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First Bell - On Education:
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Pets:
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The Heldenfiles:
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Akron Zips:
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Tribe Matters:
Thursday’s Indians lineup
Cleveland Browns:
Links to Browns coverage: July 30, 2010
Kent State Sports:
Key MAC Games Of 2010 Season
Cleveland Cavaliers:
LeBron still has at least one fan in Cleveland
Buckeye Blogging:
10 Hurdles Standing Between Ohio State and Another National Championship
Varsity Letters:
Important Dates for Upcoming High School Football Season
All Da King's Men:
Arizona Immigration Law Blocked, Drug Cartels Rejoice
Blog of Mass Destruction:
"Muslims Hate Jews, Christians &…Dogs"
Akron Law Café:
Is BP Cornering the Market on Oil Spill Research?
Car Chase:
Sunday – or Anyday Drives
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Brangelina to Buy in Santorini?
Sound Check:
Ohio alt-rock stars weigh in on Lebron….John Mayer too..
HRLite House:
From the White House – New Federal Approach to Hiring
Travel arrangements are filling up quickly for July solar eclipse
By David L. Richards
Special to the Beacon Journal
Published on Sunday, Feb 28, 2010
March begins with the waning gibbous moon and the planet Saturn only about 8 degrees apart, rising at 8 p.m. in the constellation Virgo in the east. The ringed planet is tilted only 3.2 degrees toward Earth, and will probably appear in binoculars much as it did 400 years ago to Galileo in his small telescope. He thought the giant gas planet had ''ears.''
Mars is already high in the southern sky, between the Beehive (Praesepe, M44) and the Gemini Twins, Castor and Pollux. Draw a line from the Beehive through Mars and the next two bright stars you run into will be Pollux, and then brighter Castor.
Jupiter rises at twilight mid-month in the constellation Aquarius, conspicuous at magnitude -2.0.
A sliver of the waxing crescent moon slides right by the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters, M45) on the night of March 20. On the 25th, the waxing gibbous moon is within 6 degrees of the Beehive, and Mars is only 8 degrees from this cluster of several hundred stars.
By the end of the month, Venus and Mercury are evening stars about 8:30 p.m. on the western horizon. Venus is quite bright at magnitude -3.9, and by year's end will be 21/2 times brighter — one full magnitude.
On March 31, you might easily find the only naked-eye asteroid, Vesta. Find the sickle (or backwards question mark) of the constellation Leo. The top end star of the sickle is Ras Elased Australis. One degree below, just at the limit of human vision at magnitude 6, dimly shines Vesta.
Remember to spring ahead one hour on Sunday morning, March 14, as daylight saving time begins. Less than a week later, spring begins on March 20, the equinox.
If you are planning your summer vacation, flights and accommodations are filling up for the July 11 total eclipse of the sun. The path of totality is quite narrow, and makes landfall only in the Cook Islands, Easter Island and the southwest tip of Chile. If you go, send us a photo; we'll use it in the planetarium.
Q&A
Q: This past New Year's, my wife and I were on a pilgrimage to Israel. A spectacular blue moon rose and at approximately 10 p.m. I recognized a partial lunar eclipse was happening. What is the probability of having the moon at its closest proximity to earth occurring in a month with two full moons (a blue moon) and a partial eclipse all on the same night, which is Dec. 31? — Dr. L.B., Canton.
A: While the cycles of the heavens have in large measure determined the construction of our calendar, they differ in significant ways. The astronomical lunar month and the saros cycle (about 18 years and 11 days, used to predict eclipses) are not coincident with the human constructs of the month (either 30, 31, 28 or 29 days) and the year (not a whole multiple of any lunar cycle). The occurrence of the event you witnessed — an eclipsed blue moon on New Year's Eve — would be random.
Program
The Hoover-Price Planetarium will begin And Now for the Smallest Planet on March 13. Presentations are at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through May 9. With Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet, Mercury is now the solar system's smallest planet, and NASA's MESSENGER Probe has sparked new interest in this tiny orb. The planetarium is included with admission to the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum. Call 330-455-7043 for information.
David L. Richards is director of the Hoover-Price Planetarium at the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, 800 McKinley Monument Drive NW, Canton, OH 44708, http://www.mckinleymuseum.org. He can be reached at 330-455-7043 or e-mail hooverpriceplanetarium@hotmail.com.
March begins with the waning gibbous moon and the planet Saturn only about 8 degrees apart, rising at 8 p.m. in the constellation Virgo in the east. The ringed planet is tilted only 3.2 degrees toward Earth, and will probably appear in binoculars much as it did 400 years ago to Galileo in his small telescope. He thought the giant gas planet had ''ears.''
Get the full article here.
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