Archive for the 'Current Events' Category
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
What’s Where Tonight May 13, 2009
What’s Where Tonight
May 13, 2009
Planets:
1:00 AM … The Moon will rise in the Southeast and travel across the south until sunrise.
10:00 PM …. Saturn will be in the Southwest. It will be at about 50° above the
horizon. Saturn will set in the West at around 4:00 AM.
4:00 AM … Jupiter will rise from the Southeast just about 20° above the horizon before it is washed out by the sunrise. It will be to the left of the Moon.
4:00 AM … Venus will peak out over the horizon in the East and may be visable in the increasing light of the sunrise. Venus, Jupiter and the Moon will form a line from the East to the South.
Stars and Constellations:
10:00 PM … Orion will be in the West Southwest at around 10° – 20°.
10:00 PM … Cassiopeia will be in the North. It will look like a “W”. Polaris is the bright star above Cassiopeia
10:00 PM …..Capella, a very bright star, will be at about 20° to the Northwest.
10:00 PM … The two brightest stars of the Gemini Constellation, Castor & Pollux, will be West Northwest at about 30° above the horizon. Pollus will be on the left and Castor on the right.
10:00 PM … Procyon is a bright star in the South Southwest at about 50°. Procyon, Serius & Betelgeuse form the Winter Triangle. The winter triangle will not be visable in the summer sky.
10:00 PM … If you follow the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle, almost directly overhead, and you will come to a bright star; its Arcturus in the North. If you continue the arc, you will come to Spica at about 10° aboue the horizon in the South Southeast
Current Events:
The summer triangle will be visable, in the East, after Midnight.
· 12:00 AM….. Find the Summer Triangle.
Vega (East Northeast at 45°), Deneb (Northeast at 30°) and Altari (East at 15°).
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
From CNN on April 29, 2009 (courtesy my sister Connie)
The exploding star was up to 100 times larger than our own sun, pictured above.Scientists spot oldest ever object in universe (CNN) — Edo Berger got an alert early last Thursday morning when a satellite detected a 10-second blast of energy known as a gamma ray burst coming from outer space.
Telescopes around the world swiveled to focus on the explosion, soon picking up infrared radiation, which travels more slowly than gamma rays. Berger waited for the visible light which he expected to come next. It never arrived.”We were kind of blown away. We immediately knew what that meant,” Berger said.What it meant was that he was looking at the oldest thing ever spotted — an enormous star exploding 13 billion years ago.”At that point the age of the universe was only 600 million years,” he said. In other words, Berger said, he was looking “95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time.”The star which exploded was 30 to 100 times larger than our own sun, and when it died, it gave off “about million times the amount of energy the sun will release in its entire lifetime,” Berger told CNN by phone from Harvard University, where he is an assistant professor of astronomy.Its death throes produced so much energy that “momentarily, we can essentially see it anywhere in the universe,” Berger said.The object, known as GRB 090423, is about 200 million years older than the previous record-holder for oldest object ever seen.Berger isn’t just interested in the record books, though — the gamma ray burst extended the frontiers of human knowledge about the history of the universe.”We learn that already massive stars were around 600 million years after the universe formed,” Berger said. “We suspected that, but now we have proof. Now that we know these objects are so bright, in the next few years we should be able to pinpoint exactly at what stage in the evolution of the universe stars and galaxies formed.”
The gamma radiation from GRB 090423, which took 13 billion years to reach earth, was detected by a NASA satellite called Swift. The infrared radiation was detected by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
Venus and the Moon do it again! April 22 2009
Attention all early risers (or late night people), we are having another crack at seeing the conjunction of Venus and the Crescent Moon. This occurs on April 22 (Wednesday) between 5:00 AM and 6:00 AM. My reference is Cortland N.Y.; times will vary a little other locations. As the Cresent Moon climes into the sky in the East, Venus will start to disappear behind the Moon. The whole event will end by being washed out by the rising Sun. Just below the moon will sit Mars, may not see it but you never know. Also, to the upper right (Southeast) will be the very bright Jupiter. So, given a clear sky to the East, pleasant temperature, and lots of coffee, we can expect a very nice celestial evert on Wednesday morning.
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Friday, February 27 at sunset…….
If the skys are clear, and it’s February 27th, and you can see to the West… You will be in for a very pleasant celestial observation. The Crescent moon and Veneus will move into conjunction. We have been watching Venus in the evening sky shining brightly, even in the bright sky of dusk, for a while now. Now, this bright object, so near the crescent moon, will frame a truly special picture. It will only be seen on the evening of February 27th so keep an eye out.
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy
German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile. The black hole is four million times more massive than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing – including light – can escape them. According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit. ‘The black pearl’ Dr Massey said: “Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a role in helping galaxies to form – not just our own, but all galaxies. “They had a role in bringing matter together and if you had a high enough density of matter then you have the conditions in which stars could form. “Thus the first generation of stars and galaxies could have come into existence”. The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million, million miles from the Earth. “Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist,” said Professor Reinhard Genzel, head of the research team. “The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt.” Observations were made using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso). By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
Friday, October 31st, 2008
December 1st … At Sunset…. Be there!
Ok, it’s a ways off, but you will have to watch for this interesting celestial arrangement on December 1st. At sunset, or shortly thereafter, look to the South west and see the crescent Moon, Jupiter, and Venus keeping close company. Of course, there nowhere near each other but the brightness of the planets will make them appear next to each other. The proximity effect will not be obvious one day before or one day after so let’s hope the sky is clear in the Southwest at sunset on December 1st.
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
Spacecraft finds strange object in space
PARIS (UPI) — The European Space Agency says the COROT spacecraft has discovered a massive planet-sized object that’s unlike anything previously spotted.
The object, named COROT-exo-3b, is so exotic, agency scientists said they are unsure whether the oddity is a planet or a failed star. The object is about the size of Jupiter but has more than 20 times the mass. It takes 4 days, 6 hours to orbit its parent star, which is slightly larger than the sun.
COROT, an unmanned mission led by the French space agency, was launched in 2006. It has the dual objectives of searching for extrasolar planets and performing astroseismology.
“COROT-exo-3b might turn out to be a rare object found by sheer luck”, said Francois Bouchy of the French Institute of Astrophysics. “But it might just be a member of a new-found family of very massive planets that encircle stars more massive than our sun. We’re now beginning to think that the more massive the star, the more massive the planet,” he said.
The discovery by COROT — COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits — is to be reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
Moon & Jupiter make a pretty sight tonight
From Sunset and all thru the night, Jupiter and the Moon will make a terrific pair. Look in the South East at Sunset and to the south at around Midnight. This view is for Thursday the 17th. Each night, Jupiter will be farther to the right of the moon. Enjoy how bright Jupiter is dispite the brightness of the full moon.
Thursday, July 17th, 2008
International Space Station (ISS)Flyover’s for Cortland Area
| Date: | Time (PM) | Duration | Look to: | Degrees |
| 7-18 | 9:49 | 2 min | SSW | 33 ° |
| 7-18 | 11:24 | 2 min | W | 30° |
| 7-19 | 10:12 | 3 min | WSW | 72° |
| 7-20 | 9:00 | 3 min | SSW | 33° |
| 7-20 | 10:35 | 3 min | W | 30° |
| 7-21 | 9:24 | 3 min | WSW | 72° |
| 7-22 | 9:48 | 3 min | W | 30° |
| 7:24 | 9:00 | 3 min | W | 28° |
Watch for the ISS flyovers in the next week or so. While most of the time, the ISS will be seen only about 30 degrees above the horizon, it will be very bright and unmistakable in it’s movement. Notice that on the 21st. the ISS will be very high in the Sky. Watch for this, it’s worth it.
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Apophis ad Absurdum
At some point you’ve probably been driving down the freeway and had a bug hit your windshield. Did the impact send you careening off the side of the road? I thought not. But that’s the underlying premise of a ridiculous story that took the Internet by storm yesterday.
On Friday the 13th in April 2029, a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid named Apophis will pass close enough to Earth (within 20,000 miles) to briefly appear as a 3rd-magnitude star in the night sky.
Dan Durda
It seems that a 13-year-old German student chose a study of near-Earth asteroids for his entry in a prestigious science-fair competition. While crunching the numbers for a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid named 99942 Apophis, he discovered that the giant rock might strike an orbiting satellite when it brushes within 18,000 to 20,000 miles of Earth on April 13, 2029.
That possibility, the student concluded, had been overlooked by NASA’s top dynamicists, and it increased the chance of Apophis crashing into Earth itself on a subsequent pass in 2036 from 1 in 45,000 (NASA’s estimate) to just 1 in 450. It’s a harrowing prospect — if he had actually been correct.
The story first appeared on April 4th in Bild, the German equivalent of Weekly World News. “I have calculated the end of the world!” screams the headline “…and NASA says, I’m right.” This silliness might have died quietly, had the Agence France-Presse not repeated and embellished the tale on April 15th.
Kudos to German science writer Daniel Fischer, who got to the bottom of this mess and yesterday exposed it for the farce (or hoax) it was.
First, the boy misunderstood the flyby geometry in 2029 — the chance of striking a satellite is “vanishingly unlikely,” NASA scientists insist. While it’s true that Apophis will pass closer than the altitude of geosynchronous satellites, it’ll be well outside them when it crosses Earth’s equatorial plane, where they’re located.
Second, Apophis has an estimated mass of some 20 million tons. Even if it did have a head-on collision with a sizable satellite, the impact would barely affect the asteroid’s trajectory. (If you don’t believe me, just ask the bug.)
Posted by Kelly Beatty, April 17, 2008