Bernard Reim
The celestial patterns are always changing, just as the terrestrial patterns are always changing, due to our seasons caused by our 23.5 degree tilt of the earth. Notice that Orion and the famous winter hexagon are now getting lower in the west just as the equally famous summer triangle is beginning to rise in the east. They consist of Lyra the harp, Cygnus the swan, and Aquila the eagle.
There are several interesting highlights this month. These include Mercury’s best apparition of the year, Mars getting closer and brighter each day, a comet and an asteroid in Leo the Lion, and the Lyrid meteor shower.
I hope many of you saw that wonderful total solar eclipse over Indonesia early in March. I watched a live feed of the entire event and was thrilled by its continual unfoldment and its unexpected occurrences like seeing the shadow bands race across the earth at faster than the speed of sound and the solar prominences visible just before and during totality.
I learned a lot of interesting things about the power of our sun from the professional astronomers sharing their insights and commentary with the viewers. It was also educational to get a glimpse of life in these exotic locations half way around the earth. As you physically become the fourth body in a perfect three body alignment of the three most important bodies in all of humanities life on earth, it really shows you the enormous power of nature and the surprisingly great influence that any one individual can have as they align themselves with this power and understand more about it and how to use it for the good of mankind. Just one average solar flare releases enough energy in one second to provide for all the power needs of this entire country for 100 years.
This was an especially important eclipse because it helped to prepare us for our own total solar eclipse next summer, on Monday, August 21. The narrow path of totality will cut right across our country from Oregon to South Carolina, the first time in nearly 100 years. It is not too early to start making reservations and doing some research on the best locations and methods of capturing and sharing this amazing and rare event. Then we will be very lucky and enjoy another total solar eclipse less than 7 years later, on April 8 of 2024, which will pass right over Maine.
Mercury makes its best showing for the year on April 18. Our first planet starts the month by rising around 7:30 p.m., during evening twilight. By the middle of the month it will not set until 8:30 p.m. It will be 20 degrees east of the sun and it will reach 10 degrees high, or one fist at arm’s length. Watch the waxing crescent moon pass nearby on the 8th. One of the best events for the entire year of 2016 is coming up next month. That will be the transit of Mercury across the face of the sun on Monday, May 9.
Mars will more than double in brightness during this month as the earth is rapidly catching up with our neighboring planet. Then it will continue to get brighter and larger until we get closest to it on May 22. That point is called opposition and only happens every 26 months for Mars, but about every 13 months for the other superior planets. The red planet is already showing some nice detail on its surface in small telescopes and it will only get better over the next several months until we pull too far ahead of Mars by July in our faster orbit around the sun.
Jupiter is still close to its best for the year, now rising just before sunrise. Saturn is getting closer and brighter, rising around midnight and approaching its own opposition in early June.
A comet named Ikeya- Murakami is drifting right through Leo the Lion this month. Discovered in 2010, this comet will pass just half a degree below Regulus, the brightest star in Leo and the 21st brightest star in the whole sky, on the 24th and 25th. It will only shine at around 10th magnitude, so you will need a telescope to see it for yourself, but it is nice to know that it is there when you look at Leo this month.
There will also be an asteroid crossing through another part of Leo this month. It will glow at about the same magnitude as the comet, so you will also need at least a small telescope to see this interesting asteroid, named 6 Hebe. It has been proven that 6 Hebe is the source of 40 percent of all the meteorites that fall to Earth, which is quite amazing. It is about the 8th largest of all the millions of asteroids and its diameter is about 120 miles across. It is at its closest to Earth now and is visible just above Denebola, which marks the tail of Leo the Lion.
Remember that NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is still orbiting the largest of all asteroids, named Ceres, which is about 600 miles in diameter and was discovered back in 1801. Dawn just visited the second largest asteroid, Vesta, a few years ago, learning a lot from that encounter. There is a Japanese spacecraft on its way right now to an earth-crossing asteroid named Ryugu. It was launched back in December of 2014 and should get there by 2018. It will gather several pounds of material from this asteroid and then return its precious cargo to Earth by 2020. NASA will launch Osiris-Rex on its way to another dangerous, earth-crossing asteroid named Bennu in September of this year. It will also return samples to Earth. We will learn more about the origins of life on earth and how to protect ourselves from asteroids that may hit us by analyzing these samples in detail.
Remember that on February 15 of 2013 we knew that an asteroid named 367943 Duende would pass just 17,000 miles above the surface of Earth, which is closer than our many geosynchronous satellites orbit. What we didn’t expect is a 65–foot diameter asteroid that came in from the direction of the sun and exploded just above the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia that morning, injuring 1500 people. Soon we will be better prepared with our new knowledge.
The Lyrid meteor shower will peak on April 22, but the full moon will wash out most of these meteors, caused by Comet Thatcher, which has a 415-year orbit.
April 1: On this day in 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to the sun.
April 6: The moon passes less than one degree north of Venus this morning.
April 7: New moon is at 7:24 a.m. EDT. The Compton Gamma Ray observatory was launched on this day in 1991. It discovered about one major gamma ray burst every day for its life in orbit.
April 11: On this day in 1986, Halley’s Comet was closest to the earth.
April 12: On this day in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
April 13: First quarter moon is at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
April 16: Mars is stationary, beginning its retrograde or westward motion today.
April 18: The moon passes 2 degrees south of Jupiter this morning. Pluto is stationary.
April 22: Full moon is at 1:24 a.m. This is also called the Grass, Egg, Pink, or Fish Moon.
April 25: On this day in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed. Look for the waning gibbous moon very close to Saturn, Mars, and the orange giant star named Antares in Scorpius this morning around 3 a.m. Antares is about 700 times larger than our own sun.
April 29: Last quarter moon is at 11:29 p.m. EDT.
— Bernie Reim is an amateur astronomer and teaches astronomy lab courses at the University of Southern Maine.
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