Day: October 7, 2008

The moon, Jupiter nad Venus will all fit within a 4-degree circle tonight. With the sun setting early this time of year, it should be dark enough by between 5:00 and 5:30 pm to get out and see these.   By 6:30 pm, they will start to dip into the haze near the horizon.  If you …

Moon, Jupiter, Venus ConjunctionRead More

October 12-18 is Earth Science Week! PS 102 will be kicking off the Astronomy Club that week and unfortunately, we don’t have our first outdoor event planned until the following week on Oct 24 (see "Upcoming Events" in the sidebar). The week’s activities focus on in-school lesson plans (with suitable opportunities to do the "in-class" …

No Child Left Inside!Read More

Due to the poor forecast (complete overcast by 7pm), this event is CANCELED. The weather outlook for both Friday and Saturday is poor, so the rain date will not work. We will have another outing in December, to be announced later. Original announcement: In conjunction with the PS102 Astronomy Club, I’ll be hosting a brief …

CANCELED: Stargazing at Shore Road ParkRead More

On Monday, Oct 6, MESSENGER made it’s second pass around Mercury. The spacecraft doesn’t have enough fuel to just pull up to the planet Star Trek style, so it has to make a series of looping passes, shedding a little velocity and angular momentum each time. But it wasn’t all navigational changes; MESSENGER took the …

Mercury FlybyRead More

There is a short opinion piece at the NY Times web site called "A Little Less Light" which makes good reading.