BAS Observer March 2018

MARCH 2018 13 Constellation of the month: Hydra Hydra (the Water Snake) is the largest constellation in the sky. It lies in the Southern Hemisphere, stretched across 102.5°. Hydra’s head is located south of the constellation Cancer, and its tail lies between Centaurus and Libra. The constellation was first catalogued by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century. It represents the Lernaean Hydra from the Greek myth of Heracles’ Twelve Labours. Sometimes it is taken to represent the water snake from the myth about the crow that tried to trick the god Apollo by blaming the snake for its tardiness in fetching the god some water. Notable deep-sky objects in Hydra include the open cluster Messier 48, the globular cluster Messier 68, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 83), the Hydra Cluster of galaxies, Tombaugh’s Globular Cluster (NGC 5694) and the Ghost of Jupiter nebula. Hydra stretches over a vast expanse of sky and is a great location to search for distant galaxies. Near the head of the snake is the large spiral galaxy NGC 2775, located 140 million light-years away. A dark sky is needed to find this 10.2-magnitude ‘faint fuzzy’ galaxy. The planets By mid-March, Jupiter will be rising in the eastern sky around 9.30 p.m.; however, you will still have to wait a few more hours for it to be sufficiently high in the sky for some decent observing. You will also have to wait until about 11.30 p.m. for Mars to rise, and then wait until the early hours of the following morning for it to reach observing height in the sky. So, planet observers will have to work hard again this month. Jupiter