Astronomy

When I looked out an eastern facing window this morning the first thing I saw was Venus. Not even Chicago's light pollution can stop that from shining brightly.

I wondered if there was any more news about Ceres spots. This Wikipedia article seems to have the most pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_spots_on_Ceres

It will be a while yet:

"Dawn will fly around Ceres eight times in its current orbit until June 28, when it will begin to spiral closer to the draft planet, heading for a 900-mile (1,450-kilometer) orbit in early August. By the end of the year, Dawn is scheduled to be closest to Ceres at an altitude of 232 miles (373 kilometres)." source: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/10...heir-close-up/

I have been re-reading Immanuel Velikovsky's Earth in Upheaval which decided me to write a longer post on this work of his. Quite by chance, today on earth sky.com, I found this post about a huge double asteroid impact, some 450 million years ago in Mid-Sweden around Östersund. It has only just been discovered!

I don't know anything about Velikovsky's theories. Looking forward to the longer post on this.

Just a report. I saw the blood moon earlier this evening. Unless it is delayed for some reason, the end of the world didn't happen.

Here is an explanation from earth sky: Total eclipse begins The dark shadow completely covers the moon. This is the total phase of the eclipse, called the totality. It generally lasts for about an hour. During the totality, the shadow on the moon often appears red. It is very beautiful, and the subtle colors change and shift through totality! Plus, red isn’t the only color you’ll see during totality. There are grays and browns, too. Some people say they see a rim of the color turquoise on the moon, in the minutes around the start and end of totality. This turquoise color is the result of absorption by Earth’s ozone layer. The various swaths of color across the moon’s face – especially toward the beginning and ending of totality – create an effect known as the Japanese lantern effect. You can capture it in photos, like the photo above by Monica Hall: http://earthsky.org/space/how-do-i-w...-lunar-eclipse

earthsky.com is my favourite space website, the team has a lot of enthusiasm that shows in their work, and it includes everything in and between earth and sky.

Venus has been dazzlingly bright in the southern sky for much of the second half of September. See this link: http://astronomynow.com/2015/09/17/s...-pre-dawn-sky/.

Yes, I see it in the morning when I get up around 6 am. Venus is unavoidable in the sky (unless one is asleep or it is overcast).

I woke up early this morning and Venus was bright in the east. It's in the constellation Leo and just below it is Mars (rather dim but visible nonetheless). Then comes Jupiter followed by a beautiful crescent moon. I went outside for a bigger view and those planets are the brightest objects in the sky even beating Orion to the south.

Mercury is supposed to be down there as well, but I couldn't see it because of the buildings. I heard at yoga class on Thursday that Mercury was ending a retrograde period. After looking that up later I found out that Mercury is now "direct", which I suppose means going the way it is supposed to go. For Mercury this occurs three times a year for about 3 weeks. That's astrology rather than astronomy. Here's the Huffington Post on it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-...b_8264282.html

You are lucky to have seen those three planets together, Venus, Mars and Jupiter (and the moon). I don't think I've seen them all together before.

This morning I went to a public park along the west side of Lake Michigan and watched Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury and the crescent moon which was lower today in the sky than Mercury point to where the sun would rise. The park opened at 6 am which gave me plenty of time to observe as much as I wanted. Also the light pollution was lower than where I live.

I tried taking pictures with my phone, but they are not sharp or I would have posted some. I will have to find a way to use the phone to get better night pictures. Also I tried to see Venus clearly enough to see what phase it was in through the 7x50 binoculars, but I couldn't tell.

I have never seen Mercury, it is too small and too near the sun.

Information is still coming in concerning the Pluto-Charon system, which includes the four small moons that also circle around the system. The centre of gravity of the system is somewhere between the two dwarf planets which dance around each other. It is a very curious system!

This is well explained in the NASA post on this (see the link above). They are so far away from the sun that gravity is weak. New Horizons is now entering the Kuiper Belt to examine some of the objects there. So information will be coming in for some years.

I came across this piece on how the moon is being affected by earth's gravitation, opening up stresses and cracks in its surface: http://www.space.com/30795-earth-gra...acks-moon.html. It seems major changes go on all the time.

Your link to the Pluto-Charon system led me to the cirumbinary planetary system found a few years ago: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ke...l#.Vh4xdvmrTIU It would be similar to the four outer moons circling Pluto and Charon.

The idea of "orbital resonance" is also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance I don't understand it, but there are around 200 planets with orbital resonance of 2:3 between them and Neptune, including Pluto and its moons, all called "plutinos". "Clearing the neighborhood" I originally thought meant absorbing the objects in a planet's orbit but it may also mean pushing them outward away from it.