Stargazing! <3

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Originally Posted by $aturn¥oshi

The only constallations I recognize are the Big Dipper and Orion...

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What about the big squashed M/W/sharp 3/backwards sharp 3, Cassiopeia? I swear, If I can find anything, it's Cassiopeia. It's kind of off the Big Dipper's bowl. A bit distant ("the Little Dipper and part of Cepheus are in the way" distant), but there.

Scorpius is funny. I'm always like "...Wow, big red thing near the horizon! WTF is that? *sees a shallow arc nearby and a long, bendy line, and finally recognizes it as Antares in Scorpius* Oh! lol."

And I can never keep Lyra's and Aquila's big stars' names straight. ._. Nor can I recognize the Little Dipper.

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Originally Posted by Rishi

We are not even SHIT in this universe.

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But aren't we the universe, and the universe us? ...Or ...something?

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Originally Posted by Rishi

There are marine lifeforms under those thick sheets of ice, I have a strong feeling about it!

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I don't doubt that. (Either the notion of aquatic lifeforms, or your strong feeling. :-D)

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Originally Posted by Kthleen

And I can never keep Lyra's and Aquila's big stars' names straight. ._. Nor can I recognize the Little Dipper.

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I used to be able to find the Little Dipper, but can't seem to anymore.

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Originally Posted by $aturn¥oshi

I used to be able to find the Little Dipper, but can't seem to anymore.

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We (my siblings and I) used to be able to see the Pleiades clearly (;_;) and thought they were the Little Dipper. Certainly tiny enough (bright cluster just right of center).

Man, my city is too bright at night, and my neighborhood has these bright-behind floodlights on all the time. I can't stargaze here, but I like to read about it and stuff. :(

I have a list of all the moons in the solar system lying around somewhere on my computer. When I write my stories in my head, I like to name places after them. ^_^

I got bored and looked up some of the names of the planets, constellations, and stars to find where their names come from

Mercury- Roman name for Hermes, messenger of the gods.
Venus- Roman name for Aphrodite, goddess of love
Earth- Roman name for Gaia, titaness of the earth.
Mars- Roman name for Ares, god of war.
Jupiter- Roman name for Zeus, king of the gods
Saturn- Roman name for Cronus, titan and father of Zeus
Uranus- Father of the titans, Zeus' gandfather
Neptune- Roman name for Poseidon, god of the sea.
Pluto- Roman name for Hades, god of the underworld


The stars are lengthy, so I'll post those later. ^^;

Any good planetariums in your neighborhood? The closest to me is in Davie, Florida (about a 30-45 minute drive west) at Broward Community College.

Buehler Planetarium

It's been cloudy and overcast here, so no stargazing for me recently. :-|

Be happy to know my window got lost in space Rishi.

I personally love the idea of what exists in the great beyond, and I just love wondering about the possibility of near earths in our midst. (Well I'm more potentially overexcited by the artist renderings which are probably more exotic than they let on, but hey, they're still beautiful)

While I don't think we'll be able to reach any of these exoplanets in our lifetime, at least we can be rest assured they're there. I mean it was only in the last decade we had instruments powerful enough to discover a trace of exoplanets, and now we rely on that data to believe there are dozens out there.

In recent news, exoplanets have indeed been imaged! And not by fuzzy infrared or numbers. Check them out:

Very large

The first one is a planet around Fomalhaut imaged by Hubble. This one is about 25lyr from our system and has a period of 872 Earth years.

The other star, HR 8799, was imaged by the Gemini Observatory.
The star is about 130lyr away.
Planet B is about the size of 7 Jupiters and has a period of about ~463.11554 years.
Planet C is about the size of 10 Jupiters and has a period of about ~200.047109 years.

These recent discoveries make future research that much more exciting. I really want them to observe one of those hot supergiants that orbit within a few hundred thousand km of their stars, since, I think it's just boggling that those planets can maintain any stance so close to their star. I'm not holding my breath since those planets would be so close to the sun, I'm not sure we'd be able to overcome the immense interference just yet.

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Originally Posted by Kthleen

We (my siblings and I) used to be able to see the Pleiades clearly (;_;) and thought they were the Little Dipper. Certainly tiny enough (bright cluster just right of center).

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lol, You too? I used to tell my sister it was the micro-dipper and that NASA would be glad to know that they missed a constellation. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Rayne

lol, You too? I used to tell my sister it was the micro-dipper and that NASA would be glad to know that they missed a constellation. :rolleyes:

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Oh, the things we thought when we were young....

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Originally Posted by Kthleen

I wish I could go to a dark place so I could see lots more constellations and some galaxies and stuff. ;_;

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I feel much the same way. I want complete darkness every night as far as artificial light sources are concerned.

I like gazing at the Princess. (Earth's moon.)

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Originally Posted by $aturn¥oshi

I like gazing at the Princess. (Earth's moon.)

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Me too, but my favorite has to be the planet Venus.

Ah yes, the Pop Idol. My favorite, though, is Saturn, the Warrior of Ruin.

Everyone's seen Jupiter and Venus lately, right? There's a thread in Ancora Imparo with pics if anyone's interested. It's still been somewhat cloudy, but last night was perfect.