Explore the Sky For Yourself
Astronomy is (as I’ve often said here) a science that just about anybody can do. You step outside, look up, make note of what you see and presto! You’re doing observational astronomy. It’s that easy. With that in mind, I’ve been collaborating with the folks at Astrocast.TV for several years on a stargazing video segment that points out some easy-to-find objects in the sky each month. You can watch it here, or head over to their website for other tasty video treats. This video is available for embedding and has been used by several museums and observatories. To get the embed code, go here.
July is kind of a special month for folks interested in the smaller objects in the solar system. Among them are Ceres and Vesta (Ceres was an asteroid and is now designated a dwarf planet, Vesta is designated an asteroid) and the dwarf planet Pluto. (The links go to observing tips for each object). It turns out these are within reach of folks with good binoculars (for Vesta), moderate-to-good backyard type telescopes for Ceres, and high-powered telescopes for Pluto. So, if you have one (or know somebody who has one), these objects can be observed in early July.
Another way to observe them is through a free online event sponsored by Slooh.com. (Go to their website and click on “Celestial Events”.) The group will highlight Ceres and Pluto along with asteroid Vesta on Thursday night, July 3rd, starting at 5:00 pm PDT / 8:00 pm EDT / 00:00 UTC (7/4), live from Slooh observatories located in the northern and southern hemispheres. The northern hemisphere observatory is located off the west coast of Africa, at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, and the southern hemisphere observatory is located at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC) near Santiago.
Viewers can watch the broadcast free on Slooh.com. The image stream will be accompanied by discussions led by Slooh host Geoff Fox, Slooh astronomer Bob Berman, and Slooh observatory engineer Paul Cox. Viewers can follow updates on the show by using the hashtag #Sloohdwfplanet.
There’s a lot to see out there in July for both northern and southern hemisphere observers, so get out there and look up, or log in and check ’em out!
Ceres is not really an asteroid; it’s a small planet though it probably cannot be resolved into a disk from most Earth-based telescopes. And as the Dawn mission discovered, even Vesta is closer to being a terrestrial planet than an asteroid. Interestingly, when observing these objects, viewers should note that a year from now, we will have close ups of both Ceres and Pluto from missions that will arrive there next year.