Sun rises at 6:24am
Sun sets at 5:34pm
Moon phase: fourth quarter – waning to crescent
Moonrises at 5:45am
Moonset: 3:48pm
The evening star
Enjoy the sight of Venus these evenings as it shines brightly after sunset in the Southwest.
Apparent brightness
Stand next to a car’s headlights and they look very bright, but if you move back a few metres, the lights are dimmer. Or are they? Actually, as you probably already know, the lights aren’t any dimmer; they just look that way because of the greater distance.
The same thing is true of the stars. Some stars appear faint, but they are actually just as bright as some of the ones that look bright, but they’re farther away.
You can see a good example of this in the constellation Leo. It’s a star pattern that looks like a backwards question mark rising just after midnight this weekend. Leo’s brightest star is Regulus and the star at the end of the question mark’s loop is Epsilon Leonis.
Both these stars are more massive than our Sun. Epsilon Leonis looks about one-fifth as bright as Regulus, but if you could place the two stars side by side, Epsilon would be just as bright as Regulus. The apparent brightness is more a measure of the distance the stars are from earth and us human observers.
By the way, Regulus is near the end of its life cycle. It will eventually shed its outer layers, exposing its hot, dead core – a tiny stellar lightbulb with the wattage turned way down.
Thank you for keeping up with the Night Sky articles. If you are out later on in the week, each star rises about four minutes earlier each day than written here, and the moon rises 50 minutes later. Night Sky is researched and compiled by Lisa Davis-Burnett. Stardate.org is a key resource for information and images. Questions or comments? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
