09/03/2021 – Ephemeris – Tonight: Virtual Star Party via Zoom with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

This is Ephemeris for Friday, September 3rd. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 7 minutes, setting at 8:15, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:09. The Moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 4:01 tomorrow morning.

Tonight the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will host an online star party this evening starting around 9 pm via the Zoom app available for Android smartphones, iPhones and computers. Instructions for joining are on the society’s website, gtastro.org. Images will be captured live, if it’s clear, from Northwestern Michigan College’s Joseph H Rogers Observatory. The images will be pretty much what is seen at the telescope eyepiece, and definitely not Hubble Space Telescope quality, which take weeks to process. Visible will be the Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and wonders of the Milky Way, some really neat star clusters, and nebulae, that is clouds of gas and dust in the Milky Way.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hr). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Also, the planets Venus, Saturn and Jupiter will be visible during the session.

This post is going out at Midnight the night before, and the forecast is for clouds. It is possible that we will reschedule for Friday the 10th. If so, I’ll have a post about it then.