Archive for the 'Astronomy' Category

The Earth is full of holes

Have you ever looked at the moon or pictures of other planets to see hundreds of impact craters and wondered why Earth doesn’t look like that? Well, it sort of does. That’s right, Planet Earth is full of 170 crater holes and meteor blast sites, and counting!
An interesting article about Earth’s craters on Space.com explains [...]

The total lunar eclipse that took place on Wednesday night, February 20, 2008 was nothing short of spectacular.
About 40 degrees high in the eastern sky, the bright full, white moon slowly darkened from Earth’s shadow over the course of a couple of hours. While it was hard to see the shadow actually creep across the [...]

Viewing the four moons of Jupiter

Last week on Friday was a great night for viewing the night sky. That afternoon, when I came home from work, my neighbor’s daughter came over in a state of excitement because her social studies teacher told her that one could see some of the moons of Jupiter, and she asked if I would set [...]

Randye and I were up late this past Saturday night viewing the Perseid meteor shower. Even though this yearly astronomical event peaks on Sunday night, weather forecasts are predicting cloudiness and thunderstorms in our area, so we decided to catch it a day earlier. And boy, was it worth it!
For a prime viewing location, we [...]

According to Space.com and scads of blogs, a planet that is 50 percent bigger and five times as massive as planet Earth has been discovered, which could support liquid water and life as we know it.
The planet is named Gliese 581 C, after its star Gliese 581, which is a small red star that is [...]

Between the bright moon and the street lights, finding asteroid VV2 was a no-go for me on Saturday night. Even using the star hopping method by locating the big dipper and moving from there to the constellation of Leo minor and then Leo turned up nothing.

(Photo courtesy of Starrynight.com)
Aside from viewing a beautiful moon up [...]

Last night was a great night for doing a little stargazing. It wasn’t too cold and it was relatively clear. Despite the street lights and the lights from a few nearby houses, the visibility was pretty darn good. So, I pulled out the old Dobsonian telescope, set her up and had a look at what’s [...]

Perseid, where are you?

At the suggestion of Randye’s mom, we went out hunting for shooting stars last night. Her mom had heard of the famous Perseid meteor shower that occurs in the night sky, annually, at this time of the year. According to reports from Space.com, August is known as “meteor month.” And since I had been neglecting [...]