Your one stop portal for the latest astronomy discoveries and news.
The view is going to be really stunning! On 30 June 2007 (TODAY), Venus and Saturn are going to be only 2/3º apart. With a wide FOV eyepiece, you are really going to see super duper scene.
In addition, for Asians and other continents (not America for sure, they had it last month), the residents will have a BLUE MOON. You may read “Blue Moon Isn’t Blue” for more information.
I have no idea why but I am so tired lately. I have no enough time to do stargazing, reading of CloudyNights.com, LX90 Yahoo Groups and gaming (World of Warcraft). I have been busy trainning as the school sport’s day is drawing near. I take part in 200m, 4X100m and the long relay. Ok guys, please forgive me for taking a few holidays. 
I will still notify you guys regarding the latest (going to happen) celestial events though.
Please check Heavens Above regarding the passing of ISS and STS-117. The STS-117 has undocked from ISS and prepared to return to earth on Thursday. This will be a very great chance to photo the flyby of them. Most of the America has the sight of them. I don’t have the chance to take the photo as the nearest flyby is only going to happen on 29 June. The STS-117 has backed to earth by that time.
Ok guys, gear up!
Do you see that Venus is so close to the crescent moon? Will they be very close until they “collide”? Yes, they definitely will but just not colliding. It’s occultation. It happened on 1448 UT at 18 June 2007. The moon occulted Venus for not less than 4 hours (roughly figure). Have you seen it?
Image shift and mirror flop are the common phenomena seen on mirror type telescope, especially SCT. When either of them happens, you can see the image through the eyepiece shifting. The reason for these phenomena is the not-so-perfect movement (slightly to left or right) of the mirror. What’s the difference between them?
While focusing, “Image Shift”.
While slewing, “Mirror Flop”.
Both are actually the same thing. When focusing, you are doing the shift of the mirror back and forth, thus you made the imperfect movement and the movement caused the image shift; when slewing, gravity is doing it and it causes the mirror flop.
We always hear that people are sorted into types and groups automatically at a gathering or any similar activity. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) found a direct proof of this behavior having by globular cluster. Heavier stars are sinking into the cluster’s core and the ligher stars accelerate to the boundary of the cluster.
Quick facts: A typical globular cluster contains several hundred thousand stars. Although the density of stars is very small in the outskirts of such stellar systems, the stellar density near the center can be more than 10,000 times higher than in the local vicinity of our Sun. If we lived in such a region of space, the night sky would be ablaze with 10,000 stars that would be closer to us than the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light-years away (or approximately 272,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun).
Recent Comments