Sunday the moon went third quarter, so darker skies ahead. However the forecast for the week calls for some damp days ahead. We may not get that much rain, but the sky will be cloudy this week. Last Saturday night’s
TPML event was cancelled. The forecast was partly cloudy with 40% cloud coverage. However, the report from the site was clear skies Saturday night. Larry had to make the NO GO call, based on the forecast information.
This week’s highlights, if your backyard is clear: With the Moon gone from the evening sky, this week is a fine time to look for the
zodiacal light at a clear, dark site. Look west at the end of twilight for a dim pyramid of light. It will be tilted left to align along the constellations of the zodiac. So it points toward toward Jupiter. What you're seeing is sunlit interplanetary dust — comet and asteroid debris — orbiting the Sun near the plane of the solar system.
Saturn highlights the early morning sky. The ringed Planet (magnitude +0.5, in Libra) rises in the east-southeast around midnight or 1 a.m. local time. By the beginning of dawn it's at its highest in the south — more or less between Spica, far to its right, and Antares farther to its lower left. Saturn's rings are tilted 19° from edge on, the widest they've appeared in seven years.
Look South for Jupiter: (magnitude –2.5, in Taurus) dominates the high south in early evening, and the southwest later. To its left is
orange Aldebaran; to its right are
the Pleiades. The whole group sets around 2 or 3 a.m. In a telescope, Jupiter is shrinking (from 43 to 42 arcseconds wide this week) as Earth pulls farther ahead of it in our faster orbit around the Sun.
Orion is center stage late evenings:
Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star on his shoulder, and it’s likely to supernova anytime. The three stars across Orion’s middle. Just beneath them the Orion Nebula. It’s about 1,500 light-years away from us and it just blazes with hot clouds of gas and dust that are forming stars.
Comet PanSTARRS update. The incoming comet that we hoped would make a fine showing in March has been weakening. It may not even reach naked-eye visibility, what with its low altitude in evening twilight.