Star Points for March, 1997; by Curtis Roelle SPRING BRINGS COMET FEVER March is comet month as Hale-Bopp moves from the morning to the evening sky. In fact March has been favored by the brightest comets in recent memory according to Alan Hale, one of the comet's co-discoverers. In the March issue of Astronomy Magazine Hale writes, "The month of March always seems to produce the best comet displays." My own comet experiences concur with Hale. The first comet I saw was Bennett in March of 1970. The amazing site of that bright comet hanging silent and motionless high in the night sky with its long tail was so unexpected that it just had to be shared. I woke up my parents who shuffled outside rubbing their eyes. After looking up and seeing it themselves they in turn woke up my older sister. She was still protesting as they led her out of the house, but when she looked up and saw the comet she let out a loud "Oh, Wow!" Comet West in 1976 was another March comet. Ten years later Comet Halley was a poor performer in the northern hemisphere but was quite a site when I observed it from an elevation of 12,000+ feet in the Andes Mountains, the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, and the high deserts of Peru in 1986. Ten years later Comet Hyakutake was a glorious visitor up all night in March of last year. When viewed from a dark location away from artificial outdoor lighting Hyakutake's tail traced out an area in the sky some 70 times the width of the Full Moon. As March opens Comet Hale-Bopp is still a morning object rising before 3:00 a.m. EST. By morning twilight at 5:30 a.m. on the weekend of March 1-2 Hale-Bopp will be 30 degrees up in the eastern sky. The waxing gibbous Moon could make the comet more difficult to identify since its tail may be washed out from the light of the Moon. One week later the times are roughly the same even though the comet will be closer to Earth. This is because the comet and Sun both have a relative eastward motion in the sky. The Moon is out of the sky so that weekend will be a good time to try spotting the comet. During the weekend of March 15-16 the Moon is still out of the picture when Hale-Bopp rises at around 3 a.m. EST. By 5 a.m. the comet will be 13 degrees above the horizon as twilight begins. If you need help finding the comet the Westminster Astronomical Society (WAS) will have telescopes set up for observing on the night of March 15-16 at the Bear Branch Nature Center north of Westminster. Comet Hale-Bopp will be an evening object and should become visible in the northwest during twilight after 7 p.m. Due to the rotation of the Earth the comet will move northward as it sinks toward the horizon, eventually setting in the north-northwest at 10 p.m. If for some reason you cannot make it on Saturday night, come back to Bear Branch Sunday morning. The comet rises only 5 hours after it sets and will be visible from the nature center between 5 and 6 a.m. as morning twilight begins. In mid-March Mars is up all night and at its closest point to Earth for the next two years. On the same evening of the WAS public star party a lecture will be presented in the Bear Branch Planetarium. Vincent DiPietro (see February Star Points) will discuss "Unusual Mars Surface Features: Latest Results" starting at 7:30 p.m. Reservations for the program are required and can be made by calling the nature center at 410-848-2517. More information and directions is available on the World Wide Web at . A 92% partial eclipse of the Moon will occurs on the night of Sunday, March 23-24. The partial eclipse begins at 9:58 p.m. EDT, reaches maximum at 11:39 p.m., an ends at 1:21 a.m. Watch this event and see how the light of the Full Moon gets snuffed out by the Earth's shadow. March is a busy month for sky watchers. There is a lot going on in our solar system, and you only need to travel as far as your back yard to get a front row seat.