Starship Asterisk*

I've not seen Mercury in the sky with or without any equipment. Also generally Uranus is too faint to be visible with the naked eye and can only be seen with a telescope and maybe binoculars. Uranus runs around magnitude 5.8 to 5.9, so it's an easy binocular object; in fact, I've been spotting it w...

Wonderful and magical image of the only planet visible to the naked eye that I've not seen in the sky yet... Does that mean you've not seen Mercury at all, or just not naked eye? It might also imply that you've seen Uranus naked eye, which I think is generally more difficult than seeing Mercury nak...

Using Google maps, I found a spot on the southeastern shore of the St. Lawrence River that shows the buildings in much the same alignment as today's APOD. The viewing direction is just a bit south of west as shown here . Correspondingly, the Venus-Mars-Moon grouping was also a bit south of west that...

I don't believe this is a repeat like many Sunday APOD's! :D This one is almost the same as the APOD of October 1, 2009: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091001.html It looks like the same image with a slightly different crop, and the mouseover is now absent. The descriptive text is much the same too.

... the field is ... south up ... The field is actually north up since the tail points more-or-less opposite the sun. Also, east is to the left, so it's a normal view, like one would see in binoculars if the tail was bright enough. Based on the comet's position matched in SkyTools, it was taken aro...

If the moon is rising, wouldn't that be the morning skies? If it's a lunar eclipse, it must be full moon, when the moon is opposite the sun in the sky. If it's morning, the sun would of course be rising, and therefore, the full moon being opposite the sun in the sky must be setting. Conversely, whe...

I too had envisioned capturing a similar picture of Mars, Spica and the totally-eclipsed moon on the morning of 2014 Apr 15, but alas, inclement weather precluded it. Here in southern New Jersey, there were broken clouds during the penumbral stage, so I saw some slight darkening around 1:30 am EDT (...

A larger version of the IAU/Sky & Telescope chart of Sagittarius is available at: http://www.iau.org/static/public/constellations/gif/SGR.gif You may need to click on the chart to get the full size. Charts for all the constellations are linked on this IAU page (scroll down): http://www.iau.org/p...

In view of what is stated in some posts could someone please confirm or not that the labelled image is correctly labelled ('labeled' in US spelling :) ) and is it Saturn that is the very bright object towards the top right? Thanks. As a follow-up to my earlier post, here's a correctly labeled versi...

Not mars but delta ophiuchi, right? And to the right of Antares we see Saturn... You are correct, the "Mars" label is misapplied. It is indeed Delta Ophiuchi, a.k.a., Yed Prior, and just below it is Yed Posterior (Epsilon Oph). They are the visually distinctive pair of third magnitude sta...

I like the way Ceres and Vesta were circled; I never would have found them on my own! :D Yes. I wonder what their apparent magnitudes are? Looks like they might be easy to find with binoculars. I'm not certain when the picture was taken, but based on the positions of the asteroids and Mars, I'm gue...

Too bad it did not have Mercury in there too, it was close by...at least on my software.... Indeed, it was only about 17.5 degrees from Venus on December 30th, 2013, the date of the picture. However, Mercury was also just a couple of degrees from the sun a day after superior conjunction, setting ab...

Anybody know the designation of the bright galaxy below the comet in the frame? The bright star at the bottom-right corner of the panel on the left is magnitude 6.3 HR 4856. The prominent galaxy below-left of that is magnitude 10.1 NGC 4697. Based on the positions of these objects relative to the c...

My dear friend Bubbles made this analemma that tracks the Sun through the tropical zodiac ( e.g. the September equinox is the beginning of Libra ). The sun's position at today's equinox (Sept 22, 2013) is in Virgo, about 38 degrees west of the modern Libra border. It looks like your friend is using...

Unfortunately, this daytime launch of the Antares rocket was essentially invisible to those of us in southern New Jersey (roughly 100 to 150 miles north of Wallops Island, VA). Despite a beautiful, clear blue sky, I saw nothing from the NJ suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, and neither did a number of oth...

I was curious about the specific stars and constellations in this picture, so I labeled a copy of it:



Click here for a larger version.

From Earth, the Moon is seen against a black sky. Therefore it can't appear darker than its surroundings. This is true whether the night is clear or party cloudy. In this picture, the Moon's dark parts should actually be observably lighter than its surroundings, because at thin crescent the Moon re...

Another little boo-boo. The APOD text says the nebulae are northeast of Deneb while the photographer's web page says they're west of Deneb. Actually, they are approximately east-southeast of Deneb.

Regardless, it's a fine picture!

Joe

"But thank you so much, Joe Stieber, for that lovely EPOD (Earth Science Picture of the Day)!!

Ann

You're welcome, Ann!

Actually, the EPOD features "astronomical" subjects far more often than the APOD features "terrestrial" subjects.

If you want a nice picture of the night sky, go to today's EPOD (Earth Science Picture of the Day)...

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2013/09/milky ... ntain.html

Go Figure.

Giza Guy wrote:

3.162277660168379 wrote:Absolutely wonderful and so educational.

sqrt 2 X sqrt 5 = 3.162277660168379

Which, of course, equals the square root of 10 since: (sqrt 2) x (sqrt 5) = sqrt (2 x 5)

I'm not positive but I may have inadvertently caught a photo of this the night of the 13th in Oregon while experimenting with my new camera. Looking at the large version of the picture you linked, it does not include Nova Delphinus 2013 (even if it had erupted by the 13th). Altair is the bright sta...

... is still an object that requires a small telescope to see... it isn't naked eye. Actually, it has reached naked-eye brightness (at least from a moderately dark site). I saw it in binoculars on the night of August 14/15 when it was around magnitude 6 (near the threshold of naked-eye visibility)....

Somebody check the math, please? Which math? The distance-angle relationship? distance = tan(3°) / 1.6 AU = tan(3°) / 2.39e8 km = 12.5 million km. Did you get something different? Chris, Your equation has the wrong operator; actually: (tan 3°) / 2.39E8 km = 2.19E-10 km !!! You probably meant: (tan ...

It was stationary at Greatest Eastern Elongation on February 14, 2000. Mea culpa! I scribbled too quickly. Mercury would have been stationary about February 20, 2000 (not the 14th). Mercury is stationary some days after Greatest Eastern Elongation because even though the apparent spacing between Me...