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Wednesday, March 11, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Stars over Sisters
By Christopher Lundgren and
Jackson Parkins
Correspondents
At 8:50 p.m. on Thursday,
March 19, the sun will lie
directly above the equa-
tor and the spring season
will officially begin smiling
upon Sisters and all of the
Northern Hemisphere. Here
on the ground, it can be easy
to overlook the astronomi-
cal clockwork responsible
for the change in season,
and how it affects our per-
ception of the space around
us. However, the motion
of our fragile planet whirl-
ing through space allows
for the way we see the night
sky to be constantly chang-
ing. In addition to the prom-
ise of warmer weather, the
arrival of the new season
will bring us a fresh perspec-
tive of the heavens, and a
reminder of the enormity and
beauty of the universe we
inhabit.
Ascending into the north-
eastern sky during March
evenings is one of the most
easily recognized spring-
time stellar groupings in the
northern celestial sphere. It
is, of course, the Big Dipper,
which is part of the con-
stellation of Ursa Major, a
RENTALS: Fewer short-
term permits in place
Continued from page 1
Regulations require opera-
tor licenses for owners of
short-term rental properties
and a business license for each
unit. Operator licenses for new
STRs after the ordinances took
effect do not transfer with the
property when it sells. There
is also a 250-foot spacing
requirement between STR
units.
The spacing requirement in
particular has rendered some
properties in Sisters unable to
be used as an STR.
<We9ve turned away, I
would say, five or six dozen,=
Davenport told the council. <At
some point, we just lost count.=
The real number of poten-
tial units that were found to be
ineligible is hard to pin down,
however, because there are
often multiple inquiries regard-
ing a single property when it
goes up for sale, Davenport
reported.
Councilor Nancy Connolly
noted that the Council had a
goal of keeping the number of
STRs at or below 10 percent of
Sisters9 overall housing stock.
As of this month, numbers
are well below that threshold.
Davenport also reported
that, in 2019, STRs gener-
ated $113,932 in room-tax
revenues.
Latin name meaning <the
great bear.=
The satisfaction that
comes from finding the
stars that define the out-
line of the bear can often be
enhanced by exploring some
of the many tales invented to
explain why we should see
this shape.
One such story comes
from the ancient Greeks. In
the legend, Zeus, king of
the gods, has a son, named
Arcas, with the beautiful
nymph Callisto as a result of
one of his many affairs. Hera,
the wife of Zeus, is under-
standably annoyed by this,
and, naturally, turns his lover
into a bear, to work out some
of that anger. Callisto wan-
ders the forest for years, and
one day crosses paths with
her son, now a grown young
man, while he is hunting.
But Arcas doesn9t recognize
her (probably because she is
now a bear), and prepares to
attack, out of fear. Zeus sees
all of this from Olympus
and does not want his son
to kill Callisto. The king of
the gods probably thinks that
the situation is already com-
plicated enough, without his
illegitimate son unknowingly
murdering his own mother.
Acting quickly, he causes
a great wind to carry them
up to the sky where they
are now protected as con-
stellations: Callisto as Ursa
Major, and her son, Arcas, as
Boötes, the Herdsman.
There is a plethora of
magnificent deep sky objects
that lie within the borders of
Ursa Major, most of them
galaxies. One of the more
photogenic of these is M101,
a gorgeous face-on galaxy
with well-developed arms
that spiral outward from its
central region. Sometimes
referred to as the Pinwheel
Galaxy, this object is located
at a distance of about 21-mil-
lion light-years.
Spring is the best time of
the year to look for a faint
glow on the western horizon
once dusk has passed. It is
known as the zodiacal light
and is caused by sunlight
reflected by dust particles
and rocky debris that orbit in
the inner solar system. Now
is the ideal time of the year to
see the zodiacal light because
the ecliptic 4 the path of the
sun, moon and planets across
the sky 4 is highly inclined
to the western horizon in the
evening. Autumn is also a
good time to see the zodiacal
light, only this time appear-
ing just before dawn on the
Dr. Thomas R. Rheuben
IMAGE BY NASA, ESA
The photogenic Pinwheel Galaxy lies in the constellation of Ursa Major
at a distance of 21-million light-years.
eastern horizon.
Venus continues to lead
the planetary parade, shin-
ing brightly in the west-
ern sky. It spends most of
March in Aries, then crosses
into Taurus at the end of
the month. Lined up across
the morning sky are Mars,
Jupiter and Saturn, from west
to east, respectively. But
Mars is traveling eastward
much faster than the two gas
WE’RE
FUELED BY
PASSION
giants and will catch up to
Jupiter on March 20.
By mid-month Mercury
makes an appearance in
the morning sky, reaching
greatest western elongation
(greatest angular distance
from the sun) on March
23, but it will stay low in
the sky because the eclip-
tic makes a shallow angle
with the eastern horizon this
time of year.
AND HAIR
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