Sky this Week

The following is a brief summary of some things to check out in the sky, during this week January 6 to January 12.

International Space Station
There are no bright passes this week.
Sun
The sun rises at 7:32 am this week for us at latitude 40 degrees north. It starts setting a little later this week at 4:53 pm to 4:59 pm.
A high latitude sunpot with a magnetic polarity opposite those currently being observed appeared on the solar disk on Janurary 3rd. Such an occurence always marks the beginning of the next solar cycle according to the folks at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. This region 10981 is currently located in the north central region of the solar disk. It is very small and decreasing in size. It will probably not be visible in a few days.

Moon
The moon will be “new” on Tuesday at 4:37 am MST. On Wednesday you might be able to spot a very thin crescent moon very low in the southwest before it sets at 6:05 pm at age 1.56 days.
On Thursday you should have no difficulty spotting the 2.6 day old moon which sets at 7:22 pm. Look for crater Langrenus slightly south of the center of the crescent. Mare Crisium should be a good to view in your telescope as the rising sun on the moon surface casts long shadows which increases contrast. See if you can locate the 31 mile wide block known as Cape Agarum in the southeastern part of Mare Crisium. This is the highest point in Mare Crisium and rises 18 thousand feet above the plane.
On Friday Jan 11th, the moon sets at 8:30 pm. Locate craters Messier and Messier A in northern Mare Fecundiatits. Note the remarkable parallel rays extending westward. These rays were probably formed by collisions with different objects impacting at very shallow angles of 1 to 5 degrees .
On Saturday the moon will be 4.6 days past new. In the north look for the remarkable craters Hercules and Atlas. Mare Fecunditatis is in full view as well.
Planets
Mercury appears low in the southwestern sky after sunset this week in constellation Capricornus. It sets at 6:09 pm on Saturday.

Venus is visible early in the morning low in the southeastern sky in the constellation Scorpius; it is a briliant -3.9 magnitude in brightness and 13.7 arc sec across.

Mars continues a westward trek in constellation Taurus. The disk shrinks from 15.1 to 14.4 arc across and its brightness dims from magnitude -1.4 to -1.2 . On Saturday evening around 11 pm, the martian feature Mare Serenum will be visible near the central meridan.

Jupiter makes its debut about an hour before sunrise, very low in the southwest in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Dark Sky
This a great week to view objects in a dark sky. Located very high up in the sky (around 65 degrees) is the constellation Taurus. Look for a ‘V’ shape asterism of dim stars. The point of the V points to the lower right with a bright orange-red star marking the left eye of Taurus the bull. This “V” shape is a cluster know as the Hyades. Look even farther up and to the right and spot Messier 45, a small cluster of 6 to 9 stars, depending on how dark your skies are. This cluster is also called the Pleades or the seven sisters. It is one of the most beautiful objects to view in the night sky with binoculars or wide field telescope. Look for swirls of nebulosity surrounding the two brightest stars. Also in Taurus is Messier 1, a supernova remnant which is also known as the crab nebula.

Above Taurus is the constellation Auriga which contains three other objects on Messier’s list,the open clusters M36, M37 and M38. These clusters are easily spotted with binoculars under reasonably dark skies.
Comets
Comet 17P Holmes is in constellation Perseus above the star Algol. On January 22nd it will pass within about 8 arc minutes of Algol — photo op!.
Comet 8P Tuttle is moving southward in constellation Cetus. This is about the last week for us in the northern hemisphere to view it. It will be getting very close to the southern horizon in another week.