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
