Astronomy

Well, bad news. Weather isn’t looking good for tomorrow’s historic event. It’s like 80% chance of showers almost entire Pacific Northwest extending even in to Eastern Washington. Even LIGO Observatory is not going to have sun shine.

The Observing Blog at S&T have posted this wonderful movie about celestial dance of some of the brightest objects in sky in August and September 2008, just after sunset. Unfortunately, for us in mid-northern latitudes (and especially Seattle weather), things won’t be as bright and high but having these objects “collide” with each other and that too with crescent moon around looks beautiful!

Cloudscapes, scheduled to be released in Oct, 2004, is definitely some of the coolest stamp set. [via Enchanted Ceiling]

This one is not a spectacular but its interesting because it’s rare and because of history. Specifically, in old times (pre 1900s), people used this rare event to measure distance between Earth and Sun.

If you live on East Coast and if you looked in to West in last few hours you might have seen a real bright blob of light. It’s so bright and has “burning aura” (literally looks like flames) around it that I thought it will soon fall down as huge shooting star.

This event is slowing down every year and so for some people it would be a reason not to care and for others it would be a reason to care even more, because next year it will be more slower :).

On Tuesday, Sep 9, Sunset is at 7:16 PM and moonrise is also at 7:16 PM. Cool right? Good way to see this would be at High Point State Park or a special hike from Sierra Club.

Just saw the red planet through my 4.5" telescope and 10mm eye piece. Unlike it was advertised on several web sites, no, it doesn’t get as big as moon when looking through modest telescope.

Mars is going to be the closest to Earth in recorded human history so far. You can go out at midnight and look in the South and the big blob of orangish yellow light (which you might mistake as air plane) is Mars.

Star parties are event with all night deep sky observations and chance to meet other fellow amateur astronomers. The first one of the year at East Coast is happening this weekend at Hope, NJ.