TGT #24T - Can You Get Conked by a Meteor Shower? - Saturns for Cloudy Nights - Finding Planets in Different Ways
TGT 11/1/24: All Five Evening Planets Found by Time, Brightness, or Moon Passage; Saturnian Night Life; Can You Be Hit By A Taurid Meteor? Maybe....
Cover Photo - Potentially Hazardous Taurids?
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Potentially Hazardous Taurids?
Welcome to Issue 24T!
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - A Bright Star, a Star Cluster, and a Planet Covered Over* Observing—Plan-et - Finding All Five (Six) Naked-Eye Planets by Time of Night, Brightness, Moon Passing
* For the Future - The Leonids a’Coming
* Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the Evening - A Montage
* Border Crossings - NoneThis Just In -
* The Fiery Tears of Taurus the Bull (Cover Story)Astronomy in Everyday Life - Put a Ring On It—Your Night Life, That Is.
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24T!
At last, the nights here in Alabama are clearer and oh, so much cooler! Nearly every night was a great opportunity to search for Comet 2023 A3. A montage of photos showing its daily changes is below.
Meanwhile, all the five traditional ‘wandering stars’ are visible in the evening sky….but just not all at the same time. Huh? Read the Sky Planning Calendar!
Visible more than half of the night is Saturn, the Ringed Planet. But if your nights are cloudy, there are still Saturnian delights you can enjoy! Find out in the Astronomy in Everyday Life section!
We have a pair of related meteor showers this half-month, the Northern and Southern Taurids. Both come from debris of Comet Encke, visible poorly last year and once the shortest orbital period comet. But there is more to the Taurids and Encke. Fireballs, and possibly Potentially Hazardous Asteroids hidden within the long-term orbiting debris. See This Just In.
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Personal news: I will be in Sylacauga, AL, on November 30th, the actual anniversary date for the Meteor That Hit a Mrs., back in 1954. I will be among the speakers talking about the event—myself on the astronomy and the current status of it all—and I invite any readers who can get there to say hello!
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TGT News: I have removed the paid subscription level. Refunds have been automatically sent out, and all benefits from having a paid subscription are now moot.
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
November 1 New Moon.
November 3 A challenging observation….earn points first for finding the crescent Moon low in the SW of your evening twilight, without binoculars. Then look to find your last glimpse of Antares, a summer red giant, left and slightly above the Moon. Next challenge points are earned for seeing two-degrees or so to the right and slightly lower than the Moon for Mercury. No points to this next challenge, though—can you spot Venus, brilliant to the Moon’s upper left? Use binoculars to see a star very close the our sister planet.
Incidentally, Antares will be occulted around 8PM Central Time (and that’s standard time, not daylight savings time anymore), but only visible in the the South Pacific. North Americans just get a really close conjunction with Luna.
November 4 Venus is 3 degrees to the North of the Moon.
November 8-9 The midnight between these dates —East Coast hours—has the official First Quarter moon phase. Look for it to be perfectly straight. Or is it? Are craters on the terminator [the day-night line—and not Arnold….] or their shadows making the line wavy?
November 10 Find Saturn also very close to the Moon, but to the Moon’s left. It will also be covered up in the evening, and this is a Southeast US and Caribbean show.
November 14 Perigee.
November 15 A Full Moon and it is going through the Pleiades star cluster during this day’s evening into the next morning. Stars will disappear and reappear on the Moon’s two sides for a good part of the night.
Observing---Plan-et
==All Wandering Stars Visible in Evening, Just Not at the Same Time==
All five naked-eye, traditional ‘wandering stars’ are visible in the evening. Let’s change the Observation Game. Let’s see how the planets stack up via two characteristics….brightness and time of visibility. How many are visible during every evening hour?
Let’s start with the latter first, Planets by Time:
THREE PLANETS THEN TWO: From sunset until nearly 6PM local time—all times are approximate because of where you are east or west compared to your time zone’s central longitude—Mercury will be visible in the twilight (hence, not really in the dark evening sky but we won’t be picky). Additionally, Venus will be up nearby, but only until 7PM. Saturn will be up in the South.
TWO, THEN TWO THEN THREE: Jupiter rises at the Venus sets around 7PM (your count stays at TWO, Venus and Saturn, then Jupiter and Saturn) on the 1st and then afterwards, until the count rises to THREE at midmonth (Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn) but again, only until around 7PM.
NOW TWO THEN THREE: After Venus sets, you have just TWO, Jupiter and Saturn, until Mars rises around 10 PM (9:30 at midmonth) and you have THREE again.
THREE BECOMES TWO: Saturn sets around 1:30 AM on the 1st—12:30 by midmonth—so after that, you are down to TWO, Mars and Jupiter, until dawn.
So there is always at least two visible during any hour between sunset and sunrise, but not all five.
How about ranking by brightness, their magnitudes?:
Venus, as always, is the #1 on the list. It is magnitude -4, technically visible even in daylight, though one almost always needs a telescope or binoculars, and even more helpful, a very nearby Moon, to catch. It is the brightest thing other than the Moon during any of these evenings.
Jupiter is the #2, as it almost always is; it is on rare occasions surpassed by Mars but not now. It is shining at -2.8 for most of the night, as it approaches its opposition to the Sun date, and is the brightest ‘star’ once Venus sets.
#3 at the start of the month is Mercury, at magnitude -0.3, but fading slightly by month’s end, and gone by around 6PM. Mercury falls to #4 by then, replaced by Mars, now brightening as it is approaching opposition after Jupiter, starting at magnitude -0.1 but rising to magnitude -0.5 by midmonth, passing Mercury. Don’t confuse Mercury with Antares, which the small world passes 2-degrees to the North on the 9th. It will be second to Jupiter once Mars clears over the horizon later in the evening.
The number 5 planet is Saturn at a ‘measly’ +0.8, not shabby as a star but the last ‘ancient’ planet for the unaided eye…. It is visible until after midnight but never anything but three brightests, after Jupiter and Mars.
…and that last statement is said because the first ‘modern’ world, Uranus, is also visible to the unaided eye, at magnitude +5.6, just 0.4 above the traditional naked eye limit. If your eyes are very sharp (yours truly’s are no longer) you might see it in Taurus, not too far from Jupiter.
Need help finding these planets?
Use the Moon passages in the Section above! Well, not for all. The Moon passes Uranus on the 16th, the day before that giant world reaches opposition and rises as the Sun sets. Mars and Jupiter get their passes during our next Issue’s time-frame.
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Earth, visible only under your feet, meets up with two related meteor showers this month, the South Taurids peaking on the 5th, and the North Taurids during the overnight period of the 11th-12th. See the article below for more information
For the Future
In addition to the Moon passing Uranus, Mars and Jupiter in the second half of the month, we will have the Leonid meteor shower on the 17th. Will we have a meteor storm? If not, when? We’ll talk about that in the next The Galactic Times.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (Comet 2023 A3) in the Evening
All photos by the author, notice that over the week, the Comet rose higher into the light-polluted sky and further to the left (East, actually from W to SW). The tail shortened and the comet faded, too.
Border Crossings
The reality and the unreality still don’t mix this half-month. The Sun spends its days in Libra this entire fortnight. Astrologers say it is in Scorpio (which, as mentioned last month, isn’t a constellation—that would be Scorpius…..which is a story for November and December….).
This Just In —
The Fiery Tears of Taurus the Bull
Between two major meteor showers, the October Orionids and the December Geminids, are a pair of related minor showers, the Northern Taurids and the Southern Taurids. (See Cover Photo). Both sets of debris orbit the Sun in the path of Comet Encke, a rapidly orbiting comet taking just over 3 years to make a turn around the Sun (it used to be the shortest period but a recent tiny comet beats it by 0.1 years). Rather, they orbit in the PATHS—plural—of the Comet. Even more, different pieces of the Comet. It has been suggested that the original Comet Encke, named the Encke Complex, was at least 100 kilometers in diameter, perhaps even larger, and somewhere around ten to twenty thousand years ago, it broke apart into multiple pieces. One of those is labeled 2004 TG10, an asteroid designation, and a source of the Northern Taurids. Because of the existence of such large fragments, and not the inch-sized or smaller bits most meteors tend to be, this meteor stream could be a source of PHAs—Potentially Hazardous Asteroids—that could hit the Earth, or so some researchers hypothesize.
Before we get to the study of danger, let’s look at the showers for a moment.
The Northern Taurids (NTA) peak on November 12th, though some years it appears to peak a day or two earlier. It has a rate at maximum of 10 - 15 meteors per hour, a ZHR (Zenithal Hourly Rate) which means this max is reached if the radiant, the point the meteors appear to come at us in the sky, is overhead, at the Zenith. That would be around the North latitudes of the low to mid-20’s. But North Americans, Eastern Asians in Japan, China, or Korea, and southern Europeans are not that far off enough that the observed rate is too different.
[Note: the observed rate changes not only with latitude but by the hour. For nearly all meteor showers, the rates are minimal in the evenings until the radiant point gets over your horizon and maximizes as dawn approaches. This is because as evening starts we are facing away from the source of the meteoroids—they are at our backs—and we simply see more as we turn into ‘the wind’. There are exceptions.]
But the debris stream of the NTA is wide and flat and thus these Taurids can be seen from October 13 until December 2, nearly a month either way.
The Southern Taurids (STA) are also a wide debris stream, lasting from September 23 until December 8, and is weaker. Sources vary in its ZHR rate; some quote only 5 meteors per hour at peak, others 10. It *may* have two peaks. The International Meteor Organization claims the peak is October 10, and that is what the venerable Sky and Telescope magazine puts as its date. The American Meteor Society and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada list its peak on November 5, with the higher ZHR amount.
Between October 12 and December 2nd, both streams are hitting us at the same time so observers will be treated to an even greater number of meteors in the sky. The better news is while both may be comparatively weak showers individually, together they apparently contain larger than average amounts of bigger meteoroids, and move fairly slowly; the two aspects combine to produce a greater abundance of fireballs during the overlap time.
Some parts of Encke’s debris, despite the wide, flat spreads, are actually in resonance with Jupiter; they are concentrated or constrained to orbit the Sun in about 1/4th the orbital period of the giant planet (actually a 7:2 ratio). Recently it has been discovered that there are several 100+ meter diameter asteroids that orbit in similar resonant orbits like Encke. With bodies this large, and intersecting the Earth’s orbit (Encke itself gets within 25 million kilometers, and will nearly so in 2030), these fall into the category of the PHAs. After all, the great Tunguska event, when a large meteor struck in Siberia leveling trees for hundreds of miles but leaving no crater way back in 1908, is believed to have been a (large) piece of Encke. The swarms’ PHAs therefore need to be watched for as part of our asteroid defense projects.
Or do they?
A research study discussed in a press conference at the Division of Planetary Sciences of the AAS early in October, done by Quanzhi Ye and 6 others, looked for PHA signatures in the visible Taurids. It has been noted that there is a correlation between the number of meteors seen each year and the distance the Earth is from the center of debris swarm. The swarms do vary a bit from year to year as the gravities of the planets shift them around. In the centers of the swarms would be where the PHAs would be found. Using the Zwicky Transient Facility, in 2022, they found fewer PHA candidates than expected, no more than 9 to 14. This results may indicate that the proto-Encke, the Encke Complex, may be smaller than hypothesized, only 10km.
So when you are observing the fireballs of Taurus, you need not likely worry about becoming the next person getting hit by a PHA, like Mrs. Ann Hodges in Sylacauga, AL in 1954.
Probably…..
Astronomy in Everyday Life
Put A Ring On It— Your Night Life, That Is.
It is a toss-up in which planet has to be the most popular to use in naming something. Is it Venus? Is it Pluto? More likely it is Saturn. The ringed planet is the observational jewel of the Solar System. So shouldn’t you have a jewel of a night when the skies are cloudy?
I was inspired when this popped up unexpectedly:
This one cropped up on my Facebook! It is in New Orleans.
Of course, you need to have the appropriate drink…..the Saturn tiki drink! Made with
1 1/4 ounces gin
1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/2 ounce passion fruit syrup*
1/4 ounce falernum
1/4 ounce orgeat
Garnish: edible flower
Garnish: orange twist
Search for it on liquor.com……..
It’s enough to make you hungry for a cloudy night and go out indoors rather than outdoors somewhere…..
Till next issue,
Dr. Larry Krumenaker