This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, October 31, through Sunday, November 2, written by Alan French. This weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving Time, so don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour (“fall back”) before going to bed on Saturday night. Neither Arizona nor Hawaii observes Daylight Saving Time, and both are on Standard Time all year. Russia changed to yearlong Summer Time in 2011, leaving the clocks an hour ahead. It was very unpopular. They set their clocks back an hour on October 26, and will now simply leave them there. No more biannual time changes for Russia. The Moon reached first quarter on Thursday and is moving toward full, so a waxing gibbous Moon will dominate the evening sky this weekend. Look for it toward the south southeast, appearing a bit more than half illuminated, on Friday evening. Each following night will find it about fifteen degrees farther east and increasingly illuminated. If you own binoculars they will show a surprising amount of lunar detail, revealing the roughness of the bright lunar highlands and many craters. Detail shows up best along the terminator – the line between bright sunlight and darkness. As the Moon moves toward full, the terminator is the line of sunrise marching across the surface as the lunar orb moves toward a position on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun.Pay attention to how the lunarscape’s appearance changes from night to night as the height of the Sun increases in the lunar skies. Identifying features on the Moon has never been easier. Many planetarium programs for computers and devices allow close up views of the lunar surface labeled with the names of craters, mountains, seas, and other features. There are also dedicated apps that will show the Moon with its current phase and label the features. This writer uses Moonglobe on his iPad. The basic and completely adequate version is free. Binoculars are excellent tools for exploring the night sky, bridging the gap between the very wide field views provided by our eyes and the narrow view through a telescope. Although there are some specialized “rich field” telescopes that give wider fields, a typical telescope only shows a maximum ofabout two degrees of the sky – or a field of view fourtimes the Moon’s apparent diameter. For reference, the disk of the Moon is completely covered by an aspirin held at arm’s length. A typical binocular magnifying seven or eight times shows a field five to eight degrees across, ten to sixteen times apparent diameter of the Moon. If you’re interested in exploring the night sky with binoculars I recommend Gary Seronik’s book “Binocular Highlights: 99 Celestial Sights for Binocular Users.” It features some of the finest objects for binoculars and includes detailed finder charts.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 19:47:02 +0000
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