Archives for the 'astronomy' Category
Big and Bright Moon
Published on 10 Jan 2009 at 11:19 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under astronomy, moon, skywatching.
Tonight is Full Moon. Actually, it occurs at a little before 9:30 tonight, Central Time, in the USA. It is very early Sunday morning in Europe. Full Moons occur about every 29.5 days. So, you get one every month. Every few years, you can get two in a month (one […]
X-Ray Crab
Published on 7 Nov 2008 at 5:13 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under astronomy, nebula, neutron stars.
Messier 1, the Crab Nebula, is a famous supernova remnant in Taurus. It was left behind by the supernova visible from Earth in 1054. The Crab Nebula is about 6000 light years away. The image above is a composite make from three different instruments. The green and dark blue images […]
A trio of planets
Published on 6 Sep 2008 at 2:22 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under astronomy, skywatching.
This past Thursday night, I took some students out to observe a grouping of three planets. Those planets are still grouped low in the western sky in the early evenings, so you can go look at them yourself. They’ll be in a slightly different arrangement than shown in this image. I created this image using […]
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.
2 Comments.
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.
1 Comment.
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.
4 Comments.
Filed under astronomy.
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. […]
