Category Archives: stargazing

carnival of space, sky & telescope magazine, space music, stargazing

Let’s Go to the Carnival

Leave a comment

The Carnival of Space

This week’s Carnival of Space, #188, is up for all to enjoy. If you’ve never read or heard of the Carnival of Space, it’s a weekly event hosted by a different blogger — a sort of romp down the cosmic carnival midway. This week, the Carnival is hosted by AARTScope Blog and features entries from nearly a dozen science writers scattered around the Web, including one of my own entries.  This week’s host also did something rather cool — he has embedded QR codes for each bloggers so that folks who want to explore these entries from their mobile devices can simply scan the code and have the entry right there! Very neat idea and I’ve now embedded a QR code in my own page — over there in the left column. Here’s AARTScope’s QR code for you to use if you’re catching ME on mobile.

So, check out the Carnival — it’s a great way to catch some new views of the cosmos from readers you might not have seen yet.

On the skygazing front, there’s a good chance you can catch Jupiter and Venus together in the western sky over the next few nights. If you’ve got clear weather, step out about 35 or 40 minutes after sunset and look west. The bright starlike object will be Jupiter. The dimmer one closer to the horizon just below Jupiter will be Mercury.  The folks at Sky&Telescope.com have a nice little graphic that you can use as reference.

The western view the next few nights, courtesy of Sky&Telescope.com
Mark C. Petersen, aka Geodesium, in concert.

Finally, while you’re browsing around, check out my March 13, 2011 episode of 365 Days of Astronomy. This month, in response to queries about the music that appears behind my podcasts for 365 Days, I decided to do a segment about space music. It features cosmic sounds I’ve spent much of my adult life hearing around the house because it’s composed by my husband, Mark C. Petersen!

Check it out, and read more here!

astrocast.tv, astronomy, stargazing

Skywatchers of Earth

2 Comments

Look Up!

From time to time I exhort all my readers to do a little skywatching. There’s nothing like stepping outside on a clear night and just gazing at the stars and planets. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, when weather conditions permit it. My stargazing began next to a house that doesn’t exist anymore, on a farm in Colorado that’s now a highway overpass. But, I still have these flashes of memory of standing there next to the house with the stone chimney soaring up to the sky, looking up at the stars overhead. I did it with my folks, usually my dad, and then as I got older, I did it with my friends and on dates with my first serious boyfriend.

Well, bunches of years have passed, and I still go out and look up. That boyfriend became my husband and we’ve carved out our careers bringing astronomy and space to the public through planetarium shows we produce, exhibits that I write, books I’ve written, and videos we’ve produced.

Stargazing’s a constant in my life. And, it’s one in a LOT of people’s lives.  I spent a lot of time in college — and afterwards — learning as much as I could about as many aspects of astronomy as I could.  Judging by the websites that link to this one, and the folks who follow me on Twitter and Facebook, there are a LOT of skygazers out there.  Maybe you’re one. If not, why not become one?  It’s pretty easy. You just step outside at night and look up!

Of course, you want a little background about what you’re seeing — and here’s where access to the Internet and the Web come in handy. There are many, many, many Websites about stargazing out there. I’m involved in at least one other site besides this one, an online “TV” show called Astrocast.TV. My contributions are to a program called The Astronomer’s Universe and a short little stargazing show called Our Night Sky. Here’s the February 2011 edition.

What do I do for Astrocast.TV?  Well, for both programs, I write and narrate the scripts, occasionally appear on-camera, and pull together imagery and starmaps and send them off to the fellow who “owns and operates” Astrocast.TV — a fellow named Rich Mathews. He’s really the show’s producer and mastermind and I supply him with the raw material for the shows, plus a script as a template to follow as he does the final show assembly, complete with music mixing, visual special effects, etc.

For example, this month, on Our Night Sky, I wrote the script, got it vetted by an astronomer friend of mine, then recorded myself voicing it over. I sent that VO, along with some music from my husband’s upcoming new album called Geodesium Stella Novus, and some star charts. Through the magic of video editing, Rich put it all together into the little program you can see all month. It covers a few of the many highlights of the February sky for both Northern and Southern Hemisphere stargazers. Of course, there’s a LOT more than I can cover in five minutes or so — but that’s the beauty of stargazing: there’s always something for you to discover on your own!

As long as I’m sending you to other Web sites for stargazing help, here are a few (of the many that I know about):

Sky and Telescope — the home page for Sky and Telescope Magazine.

Astronomy — the home page for Astronomy Magazine.

SkyWatcher’s Odyssey — a blog dedicated to sky sights, written by a stargazer in Texas named Dan Riding.
Check ’em out and do a little stargazing (weather permitting!).