Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that star? Get the answers from mySKY--a fun new astronomy helper from Meade. | | | NEW SUNSPOT: A new sunspot is emerging near the east limb of the Sun. In a matter of hours it has grown from near invisibility to a dark core the size of Earth. On the scale of the Sun, this is still small, but readers with solar telescopes may wish to monitor its rapid development. more images: from Howard Eskildsen of Ocala, Florida; from Scott McCormick of Berks County, Pennsylvania; from Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, Kentucky EARLY EASTER: Why is Easter so early this year? Blame it on the Moon: The full Moon of March 21, 2008. Credit: Ehsan Rostamizadeh, Kerman, Iran Simply put, Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full Moon of Spring. This year, Spring arrived on March 20th, the full Moon followed on March 21st, and viola!--we have Easter on March 23rd. (Actually, it's not quite so simple because the church has its own table of full Moons that differs from the table astronomers use. But that's another story.) Because of its dependence on Moon phases, the date of Easter shifts around from year to year. The earliest it can be is March 22nd, the latest is April 25th. The last time Easter occurred as early as March 23rd was 1913, an Easter remembered in Ohio for the Great Dayton Flood. On that fateful Sunday, a month's worth of rain fell in a single day. So keep your umbrella handy and have a Happy Easter! JULES VERNE AND THE ISS: "Now that the European Space Agency's Jules Verne cargo carrier is parked 2000 km in front of the International Space Station, observers have a good opportunity to see both spacecraft in the evening sky," says amateur astronomer Till Credner. On March 19th he photographed the pair streaking over Hohenzollern Castle in southern Germany: Click to play a 2.5 MB movie "The Jules Verne appears about four and a half minutes before the ISS and they follow the same track across the sky," he says. "Jules Verne vanishes in the east just as the ISS appears in the west." These double-flybys will continue for at least another week. Jules Verne won't dock with the ISS (merging the two points of light) until after space shuttle Endeavour leaves the station on March 25th. Get your flyby alerts from Spaceweather PHONE. more images: from Robert Jeffers of Virginia Beach, VA; from Nikolas Gull of Herndon, VA; NEW--SIMPLE FLYBYS: Spaceweather.com has a new tool for US and Canadian readers: Simple Satellite Flybys. Just enter your zip code and it tells you about satellites due to fly over your area in the nights ahead. There are hundreds of spacecraft in Earth orbit; we cut through the confusion by narrowing the list to a half-dozen or so of the most interesting. At the moment we're monitoring Jules Verne, the International Space Station, space shuttle Endeavour and the Hubble Space Telescope. Please try it and, remember, it's a new tool with room for improvement. Feedback is welcomed. |