Basic astronomy and night sky information
The usually reliable Orionid meteor shower runs from October 17-25, 2015, and peaks in the early morning of October 21. The first-quarter Moon will set after midnight at the peak of the shower year, so it will be a great year to see the Orionids, which at their peak, can display as many as 30 meteors per hour [Read more…] about Orionid Meteor Shower 2015
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NASA has released an astonishing cache of more than 11,000 images from all 12 manned Apollo missions from 1968-1972. These images, which are scanned versions of the original 35 mm and Hasselblad film are not corrected or enhanced, so their colors are reminiscent of old vacation photos from the 1960s. Their tint and subject matter call forth a strange pang of nostalgia, I must admit.
The project to scan these images was the idea of Kipp Teague, a volunteer with the NASA History Office in Washington, D.C. The project began in 2004 and concluded recently. You can access all of these newly-released Apollo images at Flickr at the link below. As you will see, they are conveniently organized by mission:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums/
Here are a few to whet your appetite… [Read more…] about New Collection of Apollo Moon Images
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If you want to see planets this month, you’re best to look in the eastern sky before sunrise. There you’ll see Mars, Venus, and Jupiter congregating and brightening over the next many weeks, along with a visit next week by the waning crescent Moon. But the planet Saturn still lingers in the western evening sky in early October after sunset, tangled among the claws of the fearsome scorpion represented by the constellation Scorpius and its next-door neighbor Libra [Read more…] about Saturn and Antares Fade in the Western Sky
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Observers in southern Africa will enjoy a partial solar eclipse this weekend on September 13, 2015. This eclipse will be visible from all parts of South Africa, southern parts of Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It will also be visible for the very few observers over a wide area of the Indian Ocean and Antarctica. This is a partial eclipse– not total– so sky and Earth will not darken completely, and you will need proper solar filtering to enjoy this event [Read more…] about Southern African Solar Eclipse of September 13, 2015
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Ocean tides are one of the few phenomena that bring the workings of the sky down to Earth. The gravitational pull of the Moon, and to a lesser degree the Sun, tug on the world’s oceans while the Earth rotates under them, causing the ocean to appear to rise and fall twice each day. Isaac Newton applied his theory of gravitation to explain the tides. He reasoned that the Moon pulls on the ocean on the Moon-facing side of Earth, pulls on the Earth itself to a lesser degree because it’s further away, and pulls on the ocean on the far side of the Earth least of all. The effect is to cause the oceans to bulge slightly on a line towards the Moon as the earth rotates. So we see two tides each day spaced by 12 hours plus a little bit more to account for the Moon’s revolution around the Sun. Other than sunlight itself, tides are one of the most familiar astronomical phenomena we see around us.
In this time-lapse video by photographer Alan Dyer, you see the tides in action on the east coast of Canada, including the Bay of Fundy, a place in New Brunswick that boasts the highest tides in the world. It ends with a view of the Moon and Sun setting over the Bay of Fundy.
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