Astronomical Society of Rowan County

GLOBE at Night is an annual 2-week campaign in March. People all over the world record the brightness of their night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars. They submit their measurements on-line and a few weeks later, organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last four GLOBE at Night campaigns, volunteers from over 100 nations have contributed 35,000 measurements…Learn How to Participate

MP3/Podcast with Constance Walker

Horsehead Nebula
by Tom Davis

I thought many of you may enjoy the following image taken by Tom Davis from Rowan County NC. The image covers a pretty wide field in the belt of Orion near the star Alnitak, thats the bright one on the left, and contains most notably the famous Horsehead and Flame Nebula which are about 1500 light years from here. Tom used a TMB100/800 Refractor with a .75x AP focal reducer, and a Astronomik CLS filter to help reduce Light Pollution, he combined all that with a Canon XS DSLR camera to produce this image. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Through the years I have let a lot of people look through my telescopes. And one of the questions most frequently asked when the target is a planet, like Jupiter, the Sun or the Moon, is “How big is that?”. Now seriously, if I say the diameter is about 800,000 miles, you will pretty much loose most people, I mean what do we have in our daily lives to compare that number too? Well I have found a neat web application that will let you compare the sizes of various objects in our solar system side by side. This is a great example of how the web can be used effectively in education; and a great example, and proof supporting the old saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. Check this out:

Planet Size Comparison

(Try selecting the Earth on the left and the Sun on the right, then click Compare in the middle. Now that’s an eye opener huh!)

Google has a cool, free application for the “Android” phone called Sky Maps and I thought a few of you may be interested. Enjoy and remember to keep looking up! Herb