Monmouth Astronomical Research Society(M.A.R.S.)
MARS
Our MARS meeting is this coming Tuesday 9th March 7:30 pm in the William Jones Room at Monmouth Boys School. Outline programme:
- Astronomy news and notes plus what’s in the sky in the next four week and more. Steve Foulkes
- A talk on Orion
- Keith will do a presentation on our Galactic Neighbourhood
- A question and answer session. Bring along those questions you’ve always wanted to know the answer to on Astronomy or Cosmology and the MARS Brains Trust (principally Keith) will try and answer them
- Update on the proposed trip later in the year to CERN in Geneva
A few other current points:
- The weather forecast for this Saturday looks good. The moon is well placed too – is in its third quarter and doesn’t get up till one o’clock in the morning. The plan is, therefore, to do some simple naked eye and binocular viewing at Ancre Hill, Monmouth. Meet at 8.00pm this Saturday in the small car park by the bridge over the River Monnow on Vauxhall Fields. Warm gear.
- MARS is still bright but now fading to magnitude -0.46. It’s high in the south-east left of Gemini and a bit below. Saturn is also up – I saw the rings looking splendid at 11pm last night. It’s to the left and below Leo at the moment
- Below is a very good description of the March sky I unashamedly have lifted from the One Minute Astronomer posting:
March is a “change over” month for the night sky. The bright stars of the northern winter move westward and give way to the star-sparse nights of March, April, and May. That’s because we’re starting to look out of the plane of the Milky Way and into intergalactic space. So we see fewer stars and nebulae and open star clusters, but more galaxies become visible, especially those of the Virgo cluster and smaller collections like the M81 and Leo groups. And of course, the seasons change this month. The northern hemisphere begins spring on March 20 at 17:32 UT. At this time, the sun sits at the point where the celestial equator and ecliptic meet. All points on the Earth receive an equal amount of sunlight, hence the term “equinox”, or “equal nights”.
Look forward to seeing you on Tuesday
Colin Harris