Learning Ra and Dec, how to find Venus, music and more! We had major technical difficulties during recording and lost large segments of the podcast so we pieced together what was usable and did our best to carry on!

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

"Stars"
by Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Welcome!

Hello to Steve from Utah in the states , Cheryl who publishes "Backyard Astronomy" at Pikerpress.com and to
Joe from Middlefield Connecticut

Thank you to Craig from Poway, California for sending me the Rush song "Earthshine" If it weren't for the fact that the song is copy written I would play it here!
Thanks to a suggestion by Ian of Burford, Oxfordshire U.K. we have Frappr!map for Astronomy a Go Go! Ian has the distinction of being the only Astronomy a Go Go! listener, that I know of so far, who can hear lions roaring while he stargazes!

Russell from Australia had a new podcast "Dark Matters" and we have a snippet of his first podcast to play.

Thanks to the kids from After School Astronomy Clubs for the Venus report.

Tips and Tricks

Last week we talked about using your hands to measure distance of object in the sky by degrees and that is great for communicating to each other how to find an object, like finding Saturn 15 degrees from Procyon. But there is a more precise way to refer to objects and that is by their Right Ascension(hours, minutes and seconds) and Declination(degrees, minutes of degree and seconds of degree)

The Celestial Sphere - The transparent imaginary two-dimensional sphere around the earth so that the Earth's equator (0°) will equal the Celestial Equator (0°) and the Earth's south pole (-90°) will equal the south celestial pole (-90°). The Earth's north pole will represent the north celestial pole where the star Polaris resides (+90°).

The Ecliptic - The path of the Sun across the Celestial Sphere

The Meridian and your Zenith - The line that goes directly above over your head from North to South through your Zenith is called the Meridian. Your Zenith it the point directly above you head in the sky. (90 degrees up in the sky when using altitude).

Remember it like this: Right Ascension (RA) is equal to Longitude. If you ascend, you go up: up down, north south, the RA lines go from North to South in the sky. Declination (Dec) is equal to Latitude, the Dec lines turn like a wheel from west to east in the sky, parallel with the latitude lines on Earth which also go from west to east.

"Movement" of the Grid Lines - Just as the longitude and latitude lines are fixed to the Earth as the Earth rotates, so does the RA and Dec lines move together with the sky as it "rotates" around the Earth. A star will thus always be at the same coordinate at all times. The Moon, Sun and Planets though, will not always have the same RA and Dec, because they move on the ecliptic path in the sky much faster than the stars can ever imagine traveling.

Planets

Venus - just before dawn between Aquila and Sagittarius
Jupiter - in the wee hours of the morning in the constellation Libra
Saturn - is in cancer the crab
Mars - is south of the Pleiades
Mercury - is visible in the west 45 minutes after sunset at the head of Pisces

Naked eye viewing- I am going to have you seek out our two solar hide and seek planets Mercury and Venus The after school astronomy club kids made this recording on how to find Venus.... This Friday the 24th Mercury officially reaches greatest elongation, which means that it is at its farthest visual distance from the Sun for this go-round and sets later than usual about one and a half hours after sunset. But to make sure you catch it I suggest looking during twilight about 45 minutes after sunset. And if you still have a real hard time finding it wait until Wednesday March first when an crescent Moon will be parked just above Mercury.

Telescopic viewing- Lets try for Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy. At mag 8.5 it straddle the line between Corvus and Virgo

News

there are so many great space and astronomy news sites and podcasts out there I won't try and duplicate them all, I'll just report things that really strike my fancy or that I think you might be interested in. Here is a list of some of the sites I visit daily:

• Universe Today
• NASA breaking news
• BBC Science and Technology - ! World Edition
• Planetary Society Blog
• Space.com
• And to get a good summary of all the news try Tom's Astronomy Blog
• Bad Astronomer's Blog
• Some of the names proposed for Pluto's two new moons.
• And since we are talking about moons, Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos are objects we can't catch in the normal backyard telescope but Mars express did a wonderful job returning some outstanding images
.
• Two comets visible with telescopes in the southern hemisphere. - Pojmanski is very faint magnitude 12.5 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 may eventually become a naked eye comet but I'm not going to predict that...we will keep an eye on both of these.

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
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Music

Brobdingnagian Bards -"Wild Mountain Thyme"