The EYE ON THE SKY® AstroCruises Seabourn Page
edited by Dan Benedict
THANKS! for joining EYE ON THE SKY® August 15-September 13 for the
"Passage to the South Pacific" aboard the Seabourn Sun!
Watch this space for notices of other
EYE ON THE SKY® cruises on Seabourn Cruise Line!
Here are some of the Web sites of interest we discussed
during the
lectures and observing sessions aboard the Seabourn Sun:
Tonight's Sky
For moon phase information and sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset and civil twilight
times for your city, see:
For a graphical display of the night sky as seen from your home, go to Your Sky, "the interactive planetarium of the Web" and follow these instructions:
- To customize this site for your precise location, you need to know your latitude and longitude. For many locations you can find this by going to Mapblast at http://www.mapblast.com and entering your Country, Street Address, and City, then pressing Create Map button. The latitude and longitude are then given in decimal degrees (you can then click the Lat/Lon hypertext if you want the results in degrees/minutes/seconds). For Australian locations you can also find latitudes and longitudes (in degrees/minutes/seconds) through the Australian Geographic Place Names Gazetteer at http://www.auslig.gov.au/mapping/names/names.htm. For locations in the U.S. you can also find latitudes and longitudes (in degrees/minutes/seconds) through the USGS Geographic Names Information System at http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis/gnisform.html.
- Go to the Your Sky: Sky Map Custom Settings page at http://www.fourmilab.to/yoursky/custom.html. You'll need to enter your latitude and longitude in the Observing Site boxes, remembering locations in the U. S. are always "north" latitude and "west" longitude and locations in Australia are always "south" latitude and "east" longitude. For easier-to-read maps I suggest you change the defaults in the Display Options to the following:
- Uncheck Deep Sky Objects box
- Uncheck Constellations-Boundaries box
- Change value in Show Stars Brighter Than Magnitude to "3.5"
- Change value in Stars-Names for Magnitude to "1.5 and brighter"
- Uncheck Stars-Bayer/Flamsteed Codes box
- Click the Update button and then bookmark the resulting page in your Web browser so you don't have to repeat this step every time.
To find out about when and where to look for satellites at your home, see:
To find out how to watch for satellites, go to:
Southern Sky Almanacs
For almanacs noting the most interesting celestial sights in the southern sky, see:
Northern Sky Almanac
One of the best almanacs with a northern hemisphere perspective is:
You can receive Sky &Telescope's This Week's Sky at a Glance and Weekly News Bulletin automatically via e-mail. For a free subscription, send e-mail to join@astromax.com and put the word "join" on the first line of the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send e-mail to unjoin@astromax.com and put the word "unjoin" on the first line of the body of the message. If you have any problems subscribing to or unsubscribing from the list, send a message to list administrator John Wagoner at stargate@gte.net for help.
Meteor Showers
Rob McNaught of Australian National University predicts the "prospects appear good for a moderate Leonid storm visible in dark skies from Australia and eastern Asia in 2001" with two peaks, each of about 250 meteors per minute, on the morning of November 18, 2001. For more information, see the Astronomical Society of Australia's Leonid Page at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/asa_www/info_sheets/leonids.html.
The American Meteor Society furnishes information about these (and other) meteor showers:
- Quadrantids
(peak January 3-4)
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/quadrantids.html
- Perseids
(peak August 12-13)
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/perseids.html
- Leonids
(peak November 17-18)
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/leonids.html
- Geminids
(peak December 13-14)
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/geminids.html
Green Flash
The most complete source of information I've found about the "green flash" is:
Sydney Tourist Attractions
These Sydney tourist attractions have a space or astronomy theme:
- Sydney Observatory in The Rocks is the former national astronomical observatory; it presents talks, films, starwatches and exhibitions of antique astronomical instruments.
http://www.phm.gov.au/observe
- Buran in Darling Harbour allows you to step aboard an actual Russian space shuttle that flew at least 25 flights; you view the cockpit, move into the cargo bay to the rocket boosters and experience interactive displays and a simulated mission.
http://www.buran.com.au/standard/content/exhibit/exhibit.htm
- Powerhouse Museum in Darling Harbour has the permanent exhibition Space: Beyond This World; it features authentic and replica space hardware from different spacefaring nations.
http://www.phm.gov.au/exhibits/exib_perm/space.htm
- Sky & Space Shop at 80 Ebberly Street in Bondi Junction offers a wide range of space and astronomy products.
Sydney Astronomy Clubs
These Sydney-area astronomy associations may be sponsoring local activities:
General Astronomy News
For the latest astronomy news and lots of other
features, try the online editions of these astronomy magazines:
- Sky & Telescope (USA)
http://www.skypub.com
- Astronomy Now (UK)
http://www.astronomynow.com
- Sky & Space (Australia)
does not yet have its Web site operating at
http://www.skyandspace.com.au
Thanks again for joining EYE ON THE SKY® aboard the Seabourn Sun, and
we hope to sail with you
again soon! Bon voyage!
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