This thread has now lasted one month! What has happened in that month?
-1,200 views.
-67 posts.
-31 Pictures and a month of learning what's in the sky that most of us can see.
-Contributions from members about finding helpful links to astronomical related sites, cameras, telescopes.
-A stickied thread.
-1,200 views / 31 days means on average, 38.7 people view this thread
a day. Thank you for helping this thread maintain its splendour.
-Several new features, including a Light pollution map, Messier Map, new links.
My question now comes to you, the viewer:
What would you like to see added to this thread? Perhaps someone could make a neat banner to head the thread. I'm in the final exam period so I don't quite have the time to do it, but
a major thank you to all who regularly view this thread!
Now having said that...
What's in the sky tonight?
April 10, 2012
-The bright star high to the upper right of Venus these evenings is Capella, the Goat Star. It's the same yellow-white color, and thus the same temperature, as the Sun. The wavelength of the star is a good measurement of indicating how hot a star is. It's also how we know the temperature of our own sun! The shorter the wavelength, the warmer the star. Wavelengths are also used to calculate how fast the star is moving to, or from us by how much it has redshifted (how much the elemental spectra of a star has moved to the longer end of the spectrum compared to the elemental spectra at rest state found here, and as such, is moving away) or blueshifted (how much the elemental spectra of a star has moved to the shorter end of the spectrum compared to the elemental spectra at rest state found here, and as such, is heading towards us). The greater the shift, the faster the object is moving to or from us.
-You can see Venus in the clear blue sky of daytime, if your eye lands right on it. The best time to examine Venus in a telescope is late afternoon or around sunset. It's now a thick crescent that has grown to 27 arcseconds tall as it rounds the Sun and approaches Earth.
Astro Picture of the Day:
April 10, 2012
Source:
Does part of this image look familiar? In the second picture in as many days, the Cone Nebula is revisited with its many friends in a more zoomed out scale. Found in Monoceros, pictured above is a star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The above image spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies at the upper left, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze just below the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula near the tree's top. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears sideways here, with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near S Mon.