2017 Week 5: (January 29-February 4)

The weather for this week is considered to be average for this time of year with the temperature hovering around the freezing mark.  There may be some light flurries on Monday and Tuesday, but otherwise, the skies are forecast to be clear, so if you can brave the cool weather there may be good observing opportunities.

Date	Event
Jan 30	Neptune 0.2°S of Moon
Jan 31	Venus 4°N of Moon
Jan 31	Mars 2°N of Moon
Feb 2	Ceres 23'S of Moon
Feb 3	First Quarter

This week the Moon has some close encounters with some Solar System objects.  A new entry this week is Ceres, a dwarf planet residing in our asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  Ceres will be 23 minutes South of the Moon at 19:00 on February 2, 2017.  Ceres will be magnitude 8.9 at this time and thus only likely observable through a telescope.  The good news is that it should fit nicely into the same field of view of a 25mm eyepiece on most telescopes.  An image borrowed from Wikipedia of Ceres is shown below.

Ceres 

Ceres is about a third of the diameter of Pluto and is the only dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune.  It comprises approximately one-third of the entire mass of the asteroid belt.  I hope to have the opportunity to view Ceres on Thursday evening, even if it will be just a spot of light.

The following night the Moon will be at its First Quarter, making it a great evening to view some of the central topography cut through by the terminator.

Today marks the start of a new lunar cycle with a New Moon occurring at 17:07.  Happy New Year to all those who are celebrating the coming year of the rooster!

**Breaking News** I have just been made aware that there are currently moderate auroras in the NNE sky at time of writing (23:33 January 26, 2017).  The following two evenings are observatory evenings and hopefully the Northern Lights will put on a show.  I would recommend checking out the open house at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory Saturday night at 8pm.  We went in May and there was a level 5 aurora that was just majestic.

Hopefully there will be clear skies so you can take in the naked eye sights of the Moon/(Mars and Venus) conjunction on the 31st.