Mon May 1, 2023 SPRING CROSS QUARTER DAY AND VIRGO
Divide the year up into four parts or quarters. Each quarter is marked by the beginning of a new season. Now divide those seasons in half and you get cross-quarter days, the midpoints of each season. We’re now at the cross-quarter day for Spring, called Beltane in the old Celtic calendar, when wooden poles were decorated with flowers and ribbons. Then folks would take those ribbons and dance clockwise, wrapping them around the maypole, mimicking the sun’s motion across the sky through the day. Tonight the stars of the constellation Virgo, the springtime maiden, appear in the southeast after sunset, reminding everyone that the green growing season of crops is waxing toward the summer harvest.
Tue May 2, 2023 THE BIG DIPPER AS A GUIDE
The Big Dipper can guide you to other stars. If you draw a line through the two stars in the front of the Big Dipper's bowl and extend that line to the north, it will point to Polaris, the North Star. Polaris is not very bright, but it is in the north, and it’s also at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, which is also hard to see since most its stars are even dimmer than Polaris. So go back to the Big Dipper’s pointer stars and run a line in the other direction, and you’ll discover a group of stars that looks like a backwards question mark high up in the southern sky - that’s Leo the Lion. Finally, draw a curved line through the stars in the Big Dipper’s handle, and then follow that curved line out, and low in the east are the stars Arcturus and Spica.
Wed May 3, 2023 QUEEN OF THE UFOS
That bright object you may have spotted in the western sky after sunset the past couple of months is not, after all, a UFO. It's actually the planet Venus. Venus has been called the Queen of the UFO's, because so many people have mistaken it for a flying saucer, or a plane's landing lights - several years ago, an air traffic controller out in Chicago, thinking it was an airplane, gave Venus permission to land. Good thing it didn't, or it would have been a bad day for earth. Look for Venus as soon as sunset begins. You should be able to find it even before it gets dark - just look well up in the western sky, above the glow of sunset. Over the next several weeks, Venus will continue to shine as our evening star.
Thu May 4, 2023 ALAN SHEPARD, FIRST ASTRONAUT
On May 5th, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to be called a real astronaut, riding on board the Mercury space capsule Freedom 7 to an altitude of about a hundred miles. It was a suborbital flight, and the rocket’s trajectory brought him down again to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas. The first minute of flight was fairly smooth, until the rocket made the transition to supersonic speed - as Shepard put it, "the ride did get a little rough." When things settled down, and the capsule separated from the Redstone rocket, Alan Shepard had a beautiful view of Florida - south to the Keys, north toward the Carolinas, west to Lake Okeechobee, Tampa Bay and Pensacola, and east to Bimini.
Fri May 5, 2023 MAY FULL MOON; ETA AQUARID METEOR SHOWER
The moon is full tonight. May’s full moon is called the Merry Moon. The Creek and the Seminole Indians say it is the Mulberry Moon. The Cheyenne name it the Moon When Horses Get Fat, but to the Sioux, it’s the Moon When the Ponies Shed. To the Salish, it is the Flower Moon, but the Osage tribes call it the Moon When the Little Flowers Die. There’s also a meteor shower going on tonight, it’s called the Eta Aquarids, bits of dust and debris from the tail of Halley’s Comet; and this is usually a pretty good shower, with a dozen or more meteors visible each hour. But the full moon’s light will keep us from seeing most of them, so you could call this the Can’t See the Meteors Moon.
