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).
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.
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