Posted on 06/08/2008 7:45:21 AM PDT by 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]
Great points. Also see “banded iron formations” and “stromatolites”. I was just at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City yesterday and was talking to someone about one of the banded iron specimens they have on display there. Some of them are around 3.5 BILLION years old. But most banded iron formations were deposited billions of years ago.
Unless you live in a hole in the ground and never come up for air, particularly at night, you can see them. But you probably weren't being serious?
We live on a round planet. It has a top from where you can’t see half the sky and barely can see something in geosynch orbit. The full moon barely clears the south horizon this time of year. There are people living here you can’t explain this to.
Oh, I see. You threw me off a bit when you wrote, "it's just a rumor", as if you had received reports in the past. You should have mentioned your approximate location. Where is your general location, btw?
Very nice picture! Feels like Orlando here in NYC these past couple days! It’s near 100 degrees!!! It might have had something to do with Big Brown’s defeat yesterday in the Belmont Stakes.
Not for him...
Click on the ‘Posted . . . by’ to bring up the About Page. Your own About Page is unpopulated.
I think Big Brown got kicked at the first turn, when his head kicked up and before he was maneuvered outside and that spoiled his afternoon and a lot of other folks.
Of course that would depend on not just latitude but local light pollution. He confused me when he wrote, “it’s just a rumor”. He could have mentioned that he lived in Alaska!
Yes, he was very headstrong on the first turn, trying to run up on the horses in front of him. But the weather cannot be ignored. It’s absolutely brutal here in the New York City area. And it isn’t expected to improve until around Tuesday when a storm-producing (hopefully) cold front comes through. I love when it rains hard and furious during a hot spell like this.
What??? and make it easy for you?????
Excellent! I was going to say (before I noticed your comment) that the pic couldn’t have been taken this year because Venus is just now beginning to make her way around the Sun and into the evening sky (about where Saturn and Regulus are now). She still has a few more weeks, I believe, before she just starts to become visible in the west at sunset, however. And definitely longer than that to be high enough (far enough from the Sun in the sky) to be seen easily.
About 4 years ago, we were at the town park for the July 4th fireworks display, and just as the first rockets went up, the ISS started a long, high pass.
EXTREMELY cool!
Last weekend, when we got home from the movies, instead of heading inside, we drove out into the pasture to check out a possible auroral glow. (That turned out to be VERY thin high clouds even farther north than the city lights 50+ miles north of us that were reflecting off of them.) While out there, first the ISS, then seven minutes later, the shuttle made high, long passes. Got a bonus of 2 meteors, also.
And while there, don't forget to check the other table for Iridium flares. Those are VERY positional, so be sure to enter your EXACT location.
Thanks for posting! Got pictures of everything: Saturn, Mars, the moon, and ISS.
Mars will be slowly closing the gap between it and Saturn in the days ahead. The Moon will similarly be moving eastward (away from Saturn) each day. In its orbit around the Earth, the Moon moves west to east (opposite to the daily east to west motion of the entire sky).
LOL.
I wish! But I thought, “Duh” after I posted my comment.
Thanks again for the info. I’ll be out watching the next few nights.
...thanks for posting....I went out in the yard last night, oriented myself to the NW direction, checked my watch and BINGO!....there came the ISS; right on time....that baby really moves.....it rose over the top of one mountain, traversed the sky and sank behind another in about 80 seconds....it was the color of a candle flame and really beautiful....thanks again.
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