The northern hemisphere will be officially in the spring season on March 20. Do you feel springy?
All signs of spring are here: the red-winged blackbirds flitting and chittering in all the trees, blooming wildflower patches along the roads, and the southern sky harboring Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, Leo, faint Hydra, Lynx, and Cancer gliding across the field of view throughout the night.
These last three constellations are part of the 88 formal constellations listed in astronomical circles but are so faint they are almost invisible unless a person is out in the middle of nowhere.
Only one of the three, Hydra, has a star as bright as magnitude of two. The star is named Alphard, which is Arabic for “solitary one.” It is orange, more than 780 times brighter than our Sun but so very far away we can barely see it. Astronomers have tools to determine the composition of stars, and this one is larger barium. Hydra is the largest constellation in the official list of them.
Why did spring officially begin on this date? Because the sun rises at the vertex of the imaginary divisors of our hemisphere and also the sky, the equator, and the ecliptic on this date.
The sun rises at the equator at that vertex at 4:24 p.m. our time. Our sun will appear exactly due east at the horizon and set due west. This means that there will be almost equal hours of daylight and darkness on either side of this day, with the sun rising a few minutes earlier and setting a few minutes later each day until the first day of summer. This daily motion gives us more heating of our atmosphere as well as the surfaces on the planet, which effects the temperature.
It is the sun, folks. And we have no control over that. Planting more trees and stop the paving over all the arable land would be nice.
If you have an app on your phone to show constellations, look for Cancer, which resembles an upside-down Y and the Beehive cluster, Messier 44, an open cluster of stars.
Nestled along the right side of the upper region, in the lower part, there is another open cluster, M67, near the left-hand claw as it faces you. Hundreds of stars are brighter than our sun in these clusters, but they are so far away they can barely be detected.
The Beehive is officially known as Praesepe, the manger, and the stars around it are known as the donkeys. Galileo was the first person to turn a telescope toward this little cluster. Occasionally, a planet visits this little beehive which makes a viewing opportunity even more interesting.
If you would like to see in image of the clusters, check out these links: https://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=42358 and https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070809.html. This site shares thousands of astronomical photos and amazing information for the curious sky watchers.
I hope you plan to join the folks at Resaca de la Palma for the night hike the last Friday of the month. We will be sharing the reason for the seasons in action prior to the hike for those folks who come ahead of the starting time. The night hike ends at the Christina Torres Memorial Observatory for a look through the telescope.
Until next week, KLU, and do let some stars get in your eyes.
