The Tiny Moons of Mars
February 8, 2010
You can see many things when you look at Mars through a small telescope, but you can’t see its two puny moons, Phobos and Deimos. Few have ever seen these moons directly. Even the largest scopes show them as faint points of light. But they’re there, and recent space probes have snapped close-up images of these potato-shaped satellites as they zip and wobble around the red planet.
In an odd way, the presence of Mars’s moons was predicted more than two centuries before they were discovered in 1877.
A Window on the Sky
February 4, 2010
We haven’t done an observing tip in a while. So here’s one that’s brief but a little… unusual. If you like to look at the sky with your unaided eye or binoculars, but don’t like getting a stiff neck and sore back, then today’s idea might be worth trying out. It takes a little practice, but it’s simple and works amazingly well.
The Sky This Month – February 2010
February 1, 2010
Overview
An anniversary this month: 80 years ago, the young astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the (former) planet Pluto at Lowell Observatory after a year of grinding, diligent work.
Through most of 1929 and early 1930, Tombaugh photographed and analyzed hundreds of star fields along the ecliptic from Cancer to Gemini in search of “Planet X”. Tombaugh planned to start his search in Gemini, but the full moon was in the way. So he started just next door, in the constellation Cancer, and worked his way all the way around the sky back to Gemini a year later.
Turns out Pluto was in Gemini after all. It seems Murphy’s Law applies to the heavens as well.
Now for this month’s sky. If you liked January, then you’ll like February even more…
(more…)
How To Observe Mars This Week
January 28, 2010
If you have clear sky this week, try to get outside to take a look at Mars. While the Red Planet never easily reveals its surface features, this week’s view is a good as you’ll get for a while: the planet won’t get this close again until 2012.
Mars in a Nutshell
January 25, 2010
Mars swings to within 99 million kilometers of our fair planet this week, making its closest approach until 2012. Get your telescope out, or simply look up and gaze at the steady orange-red glow of the Red Planet. It rises in the east in the constellation Cancer just after sunset. You can’t miss it. At magnitude -1.3, Mars almost shines as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
Later this week, we’ll give you some tips for observing Mars. Today, we have a few facts and figures about this fascinating world.
