March skies are well worth looking at. Evenings are warmer, skies tend to be clearer and the some of the best known constellations are high in the sky.

Sirius - the dog star

The constellation of Orion is easy to find lying in the southern sky. But below it and to the left is Canis Major easily identified by the brilliant Sirius.

Sirius, the dog star, is the brightest star in the night sky. This is partly due to the fact that it is only (!) 8.7 light-years away but also it is twice the size of the Sun and it shines 23 times brighter.

Although not visible without a fairly powerful telescope Sirius is accompanied by Sirius B or the pup.

Sirius B is a white dwarf star which has burnt up all of its hydrogen fuel and which has consequently collapsed on itself. One teaspoonful of material from the pup would weigh about 2.5 tonnes.

The Planets

With a pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod it should be possible to identify the bright open cluset M-41. Several clumps of bright stars can be seen immersed in a misty patch.

Two planets feature prominently in the evening sky. Jupiter appears at sunset rising in Cancer and the slightly fainter Saturn should be visible in the constellation Taurus around the same time.

Mars rises in the southeastern sky at around 0330. This is followed by Venus, the brightest object in the morning sky, but the brightest object in the early morning sky is Venus (magnitude -4.0).

Richard Angwin - Wiltshire weather is his expertise.

The much fainter Mercury (magnitude -0.3) may just be visible at the very end of the night although its rising begins to coincide with that of the Sun.

As the planets all orbit the Sun in the same plane it should be possible to draw an imaginary line through Mars and Venus towards Mercury on the horizon.

The spring equinox occurs at 0059 on the 21st of March. Spring is almost here and there is a new moon on Monday the 3rd with the next full moon appearing on Tuesday 18th March.

There are no significant meteor showers during March.

NASA Activity

Following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia NASA has revealed that future launches may be delayed for up to a year until a way of repairing missing or damaged heat-resisting tiles is developed.

The loss of tiles, or the damage caused to the wing by falling tiles, is still believed by NASA officials to have been the most likely contributor to February's disaster. Officials are keen to develop a method for repairing any such damage in-flight. Columbia did not have a boom or robotic arm fitted which could have been used to help the astronauts repair the damage.

The International Space Station (ISS) does have such a boom and it is thought that flights might be resumed quicker if they were headed to the ISS.

In the meantime, the current three man crew aboard the ISS is expected to be relieved by a two-person crew aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft which will be launched some time in late April or May. The current crew would then come home using a Soyuz craft already docked at the ISS. The ISS and Envisat are both visible in the evening sky.

Richard Angwin