Thu Apr 18 01:43:11 2002

Check it out, if you have a telescope or even just binoculars, it's a rare event.  That's pretty much every visible planet lined up with the moon all at once.  38 years until the next time it happens.  

Thu Apr 18 03:05:26 2002

BTW, how shall we see the planets behind the moon?

Thu Apr 18 03:23:02 2002

Thu Apr 18 03:24:54 2002

Thu Apr 18 08:49:32 2002

Thu Apr 18 09:35:11 2002

Nice pic.

Thu Apr 18 16:21:37 2002

Fri Apr 19 03:48:55 2002

I want to see the fricking comet thats next to the 'w' shaped constelation for the next few nights. Prob is from the star maps i've seen show the prime time in HK is around early evening. Just fucking great. Light pollution, smog, and no time to go far from the city. Late night is best but the constelation seems to dip beyond the horizon. Then again i don't know if i'm reading the maps right.

Does the app you are using give you semi specific data to location, time and angle or just a general idea?

I wonder if they have the same app for OS X? It logs to the net to get the data right?

I like the visual representation. It almost looks cooler then the real thing.

My fondest memories are with astronomy. When i was looking through a telescope for the first time in college by chance I saw either Jupiter or Saturn. WOW!!!! I figure it was one of them because i could see what looked like rings. Talk about incredible luck. Its a bitch to use a telescope unless you have experience and know what you're doing. So i was lucky that within a few minutes i got to see a gas giant.

I saw a double star system too. That was kinda cool but just looks like two points of light very close to each other.

Best was the leanoid meteor shower a while back. Fucking cool to see fireballs hurtling through the sky at incredible speeds. The 'shooting stars' were nice, as it just looked like streaks of light in the night.
However EARTH GRAZERS ARE FUCKING SWEET.

Makes you more humble, and also makes you hate human beings more. We as a species are truly retarded. Everyone needs a healthy dose of astronomy to make us realise that the universe is much bigger then our stupid political/religious/social issues that we fight over. Bah.

I'm back in that "i hate people" mood but "love the universe" mind set. I watched a documentary about the formation of Earth last night. The existence of the human species is just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a blip in the geological scale of the earth.

Beautiful Earth.
Ugly annoying fucking human beings.

Fri Apr 19 04:16:24 2002

This isn't a "one night wonder"  all the visible planets will be aligned nicely for a couple weeks.  So if it's cloudy where you are or whatever you should still be OK.

I've been told the stars are all within the range of around two binocular widths so that's pretty cool.

The Leonids were SO AWESOME!  Best light show I've ever seen.  Watched them hurtling over the Strait of Georgia (water between Vancouver and Nanaimo/Vancouver Island).  You could hear some of those Earth grazers... it was weird.

Oh ya... there is a pretty good chance for northern lights tonight and through the weekend according to spaceweather.com.  So if you life in the northern US, Canada, or pretty much anywhere above the 49th parallel you might see them.

Fri Apr 19 05:23:03 2002

pretty lights :)

Fri Apr 19 06:40:34 2002

edit: chrisale, change yer damn avatar!!! :biggrin:

(Edited by OscarWilde at 2:42 pm on April 19, 2002)

Fri Apr 19 09:57:25 2002

No need to make Paolo feel unoriginal.

Fri Apr 19 14:45:51 2002

Fri Apr 19 15:58:54 2002

Fri Apr 19 17:50:14 2002

JR, what's that Utsunomiya thingie (technical term) shown to the right of Venus?

That would be a comet.

There's another, brighter comet visible to the north, but it's not bright enough to see with the naked eye.  Hard as hell to find with a telescope if you don't have a proper alignment thingy.

It's Starry Night Backyard software, www.starrynight.com.  They have a Mac version but Classic only, no OSX.  It's not that expensive, my wife bought it for me for my birthday.  Frigging awesome, you can zoom hundreds of lightyears out from the Earth, view any celestial body from any other, zoom back and forth through time, etc, etc.  

It's not a one night wonder but the planets are already moving away from their nice straight line.