August 2024 Stargazing Guide
Greetings Junior Scientists, Scientists and Citizens of this great big weird, wild and wonderful world in which we live! As always I'm your humble science communicator... the great Orbax coming to you from the Department of Physics here at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our August 2024 Star Gazing Guide!
[Music] While there's still plenty of Summer left, we can start to see the Autumn months peeking over the horizon. This month our sunrise pushes back from 6:11 a.m. on the 1st to 6:44 a.m. on the 31st and sunset bumps up from 843 p.m. on the 1st to 7:57 p.m. on the 31st. This means we'll have almost 11 hours of star gazing as we head into September... but what should we look for in the last few weeks of Summer? This month we look for a lineup of constellations in the Eastern sky, get ready to enjoy one of the biggest meteor showers of the year and contemplate the true meaning of the Super Blue Sturgeon Moon. All this and more if you just take some time... to look up.
As far as stars go this time of year the Summer Triangle dominates the Eastern Sky appearing almost directly overhead late in the night or late in the month so let's start there. It's easy to spot Vega, the fifth brightest star in the sky and the uppermost vertex in the Triangle. Below Vega is a parallelogram of four stars composing the musical instrument of Orpheus a constellation known as Lyra the Lyre. If you head down towards the South our next brightest star is Altair, another vertex of the Summer Triangle and the 12th brightest star in the sky. Altair is in the constellation Aquilla the Eagle and arguably is one of those constellations that actually kind of looks like the thing it's supposed to be. Between these two easy to spot constellations is a fainter and smaller one called Saggita, The Arrow. While harder to find, if you do happen to have access to a telescope Saggita contains the globular cluster Messier 71 and the Necklace Nebula which was only discovered in 2005.
Our planets this month are mostly morning plants but you should be able to catch Venus setting about 40 minutes after the sun sets all month long. This means that best viewing is in the West at dusk. Mars, the planet of robots, and our gas giants Jupiter and Saturn are best seen in mornings. Throughout August you'll notice that Saturn will actually start appearing late in the evenings, rising earlier and earlier as we approach September and the Autumn months.
Our full moon this month is on August 19th and is the first of four consecutive Super Moons. The moon's orbit around the Earth isn't a perfect circle, it's an ellipse. Therefore sometimes the moon is closer to us and other times it's further away. If a Full Moon takes place when the Moon is closest to the Earth it appears about 14 % bigger and 30% brighter than when the Full Moon is furthest away from Earth. This is what we call a Super Moon. Our Full Moon this month is also a Blue Moon! Typically we have three Full Moons per season but occasionally we have four. When we have four Full Moons in a season like this Summer, the third of those four is called a Blue Moon. The Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes region call this moon Manoominike-giizis, the Wild Rice Moon, or Miine Giizis, the Blueberry Moon. The Mi’kmaw people of the East coast refer to the August Moon as the Berry Ripening Moon or Kisikewiku’s.
In years gone by, the sturgeon in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were a plentiful food source for the indigenous people of that region however these freshwater dinosaur fish are much rarer today.
So yes, you are correct, the Full Moon this month is a Super Blue Sturgeon Moon. Enjoy, junior scientists.
August 12th marks the peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower which means up to 60 meteors an hour will be produced that night. It occurs annually when the Earth passes through debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, a massive space-faring object twice the size of the comet that ended the reign of the Dinosaurs! The radiant, where the meteors come from, is the constellation Perseus in the Northeast... but meteors should be visible anywhere in the sky. The first quarter Moon sets at about 11:30 that night meaning that the skies should be nice and dark for this one. If you happen to miss out don't worry. The Perseids run until about August 24th. Good luck junior scientists!
You know it's funny to think that just over 100 years ago we invented the first airplane and only 55 years ago our first astronauts landed on the Moon! And here we are! It's 2024 and I can't wait to see what incredible adventures and discoveries are out there waiting for you... and believe me, they're all out there, just waiting for you to take some time... to look up.
See you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day!
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our star gazing guide.
And the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada