If you are in Malaysia today, you will get the rare chance of seeing planet Saturn either through a telescope, binoculars or even with the unaided eye when it is opposite the sun after sunset on June 3, which is today.
This NASA file image shows the ringed planet Saturn. - AFP/TheStar
The Star reported:
National Space Agency (Angkasa) research officer at the Langkawi National Observatory, Farahana Kamarudin, said that at this time, the ringed planet would be at its closest to Earth.
"If you are viewing it with the unaided eye, it can be seen as a bright star," she told Bernama.
She said the planet would be in the east with the constellation Scorpio.
Farahana said Saturn could be viewed in an open space which is unhindered by clouds or light pollution.
"In fact, if you use the smartphone, you can use the Google Sky or StarMap software to help track the planet," she added.
She said Saturn takes 29.5 years (10,759 days) to complete its orbit around the Sun.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. For comparision, below is a composite image roughly comparing the sizes of Saturn and Earth - courtesy of Wikipedia.
To get a better picture of just how small Earth is compared with the rest of outer space, the following photos will help put our planet in perspective.
This humbling photo, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2013, shows what Earth, indicated by the tiny white arrow, looks like from 898 million miles away.
Saturn has a prominent ring system that consists of nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs and that is composed mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust.
Saturn's rings are a beautiful spectacle of the cosmos, but they look much better on Saturn than on Earth.
Saturn's rings are so large that you can fit six Earths across them. The millions of ice particles that make up these rings are only as large as a few feet across for comparison.
If you are someone who finds joy in looking at the sky, you are in for a rare celestial treat.
Malaysians, as well as with most parts of the world, are in for this treat as the five planets of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury align in a rare astronomical event from last night until the end of February.
This rare alignment will be visible simultaneously before dawn during this period. The best display of this phenomenon is expected to be on Jan 27 when the Moon comes into alignment with the five and Jupiter and Venus will shine the brightest.
A senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Physics, Dr Cindy Ng told TODAY that four planets, with the exception of Mercury, had already been visible for several days.
Mercury, she said, has just become visible, having moved far enough from the Sun.
“Usually, we see the five planets in the night sky at different times of the night. It is thus a special event to observe all five planets in the night sky at one time,” she was quoted as saying.
Those who wish to see this rare event can begin their watch just after 8pm tonight (12.50pm GMT).
But wait, before you go out viewing tonight, here's this week's Personality Quiz, you've guessed it, related to the Planets. Find out What Planet Are You From? Interesting questionnaire too.
If you are watching the skies this week, you might just be rewarded with catching sight of a meteor shower. Yes, it's that time of the year again for that Perseid Meteor Shower.
During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky; however, the Perseids are primarily visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
While we are watching the skies, let's take a sky-related quiz this week. Find our what Color Sky Are You. A set of interesting questions at that too. Enjoy! And happy sky-watching too!
Hey hey hey! It's Friday again and time for yet another personality quiz. I'm sorry, not much time these days for blogging but let me assure you that this Friday thingy is a sure thing, so do drop by every Friday if for nothing else. I shouldn't be beating up myself like this, should I? No, I take that back, do drop by for the occasional new post. That's better? :D
Say, have you been taking in the good vibes of this Supermoon? A Supermoon is when the moon is closest to the Earth making it apparently larger in size than at other times. In Feng Shui, the effects of the Supermoon is positive as opposed to that of an eclipse.
While you are enjoying the moon, look out also for the Perseids, a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle.
The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity between 9 and 14 August, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky; but, because of the path of Swift-Tuttle's orbit, Perseids are primarily visible in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, the Perseids most active period is between July 17 to August 24. Look towards the North, I read.
I was reading about Steven Hawking's suggestion that aliens almost certainly exist but has warned humanity not to try to contact them. This article is dated Apr 2010.
Aliens may not be how we have always imagined them to be (looking like cute ET, for instance) or as friendly as we think they are afterall.
Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that earth is the only place where life has evolved.
"The real challenge is working out what aliens might actually be like."
Hawking says that they could be microbes – basic animals such as worms which have been on Earth for millions of years, but suggests that extraterrestrial life could develop much further.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking said.
Maybe one alien we meet may be like this one..
Alien predators finish off a large grazer with repeated poison stinger strikes Photo: Discovery Channel
Frankly, we do not have to look beyond our planet to find horrors, we have enough of them here on Earth already. The creepy crawlies we have are enough to scare the wits out of us. Don't believe me? Just imagine a cockroach or a lizard landing on your face.. Ewww!
My male chauvinist friend sent me this for obvious reasons. See if you agree.
The Star reported yesterday about a UFO sighting in Sunway, outskirt of KL. Some people say they were just LED kites. Do you believe UFOs and ETs exist? What about the much-talked about "end of the world" predicted to be on Dec 22 this year?
We have for a while now been hearing talk, been talking about it ourselves, even watching a movie, 2012, about the end of the world. Is the Mayan calendar to be believed? I find the end of the world a concept hard to believe but I do subscribe to 'never say never', so anything is possible. Skeptical as we may be, or at least some of us, there are signs around us that show our world falling apart - earthquakes and tsunamis, floods, global warming, and so forth. Methinks.
Scientists even believe that ETs are sending us warning signs by way of crop circles, for instance.
Crop circles - do you think they are man-made or made by extra-terrestrials with the aim of delivering humanity a message as to what to expect and what to do going forward? Crop circles have been appearing in the last 20 to 30 years and they are found all over the world. There was even a crop circle in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, just January of last year.
Remember two suns spotted last year in China? I even saw the two suns one morning in June. Something is really happening in our solar system, in space out there. Perhaps, there is some shifting going on?
Do you think astral travel (astral projection) or out-of-body experience is possible? AstralWalker, Pane Andov, astral travels and he has been receiving messages from extra-terrestrials who ask that he passes them on. In his presentation on Expected Cosmic Events in 2012, a talk he delivered in Australia last year, he talks about crop circles, planets shifting resulting in the 'other sun' being visible on Earth, the splitting of land masses, among others. Here's the video..
Is the world coming to an end on Dec 22, 2012? Your thoughts?
Images here are video-grab shots from the video, Expected Cosmic Events in 2012
Come June 5 and 6, most of us on Earth will be able to witness a rare astronomical phenomenon, the transit of Venus.
According to Wikipedia: A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2004 lasted six hours). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is almost 3 1/2 times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth.
This image, from The Star, shows Venus transits across the sun as seen over Hong Kong on June 8, 2004 (Image: Reuters)
Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The transit of Venus on 5 and 6 June 2012 will be the last Venus transit this century; the prior transit took place on 8 June 2004. The previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. After 2012, the next transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125.
Geometry of Venus Transit (Image: Angkasa)
The entire transit will be visible from the western Pacific Ocean, northwesternmost North America, northeastern Asia, Japan, the Philippines, eastern Australia, New Zealand, and high Arctic locations including northernmost Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland.[3] In North America, the Caribbean, and northwestern South America, the beginning of the transit will be visible on 5 June until sunset. From sunrise on 6 June, the end of the transit will be visible from South Asia, the Middle East, east Africa and most of Europe. It will not be visible from most of South America or western Africa.
Viewed from Malaysia, the planet will cross the Sun around 6.09am on June 6 (Wednesday), but it can only be seen after sunrise and will end at about 12.50pm.
People in Sabah will be able to see the entire phenomena because the Sun rises before the transit begins.
If you are in the Klang Valley or nearby and would like to have a better view of the Venus transit, drop by at the National Planetarium between 8am to 1pm where the National Space Agency (Angkasa) will be setting up a number of telescopes.
If you miss it this round, the next Venus transit is predicted to be on Dec 11, 2117.
Safety precaution: A transit of Venus can be safely observed by taking the same precautions used to observe the partial phases of a solar eclipse. Staring at the Sun without appropriate eye protection can quickly cause serious and often permanent eye damage.
The safest way to watch a transit is to observe an image of the Sun projected onto a screen through a telescope, binoculars, pinhole or reflected pinhole. The event can be viewed without magnification using filters specifically designed for this purpose, such as an astronomical solar filter or eclipse viewing glasses coated with a vacuum-deposited layer of chromium. However, the disk of Venus is tiny compared to the sun and not much will be seen. The once-recommended method of using exposed black-and-white film as a filter is not now considered safe, as small imperfections or gaps in the film may permit harmful UV rays to pass through. Observing the Sun directly without appropriate protection can damage or destroy retinal cells, causing temporary or permanent blindness. (Wikipedia)
There is always something happening in the sky or rather beyond. Jupiter and the Moon are in conjunction as we speak.
TheWatchers suggests When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look east. Jupiter and the waxing full Moon are in conjunction less than 7 degrees apart. Even though this is meant for yesterday, the conjunction can still be seen today and a day or two afterwards after sunset.
Although they look close together, Jupiter is 1,550 times farther away — and 40 times larger in diameter. In a telescope, Jupiter’s tiny moon Io casts its shadow on the planet’s face from 8:54 to 11:04 p.m. EST. Then Jupiter’s Great Red Spot crosses the planet’s central meridian around 12:17 a.m. EST. (Sky&Telescope)
This is Asteroid 2005 YU55, a mid-sized asteroid, that passed by Earth some three/four hours ago (Malaysia time).
According to CNN, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier passed within the moon's orbit Tuesday, the closest approach by an object that large in more than 30 years.
Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed within 202,000 miles of Earth -- about four-fifths of the distance to the moon -- at 6:28 p.m. Tuesday, NASA said.
A large asteroid as big as YU55 hitting the Earth could cause global catastrophe such as a tsunami with waves 70 feet high. However, scientists say that there is no need to worry about this one though risk of asteroid collision is real. NASA calls these "potentially hazardous objects". The next few days will provide a gold mine of information for scientists in studying the asteroid. Below is a video-shot of the asteroid path.
The skies hold much fascination and mystery beyond our comprehension. One morning last month, I was surprised to look up at the orangy morning sky to find what looked like a huge round moon very near to the rising sun. If you use your hands to measure the distance, it would be about two feet apart. Was that possible, I was wondering. Did the moon forget to retire for the night or did she stay back to enjoy a morning cuppa with the sun. Of course there is a logical explanation. Round about that time, I read that a star (forgot its name) was coming close to Earth and that it could be seen in our skies. There, that explains it. Then as the sun became brighter, the 'moon' was nowhere to be found. Interesting..
And now, we hear that we are in the midst of being able to see two suns! How bizarre! Here's a video of two suns being spotted in China..
There is an email circulating right now about two suns on June 21.
The email says,
21st June - the Whole World is waiting for.............
Star Aderoid will be the brightest in the sky, starting 10 June. It will look as large as the sun from naked eye. This will culminate on 21st June when the star comes within 34.65M miles of the earth. Be sure to watch the sky on June 21 at 12:30 pm. (S'pore: 3pm) It will look like the earth has 2 suns.!!
The next time Aderoid may come this close is in 2287.
So did you manage to view the Leonids or Leonid meteor shower yesterday morning?
Each year, Nov 17-19 marks the time of Leonid meteor shower. Meteor showers are usually named after the area of the sky from which they appear to radiate. The Leonids emanate from the constellation Leo.
The radiant begins rising from around 12:30am and the meteors will last until morning twilight. Look in the areas around the radiant, rather than directly at it.
If you missed it and would still like to see it, you still can as it has been reported that the Leonids are not a one-night stand. The dust from Tempel-Tuttle spangles the sky for a few nights every year in mid-November. This year, the peak is expected during the predawn hours of Nov. 17, but early-morning hours on the dates surrounding Nov. 17 could provide a decent show, too.
Here's an interactive Leonid meteor shower guide courtesy of MSNBC. Click here to go to guide.
