Pocket Sky-Atlas Challenges for March

The March Sky

March finds most astronomers pining for warm weather to go with nights that are long enough to do some serious observing: any possibility for a reasonable night of observing is welcome. Alas, March would rather tease us with few good observing opportunities and cause us to work on our virtue of patience and improve our self control. Beware of being idle in March!

Fight Back!

Take from the March sky all you can by being ready to observe whenever the opportunity arises. Be prepared for those nights by making up lists of objects you might want to visit ahead of time. To get the most out of your observing sessions, try to arrange the lists so that each has objects in a close neighborhood. Remember: even a small slice of sky is just packed full cosmic goodies!

And, if you have a green telescope, there is no better time to bring it out than on the 17th of the month.

 I’ve indexed the object to its star chart page.

Naked Eye

 

Arneb, Page 16.
Zaurak, Page 17.
Acubens, Page 24.
All of Gemini, page 25.
Sirius, Mirzam, Adhara and Aludra, Page 27 .

Larger Scopes

 

NGC 2782 page 22.
NGC 2286,Page 25.
NGC 2266,Page 25.
MCG-1-24-1, Page 26.
NGC 2239, Page 26.
NGC 2185 page 27.

Small Scopes and Binoculars

 

Mirfak, Page 13.
10UMa, Page 22.
NGC2281, Page 23.
M44, Page 24.
NGC 2420, Page 25.
M41, Page 27.

 

Bonus Objects

 

( Refer to page viii for notational notes!).
NGC 1407 Page 17.
Struve 1291, Struve 1187, Page 22 .
NGC 2281 Page 23.
Melote 71, Page 26.
Van den Bergh 97, Page 27.

 

Happy Hunting!

Published with permission of John Kulczycki, 2012 all rights reserved.

About the Author

I’ve been a freelance writer for more than 20 years, but I’ve been an amateur astronomer for longer than that. Astronomy is the one science that everyone can try and make significant contributions. All you need to do is take the first step and go outside to enjoy then night sky.

I’ll see you there!