Skylights featured three times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
.
Photo of the Week.. The waxing gibbous Moon shows
off its heavily cratered surface and its maria, the lava-coated
impact basins that make the face of the "Man in the Moon." Mare
Imbrium is highlighted at upper left, the basin cut in half by the
"terminator," the lunar sunrise line. Note crater rims and
mountains catching the first rays of sunlight. Photo courtesy of
Mark Killion.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, March 26, 2004.
The Moon begins the week as a fat waxing crescent,
passes through its first quarter the night of Saturday March 28
(near sunset, with the Moon near the meridian to the south), then
finishes the week in its waxing gibbous phase (as in the photo of
the week). Friday the 26th sees our companion near apogee,
where it is farthest from the Earth. The night of Saturday the
27th, the Moon will be to the northwest of Saturn
, while the following night finds it to the northeast of the
ringed planet, which now plies southern Gemini. The night of Thursday April 1 (no fooling),
the Moon will appear to the northwest of
Jupiter, which treads in
retrograde fashion in southern Leo, the planet transiting the meridian just after 11
PM. Saturn on the other hand is now in the western half of the sky
past the meridian as twilight fades.
Both of the "inferior" planets, those closer to the Sun than we
are, Mercury
and
Venus, take center stage. On the morning of Monday the 29th,
Mercury passes its greatest elongation to the Sun, lying 19 degrees
to the east of it. The nights of Sunday the 28th and Monday the
29th will thereby be the best for viewing of the little planet,
which will appear low above the western horizon in evening
twilight. Quite by coincidence, only 5 hours later, Venus passes
its own greatest eastern elongation to the Sun at an angle of 46
degrees, making it about as high in the western sky as possible.
Between roughly now and its "greatest brilliancy" (the planet still
getting brighter as it approaches the Earth) on May 2, Venus will
not set until after 10:30 PM, giving us an unusually long and good
look at our nearest planetary neighbor. At maximum elongation, the
inferior planets lie at the tangent points of their orbits as seen
from Earth, giving us a telescopic view of half their daylight sides, half their nighttime
sides, making them look like "quarter moons." Not yet done with
its planetary show, Venus will pass just to the south of the Pleiades star cluster the night
of Thursday, April 1, the two making an unusually grand sight.
Between Venus and Saturn,
Mars coincidentally glides to the north of the Taurus's Hyades.
