Saturday: Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight for the annual ritual called daylight savings. Daylight savings originated in the United States during World War I to save energy for the war effort. But a recent study by two economists shows that switching to daylight savings time may actually lead to higher utility bills. When the economists compared the previous few years of energy bills in the section of Indiana that just started observing daylight savings, they discovered that switching to daylight savings cost Indiana utility customers $8.6 million in electricity. In an even more important consequence of daylight savings, Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia discovered a 7% jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after we "spring ahead". Blame it on the lost hour of sleep. And, sky watchers will lose even more sleep because the sky stays light for an additional hour.
There are three planets clustered in the sky a half a fist
above the western horizon at 6:30 p.m. Venus is by far the brightest of the
three. Saturn is to the left of Venus, about one degree away. Most people won’t
be able to squeeze their pinky between them. Neptune is the same distance below
Venus, but you’ll need large binoculars or a small telescope to see it.
Sunday: Jupiter is six fists above the southwestern horizon
at 9:00 p.m.
Monday: “Oooo, they’re little runaways. Orion’s stars moved
fast. Tried to make a getaway. Ooo-oo, they’re little runaways,” sang Bon Jovi
in his astronomical hit “Runaway. At least that’s what I hear when I listen to
the song. After all, it fits the recently calculated trajectory of AE Aurigae,
Mu Columbae, and 53 Arietis. Extrapolating the actual motion of these three
stars back in time, they were all in the location of the star-forming region
called the Orion Nebula a few million years ago. What kicked these stars out?
Not paying rent? Excessive partying? No, it was simply gravitational
interactions with near-by stars. Find out more about the eviction at http://goo.gl/UeLwKQ. The Orion Nebula is
visible with the naked eye from a very dark site, about two fists above the
southwestern horizon at 10:00 p.m.
Tuesday: The moon is about one and a half fists above due
south at 6:30 a.m. The bright star Arcturus is about a pinky width above it.
Wednesday: “The crow rises in the southeast,” said spy
number one. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that code,” replied spy number two.
Spy one exclaimed, “That’s because it’s not a code, you idiot. I’m talking
about the constellation Corvus the crow.” This unbelievably bad spy movie
dialogue is to remind you that Corvus had an unbelievably bad life. According
to one myth, Corvus brought the god Apollo the news that his girlfriend was
seeing someone else. In a classic case of punishing the messenger, Apollo
turned the formerly beautifully colored crow black. The box-shaped Corvus is
one fist above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.
Thursday: While you were looking through your underwear
drawer for clean socks, some citizen scientists were looking through sky maps
obtained by robotic telescopes to find brown dwarfs. The project, called
Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors, allows anyone with a computer and internet
connection to search through thousands of images to find these strange objects
that are midway between being classified as large planets and small stars. Some
brown dwarfs can have surface temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. The
recently discovered ones are cooler than the boiling point of water and may
even have clouds of water vapor! Read more about the discovery and how you can
participate in this project at https://noirlab.edu/public/blog/newly-launched-backyard-worlds/.
Friday: If you are lucky, you may be able to see Mercury
just above the eastern horizon at 6:50 a.m.
The positional information in this column about stars and
planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information
about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.
All times are Pacific Time unless noted.
