Moon passes close to galactic anticenter star
9 comments Print Me Email to FriendTonight is Friday, Nov 14 2008
The slightly past full waning gibbous moon rises at early evening. If you look closely, you’ll see a star near the moon. It’s El Nath, the star representing Taurus the Bull’s northern horn. It’s a fairly bright star, though it’ll be obscured by the moonlit glare, and the moon will edge closer to El Nath throughout the night.
El nath is a special star, because it pretty much aligns with the galactic anticenter. The galactic anticenter refers to the direction in the sky that’s about-face from the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
The moon always moves in front of the background stars, traveling its own diameter eastward every hour. By tomorrow night, the moon’s change of position will be obvious. It will have moved past Elnath and into the constellation Gemini the Twins.
For a fixed reference to the galactic anticenter, use the star El Nath. The galactic center resides some 3 degrees east of El Nath, the constellation Taurus the Bull’s second brightest star. By the way, the width of your thumb at an arm length away spans roughly 3 degrees of sky.
Dear Bruce McClure, I am following your website since 2years. I find your website and comments very useful. When i went to a rural area nearby there was a dark sky. To study sky i took with me a sky chart of this evening.But it was insufficient to observe.Will you please recommend a solution to this problem. I had a telescope with me also.
Thanking you,
Akshay
Hi Akshay,
Can you tell me more specifically what you’re looking for? I’ll try to direct you or to find a sky chart that will work for you. The sky charts on EarthSky Tonight are restricted to a rather small section of sky. If you wish to find your way around the night sky in any direction at any time of night, I highly recommend a planisphere – a rotating star finder that shows the whole sky for any time and date.
Bruce
Thanks for that. I was looking for basic stars and galixies that were given in the sky chart and the brightest star of the constellations. I find very ease in observation from my city as there is a little pollution
Thanks for that. I was looking for basic stars and galixies that were given in the sky chart and the brightest star of the constellations. I find very ease in observation from my city as there is a little pollution
Dear Mr. McClure, I am completely uneducated in astronomy but am curious about a particular star (I assume). The past two evenings we’ve been able to see a very bright and very colorful star to the east at around 11 pm EST. I’m located in Pilot Mountain, NC. When looking at it the moon has been to the northwest of it. It’s been very colorful these past two evenings with clear flashes of red, green, and blue. My wife thought it might be a supernova, but neither one of us is sure. Can you tell us what this is? Forgive me for not knowing enough about our beautiful night time sky.
Thanks
A.G. Edmonds
Hi A.G.
Please feel free to ask questions anytime. I’m certain that you were looking at Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. When a bright star is close to the horizon, the starlight has to pass through more layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere acts like a prism, splitting the starlight into the colors of the rainbow.
All the stars rise about 4 minutes earlier every night. In other words, Sirius will rise about 1/2 hour earlier a week from now and 2 hours earlier one month from now. If you are familar with the constellation Orion, you can verify that you’re looking at Sirius because “Orion’s Belt” always points to this star.
I enclose a preview of our December 9 EarthSky Tonight, which features Sirius, the Dog star.
Bruce
Hi Bruce, I would like to know what was going on in the skies over the west end of Odessa,Texas Interstate 20 mile marker 110 in the early hours of February 4th, 2008. It was almost 3am Texas time which was also the time that my 20 year old nephew died in California. Thank you, Mim
Hi Mim.
Did you see a waning crescent moon with two bright points of light on the morning of February 4, 2008? If so, that was the moon, Venus and Jupiter. There is a photo of the event on the radio show Venus and Jupiter conjunction. Moon nearby!.
Bruce
What are the 2 bright points of light around the moon, I saw them last night Dec 1 2008 and again tonight Dec 2 2008?