Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Monday, March 30th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 40 minutes, setting at 8:08, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:25. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:42 tomorrow morning.

I’ve been asked whether I’ve ever seen a UFO. UFO stands for unidentified flying object, and based on the actual term it means that you don’t know what it is. The term UFO has come to mean alien spacecraft, but there’s no proof of that. I’ve seen things in the sky I could not immediately identify, but within a few minutes of observation or thinking about it, was able to find a plausible explanation for it. I haven’t seen anything that couldn’t be explained by being manmade or natural. The last time I saw something weird in the sky was a number of years ago during a star party at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. A solid line of light silently moved northward through the sky. After a bit it dawned on me that the previous day SpaceX launched their first batch of Starlink satellites. They hadn’t separated far yet.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum