Bakersfield Night Sky — August 4, 2024
Today the moon is at new moon phase, so later this week we’ll see a crescent moon in the west after sunset. Venus is now becoming visible in the evening sky but just barely there low in the west in the twilight glow. It is right next to the brightest star of Leo, the star Regulus but you’ll need binoculars to pick out Regulus in the twilight glow. Venus will be easier to see later in the month and as we head into fall.
Astronomical twilight ends at about 9:30 p.m. tonight. By that time Hercules will be overhead at the zenith. The central brightest part of Hercules makes a bowtie shape. To the right of Hercules, high in the southwest, will be the C-shaped Corona Borealis and then kite-shaped Bootes with the very bright star, Arcturus at the end. To the left of Hercules, high in the southeast will be the Summer Triangle made of Vega in Lyra, Deneb at the tail of Cygnus, and Altair in the neck of Aquila.
By 10 p.m., Saturn will be high enough to see rising in the east among the dim stars of Aquarius. Saturn will cross the meridian, the highest point of its path across the sky due south at 3:20 a.m. An hour before then at 2:20 a.m. Jupiter, Mars, and Aldebaran (at the eye of Taurus the bull) will be up high enough to easily see them in the east. They’ll make an equilateral triangle on the sky with Mars at the top vertex, Jupiter at the lower left point, and Aldebaran at the lower right point. These are objects to be looking for next week which is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
The dust particles of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle that produce the Perseids began hitting our atmosphere in mid-July and will continue hitting our atmosphere through August 24 but the peak night is August 11/12. The comet has a trail of dust left behind in its orbit that Earth plows through every August. The dust particles hit the upper atmosphere at 37 miles/second and burn up many tens of miles above the surface. They are much too fragile to survive and hit the ground.
Unfortunately, the moon will be almost at first quarter with 44% lit up on the night of the peak, so you’ll need to wait until after midnight to not have the bright moon washing out the fainter meteors. On a dark sky with no moon and far from the city lights, up to 50 to 75 meteors/hour can be seen on the peak night. If you trace the streaks backward, you’ll see that they appear to come from a spot in the upper left part of Perseus. After midnight, our part of Earth will be facing toward the direction of its orbital motion around the sun, which is another reason why after midnight is a better time to look for the meteors.
My summer travels included some time in the Saxony-Anhalt part of Germany with special attention to the “Himmelswege”—the Sky Paths archeological tourist route focusing on astronomy in ancient civilizations living in the region at the beginning of the Bronze Age over 4000 years ago. Probably the most important archeological finding was the discovery of the Nebra Sky disc in 1999. The Nebra Sky disc is a bronze disc about a foot across with gold symbols that depicts the oldest concrete representation of an astronomical calendar from anywhere in the world. It is older than Stonehenge in the U.K. and the pyramids of ancient Egypt. It was buried 3600 years ago but had been in use for about 700 years before then. It shows the rising and setting points of the sun on the solstices as well as the resetting of the lunar calendar to match the solar calendar every three years using the waxing crescent moon’s position relative to the Pleiades star cluster as a reference point.
Besides the astronomical application of the Nebra sky disc, what I found so interesting about the artifact was how the discovery revolutionized how archeologists viewed the peoples of Bronze Age Germany. Before the discovery, archeologists pretty much dismissed those ancient people and region as of no consequence. The discovery caused a paradigm shift in the archeological world that enabled people to find other ancient sites such as the Ringheiligtum Pömmmelte (a wood henge slightly smaller than Stonehenge) and to realize the astronomical uses of other recently discovered formations such as the Goseck Circle that dates from the end of the Stone Age nearly 7000 years ago.
Just as a new space observatory such as the James Webb Space Telescope opens our eyes to things beyond our preconceptions, the discovery of the Nebra Sky disc opened our eyes to what was right under our feet as well as to realize that the ancient people were just as intelligent and creative as we are today. We know more things today only because of our more advanced technology but their brain power was just as great as ours. Their civilization ended and the disc was intentionally buried after prolonged climate change from a large volcanic eruption had destroyed their agriculture food production.
—
Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College
Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com
