Homebound Astronomy: Insider’s Guide to the Galaxy MISSION TWO questions

Welcome to Week Two, Stargazers and Space Enthusiasts!

In partnership with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, AstroGeo is delivering hour-long live webcasts during the COVID-19 shelter-at-home period. Our intention is to provide family-friendly Astronomy and Space content on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30 to 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Anyone can register for the Zoom stream by using this link:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2415851638025/WN_kGvVp9EvTaSReiWsPbqTig

Since the sessions will have a 500-attendees limit, our stream can also be streamed live on RASC’s YouTube channel, where it will be available to watch later, too – or over and over again! The channel is https://www.youtube.com/user/RASCANADA

We’re going to equip you with the perfect tool to explore the sky – Stellarium! We suggest that you download and install Stellarium on your computer. It’s free, fun, very powerful, and easy to learn. I’ll teach you how. The software is available at http://stellarium.org/

You don’t need to have watched last week’s first two sessions, which are available to re-watch on YouTube at https://youtube.com/watch?v=qgME5ZogPS0 and https://youtube.com/watch?v=tA7qbANBx9Q. But I think you’ll find them VERY informative.

Read on below for the Mission Two Astro-Scavenger Hunt questions.

You can watch the session for Mission Two here, and the recording where is reveal the answers to the following questions is here.

———- Here are the questions for MISSION TWO ———-

(We will reveal the answers on Thursday, April 9th. Good luck!)

What type of objects form the Leo Triplet?

What is Markarian’s Chain, and why is it so interesting?

What creature does the star cluster NGC457 look like?

On what date will Mars start rising before midnight?

When is the brightest star, Sirius, highest in the sky?

What constellation will you find the main belt asteroid Vesta in right now?

At 9 pm, how many of the zodiac constellations are fully or partly above the horizon?

What time is solar noon where you live? Hint: It’s not 12 pm.

What boundary line did the sun cross over on March 19, and what do we call that event?

Which star in Gemini rises first, Castor or Pollux?

How many degrees of sky does Orion’s Belt span?

Please don’t post your answers in the comment box. Save them for the online session on Thursday!