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Directly from the dpa information chain
Stuttgart (dpa) – Many people find on vacation the opportunity to observe a beautiful starry sky in high mountains, in desert or desert regions.
While in our towns and villages flooded with light, even on a clear day at night, we usually do not see more than one to two dozen stars, the night sky undisturbed by the terrestrial lights, the dust and the mist is dotted with countless glittering dots of light. About three thousand stars can then be recognized by the dark night firmament.
The vast majority of suns in space are so far apart and so weak that you can not see them with your bare eyes. In the large manageable universe of the telescope, there are about one hundred billion galaxies of the Milky Way. And the big galaxies each house several hundred billion suns. This translates to the huge total of forty trillion stars, a gigantic number that writes with a four followed by 22 zeros.
Jupiter and Saturn
The evening sky dominates the two largest planets of our solar system in August, namely Jupiter and Saturn. With its brilliance, the giant planet Jupiter exceeds all other stars and planets. At nightfall, this can be seen as a bright white spot in the southwest. From the second half of the night, the giant planet withdrew. At the end of August, he already dies a quarter of an hour before midnight. Pale, yellowish but clearly recognizable Saturn stands at night in the southern sky. He currently resides in the constellation Sagittarius. However, his famous ring system can only be seen in a telescope from a magnification of about 30 times. In the morning sky, the planet of the rings bids farewell. On the 31st, Saturn's sunset is already near two o'clock in the morning.
Merkus
In mid-August, there is a chance to spy on Mercury in the morning sky, hard to observe. From the 10th to the 20th, you can see the Benjamin of the planets at the bottom of the eastern sky for about half an hour at dawn. A good pair of binoculars helps to find Mercury.
Venus
Venus pbades the sun in the middle of the month. Seen from the ground, she is behind the sun. The astronomer calls this constellation "superior conjunction". In this position, Venus reaches its greatest distance of 259 million kilometers. Since our inner inner planet is exposed to the sun in the daytime sky, it is not observable at night. Only from late October, Venus appears as the evening star.
March
Mars is also in the daytime sky and can not be seen at night. At the end of October, the red planet reappears in the morning sky. On August 26, Mars crossed the furthest point of its elliptical orbit. It separates 249 million kilometers from the sun that day.
August brings us the richest stream of shooting stars of the year. From the beginning of the month appear the meteorites of the Perseids and, as their name indicates, the shooting stars seem to come from the constellation of Perseus. The peak activity of the Perseids is expected in the night of August 12 to 13. Up to a hundred meteors light up every hour, including very bright objects called racing cars or fireballs. However, the bright light of the growing moon disrupts the observation of shooting stars. The Perseids originate from comet 109 P / Swift-Tuttle. With a penetration speed of 60 kilometers per second, the Perseids are fairly fast meteors.
Moon
Twice the moon arrives in a new moon position in August: the first, the new moon is reached at 5:12 and the 30 for the second time at 12:37. Similarly, the moon pbades twice through its orbit near the Earth: on the 2nd, it reaches 359 400 km in the morning and only 357 180 km in the afternoon of the 30th. On the evening of the 15th, the moon is fully illuminated in the constellation Capricorn. The exact setting of the full moon is already at 14:29 in the early afternoon of the 15th.
The summer character of the starry night sky has hardly changed since July. However, compared to the previous month, Arcturus is in the Bootes constellation further west. The summer triangle of Wega in the lyre, Deneb in the swan and Atair in the Eagle stands high in the southern sky. The Wega can be seen almost vertically above our heads. The orange arctic and the bluish Vega are the brightest stars in the northern sky. They appear first in the clear sky at dusk. In the east, Pegasus Square is high. This is what is called the autumn quadrilateral as it announced the coming season The Pegasus is considered the Leitsternbild of the autumn sky. Hercules, Northern Crown and the Serpent Bearer are visible in the western half of the sky.
Saturn
The Scorpion, with its giant red star deep Antares, is heading for destruction in the southwest. A little north of Antares, the giant planet Jupiter shines at the feet of the snake bearer. Just above the south horizon, the shooter pbades the midday line. In Sagittarius, you can see the bright Saturn.
The Big Dipper descends to the northwest. It is located in the descending part of its orbit around the Polarstern. Diametrically opposite elevated Cbadiopeia, the sky-W. Near the northern horizon, the yellowish Kapella shines in the constellation Fuhrmann. It is now particularly advantageous to observe an exotic celestial object, namely the ring nebula in the constellation of the lyre, as it is currently very high in the sky. In bright binoculars, you can see between the two stars Sheliak and Sulafat, these are the two southern stars of the Leierrhombus, a circular nebula. It is only in large telescopes that we can recognize the ring structure of this structure, which for a long time seemed puzzling to astronomers.
The comet hunter Charles Messier discovered the Ring Nebula on January 31, 1779. He badigned him the number 57 in his now famous catalog of nebulous objects. A week later, Antoine Darquier recognized Toulouse M 57 to the lyre. Darquier is falsely named as the first discoverer in many books. The Ring Nebula is nothing more than the outer shell ejected from an aging star whose hot star core emits intense ultraviolet radiation that shines the fog layer. Even our sun will lose its shell a distant day.
The sun
The sun moves on the descending branch of its annual orbit. Your height at noon drops by well 9 °, the duration of the day is shortened by an hour and a quarter. On the 11th, she leaves the Cancer constellation in the morning to become a constellation of Leo, through which she walks until September 17th. On August 23, she pbades Regulus, the lion's star. The same day, at noon, she enters the sign of the Virgo zodiac.
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