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Skies Over Lee's Summit
July 7, 2012
By Bob Riddle
On July 5th the Earth will be at its furthest distance from the Sun during our year-long orbit around the Sun. This is known as aphelion and on this warm summer date we will be a little more than 3% further from the Sun than during the middle of our winter in January when we are at perihelion. The root of these two words comes from the Greek word for the Sun, Helios.
With regard to that 3% difference between the furthest and closest distances from the Sun, the shape of our orbit around the Sun must be nearly circular rather than the incorrect stretched out ellipse as is typically shown in many illustrations. The point of this is to illustrate that it is not the distance from the Sun that causes our seasons but rather the tilt of the Earth. Due to the Earth’s tilt, on or around this time of year the length of daylight is roughly twice as long as the length of night hours. The Sun rises earlier, sets later, and more importantly is higher in the sky above the horizon giving us more direct energy from the Sun than during the winter months when we have the opposite situation with the Sun’s path and hours of daylight and night. And of course all of this is the opposite for the southern hemisphere!
If you are out watching a fireworks display on the 4th of July you will also be treated to having 3 planets and the rising full Moon visible at sunset. Look northwest for Mercury and the Gemini Twin stars, southwest for the planet Saturn up and a little to the right from the star Spica in Virgo. Then make an imaginary line that connects Saturn to Mercury and about a third of the way from Saturn look for a reddish appearing star. That is the planet Mercury. Look toward the east for the just past full Moon, the waning gibbous Moon, to be rising.
For the morning folks face eastward around 5:00 am for a ‘dance of the planets’ performed by Venus, Jupiter, and the thin waning crescent Moon amongst the two open stars clusters of Taurus the Bull, the Hyades and the Pleiades. As we move through the first two weeks of the month Venus, the faster moving of the two planets, Venus, will shift its position with respect to the stars of the Hyades more noticeably than Jupiter. Use the reddish star Aldebaran in the Hyades as a reference. On the 11th the two planets and the star Aldebaran will be close to see in a binocular field of view. If you have binoculars be sure to check out the stars of the Pleiades and see if your can make out a small dipper shape.
Word Bank: An open star cluster is a group of tens to several hundreds of stars held together by their mutual gravitational attraction in a loose grouping. Next time use the Moon as a guide to the evening planets, some bright stars, and the ever changing Moon phases.
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