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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