Two bright Stars/Planets

[pauldominic]

Stellarium is very good.


<a class="postlink" href="http://www.stellarium.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.stellarium.org/</a>

 

[blumoon]

Amazing little app from the appstore. You simply point your phone in any direction and the app will tell you what your looking at. It's also linked up to Telescopes around the world and you can link up "live" to them. Not sure how that bit works yet......think you input an ip address, still tis good fun

 

[pauldominic]

if a star was 20 light years away and it exploded today
would we see the explosion 20 years later?

Yep.

I agree.

 

[Le Havre Oswald]

if a star was 20 light years away and it exploded today
would we see the explosion 20 years later?

Yep.

so a star you can see in the sky today could have exploded in real time but the light has not traveled to earth yet

 

[laserblue]

Where's the space station in relation to Jupiter n Venus? Also I've just read a bit more of this thread.....is that Mars in the opposite direction to the J & V?

the space station is in the south east pretty well opposite to venus & jupiter. it often has a reddish tinge so i think you've found it. mars is in the south but although relatively close at the moment isn't very elevated in the sky.

here's a very good link to information on the night sky this month.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk ... /nightsky/</a>

 

[pauldominic]

Amazing little app from the appstore. You simply point your phone in any direction and the app will tell you what your looking at. It's also linked up to Telescopes around the world and you can link up "live" to them. Not sure how that bit works yet......think you input an ip address, still tis good fun

That is pretty good.

 

[IM NOT REALLY HERE]

if a star was 20 light years away and it exploded today
would we see the explosion 20 years later?

Yep.

so a star you can see in the sky today could have exploded in real time but the light has not traveled to earth yet

Yes thats right, It can be a bit weird to get you head round sometimes.

 

[pauldominic]

Where's the space station in relation to Jupiter n Venus? Also I've just read a bit more of this thread.....is that Mars in the opposite direction to the J & V?

the space station is in the south east pretty well opposite to venus & jupiter. it often has a reddish tinge so i think you've found it. mars is in the south but although relatively close at the moment isn't very elevated in the sky.

here's a very good link to information on the night sky this month.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk ... /nightsky/</a>

Added to my faves and ty :)

 

[laserblue]

if a star was 20 light years away and it exploded today
would we see the explosion 20 years later?

Yep.

so a star you can see in the sky today could have exploded in real time but the light has not traveled to earth yet

a 'new' supernova was spotted in the pinwheel galaxy last august. it's 21 million light years away which means it actually exploded 21 million years ago. the time scale is difficult to get your head around but that was 20 million years before the earliest hominids appeared on earth.

<a class="postlink" href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/26/night-sky-news-new-supernova-blast-brightening-fast/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com ... ning-fast/</a>

 

[IM NOT REALLY HERE]

This is amazing.

This image shows - in silhouette - the molecular cloud Barnard 68 that lies about 500 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. It is ~1 light year across and has a high concentration of dust and gas absorbing virtually all of the light from more distant stars. It is in these dark clouds that new stars form to give open star clusters like the Pleiades.