August 22
The Future Pole Star
Sun Position
The Sun is in late Leo or just entering Virgo, at approximately +10° declination. The Northern Hemisphere's descent toward autumn is now evident in both evening and morning light.
Sky Highlight
The Kappa Cygnid meteor shower, a minor shower often overlooked after the Perseids, is active in mid-to-late August, with the radiant in Cygnus and rates typically below 5 per hour. It is primarily a Northern Hemisphere event; the radiant is near the zenith for northern mid-latitude observers.
Deep Sky Object
M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, is ideally positioned on August evenings for observers at northern latitudes, a glowing ring of expelled stellar atmosphere roughly 2,500 light-years away, small enough to look stellar in binoculars but unmistakable as a nebula in any telescope at moderate magnification. Southern Hemisphere observers can catch it when Lyra is up in the northwest.
Featured Star
Vega, the A0Va main-sequence star 25 light-years away, is currently just 5° from the north celestial pole's future position, thanks to Earth's 26,000-year axial precession cycle, it will serve as the northern pole star in roughly 14,000 years. Tonight it blazes overhead for northern mid-latitude observers, as it has done every August in human memory.
Around This Date
- August 22, 2003NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope launched on its Delta II rocket, eventually revealing in infrared wavelengths star-forming clouds, debris disks around nearby stars, and the structure of galaxies hidden behind dust.
- August 25, 1981Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn, delivering the first clear images of the planet's ring structure and discovering new moons, including Enceladus in its current known form.
Vega's turn as pole star is 14,000 years away, which means every time someone tells you the sky is fixed, you can politely disagree.