THE CARIBBEAN SKY: FREE SHOW NIGHTLY! Mercury may be visible briefly in the evening twilight. (See Figure 2) THE SKY IN MARCH by Scott Welty The Planets in March MERCURY - (See below) VENUS - (See below) EARTH - Tired of coming in third MARS - High in the night sky after sundown. Will be up there all month, riding in Cancer. JUPITER - (See below) SATURN - Rising around 2000 hours and therefore up the rest of the night all month. Look for it very near the moon on the 29th. It will be just above and to the left of the moon then. Sky Events This Month 7th - Look for the moon to rise around 0100 hours and ride through the sky with the bright star Antares (a red giant) in Scorpio 15th - New Moon 20th - Vernal Equinox (see below) Crescent moon passes through the Pleiades (See Figure 1) 24th - Mars and moon together 29th - Full Moon Where in the Heck are all the Planets? Each month I try to give rising or setting times or other ways to locate the visible planets (those from Mercury out to Saturn are called the visible planets because they can be seen with the naked eye. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, when it was a planet, can only be seen with a telescope). There’s not much to see this month so I thought a picture looking down on the solar system from “above” might be interesting, to see why we will see neither Mercury, Venus, nor Jupiter this month. Toward the end of the month, Venus and 2 3yndld equal night’) that just isn’t © true — but there are lots of mother things that are true “about this day. As you can see (or not!) to look toward Mercury, Venus or Jupiter is to look toward the sun. This puts them up in the daytime here on Earth. When a planet is directly across the sun from us it is said to be in superior conjunction. The Vernal Equinox Quick, it’s March 20th. Get an egg and see if you can balance it on its end! You CAN! Well, you can do this any day with a little patience (or a little salt). Egg bal- ancing is one of those long-held superstitions about the spring equinox (literally, € 3yndld e This is the day when everyone on the planet (Earth) has 12 hours of day- light and 12 of nighttime ¢ The sun rises due east and sets due west. e A man on the equator could stand in the shade of his own sombrero at noon. e¢ This is the day that allows you to calculate when Easter is: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equi- nox.... Really! Not surprisingly, most traditions and ceremonies celebrating this easing into spring come from the northern latitudes where “time to plant stuff’ was a matter of survival and marking the equinox was a way to do that. Sue’s Favorite Star Looking low and due south early in the month and then more west as the month wears on is a beautiful star — Canopus in the constellation Carina. Now, really, all stars are about the same viewed from Earth but this is a very bright star and it sits low in the sky in the Caribbean. That makes it very colorful due to the dispersion of light through our atmosphere. It is visibly colorful with the naked eye and really fun through your Steiners. You can’t miss it but check out Figure 3 for a guide. My second mate, Sue, picked out this star a few years ago when we got far enough south to see it and it has been a favorite of ours ever since. We're happy to share but don’t wear it out! To Contemplate While Having a Glass of Wine on Deck One of the fascinations of traveling by sailboat is the connection to history. Most of the Earth was mapped and explored via sailboat. Now exploration to new places takes place in space with high tech rockets, robots, and electronics while the sailboat is left behind with us to fondly continue the tradition. But wait, the sail idea might return! A guy named Pekka Janhunen has invented an “electric sail” for space exploration. It uses the solar wind, which is the constant stream of charged particles from the sun. It is this stream of charged particles that causes the northern lights. Janhunen’s idea is to deploy kilometer long wires from a spacecraft and keep them charged up. The repulsion between the charged wires and the charged particles would then provide thrust for the spacecraft not unlike the wind in our spinnakers. So maybe in the far distant future the cruising sailor will be consider- ing a passage from Mars to Saturn instead of St. Martin to Bermuda. Watch out for pirates when you pass Jupiter! Scott Welty is the author of The Why Book of Sailing, Burford Books, ©2007. Make our New Marina your home in St. Maarten. 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