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Articles from Homeboy\'s Astronomy Blog

California Wildfire Seen From The Space 2007-10-27 08:00:58 Nasa has released a number of images of California wildfire photographed by the satellites in space. A very thick smoke passing over Southern California can be seen in many pictures. These images clearly show the massive size of the wildfire. According to the news, weather conditions in California are getting better and the firefighters are taking over the wildfire. Better weather conditions means, according to Nasa, that “the Santa Ana winds that fueled these massive wildfires have all but died out, and relatively calm weather patterns are taking hold in the area“.  Currently twelve people have died because of the wildfire. Image source. Share This ...

Astronomy Picture Of The Day - The Milky Road 20.10.2007 2007-10-26 16:15:05 There is a fantastic astronomy picture of the day on October 20th. There is a road in the picture which continues as “the Milky Road” in horizon. This is a fantasy view but a spectacular one. I just wonder how long was the exposure time. Anyhow, this is so nice picture that I would like to put it on our wall. Image source. Share This ... Astronomy

Andromeda Galaxy Photographed By Harri 2007-10-22 21:19:24 Harri, my collegue at my day job, has posted a fantastic image of Andromeda in his blog. This is not Harri’s first time photographing Andromeda, see the previous post from September 2007. This is good job, I like very much. Read the whole post in Harri’s blog. Harri is good at photographing astronomy. Check out his earlier posts and keep on reading his blog.  There are a number of impressive images from Harri. Image borrowed from Harri’s Astro Blog.  Share This ...

Star Charts And A Planisphere - Part 1: Basics 2007-10-22 08:15:47 You just read a fashinating article of about Andromeda and you are eager to see it through your binoculars, but there is one problem. You don’t know where it is, right? You know where Orion and M42 are. You can locate the Pleiades as well as Venus, but you have no idea where are objects such as Betelgeuze, Altair, Vega and Arcturus. They are all there, up in the sky. You just need a chart in order to locate them. You need a star chart or a planisphere. Hold on, what are the star chart and a planisphere? Let’s see how Wikipedia defines them. “A star chart is a map of the night sky. Astronomers divide these into grids to easily use them. They are used to identify and locate astronomical objects such as stars, constellations and galaxies. They have been used for human navigation since time immemorial. A planisphere is a type of star chart. Note that a star chart differs from an astronomical catalog which is a listing or tabulation of astronomical objects for a particular ...

Lazy Sunday - Flying To Orion Nebula 2007-10-21 03:00:07 It is Sunday morning again and I am sitting here at home with my first coffee. How can coffee taste so good early in the morning? I am addicted to coffee, for sure. I love to watch astronomy videos as well as skiing videos (check out my other blog http://www.homeboyski.com) on Sunday mornings, especially those “journey” videos in which you travel across the sky, here and there in the space. I work like grazy and I think this is my way to take it relaxed. This morning I found an interesting video. This is from “mpcb” in YouTube. Well, I don’t know him/her, but I wanted to share this video with you because it is pretty cool. In this video we travel to the Orion nebula, one of the most photographed objects in space. Share This ...

Astronomy Basics: What Can You Actually See On The Nightsky? 2007-10-19 18:45:28 Stars, right? What else? Almost all those tiny spots you see on nightsky are stars. How many stars can be seen without any equipment? Millions? No, around 1000-1500 in cities and around 3000 in countryside. There are so many stars above that a human being cannot just handle them all. Therefore the stars are grouped into constellations, groups of stars. Those constellations are usually related to some mythology, such as greek and Babylonian mythology. Grouping stars into constellations helps human beings to manage that big amount of information. Some stars form clusters, such as Pleiades. Many stars are binary stars which is a stellar system consisting of two stars orbiting around their center of mass. For each star, the other is its companion star. Some of the stars are variable stars which have alternating brightness. The alternating cycle can take days or even years, but it can be very fast as well, e.g. hours. Some stars are kefeids, whos brightness changes in a predictable amount o ... Astronomy

Heaviest Black Hole Discovered 2007-10-19 16:54:20 This is interesting news. According to Nasa, the astronomers have discovered the heaviest black hole in a nearby galaxy. This exceptionally massive black hole was found in Messier 33 galaxy by Chandra telescope and Gemini observatory at Mauna Kea. Jerome Orosz of San Diego State University raises a question “how such a huge black hole could have been formed”. The mass of the new black hole, namely M33 X-7, has been estimated to be 15,7 times bigger than the mass of our sun! This gigantic black hole orbits another huge object, a star that is 70 bigger than our sun from its mass. This huge companion is also bigger than any companion of black holes found so far. Read more about this finding in Nasa’s website. Share This ...

Basics For Beginners - Telescopes (Part IV) 2007-10-18 16:55:44 So far in this series I have discussed about the basics of telescopes. The second post of this series pointed out the differences between reflectors and refractors. I came across with “truemartian” in YouTube. He has uploaded pretty good videos of the basics of telescopes in YouTube, such as this one discussing about the differences between reflectors and refractors. In order to understand more about reflectors and refractors, check out this video from “truemartian”. He explains clearly the differenrec between those two types of telescopes and he shows a couple of real telescopes. Share This ...