Star Light, Star Bright

[CarlLaFong]

The last time we were at Bryce Canyon, there was an astronomy club there, putting on a program. We all got to look through the telescopes at the various stars and planets. It was fascinating. Much of the talk they gave was about light pollution and the simple steps that could be implemented to reduce it. I remember growing up in the San Fernando Valley, in SoCal, and looking at the Milky Way, 60 years ago. Long gone, now. We live in semi rural northern Los Angeles County , where there are no street lights or brightly illuminated areas, so we still get a pretty good show on a clear night.

[alaska teardrop]

Well, at least the outer space aliens can see us better than in the time of Galileo.

[PKCSPT]

I love it when on a clear cold night you look up and the stars looks so close you feel like you could reach up and touch then. I wish we could reclaim the night sky and safe energy by powering down some of these city lights. As someone else said, every street does not need to be lit by electricity.

[Bogo]

If you want to see the Aurora, then Northern Wisconsin, UP of Michigan and Northern Minnesota are the places to go. They are centred on the magnetic north pole which is towards this side of the rotational north pole. That means we get to see then at 10 degrees lower latitude than Iceland does, and 20 degrees lower latitude than Russia. It means they can often be seen in the north central USA, and in Canada. For the conditions to look for Space Weather http://www.spaceweather.com/ has lots of information.

[Corwin C]

The Amazing thing is, think what you can’t see!!!

Oh how true! For instance ...



Every pinpoint of light (except for, I believe, two stars in the upper left and one in the lower right) in this portion of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image is equivalent to practically everything that can be seen from Earth ... yet again. Wrap your cerebellum around that (I can't).

[GPW]

Consider this , what’s beyond what we can’t see, even with Hubble ... Space is supposed to be Infinite .. That alone is a Big thought to wrap our little brains around ...

Now mathematicians have suggested the idea of a Multiverse, with the thought of a number of Universes totaling 10 with 500 zeroes behind it ... And with the infinite possibilities , there just may be another universe somewhere with someone just like us , building teardrop camping trailers ... That’s a lot to think about eh ... ?

Kinda’ makes you feel infinitesimally small eh ...

[Festus]

My son and I often sit outside and look at the stars and count satellites. There is a lot of man made space junk floating around up there. The satellites look like stars that move across the sky. Some are bright, most are relatively dim. We have seen the International Space Station a few times as well. It is very bright and much larger than a normal satellite.

[GPW]

Fes... you sure they’re just satellites ?

[Festus]

Gee, I hope so.... lol

In case you are interested, here is a site to type in your zip code and it will give you about a half dozen satellites, times and direction to look for them. http://www.spaceweather.com/flybys/‎

And here is one for the International Space Station.
http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/‎

[Corwin C]

My favorite is Heavens-Above... it is free to sign up, you can put in your location (and several others) and get detailed sun/moon/planet watching, stargazing, comets/asteroids, and satellite watching information.

One real exciting and impressive thing to do is watch iridium flares (satellites which become very bright and go back out in just a few seconds because a polished antenna reflects sunlight predictably along the ground).

[atahoekid]

I was on the fringes of a conversation another few folks were having about the Aurora Borealis and some folks had said they had seen it quite nicely in upstate Washington, while others said although they had lived in Alaska for a while, the COLORS of the Aurora Borealis were only visible a few times and were dependent on the atmospheric conditions. Don't know if any of that is true, but that's what I overheard...