The Sky This Week, 2013 April 2 - 9

The Moon wanes in the pre-dawn sky this week, scudding low in the
southeastern sky as morning twilight gathers. She sets a lonely course
through the dim autumnal constellations with no bright objects to call
upon along the way. New Moon occurs on the 10th at 5:35 am Eastern
Daylight Time.
The absence of the Moon from the evening sky means that it's time
forthe fourth " Globe At Night " observing campaign for 2013. This
world-wide "citizen science" program seeks to record some 15,000
observations of the night sky from all over the world to help
scientists map the distribution of dark skies and light pollution. The
past three campaigns have netted over 9500 observations so far, so the
program is on track for its target goal. For the past several months
we've been using Orion as the target constellation for determining the
"limiting magnitude" at a given observing site, but with the coming of
spring we'll shift to a different constellation. Leo the Lion is now
high in the southeast and approaches the meridian by around 10:00 pm
EDT. You should have no trouble locating it between the stars Castor
and Pollux in Gemini high in the west and the bright rosyglow of
Arcturus rising in the east. Leo's brightest star is first-magnitude
Regulus, which shows a pale blue tint. Regulus sits at the Lion's
"heart", just below a small arc of second- and third-magnitude stars
that resemble the blade of a sickle. The brightest of these starsis
gold-hued Algieba, which is one of the prettiest double stars for
small telescope examination. To theeast of Regulus is a right triangle
of stars with second-magnitude Denebola representing the Lion's"tail".
Once you've located Leo, download the observer's guide from the Globe
At Night website, make your observations, and report them.A few
minutes of your time will go along way toward helping astronomers
monitor the long-term changes in the nighttime environment.
When Leo approaches the meridian it kicks off one of my favorite
timesof the year. Sports fans revel in theopening of baseball season,
but to me it's now open season on galaxies. The sky behind the stars
of Leo, the Big Dipper, the vast constellation of Virgo, and the
bright star Arcturus surrounds the north pole of the Milky Way galaxy,
so peering in this direction takes our gaze far beyond the nearby
stars of home and into the vast depths of space. You can almost
randomly point an 8-inch telescope at any part of the sky in this
vicinity from a dark-sky site and spot a fuzzy blob of light wafting
through the field of view. Each of these blobs is a distant galaxy
like our own Milky Way, and there are hundreds of them sprinkled
around this part of the sky. Many of the brighter ones, designated
with an"M-number" on a star chart, are visible in binoculars. Most of
these galaxies are members of the"Coma-Virgo Galaxy Cluster" centered
around three vast ellipticalsystems, M84, M86, and M87, which boast
nearly a trillion stars each. Our Milky Way is an outlying member of
this cluster, some 55 million light years from the center.
If you have good horizons and a fairly dark sky you can see a much
closer galaxy, M31, about an hour after sunset in the northwest or an
hour before sunrise in the northeast. Known as the Great Andromeda
Galaxy, when it is at its best in the fall you can see it with the
naked eye, but for now you'll want to use binoculars. At these
twilight times it will only be about 10 degrees up, but unlike most
other times of the year it will have acompanion for most of the week
in the form of Comet Pan-STARRS, which slides within a couple of
degrees of M31 over the next several evenings. Both objects are about
fourth magnitude, so you'll need to find a dark place to view them
from, but it should be well worth the effort. Alignments like this
don't happen very often!
Jupiter appears shortly after sunsetin the western sky, then drifts
downto settle into the horizon haze by midnight. There's still time to
enjoy the view of Old Jove in the telescope, but as he gets lower in
the sky we are forced to sight him through more of our turbulent
atmosphere. While detail on his surface might be lacking, his four
bright moons should be easy targets for investigation.
If you're up at around midnight you can now get a decent look at
Saturnin the southeastern sky. The ringed planet is just over 15
degrees east (to the left) of the bright blue star Spica, and the two
objects offer a nice contrast in colors. Point the telescope at Saturn
and you will instantly recognize it. There is nothing else in all of
nature that quite compares to that view!

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