Astronomy

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Earth from space at night. Actually a composite from many pictures from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP), it's like a skeletal view of the Earth in tiny lights. If you really like it, there are hi-res images up to a 40 megabyte TIFF.

Last Saturday was a full moon, which looked like an ordinary full moon, but actually was a bit extraordinary a blue moon. A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. For a blue moon to occur, the first of the full moons must appear at or near the beginning of the month so that the second will fall within the same month (the average span between two moons is 29.5 days). July 2004 had two full moons: the first on July 2, the second on July 31 that second full moon is called the blue moon. Obliquity.com has a great article with FAQs about the blue moon.

Beautiful weather to watch the Venus transit, the astronomical highlight event of this year. I spent the morning at the C200 campus in Heverlee in the company of Wega, the astronomy association in Leuven. Some astronomy amateurs have the most amazing telescopes ! I saw lots of gear which made me jealous, though my 20cm Dobson would have been a worthy contestant. I should have brought one of my telescopes with me, it would have been great fun.

Solar filters made out of millar or astrofoil are such a great tool. I usually use ocular projection, which is quite awkward, and solar ocular filters are just plain dangerous. The image trough an astrofoil filter is quite sharp too : on the right a snapshot of the sun through such a filter.

I returned early from the pub, and I noticed it was a typical winter night with *finally* a crystal clear sky. Great chance to test drive my new telescope to its full potential.

• I started with something easy : Cancer was high in the south, so I took a glance at M44 aka the Beehive and M67. Both are nice and large open star clusters which are easily spotted in the scope. I even got M67 right in sight with the 9x60 finder scope, great piece of equipment. It has saved me hours wasting time searching.
• M48 is a great open cluster in Hydra, but after 15 minutes searching, it turned out it had already disappeared behind my neighbours house. Damn !
• At that time Leo was high in the Southeastern sky, so I took a glimpse at M65 and M66. Now, I don't like galaxy nebula, and with these two it became clear why : no details, and it doesn't even matter it you look at those with a small or large telescope. NGC3628 was hardly visible, only a faint hint of a galaxy, indicating that the seeing wasn't too perfect either. Maybe it was getting misty...
• Ursa Major was high in the zenith, so it was impossible to have a look at M97 and M108. I switched to Canes Venatici, and have a look at M3. And boy, what a beauty; thousands of stars, clustered together in what seemed a sticky spider sprinkled with faerie dust. This was what I bought the telescope for. Have a look at these pictures of M3. Exactly what I saw. Beyond bliss...
• NGC5466 is a globular cluster nearby M3, so I decided to have a look at this one, but the object seemed too faint.

At 2h15, I decided to jump back inside the warm house (freezing cold outside). Some more nice weather is being predicted, so the weekend might be interesting...

Tonight, I had a first real chance of testing my new gear. Despite mediocre conditions (damned high cirrus clouds !), I got a fair view on several winter objects :

• M1 was dissapointing, but the Crab Nebula is a difficult object anyway : too faint, no real structures.
• So I decided to start with something more easy : M37 is one of the most beautiful open clusters. A breathtakening sight with a 100 magnification.
• NGC 2392 aka the Eskimo Nebula, is a ring nebula which dissolved nicely, with a good view on the central star.
• The most surprising moment was the Lord of the Rings, Saturn. I got a splendid view through a 200 magnification. I even got a glimpse on 3 moons : Titan, Rhea and Japetus. The reddish color of Titan was clearly noticeable.

I've already located the most beautifull site of 2004 : yesterday, Bush anounced manned missions to the moon again. Whoever is not convinced about missions to the moon, really should have a look at some panorama''s of the moon, taken by different astronauts of the Apollo missions. Check out the rest of the Moonpans.com site !

Space is cool again. You may want to build a scale model of your favorite spacecraft while you have the chance.

The American Marsrover had more change than the European one, the Beagle2, for it's landing on Mars. The first color images are available; you might also check out the 360 degrees panorama that was published on APOD. More Mars news on Martian Soil or AstroBlog (in dutch).

As the excitement over the successful Spirit landing and the first images from Mars settles down, scientists are already thinking about where to go exploring, once Spirit leaves the lander craft next week. One nearby depression dubbed Sleepy Hollow is of particular interest.

NASA has released Maestro, a public version of the primary software tool used by scientists to operate the Mars Exploration Rovers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Anyone can download Maestro for free from mars.telascience.org and use it to follow along with the rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro containing the latest images from Mars.

I have a new telescope ! I bough myself this 20cm Dobson telescope, a large improvement on my current 114mm scope. Astronomy has been such a pleasant hobby throughout the last years, that I decided to gear up my equipment. I doubted between the Dobson, and a parallactical based 200mm Newton, but the point of portability was too important : I need to carry around the scope easily, and such a big Newtonian scope just needs a fixed place. I just got a change to test the Dobson, and the results are promising : in very bad conditions (very bright moon, misty weather), the telescope shows stars of magnitude 11, which is the best result I got from my 114mm Newton. M35 reveals itself as a jewel twinkling in the Gemini constellation. Anyway, if you are interested in a second-hand 114mm telescope, just let me know ;)

I am one of Japanese astronomical photo artists. Now, I present a lot of unique three-dimentional space arts to you. I hope you will heal your heart by 3D SPACE WORLD.

In typical Engrish, Akira Inaka presents his 3D Universe site. It contains many 3D pictures of constellations, and deep-sky objects. The site's navigation is something to get used to, but the content makes alot good. Be sure to check out some of the constellations (Lyra in the summer section), and most of the deep-sky stuff (in the 'Other' section).