Darkside wrote:
Early spring is often a more comfortable time for astronomical events thanks to nights that are still fairly long and temperatures that will not force the significant others or kids back into the warmer confines of the indoors. And if you have a telescope or nice set of binoculars, you can find yourself observing some of the brighter deep sky winter objects with relative ease.
In the south southwest after sunset at about 35 degrees above the horizon looms Orion, the hunter. Orion is easily found by the three bright stars of his belt and bright blue star Rigel below the belt and bright orange star Betelgeuse above. Last year about this time we were watching betelgeuse closely as this variable brightness star was fading and astronomers were not really sure why. Orion interests us today because we'll take a look at M42, the great Orion Nebula. It lies just below the belt and can easily be seen with the naked eye, even in fairly light polluted areas. Binoculars brings out a hazy cloud of gasses around a quadruple set of stars and a small telescope reveals some of the blueish hue of the nebula.
Around the same time of night, another area of star formation is just off to the south skies. The Pleiades is an open cluster shaped something like a small looking big dipper in the constellation Taurus. If you see the bright orange star Albederan at the tip of a V shaped grouping of stars, you're in about the right place. The Pleiades is a perfect naked eye cluster to observe, and it really shines in small scopes or binoculars.
While you're in that area, pay Mars a quick visit. The red planet is just a couple degrees north of Aldebaran on March 22nd, and on the 31st it will be near star cluster NGC 1746, another nice binoculars target.
For the early birds, Saturn is rising in the East just after 415 am by the end of the month, Jupiter a half hour later, and will be rising earlier throughout the spring and summer making both planets a delightful summer night target in just a few months. By mid summer we'll have tips on how to find the moons of jupiter and observe the majestic rings of saturn.
Last item for tonight is a heads up for a minor Meteor shower in April. The Lyrids peaks on the night of April 22 and the morning of the 23rd. In dark skies you might see 20 or so meteors an hour. The moon will wash out quite a few of these but the bright ones that remain may leave smoky trails behind them. These meteors can be seen all over the night sky, but if you trace them back to where they seem to come from you'll find the constellation Lyra, which gives the shower its name. The earlier you can get out before dawn on the 23rd the more you'll see, but you could catch a great one any time those nights.
Where'd you play your astronomy?
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Seacrest wrote:
The menstrual cycle changes among Hassidic Jewish women was something as well.
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