Branching out to things not Messier, following the water, wondering why comets are birthed in the furnace and the fridge, enjoying some music and, of course, your company.

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

Simon Vouet, The Muses Urania and Calliope, c. 1634
Urania (heavenly) is the muse of astronomy and astrology.
Calliope (beautiful-voiced) is the muse of epic poetry.

The Star-Splitter
by Robert Frost

You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

--first stanza

Welcome!

I know it is a little late, but happy Pi day. March 14th at 1:59 UTC can be fudged into 3.14159. In our department we celebrate the notorious number 3.14.59 with Pie of course, any excuse for a party!

To make thing even better it was Albert Einstein's birthday as well.

Another anniversary to celebrate is On this day in 1926, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuel rocket.

Planets

• Venus - The brightest planet visible this month. Venus is outstanding in the Eastern morning sky
• Jupiter - The largest planet resides in the confines of Libra and is highest around 3:am on the ecliptic between the bright Spica to the west and the ruddy Antares to the east. Any telescope can reveal its two widest cloud bands to you, along with its four Galilean satellites.
• Saturn - It appears as a yellowish star that rivals Capella in brightness, but in the constellation of Cancer (1 1/2 thumb width west of The Beehive - M-44) A small telescope will always show Titan, Saturn's largest and most extraordinary moon. A 6-inch telescope will begin to show the orange color of its atmospheric haze.
• Mars is sneaking it's way closer to Aldeberon creating another eye for the bull. So in that part of the sky it is hip to be red, red Beetleguese, orange Aldeberon and the red Mars
• Mercury - hidden in the glare of the sun as are Uranus and Neptune

Tools

Catalogues -

• Uranography - The branch of astronomy concerned with mapping the stars, galaxies, or other celestial bodies.
• Uranometria - The sky atlas compiled by Johann Bayer in 1603
• Messier catalogue- compiled by Charles Messier
• New General Catalogue (NGC)- compiled by John Dreyer
  IC I published in 1895 added 1,529 new star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies
  IC II published in 1908 listed a further 3,857 objects
• NGC 2000.0 - is a modern compilation of the New General Catalogue, the Index Catalogue, and the Second Index Catalogue
• HIP - Hiparcos catalogue - Its name is an acronym for High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite and was chosen for its similarity to that of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus.
• Caldwell and Herschel 400 and Uranometria - all great astronomy catalogues

Constellations

Volans, the Flying FishOriginally named Piscis Volans, this constellation was named by Johann Bayer. It is located where all good fish should be, below a boat. In the southern sky Volans is southwest of Carina, the keel, and east of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Johannes Kepler called this set of stars Passer, the Sparrow.

Camelopardalis(ka-MEL-oh-PAR-duh-lis), the Giraffe can be found between Perseus, Auriga and Ursa Minor. This constellation was first observed to look like a camel but name was eventually changed to camelopardalis, which is Latin for giraffe. In the winter months the giraffe appears upside down. Only during the summer months does it appear right side up.

The Moon -

This weekend the moon will be moving from a full moon to a waning gibbous so your early evenings will be darker.

Mare Crisium (Sea of Crisis) will slowly be covered by lunar night as this week continues so we are going to look at the NW quadrant of the moon.

Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) slices across the northern cap of the moon and at it's western end seems to dump into Sinus Roris.

Image courtesy of the Lunar Republic

Sinus Roris (Bay of Dew)leads into the great Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). This ocean of regolith sweeps down the western side of the moon.

Last week we looked at the craters Copernicus and Kepler, this week our lunar crater is in the great ocean further north, but just as bright as Kepler. Crater Aristarcus

Image courtesy of the Lunar Republic

We are actually looking at a complex of Aristarcus a Greek grammarian noted for is commentary on the Iliad and the Odyssey and just a little bit SW Herodotus named after the greek "Father of History". Squiggled above and between them is Valles Schoteri. To see Herodotus or Schoteri will take a telescope. At the southern edge it finally meets up with Mare Humorum (Sea of Moisture) and Mare Congnitum (The Sea that has become known)

Naked eye viewing-The splendid open cluster IC 2602 is still known under the common name "Southern Pleiades." An open cluster of more than 50 stars in the constellation Carina, centered on the blue-white star Theta Carinae and can be seen with the naked eye. (use the chart below)

Binocular viewing Kemple's Cascade

Kemble�¢ï¿½ï¿½s cascade is situated in one of the most difficult constellations to detect in the night sky, Camelopardalis or the Giraffe. A string of 15 to 25 stars ranging from the 5th to the 9th magnitude. The stars seem to cascade from the northeast down to the southwest they do not form a group or cluster physically, it's only a chance arrangement of stars. At the southeastern end of the chain of stars you will find the 6th magnitude open cluster NGC 1502, containing 15 stars in a 7' area.

Eta Carina - The Eta Carina Nebula is the largest diffuse nebula in the sky, much larger than the more famous Orion Nebula. The star Eta Carinae itself is also interesting. It is a variable star; in the mid-19th century it was the second brightest star in the sky; today it is not even visible with the naked eye.
Star Chart generated from "Star Charts R Us"

Telescopic viewing My favorite object E.T (kachina doll cluster)

News

There are so many great space and astronomy news sites 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:

• Planet Quest - the counter has moved up from 159 to 160 extrasolar planets. Starting in 1991 with Pulsar 1257 but more popularly realized with 51 Pegasi in 1995 the list now seems to have grown to 160 (plus a few others in waiting ) with the last addition residing in Sagittarius. Still getting the data in.
• Enceladus - "Our search for liquid water has taken a new turn. The type of evidence for liquid water on Enceladus is very different from what we've seen at Jupiter's moon Europa. On Europa the evidence from surface geological features points to an internal ocean. On Enceladus the evidence is direct observation of water vapor venting from sources close to the surface," said Dr. Peter Thomas, Cassini imaging scientist, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

  But in the mean time, scientist who believed that Enceladus was fueling Saturn's E ring now have further proof!

• Stardust Update - Comets, they said, may not be as simple as the clouds of ice, dust and gases they were thought to comprise. They may be diverse with complex and varied histories. Wild 2 seems to be an example of that complexity.

  Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice," said Donald Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator and professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. The returned samples show high-temperature materials from the coldest part of our solar system.

  The material like that in the green Hawaiian beach sand is called olivine. Its presence in the comet's dust trail was a surprise. "It seems that comets are �¢ï¿½�¦ a mixture of materials formed at all temperatures, at places very near the early sun and at places very remote from it," said Michael Zolensky, Stardust curator and co-investigator at JSC

• Martian crater flyby - A "Grand Canyon of Mars" slices across the Red Planet near its equator. This canyon -- Valles Marineris, or the Mariner Valley -- is 10 times longer and deeper than Arizona's Grand Canyon, and 20 times wider. As the picture shows, you could drop the whole Los Angeles basin into a small part of Valles Marineris and leave plenty of room to spare. In length, the canyon extends far enough that it could reach across the United States from East Coast to West Coast, while its rim stands more than 25,000 feet high, nearly as tall as Earth's Mount Everest.

Comets visible with binoculars/telescopes in the northern hemisphere. - C/2006 A1 Pojmanski

and 73P/ Schwassmann-Wachmann 3
and C/2005 E2 ( McNaught )

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"
-- Shakespeare

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Music

Josh Woodward -"Soft Orange Glow"
49Bliss -"The Way you Are"