SkygazersAlmanac

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FO R LATITUDESNEAR 400 NORTH

MOR N I NG MO RN I NG A SUPP LEM ENT TO SKY & TELES COPE

EVENING SKY

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7 a.m.6

Jan 3 Earth is91,403,554

miles fromtheSun (perihelion)

at 12:20 a.m.EST

Jan 4 Latest sunriseoftheyear at latitude

40° north

Jan 6 Venusattainsgreatestelongation, 47° west

of the Sun; a partialsolar eclipse occursthis

morningfor Japan andnortheasternAsia

Jan 8 Latest onset of morningtwilight

Jan22 Jupiter is 2.4° below right ofVenus

Feb 18 Saturn is 1.1 0 below right ofVenus

Apr 10 Neptune is 0.4° northwest ofVenus (usea telescope)

Apr 11 Mercury standsat greatestelongation, 28° west of the Sun

Jun14 Earliest sunrise

Jun 17 Earliestmorningtwilight

Jun21 Summer begins at thesolstice,11:54 a.m. EDT

Aug 10 Mercuryreachesgreatestelongation, 19° westof theSun

Sep23 Fall beginsat the equinox,3:50a.m. EDT

Nov 10 Spica is 2.8° rightanddown from Mars

Nov11 Mercury transits the Sunfromdawn until aboutnoonCST

Nov28 Mercury is at greatestelongation, 20° westof theSun

Dec26 Anannular solareclipse may be seenina path crossingparts of SaudiArabia, southernIndia, andBorneo

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Midnight

Midnight

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Total lunareclipse in theAmericas,11:41 p.m. to12:44 a.m. EST,and inEuropebeforedawn onthe21st

Uranusis l O°southeastof Mars

Mercury attainsgreatest elongation,18° east oftheSun

Spring beginsattheequinox, 5:58 p.m. EDT

Jupiter is at opposition

Mars is 0.30 belowMercury

Longest day,15h 01rn atlatitude 40° northMercury is 25° fromthe Sun

Latest twilight

Latestsunset

Total eclipse of the Sun in a pathacross theSouth Pacific Ocean,Chile, and Argentina

Earth is 94,513,221 miles fromthe Sun (aphelion), 6:11 p.m. EDT

Saturn is at opposition tonight

Partial lunareclipse forEuropeand Asia(but not NorthAmerica)Venus reaches superiorconjunction

Neptuneis at oppositionMercury is 25° eastof the Sun

Uranus reaches opposition

Jupiter is 1.50 above andright of Venustonight andtomorrow

Earliest endof twilight

Earliestsunset

Saturn is 1.8° aboveand right of VenusShortest day, gh 20m

at latitude 40°north; winterbeginsat thesolstice, 11:19p.m. EST

5 p.m .,-------,

Jan 20

Feb 12

Jun 23Jun 24

Jun 27Jul 2

Sep 9

Oct19

Ocl 27Nov 23

Dec 4Dec 8

Dec 10

Mar 20

Feb 26

Jul 4

Jul 8Jul 16

Jun 9

Jun18Jun 21

Dec21

AU9 13

cr Conjunction • Greatest *Greatest illumi- 0 . . 0 New lit. First A Full • Last . Waxing Waning(appulse) .. elongation nated extent a ocpcemcn Moon If' Quarter W Moon ~ Quarter A Apogee P Pengee )... (moonset) ..« ((moonrise)

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Orleans and Denver), luck is with youand this corr ect ion is zero . Otherwise, toget standard t ime add 4 minutes to timesobtained from the ch art for each degreeof lon gitude that you are west of yourt ime -zone meridian. Or subt ract 4 min­utes for each degree you are east of it ,

For ins tance, Washington, DC (longi­t ude 7JO) , is 2° west of the Easte rn Timemeridian. So at Washington, add 8 mi n­utes to any time obtained from the cha rt .The resul t is Eastern Standard Time .

Find your t ime adjustment and memo­rize it . The tab le below at left shows thecorrectio ns from local to standard time,in mi nutes, for some ma jor cities.

• RISING AND SETTING . These t imes needcorrection if your lati t ude differs from40° north, Thi s effect depends stronglyon a sta r or planet's declination (listedmonth ly on the Planetary Alma nac pageof Sky & Telescope).

If your site is north of lat it ude 40°,t hen an object with a nor th declina-tion stays above the horizon longert hanthe chart shows (it rises earlier and setslater), whe reas one with a south declina ­tion spends less time above the horizon.At a site south of 40°, the effect is ju stthe reverse . Keeping these rules in mi nd,you can gauge the approximate numberof minutes by whic h to correct a rising orsetting t im e from the table above .

Finally, the Moo n's rapid orbita lmo tion affects lunar r ising and settingt ime s if your lon git ude differs from 90°west . The Moo n rises and sets about twominutes earl ier t han the chart showsfor each ti me zone east of Central Time,and two minutes late r for each time zonewest of it. European observers can simp lyshift each rising or setting Moon symbolleftward a quarter of the way toward theone for the previous n ight.

Skygazer's Almanac 2019 is a supplement to

Sky & Telescope magazine . ©2019 H W Me dia, Inc.

All right s reserved.

Local Mean Tim e Corrections

Atlanta +38 LosAngeles - 7Boise +45 Memphis 0Boston -1 6 Miami +21Buffalo +15 Minneapolis +13Chicagb - 10 New Orleans 0Cleveland +27 New York -4Dallas +27 Philadelphia +1Denver 0 Phoenix +28Detroit +32 Pittsburgh +20EI Paso +6 St. Louis +1Helena +28 Salt Lake City +28Honolu lu +31 San Francisco+10Houston +21 Santa Fe +4Indianapolis +44 Seattle +10Jacksonville +27 Tulsa +24Kansas City +18 Washington +8

Athens +25 Lisbon +36Baghdad +3 Madrid +75Beijing +14 New Deihl +21Belgrade -22 Rome +10Cairo -B Seoul +32Istanbul +4 Tehran +4Jerusalem -21 Tokyo - 19

Rising or Setting Corrections

Declination (North or South)

0" 5" 10" 15" 20" 25"

0 7 14 23 32 43

-845° 0 3 7 10 14 19:>

~ 40° 0 0 0 0 0 0..J

'€ 35" 0 3 6 9 12 160z 300 0 5 11 16 23 30

25" 0 8 16 24 32 42

To convert the charted t ime of anevent to your civil (clock) t ime, t he fol­lowing corrections mus t be made. Theyare mentioned in order of decreasingimport ance:

• DAYLIGHT-SAVING TIME. When thisis in effect, add one hour to any t imeobtained from the chart .

• YOUR LONGITUDE. The cha rt gives theLocal Mean Time (LMT) of events , wh ichdiffers from ordinary clock time by anumber of minutes at mos t locat ion s.Our civil time zones are standardizedon par ticular lon git udes. Examples inNorth America are Eastern Time, 75°W; Central, 90°; Mountain, 105°; andPacific, 120°. If your longitude is veryclose to one of these (as is t rue for New

Time CorrectionsAll events on this Skygazer's Almanacare plotted for an observer at 90° westlongitude and 40° no rth lat it ude, nearthe population center of North America.However , you need not live near Peor ia,Illi nois , to use the ch art . Sim ple correc­tions will allow you to get times accu ­rate to a couple of minutes anywhere inthe world 's north temperate latitudes,

tion is ma rked there by a r.P symbol, asfor Saturn on the nig ht of july 8-9 .

Moonrise and moonset can be to ldapart by whe ther the round limb - theoutside edge - of the Moon symbol facesrigh t (waxing Moon sets) or left (wan­in g Moon rises). Or follow the nearlyhorizontal row of daily Moon symbolsacross the chart to fin d the word Rise orSet. Quarter Moons are in dicated by alarger symbol. Full Moon is always a largebright disk whether rising or setting; thecircle for new Moo n is open, P and Amark dates when the Moon is at per igeeand apogee (nearest and far thes t fromEarth, respect ively).

Mercury and Venus never stray far fromthe twilight bands. Their dates of greatestelongation from the Sun are shown by tsymbols on their r isin g or setting curves,Asteris ks ma rk their dates of greates t illu­minated extent in square arcseco nds. Forexample, this occurs for Merc ury on theevenings of February 20th and June 18th,but not at all for Venus this year.

Meteor showers are m arked by a star­burst symbol on the date of pea k activityand at the tim e when the showe r 's radi­ant is highest in the night sky. This isoften jus t as morning twilight begins.

Julian dates can be fou nd from the 'numbers ju st afte r the month names ont he chart's left . The Juli an day, a seven ­digit number, is a run n in g count of daysbegin nin g with January 1, 4713 Be. Itsfirst four digits t his year are 2458, asin dicated just off the chart's uppe r leftm argin . To find the last three digits forevenings in Janu ary, add 484 to the date .For ins tance, on the evening ofJanuary6th we have 484 + 6 ~ 490, so the julianday is 2,458,490. For North Americanobservers this number applies all night,because the next Julian day always beginsat 12:00 Un iversa l Time (6:00 a.m . Cen­tral Standard Time).

Other Charted InformationMany of the year's chief ast ronomicalevents are listed in the char t's eveningan d mo rning ma rgins , Some are markedon the chart itself.

Conjunctions (close pairings) of twoplanets are indicated by a 0 symbo l onthe planets' even t lines. Here, conjunc­t ion s are consi dered to occur when theplane ts actually appear closest in the sky(at appulse) , n ot merely when they sharethe same ecliptic lon git ude or rightasce nsio n .

Opposition of a planet, the dat e whenit is opposite the Sun in the sky and thusvisible all n ight, occurs roug hly when itst ran sit line crosses the Equation-of-t imelin e (not t he line for m idnight) . Opposi-

sects the sidereal-time sca le at m idnight.(A star's event line enters the top of th echart at the same time of n ight it leavesthe bottom. Sometimes one of these seg­ments is left out to avoid crowding.)

Near the mi dnight line is a wh itecurve labeled Equation of time weavingnarrowly right and left down the ch ar t.If you regard the midnight line as noonfor a moment, this curve shows whenthe Sun crosses the meridian and is duesouth. On January 6th the Sun runs slow,t ran sit in g at 12:06 p.m. This vari at ionis important for reading a sundial. It iscaused by the t ilt of Earth 's axis and theellip t icity of its orbit .

Pollux transits at 12:40 a.m ., as doesRegulus at 3:03 . Then brilliant Venusrises at 3:43 , followed by ju piter at 4:55.Four mi nutes later a star we usually asso ­ciate with a much later season, Antares,pops up in the southeast.

The first h int of dawn - start ofmorn ing twiligh t - comes at 5:45 a.m.And this morning elusive Mercury risesat 6:33, well before the Sun . The Sunfinally peeks above the horizon at 7:22a.m . on January 7th .

FOR LATITUDESNEAR 40' NORTH

slanting event lines. Each event line te llswhe n something happens.

The dotted line for January 6-7 beginsat t he heavy black curve at left, whichrepresents the time of sunset . Readingup to the top of the chart, we find th atsun set on Jan u ary 6t h occurs at 4:50 p.m.Local Mean Time. (All t imes on the cha rtare Local Mean Time, whic h can differfrom your clock t ime. Mor e on this late r.)

Moving to the right, we see that Marstran sit s the meridian at 5:10 p.m ., mean ­in g that planet is due south and highes tin the sky. The sky is still br ight, but thisearly t ran sit time tells us Mars will bevisible later this evening as it sinks intothe weste rn sky. A ti ny Moon symbolappears next on the dotted line, and thelegen d at the bottom of the chart indi­cates the Moon is a thin crescent tonight,setting at about 5:34.

Evenin g tw iligh t tec hnically ends at6:27, t he t ime when the Sun is 18' belowthe horizon. The brightest n ight time star,Sirius, rises at 6:36, an d the faint planetUranus t ran sit s 6 minutes later .

At 7:51 Polaris, the North Star, reachesupper culmination. This me ans it standsdirectly above the north celestial pole (by39' to 40 ' this year) , a good time to checkthe alignment of an equatorial t elescope,

At 8:43 p.m. comes the trans it of thefam ous Pleiades star cluster in Taurus,followed at 10 :30 by the Orion Nebula ,M42. Transits of such celestial lan dm arkshelp in dicate when they are best placedfor viewing, and where the constellationsar e during the night.

Running vertically down the mid­n ight line is a scale of hours. This showsthe sidere al t ime (the right ascension ofobjects on the meridian) at midnight . Onjanuar y 6-7 this is 7h 06m . To find thesidereal ti me at any other t ime and dateon the chart, locate that poin t and draw alin e through it parallel to the white eventlines of stars. See where your line inter-

The Events of a Single NightTo lea rn how to use the ch ar t, considersome of the events of one night. We'llpick jan uary 6, 2019.

First find "Jan u ary" and "6" at t he leftedge. This is one of the dates for whicha string of fine dots crosses the charthorizontally. Each horizonta l dot ted linerepresents the night fro m a Sunday eve­ning to Monday morn in g. The individualdots are five mi nut es apart.

Every ha lf hour (six dots), there isa vertical dotted line to aid in readin gthe hours of n ight at the chart's top orbottom. On the vertical lines, one dot isequal to on e day.

A sweep of the eye shows that t he lin efor the n ight of January 6-7 crosses many

When does the Sun set, and when doestwilight en d? Which pla n ets are visible?W ha t time does the Moon rise?

Welco me to the Skygazer's A lmanac

201 9, a handy chart tha t answers thesean d many other question s for every n ightof the year. It is plotted for skywatchersnear lati tude 40° north - in the Un itedStates, the Mediterranean countries,Japan, an d much of Ch ina.

For an y date, t he chart tells the timeswhen ast ronomical events occur dur ingthe night. Dates on the cha rt run ver t i­cally from top to bottom. The ti me ofn ight run s hor izontally, from sunset atleft to sun ri se at right . Find t he date youwan t on the left side of th e chart, andread across toward the right to fin d thetimes of even ts. Times are labeled alongthe chart' s top and bottom.

In exploring the cha rt you' ll find th atits night-to -night patterns offer manyinsights into the rhyt hms of the heaven s.

What's in thesky tonight?

Skygazers40NAlmanac

SRN: SGA19R ISBN: 9781440301056