The Sky This Month
Welcome to our night-time sky.
Please enjoy this month’s tidbits
of knowledge. We are lucky to
live in a dark-sky area where
the heavens can shine through. I
hope you enjoy the sky and per-
haps learn a thing or two. Happy
star gazing!
25 Grains of Sugar – Imagine
if you took the Earth away and replaced it with 25
grains of sugar. Then imagine another 25 grains of
sugar next door to the Earth and again as far out as
the known universe. If the mass in the universe was
spread out evenly, that’s what you would see. That is
how low the density is – 25 grains of sugar spread out
in a volume of space as large as the Earth. Luckily
for us, matter is clustered in small pockets throughout
the universe. To put life, the universe, and everything
in perspective, type “powers of 10 movie” into your
favorite search engine. A YouTube video will show
up for you to watch. This movie was created by Charles
and Ray Eames for IBM. I first saw the movie at an
Imax in Washington DC and was amazed. Enjoy!
Dazzling Lights – Can be seen if you look west from
the Clubhouse on May 12th. Those will be the candles
on my birthday cake! As a precursor to those lights,
take a look at the sky sometime between May 3-10. You
might see some dazzling lights streaking across the sky
in the form of meteors arising from the dust of Halley’s
Comet. The comet is long gone, but we pass through its
trail each year and meteors fly out of the constellation
of Aquarius. The best show should be around midnight
on May 5th when the shower peaks. Cross your fingers
and look east young lads and lasses.
– Brian Biggs
Amateur Astronomer
Enjoy the outdoors,
but remember that
the lack of winter
and spring rains have
made our forests and
natural lands ex-
tremely dry.
The Forest Service,
towns and neighbor-
hoods have put out
bans on open fires.
Please share the
message of fire safety
with neighbors and
visiotors.
Opens at 5:00 PM
May 11, 8:00 PM
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8 May 2018 pccnews