Mon Mar 27, 2023 DARKNESS WASTING TIME
By now most of us have recovered from the semiannual trauma of converting from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time. We’ve run our clocks ahead an hour to compensate for the extra daylight we get early in the morning, thanks to the longer path our sun travels through the sky as we approach summer. This may be a great idea for most folks, but astronomers now have to wait an extra hour for the sun to set, and we call it darkness wasting time. There has been some talk lately of either abolishing Daylight Saving time, or abolishing standard time. An article in the Washington Post favored getting rid of Standard Time altogether. That was actually tried back in January 1974; but the extended early morning darkness resulted in a 17% increase in early morning traffic fatalities - so we went back to Standard Time.
Tue Mar 28, 2023 WHY DOESN’T POLARIS MOVE?
Earth’s north pole points toward the star Polaris. As the earth rotates, stars rise out of the east and set in the west. But Polaris doesn’t move. It’s like spinning a basketball. There’s only one other place to put a second finger on the ball and not disrupt rotation, and that’s the top of the ball. Now think of standing on the top of the earth. Look straight up. Instead of a giant finger, you’ll see a star. That’s Polaris, and it appears on the zenith, 90 degrees overhead, from the Earth’s north pole, which is at 90 degrees North latitude. If you slide down the Earth, then the North Star slides downward too: at 45 degrees North latitude, Polaris is halfway up the north sky. But if you go to the equator, 0 degrees, then Polaris is on the north horizon, and you can’t see it.
Wed Mar 29, 2023 NAME THAT PLANET 2
Let’s play “name that planet.” I’ll name some of their features, and you try to identify it. The first planet has craters named for Cleopatra, Amelia Earhart, and Sacajawea, plus two continents - Ishtar and Aphrodite. The planet is Venus, and its features are named after love goddesses or famous women. Now try, Tombaugh, Norgay Mountains, Tartarus, Balrog and Cthulhu. That would be Pluto. How about the plains of Utopia and Chryse, or the Hellas basin, the Tharsis bulge, the Mariner Valley or Mount Olympus? That’s Mars. Where do you find the Caloris basin, or craters named Bach, Velazquez, Cervantes, Chopin, Tolkien, Shakespeare or Mozart? Artists, musicians and writers’ names can be found on Mercury.
Thu Mar 30, 2023 LIGHT SPEED ZOOM OUT
Traveling at the speed of light is impossible. Too bad. The moon is only a quarter of a million miles away. At the speed of light, you could get there in less than a second and a half. The light from the sun takes eight minutes to travel 93 million miles to Earth. Pluto is four and a half light hours away. The comets at the edge of our solar system, perhaps a trillion miles out, are nearly ten weeks away at speed-of-light travel. Then we come to the star Alpha Centauri, a little over four light years distant – that’s 25 trillion miles. The farthest stars in our Milky Way are over a hundred thousand light years away – that’s about 600 thousand trillion miles - and the nearest big galaxy, Andromeda, is fifteen million trillion miles out – 2 and a half million light years. But distant quasars are over 12 billion light years away – 90 billion trillion miles – far out!
Fri Mar 31, 2023 OUT WITH THE RAM
The old saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” refers to the improving weather in the springtime of the year. But there is also an astronomical connection. In early March, the constellation Leo the Lion appears in the east after sunset. As the month progresses, Leo is a little higher in the sky each night, while in the west, winter constellations sink toward the horizon. By the end of March, one of our winter constellations makes its exit in the western sky. For the past few weeks, the sun has been steadily encroaching on this constellation, due to the earth’s revolution. Now the sun is about to pass between us and the constellation Aries the Ram. March comes in with the Lion and goes out with the Ram.
