HEAVENLY TRIANGLE [Crescent moon, Saturn and star Regulus in tight triangular formation tonight]

spaceweather.com for June 8, 2008 ^ | Sunday, June 8, 2008

[ETL]

HEAVENLY TRIANGLE: Ringed planet, first-magnitude star, crescent moon. Add them all together and you get a heavenly triangle visible tonight. Look up after sunset for Saturn, Regulus and the Moon in scalene formation.
http://spaceweather.com/

[note: First, all of this is naked-eye visible (no, you do not need to remove your clothes to see it!). Next, Saturn (in the diagram above) is the large blue dot. They apparently forgot to label it. Saturn will appear brighter and somewhat 'yellowish' compared to the nearby white star Regulus just to its lower right (Saturn is brighter than the star). Mars, a bit further away to Saturn's lower right, is slightly orange in color and is a good deal less bright than Saturn at this time. The orangey color is simply the result of Mars' iron-bearing rocky surface turning rusty. The bedrock of Mars is comprised of a rock commonly found on Earth: basalt.-ETL]

[ETL]

Additional notes: Saturn is currently about 900 million miles from Earth. Mars is approximately 170 million. Back in December, 2007, we got as close as 55 million miles from Mars. Every 26-27 months, Earth catches up to Mars along its 'inner track' (we're in lane 3, Mars in lane 4) and we have what's called a 'close approach'. In August, 2003, Earth came to within ~34 million miles of Mars, closer than in many thousands of years. The reason we're not at the same identical distance from Mars at every close approach is that our two orbits are not perfectly circular but rather elliptical. And so it depends on our planets' positions along their paths at the time of the close approach.

Regarding a popular internet story about Mars which seems to circulate every August: don't believe it. The story is based on the 2003 close approach described above. ie, we get close to Mars every 26 months, not every August. The story also claims that Mars will get as big as the full moon at that time (ridiculous, of course). Mars, at its brightest, is a little brighter than the brightest stars in the sky, is not much bigger than the brighter stars, and is slightly orange in color (as are some stars).-ETL

BONUS! The International Space Station, with Shuttle attached, will pass over parts of the United States tonight. Check with the website, heavens-above.com, for the necessary details. The track below is centered on my New York City location. Times are in eastern daylight.

To see if the pair will in fact pass and be visible over your particular location,
schedules and other important information are available from the website just below (heavens-above.com):
http://www.heavens-above.com/

Important note for first time Space Station observers:
Unless the Station is scheduled to pass 20 or more (depending on your viewing location--obstructions, etc) degrees above the horizon, you may not see it at all. But if the pass IS high enough above your local horizon, it will 'look' like a very bright white star, w/ no blinking or colored lights whatsoever, moving at a steady rate of speed (about the apparent rate of a high-flying airplane) In reality, the ISS is actually travelling about 4-1/2 miles per second). Also, it will NOT be visible right at the time the schedule indicates it will first appear or 'start', so give it a minute or so. Finally, they list the "magnitude". This is simply the brightness of the pass. Due to some old rules which were never updated, the LOWER the number for magnitude, the BRIGHTER an object is. ie, negative magnitudes are very bright. When Venus is at her spectacular brightest, she's about a mag minus 4.7 --ETL.

Here is a link to an animated cloud map for the U.S. from the Weather Channel website, because if it's too cloudy you won't of course see anything:
http://www.weather.com/maps/maptype/satelliteusnational/index_large_animated.html

"The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in space.
The on-orbit assembly of ISS began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye:
it has an altitude of approximately 350 km (217 mi)[1] above the surface of the Earth, and travels at an average speed of 27,700 km
(17,210 statute miles) per hour [roughly 4.5 miles per second!], completing 15.77 orbits per day."[it takes the ISS about 90 min to go once around the Earth]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

How big is the International Space Station?
"The complete ISS will be over 100meters [~300 feet] long and more than 70meters [~210 feet] wide.
For comparison, the space shuttles are about 38meters [~100 feet] long.
A shuttle would stretch from home plate to second base on a baseball diamond
and the Space Station would reach from home plate all the way to the outfield walls.
The inside of the Station, when complete, will have a volume roughly equal to that of three jumbo jets.
The Space Station pieces will be launched into orbit over the course of more than 40 missions,
during which they will be assembled like a giant LEGO space project."
http://tinyurl.com/3mw7x4

"I took these pictures during the early morning hours of May 12th using a 5-inch refractor." says amateur astronomer Dirk Ewers of Hofgeismar, Germany.
For five minutes, he tracked the ISS across the sky and his *MOVIE* of the entire 75 [degree] transit is a must see!"

NASA-International Space Station (official website):
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/

[Issaquahking]

Thanks for the post. Saw the Space Shuttle/Station last year here in Nevada. Funny that it was almost like a Star Trek event! By that, I mean that we only got to see it for what was about 20 seconds, and that it was only visible for a short time (looked like about two foot of travel across the sky, rather than from one horizon to the other). Kind of a little shimmer, appeared, traveled,shimmered again and gone! I would suspect it won't be too much different in other places.

Maybe I'll take my little Saturn (GM product) out for a look see tonight. At Saturn and Mars that is!

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, Binocs...ready.

[RaceBannon]

bump for tonight

[Issaquahking]

Oh ya, checked your sign up date...

Welcome to Free Republic!

[Tax-chick]

Cool! We’ll have to take the telescope out.

[ETL]

Thanks. Glad to be here. (I assume you meant to reply to me?)

[martin_fierro]

Took a picture of the moon & redwoods last nite

[mad_as_he$$]

Will the gray’s take the opportunity to invade tonight?

[WSGilcrest]

Never miss a chance to run outside and watch a shuttle pass. I remember a couple of years ago, think it was STS115, we had a dinner party out on the patio and I announced to everyone where and when to look. Full daylight pass straight over head, very bright. Everyone was very impressed and are shuttle watchers to this day.

[STONEWALLS]

...thanks ETL..we’ll be out in the front yard tonight....there is no light pollution where we live and viewing conditions should be good.

[RightWhale]

I appreciate these astro threads this time of the year since the stars are gone and won’t be back until the first of August, so anything could be going on out there and we wouldn’t know.

[Cailleach]

PING
space! The pricess is excited. Wishes we were in the line to see the space station as well. Y’all are though.

[ETL]

Don’t forget to check with the heavens-above.com website I provided to get a proper schedule for your area. Otherwise, you’ll all be out there eating, drinking and laughing for nothing. :) Seriously, check with the site.

[null and void]

“The orangey color is simply the result of Mars’ iron-bearing rocky surface turning rusty.”

Turning rusty requires free oxygen. On Earth all of our iron was quite happy to be dissolved in the oceans until those nasty living things figured out photosynthesis, and started dumping waste oxygen into the air.

It was Earth’s first real environmental catastrophe...

[null and void]

Will the gray’s take the opportunity to invade tonight?

No. Too many people looking up.

I'm more curious about what the moon worshipers are going to do to celebrate.

Beheadings, bombings and burning of cars, oh my!

[kalee]

pinging Papa

[mad_as_he$$]

lol...good point.

[ETL]

I appreciate these astro threads this time of the year since the stars are gone and won’t be back until the first of August...

There's plenty of stars up in the summer sky. They don't go on vacation. Also in the summertime, we have constellations like Sagitarious. In the direction of Sagitarious is where the center of our Milky Way galaxy lies. Astronomers estimated a black hole about 3 million times as massive as our Sun resides there (rent free). The BH's distance from us is approximately 30,000 light years, one light year being the distance light travels in a year at its steady speed of 186,000 miles per second. And one LY works out to be about 6 trillion miles (6,000 billion miles). To get the actual distance to the center of the galaxy and the supermassive black hole there, multiply THAT number by 30,000.

[RightWhale]

Actually we can’t see Sagittarius from here. Ditto the ISS and the Space Shuttle. It’s all rumor.