Learning Ra and Dec, how to find Venus, music and more! We had major technical difficulties during recording and lost large segments of the podcast so we pieced together what was usable and did our best to carry on!

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

"Stars"
by Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Welcome!

Hello to Steve from Utah in the states , Cheryl who publishes "Backyard Astronomy" at Pikerpress.com and to
Joe from Middlefield Connecticut

Thank you to Craig from Poway, California for sending me the Rush song "Earthshine" If it weren't for the fact that the song is copy written I would play it here!
Thanks to a suggestion by Ian of Burford, Oxfordshire U.K. we have Frappr!map for Astronomy a Go Go! Ian has the distinction of being the only Astronomy a Go Go! listener, that I know of so far, who can hear lions roaring while he stargazes!

Russell from Australia had a new podcast "Dark Matters" and we have a snippet of his first podcast to play.

Thanks to the kids from After School Astronomy Clubs for the Venus report.

Tips and Tricks

Last week we talked about using your hands to measure distance of object in the sky by degrees and that is great for communicating to each other how to find an object, like finding Saturn 15 degrees from Procyon. But there is a more precise way to refer to objects and that is by their Right Ascension(hours, minutes and seconds) and Declination(degrees, minutes of degree and seconds of degree)

The Celestial Sphere - The transparent imaginary two-dimensional sphere around the earth so that the Earth's equator (0°) will equal the Celestial Equator (0°) and the Earth's south pole (-90°) will equal the south celestial pole (-90°). The Earth's north pole will represent the north celestial pole where the star Polaris resides (+90°).

The Ecliptic - The path of the Sun across the Celestial Sphere

The Meridian and your Zenith - The line that goes directly above over your head from North to South through your Zenith is called the Meridian. Your Zenith it the point directly above you head in the sky. (90 degrees up in the sky when using altitude).

Remember it like this: Right Ascension (RA) is equal to Longitude. If you ascend, you go up: up down, north south, the RA lines go from North to South in the sky. Declination (Dec) is equal to Latitude, the Dec lines turn like a wheel from west to east in the sky, parallel with the latitude lines on Earth which also go from west to east.

"Movement" of the Grid Lines - Just as the longitude and latitude lines are fixed to the Earth as the Earth rotates, so does the RA and Dec lines move together with the sky as it "rotates" around the Earth. A star will thus always be at the same coordinate at all times. The Moon, Sun and Planets though, will not always have the same RA and Dec, because they move on the ecliptic path in the sky much faster than the stars can ever imagine traveling.

Planets

Venus - just before dawn between Aquila and Sagittarius
Jupiter - in the wee hours of the morning in the constellation Libra
Saturn - is in cancer the crab
Mars - is south of the Pleiades
Mercury - is visible in the west 45 minutes after sunset at the head of Pisces

Naked eye viewing- I am going to have you seek out our two solar hide and seek planets Mercury and Venus The after school astronomy club kids made this recording on how to find Venus.... This Friday the 24th Mercury officially reaches greatest elongation, which means that it is at its farthest visual distance from the Sun for this go-round and sets later than usual about one and a half hours after sunset. But to make sure you catch it I suggest looking during twilight about 45 minutes after sunset. And if you still have a real hard time finding it wait until Wednesday March first when an crescent Moon will be parked just above Mercury.

Telescopic viewing- Lets try for Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy. At mag 8.5 it straddle the line between Corvus and Virgo

News

there are so many great space and astronomy news sites and podcasts out there I won't try and duplicate them all, I'll just report things that really strike my fancy or that I think you might be interested in. Here is a list of some of the sites I visit daily:

• Universe Today
• NASA breaking news
• BBC Science and Technology - ! World Edition
• Planetary Society Blog
• Space.com
• And to get a good summary of all the news try Tom's Astronomy Blog
• Bad Astronomer's Blog
• Some of the names proposed for Pluto's two new moons.
• And since we are talking about moons, Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos are objects we can't catch in the normal backyard telescope but Mars express did a wonderful job returning some outstanding images
.
• Two comets visible with telescopes in the southern hemisphere. - Pojmanski is very faint magnitude 12.5 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 may eventually become a naked eye comet but I'm not going to predict that...we will keep an eye on both of these.

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Brobdingnagian Bards -"Wild Mountain Thyme"

Learn how to use your hands to navigate between the stars and some tricky winter(summer)constellations.

Carpe Amor - Seize the Love!

"i carry your heart"
by ee cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Welcome!

Hello to Frank in Toronto he has a new scope and is floating on that new scope high!

Welcome to Ed from the Birmingham Astronomical Society in Birmingham Alabama. This club has a very nice webpage if you are looking for an example of a well laid out club page. I happen to be partial to ours as well! Ed did you know that there is a Birmingham Astronomical Society in the United Kingdom?

Lastly a special Howdy to my sister Kellie and her husband Craig and their boys. The final song in the show is for my nephews...Caleb and Ben when you are done looking at the stars put on the p.j.s and listen to the song... it is time for bed!

Tips and Tricks

We have been easing into astronomy and astronomical skills and I have a new skill for you to roughly gauge distances in the sky.

Held at arm's length, your pinky finger is about 1 degree wide. Your three middle fingers, held together, are about 5 degrees wide. If you hold out your fist, it will measure a 10 degree width of the sky. If you hold up just your pointer finger and your pinky finger, it will be about 15 degrees of sky between them. If you spread the thumb and pinky of one hand as far apart as they will go, it will be about 25 degrees from outside edge to outside edge.

Now this is an approximate measuring device of course but it works very well. So now I can go out and say that Saturn is 15 degrees SE of Pollux (of Castor and Pollux in Gemini)

Special Valentines Gift

In show #3 we talked about planispheres and how to use them. Planisphere are a wonderful tool and for the N. Hemisphere there are many that you can find for free online. Alas for the southern hemisphere I couldn't find one decent FREE planisphere. Chris, from the Astronomy in your hands website, is giving Astronomy a Go Go! podcast listeners a free planisphere! It is the city version but after looking at his site if you like the Milky Way version you can subscribe and get them all.

In order to make sure that folks don't just randomly find and pilfer these gifts I have hidden them on the show notes! For If you listened you will know what to do...(look at the bottom of the page)

Constellations

For most amateur astronomers constellations are shapes and containers that help us find other things that we really want to see like comets, double stars, and Messier objects. We have been working our way through the 88 'official' constellations since January and tonight we add 3 more all of which are tough!

• Lepus, the Hare. Only 4 bright stars from our city location and home to M79 is a beautiful globular cluster.
• Monoceros (mon-OSS-err-us), The Unicorn. Almost visible in the urban lights an home to M50 and open cluster.
• Columba, Noah's Dove. The constellation refers to the dove released several times during the voyage after the great flood to find land, it was this dove that returned with an olive branch in its beak, indicating dry land had been found.

Northern Hemisphere looking South


Equator, looking West and up


Southern Hemisphere looking North and up

Naked eye viewing- There are always celestial clues that time is just whizzing by. Not nearly as critical as the flooding of the Nile, when I start to seen Arcturus, the 4th brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Bootes, in my window at bed-time I know that it won't be long until the early summer (or winter in the S.H. )constellation will be visible.

But our naked eye challenge tonight is to find the Pleiades. They are in the constellation Taurus the Bull and near Mars. I have Mars marked in each of the charts on the show notes. The Pleiades, or M45 look to me like a very small cup with a short pokey handle. Just how many stars can you see. They are called the 7 sisters but this open cluster has hundreds of stars. I hope your vision is better than mine!

Binocular viewing- We are going to look back at the moon tonight and find the bright crater Copernicus

Named after the Polish astronomer who in 1543 gave us the first modern formulation of a heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory of the solar system. You can see it with the naked eye but with your binoculars you should be able to see the high walls and if you look north and east you will find another large crater Eratosthenes (aira TOTH tha nees) named after the Greek mathematician who is noted for devising a system of latitude and longitude, and for being the first known to have computed the size of the Earth.

Telescopic viewing- If you have a telescope lets look for those Messier objects we talked about earlier. M79 and M50...you will be helping me get ready for next months marathon!

News

Cassini listens as well as looks! So if you think that Cassini is only taking fabulous pictures listen to this. The Cassini spacecraft has captured radio emissions believed to come from a large lightning storm on Saturn.

This image shows a rare and powerful storm on the night side of Saturn.

Light from Saturn's rings (called "ringshine") provided the illumination, allowing the storm and other cloud features to be seen. This storm is approx 2,175 miles north to south which is the distance from Seattle Washington to Dallas Texas

Space Station Flies in Higher Orbit The International Space Station (ISS) is in a higher orbit after a weekend boost from one of two unmanned cargo ships docked at the orbital platform. The maneuver will help place the ISS in position for the arrival of ISS Expedition 13 Russian ISS flight controllers said the reboost maneuver, which occurred at 5:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT) on Feb. 11, also allowed them to test techniques to dodge space debris in orbit, according to the Interfax News Agency.

Part of a solar system running in reverse?

In a NASA news release from Monday reports that NASA scientists have discovered a solar system with planets rotating to two different direction. Our solar system is a one-way boulevard. All the planets --- from Mercury out to Pluto and even the newly discovered objects beyond --- revolve around the Sun in the same direction. The fact that a solar system can have planets running in opposite directions is a shocker.

This solar system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, is a work in progress. At its center is a young star. No planets have formed yet and likely won't for millions of years. What Remijan and Hollis saw were two flat and dusty disks rotating around the equatorial plane of the central star in opposite directions.
A paper describing this result will appear in the April 1 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Trivia

Answers for Show #9
1. Which constellation has the most Messier Objects? Answer: Sagittarius
2. What constellation mentioned tonight is the 'missing' constellation of the zodiac? Answer: Ophiuchus

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Saffire -"Uppity Blues Woman, Don't you tell me!"
Eddie Rocks -"I don't want to live on the Moon"

Gift Directions!
North 1 2 3
Middle 1 2 3
South 1 2 3

Well tomorrow is podcast day but I wanted to give you all a little love!

What in the world is a Messier Object and what does it have to do with comet hunter Charles Messier...especially if they aren't comets!

Carpe Noctem - Seize the Night!

Welcome to Astronomy a Go Go for Thursday February 9, 2006!

Welcome!

I have had some wonderful conversations lately listeners, Tom from Boston who is an amateur astronomy who measures and records variable star information for the American Association of Variable Star Observers and Brian a PhD candidate at UCIrvine!

Find a group!

I have touted the merits of astronomy clubs in past shows. They are a wonderful way to learn more about astronomy and there is nothing better than to have someone say "Hey come over and look at Saturn!" or help you learn your way around the sky or answer all the questions you have about space or telescopes or even the best books to read.

Astronomy clubs aren't the only place you can interact with others who are also interested in science. Brian Hart who is a Ph.D. student at University of California, Irvine Brian uses observations done by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory -- a satellite orbiting about the Earth -- to learn about the structure of the Universe and formation of galaxies.

So well and good, he is dealing with a end of the electromagnetic spectrum we haven't talked about yet right now we have been mainly focused on the VISIBLE light portion of that spectrum.

Okay but where I was going with this description was other groups.
Brian is the fearless leader of the The Southern California Science Cafe is a comfortable, Cafe setting where science and life come together

Chandra X-ray observatory
Science Cafe
The Science Cafe Blog
Find Saturn here!
Next week the Science Cafe group has a field trip, of sorts, to the UCI Observatory and just guess what they will be talking about..Saturn and the Orion Nebulas! Brian says to bring yourself, bring a friend, and bring your mp3 player with your favorite astronomy podcasts to keep you entertained while you are in line. Heck, if you are going to do that then spread the joy, Bring those Y-jacks and a spare set of headphones, it is much easier that trying to describe a podcast to someone.

Finally, another way to commune with your fellow amateurs is to just plunk a telescope down on the sidewalk outside your house and entertain the neighborhood. You could be the first sidewalk astronomer on your block.

Tips and Tricks

Naked eye viewing So did you go out and use the notes from the last podcast to find the woman in the moon? The moon is a waxing gibbous and will be full by Monday so we are back to looking at really bright objects. The full moon not the best time to look at the moon, it is flat and missing all of it's dramatic features but here is a trick if you do want to pull out the binoculars...put on your darkest sunglasses first or you'll not be able to see much afterwards! It is bright! Better yet hold a piece of stiff white paper about a foot away from the eyepiece and then focus to the paper. It is a lot of fun and you can share the view with others.

So since we have this full moon and you have already found the woman in the moon let's see if you can find these other shapes...the rabbit making rice cakes, a leaping rabbit, the cow, the man, and the soccer player? Take a look and we will post the images on the show notes next week.

Binocular viewing-Put on those shades and use your binoculars to find the Mare Imbrium and for Sinus Iridium or the Bay of Rainbows.

Also! On Valentines day don't fall for the "Buy your loved one a star" all you are paying for is a piece of paper instead grab your binoculars and a tripod and go out and look west just after sunset and look for Mercury, it will be pinkish and just off the horizon. 3,000 mile wide Mercury will be joined by the 32,000 mile wide Uranus only 1/2 a degree about one full Moon width away from each other with the blue Uranus closer to the sun/horizon than Mercury So give your sweetie a little personal sky view and some nice chocolate, it is a lot cheaper and much more personal!

Telescopic viewing- Now even though the moon is bright you can still get out with that telescope and have some fun. Use the java script from Sky and Telescope to help you identify the moons around Saturn in the evening or Jupiter's moons in the morning!
What I like about these scripts is that it will allow you to 'fix' the image to match the inverted view that a dobsonian or newtonian scope has as well as the mirror reverse image of a cassigrain or a refractor with a diagonal.

What do we think about in March? Charles Messier!

The year 2006 will offer an opportunity for the Messier Marathon on the weekend of March 25/26, and a second chance on April 01/02. Amateur astronomers around the world battle it out against the weather, time, the elements, sleep and even each other to try and find all 110 of Charles Messier's catalogued objects. So how did these objects some into being?

During his professional life, Charles Messier observed and carefully recorded 44 comets. his passion was looking for, discovering, and observing comets. He was considerably successful in this endeavor, with 13 first discoveries and 7 more independent co-discoveries. His nick name "The Comet Ferret" given to him by Louis the XV of France was well earned.

Messier information

• My favorite star charts for Telrad and Messier object by John Small from the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston website
• SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space)
• SEDS Messier Marathon Page
• Messier Marathon old hat? Try the Messier Plus Marathon
• Want to take it at a slower pace? The 12 month Messier Marathon
• History of Charles Messier
• Some of his original drawings and star charts

So how would y'all feel about a little Astronomy a Go Go! Messier Marathon? I plan on being out on April Fools night with the student club helping them with their own personal goals so we will try and put some of those highlights on the air so to speak. If you plan on participating in a Messier Marathon let us know in the show notes for show #9. We will talk more about this as the day draws nearer but for the mean time, start looking at those websites!

News

Who is the neighborhood bully, the Milky Way Galaxy that's who!
Like many of the small dwarf galaxies that surround our Milky Way, the globular cluster M12 has been pillaged and plundered by its much larger neighbor -us- losing nearly 1 million stars. This cluster is about 23,000 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and it's known to contain about 200,000 stars The group predicts that M12 has another 4.5 billion years of life before the stripping process reduces it to nothingness

SuitSat! Alas, it seems that suitsat didn't transmit as loudly and many of us would have liked. I never found it but many others reported faint transmissions.

Binary Trojan Asteroid 617 Patroclus and Menoetius Partoclus is the son of Menoetius and the friend of Achilles. But as asteroids they are Trojans and binaries the other oddity is that one study has suggested that unlike most "asteroids" it may not be made of rock but instead of ice, like the core of a burned out and captured comet from the Kuiper belt.

Trivia

Answer's for Show# 8 Trivia Who gets all the credit for 'inventing' the telescope and who's patent application is the closest documentation to proving who really did invent the telescope? Answer: Hans Lipperhey (http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/lipperhey.html)
Trivia for Show #9
1. Which constellation has the most Messier Objects?
2. What constellation mentioned tonight is the 'missing' constellation of the zodiac?

Email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com
Help us out by leaving a donation in the ol' PayPal hat

Music

Slackstring -"Wednesday Morning"
Maria Danes -"Rollin"

Thanks to James Barclay of the Maidenwell Observatory! You can find more information about the Maidenwell Observatory at http://www.sbstars.com/ Cheers!

Make sure you hit the show notes for plenty of information about Saturn and a first look at our Moon...including the Woman in the Moon.

Carpe Marmota monax - Seize the Groundhog!

Welcome to Astronomy a Go Go! for Thursday February 2, 2006!

Happy Groundhog day and more importantly happy cross quarter day.

Spring is here! Okay, most people think you have to wait until the Vernal Equinox but that really doesn't make any sense...so I demand a recount, today is the first day of Spring in the N.Hemisphere or Fall in the S.Hemisphere. What do you think?

Welcome!

I have had some wonderful conversations lately with two new listeners, Russell from Australia and Sri Sankar from India, who found me from my connection with the Saturn Observation Campaign

Saturn

The most useful to you right now will be the link for finding Saturn in your own night sky. It was fun working with Sri Sankar trying to figure out where he was and then trying to describe where to look, it seemed to work but instead of getting a hundred email for custom directions I am going to have you go to the Saturn Observation Campaign website and to their link for the Saturn finder!

Find Saturn here!
Galileo Project
Cassini Homepage
Wikipedia - Saturn

Saturn reached opposition on Jan. 27, 2006 just after the last podcast. An object is at opposition when the Sun is on one side of the Earth and an object is directly on the opposite side. January through June 2006 are the best months to view Saturn this year. In June, Saturn will dip lower in the sky, and by early August it is lost in the glare of the setting sun.

"I discovered another very strange wonder, which I should like to make known to their Highnesses . . . , keeping it secret, however, until the time when my work is published . . . . the star of Saturn is not a single star, but is a compsite of three, which almost touch each other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than the lateral ones, and they are situated in this form: oOo." - Galileo

Galileo's Saturn

Huygens's Saturn

Saturn Reference

Saturn Fast Facts

• Saturn is the 6th planet from the sun second largest planet in our solar system.
• Named after the Roman god of agriculture Saturn is the least dense planet in our solar system, it would float if you could find a bathtub full of water that it would fit in...but who would want to clean the rings.
• Like Jupiter, Saturn is about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium with traces of water, methane, ammonia and "rock", similar to the composition of the primordial Solar Nebula from which the solar system was formed.
• Saturn's interior is similar to Jupiter's consisting of a rocky core, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present.
• Saturn's rings primarily made of rock and ice are extraordinarily thin. About 250,000 km or more in diameter they're less than one kilometer thick. Despite their impressive appearance, there's really very little material in the rings -- if the rings were compressed into a single body it would be no more than 100 km across.
• Like the other jovian planets, Saturn has a significant magnetic field and they have photographed auroroas on Saturn as well as lightning.
• Saturn has been visited by Pioneer II, Voyager 1 & 2 and now Cassini has taken up a research position around Saturn and has already given us an amazing amount of data and will
• Orbital Period: 29.46 Earth years
• Rotation Period: 0.436 Earth day (10.67 Earth hours)
• Distance from Sun: 1,426.94 million km =9.5 AU
• Mass= 95 Earth masses
• Rings=in order D, C, B, A, F, G, E
• Moons= (47) 34 named and growing. Titan is the largest and home to the Huygens Probe
  Mimas is the coolest because it looks like the death star from Star Wars
  Iapetus (eye-ap-eh-tes) is the strangest with its two-tone red/black and white high contrast surface and it's strange equitorial ridge.
  And Prometheus and Pandora are the most controlling, shaping the F ring

Tips and Tricks

Naked eye viewing Start watching early in the week for the first time you can see the new waxing crescent moon. Also, if you are where it is dark look for Saturn, in Cancer, it will be in an open star cluster called M44 or the Beehive
Moon

By Monday you will be able to see the Woman on the Moon. I tell my Girl Scouts that Juliette Low is on the moon, Juliette Low is to Girl Scouts as Lady Baden Powell is to Girl Guides for those of you who have guides or Scouts in their countries. Anyway...

Her hair is formed by:

1. Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis)
2. Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis) This "sea" was the location of the first human visit to the Moon. In 1969, Apollo 11 landed just in front of the lady's ear.
3. Sea of Fertility (Mare Fecunditatis)
4. Sea of Nectar (Mare Nectaris)
Other features are:
5. Sea of Vapor (Mare Vaporum) her eye.
6. Seething Bay (Sinus Aestuum) her nose.
7. Central Bay (Sinus Medii) her mouth.
8. Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) is under her chin.
9. Tycho is a crater that is sometimes a gem on a chain of pearls/craters around the neck of The Woman in the Moon.

Picture Credit

Terminology

• Terminator - The line separating the illuminated and dark areas of a planetary body; the dividing line between day and night as observed from a distance
• Limb - The outer edge of a Lunar or other planetary disk
• Highlands, The densely cratered portions of the Moon that are typically at higher elevations than the mare plains
• Mare (pronounced "mahr-ay") "Sea"; a large circular plain on the Moon; specifically plains covering the floors of several large basins and spreading over adjacent areas comprised primarily of basaltic lava flows.
• Dorsum pl. dorsa, Ridge

Binocular viewing-Our first binocular look at the moon we are looking at a crater inside a crater, Posidonius A inside Posidonius. First find the Sea of Serinity, the top of the lady's hair to lunar north and lunar east you will see a large crater on the edge of the sea. Now image those two are the wide open mouth of a frog, the frog's eyes Posidonius P and J sit on the north side of the primary crater.
Telescopic viewing- with a telescope look at the same area and take a look at the floor of Mare Serenitatis do you see the winding ridge? This is the Dorsa Schmirnov, the Schmirnov ridge

For those of you in the S. Hemisphere I would recommend listening to James Barclay's podcast on his website. He is in a luck spot on the planet, no light pollution and a great observatory. You can find all of his show in his podcast section.

Planets

The Evening Set
Mars in Aries is still easy to pick out as the rusty red point SW of the Pleiades above the tale of Cetus the whale.
Saturn sits in Cancer and outshines all the stars in that constellation. It makes a nice triangle with Castor and Procyon
The Morning Set
Venus is low in the sky rising just before the sun. She is technically in Sagittarius but those stars will be too washed out to see.
Jupiter is in Libra and higher and west of Venus look between the red star Antaras and the bright white star Spica in the pre-dawn sky.

News

On Feb 3, 1966 the first soft landing on the moon the Soviet probe Luna 9 touched down and sent back the very first picture of the surface of the moon

Astronaut Bill McArthur was un-officially the 17,780th participant in the Houston marathon he ran a half marathon on a treadmill from the International Space Station. Coming in at 1:54:32, McArthur said he �felt wonderful� � even if he wasn�t a threat to the elite runners.

Exiled Stars Two stars have been spotted streaking out of the Milky Way, never to return. These stars are part of a new class of objects which astronomers have dubbed "exiles". These are stars which were once part of a binary system that strayed too close to the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. The pair is torn apart, and the exiled star is fired off on a trajectory that will take it out of our galaxy. These events occur about once every 100,000 years.

SuitSat! Check it out and fire up the ham radio, we sure will.

Where is New Horizons now? Its fast!

More on 2003 UB313 Larger or Smaller

Stardust is asleep. The Stardust spacecraft, minus its aerogel-equipped sample return capsule, is now in a state of hibernation. On January 30 at 00:00 UTC, nearly all of its systems were deactivated, leaving only a few critical ones like its solar arrays and radio receive antenna online. Stardust is not the only spacecraft in such a state -- Deep Impact is too. Both are fully functional spacecraft that could be sent to explore other asteroids or comets if the opportunity arises for a close enough approach.

Trivia

Answer's for Show# 7 Trivia

1. The constellation Eridanus is considered the SECOND longest constellation in the night sky, what is the longest? Answer: Hydra

This week's trivia

1. Who gets all the credit for 'inventing' the telescope and who's patent application is the closest documentation to proving who really did invent the telescope?

Well that is it for Astronomy a Go Go! Show #8, I'm glad you tuned in as always you can email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com. We would love to hear from you!

Music

Intermission: Amy Sawyer, Patience (fat hippy records)
End song: Jenny Beck Morning Rain (as if we need any more)