Minnesota Starwatch for March 2002

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

Minnesota Starwatch for March 2002

Hello, this is Minnesota Starwatch for March 2002, exactly halfway between the last February 29 and the next one! We may have dark nights around the middle of this month, because New Moon is on the 13th and Full Moon won't happen again until the 28th. Most of the planets are visible on clear nights for the next few weeks. In mid-evening Mars is above the western horizon, Saturn is toward the southwest, and Jupiter - the brightest of them - is high in the southern sky. Meanwhile, as the month goes by Venus, the evening star, will begin to appear low in the southwestern sky after sunset. Each night will be a little higher. What has happened is that Venus has just gone around the other side of the Sun and is now beginning to catch up to the Earth again, on the inside track as those two planets race around their orbits. The spring equinox is scheduled for March 20th this year. As Minnesotans sleep, at about 1:00 a.m. the Sun will pass exactly over the equator at a place in the Indian Ocean. The classic spring constellations are beginning to appear above the eastern horizon after 8:00 p.m. as the weeks go by: Leo, Virgo is a region where astronomers study a huge cluster of galaxies 50 million lightyears away. But much closer to us, low in the eastern sky on a March evening, is a very special nearby star. Arcturus [pron. Ark-too-rus], one of the 10 brightest stars in the Minnesota sky, is an orange giant star about 34 lightyears away, which is pretty close by interstellar standards. The odd thing about Arcturus is its high velocity: it's blasting through our vicinity at almost a hundred miles per second, and has moved about the width of the full moon since the ancient Greeks observed it. This is a sure sign of an eccentric path around the galactic center, which means this star is really OLD. Arcturus is probably about 8 billion years old, which is 50 percent older than the solar system and more than twice as old as any rock you can find on Earth. It's the oldest thing that is easy for us to see and identify from our viewpoint here!

Friday night telescope viewing begins at 8:00 p.m. Please call 612/626-0034 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 on-line 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.

Return to the Minnesota Starwatch Homepage.

Last Updated: Wed Feb 27 14:25:12 2002