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Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. We hope you enjoy it!
Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned "pro," summer offers a wealth of sky sights. Here are just a handful of easy targets, but be sure to check out your copy of Starry Night® and stayed tuned here on Space.com for more suggestions as the summer sails by.
The early evening offers three easy planets. Venus continues to dominate the western sky, with Saturn nearby in Leo. On June 18, the Crescent Moon, Saturn and Venus make a wonderful sight in the western twilight, a great target for binoculars such as Orion's Resolux WP 7x50s.
Figure 1—Look west at 9:00 PM Eastern Time, June 18, 2007
If you miss it, there is a similar grouping on July 16. To the southeast, Jupiter is a standout near Antares in Scorpius, but you'll need a scope to see the nightly parade of moons. (The Orion ED refractor line is a good choice for Jupiter, Saturn's rings, the Moon and planets in general.) Jupiter just gets better through the Summer, but Venus and Saturn will be gone by August, lost in the glare of the setting Sun.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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When June begins, Venus and Saturn will be nearly 25° apart, Venus close to Pollux in Gemini and Saturn close to Regulus in Leo. Oven the month of June, we will witness the spectacle as the brilliant Venus swiftly crosses the entire constellation of Cancer until the two meet, close to Regulus, at the beginning of July.
Figure 1—Paths of Venus and Saturn, June 1 to July 1, 2007
In the Starry Night® image above, we see the paths of the two planets from June 1 to July 1, each dot marking five days along the planets’ paths. Because Saturn is 19 times farther away from us than Venus, 9.94 versus 0.53 astronomical units from Earth, it moves much more slowly against the background stars. Thus Venus appears to catch up with Saturn and pass it on July 1. A particular date to watch is June 18, when the four-day-old crescent Moon will be located right in between Saturn and Venus.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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The moon is the hardest working object in the night sky. Unlike the planets that hide close to the sun for months and wallow in the lowest reaches of the ecliptic for years at a time—the moon is always there for you. It is beautifully positioned for picture taking much of each month. And during those brief times when it lies behind the sun you can always spend some hours at the eyepiece looking for dim fuzzy stuff!
Through a telescope, the moon is more fun than Google Earth. As you zoom in with higher magnification new landscapes are revealed and a limitless supply of features—craters, rimae, domes—are revealed. To capture a detailed close-up of the moon using a long effective focal length you will need a telescope and a mount that tracks the night sky.
A camera capable of capturing streaming video (a webcam or dedicated planetary imaging camera) is relatively inexpensive, simple to set up in the field and perfectly suited for lunar imaging at high power. A basic 640x480 pixel chip is fine. Larger chips will display a wider field of view but will be more expensive and require a fast processor to handle the huge stream of data at 30 or 60 frames per second.
Like a trip to the Louvre, the moon at high power will offer more than you can see in one visit. It pays to plan ahead. Your session will be most rewarding on a night when the seeing is steady. Find a good weather resource (the Clear Sky Clock is a good internet site to bookmark) and learn the patterns at your location. Often you will find windows of good seeing just after sunset and before sunrise. Store your telescope in an unheated location so it will be thermally stable and ready for imaging at short notice.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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Rich Cambell of Orion Telescopes & Binoculars was interviewed by "News In Space" host Casey Dee at a recent Astronomy Expo in Suffern, New York.
Courtesy AstroShorts.com
Pedro Braganca Content Director, Starry Night®
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At this time of year, Coma Berenices hangs high overhead, very well-placed for observation. Berenice was an Egyptian queen, the wife of King Ptolemy III Euergestes. When her husband went off to war, to ensure his safe return, she promised her hair to Aphrodite. The King did indeed return and Berenice gave up her hair, a tuft of which became this constellation.
Diadem is a binary star about 47 lightyears from us. It's two suns cannot be split in telescopes but, just a little to the north, M53 hangs in space at a much greater distance: 60,000 lightyears. M53 is a halo cluster, filled with dozens of Mag 13 stars.
M64, The Blackeye Galaxy, gets its famous name from the dark dust lane that cuts through the galaxy's core. With averted vision, you'll just be able to make out the lane. Overall, the galaxy is bright enough to be visible in binoculars.
NGC 4725 is a large bright spiral galaxy which has been warped by its interactions with close-by NGC 4747. This patch of sky also contains the North Galactic Pole.
NGC 4559, a faint spiral galaxy, is inclined 20° from edge-on. The larger your scope the better the view. NGC 4565 is inclined only 4° from edge-on and is breath-taking. Both galaxies belong to the Virgo Cluster.
NGC 4494 is an elliptical galaxy whose core rotates very rapidly—and in the opposite direction to the stars in the outer disk!
Sean O'Dwyer Starry Night® Times Editor
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Horse Head Nebula Phillip Holmes took this photo from his backyard in Rockhampton Australia. The photo is taken with a STL-11000M through a Televue NP101mm F5.4 on a G11 mount. Photo has been cropped to show the horse head.
PRIZES AND RULES:
We would like to invite all Starry Night® users to send their quality astronomy photographs to be considered for use in our monthly newsletter.
- Featured submissions (best of month) will receive a prize of $75 USD.
Please read the following guidelines and see the submission e-mail address below.
- Format: Digital images in either JPG, GIF or TIFF format.
- Size: 700 pixels wide maximum.
- File size should be less than 2 MB.
- Include a caption: Your full name, location where photo was taken and any interesting details regarding your photo or how you took it. Please be brief.
- Important notes: We may edit captions for clarity and brevity. We reserve the right to not use submissions. In submitting your image or images to Imaginova®, you agree to allow us to publish them in all media—on the Web or otherwise—now and in the future. We'll credit you, of course. Most important, you'll have the satisfaction of sharing your experience with the world!
- Send images, following the above guidelines, to photo@starrynight.com (by sending an image you agree to the above terms, including Imaginova®’s right to publish your photos). Please do not send .ZIP files as they will not reach us.
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Winter Star Party Panorama
Submitted by Joe Bergeron based on a pan shot by Art Mullis.
• WSP.zip [6.3 MB]
SN Pro 4.x and higher users: simply download these two files and place them in your Sky Data/Horizon Panoramas Folder. Be sure to backup your existing Mars.txt and Mars.psd images.
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Trouble downloading? PC users, use a right-click to save the files to your disk. Mac users, use ctrl-click and save the files to your disk.
Pedro Braganca Content Director, Starry Night®
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A guided video tour of celestial events visible this month.
• Click Here to Download
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Starry Night® Favorites
Take some time to look at the entries in the Favorites menu. Remember that the entries are not static images, they are regular Starry Night® files which you can then modify using any of Starry Night®'s controls.
Pedro Braganca Content Director, Starry Night®
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Moon Phases
Last Quarter: June 8
New Moon: June 14
First Quarter: June 22
Full Moon: June 30
Planets
Mercury is visible in the evening skies, reaching "greatest elongation East" on the 2nd. After this its visibility decreases as it moves back toward the Sun, reaching "inferior conjunction" between the Earth and Sun on the 28th.
Venus continues its stunning appearance in the western evening skies, even gradually brightening as the month goes on. It is at its greatest separation from the Sun on June 9, and thereafter begins to move back closer to the Sun. However, due to the geometry of its orbit, it grows slightly brighter until mid-July (although the amount of additional brightness is too small to really notice).
Mars, which for months has been a morning object, remains poorly placed during June. It is in Pisces until it moves into Aries late in the month.
Jupiter is in opposition to the Sun on June 5, a situation analogous to the Moon in full phase. It is up all night, and bright, although it is in a southern part of its range and never gets very high for most of North America. In Denver, at a latitude of about 40 degrees North, Jupiter rises to a maximum of about 28.5 degrees on June 15. That figure decreases by a degree for every degree of latitude farther North you go.
Saturn, in Leo, is in the West to Northwest in the evening. Through the month, vastly brighter Venus approaches it, and they pass each other by less than a degree on July 1 for North America.
Dates
Friday, June 1 Moon/Jupiter, 8:30 p.m. Moon passes about 6 degrees North of Jupiter in the predawn sky.
Saturday, June 2 Mercury Greatest Elongation East, 5:58 a.m. Mercury reaches greatest elongation East, at about 23 degrees from the setting Sun.
Tuesday, June 5 Jupiter, 7:07 p.m. Jupiter is opposite the Sun, and is up all night, in Ophiuchus.
Friday, June 8 Last Quarter Moon, 7:43 a.m. This phase is seen after midnight and into the following morning, even after daylight.
Friday, June 8 Venus Greatest Elongation East, 10:41 p.m. Venus is at its farthest eastward away from the Sun in this orbit. It is about 45 degrees away from the setting Sun, and is at its best for observation in the evening sky.
Tuesday, June 12 Venus/M44, evening Venus passes just about a degree North of the Beehive Cluster in Cancer on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
Wednesday, June 13 Moon/Pleiades, predawn The very thin Crescent Moon passes less than a degree North the center of the Pleiades at about 9 a.m., but sharp-eyed observers should be to pick them out low in the eastern sky just before dawn.
Thursday, June 14 New Moon, 11:13 p.m. Strictly speaking, a "New" Moon cannot be seen, as it is too closely in line with the Sun. It may be helpful to think of the "New Moon" as "No Moon."
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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