Pink supermoon

I always note that I’m not really an astrophotographer, and this is readily apparent to anyone who sees my shots, but I do occasionally like to take a snap just to prove I was there. Thus, here’s my photo of the full Moon of April 7, 2020.

There are those who call this the pink Moon, even though it isn’t pink, and a supermoon, which may be an exaggeration even though the Moon is excellent. I’ve read a few sources this morning claiming that we “often” call the April full Moon the “Grass Moon” or the “Egg Moon.” This may well depend on just how you define often.

The super bit comes from the fact that this particular Moon does appear to be slightly larger in the sky–about seven percent bigger than the average full Moon. That’s because the moment of fullness came when the Moon was near perigee, its closest point to Earth during its orbit around us.

For those into photo specs, I made this with a simple Canon PowerShot A530 pointed through the eyepiece of my 8-inch Dobsonian at 50x magnification.

The Moon will be pretty close to full this evening and almost as super, so check it out if you can.

Open houses on hold at Jacobsen Observatory

Photo: Greg Scheiderer

The first of this year’s semimonthly open houses at the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus was scheduled for today. Like many events, the series has been halted by our “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In normal years the events are held on the first and third Tuesdays of each month from April through September, but the observatory’s website notes that the open houses “are suspended until all classes are being held in their regular classrooms and our undergraduate volunteers are back on campus.” Undergrads give talks about astronomy at the events, and volunteers from the Seattle Astronomical Society staff the observatory’s vintage 1892 telescope, which features a 6-inch Brashear objective lens on a Warner & Swasey equatorial mount.

The website notes that organizers hope to welcome students back and to resume the open house series “soon.”

Watch this space for updates.

Summer astronomy from home

Yesterday I did an interview with a writer who is working on an article for a regional travel magazine. Its editors have concluded that most folks aren’t so anxious to go anywhere right now given our situation with coronavirus and stay-at-home orders. They correctly note that astronomy is something that one can enjoy without venturing too far afield.

It’s true! The sky is everywhere. All you have to do is look up! There are lots of interesting things to see that don’t even require a telescope or binoculars. Here’s a quick look at just a few of the things headed our way this spring and summer.

Venus 

Venus is the queen of the evening hours these days and is high in the west at dusk. She’s flirting with the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, and will be closest to this gorgeous star cluster tomorrow, April 3. The Sun will set around 7:40 p.m. Pacific time. Give it until a little after eight for the Pleiades to appear, then they and Venus will hang out together until they all set a bit after 11 o’clock. If you have binoculars or a telescope take a closer look to spot the phase of Venus. It’s a pretty thin crescent right now. The Pleiades look great through binoculars, too!

Comet ATLAS 

Discovered in December, the comet ATLAS, so-named because it was first spotted by astronomers using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Hawaii, has some folks thinking it may become a highly visible naked-eye object, perhaps the best in 20 years. Comets can be pretty fickle, and such predictions are often the kiss of death. But it doesn’t cost anything to keep an eye out.

This article from EarthSky explains how to find ATLAS. If it’s going to be spectacular, that will happen later this month through most of May. Maybe.

Parade of planets 

Your view of Jupiter from your back yard won’t be
quite as great as the 2016 Hubble Space
Telescope photo. Credits: NASA, ESA, and
J. Nichols (University of Leicester)

Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are keeping pretty close company in the pre-dawn sky these days. You can spot all three low in the southeast after about 4:15 a.m. when Mars rises, the last of the trio to peek above the horizon. Mars will appear to move east of the others in the coming weeks and months, but Jupiter and Saturn will stay pretty close together all summer. They reach opposition on July 14 and July 20, respectively. Mars reaches opposition on October 13, and this year’s apparition of the Red Planet will be a good one. They aren’t great naked-eye targets, but Neptune will be at opposition on September 11 and Uranus will be opposite the Sun on Halloween.

Meteor showers 

The Perseid is probably the most well-known of the annual meteor showers. Maybe that’s because it’s pretty consistent and happens in the summer when folks don’t mind being outside in the evening. This year’s peak will occur around August 11-12. The last quarter Moon will brighten the sky somewhat at that time, making some of the dimmer meteors difficult or impossible to spot. While you can catch many of the brighter meteors even from light-polluted cities, the darker the sky you have, the better the show. The Lyrid meteor shower peaks around April 22 and the Eta Aquarids May 5. EarthSky has a full rundown of the year’s meteor showers.

Keep looking up!

A look at the Perseverance mission to Mars

Astronomy events are few and far between these days as clubs cope with stay-at-home restrictions and institutional closures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Most meetings and public star parties have been canceled for March and April while a few wait to see how events unfold.

Like some in arts and entertainment, astronomy clubs are looking for ways to take at least some of their activities online. Case in point, the Seattle Astronomical Society last week held its monthly meeting using the Zoom videoconferencing platform. Members enjoyed a presentation by SAS president John McLaren, who also is a NASA Solar System Ambassador, about the upcoming Perseverance mission to Mars.

A history of Mars exploration

McLaren gave a quick history of Mars exploration, from Mariner 4 which sent 21 photos back from Mars after a fly by in 1965 to the present work of Curiosity. He noted that Viking 1 in 1976 sent back the first photo from the surface of Mars. It was no accident that it shot its own foot.

The first Viking 1 photo from Mars. Credit: NASA

“If we can only get one picture back, this is the most important picture, because they want to see how well the landing gear performed,” McLaren explained. “If they can see how the landing gear did, it gives them an idea of how they can improve the next lander.”

Unfortunately, experiments conducted by Viking were thought to rule out the possibility of life on Mars, though McLaren noted that there’s still some discussion about whether those experiments were conducted and interpreted properly. In any event, the zeal for Mars exploration cooled somewhat until the mid-1990s, when a Mars meteor discovered on Earth was found to contain what could be fossilized bacteria. This sparked new scientific interest in the Red Planet.

We returned to the surface of Mars in 1997 with Sojourner and Pathfinder, which proved we could land and drive around a rover on Mars.

“It truly was the Pathfinder that led us to design more sophisticated vehicles,” McLaren said. Spirit and Opportunity followed in 2004 and Curiosity landed in 2012.

Same car, new features

Perseverance, known as Mars 2020 until a recently concluded naming contest, will be something of a souped-up version of Curiosity. It’s based on the same design, but they’ve re-engineered the wheels, as those on Curiosity showed heavy wear unexpectedly early in its mission. Perseverance will also carry different instruments more specialized for astrobiology and geology. It will drill core samples and leave them cached on Mars awaiting a possible future return mission. And its cameras in general are more powerful and versatile than those of Curiosity. It’s mission is different, too. While Spirit and Opportunity were sent to follow the water and Curiosity is trying to figure out if Mars could have supported microbial life, Perseverance will actually be looking for evidence of that life.

A photo by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the
planned landing site for Perseverance. The
target is the smooth, purple-ish area to
 the right of what looks like a river
delta. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

A big challenge for the engineers will be delivering Perseverance to its landing site, which is in a crater called Jezero on the edge of what appears to have once been a lowland sea. There’s what looks like a former river delta on the edge of Jezero crater.

“The hope is that water was here for a long time, water flowed down here building this silt, that this is the most likely location where they hope to find any signs of life,” McLaren said.

A small target

The challenge is that the landing ellipse, the target they need to hit, is ten times smaller by area than that of Curiosity and some 300 times smaller than Pathfinder’s. They’ll use a technologically enhanced version of the sky crane technique that worked for Curiosity to try to hit that target.

The window for a possible launch opens on July 17 this year and McLaren said NASA expects to land Perseverance on Mars on February 18, 2021.

You can watch a recording of McLaren’s presentation on the Seattle Astronomical Society website.

Amateur astronomy in the age of coronavirus

Coronavirus and social distancing cannot deprive us of our enjoyment of astronomy. One can make the case that the best way to enjoy the hobby is with a telescope in your back yard in the middle of the night, as noted in my most recent tweet of Sky and Telescope’s weekly update of stuff to see.

What better way to practice social distancing that going out by yourself with a telescope in the middle of the night?! Here's what you'll see in the sky this week! https://t.co/NxENojnQPx Via @SkyandTelescope

— Seattle Astronomy (@SeattleAstro) March 13, 2020

On the other hand amateur astronomy is also a highly social endeavor. There are jillions of astronomy clubs all over the country with members devoted to putting on interesting meetings and to sharing their enjoyment of the heavens with their neighbors. The members of these clubs also rely on each other as answerers of how-to questions. Our last post was about Goldendale Sky Village, which is being designed as a spot in which it will be easy for members to observe the night sky together.

In the coronavirus era the comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko has been replaced on astronomy’s hardest-to-spell list by the word “canceled.” As astronomy groups call off their events one sees this AP-Style preferred spelling about as often as “cancelled,” which most dictionaries list as OK, too. Grammar police from both sides tend to weigh in with little impact.

Calling the whole thing off

Regardless of the spelling, a great majority of official astronomy events are being canceled these days. Part of the challenge is that many astronomy organizations hold their gatherings at schools or colleges, libraries, museums, and other sorts of places that are now buttoned up. Just this morning Washington governor Jay Inslee announced a ban on any confab of more than 50 people, and said even smaller meetings had to meet strict guidelines for hygiene and social distancing. Officials urged people to avoid any “unnecessary interactions” at least for the next couple of weeks. As much as I love them, astronomy events probably fall into that category.

The Seattle Astronomical Society has canceled its March meeting which would have been on the 18th. The club is looking at streaming more meetings, as it did with a remote guest speaker last month. Similarly, the Rose City Astronomers in Portland have ditched their regular meeting set for tonight, though club members can check out an online meeting via Zoom. Clubs in Bainbridge Island, Everett, Whatcom County, Island County, Tacoma, Bellevue, Tri-Cities, and Eugene also have nixed many of their events at least for March and some in April.

Taking it online

A couple of major events are planning to go virtual. The Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF), perhaps the hobby’s biggest trade show, is switching to a one-day online event set for April 4. The next meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scheduled for Madison, Wisconsin May 31 to June 4, is looking at moving from an on-site/in-person conference to a fully remote/virtual one.

These are hard times for astronomy bloggers, too. The Museum of Flight, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Pacific Science Center, and Town Hall Seattle are all closed, and these have provided many great astronomy events that we’ve covered over the years. In addition, we haven’t heard anything official from Astronomy on Tap Seattle about the status of its monthly gathering, but it typically draws way more than 50 people, is held in a beer garden, and all of those have been closed, so we can connect the dots on that.

Nevertheless we soldier on! We’ve got a little stretch of clear sky going, so social distance yourself and get out and enjoy it while it’s here. We’ll keep blogging it up and, once this virus is licked, we’ll see you at the next star party. In the meantime, wash your hands.