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Wednesday, April 15, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Stars over Sisters
By Osmond Bates
& Ramsey Schar
As the weather continues
to warm and flowers start to
bloom during this first full
month of spring, the night
skies come alive with new
constellations, bright stars,
and exciting astronomical
events. Probably the bright-
est and most easily recog-
nized constellation of spring
is Leo the mighty lion.
Regulus and Denebola,
the two brightest stars in
the constellation, mark the
beast9s heart and point of its
tail, respectively.
In the sky, six bright
stars define the lion9s head
that form what looks to be
a backwards question mark.
Farther to the east, three
stars form a right triangle,
denoting the cat9s hind-
quarters. Leo is one of the
twelve zodiac constellations
and lies between Cancer and
Virgo.
Besides its collection of
bright stars, the constellation
contains several magnificent
deep-sky objects as well,
all of them galaxies. The
most impressive of these
are probably M65, M66 and
NGC 3628, often referred to
as the Leo Triplet.
M65 and M66 are both
spiral galaxies discovered
by Messier in 1780 and are
slightly brighter than nearby
NGC 3628, which wasn9t
found until 1784 by William
Herschel. NGC 3 6 2 8 ,
also called the Hamburger
Galaxy, is an unbarred spiral
galaxy viewed edge-on. The
galaxy9s most striking fea-
ture is a large band of dust
that bisects a puffy galactic
disk, indeed reminiscent of
a giant celestial hamburger.
All three galaxies lie rela-
tively close to one another
in space, about 35 million
light-years from the earth.
In Greek mythology,
Leo is associated with the
Nemean Lion who Hercules
had to slay as part of his
twelve Labors that were
required of him to atone
for killing his family. This
lion was slaughtering local
Commentary...
Free crossword puzzles
offer a fine diversion
By Kema Clark
Columnist
Finding free crossword
puzzles online has been
great in this new world of
stay-at-home. The puzzles
keep your mind going and
get your thoughts off disas-
ter for a while.
Go to https://www.
arkadium.com/free-online-
games/crosswords/ and
you9ll see pictures of the dif-
ferent free games available.
Some don9t say <free= in
the title of the game, but all
that I9ve opened have been
no cost.
Click on one of the
games, click on the arrow
to hear a few seconds of an
ad, click on <skip ad= when
it pops up, then start a game
immediately. Click on a line
and type in your answer
using your keyboard.
You can click a num-
bered space twice to go from
<across= to <down= so you
can fill in the spaces exactly
like you do with a pencil.
Except you don9t have to
worry about your eraser run-
ning out.
You also may be inter-
ested in Scrabble-type
games.
I9ve been playing Words
With Friends (WWF) on
Facebook and it9s similar
to Scrabble. You can play
against FB friends, but you
don9t have to play a full
game at one time since you
can enter a word and don9t
need to look at it again for
hours or even days.
WWF also has a <play
with bots= option that9s
fun. You9re playing against
a computer, but they have
some funny names so you
feel like you know them.
I won against Planter Pot
Pia but lost to Communal
Gardener Jim. It9s fun to
complete a game quickly,
because the bot thinks at
lightning speed and posts a
word immediately.
The WWF games with
bots start off easy and get
harder as you go through.
When you win a game,
you can go to the next one
immediately, but make sure
you don9t <pay to play.= Just
say no. Come back in a few
hours and the next game will
be available to play for free.
You can also go to https://
www.scrabblegames.info/
play/scrabble-online and
play against bots. I like play-
ing Scrabble online, but it9s
a pain to drag and drop the
letters, then press play to see
if what you just made up is a
real word. Not that I would
ever try to enter a fake word.
Good luck and posi-
tive thoughts to all. I hope
you get some fun out of
the games and continue to
take it day-by-day until we
make it through to the end of
COVID-19.
residents and could not be
killed because his skin was
impenetrable to any weap-
ons. Hercules, therefore,
had to wrestle the beast with
his bare hands and strangle
it to death. He saw the pro-
tective qualities of the skin
and used the lion9s own
claw to cut it from its body
and use it as a cloak to pro-
tect him through the rest of
his labors.
New moon will occur on
April 22. This will locate the
moon on the same side of
the sky as the sun, making it
the optimal time to observe
faint objects due to the lack
of interfering moonlight.
The Lyrid meteor shower
will be active from April
16-25. These bright trails of
dust are best viewed when
they peak on the evening of
April 21 and early morning
of April 22. This year about
15-20 meteors per hour are
expected. Comet Thatcher,
which won9t return to the
vicinity of the earth again
until 2276, is responsible for
this meteor shower.
A Sagittarius Jupiter and
a Capricornus Saturn form a
planetary duo as they stick
by each other low in the
PHOTO PROVIDED
NGC 3628 is an edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation of Leo that
looks all the world like a giant celestial hamburger.
sky during the early morn-
ing hours. Also visible in
the morning is Mars, which
had a close encounter with
Saturn on April 1 and a last
quarter moon on April 15.
Meanwhile, Venus continues
to dominate the evening sky
with its almost blinding bril-
liance. On April 3 it passed
just south of the Pleiades
star cluster in Taurus.
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