Star gazers

SUNSET PLANETS: This week, two bright lights are beaming through the sunset. "Venus and Mercury looked great together this evening," reports Becky Ramotowski, who sends this twilight photo from Tijeras, New Mexico:
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[align=left]Tonight, August 20th, the two planets are at closest approach--only 1o apart. To see them, look low and due west immediately after sunset. Venus pops out of the twilight first, followed by Mercury a short while later. The view through binoculars is dynamite![/align]

 

Thanks for the heads-up Walnut. I got a great photo of the two of them close by, with Saturn too I think, back in June 2005. Mind you, getting clear skies this year will be a miracle!

Just to state the obvious: make 100% sure that you don't point the binoculars at the sun, even a setting sun, including swinging the binoculars in an arc that includes the sun.

 

Well blow me down, Saturn and Mars are still in the frame, although I doubt they will be visible just at dusk. I reckon, depending on how far North, South or even West of me you are, the time to look will be around 8-8:30pm, should be good to view between now and the end of the month (Mercury steadily moving a bit left of Venus), and might we even see the new moon in the frame - say around the 2nd?

 

SOLAR ACTIVITY: Warning. This story contains material that may make you feel very small.
For the past two days, a colossal prominence has been dancing along the northwestern limb of the sun. "Here's a photo from Aug. 27th," offers Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK. "The Earth has been added for scale."
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"It does makes you feel small, doesn't it?"
Lawrence's photo frames a towering sheet of hydrogen gas stretched 75,000 km high by solar magnetic fields. The foreground is filled by a "shag carpet" of spicules--Texas-sized jets of gas that shoot up from the sun's surface and fall back again on 10 minute time scales. Spicules are the smallest thing in the photo and they're as big as Texas. Have you ever driven across Texas?
The prominence is still active today and makes an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Take a look, that is, if you can reach the eye piece.

Please note Kirstens previous warning don't look at the sun through an ordinary telescope or binoculars special filters or dedicated scopes are required.

 

Large Hadron Collider Rap Is a Hit

Written by Nancy Atkinson
Kate McAlpine at the LHC. Credit: Telegraph

Puzzled about particle physics? Want to know what the inside of the Large Hadron Collider looks like? Like music, fun and science? Want to know for sure the LHC won't create a black hole that will swallow the Earth? Find all of the above in a rap song created by Kate McAlpine, 23, who used to work in the press office of CERN, where on September 10, the LHC will be powered up. The song has been a hit on You Tube, and has been downloaded over 400,000 times. Physicists say the science in the song is "spot on" and provides a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, while noting that "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head." Without further ado, here it is:

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/08/27/large-hadron-collider-rap-is-a-hit/#more-17421
McAlpine wrote the rap during her 40-minute morning commute to CERN. "Some more academic people are not too happy and they think it kind of cheapens the science and dumbs it down," she says. "But I think mostly people are excited to have this rap out there. And a lot of people at CERN just think it's great, so that's exciting."

 

BREWING STORM: Last night (Sept. 2nd) in North Pole, Alaska, the sky turned green. "I didn't expect to see any Northern Lights, but there they were," says Bud Kuenzli, who opened the shutter of his Canon EOS 1D for 15 seconds and collected this photo:
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In Alaska, this counts as a mild display, but it might herald a bigger show in the nights ahead. A solar wind stream is approaching Earth, due to hit late on Sept. 3rd or Sept. 4th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
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KASATOCHI UPDATE
When a massive cloud of volcanic ash and sulfur dioxide hits the stratosphere, where does it go next? Click here for the answer. The movie you just saw, prepared by atmospheric scientists at the University of Bremen in Germany, shows how a plume of SO2 from the eruption of Alaska's Kasatochi volcano swirled, twirled and spread throughout Earth's northern stratosphere during the month of August 2008. Click on the image to watch it again:
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People lucky enough to look up when the plumes passed by witnessed spectacular sunsets and sunrises. The display has subsided as the clouds have disipated--but the show is not over yet. Look carefully at the last frame of the movie. Subtle tendrils of ash and sulfate aerosols are still cross-crossing the stratosphere putting on a nice show for attentive sky watchers.
Just last night Matt Champlin of Skaneateles, NY, saw the lingering ash: "The colors kept getting deeper and more beautiful for 15-20 minutes after the sunset, seemingly reflecting off of nothing in the sky." Doug Zubenel of Kansas sends a similar report: "It has been 18 days since I first spotted the ash clouds of Kasatochi over eastern Kansas, and although it was perfectly clear in the lower atmosphere tonight, the remnants persist."
Kasatochi continues. Keep an eye on the sunset!

 

A heads up for anyone interested.

DRACONID METEOR SHOWER: The pelting continues. One day after asteroid 2008 TC3 hit Earth, a stream of dust from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner is doing the same. The result is a minor shower of meteors emerging from the northern constellation Draco. At maximum on Oct. 8th, the Draconids are expected to produce a few to 10 meteors per hour.

 

Maybe clearer tonight coudl not see athing last nite.

 

OH has just dashed outside to see if he can see anything - it's a clear night.

 

This stunning photograph appeared in the sunday mail it's of the Milkyway and Jupiter viewed from a cave in America's Utah desert by a remarkable photographer Wally Pacholka, here is his web address if you would like to see some more of his wonderful photographs:enjoy:
http://www.brightnightgallery.com/top10.html