Podcaster: Shane and Chris
Title: Actual Astronomy: The Observer’s Calendar for March 2025
Organization: Actual Astronomy
Link : https://actualastronomy.podbean.com/ ; https://www.deepskyeye.com/
Description: The Actual Astronomy Podcast presents The Observer’s Calendar for March 2025. In this episode we talk about Moon pairing with the planets, features you can see on the Moon, Venus and Mercury in the evening sky, what’s happening on Jupiter these nights, a lunar eclipse and some deep sky objects you can see when the sky is clear and dark.
Bio: Shane and Chris are amateur astronomers who enjoy teaching astronomy classes and performing outreach where they help the eyes of the public to telescope eyepieces.
Today’s sponsor: Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month: Paul M. Sutter, Chris Nealen, Frank Frankovic, Frank Tippin, Jako Danar, Michael Freedman, Nik Whitehead, Rani Bush, Ron Diehl, Steven Emert, Brett Duane, Don Swartwout, Vladimir Bogdanov, Steven Kluth, Steve Nerlich, Phyllis Foster, Michael W, James K Wood, Katrina Ince, Cherry Wood.
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.
Please visit our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy
or you can consider to sponsor a day of our podcast : https://cosmoquest.org/x/365daysofastronomy/product/sponsor-an-episode-of-365-days-of-astronomy/
Transcript:
[Intro]
It’s the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, coming in 3, 2, 1.
[Chris]
The Observer’s Calendar for March 2025, on episode 472 of the actual Astronomy podcast. I’m Chris, and joining me is Shane, we are amateur astronomers who love looking up at night sky, and this podcast is for everybody who enjoys going out under the stars. So I think May 2025 will be our fifth anniversary of doing these, now that I think about it.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right, Chris. I was thinking about that the other day too, and it seems like that went by pretty quick for me anyway.
[Chris]
Yeah, except for that pandemic part, there was a few slow days in there.
[Shane]
Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, that was definitely different times, but yeah, I don’t think we’re stopping anytime soon either.
[Chris]
No, we’ll keep going, doing one a week, we’re actually going to do a couple today, going to talk to Michael Wright this afternoon. So as we were saying, I’m super excited for that, because he’s going to be talking about a quick trip down to Earth, a quick observing session in Australia, did a couple nights, I think down there, and tooled around the sky with a 20-inch telescope. So I’m kind of keen to hear about that.
[Shane]
Yeah, me too. I always enjoy hearing about Southern Hemisphere observing, A, because we primarily talk about Northern stuff, so it’s kind of nice to change the topic, and then B, it’s just kind of live vicariously through these folks that observe in the Southern Hemisphere, because that’s a big item on my bucket list to do at some point in my lifetime. So yeah, I’m excited to hear Michael’s story.
[Chris]
Yeah, I also had quite a few interesting emails from folks, need to do a bit of a listener email bag or something at this point here, I think.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, there’s been some really interesting emails that we’ve received, and some really interesting observations too. Yeah, I think we should do that soon.
[Chris]
Yeah, Richard, Bill, Stephen, V recently wrote really great emails too, interesting stuff. Really different though, like often I find that the emails tend to be more clumped together, and so we can put them together more in an episode, not really sure how to group these ones together. Wade wrote me one on balancing my scope.
I’ve been working quite a bit with Marie, and I’m going to want to have her on at some point. We’ve been working through a whole pile of stuff, I think we’re going to meet tomorrow night. Yeah, and Alistair wrote about weekly info for comments from Yoshida’s website there too.
Yeah, and we’ve had all sorts of different ones. Leonid sent us some stuff.
[Shane]
Yeah. Yeah, Phil, I don’t know if you listened to Phil’s from a couple weeks ago, but he had an interesting Venus observation too. Sounds like he was able to see the Venus cloud deck, and some of the detail in there.
[Chris]
Yeah, yeah, was that one from, yeah, maybe from a few weeks back? Yeah, yeah, a little while ago. Yeah.
Stan wrote in. Who else? Been chatting with Royce a little bit.
Yeah, it’s quite a long list. Clark was in, I wouldn’t mind having Clark on, because he was down in Antarctica and made a comet observation. Yeah, a few emails from Alistair actually, but yeah, quite a nice little collection there, so we appreciate getting those.
It’s sort of an unexpected joy to get these emails from people, because I know often when I listen to other podcasts, who have, often these podcasts have way more listeners than we do, they don’t get as many emails from their listeners, it seems anyway.
[Shane]
Well, and I really enjoy it when it’s cold and dreary and we’re not able to observe, so it’s just fun to hear about other folks that are observing and having nice sessions.
[Chris]
Yeah. So March is coming up. We have some interesting stuff on the agenda.
I always put this in as not really an astronomical event, but March 4th is Pancake Tuesday.
[Shane]
I remember you mentioning this last year.
[Chris]
Just a minute ago, but it was a year ago I mentioned that.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, and you get pretty excited for that, don’t you?
[Chris]
Yeah, let me tell you. Actually, my wife gets more excited, because she knows that’s at least one evening anyway that she’s not going to be in front of a stove, so it’s all good. March 5th, we have the moon.
In some places, it’s going to be 0.6 degrees north of the Pleiades. But for us, it’s pretty far. I think it’s just about 7 degrees east of M45 for us and about equidistance on the 4th, so we really don’t see too much of a pairing there, but it’s not so bad.
The moon that night is going to sit between the Pleiades and Jupiter, so it’d be the Pleiades, the moon, then Jupiter, so it should look pretty nice in the nighttime sky. Yeah, that’ll be a pretty view. Then on March 6th, we have the Lunar X visible.
Of course, this is one of those clear, obscure, or illusionary effects where the crater Werner and it’s Werner, and what’s the other crater? Is it just Werner?
[Shane]
I don’t know. Yeah, Werner for sure, but I don’t know about any other ones. The only other thing is when the X is visible, there’s a Lunar V visible, I believe, just further north along the Terminator.
So look for both of those.
[Chris]
Yeah, so that’s on the 6th, and then on the 7th, the Lunar straight wall is visible. That’s that escarpment area. I took a look at it last March, I think, March or April, one or the other, and yeah, I could see it.
It needed like 100 power, though, I think, to see it well in the 60 millimeter. And then that same night, we have the, I think it’s called the Walther Sunrise Ray visible on the moon.
[Shane]
I don’t know that I’ve seen that one before. Have you observed that one?
[Chris]
I definitely have not. These are ones. These are Marie obscure effects, my friend Marie, who’s made up a number of things.
But this is one of those sort of transient events. You can look it up. I’m just looking on Cloudy Nights here really quick, and there’s lots of posts and when you can see it.
But Marie had made up a schedule of this and other events for the RASC observers calendar for us. And I stuck them in there and people can buy that at RASC.ca and stuff is visible in the nighttime sky for North America. We put it in that calendar.
But I think that’s just one of those like crater rays that come out from one of the craters on the moon. Okay. Yeah.
But I think they make for some interesting targets. What I’d like to do, and I sort of had alluded to this before, is I’d like to get Marie to come on and kind of walk us through a bunch of these, whether it’s when we do these or just to have sort of like a primer, say, okay, like this is the primer for the Marie events kind of thing, right? And then just kind of walk through a whole pile of them with her and then just kind of reference people to that episode might be the best thing to do, actually.
Yeah. Good idea. Yeah.
She’s pretty enthusiastic. I think the listeners would enjoy her. All right.
March 8th, Mercury is at greatest evening elongation, 18 degrees from the sun. And this means that Mercury is in the western sky. Not super high.
You can see my little diagram there. It’s really well placed only about five degrees above the horizon or four degrees above the horizon when the sky becomes dark. So that could be a tough one to see.
Yeah.
[Shane]
Yeah. That would be a little challenging for sure.
[Chris]
Yeah. What else do we got here? Also on March 8th, we have the Mars and the moon pretty close together in the sky.
Says as close as 1.7 or 2 degrees. That looks about right. I think we get that at just about its closest point because my little circle there is five degrees.
[Shane]
Oh, that’s awesome. You know, I have to say this is the worst Mars opposition for me personally in terms of getting out to observe. The weather just hasn’t really been great for that.
And as a result, I just haven’t gotten out to have a look.
[Chris]
Yeah. I’ve looked at it twice. That’s it.
And they were not good views.
[Shane]
Yeah. Not. Yeah.
I think I had one and it was like, oh, gee, November, December timeframe. And it was still kind of low in the eastern sky because I was out earlier in the evening. And yeah, it just was not nice.
[Chris]
Yeah. Yeah. And even like when we’re having clear skies in the evening, like last night, it was clear for an hour or so.
I’d come back from the observatory for whatever reason. And then it just clouded up. And so it’s doing that even on the nights that you might be able to make some observing because it’s going to be clear.
It tends to just be clouding up, you know, an hour or so, two hours after sunset. So you only get like this wee little window of observing that, you know, it’s just not going to be worth going out and setting up like literally you can just see the clouds coming in on the horizon. So you know, and sometimes here I notice here, oftentimes they just sit there on the horizon, but this weather system or sets of weather systems that we’ve been having, they don’t, they just plow right over us and we’re into the cloud.
Last night even got super foggy there for a while. And it’s warmed up. I guess we should say that, Shane.
[Shane]
It’s true. We’ve been complaining about how cold it’s been. And I think right now it’s what, plus two or something like that.
So that’s amazing.
[Chris]
It is. And it’s also very frustrating because, you know, when it’s that cold, well, I mean, it’s downright dangerous. I mean, it really is.
You know, I, I bundle up and wear all kinds of clothes into work and then my colleagues make fun of me, but I’m like, you know, one morning it was minus 44 without the windchill or anything, just straight, which I think is the same in Fahrenheit. I’m pretty sure. I think they cross over on minus 40 something anyway.
So it’s regardless, it’s within a few degrees of minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just so cold. It’s just completely dangerous.
And then, you know, here we are at plus two and, and you know what that’s going to do to the sky. It just kind of just takes it apart, you know? So the seeing is going to be very poor and yeah, the weather conditions are just all over the place.
And it’s also frustrating because if you look for the month, like our average temperature for the month is supposed to be about minus 14, I think for a nighttime low or something. And that’s, I think I figured it out. But I think we’re pretty much right on average, but it’s the extremes of, of being the cold.
This was the coldest two weeks this century that we’ve had here in Saskatchewan, which is saying a lot considering how cold it can be. That was the coldest two weeks we’ve ever had here in Saskatchewan in the past 25 years, Shane. I did not know. Yeah. Yeah. Hard to believe. And typically if we get minus 40, we only get it for a day or maybe a day and a half or something.
But we had it for like three or four days there, you know, that’s a long period to be that cold. Yeah. Yeah.
It was, it was very cold. Yeah. And then now to be so warm, because when we woke up on Friday, it was minus 21.
It had started warming the day before, gone up to minus 16, back to minus 21. And then minus 21, we woke up and drove out to the cabin Friday afternoon and it was minus two when we got out there, which is, which is wild to think about within a 36 hour time period, a temperature swing of 42 degrees Celsius to the, to the upside. So yeah, that’s a big swing.
Yep. All right. So back to what we can see in March, March 9th, this is another one of those ones.
The jeweled handle is visible on the moon. I’m not sure what this is. We really got to do.
I just need, we need to get through the next period of stuff in the calendar and then we can maybe get her to come on and let’s see, it’s an illuminated arc on the Lumen Terminator near Montes, Montes Jura mountain range in the Sinus Iridium, Bay of Rainbows area. Oh, I think I know the one. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah. I’m looking at it too.
Yeah. It’s like a crater. Yeah.
I’ve seen this. Okay. I know what this is.
I didn’t know that’s what it was called, but I’ve seen that crater on the Bay of Rainbows or Sea of Rainbows as I might’ve called it.
[Intro]
Yeah.
[Shane]
I’m just reading here. It says that the jeweled handle effect is one of the most binocular friendly lunar clear obscure phenomena. So that’s interesting because a lot of these, you do need a telescope, but if you don’t have a telescope and you have binos, give this one a try, I guess.
Yeah. I’ve seen this one for sure.
[Chris]
Now that I’m, now that I’m digging around here. Huh. Yeah.
Well, people should take a look for that one on March 9th. That should be pretty easy. Yeah.
I would think so. March 11th. We have two satellites visible on Jupiter at 8 42 PM.
That’s going to be the Eastern time.
[Intro]
Okay.
[Chris]
So that’s 7 42 here. We’re going to have Ganymede and Europa on the, uh, the disc of Jupiter simultaneously.
[Shane]
Hmm. Looks like Europa might be a little challenging. It’s just in a lighter, like one of the lighter bands, but Ganymede is in, uh, one of the equatorial or no, sorry.
One of the polar bands it looks like. So probably a little easier to spot that one.
[Chris]
Yeah. Yeah. And, and then a little bit close to Europa, but sort of about two thirds of the way to Europa from Ganymede, uh, you’ll see the great red spot as well.
Yeah. That’ll, that’ll be a good night to observe Jupiter. Yeah.
I think in the calendar, for some reason I put this as a double shadow transit, but I’ve kind of been going through my shadowy business there on, on Jupiter, uh, this past week. I think I got a few more things sorted out as I, as I learn and understand things. Had a nice chat with Dave Chapman about these, these sort of events, right?
But, uh, you know, it’s kind of these events, these double satellite transit or double moon transits and the double shadow transits and all these transits and Jupiter is to be honest, it’s something I was never really that into before I started doing the calendar. And when I started doing the calendar, I started to observe these, um, and I’ve become very fascinated with them.
[Shane]
Yeah. They’re, they’re super interesting, aren’t they?
[Chris]
Yeah. I mean, I’d seen them before. Like if there was a double, you know, I would know about it for whatever, probably cause I was buying the observer’s calendar and, and I would go out and look at it.
But with the, with the planet, with the moons going across the disc in a small telescope, like something, um, maybe three inches, but typically four inches or larger, um, you can really see the little discs. You know, if your telescope is, uh, you know, a pretty good optically performing telescope and most are, if they’re a four inch or larger, if someone has a six inch reflector, even that’s going to be a great instrument as long as you, uh, properly optically align it. You can, you can really see these little balls, little golf balls traversing, um, the disc of Jupiter.
Uh, and it’s just fascinating to see. It really is. March 12th, we have the asteroid eight flora at opposition.
My notes say that it’s going to be magnitude 9.5. But when I was looking at up elsewhere, I saw that it was, that it could be a little bit brighter. So just, I’m just going to check on, on that here. I don’t know if you want to read my note there, Shane, if you’re handy, will I go on?
Yeah.
[Shane]
So discovered by Hind in 1847, it is the innermost large asteroid and the seventh brightest. Uh, name was proposed by John Herschel for the Latin goddess of flowers and gardens, uh, parent of the flora family of asteroids. Uh, so the, the composition of this one is silicate rock and a nickel iron metal.
Interesting.
[Chris]
Hmm. Hmm. I get it at 9.7 in my software. It’s over in Leo. It’s just up Denebola. Okay.
Yeah. I’ll make a little chart for people just while we’re chatting here. We usually post these notes anyway.
I’ll put this in. Yeah. I think, uh, discovered by Hind.
So same person as a Hind’s variable nebula fame. Oh, okay. I think anyway, I think that’s how it goes.
Let’s see if I can get them. I’m just going to post in this little image here. Yeah.
Not too bad to find. Although my software, it says 9.7, I looked up other sources. It said 8.7, but yeah, it’s neat to kind of go out and then from night to night, you can kind of watch it going by, uh, March 12th. So this is, this is something I’m going to try to take a look at is the, um, I think I got this right and put the Martin pancake visible on the moon, but I feel like that’s, I think I’ve got the name, uh, misspelled here. Let’s see. Yeah.
Just give me a second here. I think I’ve, I’ve messed that one up unless you’re, I think it’s, I’m missing a letter. I want to say it’s like the Martini pancake on the moon or something like that.
Any relation to, uh, pancake day on March 4th? That’s what I was thinking. That’s what I was thinking.
But, uh, yeah, I just got to call up the calendar here cause I got the digital version. It is handy having the digital version of it, but, uh, just take a look here and see what we got. And then on the, uh, the 13th, this is a good night to go out and take a look at M93, Shane.
It’s been a few years since you’ve taken a look at that one. Yeah.
[Shane]
That one has been a long time for me. Yeah. That’ll be well, well positioned, pretty easy to locate too with the dog star being fairly close proximity.
Worgeton pancake.
[Chris]
Visible on the moon. Oh, okay. That’s what we got here.
I knew it wasn’t the Martin. Not sure. I think my auto correct.
Oh, and I see the, I did a search for it and I referenced our own show. It’s a 54 mile wide crater, Worgeton and, uh, yeah, it must just be something in the bottom of that. Yeah.
I’m going to have to get, yeah, I guess it kind of looks like a pancake. It’s got like, you know, how your pancake kind of bubbles up. I guess it must be like a, the lab must have gone and filled up that crater.
It’s in the bottom left of the moon. If you think of where Copernicus is, it’s sort of almost right on the limb of the moon, um, down by Copernicus.
[Shane]
Hmm. Another one I haven’t seen, so I will, uh, I need to start just making a side list of all of these interesting, clear, obscure things to see on the moon.
[Chris]
Yeah. I got a copy of the calendar for you. I got to run that over.
One of these days I keep meaning to drop one by when I’m going through, uh, your neck of the woods. It just, uh, I keep forgetting to put it in the car and I think about it as I’m like driving by your, your area, but I will do that and then you can have a copy. Um, but yeah, I’m 93 on the 13th.
So one of the things that we were, we were looking to do is a little bit of a, I don’t want to say puppy, that’s the wrong word for it, but I guess it’s one thing that I noticed Shane when I’m, uh, when I have been observing with newcomers or somewhat newcomers who are working through like the messy list or just going out to observe is that people are trying to observe the, um, objects that are, are close to the horizon are going to be close to the horizon, uh, at the wrong times of the year, right.
And uh, and, and so because of that, they end up getting poor views. So for example, M 93 is going to be great to see in March and during the first half of April or so maybe even to like kind of, you know, yeah, really like just the first bit of April, you know, in here less so because once we get much past the solstice, we get so much, uh, uh, illumination in the sky so quickly, we, we tend to lose it. And then what happens is I’ll go observing and I’ll see people who are trying to complete the messy or not the messy marathon, maybe the messy marathon doesn’t matter.
Um, but I, I see people trying to go and take a look at, at the M 93 star cluster or something to that effect when it’s, uh, the sky is too bright or, or what have you, um, versus trying to track it down in, in the late autumn or early winter is probably the best, uh, best time to see it. I’ve actually already been observing and I, I’ve observed it, I think three or four times in the fall. Okay.
I had some good morning skies just with binoculars. I was getting up trying to see some of those comments and I was sort of cruising through this, uh, this area of the sky was quite nice. That’s, that’s when I end up doing a lot of the, uh, sort of Canis Major, Orion, you know, uh, Monoceros region is, uh, is in those early morning sessions in the fall.
Although Dave reminds me that not everybody likes to get up early and observe. Yeah. I’m one of those folks.
And I, I, you’re not alone because I think that most people don’t get up and observe at night. I think from what, because I don’t get too many, I haven’t seen too many people writing us saying that they’re getting up and observing the every once in a while, but I’d say that’s the exception. Wouldn’t you say?
[Shane]
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
It would by far and away be the exception. And, you know, there’s been a few times where I wake up at three or four in the morning and seem to have short term insomnia and can’t fall back asleep. I’ve considered going outside, but, um, the, I think it’s, it was twice within the last maybe six months and both times when I looked outside, it was cloudy, but maybe one day I’ll do it.
[Chris]
Yeah. Um, yeah, usually what I do is set my alarm and get up like I’m pretty, you know, if, if I see the good, the good sky coming and that’s how I’ve had my best skies, to be frank. And then sometimes, sometimes I get so committed to doing it though, and this is kind of a bit dumb, is that I’ll set my alarm and I’ll get up and I’ll observe even if the conditions are pretty marginal.
So I was the last Mars opposition, I was doing that and I was going out and observing it and the sky conditions were just trash most of the time, but I observed it lots. But this time, um, it’s just been too cold, sadly, but, uh, yeah, we’ll see. And, and just, uh, need to do a few things to get the observatory rocking and rolling a little bit, a little bit tweaked out better.
So yeah, we’ll see how that goes. Sometimes I think maybe I do want to motorize it or something. I, I don’t know.
We’ll, we’ll see how it goes. But on March 14, we have the lunar eclipse for North America, I think pretty much all of North America, it’s, it’s visible. And I think the way that it boils down to is that it’s it’s just before midnight, on the 13th, actually, that people who are east of us in that eastern time zone and east are going to be able to start to see the Earth’s shadow creeping onto the moon.
And then for us, I think it begins around 1245 or something like that on the 14th. So this is a stay up late on the 13th kind of event Shane. And I will definitely be trying to see this.
For us it’s best around or meaningful eclipse will be around I think it looks like 245 central standard time, of course, that’d be an hour earlier in eastern time 145 eastern. And then if you’re on the west coast, it’s gonna be an hour or two later, depending on how much further west of us you are. But people can can look that up and see what do you see when you see a lunar eclipse Shane?
Are they worth going out and taking a look at? I like to look at them.
[Shane]
What I like about them is, is the like, they’re highly variable. So what happens is, as the moon goes into eclipse, it, it certainly dims in terms of its brightness. And then it often takes on a, like a red color or a red hue.
And what is always variable is how much the brightness diminishes and how stark or how deep that red is on the moon. And sometimes a lunar eclipse can happen. And if you didn’t know it was happening, excuse me, you might not even be aware that there was an event.
Yeah, because it’s so subtle. But sometimes like that red is so like, so deep and, and dark and anyway, it’s kind of a neat event just because of those factors for me.
[Chris]
Yeah. And yeah, they are very different looking things. So when we when we look up at the moon, and it’s a crescent moon, we can see that nice terminator cutting across the moon because of the angle between the moon and the sun and the moon and the earth and, and that’s along that terminator, you see all kinds of great details.
But when we see the lunar eclipse, it’s it’s not the same type of an event, although the moon can look crescent, that shadow from the earth is more ill defined. It’s, it’s because it’s coming through our atmosphere, I think, and and landing on on the moon, it, you know, you just don’t get that same effect, even though to the unaided eye, it kind of looks like that, but not really, it definitely does look different from a regular crescent shape, wouldn’t you say? Yeah, I would agree with that.
And then as it makes its way across it, it more or less to the unaided eye looks kind of like a really weird or different crescent. And then as it as it engulfs the moon, as the shadow of the earth engulfs the moon, what we get is is we we can then see that effect of the earth’s atmosphere in the rays of the sun coming across the atmosphere of the earth are coming through the atmosphere of the earth and then landing on the moon. And because of the optical effects of that process, they have different colors to them.
So depending on what’s in the atmosphere of the earth, and clouds and storms and dust and volcanic ash, and all this kind of material that could be there depends on the tone that the moon will take on. So it’s kind of neat, because we see this shadow coming across and then as it as it becomes, you know, fully engulfed on the moon in that shadow, you can then see these these tonal colors. And like you were saying, Shane, sometimes they can be subtle, they can almost be like yellowish, very light red, like peachy.
And then sometimes they can be almost like dirt brown.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, you’re right. It does go across the spectrum far more than just red.
[Chris]
Yeah. And that just depends on how much of like, and also where it passes, there’s what’s called the penumbra and the umbra of the shadow and and where the moon is is traversing. In that unlike a solar eclipse, solar eclipse is just a narrow band, just because of the properties of that that travels across the earth.
And unless you’re in that band, you’re just going to see a partial. And if you weren’t necessarily looking at the moon, you might are looking, you know, at the sun through a safe solar instrument, designed for viewing the sun to protect your eyes. You might not even notice it’s taking place or anything is different.
It might just seem like it’s a little cooler or shadowy or something like that or cloudy, even though there’s no clouds. But the the lunar eclipse you can see throughout all of North America. So yeah, I’ll be curious to see how how this one pans out.
Just trying to think what day of the week that’s going to be. I don’t have a calendar here handy. Yeah, I don’t have one either.
But let’s see, March 13th is going to be the 72nd day of the year. That’s not what I was looking for. March 14th is a Friday.
Okay, so this is going to be like Thursday night, very late Thursday night. That’s what we’re looking at. Awesome.
So go and take a look at that on the 20th. We have the spring equinox that’s equal day and night for all of the all of the earth. Really not much you can see on that date.
But we are getting into more of a new moon period. So we can, you know, start to get some evening observing in Shane, hopefully without as much cold weather as what we’ve had recently. Yeah, I’m excited for that.
Then on the 22nd, we have the zodiacal light becoming visible in the western sky for a couple of weeks here, because once the moon is past that last quarter stage, of course, the evening sky is now dark. And in the west after sunset, and after it’s completely dark, you may notice a pyramid shape coming up and passing through Venus and pointing up towards the Pleiades star cluster seem to be somewhere reasonably dark, but it doesn’t have to be extremely dark in order to see this thing.
[Shane]
Yeah, you really just need to get out of kind of like the like, I don’t even know how to say it, but like kind of the immediate proximity of light pollution. If you can just get a little bit of distance between you and the source, you know, like like the city, you’ll stand a pretty decent chance of seeing this. But you do have to get outside of the city for sure.
[Chris]
Yeah. And then on the 24th, you have to get up early in the morning to see this, but it’s it’s well worth seeing, Shane. I think I think one of these months you should try to see this, which is the Mare Oriental is visible on the moon at about 6 a.m. Eastern time or local time, I guess. And it’s going to be in the bottom left of the moon, whatever that is. And you’ll see it’s a giant impact basin that’s creeping over the edge of the moon. And I played this forward in my software last night or I think it was yesterday afternoon.
And you can actually see like a pretty quickly because of the lunar libration, which is how the moon kind of appears to rock in its orbit because of, you know, orbital dynamics between the sun and the earth and the moon and all that. We kind of can sort of see around the edge of the moon a little bit. We can actually see over the course of period of time, like a month or a few months, we can actually see almost 60 percent of the surface of the moon.
And and that’s why, because sometimes we’re kind of a little bit further ahead of the moon or it’s a little bit further behind or vice versa. And we can kind of, you know, in essence, sort of see around the edge of the moon just a little bit. And this is one of those features and this is when it’s visible.
I have seen this before and it’s pretty cool. I think maybe even in your binoculars, Shane, you’d be able to pick that up and you could even just just I think you get up at about 6 a.m. anyway some morning. So that might work out for you.
Yeah. Timing actually is perfect for me. I do not get up at 6 a.m. unless I am observing. Yes. All right. March 27th.
So a couple of interesting targets. I think these must be like finest NGCs from Marie that are well placed, culminating in the evening sky. The first one is NGC 2579, which which is a nebula and star cluster.
And it looks like it only gets to maybe 12 or 13 degrees up for us. But of course, in other places to our south, you know, it’s going to get higher still. But even 12 or 13 degrees should be pretty good to be able to see this target.
Yeah, I would think so.
[Shane]
Have you ever seen this before? I don’t know. Again, my memory for recalling NGC objects is not very good.
I would need to reference my notes. But this one, I’m leaning towards. No, I don’t think I have seen this.
[Chris]
I can’t. I can’t recall. I feel like I have for sure.
There’s a big cluster just just nearby. And that is NGC 2546, which I’ve definitely, definitely seen and sketched. There’s another cluster nearby, which is NGC 2451.
And then there’s also NGC 2477. But this one, I don’t know. And what’s what’s sort of equally more interesting is that nearby, like when I’m looking at my software, I think the way it’s a very rich zone, I’ve got my five degree circle up and you can see NGC 2546, which is quite easy to see.
That’s a pretty good one. You should take a look at that, Shane or anybody listening. And then there’s there’s a few targets just to the north.
There’s like a set of these stars. What are they here? HR 3283.
And then there’s Rho Puppis. And there’s there’s a few other other ones, Q Puppis. And then it looks like there’s a big faint nebula in and around this this zone in a five degree circle anyway, but in a three and a half degree circle of my big refractor, one of my big refractors, I may be able to see it too.
But inside this, this cluster 2579, there’s the nebula, then there’s the cluster. And then there’s something called Nordstrom 238, no relation to the stars, I’m sure. And it’s a 11.5 planetary nebula. I really want to try to take a look at this in the big refractor. I should be able to see almost 12th magnitude planetary nebula in a seven inch refractor, Shane, don’t you think? I would hope so.
So that’s on my list. And then we have this galaxy NGC 2784, which to me just seemed like another galaxy in the field. So I’m not sure why Marie chose that one.
Exactly. Let me just go and take a look and see it’s it’s not even that bright. But it’s I’m not even able to call it up now.
All of a sudden, there we go. It’s a spiral galaxy up in Hydra. It’s fairly high, I think gets up to about 30 degrees for here.
And it comes in at about 10th magnitude. And then just below it, I think there’s like a UGC or PGC 16th. But don’t worry about that.
But this one’s pretty big, looks like an edge on spiral galaxy coming in at 30 degrees above the horizon. So that’s not too bad. That could be a good one for folks to take to take a look at.
I think it must be one of the finest NGCs but again. Okay, and then on Friday, the 28th, this this weekend, the 28th, 29th, those would probably be your best nights for trying the so called Missy marathon is our friend Don McColts had been on to talk about people can go back and look at that episode. Sadly, Don passed away a couple years ago.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, but he was very passionate about the Missy marathon. And I really enjoyed the conversation that we had with him about that. And I know you’ve tried it a number of times.
I’ve been out observing kind of in the vicinity, but I’ve never really made it a thing for myself to see how many I could observe.
[Chris]
Yeah, it’s it’s worth doing once or twice, I think. Don, of course, was in California. Lomo Pareto.
He actually, I think started observing it where that earthquake had taken place. Anyway, and he, he was further south. So it was a little bit easier.
Like there’s a few targets here that are super tough. If not impossible to get like, messy 7477. It’s pretty tough.
And then like messy 30. I really don’t think you can get messy 30 from here. What is it messy 75 to there’s a handful of them that are that are just too, too difficult to get just because of the proximity to the dusk or dawn.
And then there’s a few that, you know, are just going to be not above the horizon. You know, some of those ones like messy 54, I think, and some of the other ones sort of towards the bottom of Sagittarius messy 55 is likely out of reach because you need such a good night to see some of them anyway, from here that you’re just going to be out of luck. And without them being on the meridian, it’s it’s going to be a head shake.
So probably from here, you’d be looking at Nani, that would probably be doing pretty good to see Nani but for places further south. But the history of this is is that there’s this weekend every year where you can see all or most of the 110 messy objects and people go out often in in groups or as a club or whatever to try to see how many of them they can they can observe in a night. But trying to see 110 objects over the course of of an evening is is a fairly tall order.
[Shane]
I think Shane, it’s a lot. You really have to be motivated.
[Chris]
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I did it with my with my friend Graham.
Sadly, he also passed away a few years ago. And and yeah, he and I did it on a few occasions. I kind of had to break it up between sort of an evening and mornings and another evening.
And we just sort of did it over the course of like 36 hours. Just we were in Nova Scotia. So we were playing my Nova Scotia rules, I guess.
And and we end up seeing like 105 over the course of like 36 hours or something I think was our was our record. I think the following year we did like, I don’t know, I want to say like 90 or something like that. But yeah, it’s it’s sort of interesting to do.
But you’re really just flying. I mean, you’re just going from, you know, and just becomes a challenge to try to see some of this stuff in the in the dusk or dawn. But from here anyway, you know, with the weather that we’ve had, probably I will just be focusing on some targets that I haven’t seen before, instead of trying to run through 110 objects I’ve seen 110 times before.
Yeah, I’m, I’m of a similar mind. Let’s see. On March 29, we have this partial solar eclipse.
Looks like it’s centered on northern Labrador and Baffin Island. Shane, any any plans to go and witness this?
[Shane]
No, I would love to go to Baffin Island one day. But it won’t be on March 29. Unfortunately.
[Chris]
Yeah, I think that if you go to Baffin Island, the thing that I would want to do is there’s a Baffin Island is one of the largest islands in the world. And you can go to a lake that has an island that has a lake that has an island. It’s like nesting dolls.
It’s like nesting dolls of sorts. Yeah, we don’t get any of it here. We’re a good piece of there’s like maybe Churchill or someplace like that in Manitoba just sees a scooch.
But you’d really have to get up into Quebec or the Maritimes or, you know, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, a little bit looks like they get a piece of this. So for those with solar scopes down there, definitely worth taking a look, especially like in Nova Scotia. I think they they see a pretty good bite taken out of the of the sun.
I mean, it looks like it’s about a 90 percent or more from there. Then Newfoundland and Labrador, it gets to like 98 percent, but it never gets a full eclipse in Quebec for sure. There’s one for you, Leonid and lots of folks in Nova Scotia and out east Ontario gets a gets a little bit there in southern Ontario.
You’d really want to be going as far east as you could. I think maybe Toronto, you just get a small little little piece taken out of the sun, but you’ll need a solar scope, solar safety glasses. This is not a total eclipse of the sun.
So for the entirety of the event, you’ll need to be using your solar safety equipment and processes. So anyway, but yeah, it’s it’s nearly a total from Nova Scotia. Very, very close.
Yeah. Pretty cool. Good photographic event, perhaps.
[Shane]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Chris]
And then we have the the Gagin Sheen is going to be well placed towards the end of the month in in March. It’s going to be visible only from very, very dark sites. And it’s it’s not directly overhead, but it’s it’s very high in the south at midnight.
And essentially what you’re seeing is this anti solar point. I think what happens is that the sun kind of cuts through the the atmosphere of the earth and then reconverges at a point in the sky just opposite. And it varies a little bit depending like the the height of this varies depending on where you are on the earth.
So I suppose maybe in some areas it might be overhead, but in other areas it’s really just going to be very high in the south. Got to say, I’ve never really seen the Gagin Sheen. Shane, I don’t know about you.
[Shane]
No, I don’t think I have. And I’ve never really tried for it all that much either. So it would be interesting to be in a place like grasslands or, you know, somewhere similar that’s very dark at that time to to see if you can identify it.
But that won’t be me, unfortunately.
[Chris]
Yeah, I think I tried to see it once from I used to observe in a really dark place called the Liscombe Game Reserve back in Nova Scotia. And I think I tried it a few times from there. I can’t recall.
Maybe we kind of sort of saw it once. But that’s that’s more or less it, Shane. There are some large tides towards the last week of of March.
So if you are on the coast, keep an eye out for those, especially if you’re camping on a beach somewhere, which is always fun. But I put in this there wasn’t any comments that looked like they were coming around at this point in time anyway. Stay tuned.
If we do have a comment, we’ll report back. But Sirius B, which is the companion to the bright star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, Sirius being the brightest star in the nighttime sky, has this component, Sirius B, and it’s at its approximate maximum of 11 arc seconds from from the alpha component of Sirius. And I think this was was discovered by the Clarks when they were testing out one of their 18 inch telescopes from the Deerlick site.
So I think that this is probably going to be about the best time to try to split Sirius.
[Shane]
Yeah, that’ll be I’ll give it another go. I did. I did split it, I think, two years ago.
But it’s challenging. Like 11 arc seconds is a pretty big gap like that doesn’t make it challenging. But the brightness of Sirius A compared to B is what makes it a challenge.
And you really need a couple of well, a few things, at least if you’re as far north as us, people, you know, in the southern US, I think have a little bit easier of a time because it’s higher in the sky. So they’re not looking through as much atmosphere. And I’ve heard some people, well, even here, like in Edmonton, which is further north than us, I think we’ve had reports of people seeing it through an 80 millimeter telescope.
But for this, if you want to kind of have the best chances for success, the more aperture you have, the better. And probably the more magnification you have, the better. The key thing will be the atmosphere and just how steady the sky is.
But give it a try if you haven’t. It’s kind of a it’s a it’s a neat double. And it’s a challenging double.
[Chris]
Yeah, and I put a link in our notes rsc.ca slash Sirius dash B dash observing dash challenge, which I was co author on a bit of a challenge article about it. Or if you just type in Sirius B observing challenging into Google, it will be one of your top links. Or you can just Google Beckett Sirius B.
And you can find the documentation on that.
[Shane]
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good resource. And there’s a number of tips and tricks to like to sort of, again, set yourself up for success. One of them is to observe Rigel.
It’s near Sirius in the night sky, but it’s also a double star. And why that one is a good one to start with is it’s I think about the same distance, like about 11 arc seconds between A and B there. It’s just the magnitude difference isn’t as great.
So it’s much easier to see. But it gives you a sense for the distance between Sirius A and B. And then also, it’s a little bit of a test of the sky conditions.
Like if you can’t split Rigel, don’t even try Siri. It won’t happen.
[Chris]
Yeah. Okay, sounds sounds good. I’m just looking at my old notes here.
And Randall did a diagram and and the whole bit. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting people can go through and spend a few hours reading through that documentation and, and all the notes linked. We’ve had a few people who were successful over the years.
8.5 magnitude is the secondary star. And it has an orbital period just about 50, 50 years just over. So but yeah, Sirius negative 1.44. So real challenge to ferret out almost a ninth magnitude star next to almost a negative 1.5 magnitude star.
[Shane]
Yeah, this will test how clean your optics are as well. Because if you have dirty optics, that flaring from Sirius A really is noticeable.
[Chris]
Cool. All right. Anything to add Shane?
That is all. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening.
Be sure to share the show with other stargazers. You know, you can always send us your emails, observations, notes, anything else you want to share with us to actual astronomy at gmail.com.
[Outtro]
You’re listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Cool. The 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production is by me Richard Drum.
Project management is by Avivah Yamani. And hosting is donated by Libsyn.com. This content is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non commercial 4.0 international license. Please share what you love, but don’t sell what’s free. This show is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you. Please consider supporting our show on patreon.com forward slash CosmoQuestX and get access to bonus content. Without your passion and contribution, we won’t be able to share the stories and inspire the world. We invite you to join our community of storytellers and share your voice with listeners worldwide. As we wrap up today’s episode, we’re looking forward to unraveling more stories from the universe.
With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it. Until next time, let the stars guide your curiosity.
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production by Richard Drumm, project management by Avivah Yamani, and hosting donated by libsyn.com. This content is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please share what you love but don’t sell what’s free.
This show is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you! Please consider supporting our show on Patreon.com/CosmoQuestX and get access to bonus content. Without your passion and contribution, we won’t be able to share the stories and inspire the worlds. We invite you to join our community of storytellers and share your voice with listeners worldwide.
As we wrap up today’s episode, we are looking forward to unravel more stories from the Universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.
Until next time and let the stars guide your curiosity!