Winter constellations move into view

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For those who missed the meteor storm on Nov. 18, you may have to wait a long time to get as good a show. Right at 3 a.m., a large hole in the clouds opened up right over our heads and we began to see a meteor every few tens of seconds. The peak for us was near 4:30 a.m. and just before sunrise when we saw about one per second. This was very good considering the cloudy conditions.

Well, it may not feel like winter but the stars tell us otherwise. Mighty Orion returns to watch over us this coming winter. Orion just clears the eastern horizon at sunset but begins to loom higher as the night wears on.

North of Orion is the constellation Taurus with it's distinctive "V" shape. Near the bright star Aldebaran is a very bright yellow star which turns out to be Saturn. Saturn is up high enough at sunset that you can begin to observe as soon as it gets dark. The rings are still opened widely and you should easily see the empty space between the rings and the planet proper. You will need a modest telescope to see it well but even a 60 millimeter telescope will show the rings. If you have a larger telescope you can make out several of Saturn's brighter moon. They look like faint but distinctive stars near the planet.

A few hours after sunset another bright star emerges from the eastern horizon. Being the brightest star in the sky, Jupiter, claims his role as king. Again even a small telescope can determine Jupiter is not a star. The original telescope used by Galileo was probably similar to a cheap pair of binoculars. The main difficulty is holding the binoculars steady enough to take advantage of their finer detail. Colleagues have told me that the newer image stabilized binoculars easily see the rings of Saturn and the cloud band of Jupiter.

We say that Jupiter has a great red spot, and this is true. But people are sometimes disappointed when the find out it looks more like the great Salmon spot in color. Most of the images people see on TV or in books have had their colors and contrast greatly enhanced to make a good picture. In reality, colors in astronomy are very subtle since the eye requires lots of light energy to detect color.

During this time of year the Milky Way stretches from east to west just north of overhead. This is also a good time to look at the only other galaxy you can see in the northern hemisphere with the unaided eye. It is nearly overhead at sunset and can be easily seen with a good pair of binoculars. It is still a fuzzy blobby thing but you can tell it extends more in one direction than another. It is our sister galaxy, Andromeda, being nearly the same shape and size as our Milky Way.

The Pleiades open star cluster is getting high in the east. It looks like a small faint little dipper made up of six stars until you use a pair of binoculars. Then the cluster turns into several dozen stars shinning brightly. The Pleiades is a young cluster and in deep photographs shows wispy clouds of dust still in the process of being blown away by the winds that come from young stars.

This is becoming a good time of the year for planet watching so for those who wished for telescopes for Christmas, I hope you get your wish.

Mike Cobb is a physics professor at Southeast Missouri State University.