The rescue of the princess

With the advent of autumn comes the season of celestial royalty, the king and queen of the sky. Refering of course to the queen, Cassiopeia and the king Cepheus (pronounced SEE'-fee-us).

The pair can be found high in the northern sky at about 8 p.m. by using our old friends, Dubhe and Merak, the pointer stars in the outer edge of the Big Dipper.

Follow the pointers to Polaris, the North Star, and continue about the same distance in the same direction and you will find Cepheus.

Cepheus looks like what a child would draw when depicting a house; a box with a triangle on top. At this time of the year the top is pointing down toward the north, and everyone knows that Cassiopeia looks like, (at least at this time of the year) the letter "W."

In ancient mythology Cassiopeia and Cepheus were the king and queen of Ethiopia. When Cassiopeia bragged that her daughter, Andromeda, was the most beautiful of all, the gods determined that as punishment Andromeda should be chained to the rocks and eaten by the sea monster, represented in today's sky as Cetus, the Whale.

We all know the rest of that story, Perseus the hero rode in on Pegasus the flying horse, rescued the fair princess, killed the evil monster and won the day and they all lived happily ever after, or something like that.

In fact, all of those constellations, except for Cetus, can be found in the same area of the sky. Perseus is just below Cassiopeia and Andromeda and Pegasus are to the left and upper left respectively.

September is also the time for viewing the Zodiacal Light, that faint wisp of difficult-to-find sunlight reflected off the massive amount of dust particles in the galactic plane. The viewing is good now because that galactic plane is almost perpendicular to our eastern horizon.

The best time for viewing now will be about two hours before sunrise from a very dark sky location when the moon is absent from the sky. With the moon fading to a small crescent, this week would be a good time to look for it.

If you can see the Milky Way from your dark sky location, you should be able to see the Zodiacal Light, they are very similar in appearance. The light will be a cone of light extending from one-quarter to half way up into the sky from the eastern horizon. As for me, I think I will wait until March when the light will be an evening event.

SKYWATCH:

Jupiter and Venus continue to rule the evening skies and will do so for several more months, in fact they will have a meeting with a very thin crescent moon on Dec. 1. The International Space Station has been absent from our skies for the past several months but is now beginning a series of several favorable passes over our area. Today, look in the west north west at 7:59 p.m. CDT traveling to the north north east, On Friday, look in the northwest at 8:27 p.m. going to the north northwest, and on Sunday at 7:45 p.m. from the northwest to the north.

All of these passes will be extremely low in the north, most of them will travel below the Big Dipper. More information about the International Space Station and its travel times can be found here.

NEXT TIME: More astronomical blathering.