tingilinde

leftover bits of halley's comet tomorrow morning

The predawn hours of October 21 should be the best time to watch the Orionid meteor shower.  The moon is almost new and absent from the sky - all you need is a dark sky, some warm clothing and maybe some hot chocolate or coffee..

Comets tend to be messy things, leaving bits of dust along their orbits.  As the Earth passes through their orbits we get meteor showers.  The Orionids are from Halley's Comet - they are named for Orion because they appear to come from an area in the sky near that constellation.

What makes this one worth watching is the past few years have produced over fifty meteors an hour for people in dark places and this year should be at least that good.  This shower also tends to produce a few very bright meteors - fireballs.

night myopia

Have you ever found yourself out on a dark night not seeing as many stars as you used to?  Perhaps those around you are seeing better.

You might have night myopia.  Truckers are treated for it, but it might make sense for some of you who like to watch the sky to read this Sky and Telescope article and talk to your ophthalmologist.

2d vs 3d and the universe

We look at things in the sky, but have little sense of where they really are,

Where is M13?  is a 3d sky atlas.  Very basic now (mostly messier objects), but great promise!

real beauty from the world at night

We've plugged The World At Night before, but some of the photography is so beautiful that it deserves a revisit.

You should also check out ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project.

find big hunks of stuff far overhead

A neat tool to predict passes of the ISS and other large objects over locations of your choosing...

The ISS can be very bright and is a lot of fun to watch.

amateur astronomy

I used to do it, but the night skies of NJ aren't particularly clear and dark.  Still, over the years, people have asked for entry level advice for themselves or their kids.  I usually tell them to find some low power high aperture binoculars and point them to some resources.  

A few people go beyond that - way beyond that.  All of the pretty images in Sky and Telescope have to come from somewhere you know and a few even do real science.  The Astronomy Podcast recently had a show (mp3) devoted to what sort of hardware the serious amateur might be looking at.  This is the $5k to $100k+ range and is a fun listen if you're into this sort of thing (Jeff?).  Probably the first time I've heard the mention of Ritchey--Chrétien telescopes outside of S&T.  Serious stuff  (also Paramount mounts)

kids and exploding stars

One of the few physical periodicals I still subscribe to is Sky & Telescope.  Paging through the new October 2009 edition I found a nice section devoted to a few remarkable amateur astronomers.  Astronomy turns out to be an area of science where amateurs still make serious contributions (oddly enough amateurs invented astrophysics in the mid 1800s) and some amateurs do amazing stuff.

One of the people featured is Caroline Moore.   At 14 she is the youngest person to discover a supernova - not only that, but it turns out to be the least powerful supernova ever seen (still three orders of magnitude more energy was released than a regular nova).

She also wrote the commentary on the last page of the magazine - give it a read if you spot a copy in a bookstore.

A bit of searching turns up a few videos.  (check out Rachael Maddow's interview)

almost time for the perseid meteor shower

get ready!

0.2 kg of your stuff into orbit for < $10k

Gregg notes the TubeSat - an inexpensive path for the hobbiest to experiment with a small satellite.

It won't stay up very long and you have to build a very light payload -- and who knows if your payload will reach orbit, but this is getting into the range that a amateur can begin to dream about.

get ready for the perseids

One of the best meteor showers of the year should peak early on the morning of August 12.  The best time to observe will be late night on the 11th and then through the early morning hours on the 12th until moonrise.  The intensity will increase until dawn, but you'll be fighting the moonlight.

Still - if you are in a reasonably dark place you might see well over 100 meteors per hour.  

Put it on your calendar!