Observing Orion News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Stelliferous: March skies will have a great show for amateur astronomers Howard Hochhalter Early March’s pre-dawn sky will give us a show worth getting up early for, as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and the moon perform a celestial hoedown, all four objects neatly lined up on the ecliptic. The ecliptic, by the way, is the imaginary line that represents the apparent path of the sun across the sky. Here are the key dates for the show (all times are 6 a.m.): March 1: Mercury (shining at near 0.0 magnitude), Jupiter (-2.0 magnitude) and Saturn (+0.7 magnitude) are bunched up together in the eastern ...

Howard Hochhalter Ah, winter in Southwest Florida – the season of cooler temperatures, lower humidity, and fewer mosquitoes. To these seasonal pleasures, astronomers add clearer night skies and the constellation Orion the Hunter, which appears high in the eastern sky after sunset at this time of year and slowly slides westward throughout the night. This is the silver dollar of the sky, the superstar of constellations. It has something for everyone. For me, after 15 years as an astronomer, Orion is still unbelievable. But why do astronomers get so stoked when they think about being able to w...