Astro event: A Close Planetary Conjunction.

 
   The dusk planetary action continues this week with a close conjunction of the planets Mars and Venus. Our two nearest planetary neighbors in space have been playing a game of apparent cat and mouse in the dusk skies, approaching each other within two degrees of arc July 31st, receding, and then approaching again. Closest [...]

Astro-Event: Venus at Greatest Elongation.

 
   Our nearest planetary neighbor is about to put on a brilliant dusk showing. The planet Venus reaches greatest elongation, or its maximum separation from the Sun as observed from the Earth on August 19th. From there, it will begin a long dive towards inferior conjunction with the Sun on October 28th, slendering in phase [...]

Astro-Challenge: See Saturn’s Moons in 1 to 7 Order.

 
    This week’s challenge may also give you a unique photographic opportunity. On the evening of July 31st (my birthday!) Saturn’s moons will be in 1 to 7 order. This will occur from 6:45 to 11:15 Universal Time, and favor viewers in Australia and the Far East. Later in the evening over North America, only speedy [...]

Imaging Satellites: A Low-Tech Method.

 

Portable Satellite Tracking “Station”. (All Photos by Author).

  

    We here at Astroguyz have been working for some time on an interesting technique for capturing photographs of satellites, and by popular demand, we wanted to give a brief rundown at how we were ultimately successful. Go out star-gazing on any clear night, and it’s only a [...]

Review: How to Build a Habitable Planet by James Kasting.

 

Out now from Princeton Press!

 

 
   Some years ago, a book entitled Rare Earth was published amid much controversy. The central thesis of this work was that events that led to the eventual habitability and diversity of life and intelligence on Earth were so improbable, as be near to impossible to replicate elsewhere in our galaxy. [...]

26.04.10-Amateurs Scour the Solar System.

A stunning Martian panorama! (Credit:NASA/JPL Image Processing by Michael Howard & Glen Nagle).
   A quiet sort of revolution has been brewing online. Amateur astronomers have taken to the web on cloudy, light polluted nights and turned newly found computing power normally reserved for gaming and Second Life into something truly productive and phenomenal; the reprocessing [...]

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