Astronomical Oddities in 2017
Some things happen every year, like celestial clockwork — the slow shifting of the constellations, regularly-scheduled meteor showers, and the phases of the moon. Those can be interesting enough, but it’s the rarer events — once a decade to once a lifetime — that really make us want to look up. Here are the top three oddities we’re looking forward to in 2017.
March / April : Comet 41/P-Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak
This Jupiter-family comet will be making its closest approach to Earth in 100 years this March. On the 17th, it will be within 0.15 AU (22 200 000 km) from our fair planet — well out past the orbit of the moon, but still a close call, as far as comets go. This particular comet won’t come so close again until 2141, even though it orbits the sun every 5.4 years. Not a particularly large or bright comet, 41/P is still the brightest we are likely to get this year. It will be only just visible to the naked eye in dark skies through March and April, but should be quite the show in even a small telescope or binoculars. Look for it in the North — in early March, in the constellation Lynx between Cancer and the Big Dipper, passing through the dipper as we near April. It will fade in April as it passes into the constellation Draco, where you will probably need a telescope to find it come mid-month.
August 21 : Partial Solar Eclipse
This one is a bit of a cheat, since it won’t be in the night sky, but turning day to night ought to count, don’t you think? A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes in front of the sun, casting its shadow onto the Earth. Directly under that shadow, the sun is covered and the stars come out: a total solar eclipse. That’s not what we will see — further south, in St. Louis, they’ll be under the shadow of the moon, but for us the sun will only appear about ¾ covered. This is the first partial eclipse we’ve had since 2000. (1994 gave us an “annular” eclipse, in which the moon is further from Earth than usual, and so appears too small to totally cover the sun — Sudbury, at least, hasn’t seen a total solar eclipse since it was settled.) Here at Science North, it will begin around 1:07PM and last until 3:41PM, with maximum eclipse at 2:26PM. Remember to never look at an eclipse with your naked eyes! We’ll have plenty of protective goggles on-hand at Science North if you’d like to join us for the first eclipse visible from Ontario this century.
October: Tip O’ the Rings
Saturn is a jewel in any telescope, and will be especially so this coming October. Saturn will be tipping the north side of its rings towards us by a full 27 degrees — a better view of the north side of the planet and its rings than anyone has had for 30 years. It will be another 30 until we see the like. Saturn, like Earth, is tilted on its axis, and so shows a different face to us at different points on its roughly 30-year orbit. October 2017 marks the summer solstice for northern Saturn ; the rings will then very slowly tilt away, finally vanishing from view when we see them edge on in 2025. We’ll get a similarly excellent view of Saturn’s south pole (and the ‘underside’ of the rings) in 2032. If you miss it this year, the ringed planet’s north pole will face us again in 2047… so try not to miss it. We can help with that: we’ll have a telescope pointed at the ringed giant during our fall star parties (weather permitting).
Remember, these are only some of oddities — we still have micromoons, supermoons, meteor showers and planetary alignments to look forward to over the coming year, and they’re no less worth seeing for happening more often. Watch this space, and watch the skies.
