Fred Schaaf
SkyandTelescope.com March 2014 47OBSERVING
Northern Hemisphere’s SkyFred Schaaf welcomes your
comments at [email protected].When does spring arrive in the Northern Hemisphere?
Meteorologists often consider it to start on March 1st,
though astronomical spring doesn’t start until the equi-
nox, which this year falls on March 20th.
But in much of North America and Europe, even the
end of March falls short of most people’s conception of
spring. The month is famous for some of the biggest
snowstorms and blizzards on record — and many a cold
night for astronomers.
The season of stirring. I like the way the Eldar (Elves)
of Middle Earth divided the year. In The Lord of the Rings’s
appendix on calendars, J. R. R. Tolkien tells us that they
recognized not four but six seasons: spring, summer,
autumn, fading, winter, and stirring. For many of us,
March is a season of stirring, but not quite spring. The
trees won’t leaf out for weeks, only the fi rst fl owers have
bloomed — and the night sky is a strange hybrid of winter
constellations, spring constellations, and ones that belong
to both seasons.
Constellations on the fence. What season comes to
mind when someone mentions Gemini and Canis Minor?
I’ll bet most of you think fi rst of winter. These constella-
tions are part of Orion’s entourage, and Orion epitomizes
winter. Canis Minor and its majestic counterpart Canis
Major are Orion’s dogs, trailing him across the sky. And
Gemini is just above or upper left of Orion.
Yet take a look at our all-sky map for March evenings.
Castor, Pollux, and Procyon, the brightest stars of Gemini
and Canis Minor, have barely passed the sky’s meridian.
They will be more than halfway up the west sky in April
and low but plainly visible at nightfall in May.
What about Cancer the Crab, Gemini’s successor in
the zodiac? I’d venture to guess that most of us group it
with the constellations of spring. Yet it’s well up on Janu-
ary evenings, and our March all-sky map shows it and its
cluster-fi lled center barely short of the meridian.
Sights for the season of stirring. Gemini, Canis
Minor, and Cancer are at their highest shortly after night-
fall in the season of stirring. That’s when we can see M44,
Cancer’s Beehive Cluster, at its most bee-yootifully bright
and prominent; appreciate Procyon in its own right,
divorced from Sirius, the greater Dog Star; and, with atelescope, split Castor cleanly into two bright bluish stars
and one faint red dwarf.
Our all-sky map shows that this is also a great time to
observe the open star clusters M48, M50, and the wonder-
fully mismatched pair M46 and M47. There’s also M67,
Cancer’s other great cluster, conveniently close to Alpha
Cancri (Acubens). It appears much dimmer and smaller
than M44, but it’s rich in telescopes and visible to the
naked eye in truly dark skies.
Now is also a wonderful time to admire the front,
upright third of long, long Hydra, the Water Snake.
Hydra’s head isn’t very bright, but it’s compact and there-
fore rather prominent in reasonably dark skies — a lovely
pattern to admire. This mythic creature seems to stick
its head and neck up just above the celestial equator as if
from out of a lake. Below the celestial equator is Hydra’s
heart, orange-colored 2nd-magnitude Alphard.
Looking east to spring. If you start getting cold while
observing all these wonders on the fence between winter
and spring, there’s a remedy: take a look at the eastern
and northeastern sky. Leo has sprung halfway up the east-
ern heavens. The Big Dipper has wheeled surprisingly
high in the northeast. And bright Arcturus, the great glad
star of spring and early summer, has just cleared the east-
northeastern horizon. ✦The Month Between
the Seasons
March separates and unites winter and spring.
Snowdrops often bloom before the snow has melted, embodying
the transition from winter to spring.IRIS WIJNGAARDEN / WIKIMEDIA COMMONSNHS layout.indd 47 12/23/13 11:37 AM