A Visit to Boomer Planetarium

How many of you knew that Boomerville has its own planetarium?  Astronoboomers Alan and Beverly Tackman announced an astronomy session at Happy Hour and were joined by David Lopushinsky and Leslie Manion, and Kathy and David Scranton for a planet-fest in the wee hours of the morning January 21.

The purpose of the conclave was to catch the alignment of five planets (six, if you count Pluto) across the morning sky:

Until February 20, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury are visible with the naked eye.  You can catch the show as early as 5:00 am, but Mercury doesn't join the party until about 45 minutes before sunrise.

By 6:45 am, however, the other sideshows will be long over because of the ambient light from the coming sunrise.  If you are intrepid enough to get up as early as 5:00 am, you'll be treated to a starry show.  The Arizona desert near Quartzsite is a great place to spot the constellations and many more stars than you might see in many metropolitan areas.  Our starry adventurers also enjoyed shooting stars; every 5 or 10 minutes, a meteor would streak across the sky and interrupt conversation.

While you can enjoy the show without visual aids, our group brought along two tools that made it much more enjoyable and educational.  We had a monocular (no need for a powerful telescope), and a smartphone app that locates and identifies planetary objects simply by pointing it to a position in the sky.

The app we used was “StarTracker,” which available for free download from both iTunes and the Android app store Google Play.   With the app, you can point your phone at a section of the sky, as if you were taking a photo of it, and that section appears on the screen with labels and helpful coloration,so that you can easily spot and identify planets, stars, constellations and other astronomical features.   Pan across the sky with your smartphone and the wonders of astronomy will unfold before you!

Here is a screenshot of our planetary alighment, taken with the app on our smartphone:

These are the only planets of our solar system visible to the naked eye.  The last time they were aligned in the sky was from December 15, 2004 to January 15, 2005. There will be another chance to observe their alignment from August 13-19, 2016, but Mercury and Venus will be slightly harder to spot because they will be nearer the horizon and may be lost in the increasing sunlight.