The Sky This Week 2-8 Apr 2003
The Moon waxes in the evening skies this week. First Quarter occurs on the 9th at 7:40 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Look for Luna close to the Pleiades star cluster on the evening of the 5th. Two nights later she lies just 3 degrees north of the golden glow of Saturn. On the evening of the 8th the Moon forms an attractive triangle with Castor and Pollux, the Twin Stars of Gemini.
The annual ritual of ìspringingî our clocks forward takes place officially at 2:00 am on the morning of Sunday, April 6th. From that time until the last Sunday in October we will observe Daylight Time. The concept of changing the clocks to add an extra hour of afternoon daylight is said to have originated with Benjamin Franklin, but it never went into widespread use in the U.S. until World War I. It was never a popular idea, and the national use of Daylight Time wasn’t made the law of the land until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act. The law was amended in 1986 to give us the system we use at present.
The evening planet parade has now been joined by a very shy visitor. The fleet planet Mercury becomes visible shortly after sunset by the end of the week. Look about 10 degrees above the western horizon about half an hour after sunset. Mercury will appear as the brightest star-like object in this part of the sky. It will reach its greatest elongation on the 16th.
Saturn gets a visit from the Moon by the week’s end. The ringed planet gets something of a reprieve for skywatchers by the switch to Daylight Time. Beginning on the 6th, he’ll set an hour later, so he’ll still be visible during the later evening hours.
Jupiter also gets an extra hour to shine thanks to the clock change. The giant planet beams down on us from near the meridian as evening twilight ends, and he remains the brightest nighttime object after the Moon. Jupiter reaches the second stationary point in this year’s apparition on the 4th. Binocular skywatchers have been enjoying Jupiter’s approach to the Beehive star cluster over the past few weeks. The planet will now appear to halt in his tracks just east of the cluster, and he’ll slowly start to plod eastward again over the next few weeks.
The morning sky finds ruddy Mars lurking just east of the teapot-shaped asterism that makes up Sagittarius, the Archer. The red planet is on a much swifter eastward pace than Jupiter. Over the course of the next several weeks he’ll scurry across Capricornus and into Aquarius, where he’ll spend the late summer and fall in the closest opposition to us in recorded history. Right now he’s little more than a tiny pink dot in the telescope, but this summer he should put on quite a show.
