Night sky activity aplenty for March
the Celestial Equator, in this case leaving the Southern Hemisphere moving into the north.
It is called the Spring Equinox north of the Equator where they are really looking forward to warmer times. We will have approximately 12 hours of direct sunlight, and our daylight will continue to dwindle as we move toward winter.
There are at least two more fairly easily recognised summer constellations that we should take a look at. These are the Gemini Twins and Leo the Lion. To find Gemini, which means twins in Latin, you look for its two brightest stars, Castor and Pollux, low above the horizon.
These two bright stars are the heads of the Gemini Twins. Castor is below and a little left of Pollux. The twins are lying down, formed by a very rough rectangle of dimmer stars stretching to the left and upward toward Orion. Castor and Pollux will be easy to spot on a clear night at the beginning of the month.
They will be due north in Timaru at 10.35pm on the first and at 8.35pm on the 31st. Castor’s lengthy Arabic name is Al-Ras al-Taum alMuqadim, which means The Head of the Foremost Twin. In China Castor was the Yin of Yin and Yang.
Castor is a complex star system, consisting of not one star, but six stars, organised into three pairs, A, B, and C. In each pair the two stars orbit each other. Then the A pair and B pair orbit one another, with the C pair apparently orbiting the A – B orbital unit. It all seems
more than a little strange to us, fanciful even, compared to our own system with the one star, the Sun, and its host of planets with their moons, asteroids, comets and perhaps other distant bits and pieces. We wonder whether planets could even form in a system like Castor.
Pollux is closer to us and brighter than Castor in our sky, and has one confirmed Jupiter-class planet. Pollux is known to the Chinese as the Yang of Yin and Yang.
Next month we will take a look at Leo the Lion.
If you are still following Matariki/ Pleiades, Taurus, and Orion, you will know that Matariki will be setting around 11pm on the 1st and 9pm on the 31st. Matariki is followed an hour and a half later by the bright star Aldeberan in the head of Taurus the Bull, and two hours after that by Orion the Hunter. All three of those objects are found west of the Gemini Twins.
Early news from the Chinese Chang’e 4 mission on the far side of the Moon included the sprouting of cotton and potato plants in their enclosure. They are sealed away from the extreme temperatures and intense radiation on the Moon’s surface, but I have seen no mention of artificial lighting, and to my knowledge there has been no further news of the plants after the lander and rover shut down for their first two-week-long lunar night. I am wondering about the survival of the experiment. During that first lunar night a low of -190 degrees C was recorded. Cucumbers and lettuce have been grown on the International Space Station (ISS).
Some forms of algae also survived less harsh conditions than on the Moon, in a 530-day experiment on a panel outside the ISS.
Meanwhile the Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover have endured their second two-week lunar night. Hopefully we will hear more from them in March.
If you have any questions, would like to receive or share information, or just share a stargazing experience or a thought about our place in space, please email me at nightskysouth@gmail.com. Clear night skies.
- Freidl Hale