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  Night Sky Calendar - Southern Hemisphere
June 2008
Celestial Object
 


07 - Mercury at inferior conjunction with the Sun at 15h UT.
0000Mercury passes into the morning sky (not visible).
08 - Moon near Mars at 1h UT (evening sky). Mag. +1.5.
19 - Venus at superior conjunction with the Sun at 4h UT.
0000Passes into the evening sky (not visible).
19 - Moon near Saturn at 7h UT (evening sky). Mag. +0.7.
18 - Full Moon at 17:30 UT.
20 - Moon near Jupiter at 14h UT (morning sky). Mag. -2.7. Jupiter displays the
0000largest and most detailed planetary disk of all the planets. Even a small telescope
0000will reveal Jupiter's cloud bands and its four largest moons known as the Galilean
0000moons (discovered by Galileo in 1610). Jupiter has a total of 63 moons.
20 - Pluto at opposition at 16h UT. Mag. 14. Requires at least a 10-inch telescope and
0000a very dark sky to view.
20 - June solstice at 23:59 UT. The time when the Sun reaches the point farthest north
0000of the celestial equator marking the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere
000 and winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
00 0 0 0 0 0// Get the complete calendar version at skymaps.com
7 -

The photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a detail of the nebula. This close-up shows a dense cloud of dust and gas, a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light-years away from the nebula's central star, not shown in this picture. Located in Sagitarius, the nebula's name means "divided into three lobes".
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  Featured Book ~ The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut | Mike Mullane
The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle AstronautThe Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut - On February 1, 1978, the first group of space shuttle astronauts, twenty-nine men and six women, were introduced to the world. Among them would be history makers, including the first American woman and the first African American in space. This assembly of astronauts would carry NASA through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle program. Four would die on Challenger. Mullane vividly portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience -- from telling a female technician which urine-collection condom size is a fit; to walking along a Florida beach in a last, tearful goodbye with a spouse; to a wild, intoxicating, terrifying ride into space; to hearing "Taps" played over a friend's grave. Mullane is brutally honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling would precipitate the Challenger disaster.  


 


Monday, January 30, 2006

 An Up-close with Comet Fragments 



This close-up picture of comet Wild 2 fragments was recently published on JPL website. The image shows a particle impact on the aluminum frame that holds the aerogel tiles from the Stardust collector grid. The debris from the impact shot into the adjacent aerogel tile, producing the explosion pattern of ejecta framents captured in the material. Click here for the high resolution image. (- image credit:JPL)


Posted @ 3:17 PM by kinzi


 

Friday, January 27, 2006

 Saturn at its Closest Today 

Today Saturn will reach its closest position to Earth (opposition), a mere 1,215 million kilometers (755 million miles) away. It will be visible all night long, rising in the East and moving to the West. A golden orb surrounded by Saturn's amazing rings will be revealed even in a small telescope. This best condition in viewing Saturn will last until June. Further information on viewing this ringed planet and its moon, can be found at Saturn Observation Campaign viewing page. If you are having difficulties in tracking this planet location, download this helpful nightsky map here.


Posted @ 7:44 PM by kinzi


 

Thursday, January 26, 2006

 Astronomers Detected An Earth-Like Planet Outside Solar System 

For the first time, a low mass, rocky planet like our Earth was discovered. The new planet lies 25,000 light years away, close to the galactic core of the Milky Way. The planet, designated OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is located 390 million km from its parent star, the distance that will put the planet orbit between Mars and Jupiter in our solar system. The planet's surface is a frigid -220 C (-365 F) that the chance of life spawning on the planet is almost null. The parent star that hosted the planet is red dwarf, just like our Sun but relatively cooler. The astronomers used a method called "gravitational microlensing" to detect the presence of the planet. A methode which is relatively new but it's said more effective in finding low mass planets. So far, there's about 170 planets outside the solar system have been discovered, but most of them are at the size of the giant planet, Jupiter.


Posted @ 8:33 PM by kinzi


 

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 Two New Stellar Disks Found on Nearby Stars 



Stellar disks around two stars may resembles our Kuiper Belt. That's the newest discovery of Hubble Space Telescope on its survey over 22 nearby stars. The two stars lies about 60 light years away and bring to nine the number of stars with dusty debris disks observable at visible wavelengths. The new ones are different, however, in that they are old enough - more than 300 million years - to have settled into stable configurations akin to the stable planet and debris orbits in our own solar system, which is 4.6 billion years old. The other seven, except for the sun, range from tens of millions to 200 million years old - young by solar standards. In addition, the masses of the stars are closer to that of the sun.

The finding was reported by Paul Kalas and Michael Fitzgerald of the Univ of California, along with Mark C. Clampin of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.


Posted @ 7:58 PM by kinzi


 

Friday, January 20, 2006

 A Nine Years' Voyage to Pluto Has Just Been Started 

The first challange to explore the last planet has been passed. NASA's New Horizon probe aboard Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Caneveral and now heading to Pluto. After 3 days delayed due to weather and power failure at the mission controller, the superfast Atlas 5 rocket finally blasted off from its launch pad. The nuclear powered spacecraft will travel at the breaking record speed at 10.07 mile per seconds - 36, 256 mph. With that speed the spacecraft is expected to cross the moon's orbit in just nine hours after liftoff and 13 months to reach Jupiter for a velocity boosting flyby. It will take nine years for New Horizon probe to reach Pluto due to enermous distance between Earth and Pluto (almost 50 times Earth - Sun distance).

Carrying the ashes of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, New Horizons will race by the frozen planet July 14, 2015, passing within 5,500 miles of the icy, 1,460-mile-wide planet at 31,300 mph. Fourteen minutes later, the spacecraft will pass by Charon at a distance of 16,800 miles.

New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto will last a full day, 12 hours before and after. The spacecraft cannot enter orbit around the planet because no current rocket can launch a probe carrying enough fuel to arrest the velocity needed to get it there in a reasonable amount of time.

The next target after flying past Pluto will be objects in the region called Kuiper Belt. It's where recently two planet-sized objects were discovered. This mission is going to be a mission of exploration and discovery because no such mission has been carried out into such distant worlds.

Mission Website : http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/


Posted @ 7:56 PM by kinzi


 

Monday, January 16, 2006

 ... and Stardust Capsule Touched Down on Earth 


The Stardust capsule descended flawlessly on Sunday morning bringing primitive samples from comet and interstellar dust. The capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere at high speed producing streaks of light in the sky and released a small parachute at 32 km altitude to slow its descent before landing on Utah desert. The mothership that jettisoned the capsule will end up in permanent orbit around the Sun. The probe has travelled for more than 4 billion km and took up 7 years journey to complete its mission. The goal of this mission is to unlock the secret of our solar system, by studying the comet particles and interstellar dust which is believed to be remnants of pristine materials of the solar system earliest history.

...Coming up next! Pluto New Horizon Probe is ready on the launch pad for the NASA's new grand tour to explore the ninth planet and its moon, Charon. Enrouted to the outskirt of our solar system, the probe will be launched on January 17 atop Atlas 5 rocket. The probe will travel for nine years to reach Pluto, and continue its grand tour into the Kuiper Belt region, a region that contains many icy bodies and is still unexplored by any spacecrafts to date.


Posted @ 1:18 PM by kinzi


 

Saturday, January 14, 2006

 Stardust Capsule to Land Sunday Morning 

NASA's Stardust mission is heading home to deliver pristine samples of comet material. The spacecraft's return capsule, which will make the fastest reentry of any human-made object on record, will land Sunday, Jan. 15, at approximately 2:12 a.m. Pacific time on the Utah Test and Training Range. Learn more about the capsule's return, the mission and the comet materials collected at the mission website.


Posted @ 9:20 PM by kinzi


 

Thursday, January 12, 2006

 Seeing Saturn from the Backyard 

I finally took out the t'scope yesterday night. There was a clear sky outside, the best time we have here since terrible viewing condition with cloudy sky and rains for couples of days. The most wanted-object to capture that night was Saturn. Saturn will be at brightest and closest to our planet at the end of this month. Then it would be a simple target to scan. But this time around not, as we are still in the early month. With the naked eye, Saturn was a bit hard to find, although I know it is somewhere in the eastern sky. Then, I used the sky map as a guide to search for the location. You can get the monthly calendar, including the skymap here. At around 11 pm, I pointed the t'scope towards the constellation Cancer, somewhere at one o'clock position to the east. It's there. The bright, yelowish star-looking planet shone brilliantly. With my small t'scope, I could see the ring. Fantastic, first time ever for me to see this planet with my small new t'scope. My friends, who are not enthustiastic in space and so eager to look at it, also enjoyed so much seeing this magnificent planet. The ring is now at the oblique angle seeing from earth.

Also, there were many brilliant objects visible that night. Mars -far to the western sky, the supergiant star Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, the seven sister Pleiades star cluster (outshine by the brightness of the moon that time), the brightest star of all Sirius, and the second brightest star Canopus.


Posted @ 3:22 PM by kinzi


 

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

 200,000 Years Trip into Oblivion of Black Hole 

A team of astronomers has recently observed the heart of galaxy NGC1097 and has found that it would take 200,000 years for gas to travel the last leg of its one-way journey into the oblivion of a black hole. By tracking the death spiral of cosmic gas at the center of the galaxy, scientists figured that material moving at 110,000 miles an hour would still take eons to cross into a black hole.

Black holes are drains in space that have gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Huge ones are believed to lurk at the centers of many galaxies including the Milky Way, which contains the sun.


Posted @ 6:48 PM by kinzi


 



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    ryan kinzi
    Nightsky calendar (a brief version) by Skymaps & NASA's Space Calendar | Image of FCO - credit: NASA. Hosting generously provided by Site Design Magazine
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    The Oort cloud, is a postulated spherical cloud of comets situated about 50,000 to 100,000 AU from the Sun. This is approximately 1000 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto or roughly one light year, almost a quarter of the distance from the Sun to Proxima Centauri, the star nearest the Sun. The Oort cloud would have its inner disk at the ecliptic from the Kuiper belt. Although no direct observations have been made of such a cloud, it is believed to be the source of most or all comets entering the inner solar system (some short-period comets may come from the Kuiper belt), based on observations of the orbits of comets.
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