Skywatch Line for Friday, August 11, through Sunday, August 13, 2023
This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, August 11, through Sunday, August 13, written by Sam Salem.
On Friday, Sun rises at 5:57am and sets at 8:03pm; Moon rises at 1:04am and sets at 5:28pm.
The Perseid meteor shower should be at its peak late Saturday night. The moonless sky offers a good opportunity to view the shower. In early evening the meteors will be few, but those that do appear will be long, Earth-grazers skimming far across the top of the atmosphere. As the hours pass and the shower’s radiant point in northern Perseus near Cassiopeia rises higher in the northeast, the meteors will become shorter and more numerous. The most meteors appear from midnight to dawn. You’ll see fewer under light pollution, but the brightest ones will still shine through. The best direction to look is wherever your sky is darkest, usually overhead. The shower’s radiant is the meteors’ perspective point of origin if you could see them coming from far away in space. But the meteors only become visible in their last second or two when they rip into the upper atmosphere, and this can happen anywhere in your sky.
Jupiter, at magnitude –2.5 in the constellation of Aries, rises before or around midnight. Watch for it to come up low in the east-northeast. By the beginning of dawn it shines very high toward the southeast.
Saturn, at magnitude +0.5 in dim constellation of Aquarius, rises in twilight. It’s nearing its August 26th opposition. After dark Saturn glows as the brightest thing low in the east-southeast. It’s highest in the south, and sharpest and steadiest in a telescope, around 2am.
Uranus, at magnitude 5.7 in the constellation of Aries, is nice and high before dawn, about 9 degrees east of Jupiter.
Neptune, at magnitude 7.8 at the Aquarius-Pisces border, rises around nightfall and is high in the south before dawn, about 20 degrees east of Saturn.
August is prime time to observe the Milky Way, especially when there’s no moonlight. After dark, the Milky Way runs from Sagittarius in the south, up and left across Aquila and through the big Summer Triangle very high in the east, and on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus rising low in the north-northeast. Our Milky Way galaxy is a vast collection of hundreds of billions of stars. We’re not in the galaxy’s center, but instead about two-thirds of the way out from center, in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. On August evenings, we gaze toward the galaxy’s center in a dark sky. The band of the Milky Way gets broader and brighter in the direction toward the center. In that direction, you’ll find the Teapot asterism, in the constellation Sagittarius. The Teapot’s pattern is distinctive. You’ll find it southward on August evenings a couple of hours after sunset. Once you find the Teapot, you can use it to guide your eye to the star-rich center of our galaxy. You’ll need a dark sky to find the Teapot. You can see the Teapot even if you can’t see the starry band of the Milky Way.