What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! My computer died so am in the throes of getting up & running again Big stories: NASA's budget at 19.285 Billion for FY 16; Space X lands its 1st stage after a rocket launch; ISS astronauts fix the robotic arm carrier. Happy Holidays & back up sometime! Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Can you tell what is in the picture? Give up? It is Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull and the Pleiades UPSIDE DOWN! The two bright stars on the right are Sirius (top) and the 2nd brightest star in the sky Canopus below and to the right of Sirius. I took this pic on Oceania Cruises’ Nautica, which I am aboard. The latitude at the time was 28 degrees SOUTH and I have never been that far south of the equator. The stars in the Northern Hemisphere look very different down under the equator. We have started heading North so I am hoping to get some pics of southern sky gems to share with you as we go along. Sky Guy Down Under

Hey Space Placers! Check out the best meteor shower of the year - the Geminids. This weekend, especially on Sunday and Monday night, we will enjoy the peak time for what I think is the best meteor shower of the year, the Geminids. I say best because it reliably produces a large number of meteors per hour (60+) in a dark sky and many of them are bright. Plus the Geminids is the only major meteor shower where you can see a good number of meteors starting at 10 p.m. local time instead of the hours just before dawn. Sky & Telescope The predicted peak of the 2015 Geminid Meteor Shower is the night of December 13-14 but you can see Geminids from the 12th to the 16th. Each year at this time our planet encounters a debris stream of rock particles made by Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The Geminids is the only meteor shower caused by an asteroid or what astronomers call a rock comet - all others are due to cometary debris.  As Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun it collid...

Hey Space Placers! NASA's Dawn mission might finally have an answer to the enigmatic bright spots that I have written about numerous times. Occator in False Color NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA The Dawn spacecraft has finally reached its lowest altitude - about 240 miles - above Ceres. This will allow for accumulating very detailed photographs and data as the mission enters its final phase. Ceres is quite the dwarf planet like Pluto. What an amazing solar system we live in. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Venus has a new visitor . Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! The next two predawns offer a beautiful view of the Moon and Venus PLUS a chance to see Comet Catalina. You will need binoculars to see the comet. Here is a Sky & Telescope finder chart: I'm hoping to get some pics to share with you - stay tuned. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Watch the 1st of the 18 mirror segments go into place on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in this video   by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Check out this uber cool graphic of the size of exoplanet candidates (planets to be confirmed beyond our solar system) from NASA's Kepler mission We live in a time when we know of thousands of planets beyond our solar system that are orbiting other stars - think about that..... It is quite clear that planets are a natural byproduct of stellar formation and our Milky Way probably contains BILLIONS if not TRILLIONS of planets. Oh, and each of the 200 billion plus galaxies we can see should also have planets as well. What a Universe! Sky Guy in VA