Spring could use more razzmatazz

Stargazing is always a lot of fun year-round, but if there’s a slow time of year this is it. The spring constellations just don’t have the razzmatazz that the winter ones do.

That’s easy to prove. As soon as it’s dark enough, and that’s not until about 9:30 or so these nights, you’ll see what’s left of the great winter shiners in the southwestern sky. The great constellation Orion the Hunter is about halfway below the horizon, but the winter stars of Gemini the Twins, Auriga the Charioteer, and Canis Minor are still hanging high above the horizon, saying their long goodbye from our evening sky over the next month or so.

Jupiter, the brightest starlike object in the entire sky, is also dazzling in the west but it doesn’t really count because it’s not always among those constellations.

There are only three bright stars in the eastern half of the sky these last spring evenings; Arcturus in the constellation Bootes the Hunting Farmer, Spica in the faint constellation Virgo the Virgin, and Vega in Lyra the Harp. All of the other stars in the eastern heavens are definitely a little ho hum.

The spring constellation Coma Berenices, or Berenice’s Hair, is definitely a ho hummer when it comes to brightness, but if you can see it in the dark skies of the countryside you’ll come to appreciate its true beauty. It resembles flowing hair, and the story about how it wound up in the heavens is based on a true story. No other constellation can claim that!

To find Coma Berenices in the dark rural skies face east as darkness sets in. Look for the brightest star you can see. That will be Arcturus, about halfway from the horizon to the overhead zenith.

The flowing celestial hair will be about 25 degrees above Arcturus which is about two and a half fist-widths held at arm’s length. The darker the sky the lovelier the locks of heavenly hair will be.

Coma Berenices is actually more of an open star cluster than a constellation. Open star clusters are populated by young stars, at least by astronomical standards. They’re all gravitationally born together out of the same gigantic cloud of tenuous hydrogen gas.

The stars of Coma Berenices are about 500 million years old on average. They also lie relatively close to us in our part of the Milky Way galaxy, right around 250 light years away. That’s not exactly a hop, skip, and jump, as just one light-year is the equivalent of a little under six trillion miles.

As far as the story of the faint constellation or star cluster it’s based on Queen Berenices of Egypt, the wife of the famous Pharaoh Ptolemy III who lived around 200 B.C.

Right about that time Ptolemy was leading his troops into a fierce war. Queen Berenices, a very devoted spouse, prayed to the gods for his safe return. She loved her hubby so much that she promised the gods to cut off all of her beautiful hair if her husband returned safely.

Her prayers were answered as Ptolemy returned victorious. True to her word Berenices sheared off all of her hair and dedicated it to the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Days later, however, souvenir-seeking scoundrels stole Berenices’ hair out of the temple.

When the hair heist was discovered, Ptolemy and Berenices were out to roll some heads, and they meant that literally!

All of the temple priests were on death row when a traveling group of Greek consulting astronomers literally saved their necks. They convinced Ptolemy and Berenices to join them after dark to see a brand new pale cluster of lights high in the sky.

“Look!” they exclaimed, “do you not see the clustered curls of the queen’s hair?” They continued, “Aphrodite and the other gods believed that the queen’s hair was just too beautiful for a single temple to possess. Berenices’ hair belongs in the heavens for all to see!”

It worked! Berenices and Ptolemy bought it. The temple priests were released! Everybody won, including us who still enjoy this lovely constellation/star cluster.

The poorest excuse for a solar eclipse ever!

One of the big astronomical events of the year is coming Monday morning.

However, it’s absolutely dangerous to try and watch it directly unless you have special solar glasses or a solar filter for your telescope. It can cause instant blindness and that’s no exaggeration. Actually, the best way to see it is on the Web. A good site is live.slooh.com.

The tiny planet Mercury, not much larger than our moon, will attempt to eclipse our sun but will fail miserably! Against the face of the sun from our perch on Earth all it will look like is a tiny little dot.

This event is called a transit of Mercury and it doesn’t happen often. The last one was in 2006 and the next one won’t be until 2019.

Mercury, in its 88-day orbit of the Sun, happens to cross the face of the sun from our view from Earth.

As often as Mercury whizzes past the sun it doesn’t cross the face of our home star that often, because its solar orbit is inclined with respect to our orbit around the sun. Mercury and the Earth have to be in the right place at the right time.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist.