I appreciate the comments - I'm sure there's many other people in the same boat, this thread seems to be averaging 60 views a day now which is awesome. Has anyone noticed performance issues with the first page though, does it take awhile to load?
What's in the sky tonight?
December 19, 2013
-Once the waning gibbous Moon rises after dinnertime, you'll find Jupiter above it, Pollux and Castor left of Jupiter, and Procyon to the Moon's right or lower right. Much farther right of Procyon, watch for brilliant Sirius coming up.
-Jupiter (magnitude –2.7, in Gemini) rises in the east-northeast around the end of twilight, with Pollux and Castor to its left. It blazes highest around 1 or 2 a.m. In a telescope Jupiter has grown to a big 46 arcseconds wide as it nears its January 5th opposition.
News Posted Today:
December 19, 2013
Gaia Launches to Pinpoint a Billion Stars
Astro Picture of the Day:
December 19, 2013
Source:
The Moon is normally seen in subtle shades of grey or yellow. But small, measurable color differences have been greatly exaggerated to make this telescopic, multicolored, moonscape captured during the Moon's full phase. The different colors are recognized to correspond to real differences in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface. Blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The familiar Sea of Tranquility, or Mare Tranquillitatis, is the blue area in the upper right corner of the frame. White lines radiate across the orange-hued southern lunar highlands from 85 kilometer wide ray crater Tycho at bottom left. Above it, darker rays from crater Copernicus extend into the Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium) at the upper left. Calibrated by rock samples from the Apollo missions, similar multicolor images from spacecraft have been used to explore the Moon's global surface composition.