06/14/2012 – Ephemeris – Flag Day: Red, White and Blue Stars

Ephemeris for Flag Day, Thursday, June 14th.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 32 minutes, setting at 9:29.   The moon, 3 days past last quarter, will rise at 3:16 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 5:56.

Since it’s Flag Day, lets look for some red white and blue stars.  Red is easy, I talked about it Tuesday,  It is Antares now low in the southeast in the evening in the heart of the constellation of Scorpius the scorpion.  For the white star there is no purer white star than Vega, spectral type A0 (A zero), the astronomers definition of white.  It is located midway up the sky in the east.  It is the 5th brightest night time star, and is seen off a small parallelogram of stars that make up the body of Lyra the harp.  For the blue star, the best is Spica, below Saturn this year and in the south in the evening.  It is the bluest of the 21 brightest first magnitude stars.  Color in stars is often subtle, so try to see these colors.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Red (Antares), White (Vega) and Blue (Spica) stars of spring. Created using Stellarium.