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!
Though we link book references to nationwide sources, we encourage you to
support your local book store whenever possible.
Notes from March 2022
Cropped screen shot from Star Guide, March 28th, 6:50am.
Cropped screen shot from Star Guide, April 18th, 6:20am.
Have you ever watched the dance of the planets? The newer apps for Apple
and Android operating systems make this incredibly easy to do. I didn't
have much time last month for photography, but I did get up a
little early so I could go out and look at the morning sky before sunrise.
I watched Saturn, Mars, and Venus slowly change positions from day to day. As
the eastern
horizon slowly brightened I heard the first notes of the dawn
bird chorus in the cool morning air. In difficult times, those brief moments
gave me an incredible amount of peace.
The word planet comes from the Greek planetes, meaning "wanderer". The
ancients knew that these points of light moved slowly through the fixed
patterns of the constellations. It's not hard to see this movement from
one week to the next, and even from day to day.
I've used the Sky Safari app for quite a while,
and I think it is really a superb app for both Android and Apple operating
systems. It's very data intensive and can do a lot of tasks. However, you
may not need this much capability, particularly if you are a beginner. One
alternative for Apple operating systems is an app called Sky Guide. I
tried Star Guide out recently and it really wowed me on just the sheer beauty of the graphics. The
images at right are cropped screen shots from the app.
It's really the small things in Sky Guide that make it appealing. In
wide-field views the Moon is shown in beautiful detail - it reddens when it
is close to the horizon, and becomes lighter as it rises. Stars near the
horizon scintillate (twinkle) while the planets do not - just like the
real sky. It's a beautiful
way to learn the planets and the night sky in general.
Either of these two apps will serve you well in
following the planets. Both include compass options where all you have to
do is point the phone at the sky and it will identify any planets or stars
at which you are pointing.
Mornings in April are particularly good this year
for planet-watching. By the 18th, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn will all
be in a straight line, like beads on a string. The image at right shows a
screen shot from Sky View about 45 minutes before sunrise. That's a good
time to get outside to see them. But keep watching! Since all of these
planets "wander" along the same path (the ecliptic) there will be several
close encounters coming up.
The apparent motion of all of these planets
now relative to the stars is from west to east (downward and to the left
in
the image). Venus has the fastest apparent motion, and will pass by
Jupiter on April 30th. Venus and Jupiter will appear less than 1/2 a
degree apart! Mars is next fastest, and will pass by Neptune on May 18th,
and then Jupiter on May 29th. It next passes Uranus on August 1st, before
it is finally lapped by a slightly faster speedster, Earth, on December
8th.
It's always a good idea to carry binoculars with
you if you have them. Besides making the fainter planets easier to spot
when the sky background gets brighter, they will give you some nice
details. If you steady your binoculars against something solid, you can
see Jupiter's tiny apparent disk and four Galilean moons. Though its
apparent size is small, remember that Jupiter alone accounts for two-thirds of
all the planetary mass in the solar
system. You can also see the oval shape of Saturn and its rings. When
Venus is passing between Earth and the Sun, you can follow the
crescent phase of Venus. Finally, both Uranus and Neptune are visible in
binoculars as star-like objects.
If you're just not a morning person, you can watch
the fleet-footed Mercury in the twilight sky after sunset from mid-month
onward. Details are in
the sky events section below.
Sky Events for April 2022
The Lyrid Meteor Shower peaks
in the morning hours of April 22nd. A waning gibbous Moon will tend to
brighten the sky, making fainter meteors harder to see.
Saturn, Tethys and Dione, June 11, 2016, 20 inch Newtonian
Reflector and Flea 3 camera.
Evening Sky:
Mercury
makes a fine appearance in April in the evening twilight. You can
begin looking for it around the middle of the month low in the
west after sunset. I usually start looking around 30 minutes after
sunset. On April 29th it is close to its maximum altitude above
the horizon, around 17 degrees. It should be easy to spot then. If
you wait until the sky is dark enough, look for the Pleiades to
the right of Mercury, about 1-1/2 degrees away.
Morning Sky:
Venus
continues to dazzle in the morning sky this month. At midmonth, it rises
about 2 hours before sunrise in Aquarius. It will come within 1/2
degree of Jupiter on April 30th.
Marsis to the right of Venus
at midmonth, and rises about 20 minutes before Venus. It also is in
Aquarius. The red planet is far away right now, and its tiny
disk reveals little detail in telescopic views. For more on its
future conjunctions with other planets, see the notes section
above.
Saturn
will is to the right of Mars at midmonth. On the 18th it will in a
line with Jupiter, Venus, and Mars.
Jupiter
will rise about and hour before the Sun at midmonth. You will want
a low eastern horizon to allow you to catch it before the sky gets
too bright.
Constellations:
Messier 66, April 3rd and 4th, 2021, 12.5 Inch Newtonian
Reflector and ZWO ASI2600MM Camera
The views below show the sky looking east at 10:45pm EDT on April 7th
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.
The constellation of Leo the Lion is well placed in the southeast in the
early evening. There are a number of bright galaxies in the lion, and
Messier 66 and its
close neighbor Messier 65 are two that can be picked out with binoculars in a
dark sky. They will not have the detail and colors in the image at right,
but will look like two small faint and fuzzy objects. But it is still fun
to try and hunt them down. You will need an app like Sky Safari or Sky
Guide that shows you the stars
around the two galaxies, as you will need to look right in the correct
place. Being far from city lights will help you, as will a clear moonless
night. This galaxy is about31 million light-years away. Its diameter is
estimated to be around 75,000 light-years. The pinkish areas in the image
are areas of hydrogen gas glowing in the hydrogen alpha wavelength. Dark
dust clouds wind through the spiral arms.
April 7th, 10:45pm EDT, Looking East
April 7th, 10:45pm EDT, Looking East
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 7th at 10:45pm EDT, you can stay up till 12:45am EDT on the April
16th and get a preview. The westward motion of the constellations is
equivalent to two hours per month.
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."
You may also want to try the very beautiful app
Sky Guide.
Though not as data intensive as Sky Safari, Sky Guide goes all out
to show the sheer beauty of the night sky.
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.
Nature Notes Archives: Nature Notes
was a page we published in 2001 and 2002 containing our observations about
everything from the northern lights display of November 2001 to frog and
salamander egg masses.
Night scenes prepared with The
Sky Professional from Software Bisque
