  The V of stars is the Hyades cluster, older than the blue Pleaides, but about half their distance.  

Yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, dominates the overhead sky.  It is part of the pentagon on stars making up Auriga, the Charioteer (think Ben Hur).  Several nice binocular Messier open clusters are found in the winter milky way here.  East of Auriga, the twins, Castor and Pollux highlight the Gemini.  UWF alumni can associate the pair with Jason and the Golden Fleece legend, for they were the first two Argonauts to sign up on his crew0.

South of Gemini, Orion is the most familiar winter constellation, dominating the eastern sky at dusk.  The reddish supergiant Betelguese marks his eastern shoulder, while blue-white supergiant Rigel stands opposite on his west knee.  Just south of the belt, hanging like a sword downward, is M-42, the Great Nebula of Orion, an outstanding binocular and telescopic stellar nursery.  It is part of a huge spiral arm gas cloud, with active starbirth all over the place.   You should be able to glimpse this stellar birthplace as a faint blur with just your naked eyes, and the larger your binoculars or telescope, the better the view becomes. 

Last but certainly not least, in the east rise the hunter’s two faithful companions, Canis major and minor.  Procyon is the bright star in the little dog, and rises minutes before Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.  Sirius dominates the southeast sky by 7 p.m., and as it rises, the turbulent winter air causes it to sparkle with shafts of spectral fire.  Beautiful as the twinkling appears to the naked eye, for astronomers this means the image is blurry; only in space can we truly see “clearly now”.  At eight light years distance, Sirius is the closest star we can easily see with the naked eye from West Florida.  Below Sirius in binoculars is another fine open cluster, M-41, a fitting dessert for New Year’s sky feast.

Events

Sky gazing at Big Lagoon State Park:  January 4 and 25; February 1, 22, and 29; and March 21 and 28. 

For more information on the Escambia Amateur Astronomers and our local star gazes for the public, visit oeaaa.net  or call the sponsor, astronomy teacher Lauren Rogers at Pensacola State College at 484-1155, or e-mail lrogers@pensacolastate.edu. Join the Facebook group, Escambia Amateur Astronomers.