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! Note: You can click on the hyperlinks to learn more about some of the featured items. To return to the Calendar, hit the "back" button on your browser, NOT the "back" button on the web page. All charts are available in a "printer friendly" mode, with black stars on a white background. Left clicking on each chart will take you to a printable black and white image. Though we link book references to nationwide sources, we encourage you to support your local book store whenever possible.
Notes From March 2021 On March 4th, just before the new moon, I spent some time fine tuning the guiding system for the observatory telescope. I've been using a ZWO camera since last year, and it requires an off-axis guiding system that was very different from the in-camera guiding system used by my previous camera. I did some fine tuning to the guiding parameters on the new system and then imaged Messier 96, a small but pretty spiral galaxy in Leo.
Messier 96 has small but very finely detailed core surrounded by a halo that has been distored by encounter long ago with its nearby neighbor, galaxy Messier 95. This gives the image a sense of depth. If you scan around the full-sized luminance image here, you will soon realize that there are more faint galaxies visible in this image than there are stars. Many of these faint galaxies are visible through the halo of Messier 96. I've annotated the luminance image to show several details, including a quasar whose distance exceeds 11 billion light-years. The light from this quasar is over twice the age of our solar system! I was happy to get accurate guiding from the new system and it capped off a really nice day. Earlier, walking back from the observatory past the lower pond, I heard my first Pickerel Frogs and Southern Leopard Frogs of the season. I got up early the next morning to walk to the end of my driveway and spot Mercury and Jupiter quite close together in the morning twilight, with Saturn a little higher and to the right. The temperature had cooled enough during the night that no frogs or toads were calling. By the end of the month I've had some great choruses at the pond with Pickerel Frogs, Southern Leopard Frogs, Upland Chorus Frogs, Spring Peepers and American Toads all calling.
The Lyrid Meteor Shower will peak in the morning hours of April 22nd. A waxing gibbous Moon will make the fainter meteors harder to see.Morning Sky:
Evening Sky: Mars continues to drift eastward through Taurus this month. Telescopically, it is quite small now, only about 5 seconds of an arc in apparent diameter. Venus emerges into the evening twilight this month after sunset. Start looking for it about mid-month about 30 minutes after sunset. You will need a flat horizon as Venus will only be a few degrees above the horizon. It will keep appearing a little higher each night as the month continues. On April 25th look for Mercury to appear just above and to the right of Venus. Mercury zips to its greatest eastern elongation from the Sun on May 17th. Constellations:
The views below show the sky looking east at 10:15pm EDT on April 15th from the Chattanooga area. The first view shows the sky with the constellation outlined and names depicted. Star and planet names are in green. Constellation names are in blue. The second view shows the same scene without labels. Arcturus and Spica dominate the eastern sky this month. New constellations are Serpens Caput, the Serpent (Head), and Hercules, the Strongman. As spring progresses and Hercules rises higher in the sky, look for the globular cluster Messier 13, which appears like a small fuzzy patch of light about 1/3 of the distance from Eta to Zeta Hercules (see illustration below). A cluster of stars about 21,000 light years away, M13 can be made out with the naked eye in a dark country sky when the constellation is high in the sky. Binoculars will help pick it out. In small telescopes you can make out some stars around the edges of the cluster. It's a beautiful sight in a large telescope, and you can see a small shadowy three-sided feature (about the 4:00 o'clock position in the image at above) nicknamed "the propeller."
On Learning the Constellations: We advise learning a few constellations each month, and then following them through the seasons. Once you associate a particular constellation coming over the eastern horizon at a certain time of year, you may start thinking about it like an old friend, looking forward to its arrival each season. The stars in the evening scene above, for instance, will always be in the same place relative to the horizon at the same time and date each April. Of course, the planets do move slowly through the constellations, but with practice you will learn to identify them from their appearance. In particular, learn the brightest stars (Like Arcturus and Spica in the above scene looking east), for they will guide you to the fainter stars. Once you can locate the more prominent constellations, you can "branch out" to other constellations around them. It may take you a little while to get a sense of scale, to translate what you see on the computer screen or what you see on the page of a book to what you see in the sky. Look for patterns, like the stars that make up the constellation Corona Borealis. The earth's rotation causes the constellations to appear to move across the sky just as the sun and the moon appear to do. If you go outside earlier than the time shown on the charts, the constellations will be lower to the eastern horizon. If you observe later, they will have climbed higher. As each season progresses, the earth's motion around the sun causes the constellations to appear a little farther towards the west each night for any given time of night. If you want to see where the constellations in the above figures will be on May 15th at 10:15pm EDT, you can stay up till 12:15am EDT on the April 16th and get a preview. The westward motion of the constellations is equivalent to two hours per month.
Recommended: Sky & Telescope's Pocket Star Atlas is beautiful, compact star atlas. A good book to learn the constellations is Patterns in the Sky, by Hewitt-White. For sky watching tips, an inexpensive good guide is Secrets of Stargazing, by Becky Ramotowski.
A good general reference book on astronomy is the Peterson
Field Guide,
A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, by Pasachoff. The book retails for around $14.00.
The Virtual Moon Atlas is a terrific way to learn the surface features of the Moon. And it's free software. You can download the Virtual Moon Atlas here. Apps: The Sky Safari 6 basic version is free and a great aid for the beginning stargazer. We really love the Sky Safari 6 Pro. Both are available for iOS and Android operating systems. There are three versions. The Pro is simply the best astronomy app we've ever seen. The description of the Pro version reads, "includes over 100 million stars, 3 million galaxies down to 18th magnitude, and 750,000 solar system objects; including every comet and asteroid ever discovered." A nother great app is the Photographer's Ephemeris. Great for finding sunrise, moonrise, sunset and moonset times and the precise place on the horizon that the event will occur. Invaluable not only for planning photographs, but also nice to plan an outing to watch the full moon rise. Available for both androids and iOS operating systems.
Amphibians:
Recommended: The Frogs and Toads of North America, Lang Elliott, Houghton Mifflin Co. Archives (Remember to use the back button on your browser, NOT the back button on the web page!) Natural Calendar February 2021 Natural Calendar December 2020 Natural Calendar November 2020 Natural Calendar September 2020 Natural Calendar February 2020 Natural Calendar December 2019 Natural Calendar November 2019 Natural Calendar September 2019 Natural Calendar February 2019 Natural Calendar December 2018 Natural Calendar November 2018 Natural Calendar September 2018 Natural Calendar February 2018 Natural Calendar December 2017 Natural Calendar November 2017 Natural Calendar October 2017Natural Calendar September 2017 Natural Calendar February 2017 Natural Calendar December 2016 Natural Calendar November 2016 Natural Calendar September 2016Natural Calendar February 2016 Natural Calendar December 2015 Natural Calendar November 2015 Natural Calendar September 2015 Natural Calendar November 2014 Natural Calendar September 2014 Natural Calendar September 2013 Natural Calendar December 2012 Natural Calendar November 2012 Natural Calendar September 2012 Natural Calendar February 2012 Natural Calendar December 2011 Natural Calendar November 2011 Natural Calendar September 2011 Natural Calendar December 2010 Natural Calendar November 2010 Natural Calendar September 2010 Natural Calendar February 2010 Natural Calendar December 2009 Natural Calendar November 2009 Natural Calendar September 2009 Natural Calendar February 2009 Natural Calendar December 2008 Natural Calendar November 2008 Natural Calendar September 2008 Natural Calendar February 2008 Natural Calendar December 2007 Natural Calendar November 2007 Natural Calendar September 2007 Natural Calendar February 2007 Natural Calendar December 2006 Natural Calendar November 2006 Natural Calendar September 2006 Natural Calendar February 2006
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