Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Carnival of Space #443

It is a time for another carnival of space. Did you manage to see all planets together in the dawn sky? After several rainy and cloudy mornings I got up at 6 am and was able to see all of them. Mercury was definitely the hardest as the sky were quite blue. It was about 30 minutes before sunrise and I will try even earlier later this month. Taking a photo of all planets is harder as they span over 100 degrees and a very wide lens is required (or taking several photos and stitching them in software).
Here is an illustration of the planets and some photos of the (not all together) planets.
All planets together illustration by Stellarium software
All planets together illustration by Stellarium software

More planets at the end. And now for this week articles:
From Aartscope blog:
  • Astroswanny is tracking asteroid 2016 BE, an interesting 79m asteroid on the risk table for 2076-2111 discusses what a Virtual Impactor is in order to demystify some of the asteroid terminology.
From Ryan Marciniak:
From Universe Today:
From Chandra's blog:
From About Education:
From the Venus Transit archives:
  • The space shuttle, an article in respect to the crews of Columbia and Challenger space-shuttles.
And as promised, more planets. Notice the red hue of Mars in the first photo 
Moon and Mars (31/1/2016
Moon and Mars (31/1/2016)
Venus and Mercury - 31/1/2016
Venus and Mercury - 31/1/2016