StarDate

Early risers are in for a treat tomorrow – a tight triangle formed by the Moon, the planet Venus, and the star Spica. It’s in the east-southeast as dawn twilight paints the sky. But the group is quite low, so there’s not much time to look for it. And you’ll need a clear eastern horizon.

The Moon is about as close to the Sun as it can get and still be visible. The Sun will light up only about three percent of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way. But you can see the rest of the lunar disk thanks to earthshine – sunlight reflected off of Earth. You should be able to make out many of its features with your eyes alone. But binoculars will really enhance the view.

By Sunday morning, the Moon will be lost in the Sun’s glare as it heads toward “new” later in the day – the start of a new cycle of phases. It’ll return to view in the evening sky on Wednesday, also a thin crescent.

Venus is the brilliant “morning star,” so it’s an easy target. It’s climbing away from the Sun and into better view day by day. It’ll be in good view well before twilight in a few days.

Spica, the leading light of Virgo, is quite close to the left of Venus. It’s the faintest member of the dawn trio – about half a percent as bright as Venus. But its proximity to the morning star will help you pick it out – completing this beautiful treat in the early morning sky.

We’ll talk about two other morning planets tomorrow.



Script by Damond Benningfield

Two crescents hang out in the twilight the next couple of mornings: the Moon and the planet Venus. They’re quite low in the east at dawn. Venus is the “morning star.” It’s below the Moon tomorrow, but will be closer above the Moon on Saturday.

Venus and the Moon appear as crescents for the same reason – both of them are passing between Earth and the Sun. That means their daylit sides are facing the Sun, while we see mainly their nightsides – the Sun is lighting only a sliver of the hemisphere that’s facing Earth.

It’s obvious that the Moon is a crescent. But you need strong binoculars or a telescope to see Venus as one. If you take a close look, you’ll notice that Venus and the Moon are almost equally lit up – less than 10 percent of the visible surface is in sunlight tomorrow, with the rest in the dark.

Venus and the Moon are headed in opposite directions. The Moon is dropping toward the Sun in our sky. It will cross the line between Sun and Earth on Monday. It’ll be “new” then, beginning a new cycle of phases. Venus crossed that line two weeks ago, so it’s pulling higher into the morning sky. So the crescent will grow a little fatter day by day.

Even though we’re seeing mostly its nightside, Venus is quite bright. That’s because it’s closest to Earth about now, so it’s a big target. And it also reflects a lot of the sunlight that strikes it in our direction – adding to the luster of this beautiful crescent.



Script by Damond Benningfield

Two Mars-bound spacecraft have been just loitering about. They were launched a year ago. But the timing wasn’t right for them to reach Mars. So they were sent to a point in space where the gravity of Earth and the Sun are balanced – a place where they could “loiter.” But now, their time has come. They’ll leave that spot in a few days, beginning their trip to the Red Planet.

Escapade consists of two small spacecraft, called Blue and Gold. After they enter orbit around Mars, they’ll measure its magnetic field and its interactions with the solar wind – a flow of particles from the Sun. That will help scientists understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere.

Escapade was supposed to launch several years ago. But there were problems with its potential rides to space, so it kept getting delayed. And if you miss a launch window, it’s a long time until the next one opens.

You can’t send a craft to Mars anytime you want. You have to wait for the proper alignment – when Earth and Mars are going to be close together. Otherwise, the distance between them is so great that you just can’t get there. That alignment comes about every 26 months.

NASA decided to go ahead and launch Escapade a year early and have the two craft wait in space. They’ll soon fire their engines to nudge them toward Earth. They’ll use Earth’s gravity to kick them toward Mars, with arrival at the Red Planet in September.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The solar system provides some handy “parking spots” for spacecraft. They’re steady locations for watching Earth, the Sun, or the rest of the universe.
They’re called Lagrange points. They’re small regions in space where the gravity of two bodies is balanced. An object can stay at a Lagrange point with little effort.
Space agencies take advantage of that gravitational quirk by placing probes there. For any two astronomical objects, such as Earth and the Sun, there are five Lagrange points. But some of them are more useful than others.
The point known as L2 has been especially popular. It’s a million miles on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. Normally, a spacecraft at that distance would move a little slower than Earth and fall behind it. But at L2 it can stay in place – almost. Over time, the craft would slowly drift away. So instead, it orbits that point – keeping it locked in position.
From L2, a space telescope has a clear view of the universe, unobstructed by Earth itself. But it stays close enough to Earth to remain in easy contact. So more than a dozen space telescopes have settled in there, including the James Webb telescope. When a telescope’s job is done, it fires its thrusters to leave L2 so it won’t interfere with ongoing missions.
For the past year, L2 also served as a parking spot for a pair of probes bound for Mars. We’ll have more about that tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The waning Moon anchors a beautiful lineup in tomorrow’s early-morning sky. At dawn, the star Regulus – the heart of the lion – is close above the Moon. The brilliant planet Jupiter is to the upper right of the Moon, with Mars a little farther along the same line.

Mars and Jupiter are the fourth and fifth planets from the Sun, with Jupiter about three times farther out. The gap between them is more than 300 million miles. But that space is far from empty. Instead, it’s home to the asteroid belt – a wide band of debris.

So far, astronomers have cataloged about one-and-a-half million objects in the belt. The largest is about 600 miles across. The smallest are about the size of a bus. But the suspected population is far larger. There could be more than a million that are at least one kilometer in diameter, and millions upon millions of smaller ones.

Current theories say the belt probably is debris from a planet that never was. Many of the solid chunks of material that came together to form the planets inhabited the region when the solar system was young. Left on their own, they might have come together to make a planet. But Jupiter’s gravity kept that from happening. It kicked many of the pieces out of the solar system. And it stirred up the others, preventing them from coalescing – filling the space between Mars and Jupiter with a bunch of leftovers from the birth of the planets.

Script by Damond Benningfield