Just a nice evening here...it was too cloudy to see Venus during the day, but was clearing around sunset.I blogged this last month and the Moon is back serving as a useful pointer to find Venus during the day. You will need to wait until the Sun is high in the sky (Venus doens't rise until well after the Sun). The Moon is a thin three day old crescent which can be challenging to find in the day, but be patient. The Moon will be west of the Sun. Once you find the crescent Moon look slightly above and to the left of the Moon (for northern hemisphere observers) to find Venus. The chart below (click to embiggen) was made for Tucson, Arizon at 1:00pm local time.
Venus will be slightly to the west of the Moon at 1:00pm, but the Moon moves about one Moon diameter per hour, so their relaive position may change depending on your time zone and what time you look (you can use Stellarium to make your own chart for your specific time and location).
Now a few tips. It is helpful if you can stand in a place where a building blocks the Sun from your view. Venus is best viewed when it hits the fovea, the most sensitive part in the center of your retina where we have the sharpest vision. Slowly scan around the Moon and have patience. Once you find it, you will be surprised you have never noticed it before.
With a little persistence, you can even photograph Venus during the day as Obrs showed us last month. I am at a meeting in Phoenix tomorrow, but am taking my camera and hope to give it a shot over lunch!
Well, it was finally nice and clear here in Tucson. I drove out to Saguaro National Park east (at the end of Speedway for those of you who know Tucson). Comet Lulin was visible naked eye as a small splotch. And here is a photo with Lulin outlined (click to ebmiggen).
That is a reasonable approximation of how easy it is to see from a reasonable dark site. You can see it, but it doesn't jump out at you. I caught a plane as you can see (the streak toward the bottom of the picture).
Through my 20x80 binoculars on the other hand, WOW! The tail was very prominent and covered just under half the field of view (probably about 1.6 degrees roughly or a little over three times the size of the full Moon). Very nice view from a dark site.
There are still a few good chances to see it. You can find a finder chart at Sky and Telescope. Lulin is heading toward a close conjunction with Regulus on Friday night (the bright star almost directly above it in my picture). By Sunday night, the Moon starts to brighten the sky and will make observing difficult, so take advantage of the next few days.
Binoculars are enough to pick out the comet, but be sure to get as far away from bright lights as you can for the best view. It was definitely worth it tonight!
And one other thing I should point out is that Lulin is on a hyperbolic orbit. If you remember your high school math, hyperbolas never return to the same point twice...Lulin is making its one and only trip through the inner solar system. I am happy I was able to spend a little quality time with Lulin tonight.
The Galileoscope is coming! This is a cornerstone project for the International Year of Astronomy (and, in the interest of disclosure, one I work on). The Galileoscope is a small, low cost, high optical quality telescope that anyone can build and recreate many of Galileo's famous observations. You can see craters on the Moon, the phases of Venus, the Galilean Moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.The telescope has a 50mm achromat lens with a 20mm eyepiece yielding a magnification of 25x and a nice big 1.5 degree field of view. A supplied 2x barlow lens can bump the magnification fo 50x. As an added bonus, you can use the Barlow lens as an eyepiece to construct a true Galilean telescope and see what Galileo had to work with (Galileo used a diverging lens for his eyepiece which is not the ideal configuration...and you can see why!) Or you can insert your own eyepiece as the holder accepts any standard 1.25" eyepeice. The included nut allows you to mount the telescope on any standard camera tripod. I posted a previous blog entry on my attempts at imaging with a Galileoscope.
The assembly is simple and requires no tools. The telescope can be put together and taken apart easily multiple times.
There are free educational materials available on the web site covering how telescopes work as well as how to osberve with the Galileoscope.
The Galileoscopes cost $15 plus shipping ($12.50 each if you order 100 or more, say for a school, astronomy club, or just get everyone on the block together to order them). I have been talking to a lot of people at meetings and there are some college professors who are making this a madatory item for their students in the fall.
When you order a Galileoscope, you have the option to donate one or more to underserved students around the world.
And there are a couple of Racine connections. Professor Doug Arion of Carthage College has been heavily involved in the design and the manufacturing partner is Merit Models of Racine.
Sorry if this sounds like a commercial. A lot of people have worked hard and put a lot of time into its development and I want to see a LOT of Galieoscopes out there!
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Hello, my cherry blossoms! How are you? Less than a week and March is already here. Can spring be far behind? Like many of you, I like to dig in the soil, too. It’s just that I prefer to do it at night.Tonight is the best time to see Comet Lulin. It is bright enough to see naked eye from dark sites, but probably not from most suburban backyards. However, even a small pair of binoculars should make it visible from most sites. I have a pair of 8x42 binoculars and have picked it up with them.
Comet Lulin is farther from the Sun than the Earth right now...in fact, its almost opposite in the sky from the Sun. It rises shortly after sunset and is visible most of the night until sunrise. The best time to look is around midnight to 1am local time when it is highest in the sky. As an added bonus, Comet Lulin is near Saturn tonight and visible in the same binocular field! That makes it nice and easy to find...find Saturn (which is bright and you don't need a telsescope to see) and you find Comet Lulin. A finding chart is below.
Start by finding the backwards question mark of Leo. You should then be able to pick out the bright Saturn. Center your binoculars on Saturn, scan slowly southeast if needed, and you should run across the comet!
You can see the comet for the next few days pretty well, but by early next week the Moon will be getting brighter and interfering. The comet is moving rapidly across the sky, so look for upated charts at sites such as Spaceweather. Comet Lulin rapidly moves away from Earth and will dim quickly in early March.
Happy hunting!
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