This picture has to be one of the best sunset pictures ever taken. It shows a sunset on Mars.
"...The new data are expected to be addressed publicly within days by NASA Headquarters in Washington, where they could become part of the political debate on future NASA mission directions..."I'll keep you posted if anything interesting comes of this.
Every once in a while, you'll find those books that make you think "Man, I wish I had that book when I started this hobby..." This book, National Geographic's Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, is one of those books. In fact, I'd rank it right up there with Turn Left at Orion.
Backyard Guide to the Night Sky distinguishes itself from most beginner's books with one thing, though: information, and lots of it! This book boasts 287 pages of full-color illustrations, charts, and star maps! More than just a quick introduction, Backyard Guide will take you through everything you'll need to know to understand the night sky.
Backyard Guide contains information on stars, planets, and deep sky objects. It doesn't stop at the basics though, and goes on to show such interesting ideas as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the history of most of the objects, and tips on viewing them. For example, regarding Saturn's moons, the book reads:
"The structure of Saturn's rings has provided a massive laboratory for studying the intricacies of gravity. For example, scientists view some of Saturn's moons as critical in keeping order among the millions of ice particles that the rings comprise. The so-called shepherd moons - Pan, Atlas, Pandora, and Prometheus - straddle two of the rings and act like herders to keep them intact."While the book contains a lot of information, it doesn't get wallowed down in technical terms, either. All the concepts are laid out in easy to understand ways. Therefore, I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to get into astronomy or is just starting out. The book is reasonably sized, so it can be carried around to the field, and used as a reference, too. It would also make a great Christmas gift for any science-y type you may know!
Check out this video of the launch of shuttle Atlantis! It is available in HD on youtube, just click on the video to go to the YouTube page, or click the HD button and then the fullscreen button to view in HD!
Sorry for the kind of short notice, but the Leonid meteor shower will be peaking November 17th through the 18th! By the time you read this, that is probably tonight! Anyways, a quick bit of info on the shower:
The Leonid meteor shower is one of the annual favorites of astronomers. While not as big a show as the Geminids or Perseids, the Leonid meteor shower has a habit of performing better one year than the previous. Refreshed every 33 years by the comet 55P Tempel/Tuttle, the Leonids are expected to put on a good show this year (although Tempel/Tuttle hasn't come around since '96). WHile the shower may be very impressive, it could do so for only a short time. The peak is predicted to occur around 21:30 UTC, with the best action occuring within an hour or two of this peak. Rates are expected to reach up to 300 meteors per hour! So don't miss this meteor shower!
Starting today, I'm trying out a new feature on the blog that should help readers find relevant posts to the one they're viewing. It shows up as a toolbar on the bottom of the page, and in testing, has worked pretty well so far. Therefore, I've decided to release the new feature and see how it does!
Basically, it aggregates keywords into the toolbar, and lets you search for them on VisualAstronomy.
Don't worry, it isn't installed on your computer, it runs in javascript in your browser, and it won't affect any other sites you visit. I'm looking for feedback on the new toolbar. What do you think? Since this toolbar has integrated facebook and Twitter buttons, I've done away with the links under each post. I think this cleans the site up a bit and it seems to load faster now without multiple javascripts doing essentially the same thing.
So drop a comment below or shoot me an e-mail at sean@visualastronomy.com and let me know what you think!
A while ago, I posed this question to the members of the Cloudy Nights forum: "What are some good face-on spirals?" Among some of the responses I received was this list. This list compiles the 200 brightest galaxies in the night sky. It also gives RA/Dec coordinates for each, along with their magnitude, type, and orientation as viewed from Earth. I'm going to be using it to plan observing sessions. For quite some time I had made this list available as an Excel file, but it was hosted on a cheapo file share. Finally, though, I've found a much more reliable service and now the file is available again! It should be available permanently now! ;)
Download the List of galaxies in Excel Spreadsheet format! (45 kb)
Clear skies!
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