While the naked eye, dark adapted by several minutes away from any bright lights, is a wonderful instrument to stare up into deep space, far beyond our own Milky Way, binoculars are better for spotting specific deep sky objects. For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, about April 1st visit the www.skymaps.com website and download the map for the new month; it will have a more extensive calendar, and list of best objects for the naked eyes, binoculars, and scopes on the back of the map. Also available as the next month begins is wonderful video exploring the April 2008 sky, featuring many different objects, available from the Hubble Space Telescope website.

Venus is low in the east just before dawn. Jupiter dominates the morning sky, the brightest object well up in the southeast, rising about midnight. Red Mars is high overhead as darkness falls; it is much more distant and fainter than back near opposition last Christmas. It is now moving eastward from Gemini into Cancer in April. Saturn is in the east in Leo, just east of the brightest star in Leo, Regulus. This is the best time to observe the most beautiful object in the sky. When viewed with a telescope, this year the rings will be even more narrow than last year. In 2009, at Saturn’s equinox, the edge on rings are so narrow they will disappear with most telescopes for several weeks.

Yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, dominates the northwestern sky. It is part of the pentagon on stars making up Auriga, the Charioteer (think Ben Hur). Several nice binocular Messier open clusters are found in the winter milky way here. East of Auriga, the twins, Castor and Pollux highlight the Gemini. South of Gemini, Orion is the most familiar winter constellation, dominating the southern sky at dusk. The reddish supergiant Betelguese marks his eastern shoulder, while blue-white supergiant Rigel stands opposite on his west knee. Just south of the belt, hanging like a sword downward, is M-42, the Great Nebula of Orion, an outstanding binocular and telescopic stellar nursery. The bright diamond of four stars that light it up are the trapezium cluster, one of the finest sights in a telescope. In the east are the hunter’s two faithful companions, Canis major and minor. Procyon is the bright star in the little dog, and rises minutes before Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius dominates the SE sky as darkness falls. At 8 light years distance, Sirius is the closest star we can easily see with the naked eye from West Florida.

Now take the curved handle of the Big Dipper, and follow the arc SE to bright orange Arcturus, the brightest star of the spring sky. Recent studies of its motion link it to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, a companion of our Milky Way being tidally disrupted and spilling its stars above and below the plane of the Milky Way, much like dust falling away from a decomposing comet nucleus. So this brightest star of Bootes the Bear Driver is apparently a refugee from another galaxy!

Now spike south to Spica, the blue-white gem in Virgo rising in the SE. Virgo is home to many galaxies, as we look away from the obscuring gas and dust in the plane of the Milky Way into deep space. One that like our own is quite dusty is M 104, the Sombrero, visible in binoculars west of Spica. Bob Gaskin shows the dust lanes well in his photo of this almost edge on spiral.

Continuing a tradition going back to the 1976 bicentennial, the EAAA will host a public stargaze at the gate for Fort Pickens on Friday evening, April 4th. We will set up at sunset, and use the dark skies to show you Saturn, Mars, and galaxies rising in the east, as well as the Orion Nebula and other winter treats.