| INFORMATION
FOR THE WEEK OF 8 - 14 MARCH 2010
Saturn officially enters
our early evening sky this week to join Mars. To find Saturn, just
watch our beautiful sunset any night this week and at 7:30 p.m. go out
and face the other way. Close to the eastern horizon, you'll see
a bright star. It isn't a star, it's Saturn. Measure five fist-widths
up from Saturn and about a fist-width to the left and you'll see a bright
red star. That's not a star either, it's Mars.
If you watched that
beautiful sunset and noticed that extremely bright star close to the ground
in the western sky, it's not an airplane, a UFO or a star, it's Venus making
its leisurely way toward Earth from the back side of the Sun. Leisurely
is an illusion. Venus circles the Sun at around 75,000 mph but since
it's about 150 million miles away, it takes a while to get closer, even
at 75,000 mph. Venus officially enters our early evening sky next
week.
There’s another interesting
milestone this week. We’re approaching spring equinox in the northern
hemisphere and I’ll talk more about that next week. The word equinox
means ‘equal night’ and on the equinoxes the day and night lengths are
supposed to be equal. Interestingly enough, here on Guam ,'equal
nights' actually happen not at the equinox but this week. This
Thursday and Friday 11 and 12 March are what I call ‘Square Days’ when
the Sun rises and sets at the same time. The Sun rises and sets at
6:31 on both days.
The path in the sky
through which the Sun, Moon and planets move was important to everybody
and the constellations along that path have familiar names. This
month, Mars is in Cancer the Crab and Saturn is in the constellation Virgo
the Virgin. Everybody told sky stories and the unfortunate thing
about Guam is that the stories told on Guam about star patterns in the
sky are stories told by people who live somewhere else. And there’s
a very sad reason for that. The Chamorus have lost most of their
sky lore. Although I’ve asked many people, no one seems to know any
Chamoru stories about constellations or other sky phenomena like what causes
eclipses or phases of the Moon.
So we decided to do
something about it. This month’s Planetarium show is Chamoru Sky
Stories: Old and New. Our first legend is a familiar one, it’s the
Chamoru legend of creation and it’s the only Chamoru story I’ve been able
to find that deals with things in the sky. The second legend was
adapted from a story told to me by a local Chamoru gentleman and it’s a
marvelous story about what happened to The Star that Fell from the Sky.
Our last tale starts with the local legend about the big fish that tried
to eat through the island and was caught with a net made from some lovely
ladies’ hair. We learn, however, that that’s only the beginning of
the story in Chief Gadao and the Big Fish.
Chamoru Sky Stories:
Old and New will be presented this Thursday, Friday and Saturday 11, 12
and 13 March at 6:30 p.m. We’ll also present Chamoru Sky Stories
at 7:00 p.m. but this one will have a distinct twist because at 7:00 p.m.
the stories will be told in Chamoru! So join us this Thursday, Friday
or Saturday for a unique cultural experience and learn some new tales you
can tell to your own children. Celebrate Chamoru month in a totally
unique way! See you then!
Would
you like to be on the Planetarium e-mail list and receive a monthly reminder
of the Planetarium shows and occasional notices of cool things in the sky?
Just send an e-mail to stars@guam.net
requesting that you be added and I'll put you on the list!
Don't forget that you
can hear this information on Guam's public radio station KPRG, 89.3 on
your radio dial. The program is called Tropical Skies and
it airs twice on Monday, at 12:25 and at 6:01 in the evening. Support
your public radio station.
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