Monday 28th March to Sunday 3rd April 2022
Firstly, something for the early risers on the morning of Monday 28th. If you look towards the south east horizon around 6.20am, which is about 40 minutes before sunrise, you will be able to see four of our Solar System neighbours - Venus, Mars and Saturn, together with an 18%-lit Crescent Moon.
The clocks moved an hour forward to British Summer Time the day before and all the times I quote on Stars Over Somerset are always in local time, so that's 6.20am BST. As the Sun will be rising, please don't be tempted to use a telescope as if you accidentally caught a glimpse of the Sun through the eyepiece, it would cause instant and permanent blindness!
If an early morning isn't your thing, there are a couple of good evening opportunities to spot the International Space Station next week. Tuesday 29th at 8.48pm, appearing from the north west and Thursday 31st at 8.49pm, appearing from the west. In both cases, the ISS spends six minutes passing overhead before disappearing to the east.
Charles Messier was a French astronomer whose main interest was comet-hunting. He kept getting confused by seeing faint fuzzy deep sky objects and so decided to make a list of them. The original Messier catalogue, published in 1744, contained 45 objects and it eventually grew to a total of 103. Other astronomers later added seven more to make a total of 110. Astronomers love the month of March because it is possible to observe almost all the Messier objects over one full night. I have included a collage of all 110 objects, courtesy of Wikipedia, in case you wanted to have a go at your own Messier Marathon with your telescope.
Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
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