Transcript for May 12 to May 19

RACHEL
Welcome to Idaho Skies for the third week of May. We’re your hosts, Rachel…

PAUL
…and Paul.

RACHEL
The moon is making an evening appearance this week.

PAUL
It takes two or three days after new moon for it to get far enough away from the sun that we can easily observe it after dusk.

RACHEL
On the evening of the 12th, the moon will be a crescent and just to the left of Jupiter. Both will be close enough together to be seen at the same time in your binoculars.

PAUL
Try looking for them around 10 PM.

RACHEL
You might notice a star very close to the moon on the right.

PAUL
That’s the star Zeta Tauri, which is 418 light years away.

RACHEL
Do you want to learn to identify the constellation of Gemini?

PAUL
The celestial twins stand on top of the moon on the 13th.

RACHEL
Gemini will appear as two parallel columns of stars stretching to the upper right of the moon.

PAUL
Some of our listeners may remember when the United States launched its first space station, Skylab.

RACHEL
The day was May 14th, 1974. Initially, the launch seemed to go well.

PAUL
The outer surface of Skylab acted as a micrometeoroid shield. Engineers designed it to extend a little distance away from the main body of the space station after it entered orbit.

RACHEL
Unfortunately, the shield deployed from the space station during its ascent to orbit.

PAUL
This permitted the rush of the atmosphere to rip it and one of Skylab’s solar arrays off the space station.

RACHEL
Because of the repairs performed by the first crew of astronauts to visit Skylab, the mission of the space station was able to continue.

PAUL
Among their experiments, astronauts made observations of the sun with an array of several telescopes.

RACHEL
Because the Space Shuttle launched several years later than planned, Skylab was not rescued and refurbished before reentering the atmosphere in July 1979.

PAUL
The oldest star cluster easily visible to our eye through binoculars is M-67 in Cancer the Crab.

RACHEL
The stars in this cluster are about four billion years old, or a little younger than our solar system.

PAUL
On the evening of the 16th, the moon is your guide to this cluster.

RACHEL
Use binoculars and search for a hazy spot to the right of the moon.

PAUL
The cluster spans an angle close to the moon’s size.

RACHEL
The heart of Leo the Lion is the star Regulus.

PAUL
It’s the yellowish-orange star above the first quarter moon on the night of the 17th.

RACHEL
While it doesn’t look like much to our eye, Regulus is quite a large star. It has a diameter five times greater than the sun’s and spins much faster.

PAUL
And we mean fast. Regulus rotates once in 16 hours versus the 24 days it takes our sun to rotate once.

RACHEL
Because of its large girth and short rotational period, the surface of Regulus travels at nearly 70,000 miles per hour at its equator.

PAUL
That high speed creates a budge at the equator. The bulge makes Regulus 33% wider across its equator than across its poles.

RACHEL
That’s Idaho Skies for the third week of May. Next week, you can locate Saturn and the star Spica next week with a little help from the moon.

PAUL
Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Idaho Skies for this week’s event reminders and sky maps.

For Idaho Skies this is Paul…

RACHEL
and Rachel.

PAUL
Dark skies and bright stars.