February Events & Publications
GoSpaceWatch have another online lecture coming up. Dark Skies of the Isle of Man. Presented by Howard Parkin on 17th Feb 21 at 19:30. Tickets are available from Eventbrite for £3 Here. The GoSpaceWatch website speaker programme is here
South Downs National Park. The approach of bringing the Planetarium night sky into your home with free virtual night sky tours, has been created by the team at the South Downs Planetarium. This is probably a first – certainly in this country and maybe the world – and will be an additional and really exciting way to understand the night sky as it is in February.
These events are planned to coincide and be a part of the South Downs National Park, Dark Skies Festival which runs from 12-28th Feb. This year it is an all online event for obvious reasons. Naturally these virtual sky tours are linked with the forthcoming events this month such as the landing of the Perseverance Rover on the 18th February.
For further details please see the South Downs Planetarium and Science Centre website: https://www.southdowns.org.uk/
Cranborne Chase International Dark Sky Reserve Dark Skies Festival – Starfest 15-20 February Full details are here. https://cranbornechase.org.uk/events/dark-skies-festival-starfest-15-20-february-2021/
Mars Atlas. “Mars 36” is the title of a new Atlas of Mars, published for Mars Year 36, with a geographic approach, created for amateur and professional students of planetary science and astronomy. This is the first planetary Atlas that presents a planetary surface with physical geographic thematic layers. The landforms created by lava, wind, water, and ice are shown separately on a topographic base map. The thematic layers are taken from other scientific feature databases, combined in a way as it is familiar in terrestrial atlases. Also included are the first Martian climate charts and climate maps, and another first is the first manually edited Martian albedo map of the 21st century. The explanations are in English, Hungarian and Czech languages. Its structure and themes follow 20th-century school atlases The Atlas will be presented to the scientific community during the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2021.
The Atlas is available via Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/955444239/mars-36-pocket-atlas
Questions can be sent to: planetarymaps@gmail.com
We also welcome suggestions on how to improve the Atlas and requests for new topics or detail maps in the next, Mars Year 37 edition.