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| Image credit: David Malin |
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| What's Up This Week - Dec 6 - Dec 12, 2004 |
Dec 6, 2004 - Greetings fellow sky watchers. This will be an exciting week for both hemispheres! Our own solar system continues to put on a wonderful show before dawn and the Moon will occult Jupiter for a substantial portion of North America on December 7. The Southern Hemisphere is favoured for four meteor showers, as the Phoenicid, Puppid-Velid, Monocerotid and Sygma Hydrids all peak during this week. For evening observers, Comet Tucker reaches perihelion, as well as Comet Tsuchinshan for the early morning. Other high "lights" for the week include viewing two southern globular clusters (M30 and M2), a look into one of our galactic neighbors as we locate the M33, an introduction to stellar spectra and two unusually colorful planetary nebulae. As always, you will find things of interest here for all observers, be it with binoculars, telescopes, or just with your eyes. So look forward to this week's dark skies and let me take you higher...
Because here's what's up! (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| Astronauts Running Low on Food |
| Dec 6, 2004 - The 2-man crew onboard the International Space Station are going to be rationing their food carefully between now and the arrival of a Progress cargo ship on December 25 which will be carrying additional supplies. It appears that these astronauts, and the previous occupants, have been eating more food than engineers were predicting. This next Progress flight will contain extra food supplies, but if there's a problem with the mission and the cargo ship is destroyed, Commander Leroy Chiao and Russian flight engineer Salizhan Sharipov may have to evacuate the station, as additional supplies can't reach them in time. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI |
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| Sweeping View of Saturn's Rings |
| Dec 6, 2004 - This sweeping view of Saturn's rings shows the incredible detail and grandeur of the system, from the outer F ring to the inner C ring. The difference in brightness at each spot in the rings highlights the different concentrations of ring particles. Cassini took this image from below the ring plane, looking up; the top is closer to the spacecraft, and the bottom is farther away. Cassini took the picture when it was 836,000 km (519,000 miles) away. (Full Story) |
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