Astronomy picture of the day...
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yup...could actually see the milky way in tekong..the only other place i've been is in ozOriginally posted by BaByBoY:yup
very true
the best that i can tink of in mainland is ecp
else ubin is a nice place too
still rem that i once had OBS there and i was v impressed wat i could see
the normal mag 4 stars could be spotted there -
u can nvr see this in singapore...
The Northern Milky Way
Credit & Copyright: Jerry Lodriguss (Astropix.com)
Explanation: Many of the stars in our home Milky Way Galaxy appear together as a dim band on the sky that passes nearly over the Earth's north and south poles. Pictured above is the part of our Galaxy that passes closest over the north pole. Placing your cursor over the image will bring up the names of several constellations and bright stars. The diffuse white Galaxy glow is created by billions of stars, while red patches are large emission nebulas, usually marking areas where bright stars have recently formed. In the north, all of the lights visible at night and all lights that created this image were emitted within the past few thousand years from within the Milky Way Galaxy -- except one. On the upper right is a small faint patch designated M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. M31 is a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way but so distant it emits the oldest light distinguishable by the unaided eye -- light that takes over two million years to reach us. -
if u can spot the orion constellation, sirius, alpha centurii in the southern cross n the red giant in the scorpion constellation here...then it's considered good weather in s'pore
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actually in sg we can still see the milky way
but willl be very faint
if on a CLEAR nite ( no damned clouds )
u can so call see a small broken `cloud` across the sky
it`s actually a faint light from the milky way
very seldom will the `clouds` form a whole stretch
tt`s why the chines legends had a liu lang zhi nu bridge
only happens when earth is in tt position every year
where the 2 lovers meet in a full bridge..
aka the MILKY WAY -
can c sirus tonite but hard to see the belts of orion...
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wowOriginally posted by poon cho tang:if u can spot the orion constellation, sirius, alpha centurii in the southern cross n the red giant in the scorpion constellation here...then it's considered good weather in s'pore
seems u`re rather interested in stronomy too..
u know abt the equi triangles in the sky?
form by betagluse , sirus and another star in gemini..
cant recall wat name thou -
2004 November 12
Missouri's Green Ribbon Sky
Credit & Copyright: Vic & Jen Winter (ICSTARS Astronomy)
Explanation: The critics rave - "Amazing!", "Unbelievable!", "The best I've ever seen!" They aren't talking about a movie, though. Instead, even casual sky critics are remarking on November's stunning auroral displays, visible with surprising intensities well beyond the confines of high latitudes where auroral activity is normally observed. In fact, in this example of an unforgettable performance a green ribbon of auroral light stretches from horizon to horizon - recorded on November 7th with a fisheye lens near Warrensburg, Missouri, USA. Want to see an aurora? Relatively wide-spread displays may continue, triggered by activity from an energetic sunspot region. -
2004 November 13
Moon Over Shiraz
Credit & Copyright: Ahmad Karimi,
Explanation: Early morning risers around the world have enjoyed the sight of bright planets in this week's predawn skies - further enhanced by the celestial spectacle of the waning crescent Moon. From some locations the Moon was seen to pass in front of Jupiter or Venus, a lunar occultation. Recorded near sunrise on November 10th from Shiraz, Iran, this eastern horizon view finds Jupiter (top) and a brilliant Venus in line with the Moon, a lovely conjunction of the three brightest objects in the night sky. Although the Moon has now fallen out of the early morning scene, Venus and Jupiter (along with a much fainter Mars) still precede the rising Sun above the eastern horizon. -
nice sia...starting to like astronomy
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Originally posted by monkeybusiness:nice sia...starting to like astronomy
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Sometimes during Guard Comd duty, when I can't sleep.I'll just go out into the open field in front of the guardroom and just sit there on the kerb , looking the stars at night, wondering whether there is life out there, or amongs the billions of stars and galaxies out there, only our Sun has an inhabited star system.We are very small in the cosmic scheme of things.We cannot even fully understand our own galaxy, much less grasp the nature of God ..
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Wah nice.. v int... i like also but sumtimes lz to read then get him to tell me.. i prefer to listen..hehee
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2004 November 14
Leonids Above Torre de la Guaita
Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado
Explanation: The 1999 Leonids Meteor Shower came to an impressive crescendo. Observers in Europe observed a sharp peak in the number of meteors visible around 0210 UTC during the early morning hours of November 18. Meteor counts then exceeded 1000 per hour - the minimum needed to define a true meteor storm. At other times and from other locations around the world, observers typically reported above photograph is a 20-minute exposure ending just before the main Leonids peak began. Visible are at least five Leonids meteors streaking high above the Torre de la Guaita, an observation tower used during the 12th century in Girona, Spain. This year's Leonids should peak twice on November 19th, but is predicted to be less impressive than in 1999. -
Erm..wats the name of the planet wif rings ard it???
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isit saturn? saturn is the planet with the most prominent rings ard it.
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saturn with different angle views...
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in fact 4 planets got rings around them....jupiter, saturn, uranus & neptuneOriginally posted by Patrik:Erm..wats the name of the planet wif rings ard it???
saturn's r the most spectacular
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2004 November 15
Burns Cliff on Mars
Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, JPL, NASA
Explanation: The majestic walls of Endurance Crater contain layers of clues about the ancient past of Mars. In fact, the deeper the layer, the older the clue. The particular crater wall imaged above was dubbed Burns Cliff and was in front of the robot rover Opportunity last week. Close inspection of different layers has found slightly different compositions as well as interesting trends in relative compositions. For example, deeper layers contain similarly decreasing amounts of both magnesium and sulfur, indicating a common reason for their decline -- possibly dissolution in water. Today, more practically, Burns Cliff blocks one exit direction for Opportunity to leave Endurance Crater. When combined with slippery sand elsewhere on the crater floor, controllers have decided to program Opportunity to back out of the crater the way it came in - after a few more days exploration -
2004 November 16
Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy
Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI), Y. Momany (U. Padua) et al., ESA, NASA
Explanation: How old is this galaxy? The nearby Local Group galaxy dubbed the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy (SagDIG) is not only very small but also has relatively few elements more massive than helium. Now the lack of heavy elements might mean that SagDIG is very young, so that component stars had little time to create and disperse massive elements. Conversely, SagDIG's diminutive size could indicate that it formed in the early universe, being a surviving building block of modern large galaxies. The above detailed image from the Hubble Space Telescope has now resolved enough stars to solve this mystery: SagDIG is ancient. Although SagDIG does have some groups of young stars, many stars are very old, and the galaxy as a whole helps astronomers to understand how the universe evolved, and show that at least one metal-poor galaxy is almost as old as the universe. Pictured above, SagDIG spans about 1,500 light years and lies about 3.5 million light years away toward the constellation of Sagittarius. -
2004 November 17
Aurora Over Wisconsin
Credit & Copyright: Chris VenHaus
Explanation: The auroral displays of the past week are being reported as some of the most beautiful in memory. In particular, impressive auroral bands fanned out over much of eastern North America after sunset on November 8. The multicolored aurora pictured above was caught reflecting in one of the many small lakes in central Wisconsin near that time. Continued solar activity might create more aurora visible over the next few nights as the Leonids meteor shower peaks -
2004 November 18
A Sharper View of a Tilted Planet
Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Keck Observatory
Explanation: These sharp views of tilted gas giant Uranus show dramatic details of the planet's atmosphere and ring system. The remarkable ground-based images were made using a near-infrared camera and the Keck Adaptive Optics system to reduce the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere. Recorded in July, the pictures show two sides of Uranus (careful how you pronounce that ...). In both, high, white cloud features are seen mostly in the northern (right hand) hemisphere, with medium level cloud bands in green and lower level clouds in blue. The artificial color scheme lends a deep reddish tint to the otherwise faint rings. Because of the severe tilt of its rotational axis, seasons on Uranus are extreme and last nearly 21 Earth years on the distant planet. Uranus is now slowly approaching its southern autumnal equinox - the beginning of fall in the southern hemisphere - in 2007 -
2004 November 19
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
Credit: G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR, ESA
Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The largest moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning new color image from the Mars Express spacecraft, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits so close to Mars - about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000 kilometers for our Moon - that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. In 100 million years or so it will likely crash into the surface or be shattered by stress caused by the relentless tidal forces, the debris forming a ring around Mars. -
2004 November 21
Spiral Galaxies in Collision
Credit: Debra Meloy Elmegreen (Vassar College) et al.,
& the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/ STScI/ NASA)
Explanation: Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide. -
2004 November 22
Swift Launches
Credit: NASA
Explanation: Where do gamma ray bursts occur? To help find out, NASA launched the Swift satellite on Saturday, as pictured above. What Swift is designed to do better than any previous satellite is to quickly locate these enigmatic explosions in both sky position and distance. Once a gamma ray burst (GRB) is located, Swift itself will rotate to face it head-on and determine its distance directly. Swift locations will be immediately beamed down to Earth-based telescopes operating around the world and across the electromagnetic spectrum that are just waiting for a place on the sky to point. Subsequently collected GRB and afterglow information will help astronomers not only determine the nature of the initial explosions, but also the nature of the expanding shockwaves. Some Swift-located GRBs could turn out to be the most distant transient events ever detected, holding unique clues to the nature and rate of the very first wave of star formation in the early universe. -
2004 November 23
Leonid Meteors Streak
Credit: Night Sky Live Project
Explanation: The 2004 Leonids meteor shower had its ups and downs. Although average rates were significantly less than many previous years, as expected, at least two unexpected "mini-outbursts" of several bright meteors over a few minutes were reported. Pictured above, a bright Leonid meteor was imaged by a Night Sky Live camera over Kitt Peak National Observatory early in the morning of November 19 during one mini-outburst. The meteor appears as the streak just to the left of the green "Ursa Major" label. Moving your cursor over the image will show the image taken about 25 minutes later where two bright Leonid meteors from a second mini-outburst were recorded, visible on the lower right just to the left of the green words "Canis" and "Minor". The stars appear to shift between the two images because of the rotation of the Earth. The Night Sky Live frames show fisheye images, capturing the entire sky as a person would see it looking straight up, including peripheral vision. In mid-December, the Geminids meteor shower will give sky enthusiasts another good chance to see live meteors