Archive for the ‘Observing’ Category
Saturday, March 7th, 2020
As you may have figured out by now, I have been using Sky View Cafe for quite a while. Occasionally, I find something new (or quirky) so I thought I would bring a few things to your attention.
First, I like to set the calendar tab as my default view since ...
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Saturday, February 29th, 2020
One of the interesting aspects of observing our Moon is that many features are only visible during certain times within the full cyclic phasing of the moon. Details come and go depending on the angle of sunlight reflecting off the lunar surface and coming back to Earth. As Galileo noticed ...
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Friday, February 7th, 2020
This time of year is a great time to reconnect with The Big Dipper in Ursa Major and it's cousin the Little Dipper, in Ursa Minor. Even though Daylight Savings Time is going push dusk well into the evening, you will still be able to follow these great asterisms into ...
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Monday, December 16th, 2019
I'm a tool kinda guy. You know .. Swiss Army knife, a good flashlight, some vice grips, and, of course, a good astronomy app. Web based tools and apps for astronomy and stargazing are really the good stuff. This series is going to delve into various tools I've found on ...
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Monday, April 1st, 2019
Yes, indeed! Apparently! That's how we see a star's brightness form our perspective here on Earth. We use the term "magnitude" to describe the brightness of a star. We call the measurement of the brightness from Earth the "apparent magnitude". The effect of this apparent brightness leads us to the ...
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Tuesday, February 26th, 2019
A common question arises about sky watching that I wanted to address, namely, "How do I find Polaris, the North Star"? It's a great question as well as it is often asked. For many people, the first assumption about Polaris is that it is a bright star so it should ...
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Sunday, January 6th, 2019
This year starts off nicely with a lunar eclipse on January 20. This is a Sunday night during the MLK 3 day weekend and it will be visible to all of North America. The first stage with the penumbra visible is starting Jan 20 at 10:10PM (22:11) EST and last ...
Posted in Events, Observing | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 4th, 2018
Here's another update in the series on using Sky View Cafe (SVC) and some details on the recent upgrade of this tool. Kerry Shetline has released the latest upgrade as of July 2017 with a slightly different look but it replaces the legacy Java version. There have been some refinements ...
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Thursday, November 30th, 2017
In this post, we'll continue the discussion of naked eye targets on our Moon. In the first post, we looked at some of the larger mare that present themselves during the week from new moon to 1st quarter. Let's continue to "follow the terminator" and look for some more challenging ...
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Saturday, October 14th, 2017
This is the first of several posts that discuss naked eye targets on our Moon. Instead of an overall geographical approach, I'll proceed chronologically and "follow the terminator", the shadow line that progresses across the moon's surface as the phases advance.
For some easy targets, why not start with the Lunar ...
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