The purpose of this feature is to give scout leaders, educators and naturalists an idea of some of the natural events coming up each month.  We will try to cover a variety of natural events ranging from sky events to calling periods of amphibians, bird and mammal watching tips,  prominent wildflowers and anything else that comes to mind.  We will also note prominent constellations appearing over the eastern horizon at mid-evening each month for our area for those who would like to learn the constellations.  If you have suggestions for other types of natural information you would like to see added to this calendar, let us know!

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Notes and Images From January 2025

Monday and Tuesday, or at  least their celestial counterparts, met a little earlier than normal last month. The days of the week are named after the Sun, the Moon and the five planets easily visible to the naked eye. With one exception, their names have a Norse origin. The exception is named after a Roman god, and is most kids' favorite day of the week. Of the remaining Norse names, Sunday and Monday are the easiest to match with their solar system counterparts. Thursday is only a little more difficult. Think of a god wielding a hammer.

Left are Frig, corresponding to the Roman god Venus, Woden, corresponding to the Roman god Mercury, and Tiws, corresponding to the Roman god of war, Mars. On January 13th, the Moon and Mars met in the sky three hours before midnight, with the full Moon passing in front of (occulting) Mars.

Shown above are the Moon and Mars just as Mars was emerging from the occultation.

People are often surprised at how small Mars looks in a telescope compared with the Moon. This is probably because they overestimate the size of Mars, which is only about twice the size of the Moon, and they underestimate the difference in the distance of the two. Mars was about 255 times farther away on this night. If you do the math, it results in Mars appearing less than one-hundredth the size of the Moon.

Though Mars in this image does not show much detail, it still amazes me that you can now hand-hold a camera and lens and take an image that shows some surface details on Mars!

This full moon was the Wolf Moon, the first full moon of the new year. It was a very cold night! Our footsteps crunched on the unmelted snow that fell a few days before. The sky was beautifully clear, the woods dark and silent. Orion and Canis Major shown brightly over the ridge behind the house. Like most winter full moons, this Wolf Moon looked like it was carved out of ice. Mars was at opposition on this very night and glowed a bright reddish orange.

It was nice to spend some time with the Moon. Some of my first views of the Moon were with a small 60mm refractor given to me by one of my teenage friends. He no longer wanted it, but I loved those magical views of the lunar surface drifting through the field of view.

The phases of the Moon are simply a result of looking at a half-lit object from different perspectives. Those perspectives constantly change as the Moon orbits Earth. When we look at a half-lit Moon from mostly the dark side, we see a crescent. If we are looking at the same half-lit Moon mostly from the sunlit side, we see a gibbous phase.

Between a new moon and a full moon, the Sun is rising on the unilluminated parts of the Moon. The border between the lit and unlit areas is called the terminator. I spent many evenings watching the Sun rising over the Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridum) and watching its rays climb the edge of the crater Copernicus, casting jagged shadows across its floor. I've used the English translation of the Latin names on the image above. There you can find the Sea of Tranquility and the Ocean of Storms, the Sea of Serenity and the Sea of Crisis, the Lake of Dreams and the Lake of Death.

When we did night programs with a telescope the Moon always produced what we called the highest "Wow" factor. When kids would look into the telescope they often had trouble looking directly into the eyepiece. I would encourage them and tell them to move their head one way or the other, watching the bright spot of the moonlight projected by the eyepiece on their face. You didn't have to ask when they saw the Moon. Their faces just lit up! They were awestruck by this strange and beautiful landscape.

We owe all of those romantic and fanciful lunar names to the 17th century Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli and his student Francesco Maria Gremaldi. Gremaldi drew the maps based on their observations of the Moon and Riccioli named the lunar features. Both were Jesuit priests, and they could not publicly endorse at that time the unpopular (and heretical!) Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. But Riccioli respected Copernicus and named perhaps the Moon's most beautiful crater after him. To those in power who asked why he made that choice, he had a ready reply. He said that he placed Copernicus in the Ocean of Storms.

I like Riccioli. Look at the two craters for Riccioli and Grimaldi in the image above. Note that Riccioli named a much larger crater for his student Gremaldi than he did for himself. But there is an additional reason for that I think. Imagine the phases of the moon from a new moon to a full moon as a two-week time-lapse movie. On the image above, you would first see a thin crescent moon at the top of the image and then watch as the sun rose and the terminator moved downward across the Moon as it's shown in the image.

As it does so, it slowly reveals Riccioli's and Grimaldi's beautiful map, a roll of honor written across the Moon. Then, just before the full moon, it's time to run the credits. Just as the Sun's rays climb the rim of the last easily visible crater on the Moon to be revealed, Riccioli modestly signs his name.

Sky Events for December 2024:

There's a lot to see on Jupiter. Even with just a good pair of binoculars you can see Jupiter appears as a small disk rather than a star-like point. You can often see one or more of the four Galilean moons. One of Galileo's great discoveries was these four moons, though the names presently used (Io, Europa, Calisto and Ganymede) were suggested by his archrival Simon Marius. The movement of the moons is noticeable even over the course of one evening.

A six-inch aperture telescope will show the Great Red Spot, a long-lasting, Earth-sized storm in Jupiter's clouds shown in the image at right, and some of the belts, though the belts have lower contrast visually than they appear in images. The planet rotates in just under 10 hours, so in a single night you can watch the Great Red Spot rotate from one side of the planet to the other.

I've had some very memorable experiences observing Mars over the years. I love to spend relaxed time just looking for surface details. I once spotted a feature on the planet's surface that was named Nodus Alcyonius. That led me to the Greek mythology and Ovid's telling of the legend of Alcyone and Ceyx, which in turn led me to the origin of the scientific name of our Belted Kingfisher. I've never looked at kingfishers the same way since. If you are interested in the history of Mars observations, the "canals" and other Mars trivia, you can find a much more in depth discussion here.

Though you will need binoculars, you may be able to spot Saturn and Mercury as they cross paths on Monday, February 24th. Look low above the west-southwest horizon after sunset. You will need a very flat horizon, as they will only be about 5 degrees above the true horizon and the sky will still be somewhat bright.

Recommended:  The Frogs and Toads of North America, Lang Elliott, Houghton Mifflin Co.