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About The Dalles chronicle. (The Dalles, OR) 1998-2020 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 29, 2020)
The Dalles Chronicle TheDallesChronicle.com Weekend of February 29 - March 1, 2020 A3 March brings spring, opportunities for stargazing Welcome to March, the month when spring be- gins and when we “spring” forward to daylight savings time. Change to Daylight Standard Time (DST) occurs first, on March 8. Set your clocks ahead one hour. Spring officially begins March 19, when the Sun is directly above Earth’s equa- tor, and the length of day and night are approximately equal. Even though our winter rains are important, provid- ing us with snowpack and water for the dry summer months, it does not make for much in the way of stargaz- ing opportunities. Maybe some of you were able to sky after sunset. Orion’s “belt” is easy to pick out, with a line of three almost equally bright stars. Below the belt, a fainter collection of stars Jim make up the sword, also White fairly easy to spot. Point your binoculars toward those stars in the sword—you should be able to see the entire sword take a peek at Betelgeuse, the star in Orion that was last in standard binoculars, thanks to their wide field of month’s binocular sugges- tion. If you missed it, March view. You’ll get a dazzling display of many stars! Look may provide you with the closely at the center of the opportunity. The March binocular object is also in the view, where the bright stars of the sword are. You should constellation Orion, so you can pick them both up at the be able to pick out a fuzzy area—the gas and dust same time. clouds of the Orion Nebula. The March object is the You are looking at a stellar sword in Orion. Look for nursery, an area where stars Orion in the southwestern What’s in the Sky are being born, about 1,400 light-years distant. Just above the nebula is a nice open star cluster that may stand out. As March begins, we’ll have a nice first-quarter Moon sitting between the Pleiades star cluster, to the right of the Moon, and the Hyades star cluster to the left. The Hyades cluster makes up the “face” of Taurus the Bull, along with the bright star Aldebaran. Aldebaran is much closer than the fainter stars of the Hyades cluster, lying along our line of sight with the cluster. Full Moon follows on March 9, with new Moon March 24. On March 18, the waning crescent Moon will join the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars low in the southeast before sunrise. The full Moon on March 9 will be a “Supermoon.” The Moon circles the Earth in an elliptical orbit, and thus is sometimes slightly closer or farther away than average. Although not really defined, the Moon is generally con- sidered a Supermoon when it is near its closest approach to Earth, at the time it is either full or new. You may be able to detect that it is slightly brighter. The only planet visible in our evening skies in March is Venus. The planet is very bright, and can even be seen during the day under clear skies. Venus is growing closer to us during March as it orbits the Sun. At the start of the month, it will be over 80 million miles from us, and will close in to about 60 million miles by the end of the month. As it grows closer to us, its appearance changes from mostly-illu- minated, like the Moon past its first quarter, to slightly less illuminated, like the first-quarter Moon. Even a small telescope will allow you to see the shape. Venus is shrouded in thick clouds, which help to make it shine very brightly in our sky, but do not allow us to see any detail on the planet. Enjoy our March skies! Dog Mountain permits available March 1 The U.S. Forest Service will release online permits on March 1 at www.recreation. gov for hikers heading to Dog Mountain on weekends from April 18 to June 14 this year. The permits are required as part of a partnership that began in 2018 to ensure pub- lic safety near Dog Mountain Trailhead, where congestion during the spring wildflower hiker rush created annual congestion and at least one fatal accident before permits were required. Every hiker on the Dog Mountain Trail system on Saturdays and Sundays be- tween April 18 to June 14 will be required to carry a permit (or digital proof). There are two ways for hikers to obtain permits: • Ride the shuttle from Stevenson. A permit is in- cluded automatically with the cost of the Skamania County West End Transit bus from Skamania Fairgrounds in Stevenson. Seats are available on a first come, first served basis, for $1 per person per trip, or $2 roundtrip (cash, exact change only). Each per- mit is good for one individual on the day it is issued. The shuttle runs about every half hour from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekends from April 18 to June 14. • Reserve a permit online. Anyone parking at Dog Mountain Trailhead will need to reserve one permit for each person online at www.recreation.gov and pay the $1 non-refundable administrative fee (per per- son) in addition to paying the recreation site fee of $5 per car. Valid Northwest Forest or interagency federal passes are accepted (but not state parks pass- es) as a form of paying the recreation fee but are not a substitute for having the per person permit. This year, 100 permits will be released on March 1 for each day through the permit season. An additional block of 100 permits will be released online three days before each permit date at 7 a.m. Pacific Time. As the season progresses, there may be adjustments made to the number of late-breaking permits to match parking patterns. The permit system is designed to limit conges- tion, but a permit does not guarantee a parking spot will be available at the time A hiker celebrates among the wildflowers at Dog Mountain. Permits for weekend use of the trailhead are available online Sunday, March 1. Additional permits will come available through the season. Chronicle file photo a hiker arrives, so visitors are encouraged to carpool. The Dog Mountain permit system was made possible by a U.S. Forest Service part- nership with Washington State Department of Transportation, Skamania County, and the Skamania County Chamber of Commerce. More details about the permit system and related shuttle are available at: fs.usda.gov/goto/crgnsa/ hikedogmountain & REN TAL S tore Hours: Monday–Friday 7:30 a.m.–7 p.m. Saturday 8 a.m.–6 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. 500 E. 3rd 3 rd St., The Dalles, OR 97058 • 541-296-4814 www.sawyershardware.com
