March 2024
M T W T F S S
« Oct    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Pages

Venus kissed the moon - a daytime occultation of Venus

going

going

gone!

Venus reappears!

If you were up before sunrise on Monday, August 13th, 2012 you might have seen a very bright “star” next to the moon. As dawn turned to daylight, you could still see that star, or rather, that planet in the daytime snuggled up to the crescent moon.

That planet was [...]

The Crescent Moon

The moon's summer and winter path, courtesy NASA's Starchild website

The winter’s moon – a smiling crescent just after sunset Feb 5, 2011 (click to see moon upper center)

Closeup of winter crescent moon

The summer's "backwards C" crescent moon at sunset, late June 2007 (click to see moon in lower right)

Closeup [...]

A warm-up act for the Perseids

See the moon and planets low in the west August 12, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

The view from Earth – the planetary lineup in orbital perspective courtesy NASA’s Solar System Simulator, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars and moon imaged same day with same equipment (in 2005) courtesy Jim Keen

A trio of planets, without the moon August 7, [...]

A Ten Planet Night

Chasing Galileo – Jupiter and the four Galilean satellites

Galileo’s drawing

my drawing

my sketch of Jupiter’s rotation

Galileo published his observations in Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610: “On the 7th day of January in the present year, 1610, in the first hour of the following night, when I was viewing the constellations of the heavons through a telescope, the planet Jupiter [...]