Results tagged “astronomy”

This trio of planets were seen from around the world last night. And hopefully you saw it too because it won't be happening until 2052 (though, on New Year's Eve, Venus and the moon will be in view). This conjunction of planets have been seen in our skies since Thanksgiving night, but last night was when they appeared closest together.

Since Thanksgiving night, Jupiter and Venus have been in our skies for our viewing pleasure. Tonight will be the "most attractive," says Anthony Cook of the Griffith Observatory Sky Report. The two planets will appear close together--about the width of your finger when you stretch your arm out--with the moon 4 degrees--or about two finger widths--to the upper right. The planets will set around 7:40 p.m.

If tonight ends up being (another?) a late night for you, you might want to step outside and take a look up in the skies:

After the Moon sets – around 11 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, later on subsequent nights – some 10 to 15 meteors may appear per hour. They are often yellowish-orange and, as meteors go, appear to move rather slowly. Their name comes from the way they seem to radiate from the constellation Taurus, the Bull, which sits low in the east a couple of hours after sundown and is almost directly overhead by around 1:30 a.m. [Yahoo! News]

This upcoming round of Taurid meteor showers, often thought of as "shooting stars" will contain larger fragments than other meteors, which means we might see something akin to "fireballs" in the sky.

With up to two meteors flying by per minute, tonight's big Perseid meteor shower (around 1 a.m. to 4 a.m.) is probably one of the best. Of course, being in the city, gazing at the sky can be pretty useless when trying to find stars.

Quiz Question: So it is four in the morning, September 1st, the bars have long since stopped serving alcohol for the night, and you've had too many of those in-lieu-of-booze Red Bulls, and you are wide awake. What should you do next? Should you...? a) go home and watch television until you pass out on the sofa b) go to the after-party of your friend's friend c) stumble around the streets of West Hollywood for...

I lived in New York my whole damned life up until l made the move to Los Angeles in 2006, and even though I've been here at least a year already, I still get harassing phone calls from my friends that entail the sentence "yo, what you got over there in la-la land that we ain't got here in the greatest city in the world?" I've gone through the natural beauty, beaches and mountains,...

As happens every year, the wattage from the collective star-power gathered for the Oscars turns the universe into a dim bulb. But just before the big day, local braniacs at Cal-Tech have managed up another amazing astronomical feat. Using the Spitzer infrared Space Telescope, scientists peered at two planets, (360 and 904 trillion miles away) and for the first time, were able to identify molecules in an extra-solar atmosphere. The problem observing planets orbiting...