Archives for the 'astronomy' Category
Albedo
Published on 27 Jun 2008 at 12:06 pm.
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Filed under astronomy.
The word of the day: Albedo.
When you look up information about planets, one of the bits of data given is the albedo of the planet. Albedo is one of the vocabulary words that introductory astronomy students have to learn. According to the textbook that we are using, Mars has an albedo of 0.15, […]
Jupiter is back
Published on 17 Jun 2008 at 1:39 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, skywatching.
Of course, Jupiter didn’t leave the Solar System, become invisible, or any such thing. But, we haven’t seen it for a while in the evening skies. And, observers who have stayed up late or got up before dawn have been seeing Jupiter. It just hasn’t been visible at sunset in quite a […]
GLAST: T minus 4 days
Published on 7 Jun 2008 at 2:06 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, space telescopes.
About 3 months ago I wrote about the GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) and the search for a new name for the mission. The satellite was supposed to launch this weekend, but it has now been delayed until at least June 11. If all goes according to the plan, GLAST will […]
The Moon and the galactic center
Published on 1 Mar 2008 at 9:38 pm.
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The Moon appears to move its own width across the sky each hour. This morning, the Moon moved from the constellation Scorpius into the Constellation Sagittarius. That isn’t really anything special. It happens about every 27.3 days. However, the Moon does not always follow the same path around the sky. […]
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Saturn at Opposition
Published on 24 Feb 2008 at 4:40 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, skywatching.
About a week and a half ago, I wrote about Neptune being in conjunction with the Sun. That was when Neptune was on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth. Today, I am writing about another planetary alignment. Saturn is in opposition. That means that Saturn is on the opposite […]
AU
Published on 19 Feb 2008 at 9:49 pm.
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Filed under astronomy.
In astronomy, you often seen numbers written as XXX AU. The AU means Astronomical Unit (not gold, which is Au in chemistry!). I wrote about astronomical units in an earlier post, in which I mentioned the AU, but I thought that I’d write a bit more detailed post about just AUs today.
For […]
Neptune in Conjunction
Published on 10 Feb 2008 at 6:28 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, planets.
According to my Observer’s Handbook, Neptune will be in conjunction with the Sun in less than two hours. So, I thought that I’d take a moment to explain what we mean by the terms conjunction and opposition when we are talking about planets. For this discussion, I’ll focus on superior planets, which are […]
