Starship Asterisk*

I'm a long-time APOD fan, but no astronomer, so please bear with an inexpert question: Is the time sequence from left to right, or the reverse? I am assuming the former. Here's another, more fun question: Where in the path is Mercury moving directly, and where is it moving retrograde? Remember that...

I think the difficulty in finding Mercury is greatly overstated, to the point that a lot of folks don’t even try. I had been seeing it on an irregular basis for many years, but after spotting it in January 2011, I decided to attempt seeing it at every elongation that year (seven of them) and succeed...

But you were only two hours after the end of Daniel López's video... which explains why 2012 DA14 is slowing down thru-out his video. Looking at ephemerides from the Minor Planet Center, the apparent motion of DA14 during the pass (in arc seconds per minute of time) was approximately: 15-Feb, 21:00...

This is indeed a fine video of the 2012 DA14 pass. However, I think it pales compared to seeing it with one’s own eye. Even though DA14’s motion and brightness had decreased substantially by time it was accessible from my location in New Jersey, USA, I was able to follow it in my telescope from 7:15...

I notice a vague, brighter glow on the soil near the shadow of the camera, which would be the anti-solar point. This appears to be from the “Opposition Effect” (as opposed to a “Glory” or the “Heiligenschein”). More about it from Atmospheric Optics: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/oppos1.htm Joe

Based on the phase and position of the moon, this APOD was taken on January 20, 2007, when the moon was about 2 days old and 5% illuminated. It was in the constellation Capricornus, the Sea Goat. Venus was just below-left of the moon, but obscured by clouds in this view. The bright star above-right ...

It's a very beautiful APOD. Thank you, Sebastian Saarloos. And thank you, Joe Stieber, for identifying the stars for me. I was unable to do so myself, although I wondered about the bright blue star that you identified as Alpheratz, Alpha Andromedae, the top left star in the Great Square of Pegasus....

Can someone tell me what constellations are in the background? The pair of brighter stars on a slightly tilted vertical line above and slightly to the left of the moon are Hamal and Sharatan (Alpha and Beta Arietis). Mesarthim (Gamma Arietis) also dangles down from Sheratan. Above the right-hand mo...

I don't understand the statement that "...a paraselene is produced by moonlight refracted through thin, hexagonal, plate-shaped ice crystals in high cirrus clouds." As I look at the picture the paraselenae appear to be in front of the mountains which means that they are well below the &qu...

The Helix nebula is notoriously difficult to observe in a small telescope. You would think that at magnitude 7 it would be a piece of cake, but its light is spread out over such a large area in the sky that it tends to be washed out by even low levels of light pollution. The Helix Nebula does indee...

Uranus is also visible in the picture. There’s a pair of similarly-bright “stars” not far below the “P” in Pisces on the annotated mouseover. Uranus is on the left of that pair, 44 Piscium is on the right (about magnitude 5.7 and 5.8 respectively, roughly a degree apart). Uranus has been in retrogra...

Locutus wrote:I'm also having trouble finding the mentioned stars, other than Polaris...

Here's my labeled version...

Blue Moon over New Jersey Copyright: Joe Stieber http://sjastro.org/ Taken at 10:32 pm EDT on August 31, 2012, from Maple Shade, NJ, using an 80 mm, f/6 apo refractor (on a fixed tripod), a Canon 40D digital SLR and a Kenko doubler. Exposed 1/350 second at f/12, ISO 400 (monochrome mode). http://wa...

Beautiful picture! Fascinating colors. Note that in comparison with the artificial illumination, all the stars appear either white or bluish (there may be a faint hint of yellow in Antares and Aldebaran). Keep in mind the photograper may have shifted the color balance a bit towards blue to give thi...

The Crescent Moon joins Jupiter and Venus Copyright: Joe Stieber http://sjastro.org/ On Sunday evening, March 25, 2012, the crescent moon is next to Jupiter at the base of the narrow triangle with Venus at the upper apex. Taken at 8:09 pm EDT from Maple Shade, NJ, USA, with a Canon 40D digital SLR ...

I am always disappointed when I hear about these things on the news AFTER they've happened. Is there a website that I can visit that would alert me to upcoming cool spaces happenings, such as this one? You could also keep an eye on the Wallops web site: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/home/inde...

Jupiter and Venus Converge Copyright: Joe Stieber http://sjastro.org/ Jupiter and Venus converge above the Delaware River and northeast Philadelphia as seen from Riverton, NJ, on March 11, 2012 at 8:31 pm EDT. [attachment=0]njjoeconjunction.jpg[/attachment] http://home.comcast.net/~joestieber/6016-...

Are you sure Chris? I had the idea that Venus is on a southern declination most of the time as Mercury is (I'm sure about mercury) but maybe my thinking was wrong :D I don't see how this could be, either for Venus or for Mercury. The planets all orbit on planes tilted some small amount with respect...

Jupiter, Venus and the Crescent Moon Copyright: Joe Stieber, Web Page: http://sjastro.org/ Saturday evening, 25-February-2012, at 6:23 pm EST from my backyard in Maple Shade, NJ, USA. I had to edure fast-moving broken clouds, waiting for all three objects to appear simultaneously. Jupiter is at the...

Ann, This is indeed a fine image of what is presumably comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) ... the full name that is not mentioned in the APOD text. Also absent is the date and time when the image of this celestial wanderer was captured. Checking with SkyTools 3, I figure it was taken around 04:00 UT on 22-Fe...

Did anyone noticed the several lines of different angles through the image? Are they artifacts of the computation used to produce the image? There are several nearly-horizontal lines running across the picture. They are evidently trails from geostationary satellites, or the remnants of such trails ...

... But I have to admit that I can't identify any part of Ursa Minor at all. Can we really see Polaris is this image? Ann Yes, it's near the left edge, the first bright star not far from the top, but to see all of the Little Dipper (and get a better context for Polaris), you need to click on the im...

A fine view of a scenic location! The East Point Lighthouse is one of my favorite spots. It's at the mouth of the Maurice River in Southern New Jersey overlooking the Delaware Bay. I've seen Omega Centauri from there when it transits at little more than 3 degrees altitude. The beacon, which is just ...

Chris - You may have the opportunity to view a selenelion. For Denver, the totally eclipsed moon will set ~3 minutes after sunrise. For me the moonset is ~6 minutes after sunrise, but won't be total - it will be emerging from the umbra. That's a new term for me too, but it turns out I experienced a...

Hmmm. As for the identity of that brightish blue-green star, a possible contender might be HD 162161. Its visual brightness seems right (mag. 6.13, just below naked-eye visibility), its spectral class, A1V, seems plausible (except that its luminosity, 81 times the Sun, seems too bright), and its B-...