Tag: skywatching
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November 01, 2009 10:39 PM EST --
If one wants to look for particular things in the night sky, one has to pay attention to the time and season. Planets come and go depending on their own orbits. More regular are bodies outside . . .
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August 25, 2006 05:39 PM EDT --
As a followup to my short piece on Pluto, I intercepted the following interplanetary e-mail.
TO: International Astronomy Union
We were completely ignored for thousands of years while that shrimp Mercury, . . .
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August 28, 2007 08:25 AM EDT --
I have always been fascinated with looking at the heavens. As a child, I would sit for as long as my parents would let me, looking at the stars and asking questions about how I could go up into the . . .
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November 17, 2008 09:45 PM EST --
If you have any clear nights toward the end of this month (they have been pretty rare for me lately) it'll be an ideal time to watch some prominent members of our solar system on the move. By . . .
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November 19, 2009 08:29 PM EST --
Over the past months, Mars has been getting gradually more prominent in the sky. It is well worth observing in its own right, but if you have the patience to watch it carefully over the course of . . .
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August 27, 2006 11:49 AM EDT --
first they said,"it's nine."
all of us said, "ok fine."
then they said,"twelve it is."
we said,"whatever you please."
now they insist it's eight,
deciding . . .
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May 28, 2009 09:22 PM EDT --
In the years I've watched the sky, I've seen all the planets but one (as long as you accept the recent fate of Pluto). That one elusive planet is Neptune. It is possible for even an amateur . . .
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August 25, 2006 11:43 AM EDT --
As a student of human nature I've long been fascinated with the peculiarly human trait of cognitive consonance/dissonance. As psychologists view it, this is our tendency to surround our ideas, . . .
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June 29, 2008 10:32 PM EDT --
Watching the sky almost tautologically means looking upwards. But there is one circumstance where skywatching might mean looking down--when you are up in the sky yourself in an airplane. Even . . .
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January 27, 2006 04:40 PM EST --
In my last skywatching article, I mentioned that Mars was approaching the Pleiades star cluster. Since the Pleiades are a beautiful sight in their own right, let me write a little about them too.
The . . .
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February 07, 2006 11:15 PM EST --
This month represents about as good an opportunity possible to see the most elusive of the planets visible to the naked eye--Mercury. It is said that Copernicus himself never saw the planet with his own . . .
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December 11, 2008 11:52 PM EST --
Everybody loves a good sunset. Even the most ordinary sunset can be a beautiful experience. But if you keep a sharper eye out, you can see some phenomena that are not just beautiful, but interesting . . .
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March 20, 2007 07:06 PM EDT --
Perhaps the most beautiful of all atmospheric phenomena has the most awkward of names. The circumzenithal arc at its best, is a display of spectral colors that is even more brilliant than the better known . . .
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December 19, 2005 11:16 PM EST --
For many years, I've been interested in the sky. I'm equally interested in astronomy and meteorology, which leads me to watch both the day and night sky. I also mostly confine myself to naked eye . . .
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September 09, 2006 07:46 PM EDT --
Dave Sandborg's excellent piece on sun-associated phenomena in the Astronomy group started me thinking about other sometimes unusual things to see in the daytime sky.
Having a long-time interest in . . .
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August 24, 2006 10:17 PM EDT --
We grew up learning there were 9 planets in our solar system and now there are only 8 planets!
All the teachers, all the books, and all the astronomers are going to have to say there are only 8 official, . . .
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July 30, 2008 09:12 PM EDT --
Since ancient times, observers have noticed that the stars, though they move through the sky from day to day and throughout the year, keep their same positions relative to each other. But there were . . .
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September 29, 2008 09:30 PM EDT --
Many astronomical phenomena, even some visible to the naked eye, are noticeable only to the most careful of observers. Of such phenomena that anybody could see if they just looked carefully enough, . . .
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February 28, 2006 10:43 PM EST --
Romantic as the full Moon may be, it is not a favorite among most observational astronomers. It is simply so bright that it washes out other objects. If you compare a night with a full Moon to one without, . . .
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February 28, 2007 08:46 PM EST --
Most people would describe the color of clouds as white or grey, but a closer look shows that this is not always so. There are a host of optical effects that can lead to other colors in clouds. . . .
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