Professor Kelly Cline brings the skies over Montana to life with these special reports on what you can find in the nights sky. Dr. Cline also explains how our night skies work and  gives viewers the opportunity to explore Astronomy.

Orion and Betelgeuse

We have a beautiful crescent moon out this week, over in the western sky, following the setting sun in the faint constellation of Aquarius.  Each day this week, the moon will move farther up out of the west and higher into the sky, staying with us later into the evening, as it moves through the constellation Pisces.  It will pass right under the great square of Pegasus, the flying horse, which is over in the southwestern sky.

If you look over in the southeast, you’ll see the wonderful sight of Orion the hunter.  Three close stars in a row are his belt, two bright stars above are his shoulders, and two bright stars belo are his knees.  The bright star at Orion’s upper left shoulder is the red supergiant star Betelgeuse.  This amazing star is 14 times the mass of our Sun, and even though it’s only 10 million years old, it has already burned through most of its fuel and is almost at the end of its life.  When a big star like Betelgeuse is dredging up the last of its fuel, it swells up to an enormous diameter:  Right now Betelgeuse is 600 times bigger than our Sun.  If you were to replace our Sun with Betelgeuse, it would be so big that Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars would be inside this huge star.  In a few thousand years, when this star finally runs out of fuel, it’s going to explode in a colossal supernova.  This explosion will be so gigantic, that even though Betelgeuse is 427 light years away, when it explodes it will shine about as brightly as a full moon for several months.  This explosion will throw much of Betelgeuse’s material back out into space, where it can eventually be recycled into the next generation of stars.

So take a look at the crescent moon, and Orion’s upper left shoulder Betelgeuse, up in our beautiful Montana Skies!

Click on star charts for larger versions.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2010 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Orion and Mars

Our old friend Orion the hunter is moving farther into the evening sky.  Look for him low in the southeast.  If you are looking in the later evening, by 9 or 10pm, you will see the amazingly bright star Sirius to the lower left of Orion.  If you look slightly north of East, you’ll find the planet Mars moving farther up into the evening sky.  It’s not quite as bright as Sirius, but it’s still very bright.  Mars has been very important in the history of astronomy, and was the key planet that helped the German astronomer Johannes Kepler to make an amazing discovery about the motion of the planets back in the 1600s.

Astronomers sure don’t dress with that kind of style anymore!  At the time, traditional astronomers agreed with the ancient Greeks, who said that the planets went in circles around the Earth.  But the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus claimed that the planets went in circles around the Sun.  Kepler found that both ideas were wrong!  He announced to the world:  “When I use the mathematical equations for the planet Mars to move in circles around the Sun, I find that the equations do not precisely predict exactly where in the sky you will find Mars among the stars.  This is a problem!  So I go back to the old drawing board, and instead of a perfect circle I try an ellipse, sort of an oval shape, a squashed circle.  And when I use the equation of the ellipse, I find that this tells me precisely where to find Mars in the sky.  The planets move around the Sun, not in perfect circles, but in ellipses!”

So enjoy the sight of Orion the hunter, and the planet Mars with its elliptical orbit around the sun, up in our beautiful Montana Skies!

Click on star charts for larger versions.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2010 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jupiter and Mars  

The planet Jupiter remains the brightest thing in the sky for a couple of hours after sunset, but each day it moves a little farther down into the southwest.  But as we lose one planet in the west, we’re gaining another in the East.

              Click on star charts

                for larger versions.

The planet Mars is returning to our evening skies, rising just north of East by 10 pm, in the stars of Cancer the crab.  The planet Mars is probably the next place humans will go after the moon, and so it has inspired some amazing science fiction books and movies, although it will be a pretty dangerous place to visit.  There’s an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, set on Mars, where at the end he’s in a spacesuit walking out by this cliff, when he suddenly falls of the cliff and he’s all like “Ahhhhh!” and then the faceplate of his helmet breaks open and he’s like “Whooooo!” and then his eyes pop out!  Now at this point in the movie, I’m sure most people were asking themselves:  “Hmmm…  Was that scientifically accurate?”  Well, the fundamental principle is that liquids, like water, can only exist under the pressure of a thick atmosphere.  Out in space, or on Mars, which has only a very thin atmosphere, it is impossible for water to exist in liquid form.  So liquid water would be instantly transformed into either solid ice, or boil into gaseous water vapor.  The human body is made of about 60% liquid water, which is why Arnold needed a spacesuit on Mars.  On the other hand, human skin is quite strong, and so it is unlikely that his blood would just instantly boil and make his eyes pop out.  Instead, it is more likely that he would have had massive bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, which would have led to a quick and painful death, but probably no eyes popping out.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2010 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Moon and Taurus

We’ve got a big beautiful moon out tonight, over in the East, in the constellation Taurus the bull, and right next to the Pleiades.  Each day this week the Moon will move down lower into the east, passing through Taurus, then into Gemini where it will be full on Thursday.  Every month, the moon moves in a big circle around the Earth, and so we can watch it move all the way around through the night sky.  Just about one month from now the moon will be back in Taurus again.  Why does the moon move this way?  What makes the moon go in circles around the earth?  That was a great unsolved mystery of modern science until a new theory was created by this fine gentleman:

This, my friends, is Isaac Newton.  As you can tell by the hair, Newton was from the sixties:  The 1660’s that is!  Newton proposed his great theory of gravity.  Of course people had always known about gravity:  He wasn’t the first person to notice apples falling from trees.  Newton was the first to think that gravity might go beyond the earth, and extend out into space.  Newton announced to the world:  “Everything has gravity.  Every stone has gravity!  Every tree has gravity!  Right now there is a force of gravity pulling my right hand and my left hand towards each other.  That force is very small, because my hands do not have much mass, but the force is real.  And this force continues out into space to hold the moon in its orbit around the earth.  Without gravity, the moon would just go off at a constant speed in a straight line forever.  My equations mathematically show how the earth’s gravity bends the moon’s path into a circle, eternally going round and round the earth.  And it also does make apples fall on your head!”

Montana Skies!

    Click on star charts for larger versions.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2009 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Pleiades

This is a great time to look at the Pleiades, a fuzzy little cluster of stars often called the seven sisters.  They’re a fascinating sight, visible low in the eastern sky at sunset, then rising higher as the evening progresses.  The Pleiades are part of Taurus the Bull, as a little swarm of flies above the face of the bull.  Different peoples all over the world marveled at this strange cluster, and created fascinating mythologies to explain why all these little stars are bunched together like this.  The Kiowa Indians said that they were seven young maidens who were chased up on top of a rock by several giant bears.  The maidens prayed for help, and so the rock stretched up and lifted them into the heavens, while the bears scratched at the side of the rock with their claws.  The maidens became the stars of the Pleiades, while the rock became Devil’s Tower, over in Wyoming.  To see them better, try pointing an ordinary pair of binoculars at the Pleiades, and you’ll be amazed at how many stars you can see.  And when we point the world’s best telescopes at the Pleiades, and magnify them hugely, we see this:

Isn’t that an amazing sight?  Astronomers can learn an incredible amount from an image like this.  Because these stars are blue, we know that they are much hotter than the sun.  We can also tell that they are much more massive too, and hot massive stars don’t live very long.  They burn through their nuclear fuel very quickly, which tells us that the Pleiades must be a group of young stars, only 100 million years old or so.  The blue haze between the stars is dust; mostly tiny particles of carbon, like smoke, and this dust reflects the blue light given off by these stars.

So take a look at the fuzzy little Pleiades cluster, over in the East, in our beautiful Montana Skies!

    Click on star charts for larger versions.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2009 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Polaris, Cassiopia, Jupiter and The Summer Triangle

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for hard-core astronomy.  That’s right; wintertime astronomy in Montana is an extreme sport!  Anybody can be a stargazer in August, but when it’s 10 below out there, you really have to have to earn those stars:  Yeah!  If you face north, you’ll find the North Star Polaris, about halfway between the horizon and straight up.  Directly above Polaris, you can find Cassiopeia the queen, shaped like a rough M in the sky. 

We’re finally seeing the last of the “Summer Triangle” over in the Western sky, now that winter is upon us with a vengeance.  Brilliant Jupiter is low in the southwest, and to the right of it, in the west, is a large triangle of bright stars:  Vega in Lyra the lyre, Deneb at the tail of Cygnus the swan, and Altair in Aquila the eagle.  This part of the sky is being studied intensively these days by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which is working hard to find earthlike planets around other stars.  Astronomers have been finding big Jupiter-sized planets that orbit around other stars for fifteen years now.  This is the first telescope ever created that is capable of finding planets as small as the earth in other solar systems. This mission is so amazing, that it sounds like science fiction:  Are earthlike planets common?  Will we find planets like Vulcan, Tatooine, or Degobah?  Will E.T. really phone home?  Stay tuned, because in the next few years, NASA’s extraordinary Kepler Space Telescope, will either start finding earth-sized planets sprinkled throughout the galaxy, or may it will find that we really are alone.  Either result will be a little bit scary.

So take a look at Polaris, Cassiopeia, Jupiter, and the last look at the “summer” triangle, up in our freezing Montana Skies!

    Click on star charts for larger versions.

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2009 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Capela, Gemini and Jupiter

We have a glorious group of constellations over in the Eastern sky.  Capella is the brightest star over here, high in the northeast at the top of the ring-shaped constellation Auriga the charioteer.  Below Auriga is Gemini, two bright stars on the left as the heads of the two famous warrior twins, and two strings of stars going off to the right as their bodies.

              Click on star charts for

                        larger versions.

Jupiter is still fantastically bright, low in the south at sunset, then moving into the southwest as the evening progresses.  But Jupiter is not the only planet in the evening sky tonight:  Uranus is out too, although you probably won’t find it without a telescope.  The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have all been known since ancient times.  Uranus was the first planet to be discovered!  It was found by the English astronomer William Herschel in 1781.  This was the first time in history that anyone had ever discovered a NEW planet.  However, things became a little controversial when Herschel announced what he wanted to name the new planet:  “I have decided that my new planet shall be called:  George!  That’s right, George, named after my very good friend George, the King of England.  The planets will now be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and George!  Now, there are some who have said that I’m only naming it George, because in the past, the King has given me a lot of money.  And I mean a lot!  But that is completely untrue.  I’m not naming it George because of all the money that he gave me in the past:  It’s because of all the money that he could give me in the future!  After all, he’s the King, and there’s lot more where that came from, isn’t there?”  Fortunately, astronomers instead decided to name the new planet Uranus after the Greek god of the sky.

So take a look at Capella, Gemini, and Jupiter, but not George, up in our Beautiful

Montana Skies!

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2009 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jupiter, TheMoon, Taurus and Pleiades

Jupiter is shining brightly, low in the southwestern sky.  And if you look way up and to the left of Jupiter, you can find four stars that form a square.  This square is the body of Pegasus, the flying horse.  The horse is upside down in our sky, with his neck and head pointing down towards Jupiter                                            Click on star charts for

                        larger versions.

Tonight we’ve got a big old Moon over in the Eastern part of the sky, right by Taurus the bull.  Each day this week the Moon will move to the left and down, passing through Taurus, then moving lower into Gemini.  The stars in Taurus look like the head of the bull, with the bright star Aldebaran as the eye of the bull, and two stars off to the left as his horns.  The “Ford Taurus” is not the only car named for something in this constellation.  If you look above Aldebaran, you’ll see the Pleiades cluster, a fuzzy little patch of faint stars, often called “The Seven Sisters.”  In Japanese, this cluster is named “Subaru.”  In honor of the Pleiades, let me share with you a poem that I wrote myself:  Twinkle twinkle, little stars.  I shall name for you, my car.  Not my truck or minivan.  Just my car, that’s from Japan!

Montana Skies!

Story by Professor Kelly Cline, Carroll College.

Copyright ©2009 Beartooth Communications Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

25th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Astronomer Carl Sagan, John Glenn, and others remember the excitement when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Men Walk on the Moon

The recorded conversation of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in space while practicing their moonwalk, reveal their wonder and awe at their setting.

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31833247#31833247

For more of this story and more about solar eclipses visit .

© 2009 MSNBC Interactive. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED