and welcome to the Night Sky Observer (NSO) astronomy and space news website. Most pages (especially news and podcasts) are updated several times a day.
There are many resources, news sources and headlines, articles, astro-photos and links on this site and the navigation bar (at left) will let you navigate around the website.
On this site, you'll also find software products I've created (mostly with amateur astronomers in mind) and links to some of the best suppliers of astronomical gear and space-related memorabilia on the navigation bar.
Announcements:
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Astronomy News: All the latest astronomy and space news updated hourly.
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July 1: AAVSO Alert Notice 397: Request for optical photometry of the bright X-ray binary V884 Sco (4U 1700-377)
June 30, 2009
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June 22: TOn the mornign of June 23, NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft will fly by the Moon and send pictures back to Earth from only 9000 km above the lunar surface. Watch a live video stream of the flyby.
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June 22: Activity on the Sun has been almost non-existant of late but today a pair of new-cycle sunspots is emerging in the sun's southern hemisphere. This is a good opportunity for readers with solar telescopes to watch sunspot genesis in action.
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June 21: The new Herschel Space Telescope snaps it's first test image - M51.
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June 19: NASA successfully launched the Lunar Crater
Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, on June 18, 2009 on a mission
to search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the
moon's south pole.
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June 18: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched today at 5:32 p.m. EDTaboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The satellite will relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon.
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June 6: The annual Arietid meteor shower peaks on Sunday, June 7th. |
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June 1: The 2009 Noctilucent Cloud season starts. Noctilucent clouds are tenuous, high-altitude clouds that are sometimes seen during the summer months in high latitudes after sunset. The first clouds this season have been spotted over Europe and Russia.
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May 15: Here is something incredible. Thierry Legault has taken extraordinary photos of space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope passing together in front of the sun.
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May 15: AAVSO Alert Notice 396: Nova in Centaurus discovered By: G. Pojmanski, D. Szczygiel, and B. Pilecki (Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory).
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May 7: NASA has just released an interactive, 3-D photographic
collection of internal and external views of the International Space
Station and a model of the next Mars rover.
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May 7: The primary mission of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is
about to end after more than five and a half years of probing the
cosmos with its keen infrared eye. Within about a week of May 12, the
telescope is expected to run out of the liquid helium needed to chill
some of its instruments to operating temperatures.
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May 7: AAVSO Alert Notice 395: Nova in Sagittarius discovered By: K. Nishiyama (Kurume, Fukuoka-ken, Japan) and F. Kabashima (Miyaki-cho, Saga-ken, Japan).
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May 6: NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft is monitoring an active region hidden behind the sun's eastern limb. On May 5th, it produced an impressive coronal mass ejection (CME) and a burst of radio emissions signalling the passage of a shock wave through the sun's outer atmosphere. Activity continued on May 6th, with at least two more eruptions. The blast site is not yet visible from Earth, but the sun is turning the region toward us for a better view. Is a new-cycle sunspot in the offing? Readers with solar telescopes could see it emerge as early as May 7th or 8th.
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May 3: A NASA spacecraft gliding over the surface of Mercury has revealed that the planet's atmosphere, the interaction of its surrounding magnetic field with the solar wind, and its geological past display greater levels of activity than scientists first suspected.
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Apr. 14: In my experience, many amateur astronomers are also Star Trek fans. If you're of my vintage, you'll have grown up watching original runs of the original Star Trek episodes. Here's one amateur astronomer's thoughts on the upcoming movie...
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Apr. 13: NASA is inviting the public to vote online for the most
important contribution the space agency has made to exploring Earth
and improving the way we live on our home planet.
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Apr. 1: How low can it go? The Sun is plunging into the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. he sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
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Mar. 18: NASA scientists will reveal new information and images about our sun and its influence on Earth and the solar system for Sun-Earth Day, recognized each year in conjunction with the spring equinox. The highlight of this year's celebration is a webcast for students and teachers around the world beginning at 1 p.m. EDT, Friday, March 20.
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Mar. 14: V3.30 of LunarPhase Pro has been released. Mostly a bug fix release but adds a couple of new features. If you're an existing owner, open the software's About screen and click the "Check for new Verison" button to get this latest upgrade.
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Mar. 12: I've compiled a list of my recommended astronomy and space-exploration DVDs which ranges from documentaries like The Universe, Seeing in Dark and Apollo 1 to movies and TV Series like Space Race, From the Earth to the Moon and October Sky to seminal TV series such as Cosmos, Planet Earth and Earth - The Documentary.
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Mar. 07: NASA's Kepler Mission to seek other Earth-like
planets has been successfully launched.
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Mar. 05: NASA's Kepler mission to seek other Earth-like
planets is undergoing final preparations for liftoff Friday, March 6,
from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The
spacecraft launch aboard a Delta II rocket has two windows of
opportunity Friday, from 10:49 to 10:52 p.m. and 11:13 to 11:16 p.m.
EST.
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Mar. 04: In case you weren't aware of it, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and coincides with the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo. 130+ Countries around the world are involved with astronomy events and education this year, so something is probably going on where you live.
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Feb. 19: Something is about to happen on Saturn that's so pretty, even Hubble will pause to take a look. On Feb. 24th, there's going to be a quadruple transit of Saturn's moons. Titan, Mimas, Dione and Enceladus will pass directly in front of Saturn and we'll see their silhouettes crossing Saturn's cloudtops—all four at the same time.
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Feb. 18: Comet Lulin is approaching Earth and brightening rapidly. Observers say it is now visible to the naked eye as a faint (magnitude +5.6) gassy patch in the constellation Virgo before dawn. Even city dwellers have seen it.
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Feb. 11: Astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar
remnant 30, 000 light-years away. The high-energy fireworks arise from
a rare type of neutron star known as a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Such
objects unpredictably send out a series of X-ray and gamma-ray
flares.
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Feb. 11: In conjunction with Galileo's birthday on Feb. 15, NASA is releasing
images from its Great Observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope,
Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory -- to more
than 100 planetariums, museums, nature centers and schools across the U.S.
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Feb. 11: The plasma tail of Comet Lulin, torn off by a solar wind gust on Feb. 4th, has already grown back. Also, observers in dark-sky locations report that the comet is now visible to the naked eye as a pale "fuzzy patch" in the constellation Libra before dawn. The comet is brightening as it approaches Earth for a 38-million-mile close encounter on Feb. 24th.
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Feb 10: AAVSO Alert Notice 394: Nova in The Large Magellanic Cloud discovered by W. Liller (Vina del Mar, Chile) on February 05.067 UT, 2009. Discovery Magnitude: 10.6
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Feb. 6: Comet Lulin is gracing the skies in the early hours of the morning. It's still not clear if it will be visible to the naked eye later this month. But at the least, it should be a sweet binocular sight. And catch it while you can. It won't be back for a million years.
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Feb. 4: There's a Penumbral Eclipse of the Moon this month on February 9th.
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Jan. 6: A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar
eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power
grids and other technology on Earth.
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Dec. 24: 40 years go today, the astronauts aboard Apollo 8 were the first humans to circumnavigate the Moon. It was on that historic mission that one of the most iconic photos of the 20th Century was taken - Earthrise. To celebrate that anniverasary, watch Earthrise as seen from the Japanese Kaguya Lunar Probe.
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Dec. 21: Ursid Meteor Shower: Earth is passing through a stream of debris from comet 8P/Tuttle and this is causing the annual Ursid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the Ursids to peak on Dec. 22nd with 8 to 10 meteors per hour flying out of the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper) not far from the north star. The display is usually mild, but outbursts of Ursids occasionally surprise observers with rates many times normal. The last time this happened was in 2006.
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Dec. 18: For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the
effects of "dark energy" on the most massive collapsed objects in the
universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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Dec. 17: NASA landed on Mars, photographed distant worlds, added
to the International Space Station, took part in a lunar science
mission with India and made major progress toward returning
astronauts to the moon as the agency celebrated its 50th birthday in
2008. Here are the top ten accomplishments of America's space agency in its golden
anniversary year.
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Dec. 09: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This
breakthrough is an important step toward finding chemical biotracers
of extraterrestrial life.
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Dec. 08: AAVSO Alert Notice 392: The supernova SN 2008hy
has been identified as a Type Ia supernova, and is believed to be near
maximum light. The object is located approximately 100 arcseconds NNE of the center of IC 334.
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Dec. 07: Last night, a fireball one hundred times brighter than the full Moon lit up the sky near Colorado Springs, Colorado (USA). |
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Dec. 1: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look south. Beaming through the twilight is one of the prettiest things you'll ever see--a tight three-way conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon.
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