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 March 2025

Did you ever have a teacher who warned you they had eyes in the back of their head? Well, this small wolf spider actually does have two of its eight eyes facing rearward. This is a Shore Spider, Pardosa milvina. It has six other eyes as well, two large eyes facing forward above a row of four smaller eyes. Needless to say, it's hard to catch them off guard!

This spider is common in the eastern United States along the borders of streams and other moist habitats. Wolf spiders belong to the family Lycosidae (from the ancient Greek Lukos, 'wolf'). As the name implies, they are hunters who roam across their habitat in search of small prey. The total body length for this female is only a quarter of an inch. Unless you are actively looking for them you may not notice them. But if you look for movement as you walk along the borders of streams they can often be spotted.  

I encountered this little spider while doing some tests on a macro lens setup. One feature of members of the Pardosa genus is that the spines on the legs stand close to perpendicular from the legs. 

Still, it was fun to get outside with the telescope and listen to our Chorus Frogs and Spring Peepers, not to mention our two resident Barred Owls, who were creating quite a racket on the top of the ridge behind the house. The bright star Arcturus was low in the eastern sky, a sure sign that spring was here.

I took many videos of Mars that night. The best frames from a video of several thousand images were stacked to create the image shown. South is up in this image to match the appearance of Mars in an inverting telescope. The south polar cap is visible at top. The dark area extending down along the right side of Mars is Acidalia Planitia. Extending upward from bottom right is Margaritifer Terra, and to its left you can see the thin horizontal dark line of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system.  It extends 2,500 miles, the width of the United States, across the surface of Mars.

Sky Events for April 2025:

The Lyrid Meteor Shower will occur during the evening hours of April 21st and the morning hours of April 22nd. Though a third-quarter moon may interfere slightly with your view, you should see some meteors!

Morning Sky:  

Saturn and Mercury will emerge from the morning twilight in April and may be visible low in the eastern sky before sunrise. Probably the best bet is on April 25th, when you can use bright Venus to locate Saturn (fainter and below Venus) and a thin waning crescent moon (below and to the left of Venus). Mercury, if it's visible in the bright twilight, will be below and left of Venus just above the horizon. It will be the most difficult to see. Binoculars will definitely make all easier to pick out of the twilight glow. Venus is also worth trying for earlier in the month when it will be a very thin crescent in binoculars.

Evening Sky: 

Be sure to check the positions of the four bright moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered early in the 17th century. They are Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. They are visible in binoculars and they change position during the course of a single evening.

In the 1670's Danish astronomer Ole Romer made a series of measurements of the eclipses of Jupiter's smallest moon Io. Romer noticed that the intervals between eclipses of Io varied, and these discrepancies were related to the relative positions of the Earth and Jupiter in their orbits. He correctly concluded that these discrepancies could be explained by light having a finite speed. His calculations gave a value of 226,663 kilometers per second for the speed of light. The true value is 299,792 km/sec. That's pretty amazing!

The great science fiction author Isaac Asimov once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka" but "That's funny..." 

Mars is about 64 degrees above the southwest horizon at dusk in Gemini at the beginning of the month. Over the next month it will move into the constellation of Cancer. As mentioned above, it is rapidly getting smaller as Earth swings by it and leaves it behind. By the end of the month it will be only about 6.6 seconds of an arc in apparent diameter.

You can locate Arcturus and Spica by using the three stars in the tail of Ursa Major (or the handle of the "Big Dipper"). The three stars in the tail form an arc that if extended curves on to Arcturus and Spica. The mnemonic is that you "arc to Arcturus and on to Spica".

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