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Articles from Homeboy\'s Astronomy Blog

Shortly About the Biggest Moons of Jupiter and Their Discovery - Io, Europa, Ganymedes and Callisto 2008-02-11 02:00:33 The giant planet Jupiter has a number of moon orbiting from which four are the biggest ones, namely Io, Europa, Ganymedes and Callisto. Jupiter’s moons are very interesting because they all have differences. This article provides a short introduction to the moons of Jupiter and the history of their discovery. The smallest moon of Jupiter is Europa, which has a diameter of 3138 kilometers. Europa, which is located 671.000 kilometers away from the planet, is fully covered by ice. When looking at the pictures taken by probes, we can see how Europa has a huge slab of ice on its surface. The ice cover has broken into smaller pieces that collide due to gravitational force of Jupiter. Io is the nearest moon of Jupiter. It is located 442.000 kilometers from Jupiter and it has a diameter of only 3630 kilometers. Because Io is located so close to Jupiter, the gravitational forces of planet Jupiter continuously strengthen Io, which keeps the volcano of Io active. The biggest moon of Jupiter ...

The Death of the Sun - The End of Life on Planet Earth 2008-02-10 02:00:21 One day the Sun will die. One day the Sun will “eat” planet Earth and life on Earth will stop. Is that scary? Oh yes it is, but do not worry. The sun will shine the next five billion years before it becomes the “Death Star”. Nothing lasts forever, not even the sun. During the next five billion years the sun will continue shining and giving us energy and chance to live on our planet. After five billion years the sun has used all its “fuel”. At this time several chemical reactions happen, causing that the outer layers of the sun start expanding. During few hundred million years the sun becomes a red giant that will “eat” Mercury and Venus. The new red giant can then be seen as far as 160 light years away. The core of the Sun will activate again, which will blow out the gas layer by layer. A planetary nebula is created. In the middle of that planetary nebula is our old sun, which has now become a white dwarf. The new white dwarf will become ...

Do The Stars Move? - An Easy Method to Notice How the Stars Move on Night Sky 2008-02-09 15:55:52 As we know, stars do not move. Stars are like our sun. They are stationary and do not move, but planets and moons do move. They orbit stars. Anyhow, why it looks like that stars move? As you watch the sky in early night, it looks different than later at night. Stars change their position as the night goes on. They start rising in early evening, reach the highest position after midnight and finally go below the horizon in early morning. Only the circumpolar stars do not go below horizon, but also their position in our night sky changes. As an example, take a look at my previous post: Planet Saturn in Early February Observed from Northern Hemisphere. The obvious reason for this phenomenon is that our planet move. The Earth circulates, and that’s why we see the sun and other stars changing their location in the sky. Because of this we have days and night. In addition to circulation, our planet is on move. We orbit the Sun and because of this we have winters and summers. Based on our ...

Planet Saturn in Early February Observed From Northern Hemisphere 2008-02-08 15:51:26 Planet Saturn is a very interesting object to observe, may be because of its awesome disks. Right now in February, Saturn can be seen in northern hemisphere, just like it was seen also in January. Planet Saturn starts climbing from between East and North-East direction. Saturn comes visible at about 6:30 pm. here in Helsinki in Finland. Having the bright star Regulus as its buddy, Saturn continues climbing higher. At 7:30 pm. it is already dark and at that time Saturn can be seen close to South. Directly in South the planet is at 8 pm. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun in our solar system. The diameter of Saturn is 120.000 kilometers, which is 9.5 times the diameter of the Earth. Saturn’s mass is 95 times bigger than the mass of the Earth and the temperature of the planet is -180 celcius degrees measured above the clouds. While the Earth has only one moon, Saturn has 18 moons orbiting. Saturn is definitely a huge planet providing lots of interesting things for us to observe ...

Skywatching Tip - Observing Other Things Than Planets, Moon, Sun and Deep Space 2008-02-07 15:30:51 Observing planets and deep space is probably the most common way of skywatching. Even though they are fascinating objects and the deep space has enough to observe for the rest of our lives, there are also other things in the sky to observe. Satellites, rockets and space debris can also be observed from the Earth. Have you ever seen a tiny little lights moving slowly across the sky? They are satellites and they move across the sky in about one or two minutes. Since 1957 countries have launched thousands of satellites to orbit the planet. Some of those satellites have already powered off and dropped to the atmosphere in which they have burned. Some of those satellites are still there, operating or not. In early 2000 there were about 9500 items orbiting the Earth. Most of those are satellites, but also the debris of rockets. Satellites can be seen best during tow hours right after sun set and before sun rise. During the midnight satellites cannot be seen because on that time they do not r ...

January 2008 Poll Results - 35% of Our Readers Use a Telescope for Skywatching 2008-02-06 04:41:24 During January we asked “What Equipment You Use When Observing The Sky?”, and the results are now here. It is interesting to see that most of those who replied use a telescope. 11/31votes were given to telescope, which is 35% of all votes. 8/31 votes were given to binoculars, which means that 26% of those who replied use binoculars. It seems that astrography is not that popular, because only 4/31 people say that they use a camera in skywatching. By this 13% of those who replied do shoot pictures of the objects on night sky. Just like with camera, 4/31 people use a computer as well. Probably all those who use a camera use a computer as well for image processing. Finally 3/31 people use other equipment and only one persons says that he/she uses no equipment. I was surprised that only one person watches the sky without equipment. For me this tells that many of the readers of HomeboyAstronomy.Com take their astronomy hobby seriously. They have purchased various equipment which, ...

A Useful Skywatching Tip - Using a Black Tube for Observing the Night Sky 2008-02-05 06:30:05 Not all amateur astronomers have binoculars or a telescope. Some folks might be interested in watching by the naked eye, some might not have money enough to purchase a telescope, some might be looking for the right instruments for him/herself. Whatever the reason is, the fact is that not everybody owns a telescope or binoculars. What if they try to observe from a crowded city, say New York or Tokyo? They probably suffer from artificial lights, right? Could they have any changes to observe better without changing their location? Oh yes, they could use the good old black tube! One of the oldest and most simple tools people have used to help skywatching is a black tube. The black tube is a useful tool for observing dim objects of deep space. The idea using of a black tube is that it prevents additional light entering your eyes. When the eyesight is narrowed it is much easier to search dim objects. There are two types of tubes: one with diameter of 3-5 cm. and one with diameter of 10-15 cm ...

How Big The Distances Are in the Universe? - About the Distances in the Universe 2008-02-04 02:00:38 We all know that the distances are big in the universe, but do we really know HOW big they are? We mentioned something about the scales of the Universe few days ago when we discussed about the possibility of an asteroid slamming into our planet. It is hard to get a picture of the scales when the distances are so big, but by decreasing the scale much smaller we can compare the distances to something we know well, the distances on Earth. This short article aims in giving a demonstration of the distances in the Universe. We start by decreasing the scale into 1/10.000.000.000, which means all objects and distances between the objects are ten billion times smaller than the original ones. Now the Sun has diameter of 14 cm, a pretty much the size of a grapefruit. In this scale the Earth has a diameter of 1.2 mm, which is the size of a pin head. In this scale the Earth orbits the Sun 15 meters apart, while Saturn orbits 140 meters apart. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is located 4.3 light y ...

Black Hole Video - Stephen Hawking Talking About Black Holes and His Theory 2008-02-03 02:00:54 Some months ago newspapers reported that the Heaviest Black Hole Has Been Found, and a bit later the Heaviest Small Black Hole Has Been Found. After that I noticed that many people read those posts, so I figured it out that it I should provide something more on black holes. While I am writing a longer article on black holes, I came up with an idea to post videos from YouTube because “one picture tells more than one thousand words. Now, if there are 24 still pictures in one second of a video, a ten minutes and seven seconds long video contains 14.568 still pictures. In order to describe an issue better than the video, I should write 14.568.000 words. That would be about 20.000 pages of text. Man, writing that would take a while.. Instead of reading those 20.000 pages of text on black holes, watch this video below. It is an interesting document of Stephen Hawking providing new information on black holes. This is not anything just recently published, but still interesting. As the ...

Observing the Moons of Jupiter - Could You See Them by the Naked Eye? 2008-02-02 02:00:50 Yesterday I wrote how Jupiter and Venus are close to each other right now in the morning sky. It is an interesting phenomenon that can be seen only during few days. Sad but true, it has been very lousy weather for astronomers here in Finland, and therefore I have not been able to observe Jupiter and Venus. Anyhow, let us now continue a little bit more with Jupiter. The giant planet Jupiter has several moons orbiting it, and some of them can be seen by the naked eye. Is it really so? Yes, it is possible but not very easy because of Jupiter’s glare effect. Jupiter is very bright and therefore the little moons hard to observe. In order to observe them by the naked eye, we need to find a way to deal with the glare effect of Jupiter. The four biggest moons of Jupiter are Io (brightness is 5.0 magnitudes), Europa (5.3 mag.), Ganymedes (5.3 mag.) and Callisto (5.6 mag.). Jupiter itself is 600 times brighter than its moons, so it is not a wonder we cannot see them moon easily. Io and Eur ...

Right Now in the Morning Sky - Jupiter and Venus Close to Each Other 2008-02-01 04:02:01 Some of the planets can be seen very well in January, but two of them are in interesting position right now. Venus and Jupiter are located close to each other (from our viewpoint on Earth) and can be observed around one hour before the sunrise in northern hemisphere. Venus and Jupiter can be seen when looking just above the horizon in South-East sky. See the figure on left side. It is a simulation of the morning sky today, just few hours ago. In this simulation the observer is located in Helsinki in Finland and the observation time is 8:00 am. As the observer watches the horizon in South-East, he/she can see Jupiter and Venus close to each other, located near constellations Scorpius, Ophiuchus and Sagittarius. You can use this chart to find Jupiter and Venus, but notice that the sky may look different from your location and time. Anyhow, with this picture you know at what time and in which direction Jupiter and Venus can be seen. I discussed about Jupiter and Venus few weeks ago when I ...

Killer Asteroids - One Day an Asteroid Will Slam Into Our Planet 2008-01-31 10:24:39 A huge rock with a diameter of hundreds of meters is coming towards the Earth 15 times faster than a riffle bullet. Astronomers have calculated the exact impact time. We can only wait for the destruction. Then the asteroid reaches the upper levels of the atmosphere. In few seconds that huge rock touches down. Destruction much worse than hundreds of atomic bombs begins. As the rock digs into the planet, a huge shock wave and tsunami start moving fast and destroying everything on their way. A gigantic mushroom cloud with millions of tons of debris starts forming into the atmosphere. In one hour people on the opposite side of the planet will be bombarded by thousands of fireballs. In few hours the whole planet is on fire. Our home has turned to hell. Is this true? Is this going to happen? Unfortunately yes. One day it will happen, as it has happened in the past as well. Hold on! Even though this is a scary fact, we need to take into account few things. First of all it may take very long t ...

Mars Asteroid Impact - Is an Asteroid Going to Hit Mars? 2008-01-30 07:20:59 A couple of months ago, various online news magazines and newspapers reported that an asteroid is going to hit Mars. Probability was between 1/45 to 1/75 according to some newspapers. The date when the asteroid should hit Mars is tomorrow, January 30th. Now, is the asteroid going to hit Mars or not? Because this is a very interesting phenomenon, I have been really waiting to see if the asteroid hits Mars tomorrow. In late December researchers reported that the risk of impact is higher, but soon in early January the risk was lowered. Now when the probability is 2.5%, it looks like the impact is not going to happen. The asteroid WP5 is going to miss Mars by about 30.000 kilometers. That is a pity. A direct impact to Mars would have been a very interesting phenomenon and something worth of observing. Imagine how great chance it would be for the rovers in Mars to study the crater of the impact. In 2004, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of over ...

How to Find Capella and Auriga - Tips For Locating Capella Star and Auriga Constellation 2008-01-29 08:42:57 Some time ago I wrote about the 15 brightest stars on night sky. Capella is the sixth brightest star we can see and it is located in constellation Auriga. Constellation Auriga and Capella can both be seen in winter in northern hemisphere. The constellation Auriga is in meridian in early February at 10 pm. Auriga as well as Capella is both easy to locate. This article provides you information on locating the constellation Auriga and Capella star. Auriga is a constellation visible in northern hemisphere. It is surrounded by Taurus, Gemini, Lynx, Camelopardalis and Perseus. The brightest star of the constellation is Capella which is a binary star. The stars of the binary star system orbit each other in about 100 days. The binary star Capella is easy to observe from the Earth because the stars are located close to each other and therefore do not overlap. Other stars in constellation Auriga are Epsilon Aurigae, Zeta Aurigae and AE Aurigae. As mentioned Capella is a binary star system. In fa ...

Amateur Space Telescopes - Orion SkyQuest IntelliScope (XT6, XT8, XT10, XT12) 2008-01-28 09:48:58 Purchasing the first space telescope can be a tricky job. There are a number of things you need to take into account when purchasing a telescope, and there are very many telescopes available in the market. What would be a good telescope for a beginner or amateur? How much it would cost? What should I take into account when purchasing a telescope? What can I see with it? Which one is the best for less than $1000? Are these the questions you have already asked yourself? As mentioned above, there are a lot of telescopes in the market, and it is difficult to choose the right one. This article does not provide you instructions for purchasing a telescope, but it recommends you one very good telescope. It is a popular amateur telescope with which many people are very satisfied. How do I know this? I have discussed with people in forums for many years, I have read hundreds of astronomy magazines, I have crawled through thousands of websites and I have fellow amateur astronomers with whom I hav ...