Photo of the Week. Planet Earth: the sixth of twelve
in the "Flight across Greenland," going from east to west above the
fantastic glacier and a river of ice. See full resolution.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, March 7, 2014.
Remember that Daylight
Savings Time starts on Sunday, March 9. All times below are
Daylight.
The night of Friday, March 7, sees the Moon as a fat waxing crescent as it approaches first quarter, which will be passed the
morning of Saturday the 8th well after Moonset. The remainder of
the week is spent with the Moon in its waxing
gibbous phase as it heads towards full on Sunday the 16th. The evening of
Friday the 7th, the Moon will make a fine sight to the left of the
Hyades cluster just up and to
the left of Aldebaran (which
does not belong to the cluster). The following
night, the waxing crescent will appear over Orion, then on the evening of Sunday the 9th look for
it down and to the right of Jupiter. By the
night of Monday the 10th, the Moon will have flipped to the other
side, appearing down and to the left of the giant planet. The
afternoon of Tuesday the 11th, the Moon passes apogee, where it
is farthest from the Earth, just over five percent more distant
than average.
The planets are nicely arrayed all over the sky. As evening
twilight draws to a close, Jupiter crosses the meridian high to the south and begins its
slow slide into the northwest still within the confines of Gemini to the southwest of Castor and Pollux. It finally sets around 4 AM.
An hour later, brilliant
Venus rises to dominate the sky until the Sun comes up and
Venus appears as a tiny naked eye blip in the clear blue celestial
sea. In between, Mars rises
around 10 PM to the northeast of Virgo's Spica, then
transits the meridian about 3:30 AM as it enters the western
celestial hemisphere just before Jupiter sets. As Mars approaches
its early-April opposition to the Sun, it's brightened to magnitude
minus one, behind only Venus, Jupiter, and the sky's brightest
star, Sirius in Canis Major. Mars is followed by the
midnight rising of Saturn,
which lies in the heart of Libra
to the northwest of Antares in Scorpius. Don't confuse reddish
Antares with Mars, which lies to the west of Saturn. The ringed
planet then transits the meridian about as Venus rises. Finally,
we are left with little Mercury, which passes its
greatest western elongation of 28 degrees to the west of the Sun on
Friday the 14th. Rising only in twilight, however, it's still a
difficult catch.
Not so of the bright stars. As evening draws to a close, the
Winter Six still ride high. The most prominent of them, Orion
(with bright Betelgeuse and Rigel), is accompanied by Taurus (and
Aldebaran) to the northwest, Auriga (with Capella)
to the north, Gemini (with Castor and Pollux) to the northeast,
Canis Minor (with Procyon) to the east, and finally
the Big Dog, Canis Major (with Sirius) to the southeast. Below
Orion look for box-like Lepus,
the Hare, and to the northwest the star streams of Perseus, the most easterly of the constellations of the Andromeda myth.
