Terry's Astronomy Thread.

[Zeldagurlfan1]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

TERRY
this is dope as hell. youre awesome <3 ^_________^ ima look here again tomorrowww!!

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 15, 2012

-Those in the mid northern latitudes of North America get a special treat this time of year; this is the greatest time of year to see the bulk of the milky way in the evening. Look east-southeast of of Canis Major in the constellation Puppis. A telescope will serve you well here.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 14, 2012

Source:
The heart and soul nebulae are located in Cassiopeia, a familiar constellation in North America due to it's 5 obvious bright stars that are often said to look like a W (or M in this picture). The nebulae shine brightly with the red light of energized hydrogen. There are several young star clusters visible in this image as well, appearing in blue, which makes this area a hot spot for astrophotography. Andromeda Galaxy isn't too far away from this picture either. A hydrogen filter on a camera would bring out the nebulae nicely if one wished to take a picture of these emission nebulae.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 16, 2012

-Jupiter and Venus have separated to 4.0 degrees now. Still notably close, but nothing compared to the 13th.

-Comet Garradd at 7th magnitude passes within 1/4 of a degree of 4th magnitude star Lambda Draconis. One of the best nights to try and discover this comet! Good luck on your quest to photograph or observe it.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 16, 2012

Source:
One of the most famous images related to space as of late, this is a photo of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995 by the Hubble Telescope. The pillars lie in the Eagle Nebula dubbed M16 and are associated with an open star cluster. The "pillars" are molecular hydrogen gas and dark dust that doesn't emit light. The pillars are light years in length and so dense that interior gas actually gravitationally contracts to form stars. Unfortunately, this pretty structure is short lived, as there is evidence of a supernova explosion that happened 6,000 years ago. The Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation are about 7,000 light years away, so we only have another thousand years to observe these pillars before we witness their destruction.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 17, 2012

-Have you heard of the Winter Triangle? It contains 3 of some of the brightest stars in the night sky for the northern hemisphere, and it's an equilateral triangle! The brightest of the 3 stars is Sirius, which is found in Canis Major. It is the blue looking star in the southwest. To it's upper right is the red star Betelgeuse, found on the shoulder of Orion. To the left is Procyon found in Canis Minor. All 3 are bright enough to be seen anywhere, no matter how light polluted you are. Did you know Procyon is expected to expand and turn into a red giant at any time? We could witness it happen tomorrow, or 10,000 years from now.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 17, 2012

Source:
This photo is part of the spiral galaxy M83, which is 12 million light years away. It can be found near the bottom of constellation Hydra, and this galaxy is known for it's prominent blue star clusters and red star clusters found in its arms. These clusters have given M83 the nickname of "The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy," but it is more often referred to as the Southern Pinwheel. The centre of this galaxy is dominated by red, older stars so it appears yellow. The blue and red clusters are areas of starbirth, where the blue stars are hot, young, bright and brilliant, and the red clusters are filled with ionized hydrogen, creating new stars.

[Winrar]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Terry because of you I'm taking astronomy as my general elective next year. Thanks for peaking an interest

[ninjaKIWI]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Terry because of you I'm taking astronomy as my general elective next year. Thanks for peaking an interest

Piquing.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 18, 2012

-Mars is that bright orange strucutre found in Leo, on the opposite side of the sky from the Jupiter-Venus combo. It is 7 degrees from the fainter star, Regulus. Mars is beginning to fade a bit as Earth pulls ahead of Mars in their respective orbits around the sun. Use the solar system orbit chart to help visualize this.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 18, 2012

Source:
Meet the Perseus-Pisces supercluster of galaxies. Spanning more than 40 degrees across the northern winter sky, it is one of the largest known structures in the universe. It ranges from the Perseus constellation to the Pisces constellation, which can't be viewed at at this time because that is the constellation that the sun is currently in. Perseus however, is quite visible after sunset. There are 141 galaxies found in this structure, and is roughly 250 million light years away. When looking through a telescope, each one of these galaxies may appear as a fuzzy blob. This image view covers about 15 million light years across the supercluster.

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What's in the Sky Tonight Archive March 10, 2012 - August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

-Full Moon (exact at 9:58 a.m. EDT). This is a "blue Moon," when the term means the second full Moon in a calendar month. Blue Moons come every 2.7 years on average. The next is in July 2015.

-This week, right after dark is the time when the Big Dipper descends to the same height in the northwest as Cassiopeia rises in the northeast. After this, it'll officially be Cassiopeia season.

August 30, 2012

-Full Moon tonight and tomorrow night (exactly full at 9:58 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning). The Moon tonight is in dim Aquarius.

-As sunrise approaches Friday morning, bring binoculars or a wide-field telescope to a spot with a view of the east-northeast horizon to try for the difficult conjunction of Mercury with Regulus, illustrated here.

August 29, 2012

-Fomalhaut, the "Autumn Star," rises in the southeast in mid- to late evening; the time depends on your location. Watch for Fomalhaut coming into view below or lower left of the Moon.

August 28, 2012

-As twilight fades, spot Arcturus high in the west. Look far to its lower left for Saturn, Spica below it, and Mars to Saturn's left. This triangle is lengthening each evening Saturn and Spica move to the lower right.

August 27, 2012

-This is the time of year when the Big Dipper, swinging down in the northwest in evening, catches water dumping from the bowl of the dim Little Dipper high above it. Much of the Little Dipper is made of 4th- and 5th-magnitude stars and requires a fairly dark sky.

August 26, 2012

-The Moon shines above the Sagittarius Teapot in the south after dark.

-Mercury (about magnitude –1.2) remains in view at dawn but lower each day. It's above the east-northeast horizon, far lower left of brilliant Venus. Look about 45 minutes before sunrise, the earlier in the week the better.

August 25, 2012

-The Moon at nightfall shines about equidistant from Antares to its lower right and the Teapot of Sagittarius pouring to its left.

-This evening — before the Moon becomes too bright for the rest of the week — you can still use binoculars to try for the Lagoon and Swan nebulae, M8 and M7, above the Sagittarius Teapot as shown here. To the naked eye, the Teapot is roughly the size of your fist at arm's length.

August 24, 2012

-First-quarter Moon this evening. Look for Antares to its lower left. The other stars of upper Scorpius are scattered around them.

August 23, 2012

-By about 9 or 10 p.m. (depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone), the Big Dipper sinks in the northwest to the same height that Cassiopeia rises in the northeast.

August 22, 2012

-Look for the Saturn-Spica-Mars triangle to the right or lower right of the Moon in twilight, as shown above.

-And to the Moon's upper left, look for 3rd-magnitude Alpha (α) Librae. It's a fine, very wide double star for binoculars. You'll find its two components lined up about horizontally.

August 21, 2012

-In twilight the waxing crescent Moon makes a lovely quadrilateral with Saturn, Spica, and Mars low in the southwest, as shown above. They all just fit in a 6° binocular view. By coincidence, this is also the evening when Saturn, Spica, and Mars form an equilateral triangle.

August 20, 2012

-Venus (magnitude –4.4, in Gemini) rises in deep darkness around 3 a.m. daylight saving time (depending on where you are), emerging above the east-northeast horizon like a UFO a good two hours before the first glimmer of dawn. By early dawn it's blazing high in the east — vastly outshining Pollux and Castor to its left and Procyon to its lower right.

-Uranus (magnitude 5.8, at the Pisces-Cetus border) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) reach good heights in the southeast by late evening.

August 19, 2012

-Nine Messier objects float within just a couple binocular fields above the lid star of the Sagittarius Teapot, now at its highest in the south in early evening. How many can you detect in my photos, or on your own? Some are easy in binoculars, some are tougher and require a dark sky.

-Jupiter (magnitude –2.2, in Taurus) rises in the east-northeast around midnight or 1 a.m. daylight saving time. Once it's well clear of the horizon, look for fainter orange Aldebaran twinkling 5° or 6° to its right or lower right. By dawn Jupiter shines very high in the southeast, about 30° upper right of even brighter Venus.

August 18, 2012

-In these waning weeks of summer, autumn's Great Square of Pegasus is already looming up in the east after dark. It's somewhat larger than your fist at arm's length, and is balancing on one corner.

-Mars, Saturn, and Spica (in Virgo, very similar at magnitudes 1.1, 0.8, and 1.0 respectively) form a changing triangle low in the west-southwest at dusk, as shown above. Look for them far lower left of Arcturus. Saturn and Spica are moving to the lower right away from Mars, lengthening the triangle day by day.

August 17, 2012

-It's already that time of year. If you're up before the first light of dawn, you'll get a preview of wintry Orion coming up in the east-southeast. It's to the right of brilliant Venus, which is in the feet of Gemini near the top of Orion's dim club.

-At the bend of the Dipper's handle, you'll know to look for little Alcor shining directly above Mizar. That's because the line from Mizar through Alcor always points to Vega, and Vega is now near the zenith (as seen from mid-northern latitudes).

-Mercury is having a good apparition low in the dawn. About 45 minutes to an hour before sunrise, look for it above the east-northeast horizon far lower left of brilliant Venus. Mercury is still brightening, from magnitude –0.4 on the morning of August 18th to –1.0 by the 25th. Though by then it's a little lower.

August 16, 2012

-It's already that time of year. If you're up before the first light of dawn, you'll get a preview of wintry Orion coming up in the east-southeast. It's to the right of brilliant Venus, which is in the feet of Gemini near the top of Orion's dim club.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.5 and –2.2) shine dramatically in the east before and during dawn. They've widened to about 24° apart, with Jupiter high to Venus's upper right. They're in Gemini and Taurus, respectively. Look for orange Aldebaran, much fainter, 5° right or lower right of Jupiter. Near Aldebaran are the Hyades, and above are the Pleiades.

August 15, 2012

-Vega passes high overhead after dark for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes (exactly overhead at latitude 39°). Altair is the brightest star high in the southeast, marking the bright eye of Aquila, the Eagle.

-Running down the main axis of Aquila are bunches of dark nebulae, two planetary nebulae, and a globular cluster that await hunting with your telescope.

August 14, 2012

-No less than nine Messier objects float within just a couple binocular fields of view above the lid star of the Sagittarius Teapot (now at its highest in the south in early evening). How many of these can you detect? Some are easy in binoculars, some are tougher and require a dark sky.

August 13, 2012

-Mars is finally passing between Saturn and Spica low in the west-southwestern twilight this evening and tomorrow evening.

Daytime occultation of Venus. This afternoon, telescope users across most of North America can watch the edge of the thin waning crescent Moon cover half-lit Venus in a blue sky. The event happens low for Easterners; the farther west you are, the higher the Moon and Venus will be in your sky. Finding them is the trick. If you live in the area that's within the highlighted portion of the map below, then you can see this happen yourself! Use the list found on the occultation website

to pinpoint exactly when Venus will mysteriously vanish and re-appear out of nowhere in your location! This is something you do not want to miss if you have clear skies.





August 12, 2012

-Venus hangs below the waning crescent Moon before and during dawn Monday morning, as shown below.

-Mars, Saturn, and Spica (very similar at magnitudes 1.1, 0.8, and 1.0 respectively) are bunched low in the west-southwest at dusk, far below bright Arcturus. They form a triangle 4½° tall that changes every day. Mars passes between Saturn and Spica on Monday and Tuesday, August 13th and 14th — turning the triangle into a slightly curved, nearly vertical line.

August 11, 2012

-The Perseid meteor shower should be at its best late tonight. Find a dark spot with a wide-open view of the sky overhead, bundle up against the late-night chill, lie back in a lounge chair, watch the sky, and be patient. After 11 or midnight you may see a meteor a minute on average; fewer earlier.

-The thick waning crescent Moon rises by 1 or 2 a.m. (with Jupiter above it). But its modest light, notes the International Meteor Organization, "should be considered more of a nuisance than a deterrent."

-You're also likely to see occasional Perseids for many nights before and after. Click here for more information about the Perseids.

August 10, 2012

-The waning Moon forms a tight triangle with Jupiter and fainter Aldebaran after they rise about 1 or 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Bright Venus rises far to their lower left around 3 a.m. (depending on where you live).

-Have any plans for the weekend? The Perseids peak on Saturday night at approximately midnight EST.

August 9, 2012

-Last-quarter Moon (exact at 2:55 p.m. EDT). The lopsided-looking Moon rises around midnight with the Pleiades to its left.

-Mars is about to cross Saturn in Spica after sundown in the coming days. It has moved much closer now to form a tight triangle.

-Have any plans for the weekend? The Perseids peak on Saturday.

August 8, 2012

-The two brightest stars of summer are Vega, nearly overhead after dark (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes), and Arcturus in the west. Look a third of the way from Arcturus to Vega for the dim semicircle of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Look two thirds of the way for the dim Keystone of Hercules, about the same size.

-Have any plans for the weekend? The Perseids peak on Saturday.

August 7, 2012

-The waning gibbous Moon rises in the east as twilight fades away. Look well to the Moon's left or upper left for the Great Square of Pegasus, balancing on one corner.

August 6, 2012

-By mid-evening this week, W-shaped Cassiopeia rises as high in the north-northeast as the bowl of the Big Dipper has sunk in the north-northwest.

August 5, 2012

-Vega is near the zenith soon after nightfall (as seen from mid-northern latitudes), and this tells you that the rich Milky Way in Sagittarius and the tail of Scorpius is now at its best low in the south. The region is loaded with telescopic star clusters and nebulae. Catch it while you can.

-Mars and Saturn (magnitudes +1.1 and +0.8, respectively) are low in the west-southwest at dusk, forming a triangle with similarly bright (but twinklier) Spica. Saturn and Spica are 4½° apart, with Saturn on top. Mars, to Spica's right, is approaching closer to them every day. It will pass between them on August 13th and 14th.

August 4, 2012

-The waning gibbous Moon rises in the east as twilight fades away. Look well to the Moon's left or upper left for the Great Square of Pegasus, balancing on one corner.

August 3, 2012

-As summer enters its second half, the Summer Triangle approaches its greatest height in the evening. Face east and look almost straight up after nightfall. The brightest star there is Vega. Toward the northeast from Vega (by two or three fist-widths at arm's length) is Deneb. Toward the southeast from Vega by a greater distance is Altair.

August 2, 2012

-Arcturus is the brightest star in the west after dark at this time of year. It and Vega, almost overhead, are the two leading stars of summer. Look off to the right of Arcturus, in the northwest, to spot the Big Dipper dipping down.

August 1, 2012

-Full Moon tonight (exact at 11:27 p.m. EDT). The Moon is in dim Capricornus. Shining high above it is Altair.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.6 and –2.2) shine dramatically in the east before and during dawn, as shown at right. They've widened to about 14° apart now, with Jupiter higher. Look for Aldebaran, much fainter, lower right of Jupiter. Also near Jupiter are the Hyades, and higher above are the Pleiades.

July 31, 2012

-During early dawn Wednesday and Thursday mornings, look low in the east to spot brilliant Venus, magnitude –4.6. Look 2° upper left of it (roughly a finger's width at arm's length) for Zeta Tauri, magnitude 3.0. That's a brightness difference of just over 1,000 times! Binoculars will be necessary as dawn brightens.

-All week, watch Mars move in on Saturn and Spica at dusk.

July 30, 2012

-The waxing gibbous Moon this evening hangs over the handle of the Sagittarius Teapot.

-Uranus (magnitude 5.8, at the Pisces-Cetus border) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are high in the southern sky before the first light of dawn.

July 29, 2012

-Before and during dawn Monday morning, Jupiter is closest to Aldebaran. They're 4.7° apart, with Aldebaran to Jupiter's lower right.

-Mars and Saturn (magnitudes +1.1 and +0.8, respectively) are low in the west-southwest at dusk. Saturn stands 4½° above similarly-bright Spica. Mars is approaching closer to them every day and will pass between them on August 13th and 14th.

July 28, 2012

-Fiery Antares shines lower right of the waxing gibbous Moon tonight.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.6 and –2.2) shine dramatically in the east before and during dawn, as shown at right. They've widened to about 14° apart now, with Jupiter higher. Look for Aldebaran, much fainter, lower right of Jupiter. Also near Jupiter are the Hyades, and higher above are the Pleiades.

The asteroids Ceres and Vesta, magnitudes 9.1 and 8.4, are in the area too!

July 27, 2012

-Look left of the Moon (by a fist-width at arm's length or more) for orange Antares. Much closer left of the Moon are the three fainter stars that mark the head of Scorpius, lined up about vertically.

-Mars has crept to within 11° of Saturn and Spica, on its way to passing between them in mid-August.

-Before or during dawn Saturday morning, telescope users near North America's West Coast can see Jupiter's satellites Io and Europa both casting their tiny black shadows onto Jupiter's face from 4:45 to 5:33 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

July 26, 2012

-By 10 or 11 p.m. the Great Square of Pegasus is up in the east, balancing on one corner — an early warning of the inevitable approach of fall.

-Saturn (magnitude +0.8, in Virgo) shines in the southwest as the stars come out. Below it by 4½° is Spica, nearly the same brightness but twinklier. After dark they move lower to the west-southwest.

July 25, 2012

-The first-quarter Moon is left of Spica and Saturn this evening, as shown here.

-Uranus (magnitude 5.8, at the Pisces-Cetus border) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are high in the southern sky before the first light of dawn.

July 24, 2012

-The waxing Moon this evening forms a quadrangle with Saturn, Spica, and Mars.

-Mars (magnitude +1.0, in Virgo) glows orange low in the west-southwest at dusk, lower right of the Saturn-and-Spica pair by about 13°. It's heading their way; Mars will pass between Saturn and Spica in mid-August. In a telescope Mars is gibbous and very tiny, 6 arcseconds wide.

July 23, 2012

-As twilight behind to fade, use the Moon in the west-southwest to guide your way to Saturn, Spica, and Mars glimmering through the dusk (in that order of visibility) as shown below.

-Saturn (magnitude +0.8, in Virgo) shines in the southwest as the stars come out. Below it by 4½° is Spica, nearly the same brightness but twinklier. After dark they move lower to the west-southwest.

July 22, 2012

-Arcturus is the brightest star high in the west after dark at this time of year. It and Vega, almost overhead, are the two leading stars of summer. Look off to the right of Arcturus, in the northwest, to spot the Big Dipper.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.6 and –2.1) shine dramatically in the east before and during dawn. They've widened to about 10° or 12° apart now, with Jupiter higher. Look for Aldebaran, much fainter, below or lower right of Jupiter. Also in Jupiter's starry background are the Hyades, and above it are the Pleiades.

July 21, 2012

-Draco the Dragon arches his back over the Little Dipper in the north at this time of year. With your scope, here you can search out the Cat's Eye Nebula, some interesting double stars and galaxies, and (if your scope is big enough) a quasar with a look-back time of 8.6 billion years!

July 20, 2012

-The Teapot of Sagittarius is in the south-southeast at nightfall and highest in the south later in the evening. Hidden in the star fields above it is the magnitude-9.5 asteroid 18 Melpomene, which you can ferret out with a telescope.

-Just before Sunrise, the first glimpses of the constellation Orion are slowly becoming visible to mid northern latitudes again.

July 19, 2012

-This is the time of year when the Big Dipper, in the northwest after dark, begins scooping down to the right as if preparing to scoop up water. And the dim Little Dipper, standing upright from the North Star at the end of its handle, begins to tip left starting its six-month downward fall.

-Uranus (magnitude 5.8, at the Pisces-Cetus border) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are high in the southeast and south before the first light of dawn.

July 18, 2012

-Once you've found Vega and Arcturus (see yesterday), imagine a line between them. A third of the way along it from Vega is the dim Keystone of Hercules. Two thirds of the way is the little semicircle constellation Corona Borealis, the dim Northern Crown, with one modestly bright star, Alphecca or Gemma.

-Mars (magnitude +1.0, in Virgo) glows orange in the west-southwest at dusk. It's lower right of the Saturn-and-Spica pair, by about 16°. Mars is heading their way; it will pass right between them in mid-August. In a telescope Mars is gibbous and very tiny, only 6 arcseconds wide.

July 17, 2012

-The two brightest stars of summer are Vega, very high in the east as the stars come out, and Arcturus, very high in the southwest. Compare their colors. Vega is icy white with a hint of blue; Arcturus is pale yellow-orange. They're both relatively nearby as stars go. It's 25 light-years to Vega, 37 to Arcturus.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.7 and –2.1) shine dramatically in the east before and during dawn. They're stacked about 8° apart now, with Jupiter on top. Look for Aldebaran, much fainter, moving away from Venus to its upper right. Also in Venus's starry background are the Hyades, and above Jupiter are the Pleiades. The asteroids Ceres and Vesta, magnitudes 9.1 and 8.4, are there too!

July 16, 2012

-July is Scorpius month — at least in the evening hours. Scorpius is highest in the south right at nightfall this week. Its brightest star is orange-red Antares, "Anti-Ares," the "rival of Mars" in Greek. Compare its color with the real Mars moving lower in the west-southwest (to the lower right of the Saturn-and-Spica pair).

-Mars (magnitude +1.0, in Virgo) glows orange in the west-southwest at dusk. It's lower right of the Saturn-and-Spica pair, by about 16°. Mars is heading their way; it will pass right between them in mid-August. In a telescope Mars is gibbous and very tiny, only 6 arcseconds wide.

July 15, 2012

-Stars twinkle and planets (being extended objects) don't, right? That's what everyone is supposed to learn when they take up skywatching. But how true is it really? See for yourself by comparing Spica and Saturn as they sink together in the southwest these evenings. Saturn is the one on top. Sometimes the difference is dramatic, other times not so much, depending on the small heat waves rippling in the lower atmosphere.

July 14, 2012

-During dawn Sunday morning, the waning crescent poses dramatically with Jupiter and Venus, as shown here for North America. Think photo opportunity!

-The Moon actually occults Jupiter for most of Europe and parts of Asia. Jupiter disappears behind the Moon's sunlit limb. A map and timetable can be found on this link for those who will be able to see the occultation: http://www.lunar-occultations.com/io...715jupiter.htm

July 13, 2012

-During dawn on Saturday morning, the waning crescent Moon in the east poses to the upper right of Jupiter and lower right of the Pleiades.

-Mercury is lost in the sunset.

July 12, 2012

-By 11 p.m. daylight time the Great Square of Pegasus, signature constellation of autumn, is already up in the east and balancing on one corner.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.7 and –2.1) shine dramatically in the east-northeast before and during dawn. They remain stacked 5° or 6° apart this week, with Jupiter on top. Watch Aldebaran, much fainter, moving this week from below Venus to its right. Also in Venus's starry background are the Hyades, and above Jupiter are the Pleiades. The asteroids Ceres and Vesta, magnitudes 9.1 and 8.4, are there too!

July 11, 2012

-Altair is the brightest star halfway up the southeastern sky (halfway from the horizon to the zenith). Look to its left by slightly more than a fist-width, and perhaps a bit lower, for the distinctive little constellation Delphinus, the leaping Dolphin. Its nose points left.

-The sunspot continues to be visible, but the chance of the northern lights hitting your region is now waning.

July 10, 2012

-As the stars begin to come out, look very high in the east for bright Vega. How soon can you spot the other two stars of the Summer Triangle? Deneb is 24° to Vega's lower left: two or three fist-widths at arm's length. Altair is 34° to Vega's lower right: three or four fists.

-Vega passes the zenith around midnight.

-The Sun is displaying a spot group big enough to see without optical aid, just a safe solar filter. Active Region AR 1520 is on the eastern side of the Sun as of Monday and is rotating toward the midline of the Sun's face, where it should be all the more obvious — and could blast some serious solar weather our way if a big flare happens to erupt within it. High-res near-real-time image from SOHO.

July 9, 2012

-At nightfall, spot bright Arcturus very high in the southwest to west. It's way above Saturn, Spica, and Mars. Look off to the right of Arcturus for the Big Dipper — which is hanging down and, as night grows late, previewing its late-summer dip as if scooping water.

July 8, 2012

-After nightfall at this time of year, the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia has just passed its lowest point in the north and is beginning its long, slow climb in the north-northeast. The later in the night you look, the more altitude it gains. But the farther south you live, the lower it will be.

-Mercury is disappearing deep in the sunset.

July 7, 2012

-The red long-period variable star R Draconis should be at its maximum brightness of about magnitude 7.6 this week. Binoculars should show it.

-Aldebaran passes 1° to the right or lower right of Venus low in the dawn Sunday through Tuesday mornings.

The dawn sky on July 4th, as captured by Gregg Alliss near Marion, Iowa. He took this 7-second exposure through an 18-mm f/7.1 lens at ISO 800.

July 6, 2012

-After nightfall at this time of year, the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia has just passed its lowest point in the north and is beginning its long, slow climb in the north-northeast. The later in the night you look, the more altitude it gains. But the farther south you live, the lower it will be.

-Mercury (about magnitude +0.5 and fading) is becoming harder to see very low in the west-northwest about 45 minutes after sundown. Far to its right are fainter Pollux and Castor; use binoculars.

July 5, 2012

-The waning gibbous Moon rises around nightfall. The bright star high above it is Altair. Look a fist-width or more to Altair's left, and perhaps a bit lower, for the little constellation Delphinus, the leaping Dolphin. His nose points left.

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.7 and –2.1) shine low in the east-northeast during dawn. They're stacked 5° apart with Jupiter on top, as shown at the top of this page. Watch Aldebaran, much fainter, closing in on Venus from below. In Venus's starry background are the Hyades, while the Pleiades pose above Jupiter. Bring binoculars and look early!

July 4, 2012

-Watching fireworks this evening? As you're waiting for darkness to arrive, point out the two brightest stars of summer: Vega very high in the east, and Arcturus very high in the southwest.

-Far below Arcturus are Saturn and, just under it, Spica. Off to their right and perhaps a bit lower is orangy little Mars.

-Earth is at aphelion, its farthest from the Sun for the year (just 1/30 farther than at perihelion in January).

July 3, 2012

-The full Moon shines in the southeast after dark. The bright star far to its upper left is Altair. Look just above Altair, by about a finger-width at arm's length, for fainter Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae). Tarazed, an orange giant, is much more luminous than Altair but is almost 20 times farther away (330 light-years, compared to Altair's distance of 17 light-years).

-Venus and Jupiter (magnitudes –4.7 and –2.1) shine low in the east-northeast during dawn. They're stacked 5° apart with Jupiter on top, as shown at the top of this page. Watch Aldebaran, much fainter, closing in on Venus from below. In Venus's starry background are the Hyades, while the Pleiades pose above Jupiter. Bring binoculars and look early!

July 2, 2012

-Vega is the brightest star very high in the east after dark. Deneb is the brightest to its lower left. Altair is farther to Vega's lower right. These three form the big Summer Triangle.

-Mars (magnitude +0.8, in Virgo) glows orange in the west-southwest at dusk and lower in the west later. It's still about 22° from the Saturn-and-Spica pair to its left, but it's heading their way. Mars will pass right between them in mid-August.

In a telescope Mars is gibbous and very tiny (6.6 arcseconds wide), continuing to fade and shrink.

July 1, 2012

-As soon as the stars come out, look high in the northwest for the Big Dipper hanging straight down by its handle. As night advances, the Dipper dips lower and to the right as if to scoop up water.

-In the early morning hours about 1 hour before sunrise, look for Aldebaran of the Hyades, Venus in the Hyades, Jupiter, and the Pleiades to be in a near vertical line, rising higher in the sky as dawn brightens.

June 30, 2012

-The Moon shines in the head stars of Scorpius this evening, with Antares to its lower left.

-Remember when Venus and Jupiter paired up spectacularly in the evening last March? Now they're at it again, but this time low in the dawn, as shown at right. Best time: about an hour or so before your local sunrise.

-A leap second will be inserted into the world's civil time systems at the end of June 30th Coordinated Universal Time (the second before 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). The minute 23:59 UTC will have 61 seconds, not 60, to adjust for a slight accumulated slowdown in Earth's spin. The last leap second was added to the world's clocks at the end of 2008. As the moment arrives, watch your favourite online time service and see if they get it right.

June 29, 2012

-Now that June is about to turn into July, the Teapot of Sagittarius is up and sitting level low in the southeast after the sky becomes fully dark

-Venus, Jupiter, and the Pleiades make a vertical line in the morning dawn today.

June 28, 2012

-Saturn and Spica are now to the right of the waxing gibbous Moon.

-Have you spotted Jupiter and Venus low in the dawn yet? They're getting higher and easier every day.

June 27, 2012

-The Moon forms a nice triangle with Saturn and Spica this evening, as shown here.

-This is the Latest sunset of the year (at 40° north latitude) even though the solstice and longest day were on June 20th.

June 26, 2012

-First-quarter Moon this evening (exact at 11:30 p.m. EDT). The Moon shines in Virgo, below the line from Saturn to Mars.

-Mercury (about magnitude 0.0 and fading) is low in the west-northwest about 40 to 60 minutes after sundown. Well to its right are fainter Pollux and Castor.

June 25, 2012

-The Moon shines below distant little Mars during and after dusk.

-Mars (magnitude +0.8, in Virgo) shines orange in the southwest at dusk and lower in the west later. It's still about 25° from the Saturn-and-Spica pair to its left, but it's heading their way! Mars will shoot the gap between them in mid-August.

June 24, 2012

-The brightest star high in the east these evenings is Vega. The brightest far to its lower right is Altair. Left or lower left of Altair, by a bit more than a fist-width at arm's length, look for the little constellation Delphinus, the leaping Dolphin. Its nose points left.

-Venus (magnitude –4.5) shines low in the east-northeast during dawn. Don't confuse it with Jupiter to its upper right. The two planets remain 5° or 6° apart this week, crossing the background of Aldebaran and the Hyades.

June 23, 2012

-Look about a fist-width over the Moon for Regulus this evening, as shown above.

-Uranus (magnitude 5.9, at the Pisces-Cetus border) is in the east-southeast before the first light of dawn.

June 22, 2012

-Spot the crescent Moon in the western twilight this evening, and look far to its right for Mercury, Pollux, and Castor, as shown above. Binoculars help.

-Mercury (about magnitude –0.3 and fading) is very low in the west-northwest about 30 or 40 minutes after sundown. Don't confuse it with Capella far to its right, in the northwest. Pollux and Castor are above Mercury early in the week, and to the right of it by June 23rd.

June 21, 2012

-As the glow of sunset fades, look low in the west-northwest for a ragged line of the thin crescent Moon, Mercury, Pollux, and Castor, as shown below.

June 20, 2012

-This is the longest day and shortest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer begins at the solstice: 7:09 p.m. EDT. This is when the Sun reaches its northernmost point in the sky and begins its six-month return southward. In the Southern Hemisphere, winter begins.

-If you have a good view of the west-northwest horizon (from mid-northern latitudes), mark precisely where the Sun sets. In a few days you should be able to detect that it's again starting to set a little south of this point. Build your own Stonehenge?

-Mercury (about magnitude –0.3 and fading) is very low in the west-northwest about 30 or 40 minutes after sundown. Don't confuse it with Capella far to its right, in the northwest. Pollux and Castor are above Mercury early in the week, and to the right of it by June 23rd.

June 19, 2012

-This is the time of year when the Little Dipper floats straight upward from Polaris after dark — like a released helium balloon.

-New Moon (exact at 11:02 a.m. EDT).

-Mars (magnitude +0.7, crossing from Leo into Virgo) shines orange in the southwest at dusk and lower in the west as evening grows late. This week Mars creeps to the halfway point from Regulus (off to its lower right) to the Saturn-and-Spica pair (left). Mars will shoot the gap between Saturn and Spica in mid-August. In a telescope Mars is gibbous and tiny, continuing to shrink every week.

June 18, 2012

-Vega is the brightest star on the eastern side of the evening sky. Deneb is the brightest to its lower left. Altair is farther to Vega's lower right. These form the big Summer Triangle.

-This season there's another, temporary "Summer Triangle" toward the southwest: bright Arcturus high on top, the Saturn-Spica pair below it, and Mars off to the pair's right or lower right.

-Venus (magnitude –4.3), after transiting the Sun on June 5th, is now deep in the glow of dawn. Look for it low in the east-northeast before sunrise. Don't confuse Venus with Jupiter to its upper right. The two planets are 9° apart on the morning of June 16th and 6° apart on June 23rd.

-Below or lower right of Venus twinkles much fainter Aldebaran; use binoculars as daybreak brightens. Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, are on their way up for a grand showing in the morning sky this summer.

June 17, 2012

-Can you see the big Coma Berenices star cluster? Does your light pollution really hide it, or do you just not know exactly where to look? The cluster is 2/5 of the way from Denebola (Leo's tail) to the end of the Big Dipper's handle (Ursa Major's tail). The cluster is about 5° wide — a big, dim glow in at least a moderately dark sky. Its brightest members form an inverted Y that nearly fills a binocular view.

-Mercury (about magnitude –0.3 and fading) is very low in the west-northwest about 30 or 40 minutes after sundown. Don't confuse it with Capella far to its right, in the northwest. Pollux and Castor are above Mercury early in the week, and to the right of it by June 23rd.

June 16, 2012

-If you're awake in early dawn Sunday morning, look low in the east-northeast for the thin waning crescent Moon close to Jupiter, as shown here. As dawn brightens look for Venus 9° to Jupiter's lower left. Bring binoculars.

June 15, 2012

-With summer beginning in just five days, Scorpius is already rearing up in the southeast at nightfall. Its brightest star is orange Antares. The "outrigger" stars of Antares are just below and upper right of it. Farther upper right is the row of stars marking Scorpius's head. This is a grand area to explore with a sky atlas and binoculars.

-As dawn brightens Saturday morning, the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus form a diagonal line above where the Sun will rise, as shown here.

-If you happen to be in a dark area or are pulling an allnighter outside today, you can expect to see a few meteorites blaze through the sky; the Lyrid meteor shower peaks today.



June 14, 2012

-Globular star clusters are not all alike. But some do look more similar than others. With the Moon out of the sky, now is a fine time to compare and contrast many of them in your scope.

-Saturn (magnitude +0.6, in Virgo) shines high in the south as twilight fades. Below it by 5° is Spica. Later after dark they move to the southwest.

June 13, 2012

-Mercury is becoming more easily visible after sunset. Look for it low in the west-northwest in the fading twilight. It forms a long, vertical triangle with Pollux and Castor above it.

-Mercury (about magnitude –0.8) is very low in the west-northwest about 30 or 40 minutes after sundown. Don't confuse it with Capella well to its upper right, in the northwest.

June 12, 2012

-Look a third of the way from Arcturus to Vega for the dim semicircle of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. It has one modestly bright star, Alphecca. Two thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega is the dim Keystone of Hercules.

-Mars (magnitude +0.6) shines orange near the hind foot of Leo, in the southwest at dusk and lower in the west as evening grows late. Mars is still less than halfway from Regulus (off to its lower right) to the Saturn-and-Spica pair (left). Mars will shoot the gap between Saturn and Spica in mid-August.

June 11, 2012

-The two brightest stars of late spring and summer are Arcturus, now almost overhead toward the south or southwest after dark, and Vega, shining partway up the eastern sky. Arcturus is an orange giant 37 light-years away. Vega is a hot, white main-sequence star 25 light-years distant.

-Venus, having crossed the Sun from east to west during its transit on June 5th, is now very deep in the brightest glow of dawn. Don't confuse Venus with Jupiter, which is less low in the dawn and somewhat to the right. The two planets are 14° apart on the morning of June 9th and 9° apart by June 16th. Use binoculars as daylight brightens; look just above the east-northeast horizon. Jupiter and Venus are on their way up for a grand showing high in the morning sky this summer.

June 10, 2012

-After nightfall, Vega is the brightest star shining on the eastern side of the sky. Deneb is the brightest to its lower left. Look for Altair farther to Vega's lower right, still rather low. These three form the big Summer Triangle.

-This season there's another, temporary "summer triangle" in the southwest: bright Arcturus high on top, the Saturn-Spica pair below it, and Mars off to the pair's right or lower right.

-Last quarter Moon tonight (exact at 6:41 a.m. Monday morning EDT). The Moon, half-lit, rises in Aquarius in the middle of the night. By that time the Summer Triangle is very high in the east, high above it.

June 9, 2012

-Binocular observers are often told to recognize a globular cluster as "a fuzzy star." How fuzzy? You can make the comparison very directly between the globular cluster M5 and the star 5 Serpentis just southeast of it. The star is magnitude 5.1; the cluster is 5.7 in total.

June 8, 2012

-With June well under way, the Big Dipper has swung around to hang down by its handle high in the northwest during evening. The middle star of its handle is Mizar, with little Alcor right next to it. On which side of Mizar should you look for Alcor? As always, on the side toward bright Vega, which is now shining in the east-northeast.

June 7, 2012

-Have you ever explored the swarm of galaxies awaiting your telescope by the head of Serpens? See if you can find out how many Messier objects and objects on the NGC you can find here!

-Mars (magnitude +0.5) shines orange near the hind foot of Leo, high in the southwest at dusk and lower in the west as evening grows late. It's now roughly a third of the way from Regulus (off to its lower right) to the Saturn-and-Spica pair (left). Mars is heading east against the stars to pass right between Saturn and Spica in mid-August.

June 6, 2012

-Look very high in the south after dark for bright Arcturus. Much lower, and perhaps a bit right, are Saturn and (below it) Spica. Farther down to their lower right is the four-star pattern of Corvus, the Crow.

June 5, 2012

-Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun this afternoon for North and Central America; on June 6th local date for Asia, Australia, and much of Europe. Go here to see more details.

You may or may not have heard already that on June 5th, (6th if you are in the eastern side of the world) the planet Venus is going to cross the Sun in a dramatic 6 and a half hour show. The first thing you need to know is are you in the area where it is going to be displayed to the world? Use the following map courtesy of SkyandTelescope to see:

In other words, unless you live in South America, West Africa, Spain or Portugal, or Antarctica, you have a chance to see this event, weather permitting.

Their article here puts it best: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser...134332798.html

However, if you do not wish to click the link, you can also read some of the article in this spoiler.

Often we're told about a particular astronomical event — eclipses and planet line-ups, for example — that happen only rarely. But Venus crossing the face of the Sun on June 5–6, 2012, takes "rare" to a new level. Don't miss the chance to see this, because you'll never have another chance in your lifetime.
June's celestial spectacle, called a transit of Venus, happens only four times every 243 years. However, the spacing between each occurrence is very uneven: it's 121½ years, then 8 years, then 105½ years, then 8 years again. The last transit occurred in June 2004 — and after this June's event there won't be another until December 2117.

Fortunately, unlike the narrow, fleeting path of visibility for a total solar eclipse, the upcoming transit by Venus will last for about 6½ hours and can be seen from more than half of Earth's surface.


For most of North America, the transit of Venus will begin on the afternoon of June 5th and still be in progress at sunset. Those in western Pacific, eastern Asia, and eastern Australia see the whole show from beginning to end on June 6th (local date). Click on the image for a larger, worldwide map.
Michael Zeiler / Eclipse-maps.com
As the map here shows, North Americans are positioned to see at least a portion of it on the afternoon of June 5th. Unfortunately, almost everyone in South America will miss out. On the other side of the globe (click on the map), portions of the transit are observable at or after sunrise on June 6th from Europe, northeast Africa, west and south-central Asia, and western Australia.
The best-positioned skygazers are those in eastern Asia, eastern Australia, Alaska, New Zealand, and all of the Pacific from Hawaii westward. They have ringside seats for watching the entire transit, including the crucial events around both its start and finish.


People living in the Northern Hemisphere will see a longer show due to the parallax of Venus. The reason for this is illustrated in the following image, where one watching in north america sees Venus cross a lower portion of the sun, than someone in austrailia who sees Venus crossing a higher portion of the sun.

So what time does it all happen?

It depends on your location. Here are three tables of major cities where the times of the transit will begin and end.

Some definitions:
External Ingress: Venus touches the edge of the sun. The Transit starts here.
Internal Ingress: Venus completely enters the sun, and appears as a silhouette.
Greatest Transit: The deepest point of the transit.
Internal Egress: The time of the exact moment Venus begins to depart the sun's image.
External Egress: The time of the exact moment Venus leaves the sun's image. The Transit ends here.

CANADA:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/tran/TOV2012-Tab02.pdf

UNITED STATES:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/tran/TOV2012-Tab03.pdf

WORLD:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/tran/TOV2012-Tab04.pdf

----------------------------------------

Now this is likely the last transit of Venus you are going to see in your lifetime, unless you plan to live for another 105 years after this year. Unless you get clouded over, I recommend making an attempt to see this twice in a lifetime (for us) event. Some generations live their full lives without ever seeing what it looks like. To the untrained person, they won't realise what's happening as Venus covers just 3% of the surface of the Sun. Unless they're looking straight at the sun, it will appear to be a normal day.


Scientist's can use the transit to calculate precisely the circumference of the Sun, and other characteristics of the sun. The sun is crucial to our understanding of measuring more distant objects, and -everyone- is being invited to participate in a measurement where you can calculate the exact moment Venus exteranlly ingressed and egressed the sun. Read more about this here.
http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/getting-...suns-distance/

I am prepared for the Transit, assuming I have good weather. Are you?

If you do not have good weather, or you live in an area where there is no transit:

You can watch the transit online from -anyone- of the online broadcasts found in this link. Don't let poor weather hamper your experience!
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser...154213475.html

June 4, 2012

-This evening, look for red Antares about 4° lower right of the full Moon (as seen from North America).

-Partial eclipse of the Moon before and during dawn Monday morning for central and western North America. The partial eclipse begins at 3:00 a.m. PDT; mid-eclipse (with 38% of the Moon's diameter in shadow) is at 4:03 a.m. PDT; partial eclipse ends at 5:07 a.m. PDT.

June 3, 2012

-Venus is now virtually impossible to see this week as it is hidden in the glare of the sun, that is except for 6 hours and 20 minutes on June 5th when it crosses the path of the sun.

-Mercury is beginning to emerge into view low in the sunset. By late this week, look for it low in the west-northwest about 30 minutes after sundown. Don't confuse it with Capella well to its right, in the northwest.

June 2, 2012

-The gibbous Moon shines in the south-southeast after dark. Look well to its lower left for orange Antares. Nearly halfway between the Moon and Antares is the row of three stars marking the head of Scorpius. There will also be a partial eclipse of the moon on the 4th of June.

June 1, 2012

-By 10 or 11 p.m. (depending on your location) the Summer Triangle is up in the east. Its top corner is Vega: the brightest star in the eastern sky. Deneb is the brightest star to Vega's lower left. Look for Altair substantially farther to Venus's lower right.

May 31, 2012

-The gibbous Moon, Spica, and Saturn form an upward line this evening. How straight the line is will depend on when and where you're viewing from.

-In a telescope Venus is a dramatically thin crescent, just 4% sunlit on May 25th and 3% on the 30th, and about 55 arcseconds tall. You can see its crescent shape with firmly braced binoculars.

May 30, 2012

-Saturn and Spica are well to the left of the Moon this evening. Less far below the Moon, look for the four-star pattern of Corvus, the Crow, as shown here.

May 29, 2012

-Bright Arcturus shines southeast of the zenith after dark. Vega, equally bright, shines less high in the east-northeast.

-A third of the way from Arcturus to Vega, look for dim Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, with its one modestly bright star, Alphecca. Two thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega is the dim Keystone of Hercules.

May 28, 2012

-Mars shines above the first-quarter Moon this evening.

-Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Virgo) shines high in the south at nightfall. Below it by nearly 5° is Spica, fainter and bluer. They set in the west before dawn.

May 27, 2012

-Look above the Moon this evening for Regulus and, higher and fainter, Gamma Leonis. To the left of these three is Mars.

-This week is the last chance to see Venus before the Transit of Venus June 5th. In a telescope Venus is a dramatically thin crescent, just 4% sunlit on May 25th and 3% on the 30th, and about 55 arcseconds tall. You may be able to see its crescent shape in binoculars. Venus is still a blazing magnitude -4.3, but will continue to get fainter as it sinks lower into the glare of the sun.

May 26, 2012

-By late evening the summer constellation Scorpius is well up in the south-southeast, as shown at right. Look for its brightest star, fire-colored Antares, the Scorpion's heart. Antares' "outrigger" stars are just below it and to its upper right. Farther upper right is the diagonal three-star row of Scorpius's head, topped by Beta Scorpii.

-This week is the last chance to see Venus before the Transit of Venus June 5th. In a telescope Venus is a dramatically thin crescent, just 4% sunlit on May 25th and 3% on the 30th, and about 55 arcseconds tall. You may be able to see its crescent shape in binoculars.

May 25, 2012

-Well to the right of the Moon this evening shine Pollux and Castor, the heads of the Gemini twins. They're lined up almost horizontally. Look well below the Moon for Procyon, one of the last remaining stars of the winter triangle in the evening sky.

-Venus is now at the peak of its evening drama, dropping faster into the bright sunset every day. How many more days can you follow it with your naked eyes? With binoculars? Don't confuse it with Capella about 20° to its upper right. See our article, Venus Takes the Plunge.

In a telescope Venus is a dramatically thin crescent, just 4% sunlit on May 25th and 3% on the 30th, and about 55 arcseconds tall. You may be able to see its crescent shape in binoculars.

May 24, 2012

-In a telescope, Venus is a dramatic, thin crescent becoming more interesting all the time. This week it enlarges from 50 to 54 arcseconds tall while waning from 10% to just 4% sunlit. You may even see the crescent with firmly braced binoculars.

-This evening Pollux and Castor are lined up above or upper right of the crescent Moon.

May 23, 2012

-Using the Moon and Venus as your guides, what fainter stars in the area can you identify with the chart here? Binoculars help. You will be looking at the stars of Gemini. Pollux and Castor are the 'heads' of the Gemini twins.

May 22, 2012

-After sunset, look for the thin two-day-old Moon left of Venus, as shown here. This is the last chance to see the moon and Venus beside each other for an entire year, so if weather permits you, don't miss out.

May 21, 2012

-Can you pick up this month's thin crescent Moon yet? During twilight in the Americas it's barely 24 hours old. (After all, it was in front of the Sun yesterday afternoon!) Using binoculars, look for it no more than a half hour after sunset well below Venus in the west-northwest, as shown at lower right.

May 20, 2012

-Partial/annular eclipse of the Sun! This afternoon, all but easternmost North America will experience at least a partial eclipse of the Sun. So will the Pacific and (on the morning of May 21st local date) the eastern half of Asia. The eclipse will become annular — with the rim of the Sun a brilliant ring surrounding the dark silhouette of the Moon — along a path from south China and parts of Japan across the Pacific to the California-Oregon coast and from there southeastward to end at sunset in Texas. Go here to read more about the eclipse. Also see the Upcoming Events tab in the main post for more specific information.

-Arcturus shines high in the southeastern sky after dark. Vega, equally bright, shines lower in the northeast. A third of the way from Arcturus to Vega, look for dim Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, with its one modestly bright star, Alphecca. Two thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega is the dim Keystone of Hercules.

-New Moon (exact at 7:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time).

May 19, 2012

-Venus, moving lower in the west every evening as twilight fades, is now 2° left of much fainter Beta Tauri, which has been descending almost in parallel with it. Have you been monitoring the crescent Venus this month?

-Partial/annular solar eclipse tomorrow! On Sunday afternoon, all but easternmost North America will experience at least a partial eclipse of the Sun. So will the Pacific and (on the morning of May 21st local date) the eastern half of Asia. The eclipse will become annular — with the rim of the Sun a brilliant ring surrounding the dark silhouette of the Moon — along a path from south China and parts of Japan across the Pacific to the California-Oregon coast and from there southeastward to end at sunset in Texas. If you are not in the path of the Eclipse, you can watch it happen online live here.[U

May 18, 2012

-Arcturus is the brightest star high in the southeast these evenings. It's the leading light of the constellation Bootes, the Herdsman. The main stars of Bootes form a narrow, bent kite shape extending left of Arcturus, nearly three fists at arm's length long. Or maybe the kite is a pointy-toed shoe, with Arcturus the tip of the toe. This constellation also holds the Bootes Void, a huge mass of space with almost no galaxies.

May 17, 2012

-The Summer Triangle is fully up in the east by about 11 p.m. Its top star is Vega, the brightest in the eastern sky. About two fist-widths to Vega's lower left is Deneb. Farther to Vega's lower right is Altair. If you have a dark sky, you'll see that the Milky Way runs through it.

May 16, 2012

-This is the time of year when the Big Dipper floats upside down at its highest due north when the stars come out. Far below it is Polaris. Far below Polaris, near or even below the horizon depending on your latitude, is W-shaped Cassiopeia.

May 15, 2012

-Arcturus shines high in the southeast after dark. Vega, equally bright, shines lower in the northeast. A third of the way from Arcturus to Vega look for dim Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, with its one modestly bright star, Alphecca.

-Two thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega is the dim Keystone of Hercules.

May 14, 2012

-The pair of points you'll find shining fairly high in the southeast at nightfall are Saturn and (to its lower right) Spica. Look to their lower right for the four-star pattern of Corvus, the Crow. Look farther to their upper left for brighter Arcturus, the "Spring Star."

-Jupiter is in conjunction behind the Sun.

May 13, 2012

-Use Venus, the bright landmark point in the west-northwest at dusk, to identify stars in the May twilight. Capella is to Venus's upper right. Pollux and Castor are farther to Venus's upper left, and Procyon is lower left of Pollux. These four stars form the enormous Twilight Arch of Spring.

-In a telescope, Venus is a crescent becoming more interesting all the time. It has enlarged to about 46 arcseconds tall while waning to about 15% sunlit; watch it changing daily. You may even see Venus's crescent shape with good, firmly braced binoculars. An arcminute is 1/360th of a degree. An arcsecond is 1/360th of an arcminute.

May 12, 2012

-Last-quarter Moon (exact at 5:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). The Moon rises in the middle of the night, looking lopsided and awkward in dim Aquarius.

-Keep an eye out for 2 very exciting events coming up. On May 20, we are featured to an annular solar eclipse, and June 5th brings us the Transit of Venus. The annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon is too far away from the Earth to successfully block the whole body of the sun, forming a "ring" of Sun. Hence the name, annular solar eclipse.

See here for an example:

May 11, 2012

-Brilliant Venus is dropping lower in the west-northwest every evening this month. A telescope shows it enlarging and waning in phase, as shown here; it's swinging ever closer to the line between us and the Sun. Look a little to its right for the much fainter star Beta Tauri. As of tonight the planet and star are 1½° apart.

May 10, 2012

-For deep-sky observers, a favorite springtime telescopic star-hop runs from the end of the Big Dipper's handle to the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, and on to the Sunflower Galaxy, M63.

-Venus is now a crescent about 42 arcseconds tall and 20% sunlit, waning and enlarging daily. Venus will transit the face of the Sun on June 5–6 (on the afternoon of the 5th for North America). This is the last transit of Venus until 2117. This will be talked about in great detail as this date approaches.

May 9, 2012

-Look for bright Vega moderately low in the northeast after darkness falls, and higher later. To Vega's lower right dangle fainter stars of the little constellation Lyra.

-Venus is now a crescent about 42 arcseconds tall and 20% sunlit, waning and enlarging daily. Venus will transit the face of the Sun on June 5–6 (on the afternoon of the 5th for North America). This is the last transit of Venus until 2117.

May 8, 2012

-The brightest star very high in the east these evenings is Arcturus. Look three fist-widths to its lower right for Saturn and, a little farther on, Spica.

-Mars in a telescope is gibbous and small, about 9.5 arcseconds wide, fading and shrinking each week. Regulus is about 7° Mars's right or lower right and moving farther from it daily. Fainter Gamma Leonis is 8° above Regulus.

May 7, 2012

-The waning gibbous Moon is up in the southeast by around 11 p.m., depending on where you live. Look about a fist-width to the Moon's right for fiery Antares. Around and upper right of Antares are other stars of Scorpius.

-Jupiter is lost in the glare of the Sun.

May 6, 2012

-Venus, the brilliant "Evening Star" in the west, is passing its closest to the star Beta Tauri, which is only 1/300 as bright at magnitude 1.6. During and after late twilight, look for the star 0.8° to Venus's upper right. That's about a pencil-width at arm's length.

Although they look close together, they're not. Venus is 3 light-minutes from us; Beta Tauri is 130 light-years in the background. Here is a personal photo of mine of the pair from last night.

May 5, 2012

-Full Moon (exact at 11:35 p.m. EDT), in Libra. This is the closest and largest full Moon of 2012, though not remarkably so. The Moon is 8% closer and larger than average, and only 0.16 magnitude brighter than average, so you'd need measuring tools to really tell. Take a look. What do you think?

The moon will rise at 8:16PM in Toronto. It will vary depending where you live. Use this to calculate when it will rise in your location.

May 4, 2012

-Look above the bright Moon this evening for Saturn and Spica, as shown here.

-The next 35 or so days will bring great drama to how we view the planet Venus, beginning as a "half-Venus" sunlit phase, Venus will sink quickly into the horizon, but not before it becomes a thinner, yet LARGER crescent. All this just before it's June 5th-6th transit of the sun. Read here for more details http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser...149763175.html

May 3, 2012[/CENTER]

-Saturn and Spica are left or lower left of the waxing gibbous Moon, as shown here. Look lower right of the Moon for the four-star pattern of Corvus, the Crow.

-The next 35 or so days will bring great drama to how we view the planet Venus, beginning as a "half-Venus" sunlit phase, Venus will sink quickly into the horizon, but not before it becomes a thinner, yet LARGER crescent. All this just before it's June 5th-6th transit of the sun. Read here for more details http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/Venus-Takes-the-Plunge-149763175.html

May 1, 2012

-The Moon forms the bottom of a big triangle with Mars to its upper right and Denebola, the tail star of Leo, to its upper left.

-This is the time of year when the Gemini twins stand upright in the west as darkness arrives. Their head stars, Pollux and Castor, are nearly horizontal (depending on your latitude). Lower left of them shines Procyon. Farther lower right of them is Capella. Stealing the show lower down this year is brilliant Venus.

April 30, 2012

-The Moon shines below Mars, Regulus, and Gamma Leonis (Algieba) this evening, as shown here.

-Venus is at its "greatest illuminated extent" — showing the most sunlit apparent area (in square arcseconds) that it's going to this apparition.

April 29, 2012

-The Moon shines near the Leo-Cancer border, forming a roughly straight line with, running to its left or upper left: 4th-magnitude Omicron Leonis, 1st-magnitude Regulus, and zero-magnitude Mars.

April 28, 2012

-Evenings this week sport three planet-and-star pairs. High in the south, Mars shines with Regulus to its right at dusk, lower right later. Down in the southeast, Saturn shines with Spica to its lower right. Both these pairs are now about 5° wide.

-Meanwhile in the west, dazzling Venus is approaching much fainter Beta Tauri (El Nath) above it. Tonight Venus and Beta Tauri are 3.5° apart. By Saturday May 5th their separation is just 0.9°.

April 27, 2012

-Look for Pollux and Castor, the not-quite-twin stars of Gemini, upper right of the Moon this evening. Lower left of the Moon shines Procyon.

-This evening a 9.7-magnitude star in Virgo will be occulted by the small asteroid 1030 Vitja along a path from the New York City area though the northern Great Lakes. The occultation will happen within a few minutes of 9:57 p.m. EDT and will last for up to 6 seconds. Maps and details.

April 26, 2012

-This evening the Moon is in the feet of Gemini, below Pollux and Castor and high above Betelgeuse.

-Mars (magnitude –0.2) shines fire-orange in Leo, high in the south at dusk and southwest later in the evening. Regulus is 5° to Mars's right or lower right. Fainter Gamma Leonis is 8° above them. Mars in a telescope is gibbous and small, 10.5 arcseconds wide, fading and shrinking weekly.

April 25, 2012

-The Moon shines amid (counting clockwise) Pollux and Castor above it, Auriga with Capella to its right, Venus to its lower right, Aldebaran more or less below it, Orion to its lower left, and Procyon farther to its upper left.

-After dusk, three 10th-magnitude asteroids await your probing scope in and around Leo. You will be looking for 5 Astraea, 6 Hebe, and 8 Flora.

April 24, 2012

-Venus is upper right of the crescent Moon this evening.

-Look high to Venus's upper right at dusk for Capella, to its lower left for Aldebaran, and farther to its lower right for the Pleiades. Far beneath Venus, Jupiter is sinking into the sunset.

April 23, 2012

-Look for the Pleiades to the right of the thin crescent Moon as twilight deepens, as shown here.

-With Saturn past opposition, say goodbye to the Seeliger effect, the opposition brightening of Saturn's rings. Here is a comparison image to demonstrate the effect

April 22, 2012

-Jupiter shines below a very thin crescent Moon very low in the west-northwest in twilight, shown below. Think photo opportunity.

April 21, 2012

-The weak but unpredictable Lyrid meteor shower should reach maximum activity in the hours before dawn Sunday morning. There will be no Moon. You might see a dozen Lyrids per hour under ideal dark-sky conditions before the beginning of dawn. Find more information about today's meteor shower here.

-New Moon (exact at 3:18 a.m. EDT on the 21st).

April 20, 2012

-Capella, Venus, and Aldebaran form an almost perfectly straight line in the western sky this evening and Saturday evening, in that order from upper right to lower left.

-The best time to examine Venus in a telescope is late afternoon or around sundown. It's now a thick crescent 33 arcseconds tall and 33% sunlit, waning and enlarging week by week as it swings closer to Earth. Venus will transit the face of the Sun on June 5–6 (the afternoon of the 5th for North America). A transit is an eclipse that does not completely cover the object because to us, it appears to small. This is the only Venusian transit you will get to experience.

April 19, 2012

-Bright Vega is now visible low in the northeast as early as 9:30 or 10 p.m. (depending on where you live). Bright Arcturus dominates the high sky due east. Look a third of the way from Arcturus to Vega for dim Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, with its one modestly bright star, Alphecca. Look two-thirds of the way from Arcturus to Vega for the dimmer Keystone of Hercules.

-Keep an eye out for the weak but unpredictable meteor shower which will peak saturday night-sunday morning. Read here for more.

April 18, 2012

-This is the time of year when the dim Little Dipper juts to the right from Polaris (its handle-end) at nightfall. The much brighter Big Dipper curls over high above it, "dumping water" straight down into it.

-Jupiter (magnitude –2.0) is sinking ever lower toward the sunset, far below Venus. It's rounding toward the far side of the Sun, which is why a telescope shows it a disappointingly small 33 arcseconds wide. In addition, Jupiter appears increasingly fuzzy at its ever-lower altitude.

April 17, 2012

-The eclipsing variable star Algol is at minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 10:44 p.m. EDT (9:44 p.m. CDT). This is the last chance till August to see Algol at minimum from the latitudes of the U.S.


-Mercury (magnitude +0.4) is deep in the glow of sunrise. It's having a very poor dawn apparition just above the eastern horizon.

-Keep careful watch on Saturn and its rings in a telescope. With Saturn at or near near opposition, notice the Seeliger effect: a temporary brightening of the rings with respect to the globe. This happens because the solid particles making up the rings backscatter sunlight (reflect it back in the direction it came from) more effectively than the planet's cloudtops do. Compare how the rings and globe look now with with how they look a week or more past opposition. By April 12th, three days before Saturn's opposition, the planet's rings had already brightened quite noticeably due to the Seeliger effect. South is up. A comparison image by the same photographer has been posted below.

April 16, 2012

-As twilight fades, Look for bright Sirius in the southwest, Orion's horizontal Belt off to the right (with Betelgeuse above it, Rigel below it), and Aldebaran and Venus farther to the right in the west. As it sinks ever lower in the west, notice how it starts twinkling more violently, even temporarily changing colours to yellows and reds. Why is this? As it lowers into the horizon, Sirius and other stars have more atmosphere to travel to from your eyes to the location of the star. Because of this, the light of the star is often distorted through the increased atmosphere and can be strong enough to change what colour rays reach your eyes. This is the same reason why the Sun rises reddish in colour, and why the moon also rises in a red-orange colour. It also explains their often distorted and enlarged shape. Take this picture of the sun for example.

-Mercury (magnitude +0.4) is deep in the glow of sunrise. It's having a very poor dawn apparition just above the eastern horizon.

-Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) is barely emerging into view low in the east-southeast before dawn's first light. Both of these planets were hidden in the glare of the sun last week.

April 15, 2012

-Venus (magnitude –4.6; in Taurus) is shining the highest and brightest it ever appears in the evening sky during its 8-year cycle of repeating apparitions. Venus comes into easy view high in the west soon after sunset. It doesn't set in the northwest until around 11 or even midnight daylight saving time (depending on where you live). You can see Venus through the clear blue sky of day if your eye lands right on it; look for it 44° (4 or 5 fist-widths at arm's length) to the Sun's celestial east-northeast.

Look high to Venus's upper right at dusk for Capella, to its lower left for Aldebaran, and to its lower right for the Pleiades. Far below Venus in twilight is Jupiter.

The best time to examine Venus in a telescope is late afternoon or around sunset. It's now a thick crescent 30 arcseconds tall and 40% sunlit, waning and enlarging week by week as it swings toward Earth.

-Keep careful watch on Saturn and its rings in a telescope. With Saturn at or near near opposition, notice the Seeliger effect: a temporary brightening of the rings with respect to the globe. This happens because the solid particles making up the rings backscatter sunlight (reflect it back in the direction it came from) more effectively than the planet's cloudtops do. Compare how the rings and globe look now with with how they look a week or more past opposition.

April 14, 2012

-Saturn is at opposition, opposite the Sun. It rises around sunset, shines highest in the middle of the night, and sets around sunrise. Telescope users: watch for the Seeliger effect, described under Saturn in "This Week's Planet Roundup" below.

-Mars ends its retrograde (westward) motion for the year and resumes heading east against the background stars. Watch it pull away from Regulus in the coming weeks: slowly at first, then faster.

April 13, 2012

-Summer preview: stay up until 11 and look northeast, and you'll get a preview of bright Vega, the "Summer Star" in little Lyra, climbing into good view. This is an astronomical sign that summer is approaching for North Americans.

-Last-quarter Moon (exact at 6:50 a.m. on this date EDT).

April 12, 2012

-Near the back leg of Leo is the asteroid 5 Astraea, about magnitude 9.6. Use this preview to track the location of the asteroid. It can be found on page 52.

-Toronto residents get the best view of the space station tonight of the month incase you missed the 2 passes last night. The next good pass is well over a week away, so take advantage of the weather. You will be looking for a bright white-yellow ball moving at a high speed (think about the speed of a plane, but only identifyable as a dot) beginning by cutting through Orion, past Gemini, and passing the Big Dipper, before passing Bootes and siappearing into the Corona Borealis constellation. Don't miss out on this one!

Pass A:


This pass rises above the horizon at 21:00:38, and enters the shadow of the Earth at 21:09:33. The maximum altitude time is 21:05:54, and it will appear 80 degrees high at its peak in the northwest - just 10 degrees shorter than the maximum.

Event Time Altitude Azimuth Distance (km)


Rises above horizon 21:00:38 -0° 239° (WSW) 2,288


Reaches 10° altitude 21:02:41 10° 241° (WSW) 1,439


Maximum altitude 21:05:54 80° 320° (NW ) 407


Enters shadow 21:09:33 8° 57° (ENE) 1,606


Drops below 10° altitude 21:09:10 10° 56° (ENE) 1,449

Use the following star map to get a feel for the location and how fast the space station travels throughout it's ~6 minute appearance. More details can be found in the link in "Pass A".

NOTE: These times are specifically calculated for TORONTO, ON. If you're interested and wish to have a shot at looking at the Space Station, open the "International Space Station Tracker" tab in this thread, and follow the instructions. Good luck, and don't blink! Binoculars are very helpful for picking out detail.

April 11, 2012

-With the Moon gone from the evening sky, it's deep-sky observing time again. Telescope users are familiar with the "Leo Trio" of galaxies (M65, M66, and NGC 3628) by the little chair asterism in the back leg of Leo. Can you detect M65 and M66 with binoculars?

-Toronto residents should consider the International Space Station Tracker as the Space Station makes very visible passes over the city tonight and an even brighter appearance tomorrow night at a reasonable hour. There will be two passes tonight:

Pass A:


This pass rises above the horizon at 20:20:54, and enters the shadow of the Earth at 20:30:09. The maximum altitude time is 20:25:52, and it will appear 26 degrees high at its peak. At it's peak it will appear in the Southeast.

Event Time Altitude Azimuth Distance (km)


Rises above horizon 20:20:54 -0° 209° (SSW) 2,283


Reaches 10° altitude 20:23:09 10° 196° (SSW) 1,435


Maximum altitude 20:25:52 26° 138° (SE ) 818


Enters shadow 20:30:09 3° 69° (ENE) 1,998


Drops below 10° altitude20:28:40 10° 78° (ENE) 1,446

Use the following star map to get a feel for the location and how fast the space station travels throughout it's ~6 minute appearance. More details can be found in the link in "Pass A".

Pass B:


This is the better of the two passes tonight. At its peak, the space station will be almost 300 km closer to us, and the sun will also have long set. The maximum altitude will be 45 degrees - halfway up the sky.

Event Time Altitude Azimuth Distance (km)


Rises above horizon 21:56:46 0° 253° (WSW) 2,292


Reaches 10° altitude 21:58:52 10° 260° (W ) 1,442


Maximum altitude 22:02:00 45° 335° (NNW) 553


Enters shadow 22:02:37 39° 10° (N ) 615

Use the following star map to get a feel for the location and how fast the space station travels throughout it's ~6 minute appearance. More details can be found in the link in "Pass B".

NOTE: These times are specifically calculated for TORONTO, ON. If you're interested and wish to have a shot at looking at the Space Station, open the "International Space Station Tracker" tab in this thread, and follow the instructions. Good luck, and don't blink!

April 10, 2012

-The bright star high to the upper right of Venus these evenings is Capella, the Goat Star. It's the same yellow-white color, and thus the same temperature, as the Sun. The wavelength of the star is a good measurement of indicating how hot a star is. It's also how we know the temperature of our own sun! The shorter the wavelength, the warmer the star. Wavelengths are also used to calculate how fast the star is moving to, or from us by how much it has redshifted (how much the elemental spectra of a star has moved to the longer end of the spectrum compared to the elemental spectra at rest state found here, and as such, is moving away) or blueshifted (how much the elemental spectra of a star has moved to the shorter end of the spectrum compared to the elemental spectra at rest state found here, and as such, is heading towards us). The greater the shift, the faster the object is moving to or from us.

-You can see Venus in the clear blue sky of daytime, if your eye lands right on it. The best time to examine Venus in a telescope is late afternoon or around sunset. It's now a thick crescent that has grown to 27 arcseconds tall as it rounds the Sun and approaches Earth.

April 9, 2012

-The Big Dipper, high in the northeast, dumps water into the dim Little Dipper during evening at this time of year.

-Jupiter is sinking ever lower toward the sunset far below Venus. Jupiter is rounding toward the far side of the Sun, which is why a telescope shows it a disappointingly small 33 arcseconds wide. In addition, Jupiter appears increasingly fuzzy at its ever-lower altitude.

April 8, 2012

-As twilight fades down, Look for bright Sirius in the southwest, Orion's horizontal Belt off to the right, and Aldebaran and Venus farther to the right in the west. They all form a long, almost straight line. The line is horizontal if you live near latitude 38° north.

-Venus (magnitude –4.6; in Taurus) shines very high and ever more brilliant in the west during and after twilight. It doesn't set now until some 2½ hours after dark. This is just about as high and bright as Venus ever becomes in its 8-year cycle of apparitions. Look to its lower right for the Pleiades, and to its left for orange Aldebaran.

April 7, 2012

-The bright Moon rises around the end of twilight below Saturn and Spica in the east-southeast. Later in the evening the three shine higher: a long, narrow triangle with the Moon at the bottom.

-Saturn (magnitude +0.2, in Virgo) is at opposition April 15th. This week it rises almost around sunset and stands highest in the south around 1 or 2 a.m. daylight-saving time. Shining 5½° to Saturn's right is Spica: fainter, bluer, and twinklier.

-Keep careful watch on Saturn and its rings in a telescope. In the days leading up to opposition, watch for the Seeliger effect: a brightening of the rings with respect to the globe. This happens because the solid particles making up the rings backscatter sunlight (reflect it back in the direction it came from) more effectively than the planet's cloudtops do.

April 6, 2012

-Full Moon (exact at 3:19 p.m. EDT). This evening the Moon shines in the east with Spica a little to its left and Saturn farther left — a pretty lineup, as shown here. Farther to the Moon's right, look for the four-star pattern of Corvus, the Crow. Much farther to the upper left (outside the picture here) is bright Arcturus, the "Spring Star."

-Mars (magnitude –0.7) shines bright fire-orange under the belly of Leo. Regulus is 5° to Mars's right in the evening, and Gamma Leonis is 7° above it. Mars was at opposition on March 3rd. Now it's fading and shrinking as Earth pulls ahead of it along our faster, inside-track orbit around the Sun. But at least Mars is shining higher in the evening sky now. It's highest in the south by around 10 or 11 p.m. daylight-saving time.

April 5, 2012

-The Moon is nearly full this evening. Look left of it for Gamma (γ) Virginis (Porrima), a tight telescopic double star. (Its separation is 1.8 arcseconds this spring; it's widening year by year). Look farther lower left of the Moon for steady-shining Saturn and twinkly Spica, as shown here. And look to the Moon's lower right for the four-star pattern of the constellation Corvus, the Crow.

April 4, 2012

-Two planet-and-star pairings mark the evening sky of spring 2012. After nightfall this week, Mars shines high in the south with Regulus to its right (by 5°). As evening advances, Saturn rises into view low in the east-southeast with Spica to its right (by 5½°).

April 3, 2012

-The Moon now forms the bottom point of a narrow triangle with Mars and Regulus, as shown below.

-Venus is the closest it will come to the middle of the Pleiades. This evening for the Americas, Venus is passing just ½° southeast of Alcyone (the brightest Pleiad) and ¼° south of the Atlas-Pleione pair. Venus is magnitude –4.5, which means Alcyone, at magnitude 2.85, is 900 times fainter!

-Saturn rises with Spica in Virgo late in the evening, clearly visible by midnight.

April 2, 2012

-Venus is passing through the outskirts of the Pleiades this evening through Wednesday evening, as shown below. Binoculars or a wide-field telescope give a fine view of the delicate cluster behind Venus's overpowering glare.

-The waxing gibbous Moon forms a slightly curving line with Mars and Regulus, as shown below.

April 1, 2012

-The Belt of Orion points left toward Sirius, and right toward Aldebaran and (farther on) brilliant Venus. The winter constellations continue to sink in the west as April rolls in.

-Look for Venus to dance with the Pleiades between now and April 5! This is the best chance to understand the Pleiades' location in the sky and how they look like in general.

-That V-Shaped cluster with the brilliant red star Alderbaran manning the top of the V is the other popular star cluster, the Hyades. It is much closer to us, and as such spans about 5 degrees of the sky. Aldebaran is actually not part of the cluster however, it's merely a red giant that happens to be in the line of sight between the Earth and the cluster.

Previous Month:
March 31, 2012

-The Moon shines high in the southwest this evening. It forms a gently curving line (as seen from North America) with Pollux and Castor to its upper right and Procyon below it. Procyon is one of the 3 stars in the Winter Triangle, and as it sets earlier and earlier every day, it's an astronomical sign spring and summer are upon us.

March 30, 2012

-First-quarter Moon (exact at 3:41 p.m. EDT). The Moon shines in the legs of Gemini, below Pollux and Castor and high above sinking Betelgeuse.

-Saturn is high in the south by 1:00 a.m. near Spica.

March 29, 2012

-This is the time of year when the dim Little Dipper juts to the right from Polaris (its handle-end) during evening hours. The much brighter Big Dipper curls over high above it, "dumping water" into it.

-This is also the time of year when Orion, declining in the southwest after dark, displays his three-star Belt more or less horizontally.

March 28, 2012

-Do you have a pair of binoculars? Are you familiar with them? Today we turn our attention to the constellation of Cancer, where the relatively subtle constellation secretly has a few hidden treasures. The most obvious of them is M44, the Beehive Cluster. M67 is a fainter cluster a little further south of Cancer, and Iota Cancri, in my opinion the toughest of the 3 to distinguish, is a double star of 2 stars with similar brightness. It is difficult because they are two stars, 4th and 6th magnitude, that are very close together from our vantage point and may be difficult to distinguish from.

-The eclipsing variable star Algol should be at minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 9:00 p.m. EDT.

March 27, 2012
-As night comes on, look for the little Pleiades cluster to the lower right of the Moon and above Venus. Left of the Moon shines orange Aldebaran, with the stars of the Hyades around it.

-Early Wednesday morning, along a path from New Mexico to central California, the 6.8-magnitude star 14 Virginis will be occulted low in the west-southwestern sky by the small asteroid 823 Sisigambis. The star should vanish for no more than 1.6 seconds within several minutes of 11:23 Universal Time.

March 26, 2012

-If you missed yesterday's Jupiter-moon pair, don't worry, there is one more chance tonight. This time, the Moon-Venus pair will dominate the night sky, with the Moon being on the left hand side of the pair. In reality, Venus is 260 times farther away from us than the Moon. Venus is at its greatest elongation, 46 degrees east of the Sun, making this the best time to spot Venus during daylight hours. How early can YOU spot Venus? I have been able to as early as 80 minutes before sunset.

March 25, 2012

-The moon visits Jupiter today in the west this evening. Make sure you get a good look tonight, because you won't see Jupiter and the Moon this close again until April 22, but then there will be a much thinner moon, and an ever fainter Jupiter buried deep in bright twilight. It will be several months before such a pairing is seen after that. Use this chart to find Jupiter before the sun sets!

March 24, 2012

-In order from highest to lowest, Venus, Jupiter, and the thin crescent moon form a bent line in the west and are evenly spread apart tonight.

-As darkness deepens, look for the Pleiades (M45) just above Venus. The bent line points to them!

March 23, 2012

-Look low in the west about a half hour after sunset, below Venus and Jupiter and perhaps a little right, for the very thin crescent Moon in the bright twilight — as shown at bottom-right here.

March 22, 2012

-Our familiar Venus and Jupiter scene in the west has now shifted into a vertical pillar. Venus is 6 degrees directly above Jupiter (there may be slight variance depending on your location.)

-New Moon (exact at 10:37 a.m. EDT).

March 21, 2012

-The moon is out of the sky long enough to do some serious deep sky hunting. Have you heard of the messier objects? Messier was a comet hunter who generated a list of objects that were -not- comets, and passed this list on to other comet hunters. This list generated 110 objects, and is mostly galaxies, with a fair amount of star clusters. Some nebulae exist too. Refer to here for the complete list of Messier's catalogue.

March 20, 2012

-This is the time of year when the dim Little Dipper juts to the right from Polaris (found in the constellation's its handle end) during evening hours. The much brighter Big Dipper curls over high above it, "dumping water" into it.

-This is also the time of year when Orion declines in the southwest after dark with his Belt roughly horizontal. But when does Orion's Belt appear exactly horizontal? That depends on where you're located east-west in your time zone, and on your latitude. How accurately can you time this event at your location? Orion's Belt is slightly curved, so judge by the two stars on its ends. Can you rig up a sighting reference to make your measurement more precise? Welcome to pre-telescopic astronomy!

March 19, 2012

-Spring begins in the northern hemisphere tonight at 1:14am Tuesday EST, 10:14pm Monday PST when the sun crosses the equator on its way north. Now the sun rises and sets almost due east and west, and day and night are equally long. Autumn begins in the Southern Hemisphere.

-In the northern hemisphere, look northwest for the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia, now standing on its end.

March 18, 2012

-Mars is that bright orange strucutre found in Leo, on the opposite side of the sky from the Jupiter-Venus combo. It is 7 degrees from the fainter star, Regulus. Mars is beginning to fade a bit as Earth pulls ahead of Mars in their respective orbits around the sun. Use the solar system orbit chart to help visualize this.

March 17, 2012

-Have you heard of the Winter Triangle? It contains 3 of some of the brightest stars in the night sky for the northern hemisphere, and it's an equilateral triangle! The brightest of the 3 stars is Sirius, which is found in Canis Major. It is the blue looking star in the southwest. To it's upper right is the red star Betelgeuse, found on the shoulder of Orion. To the left is Procyon found in Canis Minor. All 3 are bright enough to be seen anywhere, no matter how light polluted you are. Did you know Procyon is expected to expand and turn into a red giant at any time? We could witness it happen tomorrow, or 10,000 years from now.

March 16, 2012

-Jupiter and Venus have separated to 4.0 degrees now. Still notably close, but nothing compared to the 13th.

-Comet Garradd at 7th magnitude passes within 1/4 of a degree of 4th magnitude star Lambda Draconis. One of the best nights to try and discover this comet! Good luck on your quest to photograph or observe it.

March 15, 2012

-Those in the mid northern latitudes of North America get a special treat this time of year; this is the greatest time of year to see the bulk of the milky way in the evening. Look east-southeast of of Canis Major in the constellation Puppis. A telescope will serve you well here.

March 14, 2012

-The moon reaches its last quarter phase tonight at exactly 9:25pm EST. It quietly rises in the middle of the night, and it's just above the teapot of Saggitarius at dawn.

March 13, 2012

-Jupiter and Venus are at their closest point together for the next few years today.

-Comet Garradd (At magnitude 6.5) is the brightest and longet lasting comet the northern hemisphere has had in recent memory. It will spend the next two or so days crossing Kappa Draconis in the constellation Draco. Unless you live out of the city, it may be worthless looking for the comet, as light pollution erodes all but the best of it. Use this chart to find the comet as it makes its way towards the Big Dipper.

March 12, 2012

-Jupiter and Venus are just 3.1 degrees apart today in the west. They are at their closest tomorrow where they appear exactly 3.0 degrees away from each other. Today however, they appear exactly level with each other.

-After locating Jupiter and Venus, at around 8:00pm EST turn 170 degrees at the same level to your left. You will see a red dot, this is Mars calmly rising in the East. Mars is at its highest around 1 in the morning. It appears 13.8 arcseconds wide in a telescope, the largest it will appear until 2014.

March 11, 2012

-As the moon wanes, a perfectly clear sky and an area that is not light polluted unlocks the chance to track Comet Garradd. Garradd has been visible since January, as it slowly makes it's way across the inner solar system, and will be visible until April. It is currently on its way to pass the Big Dipper, and today it wedges itself nicely between the big dipper and the little dipper. Use This Comet Tracker Guide to help you discover the comet! It's coming in at a magnitude 6.5 though, so you will need a telescope to find it. Under a light polluted city, humans cannot see fainter than magnitude 4-5. (I can see M42 which is Magnitude 4.0 from where I live at the beach of Toronto, but I cannot see it in the heart of Toronto. Location in a city makes a big difference too!)

March 10, 2012

-The most obvious one if you don't know this already is the Jupiter-Venus conjunction. If you wondered what those two bright 'stars' are in the west, it is Jupiter (the dimmer 'star') and Venus (the brighter 'star'). On March 12, the lower Venus crosses paths with Jupiter and are just 3 degrees apart from each other - close enough to be seen in a single view with binoculars. Great photo opportunity! Weather permitting, these two planets are near impossible to miss, even to those who live in the most polluted of cities. Use SkyandTelescope's picture to help picture what the two should look like over a given day:

-This is a great month to view Saturn, who rises in the east around 10-11pm depending on DST or not, if you have a telescope or even a good pair of binoculars, you will see Saturn's rings are tilted 15 degrees towards us. In a picture it looks like this:

Astro Pic of the Day Archive March 10, 2012 - August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

Source:
The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this tantalizing image, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, about 6 light-years across, which surrounds the brighter, familiar planetary nebula. Made with narrow and broadband data the composite picture shows the remarkably strong extended emission from twice ionized oxygen atoms in blue-green hues and ionized hydrogen and nitrogen in red. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. But recently many planetaries have been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier active episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years.

August 30, 2012

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As far as pulsars go, PSR B1509-58 appears young. Light from the supernova explosion that gave birth to it would have first reached Earth some 1,700 years ago. The magnetized, 20 kilometer-diameter neutron star spins 7 times per second, a cosmic dynamo that powers a wind of charged particles. The energetic wind creates the surrounding nebula's X-ray glow in this tantalizing image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Low energy X-rays are in red, medium energies in green, and high energies in blue. The pulsar itself is in the bright central region. Remarkably, the nebula's tantalizing, complicated structure resembles a hand. PSR B1509-58 is about 17,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Circinus. At that distance the Chandra image spans 100 light-years.

August 29, 2012

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There is something very unusual in this picture of the Earth - can you find it? A fleeting phenomenon once thought to be only a legend has been newly caught if you know just where to look. The above image was taken from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) in late April and shows familiar ISS solar panels on the far left and part of a robotic arm to the far right. The rarely imaged phenomenon is known as a red sprite and it can be seen, albeit faintly, just over the bright area on the image right. This bright area and the red sprite are different types of lightning, with the white flash the more typical type. Although sprites have been reported anecdotally for as long as 300 years, they were first caught on film in 1989 - by accident. Much remains unknown about sprites including how they occur, their effect on the atmospheric global electric circuit, and if they are somehow related to other upper atmospheric lightning phenomena such as blue jets or terrestrial gamma flashes.

August 28, 2012

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Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark. Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.

August 27, 2012

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Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. In fact, the features seen in the Cat's Eye are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright central object may actually be a binary star system. The term planetary nebula, used to describe this general class of objects, is misleading. Although these objects may appear round and planet-like in small telescopes, high resolution images reveal them to be stars surrounded by cocoons of gas blown off in the late stages of stellar evolution.

August 26, 2012

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A human first set foot on another world on July 20, 1969. This world was Earth's own Moon. In honor of Armstrong's death, today's picture of the day is a digitally restored video of this milestone in human history. Pictured above is Neil Armstrong preparing to take the historic first step. On the way down the Lunar Module ladder, Armstrong released equipment which included the television camera that recorded this fuzzy image. Pictures and voice transmissions were broadcast live to a world wide audience estimated at one fifth of the world's population. The Apollo Moon landings have since been described as the greatest technological achievement the world has known.

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On that same July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first to walk on the Moon. This panorama of their landing site sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Moon's Sea of Tranquility, with their Lunar Module, the Eagle, in the background at the far left. East Crater, about 30 meters wide and 4 meters deep, is on the right (scroll right), and was so named because it is about 60 meters east of the Lunar Module. Armstrong had piloted the Eagle safely over the crater. Near the end of his stay on the lunar surface Armstrong strayed far enough from the Lunar Module to take the pictures used to construct this wide-angle view, his shadow appearing at the panorama's left edge. The object near the middle foreground is a stereo close-up camera.

August 25, 2012

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In cosmic brush strokes of glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape unfolds across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy and the center of the northern constellation Cygnus the Swan. Recorded from a premier remote observatory site (ROSA) in southern France, the image spans about 6 degrees. Bright supergiant star Gamma Cygni near image center lies in the foreground of the complex gas and dust clouds and crowded star fields. Left of Gamma Cygni, shaped like two luminous wings divided by a long dark dust lane is IC 1318, whose popular name is understandably the Butterfly Nebula. The more compact, bright nebula at the lower right is NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula. Some distance estimates for Gamma Cygni place it at around 750 light-years while estimates for IC 1318 and NGC 6888 range from 2,000 to 5,000 light-years.

August 24, 2012

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Rising in the dark hours before dawn, wandering Venus now shines as the brilliant morning star. Its close conjunction with the Moon on August 13 was appreciated around planet Earth. But skygazers in eastern Asia were also treated to a lunar occultation, the waning crescent Moon passing directly in front of the bright planet in still dark skies. This composite image constructed from frames made at 10 minute intervals follows the celestial performance (vimeo video) from above the city lights and clouds over Taebaek, Korea. The occultation begins near the horizon and progresses as the pair rises. Venus first disappears behind the Moon's sunlit crescent, emerging before dawn from the dark lunar limb.

August 23, 2012

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During the past week, nightfall on planet Earth has featured Mars, Saturn, and Spica in a lovely conjunction near the western horizon. Still forming the corners of a distinctive celestial triangle after sunset and recently joined by a crescent Moon, they are all about the same brightness but can exhibit different colors to the discerning eye. This ingenious star trail image was recorded as the trio set on August 12 with a telephoto lens from the shores of Lake Eppalock, in central Victoria, Australia. Focused on foreground eucalyptus trees, the image slightly blurs the trails to show more saturated colors. Can you guess which trail is which? Of course the reddest trail is Mars, with Saturn on the right a paler echo of the Red Planet's hue. Left is hot and luminous Spica, bluish alpha star of the constellation Virgo.

August 22, 2012

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Is that a cloud hovering over the Sun? Yes, but it is quite different than a cloud hovering over the Earth. The long light feature on the left of the above color-inverted image is actually a solar filament and is composed of mostly charged hydrogen gas held aloft by the Sun's looping magnetic field. By contrast, clouds over the Earth are usually much cooler, composed mostly of tiny water droplets, and are held aloft by upward air motions because they are weigh so little. The above filament was captured on the Sun about two weeks ago near the active solar region AR 1535 visible on the right with dark sunspots. Filaments typically last for a few days to a week, but a long filament like this might hover over the Sun's surface for a month or more. Some filaments trigger large Hyder flares if they suddenly collapse back onto the Sun.

August 21, 2012

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What happens to matter that falls toward an energetic black hole? In the case of Cygnus X-1, perhaps little of that matter actually makes it in. Infalling gas may first collide not only with itself but with an accretion disk of swirling material surrounding the black hole. The result may be a microquasar that glows across the electromagnetic spectrum and produces powerful jets that expel much of the infalling matter back into the cosmos at near light speed before it can even approach the black hole's event horizon. Confirmation that black hole jets may create expanding shells has come recently from the discovery of shells surrounding Cygnus X-1. Pictured above on the upper right is one such shell quite possibly created by the jet of microquasar and black hole candidate Cygnus X-1. Rolling your cursor over the image will bring up an annotated version. The physical processes that create the black hole jets is a topic that continues to be researched.

August 20, 2012

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What's happening near the center of this cluster of galaxies? At first glance, it appears that several strangely elongated galaxies and fully five bright quasars exist there. In reality, an entire cluster of galaxies is acting as a gigantic gravitational lens that distorts and multiply-images bright objects that occur far in the distance. The five bright white points near the cluster center are actually images of a single distant quasar. This Hubble Space Telescope image is so detailed that even the host galaxy surrounding the quasar is visible. Close inspection of the above image will reveal that the arced galaxies at 2 and 4 o'clock are actually gravitationally lensed images of the same galaxy. A third image of that galaxy can be found at about 10 o'clock from the cluster center. Serendipitously, numerous strange and distant galaxies dot the above image like colorful jewels. The cluster of galaxy that acts as the huge gravitational lens is cataloged as SDSS J1004+4112 and lies about 7 billion light years distant toward the constellation of Leo Minor.

August 19, 2012

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I visited Wasaga Beach for the weekend, and head home in just over a few hours as of this post, but I noticed that it was a particularily clear and moonless night - a rather cool night also helped improve atmospheric seeing conditions. I brought my camera up with me just like I do every time I head up here, and planted myself at a small urban park and could easily see Saggitarious's Tea Pot and Scorpius pulling the milky way - however I could not see the milky way myself at this point. From my prior experience in Cyprus Lake However (the 2nd picture), I knew that Scorpius pulls the bulge of the milky way. So I positioned my camera accordingly and this was the result. After taking a few photos of 2 minute exposures each, I could see the faint, washed out milky way for myself; even though Wasaga Beach does have a large amount of street lights. I suppose it is very helpful that the bulge of the milky way was in the west - precisely where huge Lake Huron borders the town here. These 2 shots are the same part of the Milky Way - the only difference is the amount of light pollution near by. The top photo is in the middle of Wasaga Beach, the second photo is 400km from my home city.

August 18, 2012

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What does the Curiosity rover look like on Mars? To help find out, NASA engineers digitally synthesized multiple navigation camera images taken last week into what appears to be the view of a single camera. Besides clods of Martian dirt, many of Curiosity's science instruments are visible and appear in good shape. Near the middle of the rover is an augmented reality tag intended to enable smartphones to provide background information. Far in the distance is a wall of Gale Crater. As Curiosity will begin to roll soon, its first destination has now been chosen: an intriguing intersection of three types of terrain named Glenelg.

August 17, 2012

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Magnificent island universe NGC 5033 lies some 40 million light-years away in the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. This telescopic portrait reveals striking details of dust lanes winding near the galaxy's bright core and majestic but relatively faint spiral arms. Speckled with pink star forming regions and massive blue star clusters, the arms span over 100,000 light-years, similar in size to our own spiral Milky Way. A well-studied example of the class of Seyfert active galaxies, NGC 5033 has a core that is very bright and variable. The emission is likely powered by a supermassive black hole. The bright nucleus and rotational center of the galaxy also seem to be slightly offset, suggesting NGC 5033 is the result of an ancient galaxy merger.

August 16, 2012

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NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This colorful portrait of the nebula uses narrow band image data combined in the Hubble palatte. It shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula in red, green and blue hues. NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.

August 15, 2012

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If you could stand on Mars, what would you see? The above image is a digitally re-colored approximation of what you might see if the above Martian landscape had occurred on Earth. Images from Mars false-colored in this way are called white balanced and useful for planetary scientists to identify rocks and landforms similar to Earth. The image is a high resolution version of a distant wall of Gale Crater captured by the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars last week. A corresponding true colour image exists showing how this scene actually appears on Mars. The robotic Curiosity rover continues to check itself over and accept new programming from Earth before it begins to roll across Mars and explore a landscape that has the appearance of being an unusually layered dried river bed.

August 14, 2012

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Where will the next Perseid meteor appear? Sky enthusiasts who trekked outside for the Perseid meteor shower that peaked over the past few days typically had this question on their mind. Six meteors from this past weekend are visible in the above stacked image composite, including one bright fireball streaking along the band of the background Milky Way Galaxy. All Perseid meteors appear to come from the shower radiant in the constellation of Perseus. Early reports about this year's Perseids indicate that as many as 100 meteors per hour were visible from some dark locations during the peak. The above digital mosaic was taken near Weikersheim, Germany.

August 13, 2012

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What would it be like to fly through the universe? Possibly the best simulated video of this yet has been composed from recently-released galaxy data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Every spot in the above video is a galaxy containing billions of stars. Many galaxies are part of huge clusters, long filaments, or small groups, while expansive voids nearly absent of galaxies also exist. The movie starts by flying right through a large nearby cluster of galaxies and later circles the SDSS-captured universe at about 2 billion light years (a redshift of about 0.15) from Earth. Analyses of galaxy positions and movements continues to bolster the case that our universe contains not only the bright matter seen, like galaxies, but also a significant amount of unseen dark matter and dark energy.

August 12, 2012

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This galaxy is having a bad millennium. In fact, the past 100 million years haven't been so good, and probably the next billion or so will be quite tumultuous. Visible on the upper left, NGC 4038 used to be a normal spiral galaxy, minding its own business, until NGC 4039, toward its right, crashed into it. The evolving wreckage, known famously as the Antennae, is pictured above. As gravity restructures each galaxy, clouds of gas slam into each other, bright blue knots of stars form, massive stars form and explode, and brown filaments of dust are strewn about. Eventually the two galaxies will converge into one larger spiral galaxy. Such collisions are not unusual, and even our own Milky Way Galaxy has undergone several in the past and is predicted to collide with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years. The frames that compose this image were taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope by professional astronomers to better understand galaxy collisions. These frames -- and many other deep space images from Hubble -- have since been made public, allowing an interested amateur to download and process them into this visually stunning composite.

August 11, 2012

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You've just landed on Mars and opened your eyes - what do you see? If you're the Curiosity rover, you see a strange gravelly place with a large mountain in the distance. You've landed on target near the edge of 150-km wide Gale Crater, with Mount Sharp on the horizon being the rise in the crater's center. As a car-sized rover with six wheels and a laser, you prepare yourself to go on a two-year mission of exploration, climbing Mt. Sharp, and looking for signs that Mars once harbored life. Currently you sit motionless, check yourself over, and receive a detailed briefing from Earth on things you will need to know while rolling around, trying to avoid flipping over or getting your wheels stuck in sand. Your rolling explorations will likely start in a few days. What will you find? What's out there?

August 10, 2012

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Denizens of planet Earth watched last year's Perseid meteor shower by looking up into the bright moonlit night sky. But this remarkable view captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan looks down on a Perseid meteor. From Garan's perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust left from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is right of frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus. Want to look up at this year's Perseid meteor shower? You're in luck. This weekend the shower should be near its peak, with less interference from a waning crescent Moon rising a few hours before the Sun. The best time to view the showers will be around midnight tomorrow EST.

August 9, 2012

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Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of the glowing gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The entire nebula might even look like a face of a monster. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to be dangerous. Energetic light from this star is eating away the dust of the dark cometary globule at the top right of the image. Jets and winds of particles emitted from this star are also pushing away ambient gas and dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the IC 1396 complex is relatively faint and covers a region on the sky with an apparent width of more than 10 full moons. Recently, over 100 young stars have been discovered forming in the nebula.

August 8, 2012

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Just as it captured the Phoenix lander parachuting to Mars in 2008, the HiRise camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) snapped this picture of the Curiosity rover's spectacular descent toward its landing site on August 5 (PDT). The nearly 16 meter (51 foot) wide parachute and its payload are caught dropping through the thin martian atmosphere above plains just north of the sand dune field that that borders the 5 kilometer high Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater. The MRO spacecraft was about 340 kilometers away when the image was made. From MRO's perspective the parachute is flying at an angle to the surface so the landing site itself does not appear below it. Dangling from tethers and still about 3 kilometers above Mars, Curiosity and its rocket powered sky crane have not yet been deployed.

August 7, 2012

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A wheel attached to NASA's Curiosity rover is firmly on the martian surface in this early picture from the Mars Science Laboratory mission, captured after a successful landing on August 5, 2012 at 10:32pm (PDT). Seen at the lower right of a Hazard Avoidance Camera fisheye wide-angle image, the rover's left rear wheel is 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) in diameter. Part of a spring hinge for the camera's dust cover is just visible in the right corner, while at the upper left is part of the rover's RTG power source. Looking into the Sun across the rock stewn surface of Mars, distant hills on the right are the rim of Gale Crater, about 20 kilometers from the compact car-sized rover's current resting place. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover's mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed.

August 6, 2012
Noctournal:
Have you ever seen the night sky change? It does -- sometimes in beautiful and unexpected ways. To see it, though, usually requires patience. The above award winning video shows several of the possible changes in dramatic fashion with a time lapse video. Visible are sunset-illuminated clouds moving, stars of vivid colors rising, the long tail of a Comet Lovejoy rising, bright satellites crossing, a meteor exploding, a distant lightning storm approaching, skyscapes including the Magellanic Clouds rotating, and a fisheye sky rotating while the foreground becomes illuminated by moonlight. Frequently featuring an artistic human sculpture in the foreground and the southern sky in the background, the video closes with a time lapse clip of a total lunar eclipse.

August 5, 2012

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Stunning emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Energized by the bright, bluish central star seen here, this star forming region sprawls across hundreds of light-years -- spanning over three degrees on the sky while nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth. Among the intriguing dark shapes within IC 1396, the winding Elephant's Trunk nebula lies just below center. The gorgeous color view is a composition of digitized black and white photographic plates recorded through red and blue astronomical filters. The plates were taken using the Samuel Oschin Telescope, a wide-field survey instrument at Palomar Observatory, between 1989 and 1993.

August 4, 2012

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Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar apparition has a surprisingly familiar shape. Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and right of the Bubble's center is a hot, O star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and around 45 times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This view of the cosmic bubble is composed of narrowband and broadband image data, capturing details in the emission region while recording a natural looking field of stars.

August 3, 2012

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"Beautiful Nebula discovered between the Balance [Libra] & the Serpent [Serpens] ..." begins the description of the 5th entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous catalog of nebulae and star clusters. Though it appeared to Messier to be fuzzy and round and without stars, Messier 5 (M5) is now known to be a globular star cluster, 100,000 stars or more, bound by gravity and packed into a region around 165 light-years in diameter. It lies some 25,000 light-years away. Roaming the halo of our galaxy, globular star clusters are ancient members of the Milky Way. M5 is one of the oldest globulars, its stars estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old. The beautiful star cluster is a popular target for earthbound telescopes. Even close to its dense core, the cluster's red and blue giant stars stand out with yellowish and blue hues in this sharp color image.

August 2, 2012

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No star dips below the horizon and the Sun never climbs above it in this remarkable image of 24 hour long star trails. Showing all the trails as complete circles, such an image could be achieved only from two places on planet Earth. This example was recorded during the course of May 1, 2012, the digital camera in a heated box on the roof of MAPO, the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory at the South Pole. Directly overhead in the faint constellation Octans is the projection of Earth's rotational axis, the South Celestial Pole, at the center of all the star trail circles. Not so well placed as Polaris and the North Celestial Pole, the star leaving the small but still relatively bright circle around the South Celestial Pole is Beta Hydri. The inverted umbrella structure on the horizon at the right of the allsky field of view is the ground shield for the SPUD telescope. A shimmering apparition of the aurora australis also visited on this 24 hour night.

August 1, 2012

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You don't have to be at Monument Valley to see the Milky Way arch across the sky like this -- but it helps. Only at Monument Valley USA would you see a picturesque foreground that includes these iconic rock peaks called buttes. Buttes are composed of hard rock left behind after water has eroded away the surrounding soft rock. In the above image taken about two months ago, the closest butte on the left and the butte to its right are known as the Mittens, while Merrick Butte can be seen just further to the right. High overhead stretches a band of diffuse light that is the central disk of our spiral Milky Way Galaxy. The band of the Milky Way can be spotted by almost anyone on almost any clear night when far enough from a city and surrounding bright lights.

July 31, 2012

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Why does this Martian rock have so much zinc? Roughly the size and shape of a tilted coffee-table, this oddly flat, light-topped rock outcropping was chanced upon a few weeks ago by the robotic Opportunity rover currently rolling across Mars. Early last month Opportunity reached Endeavour crater, the largest surface feature it has ever encountered, and is now exploring Endeavour's rim for clues about how wet Mars was billions of years ago. Pictured above and named Tisdale 2, the unusual rock structure was probed by Opportunity last week and is now thought to be a remnant thrown off during the impact that created nearby Odyssey crater. The resulting chemical analysis of Tisdale 2, however, has shown it to have a strangely high amount of the element zinc. The reason for this is currently unknown, but might turn out to be a clue to the history of the entire region. Opportunity is already finding rocks older than any previously studied and will continue to explore several other intriguing rock formations only now glimpsed from a distance.

July 30, 2012

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Why did the picturesque 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash? Although the large ash plume was not unparalleled in its abundance, its location was particularly noticeable because it drifted across such well-populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland began erupting on 2010 March 20, with a second eruption starting under the center of a small glacier on 2010 April 14. Neither eruption was unusually powerful. The second eruption, however, melted a large amount of glacial ice which then cooled and fragmented lava into gritty glass particles that were carried up with the rising volcanic plume. Pictured above during the second eruption, lightning bolts illuminate ash pouring out of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

July 29, 2012

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In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster of the largest, hottest, most massive stars known. These stars, known collectively as star cluster R136, were captured above in visible light by the newly installed Wide Field Camera peering though the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope. Gas and dust clouds in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. The 30 Doradus Nebula lies within a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud and is located a mere 170,000 light-years away.

July 28, 2012

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Brilliant Venus and bright Jupiter still rise together before dawn. The peaceful waters by a small lakeside house near Stuttgart, Germany reflect their graceful arcing trails in this composited series of exposures, recorded on the morning of July 26. A reflection of planet Earth's rotation on its axis, the concentric trails of these celestial beacons along with trails of stars are punctuated at their ends by a separate final frame in the morning skyview. Easy to pick out, Venus is brightest and near the trees close to the horizon. Jupiter arcs above it, toward the center of the image along with the compact Pleiades star cluster and V-shaped Hyades anchored by bright star Aldebaran. One trail looks wrong, though. Not concentric with the others and so not a reflection of Earth's rotation, the International Space Station streaks off the right side of this scene, glinting in sunlight as it orbits planet Earth.

July 27, 2012

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The largest of its kind, the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) II telescope stands in the foreground of this photo. Tilted horizontally it reflects the inverted landscape of the Namibian desert in a segmented mirror 24 meters wide and 32 meters tall, equal in area to two tennis courts. Now beginning an exploration of the Universe at extreme energies, H.E.S.S. II saw first light on July 26. Most ground-based telescopes with lenses and mirrors are hindered by the Earth's nurturing, protective atmosphere that blurs images and scatters and absorbs light. But the H.E.S.S. II telescope is a cherenkov telescope, designed to detect gamma rays - photons with over 100 billion times the energy of visible light - and actually requires the atmosphere to operate. As the gamma rays impact the upper atmosphere they produce air showers of high-energy particles. A large camera at the mirror's focus records in detail the brief flashes of optical light, called cherenkov light, created by the air shower particles. The H.E.S.S. II telescope operates in concert with the array of four other 12 meter cherenkov telescopes to provide multiple stereoscopic views of the air showers, relating them to the energies and directions of the incoming cosmic gamma rays.

July 26, 2012

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Framing a bright emission region this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the Tulip Nebula the glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust is also found in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-101. About 8,000 light-years distant the nebula is understandably not the only cosmic cloud to evoke the imagery of flowers. The complex and beautiful nebula is shown here in a composite image that maps emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms into red, green, and blue colors. Ultraviolet radiation from young, energetic O star HDE 227018 ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula. HDE 227018, is the bright star very near the blue arc at image center.

July 25, 2012

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Why is this aurora strikingly pink? When photographing picturesque Crater Lake in Oregon, USA last month, the background sky lit up with auroras of unusual colors. Although much is known about the physical mechanisms that create auroras, accurately predicting the occurrence and colors of auroras remains a topic of investigation. Typically, it is known, the lowest auroras appear green. These occur at about 100 kilometers high and involve atmospheric oxygen atoms excited by fast moving plasma from space. The next highest auroras -- at about 200 kilometers up -- appear red, and are also emitted by resettling atmospheric oxygen. Some of the highest auroras visible -- as high as 500 kilometers up -- appear blue, and are caused by sunlight-scattering nitrogen ions. When looking from the ground through different layers of distant auroras, their colors can combine to produce unique and spectacular hues, in this case rare pink hues seen above. As Solar Maximum nears over the next two years, particle explosions from the Sun are sure to continue and likely to create even more memorable nighttime displays.

July 24, 2012

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What's happening over the south pole of Titan? A vortex of haze appears to be forming, although no one is sure why. The above natural-color image shows the light-colored feature. The vortex was found on images taken last month when the robotic Cassini spacecraft flew by the unusual atmosphere-shrouded moon of Saturn. Cassini was only able to see the southern vortex because its orbit around Saturn was recently boosted out of the plane where the rings and moons move. Clues as to what created the enigmatic feature are accumulating, including that Titan's air appears to be sinking in the center and rising around the edges. Winter, however, is slowly descending on the south of Titan, so that the vortex, if it survives, will be plunged into darkness over the next few years.

July 23, 2012

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While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things he encountered that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it's not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star's outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star's intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This impressive color composite highlights details within the well-studied central region and fainter, seldom imaged features in the nebula's outer halo. It incorporates broad and narrowband images recorded using filters sensitive to emission from sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Can you see the remaining core of the original star that created this nebula in the centre?

July 22, 2012

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How do stars form? A study of star forming region W5 by the sun-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope provides clear clues by recording that massive stars near the center of empty cavities are older than stars near the edges. A likely reason for this is that the older stars in the center are actually triggering the formation of the younger edge stars. The triggered star formation occurs when hot outflowing gas compresses cooler gas into knots dense enough to gravitationally contract into stars. Spectacular pillars, left slowly evaporating from the hot outflowing gas, provide further visual clues. In the above scientifically-colored infrared image, red indicates heated dust, while white and green indicate particularly dense gas clouds. W5 is also known as IC 1848, and together with IC 1805 form a complex region of star formation popularly dubbed the Heart and Soul Nebulas. The above image highlights a part of W5 spanning about 2,000 light years that is rich in star forming pillars. W5 lies about 6,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.

July 21, 2012

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Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this remarkable stereo view from lunar orbit. Created from two photographs (AS11-44-6633, AS11-44-6634) taken by astronaut Michael Collins during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, the 3D anaglyph features the lunar module ascent stage, dubbed The Eagle, as it rises to meet the command module in lunar orbit on July 21. Aboard the ascent stage are Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first to walk on the Moon. The smooth, dark area on the lunar surface is Mare Smythii located just below the equator on the extreme eastern edge of the Moon's near side. Poised beyond the lunar horizon, is our fair planet Earth.

July 20, 2012

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Skygazers around planet Earth enjoyed the close encounter of planets and Moon in July 15's predawn skies. And while many saw bright Jupiter next to the slender, waning crescent, Europeans also had the opportunity to watch the ruling gas giant pass behind the lunar disk, occulted by the Moon as it slid through the night. Clouds threaten in this telescopic view from Montecassiano, Italy, but the frame still captures Jupiter after it emerged from the occultation along with all four of its large Galilean moons. The sunlit crescent is overexposed with the Moon's night side faintly illuminated by Earthshine. Lined up left to right beyond the dark lunar limb are Callisto, Ganymede, Jupiter, Io, and Europa. In fact, Callisto, Ganymede, and Io are larger than Earth's Moon, while Europa is only slightly smaller.

July 19, 2012

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Wandering planets Venus and Jupiter were joined by an old crescent Moon near the eastern horizon on July 15. This serene southern skyview of the much anticipated predawn conjunction includes the lovely Pleiades star cluster and bright stars Aldebaran and Betelgeuse in the celestial lineup. The radio telescope in the foreground is the Parkes 64 meter dish of New South Wales, Australia. Known for its exploration of the distant Universe at radio wavelengths, the large, steerable antenna is also famous for its superior lunar television reception. On July 21, 1969 the dish received broadcasts from the Moon that allowed denizens of planet Earth to watch the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

July 18, 2012

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What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars. The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right. Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep. Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern. Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life. These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.

July 17, 2012

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Doing something a little bit different today with a video! How do galaxies like our Milky Way form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. Green depicts (mostly) hydrogen gas in the above movie, while time is shown in billions of years since the Big Bang on the lower right. Pervasive dark matter is present but not shown. As the simulation begins, ambient gas falls into and accumulates in regions of relatively high gravity. Soon numerous proto-galaxies form, spin, and begin to merge. After about four billion years, a well-defined center materializes that dominates a region about 100,000 light-years across and starts looking like a modern disk galaxy. After a few billion more years, however, this early galaxy collides with another, all while streams of gas from other mergers rain down on this strange and fascinating cosmic dance. As the simulation reaches half the current age of the universe, a single larger disk develops. Even so, gas blobs -- some representing small satellite galaxies -- fall into and become absorbed by the rotating galaxy as the present epoch is reached and the movie ends. For our Milky Way Galaxy, however, big mergers may not be over -- recent evidence indicates that our large spiral disk Galaxy will collide and coalesce with the slightly larger Andromeda spiral disk galaxy in the next few billion years.

July 16, 2012

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A fifth moon has been discovered orbiting Pluto. The moon was discovered earlier this month in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for the New Horizons mission's scheduled flyby of Pluto in 2015. Pictured above, the moon is currently seen as only a small blip that moves around the dwarf planet as the entire system slowly orbits the Sun. The moon, given a temporary designation of S/2012 (134340) 1 or just P5 (as labeled), is estimated to span about 15 kilometers and is likely composed mostly of water-ice. Pluto remains the only famous Solar System body never visited by a human-built probe and so its origins and detailed appearance remain mostly unknown.

July 15, 2012

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Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away. The Orion Nebula offers one of the best opportunities to study how stars are born partly because it is the nearest large star-forming region, but also because the nebula's energetic stars have blown away obscuring gas and dust clouds that would otherwise block our view - providing an intimate look at a range of ongoing stages of starbirth and evolution. This detailed image of the Orion Nebula is the sharpest ever, constructed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the European Southern Observatory's La Silla 2.2 meter telescope. The mosaic contains a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars. Click the source link, and then the picture to reveal the full resolution image, a 6000x6000 square!

July 14, 2012

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Awash in a sea of plasma and anchored in magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized, dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Dark because they are slightly cooler than the surrounding surface, this group of sunspots is captured in a close-up telescopic snapshot from July 11. The field of view spans nearly 100,000 miles. They lie in the center of active region AR1520, now crossing the Sun's visible face. In fact, an X-class solar flare and coronal mass ejection erupted from AR1520 on July 12, releasing some of the energy stored in the region's twisted magnetic fields. Headed this way, the coronal mass ejection is expected to arrive today and may trigger geomagnetic storms. As a result, some weekend auroral displays could grace planet Earth's skies along with Sunday's predawn conjunction of bright planets and crescent Moon.

July 13, 2012

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One of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. In contrast, this mulitwavelength view of the large island universe is a composite of images recorded by space-based telescopes in the 21st century. Color coded From X-rays to infrared wavelengths (high to low energies), the image data was taken from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), the Galaxy Evolution Explorer ( blue), Hubble Space Telescope(yellow), and the Spitzer Space Telescope(red). While the X-ray data trace the location of multimillion degree gas around M101's exploded stars and neutron star and black hole binary star systems, the lower energy data follow the stars and dust that define M101's grand spiral arms. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.

July 12, 2012

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Engraved in rock, these ancient petroglyphs are abundant in the Teimareh valley, located in the Zagros Mountains of central Iran. They likely tell a tale of hunters and animals found in the middle eastern valley 6,000 years ago or more, etched by artists in a prehistoric age. In the night sky above are star trails etched by the rotation of planet Earth during the long composite exposure made with a modern digital camera. On the left, the center of the star trail arcs is the North Celestial Pole (NCP), the extension of Earth's axis into space, with Polaris, the North Star, leaving the bright, short, stubby trail closest to the NCP. But when these petroglyphs were carved, Polaris would have made a long arc through the night. Since the Earth's rotation axis precesses like a wobbling top, 6,000 years ago the NCP was near the border of the constellations Draco and Ursa Major, some 30 degrees from its current location in planet Earth's sky.

July 11, 2012

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Early morning dog walkers got a visual treat last week as bright stars and planets appeared to line up. Pictured above, easily visible from left to right, were the Pleiades open star cluster, Jupiter, Venus, and the "Follower" star Aldebaran, all seen before a starry background. The image was taken from the Atacama desert in western South America. The glow of the rising Sun can be seen over the eastern horizon. Jupiter and Venus will continue to dazzle pre-dawn strollers all over planet Earth for the rest of the month, although even now the morning planets are seen projected away from the line connecting their distant stellar sky mates.

July 10, 2012

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Was Devils Tower once an explosive volcano? Famous for its appearance in films such as Close Encounters, the origin of Devil's Tower in Wyoming, USA is still debated, with a leading hypothesis holding that it is a hardened lava plume that probably never reached the surface to become a volcano. The lighter rock that once surrounded the dense volcanic neck has now eroded away, leaving the dramatic tower. High above, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy arches across the sky. Many notable sky objects are visible, including dark strands of the Pipe Nebula and the reddish Lagoon Nebula to the tower's right. Green grass and trees line the moonlit foreground, while clouds appear near the horizon to the tower's left. Unlike many other international landmarks, mountaineers are permitted to climb Devils Tower.

July 9, 2012

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What did you do over your winter vacation? If you were the Opportunity rover on Mars, you spent four months of it stationary and perched on the northern slope of Greeley Haven -- and tilted so that your solar panels could absorb as much sunlight as possible. During its winter stopover, the usually rolling robot undertook several science activities including snapping over 800 images of its surroundings, many of which have been combined into this 360-degree digitally-compressed panorama and shown in exaggerated colors to highlight different surface features. Past tracks of Opportunity can be seen toward the left, while Opportunity's dust covered solar panels cross the image bottom. Just below the horizon and right of center, an interior wall of 20-kilometer Endeavour Crater can be seen. Now that the northern Martian winter is over, Opportunity is rolling again, this time straight ahead (north). The rover is set to investigate unusual light-colored soil patches as it begins again to further explore the inside of Endeavour, a crater that may hold some of the oldest features yet visited.

July 8, 2012

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Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction. The last eruption occurred only twelve years ago but caused only minor damage. The green auroral band occurred fortuitously about 100 kilometers above the erupting lava. Is Earth the Solar System's only planet with both auroras and volcanos?

July 7, 2012

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Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe -- a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with a bright central core, this colorful composite image highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 (bottom right) background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106 (aka NGC 4258) is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to x-rays. Active galaxies are believed to be powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.

July 6, 2012

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A mere 30 million light-years away, large spiral galaxy NGC 3628 (center left) shares its neighborhood in the local Universe with two other large spirals, in a magnificent grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. In fact, fellow trio member M65 is near the center right edge of this deep cosmic group portrait, with M66 just above it and to the left. But, perhaps most intriguing is the spectacular tail stretching up and to the left for about 300,000 light-years from NGC 3628's warped, edge-on disk. Know as a tidal tail, the structure has been drawn out of the galaxy by gravitational tides during brief but violent past interactions with its large neighbors. Not often imaged so distinctly, the tidal tail is composed of young bluish star clusters and star-forming regions.

July 5, 2012

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Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the galaxy's bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane. An assortment of other background galaxies is included in the pretty field of view, with neighboring galaxy NGC 4562 at the upper left. NGC 4565 itself lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed.

July 4, 2012

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What stands between you and the Sun? Apparently, as viewed from Paris last week, one visible thing after another. First, in the foreground, is the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built in the late 1800s and located on the highest hill in Paris, France. Next, well behind the basilica's towers in the above image, are thin clouds forward scattering sunlight. Finally, far in the distance and slightly buried into the Sun's surface, are sunspots, the most prominent of which is sunspot region AR 1512 visible near the disk center. Since the time that this sunset image was taken, the sunspot region on the far left, AR 1515, has unleashed a powerful solar flare. Although most particles from that flare are expected to miss the Earth, sky enthusiasts are on watch for Sun events that might cause bright auroras in an invisible thing that stands between you and the Sun: the Earth's atmosphere.

July 3, 2012

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Humanity's robot orbiting Saturn has recorded yet another amazing view. That robot, or course, is the spacecraft Cassini, while the new amazing view includes a bright moon, thin rings, oddly broken clouds, and warped shadows. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, appears above as a featureless tan as it is continually shrouded in thick clouds. The rings of Saturn are seen as a thin line because they are so flat and imaged nearly edge on. Details of Saturn's rings are therefore best visible in the dark ring shadows visible across the giant planet's cloud tops. Since the ring particles orbit in the same plane as Titan, they appear to skewer the foreground moon, In the upper hemisphere of Saturn, the clouds show many details, including dips in long bright bands indicating disturbances in a high altitude jet stream. Recent precise measurements of how much Titan flexes as it orbits Saturn hint that vast oceans of water might exist deep underground.

July 2, 2012

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What causes the surrounding shells in peculiar galaxy Cen A? In 2002 a fascinating image of peculiar galaxy Centaurus A was released, processed to highlight a faint blue arc indicating an ongoing collision with a smaller galaxy. Another interesting feature of Cen A, however, is the surrounding system of shells, better visible here in this recently released wider pan from the four meter Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Faint shells around galaxies are not unusual and considered by themselves as evidence of a previous galaxy merger, analogous to water ripples on a pond. An unexpected attribute of these shells is the abundance of gas, which should become separated from existing stars during the collision.

July 1, 2012

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This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In the instruments' combined data, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Significant fields of star formation are noticeable in the center, just left of center and at right. The brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light.

The colors in this image indicate temperatures in the dust that permeates the Cloud. Colder regions show where star formation is at its earliest stages or is shut off, while warm expanses point to new stars heating surrounding dust. The coolest areas and objects appear in red, corresponding to infrared light taken up by Herschel's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver at 250 microns, or millionths of a meter. Herschel's Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer fills out the mid-temperature bands, shown here in green, at 100 and 160 microns. The warmest spots appear in blue, courtesy of 24- and 70-micron data from Spitzer.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA contributions. Launched in 2009, the spacecraft carries science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes. NASA's Herschel Project Office based at JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

June 30, 2012

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Now shining in eastern skies at dawn, bright planets Venus and Jupiter join the Pleiades star cluster in this sea and sky scape, recorded earlier this week near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Venus dominates the scene that includes bright star Aldebaran just below and to the right. The planets are easy to spot for early morning risers, but this sky also holds two of our solar system's small worlds, Vesta and Ceres, not quite bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. The digital camera's time exposure just captures them, though. Their positions are indicated when you put your cursor over the image. In orbit around Vesta, NASA's Dawn spacecraft arrived there last July, but is nearing the end of its visit to the main belt asteroid. In August, it will set off on its planned journey to Ceres, arriving at the dwarf planet in 2015.

June 29, 2012

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Part of a dark expanse that splits the crowded plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the Aquila Rift arcs through the northern hemisphere's summer skies near bright star Altair and the Summer Triangle In silhouette against the Milky Way's faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars and astronomers eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth. This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon. In the scene, visible indications of energetic outflows associated with young stars include the small red tinted nebulosity RNO 109 at top left and Herbig-Haro object HH32 above and right of center. The dark clouds in Aquila are estimated to be some 600 light-years away. At that distance, this field of view spans about 7 light-years.

June 28, 2012

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The glare of Alpha Centauri, one of the brightest stars in planet Earth's night sky, floods the left side of this southern skyscape. A mere 4.3 light-years distant, Alpha Centauri actually consists of two component stars similar in size to the Sun, locked in a mutual orbit. Much smaller and cooler, a third member of the same star system, Proxima Centauri, lies outside this field of view. Still, the telescopic scene does reveal often overlooked denizens of the Milky Way's crowded galactic plane that lie beyond the glare of Alpha Centauri, including a planetary nebula cataloged as Hen 2-111, an estimated 7,800 light-years away. The gaseous shroud of a dying star, the nebula's brighter core and fainter halo of reddish ionized gas span over twenty light-years, seen just right of picture center. Farther right are two notable open clusters of stars, the compact Pismis 19 also nearly 8,000 light-years away whose light is reddened by intervening dust, and the looser, closer NGC 5617. Just visible in the glare of Alpha Centauri is the dim glow of a shell-like supernova remnant, above and right of the closest star system's bright core.

June 27, 2012

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When stars form, pandemonium reigns. A particularly colorful case is the star forming region Simeis 188 which houses an unusual and bright cloud arc cataloged as NGC 6559. Visible above are red glowing emission nebulas of hydrogen, blue reflection nebulas of dust, dark absorption nebulas of dust, and the stars that formed from them. The first massive stars formed from the dense gas will emit energetic light and winds that erode, fragment, and sculpt their birthplace. And then they explode. The resulting morass can be as beautiful as it is complex. After tens of millions of years, the dust boils away, the gas gets swept away, and all that is left is a naked open cluster of stars. Simeis 188 is located about 4,000 light years away and can be found about one degree northeast of M8, the Lagoon Nebula.

June 26, 2012

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What time is it? If the time and day are right, this sundial will tell you: SOLSTICE. Only then will the Sun be located just right for sunlight to stream through openings and spell out the term for the longest and shortest days of the year. And that happened last week and twice each year. The sundial was constructed by Jean Salins in 1980 and is situated at the Ecole Supérieure des Mines de Paris in Valbonne Sophia Antipolis of south-eastern France. On two other days of the year, watchers of this sundial might get to see it produce another word: EQUINOXE.

June 25, 2012

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Sometimes, if you wait long enough for a clear and moonless night, the stars will come out with a vengeance. One such occasion occurred earlier this month at the Piton de l'Eau on Reunion Island. In the foreground, surrounded by bushes and trees, lies a water filled volcanic crater serenely reflecting starlight. A careful inspection near the image center will locate Piton des Neiges, the highest peak on the island, situated several kilometers away. In the background, high above the lake, shines the light of hundreds of stars, most of which are within 100 light years, right in our stellar neighborhood. Far is the distance, arching majestically overhead, is the central band of our home Milky Way Galaxy, shining by the light of millions of stars each located typically thousands of light years away. The astrophotographer reports waiting for nearly two years for the sky and clouds to be just right to get the above shot.

June 24, 2012

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In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp image was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor. The image shows Schmitt on the left with the lunar rover at the edge of Shorty Crater, near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. Now forty years later, Cernan and Schmitt are still the last to walk on the Moon.

June 23, 2012

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As seen from Frösön island in northern Sweden the Sun did set a day after the summer solstice. From that location below the arctic circle it settled slowly behind the northern horizon. During the sunset's final minute, this remarkable sequence of 7 images follows the distorted edge of the solar disk as it just disappears against a distant tree line, capturing both a green and blue flash. Not a myth even in a land of runes, the colorful but ellusive glints are caused by atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients.

June 22, 2012

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Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale pinkish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the lovely island universe is about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer Edwin Coddington in 1898.

June 21, 2012

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Made with narrow and broad band filters, this colorful cosmic snap shot covers a field of view about the size of the full Moon within the boundaries of the constellation Cygnus. It highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula traced by the glow of ionized hydrogen and oxygen gas. Embedded in the region's interstellar clouds of gas and dust, the complex, glowing arcs are sections of bubbles or shells of material swept up by the wind from Wolf-Rayet star WR 134, brightest star near the center of the frame. Distance estimates put WR 134 about 6,000 light-years away, making the frame over 50 light-years across. Shedding their outer envelopes in powerful stellar winds, massive Wolf-Rayet stars have burned through their nuclear fuel at a prodigious rate and end this final phase of massive star evolution in a spectacular supernova explosion. The stellar winds and final supernovae enrich the interstellar material with heavy elements to be incorporated in future generations of stars.

June 20, 2012

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How was this unusual looking galaxy created? No one is sure, especially since spiral galaxy NGC 7049 looks so strange. NGC 7049's striking appearance is primarily due to an unusually prominent dust ring seen mostly in silhouette. The opaque ring is much darker than the din of millions of bright stars glowing behind it. Besides the dark dust, NGC 7049 appears similar to a smooth elliptical galaxy, although featuring surprisingly few globular star clusters. NGC 7049 is pictured above as imaged recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright star near the top of NGC 7049 is an unrelated foreground star in our own Galaxy. Not visible here is an unusual central polar ring of gas circling out of the plane near the galaxy's center. Since NGC 7049 is the brightest galaxy in its cluster of galaxies, its formation might be fostered by several prominent and recent galaxy collisions. NGC 7049 spans about 150 thousand light years and lies about 100 million light years away toward the constellation of Indus.

June 19, 2012

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During July 22nd's 2009 solar eclipse, the Moon's dark shadow traced a narrow path as it raced eastward across India and China and on into the Pacific. Hong Kong was south of the shadow's path, so a total eclipse was not visible there, but a partial eclipse was still enjoyed by inhabitants of the populous city. And while many were (safely!) watching the sky, images of the partially eclipsed Sun adorned the city itself. In this downlooking photo, taken at 9:40am local time, a remarkable array of solar eclipse views was created by reflection in a grid of eastward facing skyscraper windows. The photographer's location was the 27th floor of Two Pacific Place.

June 18, 2012

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Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues, but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above, some of the stone giants were illuminated in 2009 under the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.

June 17, 2012

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Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's rings were discovered in 1979 by the passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but their origin was a mystery. Data from the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 later confirmed that these rings were created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Adrastea, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. Pictured above is an eclipse of the Sun by Jupiter, as viewed from Galileo. Small dust particles high in Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the dust particles that compose the rings, can be seen by reflected sunlight.

June 16, 2012

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Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista recorded with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation Draco. Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from left to right in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the lower left. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.


June 15, 2012

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Nearby and bright, spiral galaxies M65 (top) and M66 stand out in this engaging cosmic snapshot. The pair are just 35 million light-years distant and around 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own spiral Milky Way. While both exhibit prominent dust lanes sweeping along their broad spiral arms, M66 in particular is a striking contrast in red and blue hues; the telltale pinkish glow of hydrogen gas in star forming regions and young blue star clusters. M65 and M66 make up two thirds of the well-known Leo Triplet of galaxies with warps and tidal tails that offer evidence of the group's past close encounters. The larger M66 has been host to four supernovae discovered since 1973.

June 14, 2012

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In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now modestly recognized as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, one of the brightest globular star clusters in the northern sky. Telescopic views reveal the spectacular cluster's hundreds of thousands of stars. At a distance of 25,000 light-years, the cluster stars crowd into a region 150 light-years in diameter, but approaching the cluster core upwards of 100 stars could be contained in a cube just 3 light-years on a side. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun is over 4 light-years away. Along with the cluster's dense core, the outer reaches of M13 are highlighted in this sharp color image. The cluster's evolved red and blue giant stars show up in yellowish and blue tints.

June 13, 2012

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Waiting years and traveling kilometers -- all to get a shot like this. And even with all of this planning, a good bit of luck was helpful. As the Sun rose over the Baltic Sea last Wednesday as seen from Fehmarn Island in northern Germany, photographer Jens Hackmann was ready for the very unusual black dot of Venus to appear superimposed. Less expected were the textures of clouds and haze that would tint different levels of the Sun various shades of red. And possibly the luckiest gift of all was a flicker of a rare green flash at the very top of the Sun. The above image is, of course, just one of many spectacular pictures taken last week of the last transit of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun for the next 105 years.

June 12, 2012

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These are larger dust bunnies than you will find under your bed. Situated in rich star fields and glowing hydrogen gas, these opaque clouds of interstellar dust and gas are so large they might be able to form stars. Their home is known as IC 2944, a bright stellar nursery located about 5,900 light years away toward the constellation of Centaurus. The largest of these dark globules, first spotted by South African astronomer A. D. Thackeray in 1950, is likely two separate but overlapping clouds, each more than one light-year wide. Along with other data, the above representative color image from the 4-m Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo, Chile indicates that Thackeray's globules are fractured and churning as a result of intense ultraviolet radiation from young, hot stars already energizing and heating the bright emission nebula. These and similar dark globules known to be associated with other star forming regions may ultimately be dissipated by their hostile environment - like cosmic lumps of butter in a hot frying pan.

June 11, 2012

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Few butterflies have a wingspan this big. The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope soon after it was upgraded in 2009. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).

June 10, 2012

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What if you were given a new Hubble telescope for free? How about two? The astronomical community is abuzz with just this opportunity as the US National Reconnaissance Office has unexpectedly transferred ownership of two space-qualified Hubble-quality telescopes to NASA. The usefulness of these telescopes in addressing existing science priorities has begun, but preliminary indications hold that even one of these telescope could be extremely useful in searching for extrasolar planets as well as distant galaxies and supernovas that could better explore the nature of dark energy. Although they start out as free, making even one telescope operational and fitting it with useful cameras would be quite expensive, so NASA is being decidedly careful about how to fit these new telescopes into its existing budget. Pictured above, the original Hubble Space Telescope floats high above the Earth during a servicing mission in 2002.

June 9, 2012

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120609.html

As its June 6 2012 transit begins Earth's sister planet crosses the edge of the Sun in this stunning view from the Hinode spacecraft. The timing of limb crossings during the rare transits was used historically to triangulate the distance to Venus and determine a value for the Earth-Sun distance called the astronomical unit. Still, modern space-based views like this one show the event against an evocative backdrop of the turbulent solar surface with prominences lofted above the Sun's edge by twisting magnetic fields. Remarkably, the thin ring of light seen surrounding the planet's dark silhouette is sunlight refracted by Venus' thick atmosphere.

June 8, 2012

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This dramatic telephoto view across the Black Sea on June 6 finds Venus rising with the Sun, the planet in silhouette against a ruddy and ragged solar disk. Of course, the reddened light is due to scattering in planet Earth's atmosphere and the rare transit of Venus didn't influence the strangely shaped and distorted Sun. In fact, seeing the Sun in the shape of an Etruscan Vase is relatively common, especially compared to Venus transits. At sunset and sunrise, the effects of atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients produce the visual distortions and mirages. That situation is often favored by a sea horizon.

June 7, 2012

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Occurring in pairs separated by over a hundred years, there have now been only eight transits of Venus since the invention of the telescope in 1608. The next will be in December of 2117. But many modern telescopes and cameras were trained on this week's Venus transit, capturing the planet in rare silhouette against the Sun. In this sharp telescopic view from Georgia, USA, a narrowband H-alpha filter was used to show the round planetary disk against a mottled solar surface with dark filaments, sunspots, and prominences. The transit itself lasted for 6 hours and 40 minutes. Historically, astronomers used timings of the transit from different locations to triangulate the distance to Venus, while modern astronomers actively search for planets that transit distant suns.

June 6, 2012

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A setting full moon rarely looks like this. Monday morning just before a fully lit Strawberry Moon dropped behind the Absaroka Mountain Range near Cody, Wyoming, USA, the shadow of the Earth got in the way. A similarly setting partial lunar eclipse was visible throughout most of North and South America, while simultaneously the same partially darkened moon was visible throughout eastern Asia. Pictured in the foreground is a snowbank formation known as the Horse's Head off a tributary of the Shoshone River. Lunar eclipses occur about twice a year, and the next one -- a penumbral eclipse -- will occur in late November.

June 5, 2012

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Today Venus moves in front of the Sun. One way to follow this rare event is to actively reload the above live image of the Sun during the right time interval and look for an unusual circular dark dot. The smaller sprawling dark areas are sunspots. The circular dot is the planet Venus. The dark dot will only appear during a few very specific hours, from about 22:10 on 2012 June 5 through 4:50 2012 June 6, Universal Time. This transit is the rarest type of solar eclipse known -- much more rare than an eclipse of the Sun by the Moon or even by the planet Mercury. In fact, the next transit of Venus across the Sun will be in 2117. Anyone with a clear view of the Sun can go outside and carefully view the transit for themselves by projecting sunlight through a hole in a card onto a wall. Because this Venus transit is so unusual and visible from so much of the Earth, it is expected to be one of the more photographed celestial events in history. The above live image on the Sun is being taken by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory and can be updated about every 15 minutes.

June 4, 2012

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Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home galaxy. Still, the errors in sideways velocity appear sufficiently large to admit a good chance that the central parts of the two galaxies will miss, slightly, but will become close enough for their outer halos to become gravitationally entangled. Once that happens, the two galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to become one large elliptical galaxy -- over the next few billion years. Pictured above is an artist's illustration of the sky of a world in the distant future when the central parts of each galaxy begin to destroy each other. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire surrounding Local Group of Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic of research for years to come.

June 3, 2012

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The rare transit of Venus across the face of the Sun in 2004 was one of the better-photographed events in sky history. Both scientific and artistic images flooded in from the areas that could see the transit: Europe and much of Asia, Africa, and North America. Scientifically, solar photographers confirmed that the black drop effect is really better related to the viewing clarity of the camera or telescope than the atmosphere of Venus. Artistically, images might be divided into several categories. One type captures the transit in front of a highly detailed Sun. Another category captures a double coincidence such as both Venus and an airplane simultaneously silhouetted, or Venus and the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. A third image type involves a fortuitous arrangement of interesting looking clouds, as shown by example in the above image taken from North Carolina, USA. Sky enthusiasts worldwide are abuzz about the coming transit of Venus on Tuesday. It is perhaps interesting to wonder whether any person will live to see - and remember seeing - both Tuesday's Venus transit and the next one in 2117. If they were born today, they would be 105 before they get to see the next one!

June 2, 2012

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The 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog is perhaps the original spiral nebula - a large galaxy with a well defined spiral structure also cataloged as NGC 5194. Over 60,000 light-years across, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (top), NGC 5195. Image data from the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has been reprocessed to produce this alternative portrait of the well-known interacting galaxy pair. The processing has further sharpened details and enhanced color and contrast in otherwise faint areas, bringing out dust lanes and extended streams that cross the small companion, along with features in the surroundings and core of M51 itself. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant. Not far on the sky from the handle of the Big Dipper, they officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici.

June 1, 2012

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These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. This broad skyscape also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above and right of the Trifid.

May 31, 2012

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Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) survived its close encounter with the Sun earlier this month, taking its place among wonders of the southern skies just in time for Christmas. Seen here before sunrise from Paranal Observatory in Chile, the sungrazing comet's tails stretch far above the eastern horizon. Spanning over 20 degrees they rise alongside the plane of the our Milky Way galaxy. A breathtaking spectacle in itself, Lovejoy performs on this celestial stage with southern stars and nebulae, including the Large and Small Magellanic clouds right of the telescope dome, and the glow of zodiacal light along the left edge of the frame. With Paranal's Very Large Telescope units in the foreground, this wide-angle scene was captured on December 23. Receding from the Sun, Comet Lovejoy's tails have continued to grow in length even as the comet fades.

May 30, 2012

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What's that dark spot on planet Earth? It's the shadow of the Moon. The above image of Earth was taken last week by MTSAT during an annular eclipse of the Sun. The dark spot appears quite unusual as clouds are white and the oceans are blue in this color corrected image. Earthlings residing within the dark spot would see part of the Sun blocked by the Moon and so receive less sunlight than normal. The spot moved across the Earth at nearly 2,000 kilometers per hour, giving many viewers less than two hours to see a partially eclipsed Sun. MTSAT circles the Earth in a geostationary orbit and so took the above image from about three Earth-diameters away. Sky enthusiasts might want to keep their eyes pointed upward this coming week as a partial eclipse of the Moon will occur on June 4 and a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun will occur on June 5.

May 29, 2012

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Who guards the north? Judging from the above photograph, possibly giant trees covered in snow and ice. The picture was taken last winter in Finnish Lapland where weather can include sub-freezing temperatures and driving snow. Surreal landscapes sometimes result, where common trees become cloaked in white and so appear, to some, as watchful aliens. Far in the distance, behind this uncommon Earthly vista, is a more common sight -- a Belt of Venus that divided a darkened from sunlit sky as the Sun rose behind the photographer. The Belt of Venus can be seen every day granted clear skies; it is the earthès shadow and the first signs of night sky. It can be found opposite the sun at sunset. Of course, in the spring, the trees have thawed and Lapland looks much different.

May 28, 2012

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Have you contemplated your home star recently? Pictured above, a Sun partially eclipsed on the top left by the Moon is also seen eclipsed by earthlings contemplating the eclipse below. The above menagerie of silhouettes was taken from the Glenn Canyon National Recreational Area near Page, Arizona, USA, where park rangers and astronomers expounded on the unusual event to interested gatherers. Also faintly visible on the Sun's disk, just to the lower right of the dark Moon's disk, is a group of sunspots. Although exciting, some consider this event a warm-up act for next week's chance to comtemplate the Sun - a much more rare partial eclipse by the planet Venus.

May 27, 2012

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Can you spot the planet? The diminutive disk of Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet, spent about five hours crossing in front of the enormous solar disk in 2003, as viewed from the general vicinity of planet Earth. The Sun was above the horizon during the entire transit for observers in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia, and the horizon was certainly no problem for the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Seen as a dark spot, Mercury progresses from left to right (top panel to bottom) in these four images from SOHO's extreme ultraviolet camera. The panels' false-colors correspond to different wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet which highlight regions above the Sun's visible surface. This was the first of 14 transits of Mercury which will occur during the 21st century. Next week, however, an event much more rare but easier to spot will occur - a transit of Venus across the Sun. Mercury is found moving left to right in these images.

May 26, 2012

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This sharp cosmic portrait features NGC 891. The spiral galaxy spans about 100 thousand light-years and is seen almost exactly edge-on from our perspective. In fact, about 30 million light-years distant in the constellation Andromeda, NGC 891 looks a lot like our Milky Way. At first glance, it has a flat, thin, galactic disk and a central bulge cut along the middle by regions of dark obscuring dust. The combined image data also reveals the galaxy's young blue star clusters and telltale pinkish star forming regions. And remarkably apparent in NGC 891's edge-on presentation are filaments of dust that extend hundreds of light-years above and below the center line. The dust has likely been blown out of the disk by supernova explosions or intense star formation activity. Faint neighboring galaxies can also been seen near this galaxy's disk.

May 25, 2012

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It was a typical Texas sunset except that most of the Sun was missing. The location of the missing piece of the Sun was not a mystery -- it was behind the Moon. Sunday night's partial eclipse of the Sun by the Moon turned into one of the best photographed astronomical events in history. Gallery after online gallery is posting just one amazing eclipse image after another. Pictured above is possibly one of the more interesting posted images -- a partially eclipsed Sun setting in a reddened sky behind brush and a windmill. The image was taken Sunday night from about 20 miles west of Sundown, Texas, USA, just after the ring of fire effect was broken by the Moon moving away from the center of the Sun. Coming early next month is an astronomical event that holds promise to be even more photographed -- the last partial eclipse of the Sun by Venus until the year 2117.

May 24, 2012

Source: My camera
This is part 3 of 3 of photos that I am posting from my adventures over the weekend. The first image here shows a satellite that I managed to capture while viewing the night sky early in the evening. (When I say early, I mean around 10pm). Closer inspection of my satellite chart for objects brighter than magnitude 3 revealed this was COSMOS 1939 ROCKET flying overhead. Those rockets that are thrown off space shuttles and such don't always fall back down to the Earth you know - some of them are stuck in orbit. The other photo is a view from my campsite when you look up in the sky. It's a much nicer view than in the city where you simply see brown and maybe a select few stars. One thing I couldn't get over was how much brigher stars I thought I knew were - I had a hard time pointing out constellations that I see almost daily becuase of this! I would like to revisit sometime in October or the winter - when Orion and the Pleiades are in the sky, and the Winter Triangle dominates the night. What a sight that would be.

May 23, 2012

Source: My camera
This is part 2 of 3 of photos that I am posting from my adventures over the weekend. Part 2 is the wonderful milky way that quietly greets us every night, yet we fail to see it in such light polluted skies. In the lands of Cyprus Lake, walking about 3km away from my campsite with no city lights anywhere, I used my red flashlight to navigate my way to this opening, where around 2am I was greeted by the rising milky way which was following a quick moving Scorpius. Being my first time witnessing the whole thing, I wish I had words to describe how it happened, but there is this amusing little story behind the discovery; it took about 20 minutes for my eyes to fully adapt to the milky way. Around this time I happened to be greeted by a few noticably drunk adventurers who were trying to find something in the woods, don't ask me what because I don't know. We look towards the North east, noting a faint cloud in the sky that appeared to have stars in front of it. I pointed my camera and shot the first photograph, and it was after looking at that photograph we all realised what we were seeing, and we could see it clearly immediately after this. The drunk guys said thanks for showing us, and decided to part ways, but not before one of them walked into a tree and needed help from someone to get back up. I don't know when, but I will return up here again.

May 22, 2012

Source: My camera
This is part 1 of 3 of photos that I am posting from my adventures over the weekend. Part 1 is the annular solar eclipse that occured at sunset on the 20th for me. As I was still very far east I was unable to see the whole show, but I still came up with this. For some, this was the first chance to see a solar eclipse in about a decade. Something about watching this occur while seeing the reflection on the water slowly adjust with the real spectacle was stunning, nature at its finest. Oh and the best part is I didn't blind myself in the process! This was taken at Cyprus Lake near Tobermory.

May 21, 2012

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How can two stars create such a strange and intricate structure? Most stars are members of multiple-star systems. Some stars are members of close binary systems where material from one star swirls around the other in an accretion disk. Only a handful of stars, however, are members of an intermediate polar, a system featuring a white dwarf star with a magnetic field that significantly pushes out the inner accretion disk, only allowing material to fall down its magnetic poles. Shown above is an artist's depiction of an intermediate polar system, also known as a DQ Hercules system. The foreground white dwarf is so close to the normal star that it strips away its outer atmosphere. As the white dwarf spins, the columns of infalling gas rotate with it. The name intermediate polar derives from observations of emitted light polarized at a level intermediate to non-disk binary systems known as polars. Intermediate polars are a type of cataclysmic variable star system.

May 20, 2012

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Did you see that flash? Lasting only about 15 seconds, it's possible that nobody you ask can confirm it, but what you might have seen is sunlight reflecting off an orbiting Iridium satellite. Satellites of all types have been providing streaks and glints visible only since the launch of Sputnik I in 1957. Of these, flares from any of the 66 Iridium satellites can be particularly bright, sometimes even approaching the brightness of the Moon. If the Iridium satellites are programmed to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, they might provide even brighter flares as they burn up. Pictured above, the streak from an Iridium satellite punctuates a picturesque sunset in San Sebastian, Spain. Then again, that sky-flash you saw? If it lasted only a second or two, it might have been a meteor.

May 19, 2012

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On June 15, the totally eclipsed Moon was very dark, with the Moon itself positioned on the sky toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. This simple panorama captures totality from northern Iran in 8 consecutive exposures each 40 seconds long. In the evocative scene, the dark of the eclipsed Moon competes with the Milky Way's faint glow. The tantalizing red lunar disk lies just above the bowl of the dark Pipe Nebula, to the right of the glowing Lagoon and Trifid nebulae and the central Milky Way dust clouds. At the far right, the wide field is anchored by yellow Antares and the colorful clouds of Rho Ophiuchi. To identify other sights of the central Milky Way just slide your cursor over the image. The total phase of this first lunar eclipse of 2011 lasted an impressive 100 minutes. Parts of the eclipse were visible from most of planet Earth, with notable exceptions of North and Central America. While the Milky Way Bluearrowll is probably seeing right now (weather permitting) is not going to feature a total eclipse deep in it, tomorrow's Annular Solar Eclipse should more than make up for that.

May 18, 2012

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On June 1, the shadow of the New Moon was cast across a land of the midnight Sun in last year's second partial solar eclipse. This picture of the geocentric celestial event above the Arctic Circle was taken near midnight from northern Finland's Kaunispää Hill in Lapland. Of course the region's reindeer were able to watch as both Moon and Sun hugged the northern horizon just above a cloud bank. Also visible from parts of Alaska and Canada, the eclipse began at sunrise in Siberia and northern China at 19:25 UT, ending about 3.5 hours later north of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean. Remarkably, just one lunation later, on July 1 the New Moon's shadow again reached out and touched the Earth in a partial solar eclipse, limited in visibility to a relatively small area in the Antarctic Ocean. This is the beginning of what most people are going to see in the evening around around or before sundown in the United States on May 20th.
May 17, 2012

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The Herschel Space Observatory's infrared view of Cygnus X spans some 6x2 degrees across one of the closest, massive star forming regions in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, the rich stellar nursery already holds the massive star cluster known as the Cygnus OB2 association. But those stars are more evident by the region cleared by their energetic winds and radiation near the bottom center of this field, and are not detected by Herschel instruments operating at long infrared wavelengths. Herschel does reveal the region's complex filaments of cool gas and dust that lead to dense locations where new massive stars are forming. Cygnus X lies some 4500 light-years away toward the heart of the northern constellation of the Swan. At that distance this picture would be almost 500 light-years wide.

May 16, 2012

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How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The above illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.

May 15, 2012

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Earth Observatory - Total Solar Eclipse of March 29, 2006: The International Space Station (ISS) was in position to view the umbral (ground) shadow cast by the Moon as it moved between the Sun and the Earth during the solar eclipse on March 29, 2006. This astronaut image captures the umbral shadow across southern Turkey, northern Cyprus, and the Mediterranean Sea. To the casual observer who is outside the world, they would see a black blotch such as the one shown here cutting through the bright daylight sphere; a black void in a world of blues and greens. The photo also helps illustrate why on the ground, the sky gets very dark during a total solar eclipse.

May 14, 2012

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In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

May 13, 2012

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Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Trifid Nebula. Also known as M20, this photogenic nebula is visible with good binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M20 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. Which bright young stars light up the blue reflection nebula is still being investigated. The light from M20 we see today left perhaps 3,000 years ago, although the exact distance remains unknown. Light takes about 50 years to cross M20.


May 12, 2012

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Two stars within our own Milky Way galaxy anchor the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Beyond them lie the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are over 100 million light-years away. Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 is just above and left of NGC 3312. This was yesterday's Picture of the Day. Can you spot it? Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way. In the nearby universe, galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters that in turn are seen to align over even larger scales. At a distance of 100 million light-years this picture would be about 1.3 million light-years across.

May 11, 2012

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NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust appear to dominate the face-on spiral's structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which absorption of light from beyond a galaxy's own stars can be used to directly explore its distribution of dust. NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years (background galaxy) and 117 million light-years (foreground galaxy) away in the multi-headed constellation Hydra. The background galaxy would span nearly 70,000 light-years at its estimated distance. A synthetic third channel was created to construct this dramatic new composite of the overlapping galaxies from two color image data in the Hubble Legacy Archive.

May 10, 2012

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The rise of the Super Moon was preceded by a Green Flash, captured in the first frame of this timelapse video recorded that night in Brittany, France. The cropped image of the frame, a two second long exposure, shows the strongly colored flash left of the lighted buoy near picture center. While the Super Moon was enjoyed at locations all around the world, the circumstances that produced the Green Flash were more restrictive. Green flashes for both Sun and Moon are caused by atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients often favored by a sea horizon. The matching video can be found here, which really gives an impression on how long the green flash lasts.:

http://vimeo.com/41670884

May 9, 2012

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A lovely starfield in the heroic northern constellation Perseus holds this famous pair of open or galactic star clusters, h and Chi Perseii. Also cataloged as NGC 869 (right) and NGC 884, both clusters are about 7,000 light-years away and contain stars much younger and hotter than the Sun. Separated by only a few hundred light-years, the clusters' ages based on their individual stars are similar - evidence that they were likely a product of the same star-forming region. Always a rewarding sight in binoculars, the Double Cluster is even visible to the unaided eye from dark locations. Star colors (and spikes) are enhanced in this beautiful, wide field, telescopic image.

May 8, 2012

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What is that strange blue blob on the far right? No one is sure, but it might be a speeding remnant of a powerful supernova that was unexpectedly lopsided. Scattered debris from supernova explosion N49 lights up the sky in this gorgeous composited image based on data from the Chandra and Hubble Space Telescopes. Glowing visible filaments, shown in yellow, and X-ray hot gas, shown in blue, span about 30 light-years in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Light from the original exploding star reached Earth thousands of years ago, but N49 also marks the location of another energetic outburst -- an extremely intense blast of gamma-rays detected by satellites about 30 years ago on 1979 March 5. The source of the March 5th Event is now attributed to a magnetar - a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star also born in the ancient stellar explosion which created supernova remnant N49. The magnetar, visible near the top of the image, hurtles through the supernova debris cloud at over 70 thousand kilometers per hour. The blue blob on the far right, however, might have been expelled asymmetrically just as a massive star was exploding. If so, it now appears to be moving over 7 million kilometers per hour.

May 7, 2012

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It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed mosaic image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sh2-240 and seen towards the constellation Taurus, it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky. That corresponds to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The remarkable composite includes image data taken through narrow-band filters to highlight emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms tracing regions of shocked, glowing gas. This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.

May 6, 2012

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In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as the Omega Nebula, stars continue to form. The above image from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys shows exquisite detail in the famous star-forming region. The dark dust filaments that lace the center of Omega Nebula were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernova explosions. The red and blue hues arise from glowing gas heated by the radiation of massive nearby stars. The points of light are the young stars themselves, some brighter than 100 Suns. Dark globules mark even younger systems, clouds of gas and dust just now condensing to form stars and planets. The Omega Nebula lies about 5000 light years away toward the constellation of Sagittarius. The region shown spans about 3000 times the diameter of our Solar System.
May 5, 2012

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Rising as the Sun sets, tonight's Full Moon could be hard to miss. Remarkably, its exact full phase (May 6 03:36 UT) will occur less than two minutes after it reaches perigee, the closest point to Earth in the Moon's orbit, making it the largest Full Moon of 2012. The Full Perigee Moon will appear to be some 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a Full Moon near apogee, the most distant point in the elliptical lunar orbit. In comparison, though, it will appear less than 1 percent larger and almost as bright as April's Full Moon, captured in this telephoto image rising over suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. For that lunation, Full Moon and perigee were about 21 hours apart. Of course, if you manage to miss May's Full Perigee Moon, make a note on your calendar. Your next chance to see a Full Moon close to perigee, will be next year on June 23.

May 4, 2012

Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120504.html
Exploring the cosmos at extreme energies, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits planet Earth every 95 minutes. By design, it rocks to the north and then to the south on alternate orbits in order to survey the sky with its Large Area Telescope (LAT). The spacecraft also rolls so that solar panels are kept pointed at the Sun for power, and the axis of its orbit precesses like a top, making a complete rotation once every 54 days. As a result of these multiple cycles the paths of gamma-ray sources trace out complex patterns from the spacecraft's perspective, like this mesmerising plot of the path of the Vela Pulsar. Centered on the LAT instrument's field of view, the plot spans 180 degrees and follows Vela's position from August 2008 through August 2010. The concentration near the center shows that Vela was in the sensitive region of the LAT field during much of that period. Born in the death explosion of a massive star within our Milky Way galaxy, the Vela Pulsar is a neutron star spinning 11 times a second, seen as the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky.

May 3, 2012

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Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe: a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with prominent dust lanes and a bright central core, this colorful composite image highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries that trace the galaxy's spiral arms. The high resolution galaxy portrait is a mosaic of data from Hubble's sharp ACS camera combined with groundbased color image data. M106 (aka NGC 4258) is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Energetic active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.

May 2, 2012

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How many arches can you count in the above image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the above image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance -- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us. The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.

May 1, 2012

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On December 24, Comet Lovejoy rose in dawn's twilight, arcing above the eastern horizon, its tails swept back by the solar wind and sunlight. Seen on the left is the comet's early morning appearance alongside the southern Milky Way from the town of Intendente Alvear, La Pampa province, Argentina. The short star trails include bright southern sky stars Alpha and Beta Centauri near the center of the frame, but the long bright streak that crosses the comet tails is a little closer to home. Waiting for the proper moment to start his exposure, the photographer has also caught the International Space Station still glinting in the sunlight as it orbits (top to bottom) above the local horizon. The right panel is the near horizon view of Comet Lovejoy from the space station itself, captured only two days earlier. In fact, Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander, recorded Comet Lovejoy rising just before the Sun in a spectacular video (posted below). Even considering the other vistas available from low Earth orbit, Burbank describes the comet as "the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space."
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/video...a_id=125774121

April 30, 2012

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It was all lined up even without the colorful aurora exploding overhead. If you follow the apex line of the recently deployed monuments of Arctic Henge in Raufarhöfn in northern Iceland from this vantage point, you will see that they point due north. A good way to tell is to follow their apex line to the line connecting the end stars of the Big Dipper, Merak and Dubhe, toward Polaris, the bright star near the north spin axis of the Earth projected onto the sky. By design, from this vantage point, this same apex line will also point directly at the midnight sun at its highest point in the sky just during the summer solstice of Earth's northern hemisphere. In other words, the Sun will not set at Arctic Henge during the summer solstice in late June, and at its highest point in the sky it will appear just above the aligned vertices of this modern monument. The above image was taken in late March during a beautiful auroral storm.

April 29, 2012

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Why does this star have so few heavy elements? Stars born in the generation of our Sun have an expected abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium mixed into their atmospheres. Stars born in the generation before our Sun, Population II stars, the stars that created most of the heavy elements around us today, are seen to have some, although fewer, elements heavier than H and He. Furthermore, even the elusive never-seen first stars in the universe, so-called Population III stars, are predicted to have a large mass and a small but set amount of heavy elements. Yet low-mass Milky Way star SDSS J102915+172927, among others, appears to have fewer metals than ever predicted for any stars, including at least 50 times less lithium than came out of the Big Bang. The unusual nature of this star, initially cataloged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and pictured above, was discovered by detailed spectroscopic observations by a large VLT telescope in Chile. Many models of star formation indicate that such a star should not even form. Research is ongoing, however, with one leading hypothesis holding that fragile primordial lithium was destroyed in the star's hot core.

April 28, 2012

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Last Sunday's bright fireball meteor falling through skies over California and Nevada produced sonic booms over a broad area around 7:51 am. Estimates indicate the meteor was about the size of a minivan. Astronomer Peter Jenniskens subsequently recovered these fragments of a crushed 4 gram meteorite, the second find from this meteor fall, in the parking lot of the Henningsen-Lotus state park, not far from Sutter's Mill. This is now known as the Sutter's Mill Meteorite, the location famous for its association with the California Gold Rush. The meteorite may well be astronomer's gold too, thought to be a rare CM type carbonaceous chondrite, a type rich in organic compounds and similar to the Murchison Meteorite. To trace the meteor's orbit, details of its breakup, and aid in locating more fragements, scientists are also searching for video records. Security cameras across a wide area could have accidently captured the fireball event near 7:51 am PDT on April 22; e.g. California (SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, near Redding) and Nevada (Reno area, Tonopah), even in southern parts of Oregon and near Salt Lake City in Utah.

There are some inaccuracies in this video, but it's probably the best one in terms of actually capturing the fireball.

April 27, 2012

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Planet Earth has many moons. Its largest artifical moon, the International Space Station, streaks through this lovely skyview with clouds in silhouette against the fading light of a sunset. Captured from Stuttgart, Germany last Sunday, the frame also includes Earth's largest natural satellite 1.5 days after its New Moon phase. Just below and left of the young crescent is Jupiter, another bright celestial beacon hovering near the western horizon in early evening skies. Only briefly, as seen from the photographer's location, Jupiter and these moons of Earth formed the remarkably close triple conjunction. Of course, Jupiter has many moons too. In fact, close inspection of the photo will reveal tiny pin pricks of light near the bright planet, large natural satellites of Jupiter known as Galilean moons.

April 26, 2012

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Last week Mercury wandered far to the west of the Sun. As the solar system's innermost planet neared its greatest elongation or greatest angle from the Sun (for this apparition about 27 degrees) it was joined by an old crescent Moon. The conjunction was an engaging sight for early morning risers in the southern hemisphere. There the pair rose together in predawn skies, climbing high above the horizon along a steeply inclined ecliptic plane. This well composed sequence captures the rising Moon and Mercury above the city lights of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. A stack of digital images, it consists of an exposure made every 3 minutes beginning at 4:15 am local time on April 19. Mercury's track is at the far right, separated from the Moon's path by about 8 degrees.

April 25, 2012

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Did you see it? One of the more common questions during a meteor shower occurs because the time it takes for a meteor to flash is typically less than the time it takes for a head to turn. Possibly, though, the glory of seeing bright meteors shoot across and knowing that they were once small pebbles on another world might make it all worthwhile, even if your observing partner(s) could not share in every particular experience. Peaking over the past few days, a dark moonless sky allowed the Lyrids meteor shower to exhibit as many as 30 visible meteors per hour from some locations. A bright Lyrid meteor streaks above picturesque Crater Lake in Oregon, USA, in the above composite of nine exposures taken last week. Snow covers the foreground, while the majestic central band of our home galaxy arches well behind the serene lake. Other meteor showers this year include the Perseids in mid-August and the Leonids in mid-November, both expected to also dodge the glare of a bright Moon in 2012.

April 24, 2012

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What's causing those odd rings in supernova 1987A? Twenty five years ago, in 1987, the brightest supernova in recent history was seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud. At the center of the above picture is an object central to the remains of the violent stellar explosion. Surrounding the center are curious outer rings appearing as a flattened figure 8. Although large telescopes including the Hubble Space Telescope monitor the curious rings every few years, their origin remains a mystery. Pictured above is a Hubble image of the SN1987A remnant taken last year. Speculation into the cause of the rings includes beamed jets emanating from an otherwise hidden neutron star left over from the supernova, and the interaction of the wind from the progenitor star with gas released before the explosion.

April 23, 2012

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The unusual blobs found in the Carina nebula, some of which are seen floating on the upper right, might best be described as evaporating. Energetic light and winds from nearby stars are breaking apart the dark dust grains that make the iconic forms opaque. Ironically the blobs, otherwise known as dark molecular clouds, frequently create in their midst the very stars that later destroy them. The floating space mountains pictured above by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope span a few light months. The Great Nebula in Carina itself spans about 30 light years, lies about 7,500 light years away, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of Keel (Carina).

April 22, 2012

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When does Mars act like a liquid? Although liquids freeze and evaporate quickly into the thin atmosphere of Mars, persistent winds may make large sand dunes appear to flow and even drip like a liquid. Visible on the above image right are two flat top mesas in southern Mars when the season was changing from Spring to Summer. A light dome topped hill is also visible on the far left of the image. As winds blow from right to left, flowing sand on and around the hills leaves picturesque streaks. The dark arc-shaped droplets of fine sand are called barchans, and are the interplanetary cousins of similar Earth-based sand forms. Barchans can move intact a downwind and can even appear to pass through each other. When seasons change, winds on Mars can kick up dust and are monitored to see if they escalate into another of Mars' famous planet-scale sand storms.

April 21, 2012

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These enclosures house 1.8 meter Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert region of Chile. The ATs are designed to be used for interferometry, a technique for achieving extremely high resolution observations, in concert with the observatory's 8 meter Very Large Telescope units. A total of four ATs are operational, each fitted with a transporter that moves the telescope along a track allowing different arrays with the large unit telescopes. To work as an interferometer, the light from each telescope is then brought to a common focal point by a system of mirrors in underground tunnels. Above these three ATs, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the far far away satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. In the clear and otherwise dark southern skies, planet Earth's greenish atmospheric airglow stretches faintly along the horizon.

April 20, 2012

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Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to perspective - our view from planet Earth looks down the center of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of glowing gas. But expansive looping structures are seen to extend far beyond the Ring Nebula's familiar central regions in this intriguing composite of ground based and Hubble Space Telescope images with narrowband image data from Subaru. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. Ionized oxygen atoms produce the characteristic greenish glow and ionized hydrogen the prominent red emission. The central ring of the Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away. To accompany tonight's shooting stars it shines in the northen constellation Lyra.

April 19, 2012

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Climbing into cloudy skies, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery (OV-103) took off from Kennedy Space Center Tuesday at 7 am local time. This time, its final departure from KSC, it rode atop a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Following a farewell flyover of the Space Coast, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Washington DC, Discovery headed for Dulles International Airport in Virginia, destined to reside at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. Discovery retires as NASA's most traveled shuttle orbiter, covering more than 148 million miles in 39 missions that included the delivery of the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit. Operational from 1984 through 2011, Discovery spent a total of one year in space.

April 18, 2012

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What would it be like to fly a space shuttle? Although the last of NASA's space shuttles has now been retired, it is still fun to contemplate sitting at the controls of one of the humanity's most sophisticated machines. Pictured above is the flight deck of Space Shuttle Endeavour, the youngest shuttle and the second to last ever launched. The numerous panels and displays allowed the computer-controlled orbiter to enter the top of Earth's atmosphere at greater than the speed of sound and -- just thirty minutes later -- land on a runway like an airplane. The retired space shuttles are now being sent to museums, with Endeavour being sent to California Space Center in Los Angeles, California, Atlantis to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, Florida, and Discovery to the Udvar-Hazy Annex of the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia. Therefore sitting in a shuttle pilot's chair and personally contemplating the thrill of human space flight may actually be in your future.

April 17, 2012

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Antares is a huge star. In a class called red supergiant, Antares is about 850 times the diameter of our own Sun, 15 times more massive, and 10,000 times brighter. Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius and one of the brighter stars in all the night sky. Located about 550 light years away, Antares is seen on the left surrounded by a yellowish nebula of gas which it has itself expelled. Radiation from Antares' blue stellar companion helps cause the nebular gas to glow. Far behind Antares, to the lower right in the above image, is the globular star cloud M4, while the bright star on the far right is Al Niyat.
April 16, 2012

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From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust. Through this window, a brightly-lit workshop appears where a whole open cluster of stars is being formed. In this cavity tall pillars and round globules of dark dust and cold molecular gas remain where stars are still forming. Already visible are several young bright blue stars whose light and winds are burning away and pushing back the remaining filaments and walls of gas and dust. The Eagle emission nebula, tagged M16, lies about 6500 light years away, spans about 20 light-years, and is visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Serpent (Serpens). This picture combines three specific emitted colors and was taken with the 0.9 meter telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona, USA. The famous pillars are seen at the centre of this nebula.

April 15, 2012

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This telescopic close-up shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410 in striking false-colors. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust above and left of center, the tadpoles of IC 410. The picture is a composite of images taken through both broad and narrow band filters. The narrow band data traces atoms in the nebula, with emission from sulfur atoms in red, hydrogen atoms in green, and oxygen in blue. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars that energizes the glowing gas. Composed of denser cooler gas and dust the tadpoles are around 10 light-years long, potentially sites of ongoing star formation. Sculpted by wind and radiation from the cluster stars, their tails trail away from the cluster's central region. IC 410 lies some 12,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Auriga.

April 14, 2012

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How many moons does Saturn have? So far 62 have been discovered, the smallest only a fraction of a kilometer across. Six of its largest satellites can be seen here, though, in a sharp Saturnian family portrait taken on March 9. Larger than Earth's Moon and even slightly larger than Mercury, Titan has a diameter of 5,150 kilometers and starts the line-up at the lower left. Continuing to the right across the frame are Mimas, Tethys, [Saturn], Enceladus, Dione, and Rhea at far right. Saturn's first known natural satellite, Titan was discovered in 1655 by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, while most recently the satellite provisionally designated S/2009 S1 was found by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in 2009. Tonight, Saturn reaches opposition in planet Earth's sky, offering the best telescopic views of the ringed planet and moons.

April 13, 2012

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Reflection nebulas reflect light from a nearby star. Many small carbon grains in the nebula reflect the light. The blue color typical of reflection nebula is caused by blue light being more efficiently scattered by the carbon dust than red light. The brightness of the nebula is determined by the size and density of the reflecting grains, and by the color and brightness of the neighboring star(s). NGC 1435, pictured above, surrounds Merope (23 Tau), one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades (M45). The Pleiades nebulosity is caused by a chance encounter between an open cluster of stars and a dusty molecular cloud.

April 12, 2012

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On another April 12th, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human to see planet Earth from space. Commenting on his view from orbit he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly". To celebrate, consider this recent image from the orbiting International Space Station. A stunning view of the planet at night from an altitude of 240 miles, it was recorded on March 28. The lights of Moscow, Russia are near picture center and one of the station's solar panel arrays is on the left. Aurora and the glare of sunlight lie along the planet's gently curving horizon. Stars above the horizon include the compact Pleiades star cluster, immersed in the auroral glow. The effect of light pollution is shown in this photo as brown-yellow light domes are clearly visible.

April 11, 2012

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Why would Venus appear oval? Venus has been seen countless times from the surface of the Earth, and every time the Earth's atmosphere has dispersed its light to some degree. When the air has just the right amount of dust or water droplets, small but distant objects like Venus appear spread out into an angularly large aureole. Aureoles are not unusual to see and are frequently noted as circular coronas around the Sun or Moon. Recently, however, aureoles have been imaged that are not circular but distinctly oval. The above oval Venusian aureole was imaged by the astrophotographer who first noted the unusual phenomenon three years ago. Initially disputed, the unusual distortion has now been confirmed multiple times by several different astrophotographers. What causes the ellipticity is currently unknown, and although several hypotheses hold that horizontally oriented ice crystals are responsible, significant discussions about it are still taking place.

April 10, 2012

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Does part of this image look familiar? In the second picture in as many days, the Cone Nebula is revisited with its many friends in a more zoomed out scale. Found in Monoceros, pictured above is a star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The above image spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies at the upper left, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze just below the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula near the tree's top. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears sideways here, with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near S Mon.

April 9, 2012

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Strange shapes and textures can be found in neighborhood of the Cone Nebula. The unusual shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars. The brightest star on the right of the above picture is S Mon, while the region just below it has been nicknamed the Fox Fur Nebula for its color and structure. The blue glow directly surrounding S Mon results from reflection, where neighboring dust reflects light from the bright star. The red glow that encompasses the whole region results not only from dust reflection but also emission from hydrogen gas ionized by starlight. S Mon is part of a young open cluster of stars named NGC 2264, located about 2500 light years away toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The origin of the mysterious geometric Cone Nebula, visible on the far left, remains a mystery.

April 8, 2012

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Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud some 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. In the dusty sky toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy, this remarkable image shows the famous star cluster at the upper left. But lesser known dusty nebulae lie along the region's fertile molecular cloud, within the 10 degree wide field, including the bird-like visage of LBN 777 near center. Small bluish reflection nebula VdB 27 at the lower right is associated with the young, variable star RY Tau. At the distance of the Pleiades, the 5 panel mosaic spans nearly 70 light-years. The dust clouds are seen as brown clouds, not to be confused with clouds that might be seen in terrestrial levels.

April 7, 2012

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The star near the top is so bright that it is sometimes hard to notice the galaxy toward the bottom. Pictured above, both the star, Regulus, and the galaxy, Leo I, can be found within one degree of each other toward the constellation of the Lion (Leo). Regulus is part of a multiple star system, with a close companion double star visible to the lower left of the young main sequence star. Leo I is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies dominated by our Milky Way Galaxy and M31. Leo I is thought to be the most distant of the several known small satellite galaxies orbiting our Milky Way Galaxy. Regulus is located about 75 light years away, in contrast to Leo 1 which is located about 800,000 light years away. Regulus is easy to spot these days as it is accompanied by Mars after sunset and hangs around until the early morning hours.

April 6, 2012

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After wandering about as far from the Sun on the sky as Venus can get, the brilliant evening star crossed paths with the Pleiades star cluster earlier this week. The beautiful conjunction was enjoyed by skygazers around the world. Taken on April 2, this celestial group photo captures the view from Portal, Arizona, USA. Also known as the Seven Sisters, even the brighter naked-eye Pleiades stars are seen to be much fainter than Venus. And while Venus and the sisters do look star-crossed, their spiky appearance is the diffraction pattern caused by multiple leaves in the aperture of the telephoto lens. The last similar conjunction of Venus and Pleiades occurred nearly 8 years ago. As it did then, Venus will again move on to cross paths with the disk of the Sun in June. It is the last time in our lifetime that it will do so. Unless you plan to live through the late 22nd century.

April 5, 2012

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Sweeping from the eastern to western horizon, this 360 degree panorama follows the band of zodiacal light along the solar system's ecliptic plane. Dust scattering sunlight produces the faint zodiacal glow that spans this fundamental coordinate plane of the celestial sphere, corresponding to the apparent yearly path of the Sun through the sky and the plane of Earth's orbit. The fascinating panorama is a mosaic of images taken from dusk to dawn over the course of a single night at two different locations on Mauna Kea. The lights of Hilo, Hawaii are on the eastern (left) horizon, with the Subaru and twin Keck telescope structures near the western horizon. On that well chosen moonless night, Venus was shining as the morning star just above the eastern horizon, and Saturn was close to opposition. In fact, Saturn is seen immersed in a brightening of the zodiacal band known as the gegenschein. The gegenschein also lies near 180 degrees in elongation or angular distance from the Sun along the ecliptic. In the mosaic projection, the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs at an angle, crossing the horizontal band of zodiacal light above the two horizons. Nebulae, stars, and dust clouds of the bulging galactic center are rising in the east.

April 4, 2012

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What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, only 11 million light-years distant. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy is also known as NGC 5128. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies, Centaurus A's fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, pinkish star forming regions, and imposing dark dust lanes are seen here in remarkable detail. The colorful galaxy portrait was recorded under clear Chilean skies at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Near the galaxy's center, left over cosmic debris is steadily being consumed by a central black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun. That process likely generates the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy radiated by Centaurus A.

April 3, 2012

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Many stars form in clusters. Galactic or open star clusters are relatively young swarms of bright stars born together near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Separated by about a degree on the sky, two nice examples are M46 (upper left) 5,400 light-years in the distance and M47 (lower right) only 1,600 light-years away toward the nautical constellation Puppis. Around 300 million years young M46 contains a few hundred stars in a region about 30 light-years across. Aged 80 million years, M47 is a smaller but looser cluster of about 50 stars spanning 10 light-years. But this portrait of stellar youth also contains an ancient interloper. The small, colorful patch of glowing gas in M46 of the same colour is actually the planetary nebula NGC 2438 - the final phase in the life of a sun-like star billions of years old. It is found near the bottom of M46 within our line of sight to the cluster. NGC 2438 is estimated to be only 3,000 light-years distant and likely represents a foreground object, only by chance appearing along our line of sight to youthful M46.

April 2, 2012

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What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured above, the gravity of a luminous red galaxy (LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring. Since such a lensing effect was generally predicted in some detail by Albert Einstein over 70 years ago, rings like this are now known as Einstein Rings. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown above is a follow-up observation taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. Strong gravitational lenses like LRG 3-757 are more than oddities -- their multiple properties allow astronomers to determine the mass and dark matter content of the foreground galaxy lenses.

April 1, 2012

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This rugged road through the dark Atacama Desert seems to lead skyward toward the bright stars and glowing nebulae of the southern Milky Way. If you follow the road you will get to Cerro Armazones peak in Chile, future construction site for the 40-meter class European Extremely Large Telescope. For now though, sliding your cursor across the image will identify wonders of the southern skies in view. The scene is dominated by the reddish glow of the Great Carina Nebula, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. In fact, the remarkable skyscape is not a composite of varying exposures or a photomontage. Far from sources of light pollution, the landscape illuminated by starlight and the Milky Way above were recorded by a modified digital camera and fast lens. The sensitive system captured both planet Earth and deep sky in a relatively short exposure.

March 31, 2012

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Meet M9. M9 is a globular cluster discovered by Charles Messier, and listed it as the 9th entry in his catalogue (hence Messier 9). He listed this globular cluster as a "Nebula, without star, in the right leg of Ophiuchus ...". Optics have improved since the 18th century however, and this 'starless nebula' has been found to contain over 300,000 stars within a diameter of 90 light years. It is some 25,000 light years distant near the central bulge of our milky way galaxy. This picture takes a look at the central 25 light years of the cluster. At least twice the age of the Sun and deficient in heavy elements, the cluster stars have colors corresponding to their temperatures, redder stars are cooler, bluer stars are hotter. Many of the cluster's cool red giant stars show a yellowish tint in the sharp Hubble view. Globular clusters are typically found -outside- the disk of spiral galaxies, and are evidence that a spiral galaxy was once more spherical in shape before flattening into a disk with a bulge.

March 30, 2012

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In this alluring night skyscape recorded on March 26, a young Moon stands over the distant western horizon in conjunction with brilliant planet Venus. In the foreground, the Colorado River glistens in moonlight as it winds through the Grand Canyon, seen from the canyon's southern rim at Lipan Point. The Grand Canyon is known as one of the wonders of planet Earth. Carved by the river, the enormous fissure is about 270 miles (440 kilometers) long, up to 18 miles (30 kilometers) wide and approaches 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) deep. On this date, wonders of the night sky included the compact Pleiades and V-shaped Hyades star clusters poised just above the Moon. Bright planet Jupiter is below the closer Moon/Venus pairing, near the western horizon.

March 29, 2012

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On March 27, five sounding rockets leapt into early morning skies from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Part of the Anomalous Transport Rocket EXperiment (ATREX), begining at 4:58 am EDT the rockets launched consecutively at 80 second intervals. Releasing a chemical tracer they created luminous white clouds within Earth's ionosphere at altitudes above 60 to 65 miles, swept along by the poorly understood high-altitude jet stream. (Not the same jet stream that airliners fly through at altitudes of 5 to 6 miles.) Seen along the mid-atlantic region of the United States, the clouds drifted through starry skies, captured in this clear photograph from East Point, New Jersey. Looking south toward the launch site, the tantalizing celestial background includes the stars of Sagittarius, Scorpius, and the more permanent faint, white, luminous clouds of the Milky Way. Can you distinguish these constellations?

March 28, 2012

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Taken in Madrid, Spain, this photograph taken just yesterday shows significant earthshine from the Moon, and the bright planet Venus. Earthshine is the illumination of the part of the Moon hidden from direct sunlight by the sun-reflecting Earth. During the thin crescent moon stages, around sunset and sunrise, the Earth is reflective enough to illuminate the surface of the moon that is not being hit by direct sunlight. This moon-venus pair could have been seen around the world, weather permitting.

March 27, 2012

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How do stars form? To help study this complex issue, astronomers took a deep infrared image of Cygnus X, the largest known star forming region in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. The above recently-released image was taken in 2009 by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope and digitally translated into colors humans can see, with the hottest regions colored the most blue. Visible are large bubbles of hot gas inflated by the winds of massive stars soon after they form. Current models posit that these expanding bubbles sweep up gas and sometimes even collide, frequently creating regions dense enough to gravitationally collapse into yet more stars. The star factory Cygnus-X spans over 600 light years, contains over a million times the mass of our Sun, and shines prominently on wide angle infrared panoramas of the night sky. Cygnus X lies 4,500 light years away towards the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). In a few million years, calm will likely be restored and a large open cluster of stars will remain - which itself will disperse over the next 100 million years.

March 26, 2012

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Saturn is best well known as the planet with the most obvious rings. The rings however, also form one of the largest known sundials. These sundials determine season, not day. During Saturn's last equinox in 2009, there were almost no ring shadows cast onto Saturn, since the ring plane pointed directly to the sun. Since 2009, these shadows have become ever wider and are being cast further south. We cannot easily see these shadows because from our vantage point, the rings always block the shadows. This image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. The actual rings appear as the solid vertical bar on the right, while the shadows of the rings are the complex darker shades along the planet. Cassini will orbit Saturn until 2017 when the shadows reach maximum elongation.

March 25, 2012

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NGC 1300 is a Barred Spiral Galaxy that is 70 million light years away from Earth in the constellation of Eridanus. This is one of the largest hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. It spans 100,000 light years and there are interesting details of the central bar and majestic arms. For example, the hubble image reveals that inside this Sb (Barred Spiral) galaxy lies another spiral of some sort that is some 3,000 light years across. It is believed that there is no black hole in the centre of this galaxy unlike the milky way, and many other galaxies which do have a supermassive black hole. Our own galaxy is also believed to be a barred spiral galaxy.

March 24, 2012

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Today's photo is a little closer to home, and if you follow today's sky you will be able to see this for yourself. Shown here is the "new side of the moon" and the "old side of the moon". There are certain phases of the cycle where both are very visible to the human eye. Today is one of those phases, and the 'dark moon' is visible because of "ashen glow". Ashen Glow is the word used to describe the earthshine that reflects off the moon. The popular crescent is reflected through the sun, and the remainder of the moon is reflected through the Earth. It is known to be strongly influenced by cloud cover, and descriptions of Earthshine have been documented 500+ years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. In this phase, if one was on the moon and looking at Earth, a very bright, nearly full Earth would be seen from the surface.

March 23, 2012

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In this photo, the eye is drawn towards NGC 7635, or the Bubble Nebula. Closely neighbouring the Bubble nebula is M52, an open star cluster. The Bubble nebula is only 10 light years wide, while the cluster is about 25 light years wide containing approximately 1,000 stars. This space in the sky spans 1.5 degrees, or about the size of 3 full moons side by side. They can be found on the northern boundary of the constellation Cassiopeia in the Northern Hemisphere. The Bubble Nebula has a magnitude of +10, while the cluster has a magnitude of +5.0. Use a telescope to find them both!

March 22, 2012

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Meet the Helix Nebula. It is found in the constellation Aquarius and is only 700 light years away. A few thousand years ago, this used to be a regular star such as our sun. However, it ran out of hydrogen and helium to fuse during the red giant phase and as such, it released everything but its core into this brilliant nebula. The remains of the original star is the core called a "White Dwarf" found in the centre of the nebula. It will slowly fade because there is no nuclear reaction burning inside the star, it's the equivalent of a stovetop the moment you turn it off after leaving it on high heat for an hour. You know not to touch the stovetop immediately after turning it off because it's still hot - so to is the star, not a good idea to touch it. This is NOT a supernova explosion, but rather, this is the type of remnant that 95% of stars will leave behind, including our sun. This remnant cloud is where future stars are born.

March 21, 2012


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Star parties are one of the best ways to explore the deep night sky. Red light is used to ensure that night vision is not ruined, as to see the contents of this image requires 20 minutes of absolute darkness, and only red light seems to keep that vision. This particular photo was taken during the 10th annual Iran Messier Marathon in April 2011. A Messier Marathon is completed when one views all 110 of the messier catalogue in one night. The stars rise and set fast, especially when you're searching for 110 different objects, some of which only being visible for about 20 minutes before they set! How many Messier objects do YOU see? hint: the green laser points to M8.

March 20, 2012

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Does this look strange to you? Well it sure does to just about everyone who knows of it in the world of astronomy. This is MWC 922, nicknamed "The Red Square Nebula", found in the constellation Serpens. Only those relatively near the equator will be able to get a good view of this constellation, as the north and south hemispheres only ever see it near the horizon. What causes the nebula to be square? The answer to this one is that we don't know. It is thought that it only looks like a square through our spective. The star behind the nebula is a Be (very hot classification star, OBAFGKM being the hottest, M coldest) star that is losing mass in a bipolar outflow. It is spewing gas in a pair of conical outflows, This, combined with a ring of material that shields the rest of the projection, is the main theory on to how this square nebula exists.
March 19, 2012


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Have you ever heard of the zodiacal light? If you're in a completely dark area, just before the sun begins to rise, look towards the Milky Way belt. The Milky Way will have its own fair share of light beaming towards you; a culmination of the billions of stars found in the belt of our galaxy. You should also begin to notice a faint light that shoots away from the galaxy centre - this is the zodiacal light. Appearing only before sunrise or after sunset, this glow is sunlight reflected by billions of tiny dust particles orbiting in the Solar System. Many of these particles are pieces of asteroid and comet that have since broken away from their main body. This image was taken in Ras Lanuf, Libya. Use the annotated version to help you learn a bit about the sky! Challenge: Can YOU spot the faint red North America nebula just north west of Deneb in Cygnus?

March 18, 2012

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Meet the Perseus-Pisces supercluster of galaxies. Spanning more than 40 degrees across the northern winter sky, it is one of the largest known structures in the universe. It ranges from the Perseus constellation to the Pisces constellation, which can't be viewed at at this time because that is the constellation that the sun is currently in. Perseus however, is quite visible after sunset. There are 141 galaxies found in this structure, and is roughly 250 million light years away. When looking through a telescope, each one of these galaxies may appear as a fuzzy blob. This image view covers about 15 million light years across the supercluster.

March 17, 2012

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This photo is part of the spiral galaxy M83, which is 12 million light years away. It can be found near the bottom of constellation Hydra, and this galaxy is known for it's prominent blue star clusters and red star clusters found in its arms. These clusters have given M83 the nickname of "The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy," but it is more often referred to as the Southern Pinwheel. The centre of this galaxy is dominated by red, older stars so it appears yellow. The blue and red clusters are areas of starbirth, where the blue stars are hot, young, bright and brilliant, and the red clusters are filled with ionized hydrogen, creating new stars.

March 16, 2012

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One of the most famous images related to space as of late, this is a photo of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995 by the Hubble Telescope. The pillars lie in the Eagle Nebula dubbed M16 and are associated with an open star cluster. The "pillars" are molecular hydrogen gas and dark dust that doesn't emit light. The pillars are light years in length and so dense that interior gas actually gravitationally contracts to form stars. Unfortunately, this pretty structure is short lived, as there is evidence of a supernova explosion that happened 6,000 years ago. The Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation are about 7,000 light years away, so we only have another thousand years to observe these pillars before we witness their destruction.

March 15, 2012

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The heart and soul nebulae are located in Cassiopeia, a familiar constellation in North America due to it's 5 obvious bright stars that are often said to look like a W. The nebulae shine brightly with the red light of energized hydrogen. There are several young star clusters visible in this image as well, appearing in blue, which makes this area a hot spot for astrophotography. Andromeda Galaxy isn't too far away from this picture either. A hydrogen filter on a camera would bring out the nebulae nicely if one wished to take a picture of these emission nebulae.

March 14, 2012

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This is a digitally stacked series of Mars to track the movement of Mars between October and June. Between this time, Mars appears to move backwards. Approximately every 2 years, Earth passes Mars as they orbit around the Sun. During the pass, Mars appears brightest, and also looks to move backwards in the sky. This is called retrograde motion. At the centre of this loop that Mars makes, retrograde motion is at its highest.

March 13, 2012

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Under a completely dark sky in the southern hemisphere, if you went outside and tilted your head up while the sky was clear, this is what you would see after letting your eyes adjust for about 20 minutes to the faint lights the Milky Way galaxy has to offer. This picture specifically was taken on Mangaia, the southernmost of the Cook islands. The bright stars just off centre to the right are part of the constellation Centaurus. The brightest star is alpha centauri, which follows how stars are typically named. They are named from brightest to dimmest, beginning with the greek alphabet, and often extending into our alphabet. For example, "beta sagittae" is the 2nd brightest star in the constellation Sagittarius.

March 12, 2012

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Ever wonder what the night sky would look like if you took a 4 hour long exopsure with your camera? You'd notice the stars generate neat star trails of how they've progressed over the course of 4 hours. They revolve around the north and south poles in this 360 degree panorama taken in Mudgee, New South Wales, Austrailia.

March 11, 2012

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Comet Garradd within 1 degree of M92, a globular cluster found in Hercules. It approaches the best time for viewing this month.

March 10, 2012

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Visible in the northern hemisphere, M45, or Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters is a cluster of blue stars - the 7 brightest can be seen with the naked eye even in a light polluted city. How do you find it?
Use the belt of Orion, which nicely points straight at the Pleiades (this picture is upside down):

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 19, 2012

-Spring begins in the northern hemisphere tonight at 1:14am Tuesday EST, 10:14pm Monday PST when the sun crosses the equator on its way north. Now the sun rises and sets almost due east and west, and day and night are equally long. Autumn begins in the Southern Hemisphere.

-In the northern hemisphere, look northwest for the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia, now standing on its end.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 19, 2012


Source:
Have you ever heard of the zodiacal light? If you're in a completely dark area, just before the sun begins to rise, look towards the Milky Way belt. The Milky Way will have its own fair share of light beaming towards you; a culmination of the billions of stars found in the belt of our galaxy. You should also begin to notice a faint light that shoots away from the galaxy centre - this is the zodiacal light. Appearing only before sunrise or after sunset, this glow is sunlight reflected by billions of tiny dust particles orbiting in the Solar System. Many of these particles are pieces of asteroid and comet that have since broken away from their main body. This image was taken in Ras Lanuf, Libya. Use the annotated version to help you learn a bit about the sky! Challenge: Can YOU spot the faint red North America nebula just north west of Deneb in Cygnus?

[gold stinger]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Yay spring has officially begun! ^^ I want to get involved in an astronomy course in school, but for my board it is only available in Grade 12 in my school, and I'm in Grade 10 right now.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

It's great that this thread is encouraging people to learn more about astronomy, thanks Winrar and Gold Stinger for the feedback Maybe I'll be able to teach you guys something before you enter your courses. In my high school, it was but a subchapter in grade 9 science but I found it to be the most interesting out of any science course I took.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 20, 2012

-This is the time of year when the dim Little Dipper juts to the right from Polaris (found in the constellation's its handle end) during evening hours. The much brighter Big Dipper curls over high above it, "dumping water" into it.

-This is also the time of year when Orion declines in the southwest after dark with his Belt roughly horizontal. But when does Orion's Belt appear exactly horizontal? That depends on where you're located east-west in your time zone, and on your latitude. How accurately can you time this event at your location? Orion's Belt is slightly curved, so judge by the two stars on its ends. Can you rig up a sighting reference to make your measurement more precise? Welcome to pre-telescopic astronomy!

Astro Picture of the Day
March 20, 2012

Source:
Does this look strange to you? Well it sure does to just about everyone who knows of it in the world of astronomy. This is MWC 922, nicknamed "The Red Square Nebula", found in the constellation Serpens. Only those relatively near the equator will be able to get a good view of this constellation, as the north and south hemispheres only ever see it near the horizon. What causes the nebula to be square? The answer to this one is that we don't know. It is thought that it only looks like a square through our spective. The star behind the nebula is a Be (very hot classification star, OBAFGKM being the hottest, M coldest) star that is losing mass in a bipolar outflow. It is spewing gas in a pair of conical outflows, This, combined with a ring of material that shields the rest of the projection, is the main theory on to how this square nebula exists.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the Sky Tonight?
March 21, 2012

-The moon is out of the sky long enough to do some serious deep sky hunting. Have you heard of the messier objects? Messier was a comet hunter who generated a list of objects that were -not- comets, and passed this list on to other comet hunters. This list generated 110 objects, and is mostly galaxies, with a fair amount of star clusters. Some nebulae exist too. Refer to here for the complete list of Messier's catalogue.

Astro Picture of the Day
March 21, 2012


Source:
Star parties are one of the best ways to explore the deep night sky. Red light is used to ensure that night vision is not ruined, as to see the contents of this image requires 20 minutes of absolute darkness, and only red light seems to keep that vision. This particular photo was taken during the 10th annual Iran Messier Marathon in April 2011. A Messier Marathon is completed when one views all 110 of the messier catalogue in one night. The stars rise and set fast, especially when you're searching for 110 different objects, some of which only being visible for about 20 minutes before they set! How many Messier objects do YOU see? hint: the green laser points to M8.

[Mau5]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Ophiuchus... The dog with the backwards head

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the sky tonight?
March 22, 2012

-Our familiar Venus and Jupiter scene in the west has now shifted into a vertical pillar. Venus is 6 degrees directly above Jupiter (there may be slight variance depending on your location.)

-New Moon (exact at 10:37 a.m. EDT).

http://uvs-model.com/pictures/nebula_helix_large.jpg

Astro Picture of the Day:
March 22, 2012

Source:
Meet the Helix Nebula. It is found in the constellation Aquarius and is only 700 light years away. A few thousand years ago, this used to be a regular star such as our sun. However, it ran out of hydrogen and helium to fuse during the red giant phase and as such, it released everything but its core into this brilliant nebula. The remains of the original star is the core called a "White Dwarf" found in the centre of the nebula. It will slowly fade because there is no nuclear reaction burning inside the star, it's the equivalent of a stovetop the moment you turn it off after leaving it on high heat for an hour. You know not to touch the stovetop immediately after turning it off because it's still hot - so to is the star, not a good idea to touch it. This is NOT a supernova explosion, but rather, this is the type of remnant that 95% of stars will leave behind, including our sun. This remnant cloud is where future stars are born.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

What's in the sky tonight?
March 23, 2012

-Look low in the west about a half hour after sunset, below Venus and Jupiter and perhaps a little right, for the very thin crescent Moon in the bright twilight — as shown at bottom-right here.

Astro Picture of the Day:
March 23, 2012

Source:
In this photo, the eye is drawn towards NGC 7635, or the Bubble Nebula. Closely neighbouring the Bubble nebula is M52, an open star cluster. The Bubble nebula is only 10 light years wide, while the cluster is about 25 light years wide containing approximately 1,000 stars. This space in the sky spans 1.5 degrees, or about the size of 3 full moons side by side. They can be found on the northern boundary of the constellation Cassiopeia in the Northern Hemisphere. The Bubble Nebula has a magnitude of +10, while the cluster has a magnitude of +5.0. Use a telescope to find them both!

[Sky Kitten]

Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.

Fascinating.