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If you have trouble viewing this newsletter, click here. Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. This year, November furnishes amateur astronomers with two outstanding celestial events. On November 8, a rare Mercury transit puts a spot on the sun for several hours and, on the night of November 18, the Leonid Meteor Shower peaks, producing perhaps as many as 150 meteors per hour this year. Whether you own a telescope or not, we'll tell you where to look and what to expect.
Robbinsdale Area Schools District serves approximately 13,000 K-12 students and operates 11 elementary schools for students in grades K-5, three middle schools for grades 6-8, two high schools for 9-12 and one alternative high school. A customized teacher training has been scheduled for November 3. If you are interested in a Starry Night® Orientation or Teacher Training for your school or district, please contact Mike Goodman at mgoodman@imaginova.com or (952) 653-0493. In-person or webinar trainings available. Linda
Fung
Become a Starry Night® Affiliate! If you publish a space or astronomy Web site or blog, earn extra cash by promoting Starry Night® on your Web site. We want sites that educate, entertain and share with others their passion for space and astronomy and will enthusiastically promote Starry Night® products. Join the Starry Night® affiliate program and earn referral commissions by sending customers to our site. When a visitor to your site clicks on the affiliate link to our site and completes a purchase, you get a 15% commission on every item they buy from the Starry Night® Store. It's easy to join and it's free! To be part of the Starry Night® affiliate program, you will need to sign up with our partner, Commission Junction. This application process will allow you to create a Commission Junction account and be an affiliate for Starry Night® as well as any of the merchants in the Commission Junction network. We have partnered with Commission Junction to provide our affiliates with tracking, reporting, prompt monthly payments, and the flexibility of being an affiliate for any of Commission Junction's other merchants. For more information or to sign up, please visit: Once approved, you'll receive a unique ID and specialized HTML links to track your traffic and revenue. Linda
Fung
On November 8th 2006, amateur astronomers with small telescopes and solar filters will be able to observe Mercury's tiny silhouette moving slowly across the face of the Sun as it makes a rather feeble attempt to eclipse the Sun. Astronomers call this event a "transit".
Because Mercury orbits the Sun much more rapidly than Venus, it's in the right place for a transit far more often. Transits of Mercury occur 13 times a century or roughly once every 7.4 years, whereas transits of Venus occur less than twice a century, or roughly once every 62.5 years. In fact, transits of Venus usually occur in pairs 8 years apart, separated by a gap of 125 years. We're right in between a pair of Venus transits, one having occurred on June 08, 2004 and the next one on June 06, 2012. Mercury transits also occur in clumps. The last one was 3.5 years ago on May 07, 2003, and the next one will not be until 9.5 years from now, on May 09, 2016. This year's transit will be a late afternoon event for most of North and South America and a morning event for East Asia and Australia. The Mercury transit is not visible from Europe, Africa, and most of Asia. To read the rest of this article, click here.
If you live in Western Europe or eastern North America, put a big circle on your calendar around Saturday, Nov. 18. If that night is clear, bundle up warmly and head outside because you may be able to catch a glimpse of an intense, albeit brief display of Leonid meteors.
Norwegian
astrophotographer
Arne
Danielsen
captured The Leonids are composed of the dusty debris that has been shed by the comet Temple-Tuttle, a small celestial body that orbits the Sun at 33-year intervals. In those years during and then for several years after the comet has swept through the inner solar system, it has had a propensity for producing spectacular meteor displays; meteors falling by the hundreds, if not thousands per hour. These "shooting stars" all apparently emanate from the constellation of Leo, the Lion. Hence the name "Leonids." To read the rest of this article, click here. |
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Nov 2006
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The reviews of this little telescope were very positive. The telescope had been marketed as a kids’ telescope, but after the reviews came out, many adults bought these scopes because of their optical quality and portability. In fact, I was one of the early purchasers of the classic StarBlast™. I remember taking it to a public star party sponsored by my astronomy club, and ending up with a long line of viewers who were taken by the small size (and price) of this scope and by the fine image of Jupiter and its moons that it was delivering. The main drawback of this scope, shared by all so-called “table top” telescopes, is that it is hard to find a table top suitable for supporting it. Most tables have four legs, which makes them unstable on all but the most level surface, and few are solid enough to support a telescope magnifying a hundred times or more. Also, the table needs to be pretty small, so that you can approach the telescope from different directions, depending on where it is pointing in the sky. This problem was discussed by StarBlast™ owners on online forums, and various solutions proposed and tried out. The ideal support would probably be a three legged stool, but such things are hard to come by. To read the rest of this article, click here. |
Lunar Explorer is the world's most accurate and complete simulation of the old and familiar Moon. |
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Until recently, high power eyepieces usually meant cramming your eye against a tiny eye lens and viewing a dim narrow field. Then optical designers got the idea of combining eyepieces and Barlow lenses into a single package which gave high magnification, long eye relief, and bright, easy-to-see images. Such eyepieces have been quite expensive until Orion® recently announced their new Expanse™ series of eyepieces, available in four focal lengths: 20mm, 15mm, 9mm, and 6mm. The 20mm and 15mm are normal wide-field designs, while the 9mm and 6mm versions combine a fairly low power eyepiece with a built-in Barlow lens. That’s why, if you look at the picture above, the 9mm and 6mm versions are nearly twice as large as their low-power brethren, the opposite of what we see with most eyepieces. So, while the 20mm and 15mm are nice to have, the real interest is in the 9mm and 6mm versions, which offer a totally different viewing experience from typical short-focus Plössl eyepieces.
I tested the 15mm and 6mm Expanse™ eyepieces which came with the StarBlast™ EQ as standard equipment. Both offer wide 66° fields of view, as compared with the 52° fields of most Plössls. This gives you a 61% increase in the area you can see at a given magnification, which in itself is impressive. Secondly the lens you put your eye to is much larger than we’re used to in eyepieces of this size. The eye lens on the 15mm measures 20mm in diameter, and that of the 6mm measures a whopping 22mm. The effect is like looking through a picture window rather than straining to peep through a tiny pinhole. This contributes to the large eye relief of these eyepieces, 13mm to 17mm, depending on the focal length. Eyeglass wearers will be able to see all or most of the field of view, and for non-eyeglass wearers, it will be just as comfortable to look through the 6mm as through the 20mm. To read the rest of this article, click here. |
The world's only desk calendar devoted to space exploration and astronomy. |
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If you are someone who waits for the .0.1 release of new software, then there's never been a better time to upgrade to Starry Night® new version 6 - now with free downloadable update to version 6.0.1! Only users of Starry Night® version 6.0 qualify for the free downloadable 6.0.1 update. If you already own version 6, below are instructions on how to download your 6.0.1 update. You must be connected to the Internet to receive the update. Windows users should click on Start>All Programs>Starry Night® (Enthusiast 6, Pro 6, Pro 6 AstroPhoto or Pro Plus 6) >Check for Starry Night® (Enthusiast 6, Pro 6, Pro 6 AstroPhoto or Pro Plus 6) Updates. Macintosh users should click on Macintosh HD>Applications>Starry Night® (Enthusiast 6, Pro 6, Pro 6 AstroPhoto or Pro Plus 6) >(Enthusiast 6, Pro 6, Pro 6 AstroPhoto or Pro Plus 6) Updater. You can also download the 6.0.1 update as a standalone updater file. This will allow you to save the update to a CD and then install it later. The updater will only update Starry Night® version 6.0.0 to 6.0.1. The size of the updates ranges from 13 to 38 MB. Please download and install only the update specified for your product. Installing the wrong update will corrupt your copy of Starry Night®. Click below for the standalone updaters: Please be patient as there may be a number of people downloading at the same time. Some highlights of the free 6.0.1 Update include: Significant improvements in Windows startup times.
Usability enhancements and fixes
Corrections to graphic anomalies
For Pro Plus users, you change the color of the nebula outlines, and they will draw as black in printouts. The AllSky image now correctly flips at small FOVs (hardware permitting). Click here to see a complete list of over 40 fixes: Upgrade to version 6 to receive the Free 6.0.1 update! Thank you for supporting Starry Night®. Linda
Fung |
Based on the version of Starry Night® you have, you can upgrade to Enthusiast, Pro or Pro Plus version 6 or AstroPhoto Suite. For the first time, if you are using a planetarium or star charting program other than Starry Night®, you may qualify for special upgrade pricing to version 6. |
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Visit Starry Night® as we hit the road this fall and make stops at these conferences:
Linda
Fung |
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M15 is one of the most densely packed globular clusters in our galaxy, with a high number of variable stars and pulsars. Viewable with the naked eye from dark sites, binoculars and small scopes will bring out some detail of the collapsed, superdense core. M15 is also one of only a handful of globular clusters known to contain a planetary nebula. NGC 7331, a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy about 43 million light-years away, shows a superb spiral structure. 51 Pegasi is an unexceptional 8th Mag star, but it's notable because it is orbited by the first true extrasolar planet to have been discovered. Sean
O'Dwyer |
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The Big Dipper over Crater Lake, Oregon
Taken on September 8, 2006 with a Nikon D-200 and a Nikkor Wide Angle Lens (12-24mm). The ISO was 1600 and the exposure was 20 seconds. Michel Hersen, Portland, Oregon.
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.
Please read the following guidelines and see the submission e-mail address below.
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Free Year in Space 2007 Calendar ($11.95 value) with purchase of Starry Night® Pro or Pro Plus version 6 only applies to the purchase of a new full box version of Starry Night® Pro or Pro Plus version 6. To receive the free Year in Space Calendar, this item must be selected and listed in your shopping cart before checkout. Limited to 1 Year in Space Calendar per purchase. Offer expires October 31, 2006 11:59 pm EST. Not valid on previous purchases. |
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