Thursday, November 03, 2005
Housekeeping
Taking out the rubbish is a suburban ritual that is a microcosm of the heavens. Every week like celestial clockwork a green wheelie bin undergoes a short, highly eccentric but significant orbit from our yard to the kerb, and back again. Tonight while launching the big green bin on its orbit, I could see Venus, almost painfully bright, directly across from a very orange Mars. It was almost breath taking (and had a pleasing symmetry). Venus was burning near the the hook of the Scorpions tail, and all the stars in the tail were twinkling like crazy, so I knew it was a waste of time getting the scope out. Instead I just leant on my green companion and watched the sky peacefully.
Speaking of house keeping, I have changed the comments so that you have to type in a computer generated line of text to get your comment up (a couple of you have found out already the hard way). Sorry about the extra layer of annoyance, but I was getting tired of deleting premium dog food comment spam (everyone else gets interesting spam, I get dog food, I suppose this is a comment on my cosmic significance).
Also, if you scroll down you will note I've added some publications to my left hand links section, Sky & Space because it is a fantastic magazine for Southern Hemisphere amateurs (and I write for them, still, despite my near terminal ignorance of the concept of a deadline, they are forgiving people). The Australian Astronomy Almanac because it is an incredible reference that I use all the time (and I won bronze in their web-site Olympics). Finally, Cosmos, and Australian-based science magazine that covers a wide range of good science pitched at a general audience.
Finally, I have got the Southern Skywatch page for November finished. Putting together the Pleiades occultation times was a bit time consuming, as I do cities that don't turn up in the standard almanacs, but Astronomy goes on in the centre and north of Brisbane. Check it out for a feast of November Sky highlights.
Oh yeah, if you have just got back from holidaying in the Simpson Desert, you may not know that Pluto has two more moons. Read about it here, here and here.
Speaking of house keeping, I have changed the comments so that you have to type in a computer generated line of text to get your comment up (a couple of you have found out already the hard way). Sorry about the extra layer of annoyance, but I was getting tired of deleting premium dog food comment spam (everyone else gets interesting spam, I get dog food, I suppose this is a comment on my cosmic significance).
Also, if you scroll down you will note I've added some publications to my left hand links section, Sky & Space because it is a fantastic magazine for Southern Hemisphere amateurs (and I write for them, still, despite my near terminal ignorance of the concept of a deadline, they are forgiving people). The Australian Astronomy Almanac because it is an incredible reference that I use all the time (and I won bronze in their web-site Olympics). Finally, Cosmos, and Australian-based science magazine that covers a wide range of good science pitched at a general audience.
Finally, I have got the Southern Skywatch page for November finished. Putting together the Pleiades occultation times was a bit time consuming, as I do cities that don't turn up in the standard almanacs, but Astronomy goes on in the centre and north of Brisbane. Check it out for a feast of November Sky highlights.
Oh yeah, if you have just got back from holidaying in the Simpson Desert, you may not know that Pluto has two more moons. Read about it here, here and here.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:21 pm 
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