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COMET LULIN UPDATE:
Experienced observers report that Comet
Lulin has brightened to naked-eye visibility from dark-sky sites.
It looks like a pale "fuzzy patch" in the constellation
Libra before dawn. Backyard telescopes pointed at the patch reveal
a lovely green comet with a rapidly re-growing plasma tail. Browse
the gallery for latest
photos.
SUBTLE LUNAR ECLIPSE:
Earlier today, the full Moon passed through
the outskirts of Earth's
shadow producing a subtle "penumbral" lunar eclipse. Christopher
Calubaquib photographed the event from El Sobrante, California:
Normal full Moons are fully lit, yet this one has a dusky shading
across the north pole. That was the eclipse.
"It was not really a sight that would stop someone in their
tracks, but I did find it to be much darker than I imagined,"
reports Navneeth Chandrasekaran from Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.
"This
photo was taken about 10 minutes before maximum eclipse."
more images: from
Pam Haley of Kailua, Hawaii; from
Yandong Hu of Changzhou, Jiangsu, China; from
Wah! of Hong Kong; from
Miyagi Takafumi of Okinawa Japan; from
Karzaman Ahmad of Langkawi National Observatory, Malaysia; from
Andy Yeung of Hong Kong; from
Rob Kaufman of Bright, Victoria, Australia; from
Grahame Kelaher of Perth, Australia; from
Ben Levis of Carmel, Perth, Western Australia;
TITAN TRANSIT: Saturn's
rings are nearly edge-on to Earth and this is giving astronomers
a chance to see unaccustomed things. On Feb 8th, Christopher
Go of the Philippines photographed one of them--a transit of
Titan.
"I woke up at 1 o'clock in the morning to photograph Titan's
passage across the disk of Saturn," says Go. "The sky
was overcast from around 1am to around 1:50am. I was fortunate to
see the end of the transit which is really stunning as it gave Titan
a 3D effect!" He combined several photos taken through his
11-inch
Celestron telescope to produce this animation:
Titan passes in front of Saturn fairly often, but the transits
are usually hidden from view by Saturn's broad rings. Only when
the rings are edge-on does the giant moon's silhouette reveal itself
to backyard telescopes.
"There will be two more transits visible this year: Feb 24th
and March 12th," notes Go. "The one on Feb 24th
is special as it will be a quadruple transit of Titan, Mimas, Dione
and Enceladus. At around 14:25UT on that day, all four moons will
be within Saturn's disk."
Feb 24th is special for another reason: Comet Lulin makes its closest
approach to Earth on that date, coincidentally just a few degrees
away from Saturn: sky
map. In one quick sweep of a backyard telescope, you'll be able
to see Titan, Saturn's edge-on rings, and a green
comet with an active
tail. Mark your calendar!
February
2009 Aurora Gallery
[Previous Februaries: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2004, 2003,
2002]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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