Tonight, Jupiter will be the closest to Earth this year (2008), so it will be the brightest thing in the sky overhead at midnight. With a good pair of binoculars and a steady hand, you can even see the 4 largest moons of Jupiter (you don’t need a telescope).

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Posted by tlbs101, on September 11th, 2008, at 5:14 am. #.

On Thursday evening right after sunset, the planets Saturn and Mars will be very close together in the western sky.
Also, you can find out when cool things are going to be visible for you in your town by going to.

Posted by Eric, on September 13th, 2008, at 4:15 pm. #.

my background is in astronomy and gemology, so maybe I find this more fascinating than it really is.

A few years back, it was announced that tests that were run on the composition of the light-colored rocks in the Lunar Highlands we mostly Plagioclase Feldspars. Okay, so what? Well, on Earth we have a gemstone that is a Plagioclase Feldspar and we call it…

Moonstone!

Posted by faesson, on September 14th, 2008, at 2:36 am. #.

Since Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe, up until recently most astronomers assumed that this expansion (going on since the Big Bang) is slowing down. Its now been discovered that just the opposite is true, the expansion is getting faster and faster, apparently because of the still mysterious dark energy.And what exactly is dark energy? There is still so much yet to be discovered!

Posted by Mark K, on September 16th, 2008, at 7:54 am. #.

Aphelion was on July 4th this year. The Earth was farthest from the Sun. So why is it summer (in the Northern Hemisphere)? That’s due to the tilt of the Earth. This time of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun. The maximum tilt was just a few days earlier, the first day of Summer. So what’s cool about it? Well, when the Earth is farther from the Sun, there’s a little less light and heat that makes it there, and so Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is not as hot as it might be. The effect isn’t huge, so we still get Summer.

Posted by suitti, on September 19th, 2008, at 2:41 pm. #.

The Big Bang is not a point in space but a sphere around us. This is why the Cosmic Microwave Background is coming from all directions in the sky. Amazing, isn’t it?

The reason is this: When we watch the sky, we see in both space and time because the farther away an object is, the farther in the past it is seen. Therefore the past is all around us.

Posted by Michel Verheughe, on September 19th, 2008, at 3:13 pm. #.

. The center of the Crab Nebula contains a pulsar which rotates an amazing 33 times per second! They are the peculiar relics of massive stars that have ended their lives in a tremendously powerful explosion called a supernova.

Posted by meanolmaw, on September 20th, 2008, at 8:30 pm. #.

We live in the Local Super Cluster sometimes called the Virgo Super Cluster. The diameter of the Local Super Cluster is 200 million light years, it contains about 100 groups and clusters of galaxies and is dominated by the Virgo cluster near its center. The Local Super Cluster mass is 10 times one quadrillion solar masses. The the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are part of the Local Super Cluster.

Posted by Plasma, on September 21st, 2008, at 4:27 pm. #.