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Space Science

365 Nights of Skywatching 68

Posted by CowboyNeal from the star-tour-brochures dept.
Fraser Cain writes "Universe Today has released a free, downloadable PDF book for its What's Up this Week astronomy column. This 400+ page ebook has an entry for what you can see in the night sky every day in 2006, as well as additional information on choosing equipment, viewing conditions, and additional resources."
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365 Nights of Skywatching More

365 Nights of Skywatching

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  • Disturbing entry... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:37AM (#14416573)
    "March 3, Asteroid 758-A crashes into Earth destroying all life. [Ed. Please remove this, may panic readers. Add something about Mutara Nebula. Most readers won't realize it's a fictional place from Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan"]"

    • Printed version (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you can get a printed version from print(fu) here [printfu.org]. It costs $21 for the printing and shipping - jd

  • NASA (Score:5, Informative)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:43AM (#14416599) Homepage
    Nasa has up a Skywatching site with all sorts of fancy pictures [nasa.gov].
    • This is what amateur astronomy people call it when a "regular" person looks through a five-thousand-dollar backyard telescope and is dissappointed that they can't see the US flag left on the moon.
      .....
      Amateur astronomy can be entertaining if 1) you resolve yourself to reading astronomy-related history on cloudy nights, 2) you don't live in an area of high light pollution and 3) you don't live in an area with a lot of biting insects....
      ~
      • Amateur astronomy can be entertaining if 1) you resolve yourself to reading astronomy-related history on cloudy nights, 2) you don't live in an area of high light pollution and 3) you don't live in an area with a lot of biting insects....

        So you do most of your skywatching from the moon, then?
      • I stopped showing people anything after showing a friend and his wife Mars during one of the recent close passes. You could make out the polar cap and a few surface features.

        "Oh... I thought you'd be able to see the storms," said his wife.

      • Re:The "Hubble Syndrome" (Score:5, Informative)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot@NoSPAm.nexusuk.org> on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:28PM (#14416987) Homepage
        This is what amateur astronomy people call it when a "regular" person looks through a five-thousand-dollar backyard telescope and is dissappointed that they can't see the US flag left on the moon.

        Most astronomy photos the public sees are taken by massive professional telescopes (either Hubble or large ground based scopes) and so they have no idea what kind of results they would get out of the many many different types of amateur scope available. And of the amateur photos that are published, in my experience almost none of them are captioned with information about the equipment used, exposure times, post processing, etc.

        What would be really good is a collaborative astronomy database where you could look up an astronomical object and see the results of different equipment - i.e. I could look up the Horsehead Nebula and get to see lots of photos of it all stating what equipment and settings were used. That kind of thing would certainly be really useful when deciding what equipment to buy.

        you don't live in an area of high light pollution

        This is a serious problem and aparantly one that the UK government/councils at least don't appear to care about. More and more street lights go up every year, few of them seem to have full cutoff shades and worryingly most of the new ones now seem to be high presure sodium lights (much less filterable than the old low pressure sodium lights). Do we really _need_ our streets to be lit so brightly at night? Some legislation designed to reduce light pollution would be a good step - i.e. requiring all lights to have full cutoff shades and putting limits on the amount of lighting used.

        • It looks like you're not the only one sick of brightly-lit nights. There is an article in the Independent here [independent.co.uk] on moves to change the situation. And the Campaign for Dark Skies [britastro.org] covers any developments on their, quite frankly, rather ugly website.

          So there is hope.
        • Do know however that as much of an annoyance light pollution may be, in some areas it's for your own saftey . I also don't know what it's like in the UK however.
          • Not necessarily. A city could do a great deal to minimize light pollution without sacrificing luminosity by replacing light sources from white halogen to amber, as well as concentrating that light exclusively in a downward direction with the aid of metal screens painted white on the inside; picture something like a tablelamb-style screen and you're there. This would get rid of glare while keeping the streets as well-lit as they are now.

            If implemented, less wattage is needed to achieve the same level of i
          • Do know however that as much of an annoyance light pollution may be, in some areas it's for your own saftey

            I'm failing to see how directing light straight up into the sky increases my safety... Also, IMHO the roads are more than brightly enough lit at night and there would be no safety problem with decreasing the brightness of the lighting.

            And I'm sure lighting up the walls of buildings with floodlights also increase my safety... on the odd occasions I walk up vertical walls.
        • Please see the Skywater Gallery [skywatchertelescope.com] for examples of what you can see with their excellent and affordable telescopes. I really like the Mak90 [skywatchertelescope.com] because I can take it with me on a motorcycle.
          • Please see the Skywater Gallery for examples of what you can see with their excellent and affordable telescopes.

            Unfortunately they only seem to do planetary photos - I'm much more interested in deep sky objects (and yes, I do realise you need a bigger scope).

      • Personally, I think the two big problems are a) light gathering in most astrophotography is far better than the human eye is capable of, and b) there's a lot of 'false-color' imaging that isn't adequately labeled as such. The famous 'Pillars of Creation' [hubblesite.org] image isn't a real-light image; it's a combination of several (non-RGB) filters. (Of course, it's still beautiful.)

        Many books now, though, give real depictions of what objects will look like through scopes and binoculars, or at least point out the differe

    • Lead Story on that site:
      "Earth is orbiting through a swarm of space debris that may be producing an unusual number of nighttime fireballs."
      I need to stay up later. I'm missing something here.
    • looks through a five-thousand-dollar backyard telescope

      What the hell would you be doing looking through a "backyard" $5K telescope for?

  • Go outside? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mtenhagen ( 450608 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:43AM (#14416601) Homepage
    Why should you go outside? They should provide a live stream instead of just an ebook.

    Do they think I go out with my laptop in the night while I could be coding in my basement?
    • Why should you go outside? They should provide a live stream instead of just an ebook.

      It's a PDF. You know, for printing.

      Do they think I go out with my laptop in the night while I could be coding in my basement?

      I'm sure they are not concerned about you ever leaving your computer in your basement.

    • Re:Go outside? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by paroneayea ( 642895 )
      Do they think I go out with my laptop in the night while I could be coding in my basement?


      I just wish I had that option. I live in Chicago. I can't see the stars even if I want to. Which I do.

      But even when I lived in the suburbs, it was hard as hell to see the stars anyway. The city's light penetrates that far.
      • I live in Chicago. I can't see the stars even if I want to.

        Yes you can [psdonline.com]

      • Re:Go outside? (Score:5, Informative)

        by x_man ( 63452 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:30AM (#14416768)
        Amateur astronomy has come a long way in the last ten years. With CCD imaging and sigal processing software, you can filter out light pollution and get some absolutely amazing images from your backyard. Take a look at

        this [ghg.net] guy's pictures:

        He lives just outside of Houston, Texas.

        X

        • Re:Go outside? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by DoraLives ( 622001 )
          But even when I lived in the suburbs, it was hard as hell to see the stars anyway. The city's light penetrates that far.

          you can filter out light pollution and get some absolutely amazing images from your backyard.

          All well and good, but you're failing to properly appreciate the sense of the original post. For far too many people, the option of walking out into the night and just staring up at the sky in awe no longer exists.

          This, although it might not seem so, is a profound and disturbing change in the

          • "walking out into the night and just staring up at the sky in awe"

            To be honest the Northern Hemisphere pretty much sucks for that anyway. The Northern Hemisphere faces away from the Milky Way, so you can really only see stuff that is more on the outskirts of the galaxy than even we are (and we are).

            Even on a clear night under dark skies you will see a couple of stars here, a couple there, etc.

            Now if you want to see starry skies, make a trip to the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere faces the Milky

            • Re:Go outside? (Score:3, Informative)

              by mrhartwig ( 61215 )
              I'll agree that there are more, brighter, stars in the south. And I'll also agree that we're above the plane of our galaxy's equator -- but only by about 20 light years. I fail to see how that orients us so that "The Northern Hemisphere faces away from the Milky Way...".

              The center of our galaxy lies roughly in Sagittarius, which, as a Zodiacal constellation, is visible in most of the northern hemisphere. Maybe not as directly, and maybe not as often, but it's visible. See http://www.seds.org/messier/m [seds.org]

      • "I just wish I had that option. I live in Chicago. I can't see the stars even if I want to. Which I do."

        Interesting you mention Chicago. I also live in Chicago, and have lived in the same neighborhood on the NW side for 22 years. Though it is far from an astronomer's dream, the city has made an effort to reduce light pollution over the past decade, and the improvement is very noticeable. 20 years ago, you could see almost no stars, occasionally some bright one would be visible. Now, many are visible on

    • Re:Go outside? (Score:5, Funny)

      by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:25AM (#14416752) Homepage
      Why should you go outside?

      What is this... "outside"... that you speak of?
      • It's that big room, with a blue ceiling between 6 am and 6pm most latitudes/days of the year, a black one between 6pm and 6am, has either green bio-carpet or concrete floor, with a giant nuclear-fusion based lighting system. It's generally the more distant components of the lighting system, as well as some wandering light reflectors, that these people seem to be interested in.
        • It's that big room, with a blue ceiling between 6 am and 6pm most latitudes/days of the year, a black one between 6pm and 6am

          We doesn't like that room. The daystar burns us.
    • the feed could be useful to people in terribly light polluted areas (Bay Area, DC and NYC come to mind). It could easily take an hour of driving to get to a point where it's dark enough to see anything (and then it could be difficult to find an appropriate place to stop)
    • Don't you mean your mom's basement?

  • Got in quick........ (Score:3, Informative)

    by Typingsux ( 65623 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:54AM (#14416634)
    Was downloading at 100k now down to 25 and plummeting. Thanks to /. I should have this in time for 2007.

  • I can't see any stars, you insensitive clod! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thanks for reminding me what I've lost!

    Here in Orlando, we can see about 12 stars because of the light pollution from Maus-witz
  • The dates are off January 7th is listed as a Sunday!

  • Oh, the temptation... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:58AM (#14416656)
    ...to sneak into work on a Saturday morning and print this whole thing out on one of the fancy color printers.

  • This is brilliant (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:02AM (#14416673)
    I am very happy to have found this.

    I used to be pretty good at my constellations when I was much, much younger - I had those dumb stickers that you affixed to your bedroom ceiling that would glow in the dark. Painstakingly applied in the most realistic manner I was capable of at the time (think I was around 11-12). But of course time moves on and you spend more time looking at the monitor than looking at the stars... anyways I had been hoping to find a nice 'refresh primer' and this looks like it will do that nicely.

    If you want to re-learn your stars, or start for the first time, this is a high quality free guide.

    • I used to be able to take a simple Dobsonian scope outside and find most of the Messier catalog without star maps. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing. :) And I seemed to have an innate sense of where each planet was at any given moment.

  • Obligatory astronomy links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lord Satri ( 609291 ) <alexandrelerouxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:22AM (#14416740) Homepage Journal
    The Great Stellarium (open source):
    http://www.stellarium.org/ [stellarium.org]
    Celestia (also free):
    http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ [shatters.net]
    NASA's astronoly picture of the day:
    http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ [nasa.gov]

    Stellarium is really a must-download for anyone even slightly interested in astronomy. It's another open source software success.

    There is always the moon [google.com] from our overlords... but moon through NASA's WorldWind [slashgeo.org] too.

  • Another Great '365' Night Book (Score:5, Informative)

    by DieByWire ( 744043 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:49AM (#14416837)
    Chet Raymo's 365 Starry Nights [amazon.com] is a great, easy introduction to the night sky and astronomy. You don't read like a textbook, you just pick it up and read the day's entry. (Amazon link for convenience - I have no sales affiliation with them.)

    Some day's entries are visual objects, some are binocular, some are telescope, and some are 'here's what's there if you could see it.'

    A great book for the casually curious. You could call it 'astronomy bait.' (Star bait?)

  • Amazing Images (Score:3, Informative)

    by g_bowskill ( 801731 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:05PM (#14416906) Homepage
    What amazes me about the images are that many are taken from peoples back gardens using relatively inexpensive equipment. The results are also in reach of most ordinary people, if your interested in advice on getting started with astronomy or even how to get results such as these then one of the contributes to the images in the book frequents this forum: http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/ [stargazerslounge.co.uk] and along with many others can offer you great advice, just like they have me.
  • Looks like this might be a nice device for starting out if you want to get into astronomy.
    Might be a good product to get kids interested as well.

    http://www.celestron.com/skyscout/no_flash.php?Fla sh=N/ [celestron.com]

    It has some pretty neat features such as:
    "Tonight's Must-See List"
    "Constellation Lessons"
    etc

    Cheers,
    TimeForGuinness

  • I've personally been using the "Astronomy Events and Happenings" iCalendar feed from webcal://ical.mac.com/wesley/Astronomy.ics [webcal] for the past couple of years. It works with Firefox/Thunderbird (pre 1.5 only with the calendar plug-in), Sunbird, Chandler, and of course iCal.

    No big weekly download to manually contend with, and it covers enough of interest to satisfy my needs.

  • Torrent Download (Score:2, Informative)

    by zuffy ( 17881 )
    Here is a torrent download for this PDF.

    http://www.mininova.org/tor/193558 [mininova.org]

  • For some reason the text doesn't render properly in kpdf under kubuntu. The offical Acrobat reader is so bloated, it's a pain to have to use it :(

    But then why look at the real sky, when you can use Stellarium [sourceforge.net]? The Stellarium User Guide contains a mini sky-guide [porpoisehead.net] for the Northern Hemisphere. Anyone in the South care to contribute one for your half of the night sky?

  • If the Whats Up 2006 whetted your appetite for free downloadable astronomy guides you might like to take a look at some handbooks that the folks in the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies have been working on.

    IFAS Observing handbooks. [irishastronomy.org]

    At the moment there are 3 handbooks written, we are working on more.

    1. The Novice Observing Challenge
    Compiled by Seanie Morris this handbook provides the perfect introduction to the hobby and science of astronomy. Everything that a beginner, or nearly-new, astronomer ne

  • There's a lot of free software out there that will give better skymaps than most books can. After all, the sky changes from minute to minute, not just day to day.

    XEphem [clearskyinstitute.com] is my choice. The interface is pretty old-school, but the maps it prints out are perfect for my uses.

    KStars [kde.org] has more bells and whistles but, in my experience, doesn't print as well.

    As for advice on buying scopes, etc., check [cloudynights.com] these [excelsis.com] places [scopereviews.com] too [inreach.com].

  • Since the site is slashdotted into oblivion at the moment, can anyone tell me if it includes the southern hemisphere?
  • Software, and certain three-dimensional star guides, can compensate for location-based differences in the sky - e.g. Polaris is 45 degrees above the horizon if you're 45 degrees north, but not visible at all if you're 10 degrees south. Two-dimensional things, such as books, have a much harder time of this. Thus Planispheres [davidchandler.com] come in several different versions, for different latitudes. In this e-book, there aren't charts. Although this book does include some good southern objects, there are still entire p
  • One of them, at any rate. A few years ago, I was up in the Berkshires (U.S., not U.K.) and I noticed a really bright object close to the Moon. "Hey! That must be Jupiter!" I thought. Ran in, got a pair of binoculars, and tried to get it in view, using the chimney to block out the Moon. As soon as I found it, I noticed three bright pinpricks of light. Wow! Three of the Galilean satellites! I tried to get other people in the house to come out and look, but no one seemed all that interested. Losers.

    He
  • ...if i could see the sky through the smog and light pollution... or the rain...

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