Mahalo to all who came to February’s star watch in Kaumakani. It was another beautiful, clear night, and many people, locals and visitors, attended. Let’s look forward to what the night sky will bring in March.
For viewing planets, the morning hours before sunrise are still the best time. Venus is by far the brightest, but will get harder to see towards the end of the month as it appears to move closer to the rising sun. Jupiter and Saturn will be rising higher in the morning hours. Jupiter will be the second brightest object after Venus, high overhead and slightly towards the south. If you imagine a line from Jupiter through Venus towards where the sun will rise in the east, Saturn can be found near that line between Jupiter and Venus, much dimmer but still easily visible even at dawn.
Wednesday, March 20 will be the spring equinox, the official start of spring, when neither the north or south pole is tilted more towards the sun than the other. On this day, the sun will rise due east and set due west everywhere on Earth, and everywhere on Earth will experience roughly a 12-hour day and 12 hours of night.
After this date until the summer solstice you will notice that the location of the sunrise and sunset will move further north, so those who have been enjoying sunsets over the ocean from the South Shore will have to go either to the Westside or North Shore.
Last month we described the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius. March is a good time to see the second brightest, Canopus. You will see it low above the southern horizon in the early evening throughout March. In Hawaiian, this star is known as Ke Ali‘i Kona i ka Lewa, or “Chief of the Southern Heavens.”
It would have been useful to Hawaiian navigators, because when it reaches its highest point in the sky, the star Mirzim, a bright star near Sirius, also reaches its highest point in the sky, and a line between the two points directly south.
The constellation Cancer will be high overhead in the evening throughout March. Individual stars in Cancer are dim and hard to distinguish from all the other background stars, but there is an easy way to find it. Look for a fuzzy patch in the sky just east of Gemini.
This is the Beehive Cluster, easily seen with the naked eye if you are away from bright lights. Through binoculars or a telescope, it is revealed as a cluster of 1,000 stars. This object is called an “open cluster,” a group of stars that formed from the same primordial cloud of dust and gas and has not yet dispersed.
The sun would have been part of such a cluster early in its life. You can see it and many other open clusters through our telescopes, most of them lying within the haze of the Milky Way. They are truly beautiful objects through a telescope, a kaleidoscope of stars with varying colors and magnitudes.
KEASA (Kauai Educational Association for Science and Astronomy) will be hosting its monthly public starwatch at the Kauamakani school softball field on Saturday, March 30.
Check out our website at keasa.org for the full schedule. Come join us at sunset and bring a light jacket and a comfortable chair or blanket. Our astronomers look forward to sharing these objects and more through our telescopes.
If the weather is in doubt, call 346-5796 to verify the event is still on. While there, speak to one of our members about the benefits of membership. We need more stargazers and astronomy enthusiasts to carry KEASA into the future. Aloha, and clear skies everyone!
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David Bickham is KEASA vice president.
