Skywatch

[libby]

Orion is back and a welcome sight in the skies overnight! Welcome back great hunter.

Palehorse, that is a great view of Orion, and I like the avatar!

Just wish I'd been able to look for the expected meteors.  I did see one a couple of mornings ago -- about 5:00, when I looked out my bedroom window -- and  one flashed by Venus.

[Palehorse]

The Milky Way, showing the central bulge. . . 

[Palehorse]

Space X Dragon splashes down. Missions complete.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/28/us/spacex-dragon/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[Palehorse]

NGC 4438 and NGC 4435

[Henry Hawk]

The Eyes Galaxies....

[Bo D]

On the 12th anniversary of crews continuously living and working aboard the International Space Station, NASA announced a new service to help people see the orbiting laboratory when it passes overhead.

http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

[Henry Hawk]

.Astronomers have spotted another candidate for a potentially habitable planet - and it is not too far away...

[libby]

Know this is a little late, but if it's clear where you live, look up and towards the east and you might see some meteors -- the Leonids. Best time, of course, is after midnight. My bedroom windows face east, and I usually wake up between 5 and 6, so might get lucky.   
 

[Palehorse]

"One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away."
― Stephen Hawking

[Locutus]

"One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away."
― Stephen Hawking

I can honestly say that I think he's the most brilliant human to be alive during my lifetime.  What other person who is alive now, or has recently been alive, could possibly compare to his brilliance? 

[Palehorse]

I can honestly say that I think he's the most brilliant human to be alive during my lifetime.  What other person who is alive now, or has recently been alive, could possibly compare to his brilliance?

None that I know of.

[Locutus]

In a precursor to Skywatch 2013, I find this discovery from earlier in the week absolutely exciting beyond measure.

The astronomy community was abuzz with news about a comet discovery on Tuesday, leading to speculation that it could make a spectacular flyby of the sun, giving Earth a ringside seat of an extremely bright celestial event. It could become so bright that it even outshines the moon.

On the other hand, it might not. Confused? Well, that's comets for you.


The only thing that is certain is that a "big" cometary body has been discovered just beyond the orbit of Jupiter and it has an orbital trajectory that will take it very close to the sun -- only 0.012 AU, or 1.8 million kilometers from the solar surface -- toward the end of November 2013.

Its discovery is based on observations made by the 16-inch (0.4-meter) Santel reflector of the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) in Russia. As pointed out by my colleague Alan Boyle over at Cosmic Log, since its discovery, "astronomers have gone back through their files to find 'pre-discovery' images and calculate the comet's orbit." The comet has been designated as C/2012 S1, but it is being referred to as Comet ISON, unsurprisingly.

"In the best case, the comet is big, bright, and skirts the sun next November. It would be extremely bright -- negative magnitudes maybe -- and naked-eye visible for observers in the Northern Hemisphere for at least a couple of months," Karl Battams, of the NASA-supported Sungrazer Comet Project, told Spaceweather.com.


http://news.discovery.com/space/new-comet-discovered-will-it-be-spectacular-120925.html

^^^ Let's not forget that one year from now, we'll be discussing this upcoming event on this thread.    I'm looking forward to the Thanksgiving 2013 comet ISON.

[Palehorse]

Rumors are that Curiosity has made a very interesting discovery and an announcement is forthcoming pending validation of the data by scientists. . . 

[Locutus]

I saw that.  I wonder what it is.

[Henry Hawk]

Curiosity result could confirm Mars life...

Former NASA researcher Gilbert Levin says that a positive sign of organics by Curiosity would confirm his claim that NASA has already seen evidence for life on Mars – from an experiment called Labeled Release that went to the Red Planet aboard the Viking mission.
If Curiosity has found evidence for organics, as many are hoping, "that removes the last barrier to my interpretation of the Labeled Release results, and leaves us free and clear", Levin told New Scientist.
Though the prospect of new Curiosity findings have set the internet abuzz, nobody from NASA has yet said publicly what they are: Grotzinger has refused to elaborate, pointing New Scientist, and other journalists, to a presentation scheduled for the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, which begins on 3 December.