Backyard Stargazer March 2017
By Francis Parnell
It’s March and Spring is just around the corner, but be prepared for another case of the “Blues.” Yep, a Full Moon on the 1st, and the second Full Moon on the 31st is a “Blue” one.
Looking west on the 3rd, bright white Venus is only 1-degree to the left of yellowish Mercury. It will be a challenge to pick them out of the twilight, so start your planet hunt about 20 minutes after sunset. At dusk on the 4th, Mercury is just 1.5-degrees to the upper right of Venus. Nice view in binoculars for the first three weeks of March.
Just before midnight on the 6th to the early hours of the 7th, bright yellow Jupiter and the waning gibbous Moon will be only 4-degrees apart as they rise in the east. Great view with naked eyes, binoculars, or a telescope!
At dusk on the 15th, Mercury will be at Greatest Elongation, 18-degrees east of the Sun and still upper right of Venus.
The Sun reaches the Equinox on the 20th at 12:15 p.m. and Spring officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere and Fall in the Southern Hemisphere.
On the 22nd, the waxing crescent Moon is less than 1-degree from Aldebaran, the brightest star in TAURUS, the Bull. Aldebaran is 67 light-years away, 44 times the solar diameter, and 160 times the Sun’s luminosity.
On the morning of the 29th, you can spot red Mars above the Teapot of SAGITTARIUS, the Archer, and 2-degrees to the right of yellowish Saturn. Using a small telescope or binoculars, you’ll find the pair only 1.5- degrees above M22, a globular star cluster 11,500 light-years away and sparkling with more than 80,000 stars.
We’ve all seen a red rose, a green leaf, and a rainbow. Well…not really. When we’re not looking, roses aren’t red, leaves aren’t green; everything is just bland. A rainbow isn’t in the sky; it’s created in our skull. To quote physicist Roy Bishop, “the eye does not detect the colors of the rainbow; the brain creates them. We are part of the rainbow, the beautiful part.” Photons deliver the electromagnetic information to our brain’s occipital lobe and all brightness and color are created there. Colors exist nowhere else. Google “Do colors exist in nature” and have your visual world turned upside down.
Have a terrific Spring and “Keep looking up!”
Francis Parnell of Darlington has been an amateur astronomer for over 46 years, and was on the staff and helped out at the Francis Marion University Observatory from 1982 until 2006 by showing visitors “what’s out there.” With the help of a friend, Mr. Ernest Lowry, he built his own telescope in 1986. And, because of light pollution, for the last 31 years he has been advocating for the advantages of using fully-shielded lighting at night.
