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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.  


 


Tuesday, February 28, 2006

 My First Odd Shot of Moon 

Here is a picture of moon I captured couple of days ago with my digicam with the help of my telescope. I dont feel like to elaborate how the process works to get this blurred picture because I think that you have already guessed how I did it. :D

Click for larger view


Posted @ 6:08 PM by kinzi


 

Monday, February 20, 2006

 Astronomer Lists Stars That Likely to Have Habitable Planets 

An astronomer from Carnegie Institution of Washington has named stars that become candidates for the place of habitable worlds. Margaret Turnbull made her choices purely on the characteristics of the stars themselves. Her criteria included several related to age. The star has to be at least 3 billion years old, long enough for companion planets to form and complex life to develop. Variable stars that are prone to lots of flares and pyrotechnics tend to be too young to meet her criteria. Also, stars more than 1.5 times the mass of our Sun don't tend to live long enough to produce habitable zones.

Turnbull also considered the star's "metallicity." Stars and planets form out of the same parental cloud of dust and gas. If the star doesn't have enough iron in its atmosphere, it is likely the parent material did not contain enough heavy metals for planets to form. Turnbull's candidate stars had to have at least 50 per cent of the iron content of the Sun. Stars with higher metal content also tend to reside in more peaceful orbits in the plane of the galaxy, Turnbull said. She also stars that, like our Sun, that reside on the "main sequence" of stellar evolution. No red giants or white dwarfs allowed.

Turnbull's top candidate star for such radio scans is beta CVn, a sun-like star about 26 light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hound Dogs). (One light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles).

Turnbull announced her shortlist of so-called "habstars" at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis.


Posted @ 8:21 PM by kinzi


 

Thursday, February 16, 2006

 Astronomers Find New Class of Cosmic Object 

A new kind of cosmic object has been found by an international team of astronomers. The object is a small compressed neutron star that emitting radio waves in a single burst that happened only less than one second a day. Most of the time, these neutron stars remain silent. The objects are dubbed by astronomers as Rotating Radio Transients or RRATs, closely related to conventional radio pulsars (small stars that emit regular pulses of radio waves, up to hundreds of times a second). Normal pulsars usually produce regular pulses of radio waves. Astronomers predict that the new kind of radio pulsar exceeded the number of the normal one. The number of 'normal' radio pulsars in our Galaxy is estimated to be about 100 000. The discovery was made by astronomers from the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and Canada using the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia.

More story can be found here


Posted @ 9:12 PM by kinzi


 

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

 Giant Lightning Storm Detected on Saturn 

The most powerful lighting storm on the ringed planet has been detected by orbitting Cassini spacecraft. This storm has electrical activity 1000 times much powerful than the one found on Earth. The storm covers an area of 2175 miles (3500 kilometers) wide, larger than the United States in whole. It occurs in the Southern hemisphere of the planet, an area of known lightning sources. The radio noise were first detected on January 23 by Cassini and Earth-based amateur astronomers provided the first visual confirmation of the storm with the telescope since Cassini spacecraft were not able to see Saturn's dayside at the time.

You can hear the radio sounds of Saturn's lightning here.


Posted @ 9:49 PM by kinzi


 

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

 NASA Delayed Two Extrasolar Planet Finder Missions 

Future NASA missions to locate any presence of extraterestial planets that may harbour life are delayed. The SIM PlanetQuest and Terrestial Planet Finder missions, both managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were expected to launch in the next decade. But new proposed budget alocated for the space agency in the next fiscal year and regarding the future space vision as proposed by George Bush in 2004 have opted these two mission out in the prioritized space programs. Instead, NASA will be focusing on the program that will send human to the moon by building a new and durable space shuttle called Crew Exploration Vehicle replacing the aging space shuttle.

The SIM PlanetQuest's original launch date of 2011 was pushed back to no earlier than 2015. The aim of SIM program is to locate and measure the distance and positions of stars that host Earth-like planets within 100 light years and identify the presence of the planets by using a technique called interferometry where the objects are imaged by combining light from multiple telescopes.

Based on the data gathered by SIM, the dual Terrestial Planet Finder telescopes will then photograph those planets to detect any supporting evidence of life. Original launch date for this space telescope is in 2016 and 2019 but this program has also been postponed for the above reason.

Related websites:
SIM PlanetQuest
Terrestial Planet Finder


Posted @ 10:28 PM by kinzi


 

Thursday, February 02, 2006

 Confirmed, The 2003 UB313 is Larger Than Pluto 

German astronomers have made a new measurement of the size of 2003 UB313, and confirmed it's bigger than Pluto, which is about 700 km bigger in diameter. The data was acquired using a Spanish telescope, and reported the finding in the journal Nature. The 2003 UB313 lies in the icy bodies region called Kuiper belt. The existence of 2003 UB313 was detected firstly in 2003 but announced last year by Michael Brown, American astronomer from the California institute of Technology.

The new measurement was undertaken by detecting its heat radiation combined with data about the amount of Sun light reflected by the object. Further measurement will be carried out by Michael Brown's team using data from Hubble Space telescope. The new finding will boost a chance for the new object to be classified as a planet. The object is currently nicknamed "Xena" and probably will became the official name if the planet status is approved.


Posted @ 6:54 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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