Spring equinox

My students and I have a lot planned for Friday, March 20th this year. Of course, it is all dependent on the weather. Right now they are predicting snow and/or rain, and that is troublesome. But what can you do?

A couple of my friends from CERN have agreed to measure the length of a shadow on the spring equinox. This should enable us to determine not only our own latitude, but the latitude of the other participating schools (two in Poland and one in Nepal).  Of course, you need to be able to SEE the shadow to do this.  If we can't measure it on Friday, we will pick another day in the immediate future.

I got this idea from reading about the Eratosthenes project (from Greece, of course) and their global effort to connect schools and measure the globe. I have signed us up for that as well.

Finally, the astronomy club is not only going to take measure the globe, but we are planning to use the telescopes that night, up in Frederick County, Maryland, where the skies are a bit darker.

Check out these sky maps to see what is visible this time of year.