Fireballs

I suppose the big event of this and last week has passed with the meteorite crashing into the sea off Tolman point. It could have been an isolated pebble but it is far more likely to part of the dust left in a comets trail. The most likely contender for this is comet Thatcher which has nothing to do with the iron lady. When we pass through its tail between the 16th and 26th of April fire balls are quite common. They seem to radiate from the constellation Lyra. But Lyra rises a bit later than the meteorite was seen, in the North East at about 9:30, and the fireball appeared in the South. So we’ll never know but after 10 if you look to North East where you’ll see a brightish star Vega, you should see 10 to 20 meteors an hour. The shower should peak tomorrow on the 22nd but they should show for a few days either side.

Tonight, the First-quarter Moon shines below Mars shines over the Moon.

From Friday through Sunday Venus and the Pleiades fit within a 5° binocular field of view in the west soon after sunset. With binoculars you should be just able to see Venus as a crescent leaning toward the setting sun. On Saturday a milky yellow Saturn shines to the Moon's upper left.

Mercury is fading and dropping out of sight in the sunset, after pairing with Venus for the first half of April. And I know quite a lot of you saw the elusive little rock, well two of you anyway, buts it’s well on the way back into the sun again now.

Venus shines very brightly in the west-northwest during twilight, getting a little higher and more obvious every week.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.5, shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon. Near it binoculars show the big Beehive Star Cluster, M44.

Jupiter is low in the dawn. Look for it above the eastern horizon about 45 minutes before your sunup. Nothing else there is nearly so bright.

Saturn is high in the southeast to south during evening. Not overly bright or easy to find, so have a look at APL star map for Scilly on the blog.

But enough of this frippery, not much has been heard of the black shadow recently, but she has been busy, very busy, while her alto ego Barbara Simpson has been gleaning feel good stories the length and breath of the islands, the black shadow has been hard at it. You may have heard of quantitative easing, well my mole in the US federal reserve tells me that, through a diabolically cunning scheme, to difficult for me to understand let alone explain, the Black Shadow has siphoned more than 650 billion dollars that had been intended to kick start the world economy, its all stashed in her hide away deep in the bowels of Mt Moorwell. What sinister use she will put it too, remains to be seen.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 51st anniversary of the last Canadian missionary being booted out of the People's Republic of China.

Mercury.

Mercury

We have an unusual contender for this week’s main attraction, tiny little Mercury. Not that its overly bright, but for once its easy to, in fact this is as good an apparition as often-elusive Mercury ever puts on and with Venus lighting the way to it, you could hardly ask for Mercury to be any easier. Look to the WNW soon after sunset and you’ll very quickly be able to spot an extremely bright Venus, if you look a little to its right you be able to see Mercury.

Yesterday evening at around 8:45 I caught the pair of them at the same time in binoculars. Venus is many times brighter than Mercury but they were the only two objects visible in that part of the sky. Venus was visible from around 8 until about 10:30 when it sank over Mincarlo, looking from the garrison.

It was a bit of a red letter day for me because it was the first time I could ever say I’d definitively seen Mercury, though I must have seen it from the plane window 6 weeks ago when it was completely over shadowed by Venus. The little planet is dimming rapidly now it was magnitude -.8 on the second but by the next week it will be right down to magnitude 1.4. So the next few days will give you your best viewing window, possibly for the next 140,000 years, but I’m speculating here.

And here’s some stuff you probably have less than no interest in about Mercury, it’s a pretty miserable place that orbits as close as 30 million miles from the Sun so it gets as hot as a monkeys bum, it whacks around the sun every 88 days, and it has a 1400 hour day, one day on Mercury is 58 of ours, more or less 9 Mercurian months long. It only revolves at 6 miles an hour so if you could maintain a brisk walk at the equator, which you couldn’t then you’d never have see the sun come up, or set, depending on whether you like extreme cold -150 degrees, or heat 500 degrees, and nothing lives there. But on the plus side there are no elections

As for the other planets they’re all around at the moment. Venus will be bright after sunset in the wnw for a while yet.

Mars, dimming into the distance at magnitude +0.3, now, it shines very high in the southwest during evening. It's in Cancer, left of Pollux and Castor and above Procyon.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1) is emerging very low in the glow of dawn. Look for it just above the eastern horizon about 40 or 30 minutes before sunrise.

Saturn (magnitude +0.6, in the head of Virgo) is two weeks past opposition. Look for it in the east-southeast at dusk, higher in the southeast by late evening, and highest in the south by 11 or midnight.

As usual have a look at the blog for guidance, which I guess you are doing.

That was your night sky for the week ending on the 40^th anniversary of an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploding.

The Pliers Of Hercules

Just a short one this week, because I’m flying back to England yesterday, sorry about the miss-matched tenses there, but I’m recording this Monday you’re listening on Wednesday and I’m fly back Tuesday. So by the time you hear this I’ll be back in England trudging across the Tundra, mile after mile, trying to find some Soya milk for the huskies.

Officially spring has arrived, not that you’d know it, even in Spain where it’s wet and miserable as well but maybe not quite as cold, and nothing too special to report this week. Mercury should be just about visible in the West just after Sunset, below a much brighter Venus. This week well away from the middle aged moon.

Tonight the Moon forms a roughly equilateral triangle with Mars and Pollux this evening, as shown here, tomorrow the moon moves up a little and together with Mars, Pollux, and Castor form a ragged line this evening, and on Friday you’ll be able to spot bright Regulus shining to the left of the moon. As usual there’s a guide on the blog, though lets face it you should all be experts by now.

Not much action with the rest of the planets, these being Jupiter and Saturn, according to my secret sources Jupiter is apparently still hidden in the glow of sunrise, but I reckon it should be visible very low in the east in the minutes before sun up, especially toward the end of the week and definitely by early April.

Saturn not overly bright is in the head of Virgo and hit opposition last Sunday: rising around sunset, shining highest in the middle of the night, and setting around sunrise. In a telescope Saturn's rings are tilted only 3° from edge-on. They'll narrow further to 1.7° in May and early June, and then begin widening again. So with any luck in about 5 years Saturn will be good and bright again. Anyway there’s a thunder storm on Saturn at the moment, about twice the size of the Earth, but from here it looks like little white spot. There’s a video of it on the blog where you can see Dione, one Saturn’s moons wacking around as well, but be warned Avatar it’s not.

White Storm On Saturn.

The giant, long-lived thunderstorm on Saturn known as the Saturn Electrostatic Disturbance (SED), a source of radio emissions detected by the Cassini spacecraft, has returned to amateur visibility as a small white spot, at least for users of large scopes and/or during moments of excellent seeing. It's above center barely past the central meridian here. "The SED is really brightening now!" writes Christopher Go, who took this image. "It is much more prominent than when I last imaged it." Update: As of March 18th it was fading and had reportedly split in two.

Go took this image at 16:48 UT March 13, 2010. The spot is near System III longitude 0°, System II longitude 236°. In addition, he notes, "The [dark] South Equatorial Belt is very prominent, while the North Equatorial Belt looks faint. There are a lot of band details, especially in the northern hemisphere."

Little Dione is in the background below the right end of the rings. South is up. Click image for a .wmv movie of eight images (with north up).

Christopher Go

And that was a rather brisk Scilly Stars for the week ending on the 152nd anniversary of Hymen Lipman patenting the first pencil with an attached eraser.

Spring

The most important thing about this week must be on Sunday which is the first day of spring, the equinox occurs at 9:32 am when the axis of the earth is exactly perpendicular to the ecliptic, in English the orbital plane, and by 9:33 it will be tentatively pointing toward the Sun again. And because we’re right on top of the vernal equinox the days are lengthening faster now than at any other time of the year. The rate of change will peak on the 21st then slow down to midsummer’s day when it stops dead and reverses when we begin the inexorable plunge to mid winter. But that’s another 3 months yet.

We may be able to just swing all 5 naked eye planets this week, but I warn you now it’s iffy and it means very little sleep. Mercury sets at 6:30 just behind the sun, but it may be visible in binoculars with a clear eastern horizon over the sea, so this is really for St Agnes and Bryher folk. Though you may get a view between Porth Looe and the golf club on St Mary’s. But if you can’t see Mercury you won’t be able to miss Venus if the conditions are right, it sets around 7:30 and is a very bright -3.9. Tonight the two inner planets will be accompanied by a very young moon, which reminds me it was a month ago last night that I photographed the 3 of them from the window of a jet, over Northern France.

Mars is still very much with us, now sadly faded to magnitude –0.2, it shines very high in the southeast at dusk and is due South by 8:30. It's in Cancer, below Pollux and Castor at nightfall and left of them later in the evening.

Saturn that most buoyant of planets, it being the only one that will in water float admittedly in a bath if heroic proportions. The ringed planet is at opposition on the 21st which means it rises as the sun sets and vice versa. And it will be due South at about 12:30, this week it setting at about 6:30 am just as Jupiter rises. The giant planet has passed from behind the sun and is setting around now before the sun at 4pm, which we can’t see. But it’s back in the late dawn sky just before the sun so it may be visible briefly. But by the 31st it’s up almost an hour before the sun so it may best to wait. We won’t see it again before midnight until early July, but by September it will rise around 8 and will be dominating the southern sky throughout the autumn and early winter, but let’s get the summer out of the way first.

If you’re champing at the bit to find Aires, as I’m sure most of you are. The moon is just off new at the moment and on Thursday at nightfall you’ll find it in the west at Sunset just after Venus has retired for the night in Aries, there’s a guide of on the blog. Now who am I to pass judgement on the ancient Greeks, though it’s not as if they can sue or anything, but they must have been on something pretty strong to be able to see a ram in that little pile of nondescript stars.

On the 20th the moon a little further up occults the Pleiades again and on Sunday it’s a little to the North of Taurus the bull, which to be fair is quite like a bulls head, with his bright baleful eye Aldebaran.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 4th anniversary The Federal Reserve discontinuing publishing the M3 money supply figures.