WEBVTT 00:00:07.910 --> 00:00:10.789 Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to this episode 00:00:10.789 --> 00:00:14.369 of Star Trails. Drew here and I'll be your guide 00:00:14.369 --> 00:00:17.109 to the night sky for the week starting July the 00:00:17.109 --> 00:00:21.550 13th through the 19th. This week we welcome darker 00:00:21.550 --> 00:00:24.949 skies, the return of Jupiter, and the first traces 00:00:24.949 --> 00:00:28.519 of the Perseid meteor shower. Later in the show, 00:00:28.719 --> 00:00:31.239 we turn the telescope around and examine how 00:00:31.239 --> 00:00:34.340 the earth looks from different areas of our solar 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:37.420 system. Whether you're tuning in from the backyard, 00:00:37.700 --> 00:00:40.520 the balcony, or just your imagination, I'm glad 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:43.679 you're here. So find a cozy spot, let your eyes 00:00:43.679 --> 00:00:46.380 adjust, and let's see what the sky holds for 00:00:46.380 --> 00:00:51.500 us this week. Let's start with the moon. We're 00:00:51.500 --> 00:00:54.320 coming off the full buck moon, which reached 00:00:54.320 --> 00:00:57.460 its peak on July the 10th. Hopefully, some of 00:00:57.460 --> 00:01:00.299 you managed to catch this big moon as it stayed 00:01:00.299 --> 00:01:04.200 fairly low to the horizon. Sadly, we had thunderstorms 00:01:04.200 --> 00:01:07.620 here, so it wasn't visible. The moon will spin 00:01:07.620 --> 00:01:10.299 the early part of this week in its waning gibbous 00:01:10.299 --> 00:01:13.420 phase, gradually shrinking in brightness each 00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:16.879 night. By Thursday, it reaches the last quarter 00:01:16.879 --> 00:01:19.640 phase, with about half the moon illuminated. 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:23.219 Through a scope or binoculars, you'll see shadows 00:01:23.219 --> 00:01:26.500 stretching across the surface. highlighting craters 00:01:26.500 --> 00:01:29.400 and mountain ranges near the terminator line. 00:01:30.099 --> 00:01:32.379 By the end of the week, the moon will be entering 00:01:32.379 --> 00:01:36.079 a waning crescent phase. That means darker skies 00:01:36.079 --> 00:01:39.219 for tracking down faint galaxies, star clusters, 00:01:39.620 --> 00:01:44.459 and nebula. Now onto the planets. In the evening 00:01:44.459 --> 00:01:47.579 sky, you'll still be able to spot Mars glowing 00:01:47.579 --> 00:01:51.129 with its characteristic reddish hue. It's faint 00:01:51.129 --> 00:01:53.670 this time of the year, but still visible just 00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:57.810 after sunset, low in the western sky. Mercury 00:01:57.810 --> 00:02:00.849 is also hanging around after sunset, especially 00:02:00.849 --> 00:02:04.109 early in the week, but it's hugging the horizon, 00:02:04.209 --> 00:02:07.150 so you'll need a clear flat view and some luck 00:02:07.150 --> 00:02:11.069 with twilight timing. The best planetary viewing 00:02:11.069 --> 00:02:15.330 is for early risers. Venus remains dazzling in 00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:18.370 the morning sky. This week it's shining as bright 00:02:18.370 --> 00:02:21.590 as ever, almost like a headlight, and gliding 00:02:21.590 --> 00:02:25.150 near the famous Hyades and Pleiades star clusters 00:02:25.150 --> 00:02:29.250 in the constellation Taurus. This alignment creates 00:02:29.250 --> 00:02:32.449 a beautiful cosmic scene through binoculars or 00:02:32.449 --> 00:02:36.370 a small telescope. Saturn rises in the late evening 00:02:36.370 --> 00:02:39.389 and climbs higher into the southern sky before 00:02:39.389 --> 00:02:42.949 dawn. It's slowly moving closer to opposition 00:02:42.949 --> 00:02:46.229 later this summer, so the ringed planet is looking 00:02:46.229 --> 00:02:49.650 especially good. Look for its golden glow near 00:02:49.650 --> 00:02:53.909 the constellation Aquarius. Uranus is up too, 00:02:54.129 --> 00:02:56.949 hovering close to the Pleiades and Taurus, not 00:02:56.949 --> 00:03:01.430 far from Venus. Neptune is nearby, a little east 00:03:01.430 --> 00:03:05.009 of Saturn. You can catch both Saturn and Neptune 00:03:05.009 --> 00:03:08.689 about a degree apart this week, roughly the width 00:03:08.689 --> 00:03:11.900 of the full moon. As always, you'll need a good 00:03:11.900 --> 00:03:15.120 scope or binoculars to see Uranus and Neptune. 00:03:16.199 --> 00:03:18.939 And finally, Jupiter is slowly creeping back 00:03:18.939 --> 00:03:22.259 into the morning sky. It's faint right now, but 00:03:22.259 --> 00:03:24.780 you might catch it above the eastern horizon 00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:28.680 before sunrise by the weekend. Our constellations 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:31.840 and deep sky treasures are much the same as previous 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:35.319 weeks. Overhead, the Summer Triangle, made up 00:03:35.319 --> 00:03:38.680 of the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, 00:03:39.139 --> 00:03:43.280 is dominating the sky after dark. In Lyra, try 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:46.560 spotting the famous Ring Nebula, also known as 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:50.419 M57. You'll need a telescope to see its donut 00:03:50.419 --> 00:03:53.180 -like shape, but it's well worth the effort. 00:03:54.020 --> 00:03:57.240 Over in Cygnus, the Swan, check out the dumbbell 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:02.210 nebula M27. This is a planetary nebula visible 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:05.849 even through binoculars under dark skies. And 00:04:05.849 --> 00:04:09.370 if you've got a scope and a good Oxygen 3 filter, 00:04:09.689 --> 00:04:13.490 swing over to the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant 00:04:13.490 --> 00:04:16.430 that stretches like wisps of smoke across the 00:04:16.430 --> 00:04:20.610 sky. Draco coils high in the north, and if you 00:04:20.610 --> 00:04:23.170 have a telescope, see if you can spot the tiny 00:04:23.170 --> 00:04:27.470 but fascinating Cat's Eye Nebula. Looking lower 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:31.149 toward the southern horizon, Scorpius and Sagittarius 00:04:31.149 --> 00:04:34.769 are rich with targets. Scorpius hosts the bright 00:04:34.769 --> 00:04:38.610 red supergiant Antares, and Sagittarius, the 00:04:38.610 --> 00:04:41.910 teapot, is packed with nebula and star clouds 00:04:41.910 --> 00:04:45.149 along the heart of the Milky Way. In that area, 00:04:45.209 --> 00:04:49.569 check out the lagoon nebula M8, the wild duck 00:04:49.569 --> 00:04:54.279 cluster M11, and the butterfly cluster. The Milky 00:04:54.279 --> 00:04:57.220 Way's core is glowing this time of year, so take 00:04:57.220 --> 00:05:00.240 your time scanning through this star -rich region. 00:05:01.259 --> 00:05:04.399 And here's a heads up, the Perseid meteor shower 00:05:04.399 --> 00:05:07.800 begins this week. While it won't peak until mid 00:05:07.800 --> 00:05:10.720 -August, the first few meteors may begin to streak 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:15.459 across the sky by July 17th. With the moon waning 00:05:15.459 --> 00:05:18.439 and rising later each night, early morning hours 00:05:18.439 --> 00:05:21.439 this week offer a growing window of dark skies. 00:05:21.829 --> 00:05:24.870 If you're between midnight and dawn, you just 00:05:24.870 --> 00:05:28.410 might catch an early Perseid or two. And if you're 00:05:28.410 --> 00:05:31.189 observing Saturn this week, keep an eye out for 00:05:31.189 --> 00:05:35.250 Titan, its largest moon. A Titan shadow transit 00:05:35.250 --> 00:05:37.949 is predicted for the early hours of July the 00:05:37.949 --> 00:05:42.230 18th. This transit is visible in backyard telescopes. 00:05:42.769 --> 00:05:45.589 I'll include a link in the show notes with additional 00:05:45.589 --> 00:05:48.889 information on this phenomenon, upcoming transits, 00:05:49.069 --> 00:05:59.009 and how to catch them. Each week we peer out 00:05:59.009 --> 00:06:02.930 into the cosmos describing the planets and constellations 00:06:02.930 --> 00:06:06.589 that grace our sky. We chart the orbits of worlds, 00:06:06.769 --> 00:06:09.649 track their brightness, and note how their appearance 00:06:09.649 --> 00:06:13.170 changes with the seasons. We talk about how bright 00:06:13.170 --> 00:06:17.149 Venus is and the red glow of Mars. We're always 00:06:17.149 --> 00:06:20.310 describing what these distant places look like 00:06:20.310 --> 00:06:24.060 from here on Earth. But what if we flip that 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:28.279 around? What if instead we asked, what does Earth 00:06:28.279 --> 00:06:31.779 look like from other planets? How do we appear 00:06:31.779 --> 00:06:36.000 in someone else's sky? Let's take a little journey, 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:39.879 not outward, but inward, and look at ourselves 00:06:39.879 --> 00:06:43.519 through distant eyes. To begin, we head over 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:47.180 to our nearest neighbor, Venus. If you could 00:06:47.180 --> 00:06:50.160 stand on the surface of Venus and somehow peer 00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:53.339 through the thick sulfuric clouds, you'd see 00:06:53.339 --> 00:06:57.279 Earth as a brilliant bluish star, never far from 00:06:57.279 --> 00:07:01.100 the Sun. Just as Venus plays the role of Morning 00:07:01.100 --> 00:07:04.459 Star or Evening Star for us, we play that same 00:07:04.459 --> 00:07:08.540 role for them. Always close to the Sun, always 00:07:08.540 --> 00:07:12.480 confined to the twilight sky. At its brightest, 00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:16.779 Earth would gleam at magnitude negative 4 .1, 00:07:17.100 --> 00:07:20.220 nearly as bright as Venus looks from Earth. With 00:07:20.220 --> 00:07:23.100 a nice telescope on Venus, you'd see the Moon 00:07:23.100 --> 00:07:28.060 as a dot alongside Earth. From Venus, Earth would 00:07:28.060 --> 00:07:32.100 show slight phases, waxing and waning, shifting 00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:35.680 from gibbous to full and back again. You'd never 00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:38.680 see Earth as a crescent from Venus. It's too 00:07:38.680 --> 00:07:42.129 far out for that. Now, from Earth, we never see 00:07:42.129 --> 00:07:44.910 the outer planets in phases, so why would we 00:07:44.910 --> 00:07:48.730 see Earth in phases from Venus? It has to do 00:07:48.730 --> 00:07:52.209 with the Earth -Venus -Sun angle, which can become 00:07:52.209 --> 00:07:54.589 quite significant depending on where the planets 00:07:54.589 --> 00:07:58.790 are in their respective orbits. At greatest elongation, 00:07:58.889 --> 00:08:01.529 when Earth is at the maximum angle away from 00:08:01.529 --> 00:08:05.290 the Sun in the Venusian sky, Earth appears not 00:08:05.290 --> 00:08:09.410 directly opposite the Sun, but offset. So only 00:08:09.410 --> 00:08:12.430 part of its dayside is visible, rendering Earth 00:08:12.430 --> 00:08:16.009 as a bright gibbous disk. When it's directly 00:08:16.009 --> 00:08:19.449 behind the Sun at superior conjunction, Earth 00:08:19.449 --> 00:08:22.889 is fully illuminated and looks full from Venus. 00:08:23.990 --> 00:08:26.990 And Earth has been seen from even closer to the 00:08:26.990 --> 00:08:32.080 Sun. In 2005, NASA's MESSENGER probe en route 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:35.600 to Mercury turned its camera outward and photographed 00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:39.940 Earth from 66 million miles away. We appeared 00:08:39.940 --> 00:08:43.000 as a bright star, outshining everything else 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:46.539 in the field. Now let's journey out to Mars. 00:08:47.500 --> 00:08:50.480 From the red planet, Earth appears smaller and 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:53.679 dimmer. To Martian eyes, Earth would be a bright 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:57.519 speck, rarely far from the Sun. A telescopic 00:08:57.519 --> 00:09:00.600 view of Earth has been recorded from Mars, and 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:06.279 it's a stunning image. In 2007, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance 00:09:06.279 --> 00:09:09.059 Orbiter turned its camera back toward us and 00:09:09.059 --> 00:09:11.840 captured the Earth and the Moon floating side 00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:16.240 by side in space, both in half -phase. You can 00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:19.580 actually see detail, not just light, but texture, 00:09:19.879 --> 00:09:23.039 weather systems, and the oceans. That's from 00:09:23.039 --> 00:09:28.720 127 million miles away. Now, let's go even farther 00:09:28.720 --> 00:09:33.320 out, to the orbit of Saturn. In 2013, the Cassini 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:36.100 spacecraft took a moment from its study of the 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:39.600 ringed giant to look homeward. There, just below 00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:43.059 Saturn's vast rings, was a tiny point of light. 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:47.070 That point was us. The photo was titled The Day 00:09:47.070 --> 00:09:50.149 the Earth Smiled. For the first time, people 00:09:50.149 --> 00:09:53.570 on Earth were invited to look up and wave, while 00:09:53.570 --> 00:09:56.590 a camera out in the Saturnian system captured 00:09:56.590 --> 00:10:00.610 our image. From nearly a billion miles away, 00:10:00.730 --> 00:10:03.769 Earth was just a pixel, a flicker of sunlight 00:10:03.769 --> 00:10:07.629 reflecting off oceans, ice, clouds, and continents, 00:10:07.950 --> 00:10:11.750 all flattened into one shining speck. And that 00:10:11.750 --> 00:10:16.029 image echoes another. Back in 1990, the Voyager 00:10:16.029 --> 00:10:19.970 1 spacecraft, now past Neptune, was instructed 00:10:19.970 --> 00:10:23.009 to turn around and take one final photo of its 00:10:23.009 --> 00:10:26.509 home planet. What it captured became one of the 00:10:26.509 --> 00:10:30.210 most iconic images in human history. We talked 00:10:30.210 --> 00:10:34.070 about that image back on episode 51 earlier this 00:10:34.070 --> 00:10:37.700 year. Of course, this is the famous pale blue 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:41.639 dot image where Earth, less than a pixel in size, 00:10:41.919 --> 00:10:45.940 is caught in a ray of sunlight. It was Carl Sagan 00:10:45.940 --> 00:10:49.980 who gave the photo its name and its voice. Consider 00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:55.159 again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's 00:10:55.159 --> 00:11:00.720 us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, 00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:04.110 everyone you ever heard of. Every human being, 00:11:04.370 --> 00:11:08.210 whoever was, lived out their lives. That image 00:11:08.210 --> 00:11:11.309 wasn't just a picture. It was a mirror, a chance 00:11:11.309 --> 00:11:14.289 to see ourselves not as giants, but as fragile, 00:11:14.710 --> 00:11:18.529 temporary, and rare. From out there, we're not 00:11:18.529 --> 00:11:21.629 the center of the universe. We're not even especially 00:11:21.629 --> 00:11:24.549 noticeable. We're just another point of light 00:11:24.549 --> 00:11:28.049 among billions, brighter than some, fainter than 00:11:28.049 --> 00:11:32.259 others. It's a useful shift in perspective. Looking 00:11:32.259 --> 00:11:35.519 back at Earth reminds us that astronomy isn't 00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:39.580 only about the distant and the unfamiliar. Sometimes 00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:42.500 it's about remembering where we are in all of 00:11:42.500 --> 00:11:46.159 this, how we fit into the grand map of the solar 00:11:46.159 --> 00:11:49.879 system, and the quiet role we play in someone 00:11:49.879 --> 00:11:58.100 else's sky. If the stars spoke to you this week 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:00.559 or if a question's been on your mind, I'd love 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:04.840 to hear it. Visit our website starrtrails .show 00:12:04.840 --> 00:12:08.460 where you can contact me and explore past episodes. 00:12:09.299 --> 00:12:12.139 Be sure to follow us on Blue Sky and YouTube. 00:12:12.559 --> 00:12:15.460 Links are in the show notes. Until we meet again 00:12:15.460 --> 00:12:18.159 beneath the stars, clear skies everyone.