开云体育

Of course most of you already know this but now is a good time to start to regularly watch Venus. As the planets close out their observing season, Venus now takes the center stage. Of all the planets, none, other than perhaps Mars, changes in size so much during it's orbit around the sun. Oddly, Venus as it becomes a more and more defined crescent, actually gets considerably brighter. This is already happening. It now is a distinct crescent whereas a couple of months ago it was gibbous. This is fun to watch and the size difference over time is considerable. It should get to be the largest diameter around June or thereabouts. It is an easy target and provides a very nice extended observation. The observation can be done from anywhere as it is fairly high in the sky now.

Saturday Night is shaping-up to be a 'go'. I suspect I'll be able to make the official 'go/no-go' call early on Saturday before 3PM. As I've mentioned here at least once before, I was a Synoptic (literally meaning 'co-incident in time') Aviation Weather Forecaster & Flight Weather Briefer (mil flight ops) in my distant past. At this point in my life I don't sit around and hand-analyze upper air charts. But just using very basic Weather 101, the conditions Saturday Night are tracking to be decent (but not perfect) just using very basic knowledge of weather patterns. I thought I'd share the following which may be helpful to a few to the enthusiasts & amateurs who follow our Groups.io message boards: Weather Patterns 101 - - Cold frontal passage on late-Friday (ok, 0Z Saturday West-to-east if you follow UTC) - - A post-cold frontal trough (typically at 500mb - a constant pressure level that's roughly 18,000 FT) often follows CFP (cold frontal passage) roughly 6-18 hours after FROPA (Frontal Passage) - - The post-cold frontal trough typically will bring some mid-etage clouds ... etage means LEVEL - it's an accepted scientific term just as one could use deja vu, bon voyage, de facto, mea culpa in normal English (those aren't English words). I bring this up b/c I was once brow-beaten here by a few who thought I was dropping a nondescript French word and was told to please use English. I am sorry if I have previously offended :-0 ... I'm doing my best to define everything in this post. So ... looking at our Astro Wx apps & Astro forecast sites, you can easily see the graphically depicted scenario I explained ... beginning on Friday: clouds, precip, followed by a general clearing and then the 500mb shortwave trough (which TV broadcasters will generally refer to as a 'weak disturbance' IF they mention it at all) moves through. With the trough's passage, you'll see that graphically depicted as generally clear before, a degradation of sky conditions & clouds, followed by a second clearing after the trough passes. I will point-out that in the winter ... very generally speaking ... the most stable air in an air mass (a front separates two air masses) is most often 24-36 hours after FROPA (all of these general times vary by season & are driven by steering currents like the position of the PFJ - polar front jet). Assuming this weekend's weather pattern follows basic Weather Patterns 101 Class, Saturday P.M. should result in few (only fair weather) clouds - if any - that dissipate meaning good transparency but the best SEEING - the time when we'd be nearest to the most stable air of the incoming air mass - would most likely occur after we finish our obs and depart Saturday Night. Of course, Fluid (aka atmospheric) Dynamics isn't always textbook - and local geography among other things must be factored in. If it were always textbook, there would be vast unemployment in the field! But as of right now, the weather pattern over the next 72-hours looks more textbook than not. Hopefully Saturday is indeed classic Weather Patterns 101. We have decent weather. And we have a good turnout of amateurs & enthusiasts at YRSP. IF everything I've said is wrong, just like every good forecaster, I'm sure that I'll have a scientific excuse! Yes, seriously - I'll find a valid excuse ... uh ... reason ? Cheers,

Best night this season for Mars. I will have a longer list of carbon stars coming but wanted to comment on Mars tonight. The scope took 40 minutes to settle out temperature wise but once it did, wow. At 187 using the 4mm Zeiss there were lots of albedo features. Easy. The pole, Utopia, Hellas Basin, Syrtis Major on the limb and Mare Serpentis all showed well. I upped the power to 239x using the Takahashi TOE 3.3mm. That made the image bigger and it didn't deteriorate much. Soooo. I went to the 2.4mm Vixen. Well that was a lot bigger pushing 100x per inch. There was a bit of degradation but if you waited for that magic second............ oh my goodness. What was a generalized dark band resolved itself into an irregular border with a small peninsula. This lasted only for a second but wow what a view at 359X. Most of the time it was a bit of wavers but you just had to wait for the miracle moment to occur. Overall about two hours of just Mars observing. The best overall view was with the 3.3 Takahashi.

Here's a Spaceweather.com article about our favorite recent comet. THE DISINTEGRATION OF COMET ATLAS: Some comets like it hot. Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) is not one of them. After it flew past the sun on Jan. 13th, Comet ATLAS's overheated core began to dissolve. Using a remote-controlled telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile, astronomer Lionel Majzik recorded the disintegration: His movie, which highlights the comet's nucleus (or "head"), tracks the breakup over a 6-day period. This may sound like bad news for comet observers, but there's an upside. All of the ice and dust formerly contained in the frozen head has billowed back into the tail. Indeed, now Comet ATLAS is a "headless wonder" visible to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere. Browse the Comet ATLAS photo gallery for the latest images. George Reynolds "Solar System Ambassador" for South Hampton Roads, Virginia Back Bay Amateur Astronomers (BBAA) http://www.backbayastro.org

One from last night. This is a cool star forming region located in the GEM OB1 molecular cloud. It is sometimes referred to as the Mushroom Nebula by more imaginative people than me. Cheers Ian Sh2 257

1926: . (double star) . (887 Alinda) . . (HD55357) 2000: . . (887 Alinda) . . (HD55357) 2015: . . (887 Alinda) . . (HD 55357) 2045: . . . (HD55357) . (887 Alinda)

Frankly that was a marvelous night of observation. A classic. Snow on the ground and it was cold and clear. First up was a fine observation of 887 Alinda, a close pass asteroid in Gemini. This asteroid is cooking. I was able to navigate to the area fairly quickly but the SAO numbers for reference stars in Sky Tools were incorrect. Fortunately I had the Henry Draper number of the star that the asteroid was going to pass. It took about 15 minutes of observing to see which 9th magnitude "star" was moving against the background. Both Kent and I found it fairly fast. It is moving! Within 10 minutes you can see a change in position easily. The mountain size rock is 7.6 million miles away and that is close by asteroid standards, hence the rapid movement against the night sky. Fun observation. Did I mention how fast it moves? Mars...............What can I say? The occultation was just magnificent. I settled on a combination of 12mm Brandon and then switched to an 8mm Brandon as Mars came on to the limb of the full moon. The high contrast of the Brandon eyepieces gave a black background against the bright full moon. There were several unexpected observation both telescopic and naked eye. As the Moon approached Mars the planet seemed to become dimmer comparatively, when viewed with the naked eye. If you covered the full moon with your thumb, blocking it out, Mars seemed to increase in brightness and resume it's red color. Amazing visual effect. At 100x telescopically, the disc of Mars was fair size so its ingress into the moon was quite a sight but the best was yet to come. Waiting for Mars rise on the Moon, one hour later, watching the limb of the moon at power, was a nerve wracking experience. But as Mars rose over the lunar horizon it was like standing on the moon yourself, looking at the horizon, and seeing a magnificent Mars rise over the hills. No kidding. The color of Mars cannot be accurately described against the white surface of the moon. It was a burnt orange not to be forgotten. Additionally, the detail that was available on Mars was amazing. Due to the contrast of brightness of the moon it made everything on the red planet stand out clearly. I have never seen this effect before. I saw Mars as clearly as with a filter. This was totally unexpected. I must say it was profound and perhaps the finest experience in my half century of observing. That one you take to your grave. It was as if you were on the moon yourself at Mars rise. No camera can ever capture or do justice to the sight. Just can't be done. You had to be there. We quit at 2230 after spending about three hours in the unmelted snow of Kent's back yard. Several others were over there to join us and share in a splendid night. The cold made it much like an expedition to another planet and added to the adventure. One for the books.

887 Alinda is currently making a close pass to earth. Normally 13th magnitude it is 9th during it's close pass. It moves quite quickly so motion should be obvious over a short period of time and it does not interfere with the Mars / Moon encounter. Coordinates for the asteroid: Time: 1931 Constellation Gemini 07 13 45 RA +28 59 15 DEC Time: 2051 Constellation Gemini 07 14 19 RA + 28 05 38 A good reference 9th magnitude star is HD55357 (SAO 1466777). Alinda is moving away from the star over time.

Clyde Foster and Manos Kardasis have just (Jan 10UT) imaged a bright spot in the NTBs jet region. This is likely the beginning of a major outbreak. John Rogers of the B.A.A. says, "We can expect it to become spectacular!" It is brightest in the methane band, but should brighten in other wavelengths as it develops. It should create a dark turbulent wake in the next few days. Initial position is SYS 1 longitude of 168 with a drift of around -5 degrees per day. (Note: the fast current travels at SYS 1 speed despite being at a latitude of around +26.) All observers are encouraged to monitor Jupiter as much as possible. There should be several more outbreaks at other latitudes in the coming days.

After being offline yesterday due to the California fire threat, the Night Sky Network is back up and running. George George Reynolds "Solar System Ambassador" for South Hampton Roads, Virginia Back Bay Amateur Astronomers (BBAA) http://www.backbayastro.org

Well a tough target with a bright moon and dim stars. Anyways here's my take at it. Cheers Ian Moon In Pleiades

We had a cold but fun night with the moon going through the Pleiades giving us a life time of lunar stellar occultations. The first star, Electra, was covered by the moon around 1947 or so. At 3.7 magnitude it was fairly easy to see against the bright moon. The limb of the moon could not be easily seen due to the moon phase. Only a thin strip of the lunar surface was in the dark. The best occultation was Maia at 3.9 magnitude. That was a grazing occultation that was the most spectacular. It rode the limb of the moon so close I could see it through the peaks. Every time I thought it would be gone it would peak out Just visible on the illuminated horizon of the north region on the moon. That was the best graze I have ever seen. A real cliff hanger. Alcyone was the last we watched as the moon went through the center of the cluster. I used my 120 Stellarvue LOMO Doublet as it has incredible contrast. It is amazing how the human eye can handle contrast in light intensity far beyond what a camera can do as Kent said in his post. The choice of EP was the 40 mm Pentax giving quite a wide field at a bit less the 20 power. The entire cluster could be seen in one fov. Big binoculars would have done well also. One nice thing was I was able to reverse my sliding counterweight to perfectly compensate for the heavy eyepiece and was able to balance the scope for effortless movement. Those huge eyepieces can be a problem there due to weight. We switched to Jupiter to see a shadow transit of Io and the moon Ganymede going behind the planet high in the polar region. That was quite good as a bonus. Mars showed better surface albedo features than the past month but seeing somewhat hampered the steady view. Mare Boreum was obvious as was Acidalium, a dark feature hanging off Boreum. Detail though was a bit obscured by seeing. 34 degree temps did not dampen the spirits but did make the fingers pretty cold during assembly and disassembly of equipment. A really fun evening.

Thanks Troy. Tonight the Moon goes through the Pleiades. I'm not sure If Kent's notice made it to VPAS so I thought to send it along. On Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 08:00:54 AM EST, Troy Riedel via groups.io <troy.riedel@...> wrote: START: MON, 13 JAN 2025 AT 20:44 EST (01:44 UTC)END: TUE, 14 JAN 2025 AT 00:52 EST (05:52 UTC) https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20250114_16_100

START: MON, 13 JAN 2025 AT 20:44 EST (01:44 UTC)END: TUE, 14 JAN 2025 AT 00:52 EST (05:52 UTC) https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20250114_16_100