The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 27, 2021

Saturday:  Two of the best, and certainly the most available, “tools” for viewing the night sky are your eyes. Your eyes let you see the entire sky in just a few seconds. Your eyes can read star charts, decipher astronomy apps, and spot meteors while your friend is still setting up her tripod. Your naked eyes are not as effective as gathering light. They work well when the light source is comparatively bright and the detailed features are fairly large. It’s best to practice on a special Solar System body known scientifically as the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. Artists such as Jan van Eyck and Leonardo da Vinci produced the first realistic naked eye depictions of the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness. This week you can use your own eyes to observe evidence of violent collisions and ancient lava flows. For more information on how to observe the Magnificent Optical Object of Nearness, better known as the Moon, go to http://goo.gl/JLhraO.

Sunday: According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the March full moon is called the Full Worm Moon, either after the earthworms that appear in the warming spring soil or the beetle larvae that emerge from tree bark leaving winter dormancy. Follow up on last night’s viewing by looking for the man on the moon. Or the rabbit on the moon. Read about what many other cultures “see” at http://tiny.cc/4r8vtz. 

Monday: Signs of spring: flower buds, leaves on the trees, beetle larvae, and the Spring Triangle. The bright stars Regulus, Arcturus, and Spica rise as evening starts. By 10:00 p.m., Regulus is five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southeastern horizon, Arcturus is two and a half fists above due east, and Spica is one fist above the east-southeastern horizon and about a half a fist to the upper right of the Moon. For more on the Spring Triangle, go to http://tiny.cc/ep7vtz. 

Tuesday: Mars is four fists above the west-southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday: The Milky Way is pretty easy to spot on the early spring sky. Just look up. Everything you see in the sky, including that bird that just startled you, is in the Milky Way. But, even the path of densely packed stars in the plane of our galaxy that look like a river of milk is easy to find. Face due west at 9:00 p.m. in a fairly open area. The fuzzy Milky Way path starts due south, moves upward past the bright star Sirius, towards the bright star Capella, through W-shaped Cassiopeia and down to due north where the bright star Deneb sits just above the horizon.

Thursday: At 6:00 a.m., Saturn is one fist above the southeastern horizon. The much brighter Jupiter is less than a fist above the east-southeastern horizon.

Friday:  CWU encourages physical distancing. But astronomy learning lives on! The Physics Department is hosting a First Saturday VIRTUAL planetarium show tomorrow from noon to 1:00 p.m. CWU physics professor Bruce Palmquist will give a show called “What's up in the Spring Sky”, a tour of spring planets, constellations, and other interesting celestial objects. There is a virtual planetarium show on the first Saturday of nearly every month of the school year. Register at https://rebrand.ly/April2021FirstSaturday.

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.