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.