Podcaster: Ralph & Paul
Title : Awesome Astronomy’s March Sky Guide
Organization: Awesome Astronomy
Link : www.awesomeastronomy.com
Description: What to look out, and up, for in March. We start with the constellation of Leo in our beginner’s and young observer’s guide, and end it with a few deep sky challenges for the more advanced amateurs to hunt down. Next up is the moon and our round up of the craters and interesting lunar features you can explore with a small telescope. While Jupiter, Mars and Saturn feature in the planetary round up for Northern Hemisphere observers this month.
Bio: Awesome Astronomy is the show for anyone and everyone who has even the slightest interest in astronomy and science.
Join Ralph & Paul at the beginning of each month, for an informative and fun astronomy programme telling you what to look out (and up) for every month. You can be guaranteed a passion for astronomy, simple explanations of complex and fundamental topics, space and science news, absorbing interviews and listeners’ astronomy questions answered.
As both presenters have been accused of being a little skeptical in the past, you can also expect everything to be frivolous but fact-based
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by — no one. We still need sponsors for many days in 2013, so please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.
Transcript:
Paul: March, the month the Romans named in honour of one of their most venerated Gods – Mars and if the weather’s kind it’s a good month to plan an observing and imaging campaign on a range of targets near and far across the astronomy empire.
Ralph: And as March welcomes the spring, we’ll start with a simple tour of one of the finest constellations in the approaching galaxy season, Leo the Lion.
Paul: Yeah this is one of those constellations that actually resembles what it’s named after, in this case it represents the nemean lion killed by Hercules as one of his twelve labours and is one of the older constellations in the sky. So let’s use the Lion for our beginner’s challenge.
Ralph: Okay, so stretching way above the eastern horizon all month, we have the large and unmissable shape of the sitting lion. Look for the the rectangular shape of bright stars, about as wide as the distance between your outstretched thumb and little finger, that represent the body of the lion. This is then topped by the coathanger or backward question mark of stars that represents Leo’s head, facing southward towards the constellations of Cancer and Gemini.
Let’s start off at the head of the Lion and work our way around. At Leo’s nose sits Epsilon Leonis or Algenubi which over the space of a few days slightly increases and decreases by just less than half a magnitude in brightness. See if you can tell from one night to the next if it’s changing brightness by comparing it to it’s neighbouring stars.
Moving into the Lion’s shoulder, lies the bright star Algieba – we’ll forgive this name meaning ‘forehead, when it’s much closer to the chest – beacuse this giant star has not only a planet twice the size of Jupiter in its system, but also a companion star. You can’t see the planet from Earth but a modest telescope will be able to split Algieba into two nice colour contrasting stars of orange & yellow.
Sliding down the lion’s penis, we have the brightest star in Leo, Regulus, itself a binary star that can be split with any sized telescope at high magnification. As the companion star is only magnitude 8, the more still the Earth’s atmosphere is, the easier the pair will be to distinguish. With an 8” scope or larger, see if you can tease out a second yellow companion to Regulus
Now, scoot along to the Lion’s tail and we have the star Denebola. The 2nd brightest star in Leo and relatively young at only 400 million years old. For contrast, our sun is four and a half billion years old.
Like Zosma, the bright star slightly above and to the right, Denebola rotates incredibly fast and if you could see them close up, you’d see them bulge at the equator – similar to Jupiter.
If you want to push yourself a little, the arrival of the Lion in our skies heralds the arrival of the galaxy season and in Leo, the the cream of the crop is the Leo Triplet that sits at the bottom right corner of an equilateral triangle that you can imagine if Zosma is the triangle’s apex and Debeola is the bottom left corner.
Here you’ll see three smudges of light in a medium sized telescope under low magnification, especially in dark skies. If you use a 5” or larger scope you’ll see that these are clearly individual galaxies. It may be that you only see the brighter two at first, but persist and you may find the third with averted vision – averted vision means looking to the side of the object you want to see to let your more light receptive peripheral vision reveal it.
In the Leo Triplet, the first of the brighter pair, Messier 65, is magnitude 10.3 and shows us a spiral galaxy tilted away from us.
Next to it, Messier 66 is brighter at magnitude 8.9 and another spiral galaxy, this time with a more favourable tilt, so large scopes may tease out the spiral arms & dust lanes, but even smaller scopes should see a nice bright core.
The final companion in the Leo Triplet is Sarah’s Galaxy, NGC 3628, which is the dimmest of the three at magnitude 14.8 and is a good test of how dark and how clear your sky is and of course a good test of your averted vision ability. But seeing all three, 35 million light years away, in the field of view of the same eyepiece really is a treat.
Paul: and if that’s whetted your appetite for galaxies then Leo also contains another group of three that can be found half way along a line drawn between Denebola and Regulus, and there you’ll find the pair M95 and 96 and about a degree away, the galaxy M105. Also worth hunting down is barred spiral NGC2903, a William Herschel discovery that can be found in Leo’s nose towards Cancer and is thought to be a galaxy that resembles our own Milky Way.
Ralph: So do go and explore the galaxy-laden constellation of Leo this month, and let us know how you get on.
Paul: Of course, if you’re planning deep sky observing and imaging then you will want to know where the moon is through the month in order to pinpoint those truly dark skies, or if you are a fan of our natural satellite then you will want to know when is the best time to take a look.
We begin March with a New moon, hitting first quarter on the 8th and reaching full on the evening of the 16th. We return to last quarter by the 24th and like January we have a second new moon in the month on the 30th. Recommended objects to look out for is the area to the east of Mare Nubium here you’ll find a fantastic group of three large craters, named from the bottom as Ptolemeaus, Alphonsus and Arzachel. A smaller crater just below Ptolemeaus is Herschel, named after the great amatuer and discoverer of Uranus. Dipping into the Mare Nubium you should be able to locate the stunning Rupes Recta, about level with Arzachel and running north south, This is a fault line or straight wall and is 110km long 2km wide and up to 300 metres deep. Day 8 of the moon’s phase is a good time to look at these objects, which will be on the 9th this month.
The moon gives us some nice encounters this month with a visit to the Hyades cluster and Aldebaran in Taurus on the 7th, followed by Jupiter on the 9th and 10th. The 18th sees the moon close to Spica and the planet mars and a few days later we have an encounter with Saturn on the nights of the 20th.
Turning to these other bodies in the solar system we have to start with Jupiter which this month reaches it’s highest point in the sky for 12 years. 2002 was the last time you had to strain your neck and lean back to see jupiter like this. Sitting pretty in the constellation Gemini and if you’re based around latitude 51 then Jupiter reaches the dizzying height of 61/64? degrees at it’s highest. This will be a great opportunity to observe and image Jupiter in the clearest and most transparent part of the sky. For visual observing it is worth playing with coloured filters to bring out the different details of the cloud surface, try blue to enhance the belts, while yellow will bring out some of the small blue features that appear in the belts. Magenta may help you seek out those little white storms and enhance the lighter belts. Light blue should be a great help in picking out the Great Red Spot, smaller and fainter than it used to be. But what about imaging?
Ralph: Well, my first tip is don’t miss this opposition – actually it was on 5th January – but Jupiter is still now looking as good as it will for more than a decade, so make it your goal to enjoy Jupiter in the eyepiece or on an imaging sensor this February before it starts getting noticeably smaller.
Now, if you are wanting to take an image of jupiter, you’ll want a scope with a tracking mount to keep you centred on the planet, a barlow lens or Powermate to increase the focal length and therefore the magnification, a webcam with a nosepiece or a planetary imaging camera and a free piece of recording software such as SharpCap or FireCapture..
Just get Jupiter in the eyepiece, pop the barlow or powermate in and make sure the planet is still centred with your eyepiece, start up your free imaging software of choice and then replace the eyepiece with your webcam or planetary imaging camera.
The image on the screen will likely require a refocus but you should see the planet and maybe a moon or two in the software screen. The cloud bands and moons are the best things to use to ensure you have the best possible focus – and this is worth taking your time over. If you have a poor focus, you’ll get poor images and there’s nothing you can do to rectify them afterwards. Then take as many 2-3 minute long videos as you like, using the free recording software, and run those video files through some free stacking software such as Registax, AutoStakkert or AVIStack.
Paul: If it all sounds complicated, Ralph & Damien have some simple tutorials on the website at AwesomeAstronomy.com under the tutorials tab.
Ralph: So good luck, have fun and don’t waste this great opportunity to view or image Jupiter while it still appears high and large in the sky..
Paul: Especially since, unfortunately, the other planets aren’t so spectacular this month. Though Mars is racing towards opposition in April and while it is not a particular close opposition this year, and certainly not in the best part of the sky, Mars should now be putting on a bit of a show for us. Look for the pink bright star sitting in the constellation of Virgo, not far from the Star Spica. A small scope is not going to reveal much detail, but a good clear night should allow views of different surface shading and the polar cap.
Saturn’s rising before midnight now and is always a wonderful sight even when not at it’s best, we’re a long long way from Saturn being in the sort of Sky that Jupiter’s currently enjoying and it remains an object low in the sky for northern observers for many years. Despite this, the rings are very well presented at the moment and it never fails to amaze.
Venus plays the part of the morning star this month and will be blazing away in the east in the hours before dawn. it will reach its greatest western elongation on the 22nd, not always a great deal to see with v
Uranus is almost lost in the evening gloom and is now a very faint and distant object setting by 8.30pm One for the fans of the planet, but you will see little and the view is one that requires imagination.
Mercury and Neptune are not visible this month as they fight the suns glare.
March is the beginning of spring and this is marked on 20th by the Vernal Equinox, where at 16:57 UT the Sun will shine directly down on the equator and day and night is equal right across the globe. While this marks the start of warmer evenings it will also mark the start of shorter nights in the north, so as time goes on our dark observing window once again starts to shrink.
Ralph: Don’t forget you can also download our full Awesome Astronomy podcast for an hour long show full of news, views, answers to your questions and interviews from around the astronomy world. It is available on the 1st of every month in itunes and as an RSS feed.
Paul: You can also find tutorials, blogs, links to the show and sky guide on our website at www.awesomeastronomy.com good luck and we wish you clear skies.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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