The moon lies just below and to the right of red-tinted Antares tonight June 16. Antares is the brightest star in Scorpius. — created with Stellarium
I’m happy to report that the forecast calls for a week with more clear nights than what we’ve become accustomed to. That’s good news because tonight the waxing gibbous moon will be our guide to Antares, (an-TAR-eez) in Scorpius the Scorpion. Antares is a twinkling ruby 600 light years away in the heart of the celestial scorpion, one of the 12 zodiac constellations. It lies close enough to the path taken by moon across the sky, that on occasion, the moon passes right over it. The event is called an occultation, and it’s very exciting to watch the star disappear in a blink right before your eyes.
Antares’ size in relation to our sun, the star Arcturus and Mars’ orbit. "R" stands for radius. Double this number to get the objects’ diameters. — courtesy Sakurambo
Antares is a special star in another, big way. It’s one of the largest stars known, with a diameter 700 times that of the sun. Put it in place of the sun, and this bloated, red supergiant star would fill all of space out beyond the orbit of Mars. All the inner planets would be turned to coals as they revolved inside Antares.
Red supergiants are stars near the ends of their lives. They’re burning elements like helium, carbon and oxygen in their hellishly-hot cores. In an astronomical moment — tonight or half a million years from you – Antares will develop an iron core and its internal fusion furnace will shut down. Watch out! When that happens the scorpion will have a heart attack as Antares implodes and then explodes as a supernova. If you see this before I do, would you kindly drop me an e-mail?
Watch for a rare daytime flare of Iridium 21 over the Duluth area this evening.
The flare is shown in relation to the sun. The precise position will be 52 degrees high at 306 degrees azimuth at 6:37:29 p.m. — created with Stellarium
Speaking of brilliant things, there’s going to be a rare daytime flare of an Iridium satellite this evening June 16. At 6:37 p.m. for the Duluth area, Iridium 21 will briefly become some 15 times brighter than Venus. It should appear like a small star in the blue sky. Look five outstretched fists high in northwestern sky, well above and to the right of the sun.
I’ll be out watching and report back tomorrow. Good luck with both Antares and the flare.
Sir Astro:
I wonder how the Google ads that pop up with your blog today happen to include two ads for losing stomach fat. Could it be the use of the word heart?
Hah! I like that. I wonder though if a lowfat diet would actually help a scorpion?
Hey Bob – Got to do a little sky watching this evening. It was to cloudy for Iridium 21, but I caught the end of Iridium 58. I could see Antares when the Moon and Antares were close, but had a hard time later. Did some crater hunting and found Plato, Cleomedes, Gassendi, and Grimaldi. I also checked out Cygnus this evening and found it a very interesting constellation. Were you able to catch Iridium 21?
Hi Tony, I missed the daytime flare too because of clouds but did see and photograph Iridium 58. I’ll put the picture up later this morning. Antares was faint in the moonlight, wasn’t it? The two were only a degree apart so you had to look a little to spot it. Cygnus is an interesting constellation for sure. It’s loaded with star clusters, double stars and dark nebulae. Nice shape too!
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