08/17/2020 – Ephemeris – The Milky Way’s Great Rift.

This is Ephemeris for Monday, August 17th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 8:44, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:49. The Moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 5:53 tomorrow morning.

High overhead the Milky Way is seen passing through the Summer Triangle of three bright stars. Here we find the Milky Way splits into two sections. The split starts in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan or Northern Cross very high in the east. The western part of the Milky Way ends southwest of Aquila the eagle. This dark dividing feature is called the Great Rift. Despite the lack of stars seen there, it doesn’t mean that there are fewer stars there than in the brighter patches of the Milky Way. The rift is a great dark cloud that obscures the light of the stars behind it. Sometimes binoculars can be used to find the edges of the clouds of the rift, as stars numbers drop off suddenly. This is especially easily seen in Aquila.

The event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The Great Rift finder animation as seen in the Summer Triangle, also showing the constellations of Cygnus the swan and the the northern part of Aquila the Eagle. This image a stack of 5 30 second exposures taken the morning of the Perseid meteor shower in a vain attempt to capture some meteors.

Annotated and animated photograph taken of Aquila August 13, 2018 during the Perseid meteor shower, the same night the image above. Taken by me and processed using Registax and GIMP.