Astrophiz143-March SkyGuide

Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr Ian Musgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe clusters and deep sky objects and tips and times around the coming equinox to observe the Zodiacal Light. We also get a great challenge for those who have infrared filters on their telescopes. See if you can emulate the Parker Solar Probe and pick out some surface features on the dark side of Venus while it is in its crescent phase. In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the problems with our naming of celestial objects, in this case the naming of different sized exoplanets. And there are some peculiarities in the size groupings of exoplanets discovered so far. Currently with exoplanets we have named Super Earths, Super Jupiters, Hot Jupiters, Hot Super Mars, Super Earths, Mini Neptunes, Hot Mini Earths, and then Ian introduces us to Pulsar Planets and we now have also discovered a real supermoon which is a neptune sized moon orbiting a Jupiter sized exoplanet, Kepler 1625b. What’s next? Let’s just wait till the JWST starts exposing novel exoplanets!