Comet watch

Hey I've done searches and I didnt find anything about comets on this forum. (besides the one about the apocalypse and things).

The first comet I saw in the night sky was comet Hale-Bopp and that was years ago. I have never again seen one look that magnificent.

Until recently I forgot all about them and kinda gave up looking for them. That is until I read an article about comet Holmes. Although not as visually stunning as Hale-Bopp, it got me interested in comets and star gazing in general again. Here is an article on Comet Holmes if you didnt hear about it.

http//www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/holmes.html

I am just interested anything related to stargazing that is coming up and think it should be posted here. If you guys are interested.

As of right now. I only know of one comet that can be seen right at sunset in the WSW sky right on the horizon. This one has a distinctive tail also. Please post here if you see it or anything else relevant.

Edit Here is a calender of events coming up.

http//www.space.com/spacewatch/080111-ns-2008-events.html

Hey man, I am a huge star gazing fan as well. My wife always gets mad cause we may be on a walk and I will just stop and stare at the sky. Living in North Dakota is awosome too cause you can drive for 10 minutes and get to the middle of nowhere and staregaze with no city light to bother you. Especially on a cloudless winter night. BEAUTIFUL SKIES!...anyway, i use this free program a TON and thought you may be interested. Its called "Stellarium". It basically is a real time star map. It puts you on a at groud perspective and allows you to go to any time and date and any location and show exactly where stars,planets, comets and what not will be. You can zoom in on things. Its Amazing how much they have in this program. Check it out, I know you will love it.

http//www.stellarium.org/

Wow +karma for that program. That is pretty sweet. I only played around with it for maybe 10 mins but its awesome already. Holmes is unknown though.

Thanks a lot man.

I am jealous of where you live. I mean i get my fair share of dark skies in Pa but I am close to gettysburg. I have to drive awhile to get close to what your talking about. Must be nice haha

Thanks manD,

figured you would enjoy that program. I check it out all the time. It really is amazing. Yeah, North Dakota is good for star gazing. I like it. Get some decent Northern Lights here every once and a while to. I don't know if your into viewing human objects in space (such as the ISS) but if you are, check out this site if you are

http//spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

You can click on the 'Go to Country' button and select your state and town and it will tell you when and where to look to see the international space station.

For a Messier Object Index you can go here

http//www.seds.org/messier/data2.html

For NASA's object book, go here (very informational)

http//www.nasa.gov/worldbook/index.html

And for fun, you can purchase land on the Moon here

http//www.lunarlandowner.com/index.html

Those are all sights I like to check out. But definately Stellarium is my biggest resource! IT'S AMAZING! lol.

If you ever head up north, let me know. Its good stargazing.

haha, theres a star out there named after me and the wife =P

[quote054be707c5="manOFice"]haha, theres a star out there named after me and the wife =P[/quote054be707c5]

Haha.... thats nice. I thought about doing that for my ex gf on our 3 year anniversary. Fuck her though. No need to go into that story.


And man thanks for all those resources. Will keep me plenty busy after work tonight haha. Did you happen to catch the meteor shower in december? I believe it was called the Geminid shower. It was cloudy here on peak night but the second night was just as good. I saw 23 of em in an hour. Pretty amazing thing to see.

I would love to see the northern lights! That would be great.

[quote616c82cf1f="kelbypayday"]

And man thanks for all those resources. Will keep me plenty busy after work tonight haha. Did you happen to catch the meteor shower in december? I believe it was called the Geminid shower. It was cloudy here on peak night but the second night was just as good. I saw 23 of em in an hour. Pretty amazing thing to see.

I would love to see the northern lights! That would be great.[/quote616c82cf1f]

Yea, I was able to catch one night as well. It was pretty cool. I only watched for a little while as it was quite cold outside, but i did see a few overhead. As for the resources, no problem. I love to help out.

As for the northern Lights, when we do see them they are not like what you see on discovery channel with tons of differant colors and all, But its cool. The best I can describe is that its like a waving blanket or flag that is green waving in the northern sky. pretty cool.

I would love to go to Alaska to witness them as I have heard they are amazing there!

Asteroid to hit earth!!! No im jp...but an asteroid is going to come close to earth tomorrow night at a distance of about 334,000 miles away. Just outside of the moon's orbit of earth. The asteroid is somewhere between 500 and 900 feet in diameter. If you have a medium sized telescope you would be able to see it tomorrow night.

Here is the article on it if you want to read more, but I pretty much gave you the jist of it.

http//www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080128-asteroid-radar.html