http://www.firstlightastro.com/news/skiesabove/ 2008-07-13T20:33:50-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/07/saturn_mars_and.html Let's go planet hunting! There are several planets out now and visible to the naked eye. Probably only one is worth getting out the scope for, namely that überbright guy climbing higher in the southeastern skies lately. But we'll get to him in a moment. A Perfect Balance Mark Ritter 2008-07-13T20:33:50-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/06/siberian_shakeu.html Imagine getting up one fine June morning in the middle of a forested wilderness, taking a deep breath, letting out a long sigh, and enjoying the beautiful morning sky. Then suddenly the sky splits in two with a bright flash, only to turn into a blinding fireball so hot you feel you might burst into flames. Thunderous booming sounds overcome your pleasant surrounds and shake the earth. Your quiet, noneventful world has literally been rocked. The Solar System Mark Ritter 2008-06-29T20:29:06-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/06/at_last_summer_1.html At last, summer. Not that many of us are looking forward to the hot weather, the most likely higher gas prices, and the escalating political rhetoric.

]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-06-15T20:25:08-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/06/whats_the_obses_1.html The Mars Phoenix Lander finally made it. After years and years of planning and testing and engineering and innovation - and the most nail-biting 7 minutes in recent JPL history as it touched down - we have a robotic lander near the north pole of Mars.

]]> A Perfect Balance Mark Ritter 2008-06-01T10:48:00-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/05/get_out_your_nu.html 'Tis the time of the year that our poor public school children are subjected to those dreaded California State Tests. To help us all feel their pain, if only for a few minutes, I'd like to subject you to some questions similar to those that are plaguing our children during these weeks. They are all astronomy related, so regular readers here should find all this easy like Sunday morning. Got your Number 2 pencils sharpened and ready?

]]> Mark Ritter 2008-05-18T10:38:14-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/05/saturn_and_regu_1.html Last time here we took a deeper look into the great Lion of the Sky - Leo. We saw there a new spot on the celestial cat, a spot more familiar to us as Saturn.

]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-05-04T10:31:04-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/04/saturn_and_regu.html Those of us even slightly familiar with the night skies look up at this time of the year and welcome our old friend, Leo the Lion. It is one of those more easily spotted cats in the heavens, distinguished from the rest of the constellations by what seems to be a gigantic backwards question mark. Go out tonight, face south, look almost directly up and there it is.

]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-04-20T10:22:50-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/04/big_boom_by_boo.html An explosion bigger than anyone has seen in recorded history happened a couple weeks ago and few seem to have noticed. There was March Madness, Democratic infighting, and Paris Hilton doing more nothing, but only a few humans on Earth were aware of what happened in the sky in the constellation Bootes.

]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-04-06T09:37:06-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/03/those_crazy_twi_1.html Directly above your head in the evenings this week are two bright stars, twins as the legends go. They are Castor and Pollux, the Gemini dyads, twins from the days of myth. Observing Mark Ritter 2008-03-23T14:49:57-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/03/uranus_and_hers.html There was a day not that long ago when the only objects in the sky were the Sun, the Moon, the planets from Mercury to Saturn, and the stars. That was it. Those were all the animals in the celestial zoo.

]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-03-09T14:42:11-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/02/jocelyn_bell_1.html Observing Mark Ritter 2008-02-24T14:35:47-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/02/next_week_on_we.html th, we are all invited to a celestial phenomenon for the whole family. At about 6 in the evening, in the eastern skies, our Moon will rise full but not like it usually does. There is a twist tonight. As it rises it will be crawling into our shadow in an event we call a total lunar eclipse. ]]> Observing Mark Ritter 2008-02-10T16:03:17-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/01/testing_your_sc.html People steeped in public education swim in a swirling sea of buzzwords and phrases. One of those phrases is "scientific literacy." It seems that we Americans are a wee lacking in the area of scientific literacy, knowledge of the basic terms and facts from the land of science. But we do not have to belong to the Club of Illiteracy, oh no! We can rise above that. So, in addition to the usual sky information that we normally see here in this column, maybe this year we can, on occasion, devote some time to laying down a solid foundation in the grand science of astronomy. Ready? Science Mark Ritter 2008-01-27T15:58:48-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2008/01/huygens.html This Monday marks the anniversary of an historic event in interplanetary space travel. It was a mere three years ago when the Huygens probe landed on Titan, the largest and arguably the most mysterious of Saturn's sixty moons. The Solar System Mark Ritter 2008-01-13T15:54:58-08:00 http://www.firstlightastro.com/archives/2007/12/looking_back_lo_1.html Allow me to be a two-faced for a moment - in a good way. Like Janus, the ancient Italian deity who is depicted with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back, and for whom our month January is named, let's take a quick look back at 2007, and get ready for some events happening in 2008.

]]> Science Mark Ritter 2007-12-30T14:14:59-08:00