Starwatch Newsletter Minnesota Starwatch is a tape-recorded message describing the night sky in the Midwest, which can be called by telelphone number (612) 624-2001 It is updated montly, and is produced by the Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota 116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Hello, this is Minnesota Starwatch for March 2001.

The planets Venus and Earth act like two racehorses on circular tracks. Venus, on the inside track, passes Earth about once every 19 months. This is going to happen at the end of this month, when Venus will pass between us and the Sun. In the first part of the month Venus appears as a bright evening star in the western sky immediately after sunset -- in effect, you're like a rider on the outer, slow horse looking over your left shoulder as the faster horse rapidly approaches. Around March 10th Venus is so bright that it's easy to see why it's occasionally reported as a UFO.

Jupiter and Saturn, the giant planets, are still high in the western sky during the evening. Remember Stanley Kubrick's movie "2001", first released about 33 years ago? It was about a manned spacecraft going to a moon of Jupiter in search of intelligent messages there. If the script had been true, astronauts with their computer HAL would have been approaching Jupiter, 500 million miles away, just about now! Evidently NASA has fallen behind the writers' hopes of the 1960's, because no human has been more than a few hundred miles from Earth anytime in the last two decades.

The question of whether Mars has traces of ancient life is still unanswered. Just as Venus goes faster than Earth, Earth goes faster than Mars. This month Mars is beginning to be visible before dawn in the southeastern sky. That means that we'll pass between Mars and the Sun a few months from now, and when that happens the red planet will be high in the midnight sky.

We usually think of March 21st as the spring equinox, but sometimes it really happens a day or two earlier or later. This year the equinox occurs on March 20th; at 7:31am central time on that day, the Sun will be exactly above Earths' equator.

Friday night telescope viewing begins at 8pm. Please call 626-0034 for more information.

The Minneapolis Planetarium offers a wide variety of programs for all ages. For more information, call (612) 630-6150.

For those interested in the Minnesota Astronomical Society, call (651) 649-4861 for information on their upcoming events.

Minnesota Starwatch is available online at http://www.astro.umn.edu/Outreach/pub_out.html.

This has been Minnesota Starwatch, produced by the University of Minnesota Astronomy Department in cooperation with WCCO Weather Center.

Last Updated: Sun Mar 4 14:03:09 2001