Night sky update

Finally, a couple of highlights at dusk and dawn. On January 5th, look to the southwest after sunset to find the crescent Moon in a close pairing with brilliant Jupiter. The two will be only about 4 degrees apart, which should make them appear together through most binoculars.

Find the crescent Moon only about 4 degrees away from Jupiter on January 2. Then at the end of the month, on January 29th, if you happen to be up early, you can catch sight of the Moon near the Red Planet. Joining the pair in the southeastern sky will be Venus. Having left the evening skies last month, Venus is now rising before the Sun as the "Morning Star. In fact, NASA stops communicating with our spacecraft at Mars for about 2 weeks every two years, when the planet is directly opposite the Sun.

That event, called solar conjunction, took place back in October. Each of these objects are located in a specific part of the milky way that will rise in the northeast and travel towards the northwest during the night from a southern hemisphere perspective.

This provides you with a perfect opportunity to image some flagship nebulae such as the north america NGC , the pelican nebula IC and the eastern NGC and western veil nebula NGC which are both part of what is called the Cygnus loop, a supernove remnant of a star that exploded over years ago.

Last but not least, for both hemispheres, the milkyway is nicely positioned in the night sky for some awesome widefield astrophotography pictures. If you have access to some dark skies, just put that DSLR on your tripod or tracker, time to take some beautiful pictures!

As already stated in the beginning of this blog, thank you so much for sharing your astrophotography pictures with me on instagram using NSASFO! Clear skies! Hoi Wido, mooie beelden allemaal. Ik wil ook gaan beginnen met astrofotografie. Ik heb een celestron c9. Wat zou jij adviseren om te beginnen. Ik heb veel positieve dingen gelezen over zwo asi air en de zwo asi mc. Dag Ruut, De 9. We met with the Mayor to discuss all of our current and planned activities, and to create a schedule for preparing a draft ordinance and research plan for the City Council to consider.

Tentatively, we intend to deliver these to the City Council on March 21st. Then we filed for recognition from the IRS as a c 3 tax exempt entity. We created draft Bylaws and a Board of Directors to do a better job of moving the Initiative forward professionally. The Bylaws allow for 3 to 9 Board members. The first Board meeting is on March 1st. We completed our survey of City owned street lighting. This gave us enough information to analyze what it would cost the City to meet the requirements to get designated as a Dark Sky Community.

We signed up to have an information table about dark sky friendly outdoor lighting at the Kayenta Street Painting Festival on April 27th and 28th. And to add some excitement, we commissioned professional artist, Anat Ronen, to create a street painting at the Festival showing her interpretation of the night sky over Ivins. The St. George News gave the winning Vista School art students and their paintings a lot of coverage in Grade-schoolers interpret Ivins night sky through art contest.

The discoverer of Comet Leonard has shared a few tips to help see the bright object in the night sky this month. It won't be near Earth again for another 80, years,. More than 21 million miles away or 88 times the distance from Earth to the moon , Comet Leonard made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. The comet's next flyby will be at Venus later this week, on Dec.