Watching the skies is just part of the day, and night for some people. I am one of them. The first thing I do every morning is go outside and look up at the sky. The last thing I do before going to bed, each night, is to watch the sky for awhile. Sometimes, I even lay in bed and just look up through the window until it is morning. When I am not outside looking at the sky, often with a camera in my hand, I check in with my favorite websites to catch up on space weather and the new photos of sky watchers around the world.
The sky is always changing, revealing itself in glimpses. I think that is why I find it so fascinating. Space is a mystery we will never stop discovering and its interaction with our earth's atmosphere create some of the most spectacular sights we will ever witness.
These are some of my favorite websites. I've been checking in with them for the last several years and everytime I go there, I am amazed at all the activity happening in space.
My number one favorite website, Space Weather, has an incredible video up on its homepage right now that I highly recommend. It was taken by enthusiastic skywatcher and photograher, Laurent Lavendar in Bretagne, France showing Venus, Saturn, and the Moon rising together over a local marina. It is extremely romantic.....
Space Weather keeps you up to date on solar wind, activity on the face of the sun, asteroids, comets, and all the movement happening in space. And believe me, there is more movement than you would ever expect! This is the weather station site for space, updated daily and globally.
Space.com is a more polished site that provides information on NASA missions, satellite images, links to telescope stores, videos, and overall takes a non-specialized approach to space news. Space.com is the CNN of space, you get everything. Currently, on their site is a clip of U2 calling the astronauts in space and a plethora of interesting videos, including scientists monitoring potentially hazardous asteroids heading in our direction.
And of course, we have the old standby at NASA.gov which, is obviously full of brilliant information. Catch up on space station news and find satellite and probe pictures here first. NASA.gov is where the most cutting edge and current space mission info can be found. NASA.gov is definitely space mission-centric but, also provide a wealth of information on the solar systems, galaxies, asteroids, star clusters, and anything else space related- you just have to do a little clicking around. Naturally, their deep space photos are first-rate.
Right now, they are reminding us that Oct. 11-17th is Earth Science week and have provided a series of six short videos on the chosen topic of "Understanding Climate." The six NASA videos complete a series called "Tides of Change," which all focus on the ocean-climate connection. Each video features a specific component of the connection, such as marine life or the water cycle.
While catching up on space news this past week, I was just blown away but, all that is happening. The new technology and photos are really making space less of a mystery and more of a place. I was reading about NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy and so I decided I would try to comprehend a lightyear. Like, truly understand how far that is. I was never great at math, so the long equations were meaningless to me. I found some comparisons in this graph that finally made me understand. Hope you enjoy!
| Factor (ly) | Value | Item |
|---|---|---|
| 10-9 | 40.4 × 10?9 ly | Reflected sunlight from the Moon's surface takes 1.2–1.3 seconds to travel the distance to the Earth's surface. (The surface of the moon is roughly 376,300 kilometres from the surface of the Earth, on average. 376,300 km ÷ 300,000 km/s (roughly the speed of light) ? 1.25 seconds) |
| 10-6 | 15.8 × 10?6 ly | One astronomical unit (the distance from the Sun to the Earth). It takes approximately 499 seconds (8.32 minutes) for light to travel this distance.[16] |
| 10-3 | 3.2 × 10?3 ly | The most distant space probe, Voyager 1, was about 14 light-hours away from Earth as of 9 March 2007[update]. It took that space probe 30 years to cover that distance,[17] and will take over 18,000 years to reach one light-year at the same speed. |
| 100 | 1.6 × 100 ly | The Oort cloud is approximately two light-years in diameter. Its inner boundary is speculated to be at 50,000 AU, with its outer edge at 100,000 AU |
| 2.0 × 100 ly | Maximum extent of the Sun's gravitational dominance (hill sphere/roche sphere, 125,000 AU). Beyond this is true interstellar space. | |
| 4.22 × 100 ly | The nearest known star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is about 4.22 light-years away.[18][19] | |
| 103 | 26 × 103 ly | The center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 26 kilolight-years away.[20][21] |
| 100 × 103 ly | The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across. | |
| 106 | 2.5 × 106 ly | The Andromeda Galaxy is approximately 2.5 megalight-years away. |
| 3.14 × 106 ly | The Triangulum Galaxy (M33), at 3.14 megalight-years away, is the most distant object visible to the naked eye. | |
| 59 × 106 ly | The nearest large galaxy cluster, the Virgo Cluster, is about 59 megalight-years away. | |
| 150 × 106 – 250 × 106 ly | The Great Attractor lies at a distance of somewhere between 150 and 250 megalight-years (the latter being the most recent estimate). | |
| 109 | 1.2 × 109 ly | The Sloan Great Wall (not to be confused with the Great Wall) has been measured to be approximately one gigalight-year distant. |
| 46.5 × 109 ly | The comoving distance from the Earth to the edge of the visible universe is about 46.5 gigalight-years in any direction; this is the comoving radius of the observable universe. This is larger than the age of the universe dictated by the cosmic background radiation; see size of the universe: misconceptions for why this is possible. |