Online Scratchpad | the astronote

Night Sky Calendar - Northern Hemisphere

November 2009

Celestial Object

02 - Full Moon at 19:14 UT
05 - Taurid (south) meteor shower peaks. Active between 25 Sept and 25 Nov.
000 Associated with Comet 2P/Encke.
09 - Moon near Mars (morning sky) at 14h UT. Mag. +0.3.
12 - Taurid (north) meteor shower peaks. May produce the occasional bright fireball.
17 - Leonid meteor shower peaks at 9h UT. Arises from debris ejected by
000 Comet Tempel-Tuttle in 1533. Expect about 25 to 30 meteors per hour under
000 dark skies. Predictions of enhanced activity between 21-22h UT on 17 Nov
000 (favours sky watchers in Asia).
21 - Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower peaks at 15:25 UT. A usually minor
000 shower active 15-25 Nov. Radiant is near Procyon. Predictions of enhanced
000 activity this year. Timing favours Far East Asia, Australia and across the
000 Pacific to Alaska.
00 0 0 0 0 0// Get the complete calendar version at skymaps.com
7 -

The photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a detail of the nebula. This close-up shows a dense cloud of dust and gas, a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light-years away from the nebula's central star, not shown in this picture. Located in Sagitarius, the nebula's name means "divided into three lobes".

GALLERY

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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

My First Odd Shot of Moon

Here is a picture of moon I captured couple of days ago with my digicam with the help of my telescope. I dont feel like to elaborate how the process works to get this blurred picture because I think that you have already guessed how I did it. :D

Posted @ 6:08 PM by kinzi

Monday, February 20, 2006

Astronomer Lists Stars That Likely to Have Habitable Planets

An astronomer from Carnegie Institution of Washington has named stars that become candidates for the place of habitable worlds. Margaret Turnbull made her choices purely on the characteristics of the stars themselves. Her criteria included several related to age. The star has to be at least 3 billion years old, long enough for companion planets to form and complex life to develop. Variable stars that are prone to lots of flares and pyrotechnics tend to be too young to meet her criteria. Also, stars more than 1.5 times the mass of our Sun don't tend to live long enough to produce habitable zones.

Turnbull also considered the star's "metallicity." Stars and planets form out of the same parental cloud of dust and gas. If the star doesn't have enough iron in its atmosphere, it is likely the parent material did not contain enough heavy metals for planets to form. Turnbull's candidate stars had to have at least 50 per cent of the iron content of the Sun. Stars with higher metal content also tend to reside in more peaceful orbits in the plane of the galaxy, Turnbull said. She also stars that, like our Sun, that reside on the "main sequence" of stellar evolution. No red giants or white dwarfs allowed.

Turnbull's top candidate star for such radio scans is beta CVn, a sun-like star about 26 light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hound Dogs). (One light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles).

Turnbull announced her shortlist of so-called "habstars" at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis.

Posted @ 8:21 PM by kinzi

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Confirmed, The 2003 UB313 is Larger Than Pluto

German astronomers have made a new measurement of the size of 2003 UB313, and confirmed it's bigger than Pluto, which is about 700 km bigger in diameter. The data was acquired using a Spanish telescope, and reported the finding in the journal Nature. The 2003 UB313 lies in the icy bodies region called Kuiper belt. The existence of 2003 UB313 was detected firstly in 2003 but announced last year by Michael Brown, American astronomer from the California institute of Technology.

The new measurement was undertaken by detecting its heat radiation combined with data about the amount of Sun light reflected by the object. Further measurement will be carried out by Michael Brown's team using data from Hubble Space telescope. The new finding will boost a chance for the new object to be classified as a planet. The object is currently nicknamed "Xena" and probably will became the official name if the planet status is approved.

Posted @ 6:54 PM by kinzi

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ryan kinzi
Nightsky calendar (a brief version) by Skymaps & NASA's Space Calendar | Image of FCO - credit: NASA. Design & page layout © kinzi - 2009 | Contact me? xeno@(no-spam)cougars.com

Trifid Nebula
M20 | NGC 6514

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