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. This month we look in the direction of Cancer the Crab for the beginners guide – taking a look at open clusters Messier 67, The Beehive Cluster and the planet Jupiter beaming down from up on high.

Next we round up the planets that are visible in March 2015, say goodbye to Comet Lovejoy, take a look at this month’s eclipse, explore the phases of the moon and finish off by rounding up the galaxies and globular clusters for telescope observers in Canes Venatici.

For those in the Southern Hemisphere, 365 Days of Astronomy also play Alice Enevoldsen’s What’s Up Tonight, Southern Skies Edition each month.

Bio: Awesome Astronomy is the show for anyone and everyone who has even the slightest interest in astronomy and science.

Join Ralph & Paul twice each month, for informative and fun astronomy programs 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 with astronomers who make the news and listeners’ astronomy questions answered

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by — no one. We still need sponsors for many days in 2015, 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. For the early Romans the first month of the year, a habit the British, never one to change their minds rapidly, maintained until 1752. It is the month of the spring equinox and the official astronomical start of the new season. This of course means we end the month with days longer than the night and we begin to slowly leave those long dark cold nights behind us. This month we have some great objects for you to track down and of course we have one of the years highlights and solar eclipse. But before we look at that, what have you got lined up for the beginners in March Ralph?

Ralph: Thanks Paul. For the beginners this month, we’re going to take a look at the constellation of Cancer the Crab. It’s a faint constellation nestled between Gemini and Leo but it has one of the oldest known open clusters, one of the most spectacular open clusters and, this winter, the King of Planets, Jupiter.

So starting with the first of the two open clusters in Cancer, draw an imaginary line between bright star Procyon in Canis Minor and super bright Jupiter – we’ll speak more about Jupiter in a minute. If you scan along that line with binoculars or a telescope, before you reach halfway, you’ll find this dense collection of suns that astronomers use to study the evolution of stars and star clusters, Messier 67. The reason this cluster’s so interesting to astronomers is that the vast majority of stars here are roughly the same age and distance away, so we can see how they fared over the 4 to 5 billion years that they’ve been in existence – for reference, that makes them about the same age as our sun. Messier 67 also contains the much studied blue straggler stars that behave differently to the rest of the stars in the cluster, being heavier, bluer and more luminous.

Our second star cluster this month needs little introduction as it’s probably the most observed open cluster in the sky after The Pleiades in Taurus. The Beehive Cluster, also known as Praesepe (Pra-see-pi) or Messier 44 sits in the middle of Cancer, visible to the naked eye in moderately dark skies as a faint smudge of light and first seen in a telescope by Galileo in 1609.

To find the Beehive Cluster in binoculars or a telescope in March, if you can’t locate it with your unaided eye, scan up from the last open cluster, Messier 67, or look an outstretched hand’s width to the right of bright Jupiter. and you can’t miss this dense region of predominantly blue, yellow and white stars which are all less than 1/10th the age of the stars we saw in Messier 67. It also fills the eyepiece, covering a larger area than two full moons, so its not surprising that it’s one of the most popular open clusters in the entire northern hemisphere sky!

And finally for beginners this month, as we’re in Cancer, we can’t ignore the gas giant in the room. The planet Jupiter will be distracting anyone looking south this month as its brightness dominates the region.

High up in the south, throughout March, Jupiter will be to all intents and purposes as high in the sky as it will be at its peak in April – around 55/56 degrees in altitude between 9 & 10pm this month. Altitude being important because the higher an objetc is in the sky, the less of Earth’s atmosphere we have to peer through. If you’ve looked at the stars on the eastern horizon, they appear far more fuzzy and faint than a few hours later when they’re considerably higher in the sky and out of the dense extra miles of atmosphere we have to look through.

In binoculars Jupiter will be transformed from a bright star-like pinpoint of light into a disc-like word of its own. Even the smallest binoculars will reveal a moon or two (volcanic Io & supermoon Ganymede being the brightest). In a small telescope, you’ll see the other two of Jupiter’s bright moons, collectively called the Galilean moons, with the icy worlds of Europa and Callisto joining Ganymede & Io at the party. The elegant waltz of these four moons are wonderful to observe night after night and convinced Galileo, all those years ago, that Copernicus’ heretical theory was right – the heavenly bodies did not all orbit the Earth – and the ignored sun-centred solar system theory of Aristachus 2,000 years earlier was right after all.

But unlike the ancient greeks and the natural philosophers of the Renaissance, we all have access to telescopes now that can show us the mechanics of the solar system and with Jupiter, in particular, we can also see detail on this planet. We could easily fit more than 1000 Earths inside Jupiter and this vast size makes it a sublime spectacle in telescopes where we can see the cloud bands in the planet’s upper atmosphere, humongous raging cyclones and the passage of shadows created by Jupiter’s moons as they glide across the face of the planet.  And this is the perfect time to take a look at Jupiter through a telescope of your own or by visiting your nearest astronomical society to take advantage of theirs.

Paul: This month the planetary sky is more barren than of late, though we have Saturn making a bit more of an effort, rising near midnight and getting earlier all month and Jupiter, though past opposition is still sitting high. Venus is the evening star in both senses and dominates the post dusk sky. Moving from pisces to sit between Aries and Cetus by months end the planet of love has a close encounter with Uranus on the 4th appearing just 5 and half arc minutes from the 7th planet. Uranus will be visible in binoculars will make a lovely pale green contrast to the dazzling brightness of venus.

Mars like neptune and mercury is lost in the glare of the sun this month and it will be a while before we get back to viewing the red planet as it builds towards its 2016 opposition.

Jupiter has some mutual events to look forward to this month with a couple of highlights being Europa popping behind Ganymede on the 2nd just after 6.40pm UT and Io being eclipsed by Europa on the 18th at 9.15pm UT. Io and Europa, ever the busy moons spend the night of the 21st from 630pm UT transiting across the face of Jupiter.

Comet Lovejoy is of course still with us and while it has faded well away from naked eye visibility it is still going to be a good scope target and this month sees our intrepid icy traveller venture through Cassiopeia. on the 11th Lovejoy passes by open cluster 457 or the owl cluster, while on the 15th the star Ruchbah and cluster M103 get a visit. on the 24th lovejoy passes by cluster NGC559.

The highlight of this month has to be the total solar eclipse. March 20th, the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere sees the new moon pass in front of our star and for a lucky few in the north atlantic there will be total darkness. For the rest of europe, northern middle east and north africa there will be varying degrees of partial eclipse, with much of the UK experiencing well over 80% of totality.

The fun begins 740 am UT and concludes at 1150am UT with greatest coverage at 9.45amUT. Remember to use proper equipment to look at the sun, do not use smoked glass of naked eyes, even at greatest coverage and seek advice if you are unsure how to view the eclipse safely.

The other timings for the moon this month are full moon on the 5th at 606pm UT, third quarter on the 13th at 5.48pm UT and first quarter on the 27th at 7.43am UT.

For the deep sky tour this month we are heading to the unremarkable looking canes venatici, or the hunting dogs which is a relatively modern constellation put there by Johannes Hevelius to help Bootes the herdsmen with his flock and for all its lack of naked eye brilliance hides no less than 5 messier objects. We start with an object more often associated with Ursa Major and that is M51 or the whirlpool galaxy. Using the end of the handle of the plough asterism is usually the best way of finding M51 and moving your scope south from star Alkaid. It is a bright target and the core can be seen in even moderately light polluted skies and certainly in dark sky a small scope will reveal companion galaxy NGC5195. If you draw a line from alkaid to midway between the two bright stars of Canes Venatici, alpha and beta you will be able to scan down and find our next two targets M63 and M94. These are both galaxies and M63 is slight to the left of this line and a little over half way, while M94 is  plum on the line and makes a nice flat triangle with alpha and beta. M94 is the brighter at Magnitude 8 and should be easy to locate ina medium scope on a dark night. Small scopes will find it if conditions are good. The last two objects are a little harder to track down and are away from the two bright stars and on opposite ends of the constellation. M106 is a galaxy about halfway between the star phad in the bottom of the bowl of the plough and alpha and beta. You will be sweeping through the ursa major group if you work from Phad and may see many other fainter galaxies if you have a large scope. the last object is a globular cluster, M3which many think of as more associated with Bootes and the star Arcturus and this is perhaps a good place to start with M3 about half way between Arcturus and alpha and beta. This is one of the best globs in the north and a 100mm scope will get you individual stars. It is the original messier despite the number, this was the fuzzy patch that Messier mistook for a bright comet and forced him to make the catalogue.

So all that remains is to wish you happy hunting and clear skies.

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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