Shoot a "night" with the harvest moon this week – Twin Cities

Unfortunately, we say goodbye in the summer this weekend with the autumnal equinox at 8:54 pm. Saturday night.

Even if the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere receive the same amount of light, you have no chance of balancing an egg to an end that day. Another myth about the autumn equinox is that the hours of day and night become equal. Daylight hours are always winning! Night hours do not beat the hours of the day until Wednesday. All this is due to the phenomena of astronomical refraction which so much bend the sun's rays on the horizon that it appears that the sun is still a little above when the sun is really below. We cheat at night at both ends of the day!

No matter how little we spend this week, we will be lit almost every 24 hours by daylight and by moonlight at night. It's because we have more or less a full moon all this week. The exact night of the full moon is Tuesday and as this week's full moon is so close to the autumn equinox date, it is the annual full moon.

The harvest moon has taken its name as it illuminates the night sky just at harvest time. Any solid moon will rise around sunset and will rise around sunrise, but what makes the moon of the harvest so astronomical is that it only rises about 20 minutes later each night instead of the 45 50 minutes later. a gap between the moment when the sun goes down and the moon rises. The details of what is happening are complicated and, to be honest, a bit boring. Let's just say that this is a case of celestial mechanics unique to work where the ecliptic, which is the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun, is very close to the horizon in the evening and stays there.

Before lighthouses were an option on Allis-Chalmers tractors, farmers could take advantage of the pale moonlight to extend their time on the field. This is not easy, however. Eagle eyes, strong coffee and determination were also needed for the moonlit night agriculture weaker. You could easily miss spots. Even now, with the lights on the tractors, the full moon of the crop is still a friend to the farmer.

What I would like to do now is follow the harvest moon across the sky from the eastern horizon to the western horizon all through the night and point to some other highlights of the night sky, although the lower celestial treasures will be washed moon 'and hard to see.

When the full harvest moon is up at dusk, it's a sight to behold. This huge orange orb that rises can be breathtaking. No words can describe it correctly. Like any full moon on the rise, it has an orange hue to varying degrees, depending on the clarity of the earth's atmosphere. This is because the moonlight has to cross a larger part of the earth's atmosphere when it is near the horizon, scattering all the components, except the oranges and reds, of the light of the moon. the moon. When the moon goes up, its light does not have to go through so much atmosphere and becomes white.

The moon also seems much bigger when it goes up or goes down. Believe it or not, it's just an optical illusion. The same thing happens with the sun and even the constellations when they are close to the horizon.

As you watch the moon rise to the east, look at the top right and you will see at least two bright planets in the sky on either side of the southern horizon. They are Mars, suspended closer to the moon, and Saturn, a little further in the low sky of the southwest. Mars has definitely dropped in brightness since last month when it was at its closest point to Earth in 15 years. Even through a small telescope, you should be able to distinguish the system of Saturn's rings and some dark spots on Mars, which are part of its vast valleys. The two planets can be a little blurry because they are so close to the horizon, especially Saturn.

If you are under the magic moonlight at midnight, the moon will radiate in the southern sky. At the naked eye, you can easily see the dark areas called maria. These are the volcanic plains of the moon. It's the darkest maria you look at when you see "the man on the moon". You could see the poodle on the right side of the moon. That's my favorite! The white areas are uplands and mountains. The craters completely dot the lunar surface, and around the larger ones you can see the radial patterns of the rays. If you look at our lunar neighbor with a telescope, I urge you to use sunglasses. It is so bright that you could have a lot of headache.

As you enjoy the midnight moon, look into the low-east sky to find a small group of stars. It is the Pleiades, also known as "Seven Little Sisters". From an astronomical point of view, this is a group of young stars a little more than 400 light years old, born together about 100 million years ago. By the way, a single light-year equals almost six trillion miles. It's not a weekend trip to the Pleiades.