Star Party 11 January 2011, Murrieta Library

The Murrieta Library is hosting a star party from 6-8 on Tues., January 11. The Temecula Valley Astronomers will be providing their telescopes to look through and a presentation.
Start time is 6:00 pm. An indoor presentation begins at 6:15 (Between 6:05-6:10 pm, the International Space Station will pass overhead). 

Weather permitting, Jupiter and the moon will be prominent in the evening. Uranus is also visible in a telescope along with many fine star clusters.

Update: As of 12:30, 1/11/11, the weather outlook is not promising. However, the star party will continue regardless of weather. Sometimes we get breaks in the clouds; sometimes a telescope will bring out the moon and Jupiter though light clouds obscure them, and there will be in indoor presentation for anyone making the trip.

Update (1/14): The Murrieta Patch covered the star party: http://murrieta.patch.com/articles/star-party-at-the-murrieta-library-draws-families-to-view-jupiter-moon-and-orion

jg

Astronomy: What's Up in the Sky in January 2011

My astronomy club, The Temecula Valley Astronomers, begins each of our general meetings with a "What's Up" overview of the night sky. As of January 2011, I'll be giving the What's Up presentation. I've posted my first presentation given at our January meeting here: What's Up, Jan. 2011.

There are numerous references for current night sky information. So, I'm adding one more, which raises the question of why should I attempt to create something original. I hope to blend illustration with personal observation to make the night sky more accessible to those I reach in my community and the greater online community. And I hope to learn by being accessible to others.

Comments, questions, and criticism are welcome.

jg

Some highlights from What's Up for January 2011:

Sun pillar

A sun pillar, that could be a mundane ray of light:

I watched this effect for 3 minutes till it faded. The beam never changed it's orientation over the 3 minutes.

jg

3 bright moving lights over Lake Elsinore, Jan 6

Driving West this evening, about 7:30 pm, I saw three lights over the basin of Lake Elsinsore do a little dance in the sky. I wasn't alone observing this. The initial impression was of the meteor scene from the movie Dinosaur. There were three objects with trails and more than once one of the three would merge with another. I thought perhaps military helicoptors with lights, but I'm more inclined to believe it was a night parachuting activity, as the movement of the lights, and their proximity is consistent with parachutes.

I observed the lights on Scott Road, and lost them as Scott Road nears the large hill with the transmission towers. however, I thought one of the lights that I could still see while the other two were cut off by the silhouette of the hill appeared to wink out on it's own, though a pilot turned off his light or flare.

I'm eager to learn if others observed this.

jg

cold weather atmospheric optics

Astronomy is a 24-hour hobby, as I'm always seeing something worth capturing. Below is a Christmas sundog and an exceptional shadow from a contrail.

Sundog photographed on Christmas day

Contrail casting a long shadow

jg

Vostok icecore and Earth's orbit graphs

Almost two weeks ago, I had the honor of guest posting at Skeptical Science, sharing my latest illustration project, the Vostok Viewer, an interactive graphing tool that displays data from the Vostok icecore alongside calculations of Earth's orbit (data sources: Vostok; orbit; modern CO2).

My guest post: Skeptical Science: Ice data made cooler 

I received a lot of constructive feedback and have started adding the suggested features. I've exposed my version 2 and qualified it as beta (in progress), as I have a couple known programming bugs:

A cautious user (someone not trying to evoke a failure) will have the benefit of displaying graphs, adjusting their scale, and showing and hiding labels for an informative yet uncluttered display.

My known bugs are:
1. Displaying the modern CO2 graph while viewing a pre-modern time era will create a later failure where orbit graphs fail to update when changing time periods.
2. The graph labels may fail to align with their graphs when time periods are changed.
jg

Tangential Arc

On Dec 1, I saw for my first time, a tangential arc, an optical effect caused by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals. Also visible, though barely perceptible, was a circumzenithal arc. The top right photo was manipulated to bring out the color of the circumzenithal arc.

I highly recommend the website Atmospheric Optics to learn more about this an other related phenomena.

jg