THE SKY THIS APRIL

Welcome to the sky for the month of April. This column will try to keep you informed about celestial activities, which are visible in the night sky and furnish other facts that may be of interest to you.

Accompanying this column is a star chart showing the brighter stars and constellations visible this month. The chart is designed to be held overhead with the horizon markers rotated around as needed. When facing a particular direction the corresponding horizon marker should be at the bottom. The chart is accurate at 10 p.m. near the beginning of the month and around 8 p.m. near the end of the month.

Several readers observed that I left out the constellation Draco last month. I was just checking to see if anybody reads this column. The easiest way to do that is to (appear to) make a mistake. I left it out originally because I thought it was too cluttered given the scale of the chart once it went to print. But, because of popular demand this month's chart includes Draco (see if you can find it).

For the first time in many months there are no planets to be found when the sun sets in the evening. The two planets that are visible (Venus and Jupiter) can be seen only early in the morning before sunrise. They do promise to make it worth your while especially on the morning of April 23 when Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon participate in a close planetary conjunction. Look for them low in the East at sunrise. Venus will be the brighter of the two planets.

I am often asked if ordinary cameras could record such events. My suggestion is TRY IT. Half the fun of science is trying out new things to see if they work. Besides, most local photo processing centers won't charge you for prints that don't come out. You have nothing to loose. You might take a photo that makes it to the annual Kodak Photo contest.

It has been reported to me that an intense fireball was observed from the Ashland Hills subdivision area on the night of March 31 shortly after 7 p.m. If you observed the fireball, please drop me a note. It would be fun to track down a meteorite.

Despite appearances meteors are usually farther away than they appear. On a quiet night you can actually hear the bigger ones as they slice through the sky.

It is rare for a meteor to actually survive its fiery entry into the Earth's atmosphere. They need to be about the size of your fist to survive. The most common meteors you see are about the size of small gravel.

They enter the atmosphere at over 17 km/s and reach white-hot temperatures due to the friction from air at those speeds. I am sorry to inform you that they are not falling stars.

While the most famous meteor shower of the year occurs around Aug. 11 (a family event for the Cobbs) this month provides a smaller shower, the Lyrids, in the predawn morning of April 21. The moon will just be past the third quarter phase and will still be fairly bright so you will be limited to the brighter meteors but as rare as a good clear night has been this last month any reason to get outside on a clear morning should be reason enough.

If you want to be involved with others who share your interest in astronomy check out the Southeast Stargazers astronomy club which meets the third Monday of the month, April 20, at 7 p.m. in room 121 Rhodes Hall at Southeast Missouri State University and is open to the public. This month, Biology students Josh Woloszynek and Elizabeth Winthrop with give a brief lecture titled "Life Off Earth: The Possibility of Other Life in Our Solar System".

The Physics department at the University will be hosting a regional meeting of the Society of Physics Students on the days of April 24 and 25. Students from surrounding states will converge on Cape Girardeau to present papers of research they have conducted. If you are interested in attending please contact the Physics Department at 651-2167.

Daylight savings time begins today, which slides our time window towards sunrise to allow more daylight time after sunset. For astronomers this means we will have to wait another hour for the sky to darken for our nightly viewing. Most people I know agree that we should just slide the time window by half an hour and then never change it again throughout the year, but we appear to be locked into this ritual and nothing can be done to break the cycle.

If you have other questions or comments please send inquires to the Southeast Missourian or email me at cobb@physics.semo.edu.

Dr. Michael Cobb is chairman of the physics department at Southeast Missouri State University.