Starry Night® Times

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Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. We hope you enjoy it!

   

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Starry Night®, Ace Detective!

I’ve always loved solving mysteries. I find myself often using Starry Night® as a tool to solve astronomical mysteries. In recent months I’ve been visiting the Yahoo!Answers web site:

This is a place where people can ask questions on just about any topic and receive answers from other users. Naturally, I spend most of my time in the “Astronomy & Space” category, located under “Science & Mathematics.” Often I find Starry Night® an enormous help in answering people’s questions about the sky.

Many of the questions are of the form “Last night I saw a bright star in the sky…what was it?” In itself this isn’t enough information to provide an answer, so I often need to ask for more information:

  • Where are you located?
  • What time of night was this?
  • What direction was the star in?
  • How high was it?

With this information in hand, I can set Starry Night® to the questioner’s location, date, and time. Usually, by looking in the right direction and altitude I can figure out what the star was, allowing for the fact that many towns use local conventions for directions which may not agree with the compass directions. For example, in Montréal, where I grew up, streets which the local people describe as running east and west actually run almost north and south. This is because “east” and “west” are defined locally by the direction the St. Lawrence River flows, which is actually north to south at Montréal’s location!

There were a couple of interesting questions recently. One was from a person in Ireland asking about two bright objects in the west just after sunset. Using Starry Night® I was easily able to identify these as Jupiter (above and to the left) and Venus (below and to the right). I suggested that he keep an eye on them for the rest of the month, and I suggest that you do too. Over the next couple of weeks they will draw together and pass each other and, on the night they pass, December 1, they will be joined by the crescent Moon, forming a tight 2 degree group, which should be a very pretty sight in binoculars or a small telescope (Venus and Jupiter have been slightly enlarged in this image):

The other question was more of a puzzler. The questioner asked why the Moon appeared so odd lately. He said that the line cutting the Moon in half (what astronomers call the terminator) was horizontal rather than vertical. It turned out that he lives in Florida, and this is what Starry Night® showed:

Lo and behold: the terminator is horizontal! How can this be? By zooming out and making the horizon translucent, we can see what is actually going on:

As seen from Florida in November, the Sun is actually directly below the Moon as it rises, so the terminator runs from left to right, rather than from top to bottom. Mystery solved!

Geoff Gaherty
Geoff has been a life-long telescope addict, and is active in many areas of visual observation; he is a moderator of the Yahoo "Talking Telescopes" group.

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Stocking Stuffers

Ho ho ho! It’s getting to be that time of year again, when I get to play Santa and browse through the Orion catalog looking for goodies to put in some astronomer’s stocking. The rules of the game are to print out these pages, mark the things you’d like with a big red marker, and leave in some prominent location as a not-so-subtle hint to your loved ones. Everything on this list is either something I own myself, or wish I did!

$10 and under


$3.95 #07406
Winged Rubber Eyeguard

Is your neighbor’s porch light driving you crazy? Then you need this little rubber eyeguard to slip over your eyepiece so that you can shut out the outside world.


$3.95 #05833
Microfiber OptiCloth
Did Junior get fingerprints all over your Nagler? Time to get out the OptiCloth to soak up the oil and leave the lens sparkling clean!


$4.95 #05940
Observer's Eyepatch
Avast, me hearties! Is it Talk Like a Pirate Day? No, it’s look like a pirate: put this patch over your non-observing eye and enjoy the relaxed pleasure of observing with both eyes wide open.


$9.95 #05831
LensPen Mini Pro
But what about those short focal length eyepieces with tiny eye lenses? This miniature LensPen will let you get into the tiniest lenses and clean them up.

$10 to $20


$11.95 #05613
DC Adapter Cable with Auto Lighter Plug

Does your GoTo scope eat up batteries? Use this cable to connect to your car’s battery or a standalone battery power pack. It even includes the weird little plug that only Celestron seems to use in the entire world.


$10.95 #51466
Sky & Telescope Field Map of the Moon

This is the nicest Moon map I’ve seen. It’s laminated and unfolds to a large diameter showing close to a thousand named features on the Moon, drawn by Antonín Rükl.


$13.95 up #07214
Dovetail Mounting Base

A while ago, a telescope designer got the bright idea of putting a dovetail base on the focuser of refractor telescopes to hold the finder scope. This creates practical difficulties, since it places the finder too low for viewing objects high overhead, and causes interference between the finder and the main telescope’s diagonal. It turns out that the old-time designers had the right idea where to place the finder on a refractor: about six inches up the telescope tube. Drill a couple of holes in your refractor’s tube, install one of these little brackets, and you’ll find your finder much easier to access!


$17.95 up #04203
FlexiShield Dew Caps

If you have a Maksutov- or Schmidt-Cassegrain, you probably also have dew. These flexible dew shields will keep your corrector plate dew-free for hours, as well as shielding you from stray light. They’re light weight and store in no space at all.


$16.95 #51501
Star Watch

My favorite guidebook for locating the Messier objects and much more.


$17.95 #04150
DeepMap 600 Folding Star Chart

This is just about the handiest star map there is. It folds up and fits into your pocket like a road map, but is printed on durable plastic. It’s also a checklist of the finest 600 deep sky objects in the sky.


$19.95 #17208
Starry Night Constellation Adventure

This is Starry Night for kids! It’s a simplified version of my favorite planetarium program, with a lot of neat extras that kids will love.

$20 to $30


$23.95 #05272
2" Visual Back for Schmidt Cassegrain Telescopes

Tired of the narrow view of your Schmidt-Cassegrain? This is a real eye-opener, allowing you to use 2” diameter eyepieces and accessories.


$24.95 #59137
Celestial Sampler: 60 Small-Scope Tours

This is a collection of Sue French’s popular sky tours from Sky & Telescope. She strikes a nice balance between familiar showpieces and lesser known wonders.


$28.95 #05756
DualBeam LED Astro Flashlight

This is the handiest observing flashlight I’ve ever seen. It switches between two red LEDs to preserve your night vision, and two white LEDs for observing the Moon and finding the screw you dropped in the grass. It comes with a lanyard to hang it around your neck so you’ll never lose it.


$27.95 up #05973
Deluxe Accessory Cases

These cases protect your precious eyepieces, filters, and other accessories while also allowing you to organize everything so it’s easy to find things in the dark.

$30 to $40


$32.95 #20034
Beginning Stargazer's Toolkit

This kit has everything you need to get you started with a new telescope: a planisphere, a Moon map, a book on the constellations, and even a red LED flashlight!


$35.95 #07033
Precision Slow-Motion Adapter

This is an essential accessory for anyone who owns a Coronado Personal Solar Telescope. It allows you to mount the PST atop a camera tripod but still be able to track the Sun with great precision. It’s also a great aid for any small scope mounted on a camera tripod.


$36.95 #15178
Orion Waist Case Accessory Holder

Well, I got my Deluxe Accessory Case (see above) and filled it so full of stuff I could hardly lift it. I recently added one of these nifty Waist Cases, which weighs nothing and keeps essential eyepieces and filters right at hand (or hip).

$40 to $50


$44.95 #03640
Collimating Eyepiece

Many new owners of Newtonians buy laser collimators thinking they will solve all their collimation problems. Wrong! Every telescope first needs to be collimated with a sight tube and Cheshire eyepiece before a laser can be used. This beautifully machined device contains both essential collimation tools in one piece.


$44.95 up #08739
Sirius Plössl Eyepieces

Everybody can use another eyepiece, right? Most scopes come with a 25 mm and a 10 mm, but you will soon want the wider fields of view provided by a 32 mm or the lunar and planetary close-ups of a 7.5 mm or 6.3 mm. Or maybe something in between…


$44.95 #51500
Backyard Astronomer's Guide, Second Edition

Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, J. B. Sidgwick’s books were the amateur astronomer’s bible. Well, now it’s the 21st century and the “new testament” is Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer’s wonderfully illustrated guide to everything an amateur astronomer needs to know. This is probably the most used book on my bookshelf.


$49.95 #17237
Starry Night Complete Space & Astronomy Pack

This is the basic user-friendly version of Starry Night, my favorite planetarium software. Besides its beautiful depiction of the night sky, it gives you a huge number of guided tours to teach you about the universe, and even includes a bonus DVD with all sorts of nifty astronomical presentations. Perfect for somebody just getting started in astronomy

So those are my choices for the 2008 holiday season. I hope you receive the ones you want, and have lots of astronomical joy in 2009!

Geoff Gaherty
Geoff has been a life-long telescope addict, and is active in many areas of visual observation; he is a moderator of the Yahoo "Talking Telescopes" group.

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Constellation in Focus: Aries, Triangulum, Andromeda

Constellation Map: Aries, Triangulum, Andromeda

Triangulum is well placed at this time of year for observations of M33, a spiral galaxy. However, at 2.4 million light years and only 5% as massive as our own galaxy, it's a dim fuzzy object in 8" scopes and requires good dark skies to show any detail.

Follow a line from M33 through Mirach in Andromeda to find the brightest spiral in the sky, M31, the Andromeda Galaxy as well as its satellite galaxies M32 and M110. As with M33, the photons from M31 have travelled 2.4 million years to pass through the pupil of your eye and end their journey on your retina. The Andromeda Galaxy is also one of the few galaxies that's blue-shifted, meaning that is traveling toward us: almost all others are red-shifted and speeding away.

Once you've found M31 with the aided eye, you can practice picking it out with the naked eye. You can then congratulate yourself that no-one can see any farther than you–the barely visible faint smudge you can just make out is the farthest object visible to the unaided eye.

At the tip of the constellation's brightest limb, is Almach (Gamma Andromedae) a very sweet orange/blue double. And finally, below Triangulum, in Aries, is Mesarthim (Gamma Aries) another lovely double, orange/green, sitting 207 light years away with an angular separation of 7.5".

Sean O'Dwyer
Starry Night® Times Editor

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Astrophoto of the Month

Astrophoto of the Month

IC 434 and NGC 2024 - The Horsehead and the Flame

Photographer: Christopher J Plasch.
Location: Yorkville, IL.

Equipment: Orion XT-10, modified for astrophotography, Orion® Atlas mount, goto function driven by Starry Night® Pro 6, Orion ST-80 guide scope, Orion® Starshoot Autoguider, Canon Rebel XTi DSLR, IR moded, Dell laptop.

Taken: 10/10/08.
Conditions: Clear skies, average transparency, average seeing, 50F.

Process: 100 light images @ 1 min 50 secs each for 3 hrs 3 mins total exposure time. ISO 800, 10 darks, averaged with DeepSkyStacker, and tweaked in Photoshop CS3.

Christopher writes: “Ever since I started getting into astronomy, I've always wanted to see the horsehead with my own eyes. I've never been able to observe it visually, so I'm grateful to be able to photograph it! I struggled with the processing on this one... it's a tough balancing act between wanting to see the details versus getting a 'cleaner' more natural looking image.”

   

PRIZES AND RULES:

We would like to invite all Starry Night® users to send their quality astronomy photographs to be considered for use in our monthly newsletter.

  • Featured submissions (best of month) will receive a prize of $75 USD.

Please read the following guidelines and see the submission e-mail address below.

  • Format: Digital images in either JPG, GIF or TIFF format.
  • Size: 700 pixels wide maximum.
  • File size should be less than 2 MB.
  • Include a caption: Your full name, location where photo was taken and any interesting details regarding your photo or how you took it. Please be brief.
  • Important notes: We may edit captions for clarity and brevity. We reserve the right to not use submissions. In submitting your image or images to Imaginova®, you agree to allow us to publish them in all media—on the Web or otherwise—now and in the future. We'll credit you, of course. Most important, you'll have the satisfaction of sharing your experience with the world!
  • Send images, following the above guidelines, to photo@starrynight.com (by sending an image you agree to the above terms, including Imaginova®’s right to publish your photos). Please do not send .ZIP files as they will not reach us.

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DEC. 2008

Starry Night Middle School
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Free Download
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Sample activities and lessons plans from Starry Night® Education.

Sample Lessons

Visit: starrynighteducation.com
   

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Pedro Braganca
Content Director,
Starry Night®

   

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Sky Events
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A guided video tour of celestial events visible this month.

  • Click Here to Download

   

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Tips & Tricks
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Education and Learning

Did you know that Starry Night® has a Web site dedicated to education and learning? Check out starrynighteducation.com.

Pedro Braganca
Content Director,
Starry Night®
   

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Sky Events
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Moon Phases

Fri., Dec. 5
First Quarter Moon, 4:26 p.m.

High in the southern sky at sunset, this Moon lights the landscape until about midnight.

Fri., Dec. 12
Full Moon, 11:37 a.m.
This Full Moon is closest to Earth of any Full Moon in 2008. At 5 p.m. EST, the distance, center to center, is about 356,566 km (about 221,560 miles). This is the closest the Moon has been to Earth since March 8, 1993. The nearness of the Moon at this time may produce exceptionally large high tides (perigean tides).

Fri., Dec. 19
Third Quarter Moon, 5:30 a.m.
A beginner might think that this phase represents the Moon that is 75 percent full, but in fact a three-quarter full Moon is called either a Waxing or Waning Gibbous Moon. Somewhat oddly, the Third Quarter Moon and the First Quarter that occurs two weeks before or after both look only half full. The main reason we call this phase Third Quarter Moon is simply that it is 75 percent through its current orbit around the Earth. After about another week, or roughly 25 percent more of its orbit, it will reach "New" phase and the phase cycle will start over again. Third Quarter, which is sometimes called "Last Quarter" rises at about midnight locally, and sets at approximately noon the following day.

Sat., Dec. 27
New Moon, 7:23 a.m.
The Moon cannot be observed at the moment of the new phase, although a thin crescent may be glimpsed a few days earlier in the eastern dawn sky and a few days afterward in the western sunset glow. Only those obsessed with "young" Moons should bother trying to observe it on Saturday evening, however, and the low angle of the setting Moon on Sunday make it difficult then, too. The first good chance for observing the thin crescent following New Moon comes on Monday evening.

Observing Highlights

Sun., Dec. 21
December solstice, 7:04 a.m.
The Earth reaches a place in its orbit at which the Northern Hemisphere of the planet is tilted most away from the Sun, causing the midday Sun to appear lowest in the sky for the year. Such tilting also causes the Sun's path across the southern sky to be the shortest of the year, giving us both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. This is the astronomical beginning of northern Winter, although the weather may or may not confirm it. Effects of the Earth's atmosphere typically delay the coldest days until January or February. In the Southern Hemisphere the situation is reversed and Summer begins.

Sat., Jan. 3
Quadrantid Meteors, 8 a.m.
This occurs after sunrise for most of North America, but the conditions otherwise are not too bad for this little known but sometimes impressive shower. Several hours before dawn the radiant is high to the North in the constellation Bootes. There is no Moon to interfere, but this shower has a sharp peak, so the closer to the time of peak (8 a.m. Eastern, 5 a.m. Pacific), the better. Observers farther West are favored, but even Eastern observers could see some. Keep in mind that meteor showers are exceptionally fickle and hard to predict.

Planets

Mercury has emerged into the evening sky although as usual, never is a particularly easy target. As the month dawns it is too low to see, but the chances get better toward the end of the month when it passes Jupiter in the western twilight on the 30th.

Venus brightens further still to magnitude minus 4.2 and is reasonably well placed in the southwest sky at sunset. At the beginning of the month is it near fainter Jupiter, having passed each other by about 2 degrees on Nov. 30. On December 1, Venus, the Moon and Jupiter make a striking sight in the southwestern dusk. By mid-month Venus and Jupiter have separated significantly, with Venus still easily visible but Jupiter dipping lower to the horizon. At month's end, Venus is even better situated.

Being in conjunction with the Sun on the 5th, Mars cannot be seen this month. It does not emerge from the solar glare in the morning sky until late January.

Between Sagittarius and Capricornus, Jupiter can be found in the southwestern sky shortly after sunset at the beginning of the month (passing quite near Venus on the first), but drops ever closer to the glare of the setting Sun as the month wears on. By the end of the month is it quite difficult to locate, but passes a little more than a degree from Mercury on the 31st.

Saturn rises before midnight by about mid-month, making it an "evening" planet. It rises earlier and earlier over the next few months, making it an increasingly important object for evening observers, especially since Mars cannot be seen and Jupiter is lost to evening observations by the end of the month. After Venus-set, Saturn is the dominant planet for the rest of the night. Technically still in Leo, Saturn is currently roughly midway between Regulus in Leo and Spica in Virgo.

Dates

Sun., Nov. 30
Crescent Moon passes planets, early evening
The Moon, very low in the southwestern twilight, approaches Venus and Jupiter from below (West) shortly after sunset. Look early, because all three set roughly two hours after sunset. Best views likely will be from about a half hour to an hour after sunset. By Monday evening (Dec. 1) the Moon has passed the two planets, and is somewhat higher and easier to spot. The Moon occults (eclipses) Venus at about 11 a.m. EST on Monday morning, but this is not visible in North America except from far northeastern Canada (as well as parts of northern Europe).

Fri., Dec. 5
Mars in conjunction, 4:54 p.m.
This cannot be seen, but Mars moves from the "evening" side of the Sun to the "morning" side. Due to its low angle with the horizon, the Red Planet is not well placed for viewing until well into 2009.

Thu., Dec. 11
Moon passes Pleiades, 3:00 a.m.
The nearly-full Moon passes less than a degree north of the center of the Pleiades star cluster (M45) in Taurus. This is well up in the western sky for eastern observers, and even higher (and earlier) for observers farther West.

Sat., Dec. 13
Geminid Meteors, 6 p.m.
Normally one best showers of the year, this conditions for the Geminids this time around are not great. The peak occurs with the Moon, one day past Full, smack dab in the middle of Gemini, effectively blocking out all but the brightest "shooting stars."

Thu., Dec. 18
Moon-Saturn, 10:22 p.m.
The Waning Gibbous Moon passes about 6° south of Saturn, although the two don't actually rise until midnight or after. Six degrees is about 12 times the apparent diameter of the Moon, but while this isn't overly close, it offers a good opportunity to positively identify Saturn among the stars of Leo.

Mon., Dec. 22
Ursid Meteors, 3:00 a.m.
This minor shower radiates from a point in Ursa Minor, near the "cup" of the Little Dipper. Only about 10 meteors and hour at best normally are expected, so this is a slow drizzle at best, not a shower.

Sun., Dec. 28
Moon-Mercury-Jupiter, 11:10 p.m.
A razor thin Crescent Moon passes near Mercury and Jupiter in the glow of the setting Sun, although this is very difficult to observe. Try again on Monday evening, when the Moon is to the upper left of Jupiter and fainter Mercury, but still low in the southwestern twilight glow.

Wed., Dec. 31
Moon-Venus, early evening
Look for the Waxing Crescent Moon pass near bright Venus in the southwestern sky shortly after sunset.

Sun., Jan. 4
Earth at Perihelion, 10:43 a.m.
Contrary to what might seem common sense, the Earth is closest to the Sun in early January, and farthest in early July. This disproves the common misconception that Earth's varying distance from the Sun causes the seasons, because if it did, we in the Northern Hemisphere would enjoy beach holidays at Christmas and snow in July. No, the Earth's seasons are caused by the relative tilt of the planet on its axis, not the distance to the Sun. On this date, our planet is at a distance of 0.983267 Astronomical Units from the Sun, or approximately 1.7 percent nearer than the average. That amounts to 91,400,757 miles or 147,095,260 kilometers. (By contrast, on July 3 this year the distance is 94,505,103 miles or 152,091,221 kilometers.)

As always, there's more to explore on NightSky.

Data for this calendar have been derived from a number of sources including the Observer's Handbook 2008/09 of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Starry Night® software, and others. Only events with a reasonable possibility for Northern Hemisphere observers, or those events with some other significance, are given. All times shown are U.S. Eastern Time.
   

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