ASTRONOTESARMAGHPLANETARIUM

March 2009

The day a lion came to the Planetarium

The sky this month

Panspermia: life began out there?

Why didn’t the USSR beat NASA to the Moon?

Incorporating FRIENDS’ NEWSLETTER

2 Astronotes March 2009

By Alyson Kerr, Education Support Officer

Every Year, we celebrate the Chinese New Year at Armagh Planetarium. It was certainly another amazing event this year. In conjunc-tion with the Chinese Welfare Association, on Sunday 1 February we saw visitors from all over Ireland coming to join in the festivities. As well as our ever popular Pole Position show, visitors were treated to entertainment in the form of a traditional Lion Dance to bring in the New Year. The purpose of this dance is to bring luck into the household, the Lion bows to the household-ers before sweeping through the building in a very dramatic style. The beating of traditional Chinese drums certainly added to the enter-tainment! The Lion Dance was followed with a beautiful Ribbon dance demonstrated by Stella, one of the Chinese Welfare Association’s long standing volunteers. We were also treated to a martial arts demonstration using a sword and bamboo spear. I think I am right to say that the audience was certainly dazzled by the amount of skill and precision demonstrated by the volunteers. We were also able to get a taste of some traditional Chinese cuisine in the form of dim sum and sweet cakes. Many visitors also tried traditional Chinese teas and were treated to a fortune cookie to predict what lay in store for them this year.

During the day, some of our visitors asked why we celebrate this holiday at Armagh Plan-etarium. The answer is simple, it has strong as-tronomical ties! The Chinese calendar is based on a combination of a lunar/solar cycle. The months are lunar months. Each year contains twelve months but every two or three years a leap month is inserted. This is much better than our leap day where we work an extra day for

nothing; by the Chinese calendar you get an ex-tra month’s pay! As a result of months being lu-nar months, New Year is not the same date every year, it can fall anywhere between 21 January and 19 February. This year it began on 26 Janu-ary and festivities can last up to fifteen days. Each year is associated with an animal; this is the Year of the Ox. There are twelve animals and the Chinese calendar runs on a cycle of twelve years. The Chinese New Year is virtually always the second New Moon after the winter solstice, which must always fall in the 11th month. The Chinese New Moon is actually a dark Moon. The Western calendar defines a New Moon as when the first visible crescent appears. In comparison a dark moon occurs at the moment of conjunc-tion in elliptical longitude with the Sun when the Moon is invisible from Earth.

The Chinese calendar is based purely on astro-nomical observation unlike the western world’s Georgian calendar. The New Year is celebrated, not surprisingly, on the First Day of the First Month. The Chinese calendar is said to have started by the Xia people (ca 2205 BC), The ability to determine the seasons, especially the arrival of spring, is vital to an agricultural society. By measuring the length of the shadow cast

Welcoming the New Year

Imag

e C

redi

t: O

rla O

’Don

nell,

Arm

agh

Pla

neta

rium

Happy New Year The Lion Dance brings luck into the home for New Year. Some thought this lion was scary but all agree it could certainly dance!

“The Chinese calendar is based on a combination of

a lunar/solar cycle.”

March 2009 Astronotes 3

By Orla O’Donnell, Education Support Officer,

Out of the four Education Support Officers here in the Planetarium I would say that I would rank myself as only the third biggest sci-fi geek. However there are some science fiction topics that always pique my imagination. These are the themes of genetic mutations (like the X-Men), future dystopia (Orwell’s ‘1984’ is my favourite book) and panspermia.

Panspermia is a theory that states that life may not have arisen here on Earth but was cre-ated somewhere else in the cosmos and was transported to Earth by some means. Scientific speculations about panspermia (meaning ‘seeds everywhere’) are raised to answer the puzzle of how life arose on Earth by proposing that it originated elsewhere.

Panspermia definitely sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Some scientists such as Francis Crick (one of the discoverers of the structure of

Martial Arts Demonstration Volunteers from the Chinese Welfare Association delighted the audience with their demonstration using traditional Chinese weapons.

Imag

e C

redi

t: O

rla O

’Don

nell,

Arm

agh

Pla

neta

rium

upon a pole, ancient astronomers readily quanti-fied the seasons into 24 intervals of roughly 15 days each. Due to variations in the motion of the Earth, the summer intervals are slightly longer

than the winter ones. In 104 B.C. the length of a year was determined to an accuracy of 365.2502 days, by 480 A.D., Ju Chongzhi refined it to 365.2428 days, or 52 seconds more than the modern value of 365.2422 days. This does prove troublesome as it does not account for the 11 or so days extra every year. Within 2 to 3 years the calendar would have been severely out. To solve this problem, ancient Chinese as-tronomers inserted a leap month to compensate. 2010 marks the year of the Tiger and we hope that it will be as eventful as 2009 seems to be

with the International Year of Astronomy. We are all looking forward to our big event next year.

Hands up if you’re an alien!

“The Xia people are said to have created the chinese calendar about 2205 BC”

DNA) have even advanced the idea that an alien intelligence somehow implanted the informa-

Manly men at the height of their manliness! ‘Vikings vs Alien’ flick ‘Outlander’ is released in April in the UK.

Imag

e C

redi

t: T

he W

eins

tein

Com

pany

4 Astronotes March 2009

Imag

e C

redi

t: N

AS

A

Directed Panspermia appears throughout written science fiction. A notable example is Larry Niven’s long-running ‘Known Space’ series. In one of these works, ‘World of Ptavvs’ (1966), we learn that planets throughout the Galaxy, including Earth, were seeded with life (‘food yeast’) billions of years ago by the loathsome Thrint Empire.

Imag

e C

redi

t: il

lust

ratio

n by

Pet

er J

ones

, pub

lishe

d by

O

rbit

(197

8)

Man meets Robot Astronaut Alan Bean inspects Surveyor 3 during 1969’s other moonlanding.

tion that would initiate human life here on Earth. Indeed the topic has been covered in many science fiction movies and television shows. Star Trek, Stargate and more recent movies like 2009’s ‘Outlander’ have all included the theme with little scientific accuracy. Outlander’s extra-terrestrial yet human hero tells his Norse allies that Earth is a lost colony of his civilisation. This is clever fiction, but silly science. Fossil evidence shows that humans evolved on Earth and are re-lated to all other Earthly life. If Earth was seeded with life from elsewhere it was by primitive life billions of years ago. Some scientists have for years claimed that there could be some scientific truth to the claim that life did not begin here on Earth but somewhere out in the vastness of the Universe. In this article I am going to review some of the popular theories linked to pansper-mia that have inspired generations of science fiction writers.

There is one incident from the Apollo missions that revealed evidence that primitive life might survive in space for extended periods of time. Surveyor 3 landed successfully on the Moon on

20 April 1967 and the unmanned lunar probe re-mained on the harsh lunar surface untouched for about two and half years. In November 1969 the camera was removed by the crew of the Apollo 12 mission so the camera could be inspected on Earth to see how it had survived the harsh conditions. NASA scientists conducted a full study of the camera and uncovered something very surprising. The polyurethane foam which covered the camera’s circuit boards contained 50 to 100 specimens of Streptococcus mitis, a common bacterium found in humans. The cam-era was returned under strictly sterile conditions to Earth so the bacteria must have been inside the camera before it departed our planet. Possi-bly an engineer or scientist sneezed in its vicinity while the Surveyor probe was being assembled. These micro-organisms were able to survive as spores for over two years on the surface of the Moon without air or water, in the extreme temperatures and hostile radiation environment of the moon. The discovery that spores could survive conditions like this on the Moon again ignited interest in the theory of panspermia. If an organism can survive on the Moon perhaps they can survive drifting through interplanetary or interstellar space.

The theory that life could evolve in the cosmos was first suggested in its modern form by a Swedish chemist called Svante Arrhenius who

“Organisms were able to survive for over two years without air or water, in the extreme temperatures and hostile environment of the

Moon”

March 2009 Astronotes 5Im

age

Cre

dits

: E

SA

Saturn Rising Apollo 11 leaves for the Moon. Just think how big that plume of flame is.

The Reign of Saturn

published a work in 1903 (the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his earlier work), proposing that life in the form of spores could survive in space and travel by means of radia-tion pressure. This is the imperceptibly gentle push exerted by sunlight. Arrhenius claimed that spores could escape by random movement from life-bearing planets and then be launched into interstellar space by their star’s radiation and possibly fall on to a lifeless planet, colonizing it with life. Arrhenius’ theory was deemed faulty for a long time as ultraviolet light was thought to be always deadly to micro-organisms. In a journey through space which could last centuries, millen-nia or even aeons, the hapless spores would be seared by cosmic UV sources.

In the 1960s Arrhenius’ theories were revisited by Carl Sagan, he proposed that a microorgan-ism’s survival in space depended on the ratio p/g, where p is the repulsive force produced by the pressure of the star and g being the attractive force due to the star’s gravity. A p/g value less than 1 means the spore falls to a fiery fate in the star! A ratio more than 1 means it can escape into the interstellar void. Sagan’s equation allowed Arrhenius’ theory to have more legitimacy, proposing spores could indeed travel using radiation pressure but there were some

restrictions. The spores would have to be very small at 0.2 to 0.6 microns and be released by brighter stars. These are hotter, emitting more hard radiation and therefore more dangerous to the spores. Also brighter stars have a shorter life span limiting the time for such events to happen. Sagan concluded that the best possible location from which life could have begun in space is the moons of the outer Solar System.

Another possibility for life originating in the greater Solar System was proposed by William Thompson (Lord Kelvin). He suggested that life (or its precursors) were carried on meteorites that crashed into Earth. This theory that life could survive the rigours of an incandescent entry into the atmosphere and impact into the Earth was tested in 2007. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland strapped a piece of hardy rock from the Orkneys to the ESA research probe Foton M3, to investigate if organic chemicals could survive the vacuum of space and an ardu-ous re-entry. The Foton M3 Probe returned to earth in September 2008 landing in the plains of Kazakhstan. Most of the Orkney rock had been vaporized but what was left showed evidence that it once harboured life. The results gave some credence that spores could survive the trauma of such events but much more study is needed on the topic to prove the issue. At present the scientific consensus on panspermia is that it is extremely implausible but not totally impossible.

Possibly my favourite if not very glamorous

Foton satellite This artist’s impression shows the craft to be a direct descendent of Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1.

“Scientists strapped a piece of Orkney rock to an ESA

research probe”

False alarm Structures resembling bacteria found in Martian meteorite ALH 84001. Most scientists now regard these as having an abiotic origin.

Imag

e C

redi

t: N

AS

A

6 Astronotes March 2009

theory of Panspermia is the ‘garbage theory’ proposed by the distinguished astrophysicist Thomas Gold in the magazine Air Force and Space Digest in 1960. The theory suggests that a team of explorers from an advanced race of humanoids landed on Earth in the distant past and left behind rubbish that eventually evolved into life as we know it. This theory seems to

Our cousin? The ET monster seizes another terrified victim in this scene from Spielberg’s 1982 sci-fi horror classic. (Caption by Colin who really must actually see the movie sometime.)

Imag

e C

redi

t: U

nive

rsal

Stu

dios

come straight ffrom the pages of a science fiction novel (in fact by 1968 Robert Silverberg had the sneering time-traveller in ‘The Masks of Time’ appalling his twentieth century hosts with a crude restating of the theory) and perhaps that is why it is so intriguing to me. It is not very attractive to think that life on earth has evolved from the forgotten rubbish of a much more ad-vanced race. Gold’s hypothesis may not sound the most feasible theory of panspermia but it has thrown up some debate about us visiting another world and leaving behind spores that not only survive but had a negative effect. As a result space probes to Mars are routinely sterilised before launch to eliminate Earthly stowaways.

So was the material for life generated in the Universe and carried to Earth on the back of a meteor, transported here by a star or are we descended from a messy race of advanced space-faring aliens? Panspermia may not be the mainstream theory to explain life’s presence on Earth but many scientists argue its case.So if you accept panspermia put your hand up in the air and proudly proclaim that we are all in fact aliens!

Apollo’s Soviet RivalBy Colin Johnston, Science Communicator

A few years ago there was a vogue among historians to write about ‘counterfactuals’. A counterfactual examines the importance of an event for subsequent history by asking what if that event had taken a radically different course. What if the Nazis had invaded the UK in 1940? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What if Cleopatra’s nose had been more pert and attractive? To these I will add another plausi-ble scenario, what if the USSR’s 1960s space program had succeeded in landing a man on the Moon before the US?

It does not seem a far-fetched notion. The Soviet Union began the Space Age with an early lead over the Americans. The first satellite in orbit, first man in space, first spacewalk and first probes to the Moon were all achieved by the USSR. In 1967, NASA’s Apollo project appeared

to be faltering following the deaths of three astronauts in an accident which had indicated fatal flaws in the spacecraft design (see previous Astronotes). Political opposition to the project’s cost was growing, perhaps NASA could have been ordered to delay or halt the moonlandings. Taking advantage of the delay, the Soviets could have continued to forge ahead, by test launch-ing the huge N-1 moonrocket. Unmanned orbital tests of the spiderlike Lunniy Korabl (LK) lunar landing spacecraft could have been performed simultaneously. Finally possibly as early as autumn 1968, a single N-1 could have blasted skyward an LK and Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl (LOK), essentially a stretched Soyuz spacecraft. Two cosmonauts would have flown into lunar orbit in the linked vehicles.

In this imaginary scenario, above the Moon’s cra-tered surface one cosmonaut would have trans-

March 2009 Astronotes 7

Imag

e C

redi

t: A

sif S

iddi

q vi

e th

espa

cere

view

.com

N1 An enormous N1 rocket is transported hori-zontally to the launch pad this is in contrast to the Saturn V which was assembled and moved in an upright position.

ferred to the LK by making a spacewalk, the craft would have carried him to a gentle touchdown on the dusty plains of our satellite. This auto-mated lunar descent would have been guided by a radio beacon on an already-landed unmanned Luna probe. Within hours the heroic cosmonaut (Alexei Leonov perhaps?) would have made a permanent name for himself in history, leaving the first human footprints in the regolith. After planting the Red Flag and gathering a bag of soil and rock samples, the lone explorer would blast off to rejoin his comrade in the LOK for the return to Earth, landing in a Kazakhstani wheat field. Worldwide applause for this epic achievement would be tempered with gloom in the humbled US. Soviet communism would have proven itself superior to capitalism and a slow realignment of the geopolitical landscape might have begun…

Of course this did not happen, but it could have. Prototypes were tested of the LK lunar lander (successfully) and N-1 booster (catastrophi-cally unsuccessfully). Four circumlunar flights in the Zond series were essentially unmanned Soyuz missions with experimental animals and a dummy cosmonaut on board. Why did it not happen?

Although the USSR had announced plans to send people to the Moon in 1960, serious plan-ning did not begin until 1964 (in contrast the Apollo project had been underway since 1960). From this late start, the project was continually underfunded. Early Soviet space projects had achieved miracles but a Moon mission was an endeavour of a staggeringly greater complex-ity and expense yet the Politburo expected it to succeed on a shoestring budget. A landing in late 1968 was anticipated. Meanwhile the hugely influential Soviet military establishment actively opposed the lunar program, fearing human and technical resources would be diverted from their projects to the more civilian-orientated space program. This attitude slowed the project too. The moon project was led by the ‘Chief De-signer of Spaceships’ Sergei Korolev (1906-66) architect of the early Soviet space successes

(see ‘The man behind Sputnik’ in October 2007’s Astronotes). Korolev hoped to use a long term plan of his own devising which would see steady progress building into an elaborate Moon program culminating in the construction of a lunar base. Sadly for him, he was not given the support he needed and the plan was scaled down to simply landing the first cosmonaut on the Moon. Even this reduced plan quickly ran into problems.

To say that the development of the gigantic N-1 rocket was troubled is a major understatement. This booster was originally designed by a team led by Sergei Korolev himself. To launch a heavy lunar spacecraft the N-1 needed engines burning a high-energy propellant, ideally liquid hydrogen and oxygen. However, he was forced by his political masters to use rocket engines designed by a rival rocket designer, Valentin Glushko (1900-89).

Ignoring reality, Glushko insisted that less power-ful fuels would be adequate. This was more than a technical disagreement. Glushko and Korolev had long detested each other and in fact Korlev believed that his brutal imprisonment in the 1930s and 40s was a result of Glushko denounc-ing him to the Communist authorities. Korolev

“A lone heroic Cosmonaut could have been first on the

Moon”

“the Soviet Moon project was a dysfunctional mess”

8 Astronotes March 2009

was probably correct, but in fairness to Glushko he was already in prison at the time and he may have been tortured into giving Korolev’s name. Relations between the two engineers were appalling, slowing an already behind sched-ule project to a crawl. Glushko was eventually replaced by Nikolai Kuznetsov (1911-95), a jet engine designer with little experience in rocketry. Kuznetsov’s team’s best effort was a fairly small engine called the NK-15. The N-1 would need a staggering thirty of these clustered together on its first stage (compared to 5 F-1 motors on its US equivalent, the Saturn 5). Rocket engines and their plumbing are temperamental beasts at the best of times and to hope to have thirty operat-ing perfectly in unison while screaming and vibrating side by side demonstrated great faith in the design or great ignorance of its pitfalls. Meanwhile a third engineer, Vladimir Chelomei (1914-84), another rival of Korolev had per-suaded the Politburo to sponsor his alternative scheme to send cosmonauts around the Moon. This led only to the Zond flights described earlier and nowhere else and diverted even more funds from the moonlanding plan.

Korolev died unexpectedly in 1966 and any hope of beating the Americans perished with him. It took months to appoint his deputy Vas-ily Mishin (1917-2001) to manage the project.

There were giants in the Earth... A Saturn V and an N-1 (known as the G-1 to westerners until the late 1980s) drawn to scale.

Imag

e C

redi

t: N

AS

A

Mishin was a less than inspiring figure and under him the project stagnated. A further blow was the fatal accident which ended the first piloted flight of the Soyuz spacecraft. Behind the scenes the faltering Soviet Moon project was a dysfunctional mess of rivalry and incompetence but propaganda and secrecy largely concealed this from the outside world. It still looked as though the Communists could pull off a triumph. American spy satellites recorded steady progress at the Soviet launch facilities, and assembly of the first N-1. This was a very large rocket indeed, standing 105 m (345 ft) tall. It was second only to the Saturn V in height, mass and payload (until the 1990s western observers believed that the N-1 was actually big-ger than the Saturn). Ready for a lunar mission, an N-1 consisted of five stages in total, three of these were for boosting the remaining two into orbit. These two stages would booster the lunar spacecraft to their destination. Fully loaded and fuelled, the unique-looking N1 weighed 2788 tonnes (6.1 million lb). Its size made it impossible to hide on the launch pad, so American intel-ligence agencies were fully aware of the first N-1 being prepared for a test launch in January 1969. Under its skin it was a strangely primitive and shoddy design but the Americans had no idea how inefficient and flawed the vehicle was.

On 21 February 1969, the titanic rocket took off, rising majestically into the sky. Seconds later it was doomed. Somewhere in the first stage a fire had started. An automatic sensor detected this and took action to shut down the engines near the fire. Unfortunately all thirty engines were shut down 69 seconds into the ascent and the whole mighty machine collapsed back on the launch pad causing massive destruction. Mercifully no cosmonauts were on board and no one was hurt on the ground. Three more attempts were made to launch N-1 rockets but all ended in spectacular fireballs. The rocket’s development was stopped in 1972 and virtually all equipment related to it was destroyed, such was the embar-rassment of this failure.

“the Cosmonaut was just a passenger in the Soviet

Lunar Module”

March 2009 Astronotes 9

The Sky in Marchplenty of opportunity to observe the sky and its stellar objects. Please bear in mind that the guide presented here is based on the stellar positions at 11:00pm on 15th March, and while the stars don’t change much from day to day, their relative positions will move across the sky

By Tracy McConnell, Education Support Officer

Welcome back to the “Night Sky Guide” for March 2009. At this time of year we have reason-ably long nights with the sun setting just before 8pm and rising at approximately 5.30am, giving

The LK lunar lander was only a third of the size of NASA’s Lunar Module.

Imag

e C

redi

t: ©

Mar

k W

ade

via

astr

onau

tix.c

om

The LK, the USSR’s equivalent of NASA’s Lunar Module was being developed separately at the same time as the N-1 and was relatively successful despite its overly complex control system. This small vehicle was designed to travel to and from lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface entirely automatically with zero input from its occupant. The cosmonaut was simply a pas-senger. This design philosophy is common to all Soviet (and Russian) manned spacecraft. What would have happened should it have descended towards an unforeseen field of boulders (as happened with Apollo 11) does not bear think-ing about. Four LKs were secretly put through unmanned test flights in low Earth orbit in the early 1970s.

Compared to Apollo, every aspect of the USSR’s Moon project was unimpressive. American astronauts could make multi-hour EVAs, while the Soviet Kretchet lunar space suit was limited

to just 1.5 hours on the surface at a time. As well as planting the flag, the first Soviet moonwalk was to consist of deploying of a very limited ar-ray of scientific instruments, taking soil samples, photography of the landscape and recording a commentary on the lunar surface. In contrast, at

the very least NASA astronauts left behind the elaborate Apollo Lunar Surface Experimental Package to monitor the Moon’s geophysics and environment. The later Apollo missions involved very comprehensive sets of experiments indeed and included traverses of many kilometres in the lunar rover. Both American and Soviet spacemen were professional pilots rather than scientists, but NASA trained its crews to be proficient ge-ologists whereas the nine cosmonauts preparing for Moon missions received no such training. Any cosmonaut who walked on the Moon would be far less useful as a scientific explorer than NASA’s crews.

Even after Apollo 11’s triumph, the Soviet Moon project stumbled on in secret until 1974 before being closed down. For nearly two decades the Soviet authorities denied it had ever existed, claiming that their priorities lay in unmanned missions and space stations. This lie was widely believed in the West. If ever there was a ‘Moon Hoax’ this was it.

“For decades the Soviet authorities denied that their

Moon Project had ever existed”

Imag

e C

redi

t: vi

a w

ikim

edia

.org

10 Astronotes March 2009

Bootes and Canes Venatici as depicted in a 17th century star atlas. Note that this is reversed from how we see it in the sky!

throughout the night.

Just a quick reminder that the very bright “star” visible in the west as the sun sets at around 8pm is in fact the planet Venus. At this time, Saturn can also be seen in the east, just at the rear paw of Leo the lion. To find Leo, face south and half way up the sky you should be able to see a pattern resembling a backwards question mark. This is the sphinx-like head of the lion. To the left of this question mark is the rest of Leo’s body. Whereas Venus sets early, shortly after sunset, Saturn continues to make its way across the southern sky from east to west throughout the night.

In the east, there is a bright star called Arcturus. This star is the fourth brightest in the sky and is 10 times the diameter of our Sun and 100 times as bright. Arcturus marks the bottom star of a kite shaped pattern called Boötes, the herds-man. This constellation is pronounced bow-ho-tez.

Like all successful herdsmen, Boötes had his trusty herding dogs and they are represented by the constellation Canes Venatici. If you face east. Boötes is half way up the sky with Arcturus on the right hand side, and Canes Venatici is just above Boötes. You may not be able to see the Canes Venatici pattern very clearly as it contains only very faint stars, but Canes Venatici is home to a number of beautiful deep sky objects.

The most easily visible is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy which is estimated to be 23 Mly (Mega light years = 1 million ly) away. It’s believed that there is a black hole surrounded by a ring of dust at the centre of this galaxy. Canes Venatici is also home to three other galaxies, the Sunflower galaxy (M63), M94 and M106, as well as the Globular Cluster M3.

If you continue facing east then, just left of Boötes is a box like shape of stars with 4

Imag

e C

redi

t: J

ulie

Tho

mps

on, D

igita

l The

atre

Man

ager

spider-like legs at each corner. This odd pattern is represents the legendary hero Hercules. He was challenged to complete twelve labours, in order to regain his honour, and each contributed to the saga of Hercules, son of Zeus, in Greek mythology.

On the right hand side of the main box shaped body of Hercules, is M13, the brightest globular cluster in the northern hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye and contains hundreds of thou-sands of stars. Through binoculars it looks like a fuzzy blob but with the help of a telescope you will be able to make out individual stars (see last issue’s Image of the Month).

Globular Glory M13 is one of the most well known globular clusters. M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years away, and is over 12 billion years old. Image taken with William Optics FT110 Triple Fluorite refractor and SBIG ST2000 CCD camera processed Adobe Pho-toshop and Maxim DL.

“Saturn continues to make its way across the south-ern sky from east to west

throughout the night”

March 2009 Astronotes 11

If you return to the constellation Boötes and find the bright star Arcturus, then imagine draw-ing a line straight down from Arcturus until you come to a bright star near the horizon, facing SE. this star is called Spica and it is the brightest constellation in the constellation Virgo, one of the signs of the zodiac. Although Spica is the only bright star in this pattern, this is the second larg-est pattern in the northern sky.

There are several ways to visualise this pattern but I particularly like the one shown in the “Sky and Telescope” sky chart insert included with your Astronotes. It resembles a stick person ly-ing on its side, with Spica marking the position of the lowest hand. Virgo does contain a collection of distant galaxies called the Virgo Cluster, which are located just above Virgo in the sky, over her shoulder.

As is the norm at this time of year Orion is still visible in a WSW direction at this time and Sirius

“The brightest Globular Cluster in the northern

hemisphere’s sky is M13”

Venus as we cannot see it from Earth This ultraviolet image of the planet’s southern hemi-sphere was taken by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft on 15 May 2006, when the spacecraft was flying at about 66 500 km from the planet. In this image the South Pole is near the terminator, just above the centre of the image. The complex atmosphere that surrounds the planet is clearly visible.

Imag

e C

redi

t: C

olin

Joh

nsto

n, im

age

crea

ted

with

Sta

rry

Nig

ht

Moon Phases, March 2009 Wed 4 March First QuarterWed 11 March FULL MOON Wed 18 March Last QuarterThur 26 March NEW MOON

is just over the SW horizon. We covered Orion in some detail over the last two months.

All of our familiar circumpolar constellations are visible as always. Ursa Major is directly over head at this time, Ursa Minor and Polaris high in the northern sky, Draco snaking from overhead near Ursa Major to middle of the sky in a NE direction, Cephus is below Ursa Minor in a north-erly direction and the bright celestial “W” in the NW is Cassiopeia.

As always, I hope you’ve found this guide useful and informative and enjoy your stargazing until next month.

Imag

e C

redi

t: E

SA

/MP

S, K

atle

nbur

g-Li

ndau

, Ger

man

y

Venus as we can see it from Earth This simulat-ed image gives an idea of how the planet and the crescent Moon appeared in the western evening sky on 27 February 2009. The planet’s brilliance over the past months has stimulated dozens of queries from the public to the Planetarium.

On 20 Jan 2009 the world watched as the first African-American President of the United States of America was sworn into office. The President’s inauguration speech was followed by a huge parade, reportedly containing around 13 000 participants from all 50 US states. The parade followed a 1.5 mile (2.4 km) route along Pennsyl-vania Avenue towards the White House.In the parade NASA demonstrated the next generation Lunar Electric Rover, (LER) which is set to accompany astronauts when NASA returns to the Moon around 2020. The rover was escorted by astronauts from the recent STS126 shuttle missions to the International Space Station and by veteran Apollo 11 crew member Buzz Aldrin who was celebrating his 79th birthday.

There was however some consternation about the placement of the NASA contingent within the parade. Not only were they placed dead last in the parade, they were even behind “The Lawn Rangers”, a precision lawn mower display team from Illinois.

As an end note readers may also want to check out the following link to an amazing picture of President Obama’s inauguration ceremony: a 1474 megapixel panoramic photo taken using the same technology that the Mars rovers use to take images of the Red Planet. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/02March_gigapan.htm(Caption by Nigel Farrell, Education Support Of-ficer)

Image of the Month

Astronotes, Incorporating Friends’ Newsletter is published monthly by Armagh Planetarium, College Hill, Armagh, Co. Armagh BT61 9DB Tel: 02837 523689 Email: cj@armaghplanet.com

www.armaghplanet.comEditor: Colin JohnstonAssistant Editor: Alyson Kerr ©2009 Armagh PlanetariumAll rights reserved

12 Astronotes March 2009

Imag

e C

redi

t:

NA

SA