Cumberland-Times Sky Columns
March 2005

March 6 - Spotting Groups and Planets
March 13 - What About Hubble?
March 20 - Getting Started in Sky Gazing
March 27 - Easter

March 6 - SPOTTING GROUPS & PLANETS

Now that milder weather is coming, it'll be more enjoyable to view the night sky. Here are my choices of the top 4 sights for this month.

Turning to the northern evening sky, the Big Dipper is dumping into the much fainter Little Dipper below. The two leftmost stars of the Big Dipper point down and left to the North Star, a rather modest star about halfway up in the North.

In the Southwest, the very bright star group Orion is dropping a little bit lower each night (if you observe at the same time). Orion's belt of three stars points left to Sirius, the night's brightest star. To the right, the belt points to the 7 Sisters or Pleiades star cluster. Above and to the left of Orion is the bright planet Saturn.

In the last week of March, the moon is full, appearing near the very bright planet Jupiter on March 25th and 26th. The moon is about 1/4 of a million miles away while Jupiter is about 400 million miles distant or 1600 times farther out in space. Jupiter has four large moons of its own, which are easily viewed with a small telescope as tiny stars either above or below Jupiter.
For early risers, the planet Mars shines low in the southeastern dawn sky. You can be sure of spotting Mars by using the Summer Triangle, whose long sides point to Mars. In March, Mars passes from Sagittarius to Capricornus, one of the duller zodiac star groups.

March 13 - What About Hubble?

For more than a year, many in the scientific community and our Maryland U.S. Senators have been fighting the phasing out of the Hubble Space Telescope. The control center for the Hubble Space Telescope is the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore. This 3 billion dollar instrument which has been upgraded by 3 Space Shuttle visits is slowly deteriorating; the failure of Hubble's gyros and batteries will likely make it inoperable in 3-4 years. The Bush administration's new budget provides $75 million dollars for design and construction of a satellite rocket that will latch onto Hubble and bring the telescope into the upper atmosphere where it will be incinerated over the Pacific Ocean.

Currently Hubble is in 360 miles high orbit that will last for decades. In contrast, the International Space Station with two crew aboard is in 220 mile high orbit that is slowly shrinking month by month. One reason why the Shuttle must fly this year is too boast the $30 billion Space Station into a safe orbit.

NASA officials recently have ruled out a robotic mission to Hubble to install new batteries and gyros. NASA has developed new cameras for the Hubble that cost $200 million. So this equipment will be not used.

Over its 15 year lifetime, the Hubble Space Telescope has made some spectacular discoveries. It photographed the 21 fragments of Comet Levy-Shoemaker 9 which struck the planet Jupiter in July, 1994. Hubble's studies of supernovae (exploding stars) showed that the universe is speeding up in its expansion. This acceleration means that the universe is dominated by dark energy, which causes a repulsion between galaxies that grows with increasing distance. Hubble has also revealed the galaxies surrounding the quasars, the most powerful objects in the universe. Only Hubble can be pointed for weeks at a time at a small field showing galaxies at distances of over 10 billion light years (Hubble Deep Fields). The Earth's atmosphere prevents telescopes on Earth from doing such images.

The next large telescope to go into space will be the James Webb Telescope, which will be placed in a solar orbit about a million miles from the Earth in the early years of the next decade. Operating mostly in the infrared, the Webb telescope can't visited by astronauts if there are any problems. If any of its hardware fails, there will be no way to fix the Webb telescope. Also the Webb telescope has a radical design (accompanying sun shield without a tube) that make it less protected than the other space telescopes. The bottom line is that this telescope had to be made very light too offset the fuel needed to insert into a position four times farther away than our moon.

My hope is that NASA will not follow through on its plans to destroy Hubble. It's likely that a new administration in 2009 will consider a single Shuttle Mission to revive Hubble for a few more years until the Webb Telescope is launched. In the meanwhile, large Earth based telescopes will be used for high resolution images of star clusters & gas clouds in our galaxy and nearby galaxies.

March 20 - Getting Started in Sky Gazing

Sky gazing offers something for people from kindergartners to senior citizens. Many pastimes rely on learning a lot of vocabulary, using special equipment or engaging at special times or special places. Most of the terms in sky gazing you probably already know. It's just a matter of putting them together in a new way so you can better understand what's happening over your head. The basic equipment for sky gazing is your eyes. The night sky is right outside your dwelling and available any clear night.

Many folks think that to know the sky, you have to block out considerable chunks of time as most hobbies require (hunting, camping, fishing, getting good at video games, etc.). Sky gazing is not competitive as most hobbies, where many people brag about how many of this, etc. You can go at your own pace, so it's more enjoyable. But like most hobbies, it is nicer if you have a friend to go out at night and view the sky. (For over 20 years, I've done this with my two special dogs, CoCo and Midnight; I'm now doing it with my new dog.)

The biggest barrier in sky gazing is how to start. Reading my column each week, particularly the parts dealing with the sky is helpful. But even better is our Planetarium beginner's sky guide, called "Astro Bites". This two page handout gives you a simple guide to the sky, what are the best sights each season in 2004-2006 and a list of good websites for learning about Astronomy (the science of which sky gazing is a part).

Another useful item is our 2005 Sky Almanac, a four page handout that lists where to find the planets, when the moon is full and times of twilight, sunrise and sunset every 10 days throughout the year. Our 2005 Sky Almanac has pages 3 & 4 devoted to the best sky sights each month. The nicest things about these two items is that they are free to anybody who lets me know. You can phone me at (301) 687-4270 and press 4 and leave your name and mailing address. Or you can e-mail me at rdoyle@frostburg.edu . You can also pick up these items and free sky maps at our Sunday Planetarium shows. These items as our Planetarium shows are free and without any obligation. I have had e-mails across Maryland and letters from many places in Pennsylvania and West Virginia where I have sent these materials.

I think sky gazing has some fine set of intro books full of good illustrations. But I must warn you that most beginner's books cover too much, overwhelming most folks. Consider going into the Juvenile section of your public library and looking at the sky books there. Just sitting down and reading through one of these books in a library may be a better way to start than a standard beginner's book. Then try some of the regular novice books; my favorite authors include H.A. Rey, Terrence Dickinson and Donald Goldsmith.

When you have many questions, then it's time to talk to someone. We have a small amateur astronomy club that meets each month (next meeting is Saturday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at the Frostburg State Planetarium) and has nice star parties at the Frostburg Recreational Complex on a regular basis during the milder months. If you are tied down and can't travel much, send me your questions through the mail to Dr. Bob Doyle, Frostburg State Planetarium, Frostburg, MD 21532. You can also call me at the above number or send an e-mail.

March 27 - Easter

Easter has been called a "moveable feast" as its date drifts from early to mid spring. American Thanksgiving has a smaller range from November 22nd to 28th, falling on the fourth Thursday of November. The rule for Easter recognized by most Christian denominations is: Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon on or after March 21st. This makes the earliest Easter March 22nd if March 21st, a Saturday has a a full moon. The latest Easter is April 25th. This would occur if March 20th was a full moon. Then the next full moon would fall on April 19th. If this was a Monday, then Easter would fall on Sunday, April 25th, the latest Easter.

Even though Easter is the greatest feast in Chrisendom, strict Puritans were opposed to the celebration of Easter. Against the opposition of Charles I, the English Parliament in 1647 abolished all church festivals. (Charles I was beheaded two years later.) After the Cromwells' fall from power, Easter was reinstated under the Stuarts (1660).

Many of our Easter customs are from Europe. In some countries, eating eggs during Lent was forbidden. So the eggs during Lent were hardboiled and decorated, to be eaten on Easter. The Easter bunny comes from Germany, where they called the rabbit Osterhase.