JAMES: Welcome to Star Gazers.
I'm James Albury, director of the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium in Gainesville, Florida.
DEAN: And I'm Dean Regas, astronomer from the Cincinnati
Observatory, and we're here to help you find you way around the sky.
Now I’m not a morning person, but I'm gonna set my alarm this week to wake up before dawn.
JAMES: Really?!
DEAN: Yep.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’m going to get up
and drag myself out of bed at, (gulp), 5 o’clock in the morning to star gaze – or should
I say planet-gaze.
JAMES: Wow, this is serious.
And with good reason.
As a morning person myself, I’ve been noticing three planets in the sky before the Sun rises:
Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.
DEAN: And to add some extra flavor to the astronomer-grade
coffee I’ll need to drink to wake up that early, the Moon will be passing through.
JAMES: Perfect!
Since it’s not a workday, you can go back to sleep after you see it all.
DEAN: My thoughts exactly.
Let’s head to the morning sky!
DEAN: Okay we have our sky set up for Monday March
5th at 5 AM, facing southeast.
It’s dark, it’s clear, it may be cold, but what a view!
JAMES: Among the stars, you can find three planets
among the constellations.
And they’re all lined up.
Jupiter is about halfway up in the southern sky and is the easiest to find since it is
the brightest.
DEAN: That’s an understatement.
Jupiter is significantly brighter than any star at this time of night –
er, morning.
It is suspiciously bright.
JAMES: If you have a really good imagination you
might be able to imagine Jupiter up and to the right of Scorpius the Scorpion.
Scorpius is usually a summer constellation but one of the joys of waking up early, Dean,
is that you get a preview of the stars.
DEAN: That’s right, James.
And, just to the left of Scorpius we come to our next planet and it should shine with
a steady reddish glow.
That is Mars.
Now you may notice another red star in the vicinity.
Back in Scorpius you can find Antares.
Antares may look a little like Mars, but man-o-man, there are some big differences!
JAMES: First off, notice the name of this star: Ant-ares.
Ares was the Greek god of war and the equivalent of the Roman god Mars.
So Ant-ares is like the Anti-Mars.
They’re both the same color.
DEAN: But that is where the similarities end.
Mars is a planet about 4200 miles wide and is about 125 million miles away.
Those sound like impressive numbers but…
JAMES: Antares is a red supergiant star almost 600
million miles in diameter and about 600 light years from Earth.
That’s the equivalent of 3.5 quadrillion miles away.
DEAN: Whoa!
If we place Mars and Antares at the same distance from us, this is what they’d look like.
Uh, can you even see Mars?
JAMES: That leaves one more planet to find and Jupiter
and Mars can help.
Connect a line from Jupiter through Mars and keep going.
You will run into another pretty bright star that should be a little yellow in color.
That is actually the ringed planet Saturn.
DEAN: Ah, my favorite!
Saturn is about one billion miles away but is so big and reflective that it still shines
brightly in the morning skies.
JAMES: And here’s where it gets even better.
If we advance our time to Wednesday March 7th, look what joins the planet line-up…
DEAN: The Moon!
It’ll be right next to Jupiter.
And then as the week progresses, on the 8th and 9th, the Moon will get closer and closer
to Mars.
And on Saturday morning March 10th it will lie between Mars and Saturn.
JAMES: And to round out next week, Sunday morning
March 11th the Moon will be just to the left of Saturn.
JAMES: Wow, what a week to get up early.
DEAN: I love seeing the planets even if it is 5
AM.
And you’ll see Jupiter in the south, Mars and Saturn in the southeast and don’t forget
the Moon passing through from March 7th to March 11th.
JAMES: And if you can, take a look at all four objects
through a telescope.
The craters of the Moon look totally awesome through even a simple telescope.
DEAN: And with Jupiter you can see stripes on the
planet and four moons.
Some tiny features on Mars, and the breathtakingly beautiful rings of Saturn.
It’s all there when you…
BOTH: Keep looking up!