Greetings! You can still see four planets in Guam’s skies this week, three in the early morning and one in the evening. Mercury isn’t visible because it will be on the other side of the sun from us on Friday.
Jupiter, Mars and Saturn are all in the early morning sky and they’re pretty easy to find. Just face due east and look to your left, close to the horizon and if the clouds let you, you’ll see a very bright star. It’s not a star, it’s Jupiter.
Measure three fist-widths up from Jupiter and that red star also isn’t a star; its Mars. Turn completely around and measure five fist-widths up and a fist-width to the left and you’ve just found Saturn. Enjoy!
Your fourth visible planet is in the early evening sky and it’s impossible to miss unless it’s overcast. Just face west and you’ll find Venus. Venus will make its closest approach to Spica next week.
Now, let’s do a little evening stargazing. Turn 90 degrees to your left and face south and high above the horizon, you’ll see a giant fishhook. That’s the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion.
Just above the Scorpion and almost straight overhead at one hour after sunset this week is a large dim star group shaped vaguely like an ice cream cone with the opening toward the Scorpion’s claws.
That’s the body of Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Ophiuchus was an ancient doctor, and snake venom was used in medicine, which is why there are snakes coiled around the caduceus, the emblem of the medical profession. The sky doctor is also holding a snake. The constellation Serpens is the only constellation in the sky divided into two separate parts. Serpens Kaput the Snake’s Head and Serpens Cauda the Snake’s Tail. They lie on either side of the doctor. See if you can find the doctor and his snakes tonight!
Since we’re headed for full Moon this weekend, let’s find something bright. High overhead in the east is the unofficial constellation or asterism called the Summer Triangle. The Summer Triangle is made from the stars Vega, the fifth brightest star; Altair, the eleventh brightest star and Deneb, the nineteenth brightest star.
Deneb, the bottom star to the north, is the tail star of the constellation Cygnus the Swan, and on dark moonless nights like we’ll have next week, you can find the body of the great bird. Cygnus is also called the Northern Cross, but it’s much larger and dimmer than the Southern Cross.
If you have dark skies, you may see a faint band of light surrounding the stars of Cygnus. That band of light is made by the billions of stars that make up the Milky Way, the galaxy we live in. The swan flies endlessly south along the pale river of the Milky Way.
The Milky Way arches high overhead in August and the great celestial river flows between the other two stars of the Summer Triangle, Altair and Vega. There’s an ancient oriental legend that says those stars are the cowherd and the weaver maid, two lovers separated forever by the River of Heaven.
The River of Heaven then flows past the teapot asterism of Sagittarius to the south and flows over the southern horizon, past two very bright stars. They’re number 3 and number 10 on the bright star list. They’ll soon be gone from our early evening skies, but the upper one is very famous. That’s Alpha Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.
Have a great sky-gazing week!
Pam Eastlick was the coordinator for the former University of Guam planetarium since the early 1990s. She has been writing this weekly astronomy column since 2003. Send any questions or comments to life@guampdn.com and we will forward them to her.