Transcript for April 3rd to 9th

RACHEL
Welcome to Idaho Skies for the first week of April. We’re your hosts, Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Last week, the moon passed the region in the sky marking the center of our galaxy.

PAUL
Did you know that a monster lurks there?

RACHEL
Yep, a black hole more massive than 4 million suns.

PAUL
Its name is Sagittarius A* (A-star)

RACHEL
Calculations show that Sagittarius A* has a diameter as wide as Mercury’s orbit around the sun.

PAUL
We can’t see black holes directly, since no beam of light can escape from their surface.

RACHEL
However, before matter spirals into the black hole, it emits fantastic amounts of energy.

PAUL
That energy is in the form of electromagnetic radiation and it includes radio waves all the way up to x-rays.

RACHEL
And in some cases, even higher energy gamma rays.

PAUL
The disk of spiraling matter around a black hole is called an accretion disk.

RACHEL
So the radiation emitted by a black hole accretion disk means even approaching a black hole would be dangerous for would be space travelers.

PAUL
Astronomers have discovered that all galaxies probably have black holes in their center.

RACHEL
And that the mass of the black hole correlates to the mass of the galaxy.

PAUL
What we don’t know yet is if the black hole controls the galaxy’s mass or the if galaxy controls the mass of its black hole.

RACHEL
Sounds like the chicken and the egg to me.

PAUL
Since we mentioned Mercury, we want to let you know that you can see this tiny planet in April.

RACHEL
The best evenings are between the 8th the 20th.

PAUL
On the 8th, Mercury appears as the white star to the right of the moon.

RACHEL
Look for the pair just north of west.

PAUL
You’ll need to go outside a little after 9:00 PM just after it gets dark enough to see the pair clearly.

RACHEL
The moon is almost directly west and it’s just two days old.

PAUL
That means it’s a thin crescent, so it might be easier to find the pair with binoculars.

RACHEL
Don’t go searching for the moon with binoculars until after the sun sets.

PAUL
Two very attractive star clusters appear above the moon on the evening of the 9th.

RACHEL
The first is the Pleiades and it’s the little dipper-shaped grouping of stars located to the upper right of the moon.

PAUL
The second is the Hyades and it is a much larger and sparser cluster than the Pleiades.

RACHEL
The Hyades is a V-shaped cluster of stars appearing to the upper left of the moon.

PAUL
The star cluster will fill nearly the entire field of view of your binoculars, so it’s not quite as sparkly as the tinier Pleiades.

RACHEL
Through binoculars, you’ll see around two dozen stars in each star cluster.

PAUL
That’s Idaho Skies for the first week of April. Next week the Beehive star cluster and the moon will meet up, so we’ll tell you the best way to see the cluster’s multitude of stars.

RACHEL
Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Idaho Skies for this week’s event reminders and sky maps.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel...

PAUL
...and Paul.

RACHEL
Dark skies and bright stars.