Officers:
President: Gary Nelson
Vice President: Brian Ceci
Secretary: Corey Swanson
Treasurer: John Anderson
Board Members:
Josh Campbell
Richard Carlson
Laurie Livingston
Walter Pickut
Jon Porter
Tom Traub
Martz-Kohl Observatory
non-profit organization devoted to the amateur astronomer
Officers and Board Members
Facebook feed
Check out the night sky for the next few days - January 3-5, 2022 - weather permitting, of course 😆👍🔭
A successful launch of the James Webb Telescope is NASA's present to us.
The telescope launched on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou, French Guiana site in South America, on this Christmas morning, 25 December 2021. After 30 years of development and many delays, the huge telescope will peer at the universe's first stars and galaxies, sniff the atmospheres of nearby alien planets and perform a variety of other high-profile, high-impact work over the next five to 10 years- if all goes according to plan 👍🔭Who ever thought Christmas morning could be so terrifying?
Fantastic panorama of Mars' Jezero Crater area. Interesting fact: Mars has blue skies at sunrise & sunset and usually muddy yellow/red during the day. Pretty much the opposite of our sky.
Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) is 2021’s best and brightest comet. It’s a great comet to view with binoculars, in the sky before sunup now for Northern Hemisphere observers, soon to be in the evening sky. Attached to this post are a morning and evening location maps for Comet Leonard for the next month. Member, Tom Traub, created the sky maps and commentary.
With sunset at 4:40pm at azimuth 238 the Sun will be 5 degrees below the horizion at 5:10 PM at that time the comet will be 8.5 degrees up at azimuth 258 by 5:36 PM the comet will only be 4 degrees above the horizion at azimuth 261. As each day progresses the comet moves south and a little higher bt the 15th it will be 6.2 degrees altituze at azimuth 237. The morning of the 12th is really the last good time to see the comet. The nucleus of the comet rises at 6:01am by 6:22AM it will be 4 degrees up at azimuth 95 by 6:58 it will be 10 degrees high at azimuth 101 and the sun is 6 degrees below the horizion. On the 13 the comet will be only 1.5 degrees above the horizion at the same time. Currently the brightness is estimated at Magnitude +4.5 with a several degree long tail.December has some interesting viewing of the night sky, weather permitting! An alignment of 3 planets and the Moon, early in the month and the Geminid Meteor Shower peaking about 2am on December 14. youtu.be/PHnmapNMtlo
The Hubble Telescope is back in use 👍 The James Webb telescope, its successor, is scheduled for a December 22, 2021 launch
Hubble telescope restores 3rd instrument in slow return to operations
trib.al
Only one more left to go!The full Beaver Moon passed through Earth's shadow in a partial lunar eclipse this morning, Friday, Nov. 19 in what was the longest eclipse of its kind in 580 years. The eclipse lasted over 6 hours. The Beaver Moon is a native American name for the November full moon. Tom Traub captured this image.
Great photo.
Stunning!!!
Nice!
The Hubble Space Telescope is currently in "safe mode" after instrument failures over the last several weeks. The telescope has been working since 1990 with astronaut performed repairs in 2009. NASA is considering software changes as no further "visits" to the 'scope are planned. Software changes, if they happen at all, will happen once the Hubble team looks at control unit design diagrams, data from the lost messages, and the range of potential instrument software changes that could address the problem.
arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/hubbles-science-on-hold-as-instruments-switch-into-safe-mode/Instruments on Hubble in safe mode; NASA trying to understand why
arstechnica.com
After two spontaneous shutdowns in two days, NASA has kept hardware offline.Load more