Share the Night Sky - Broadcast on KPOO

During the recent Bay Area Science Festival, I had the privilege of sharing the night sky with DJ Marilynn and the listeners of KPOO during a special broadcast on Thursday evening October 22nd. Our hour-long broadcast features many different topics: 

• How to find a good spot for stargazing in the city, and how to prepare for looking at the night sky. 
• How to find planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Mars this fall and winter, along with the constellation Sagittarius. 
• How to find the Summer Triangle and connect it to the Milky Way. 
• How the view of the sky changes when viewing from different places around the world. 
• How to understand the motion of the constellations in the northern sky, featuring Cassiopeia and the North Star. 
• How to enjoy a view of Orion the Hunter later in the evening. 
• How to further your experience with the night sky. 

Click here to listen to the broadcast. 

Image courtesy of KPOO-FM.

Get Involved: Astronomy Lectures, Star Parties and Telescope Workshops

There are many ways to get involved with astronomy here in San Francisco, or wherever you may be. A great resource for finding events in your neighborhood is the Night Sky Network, a resource chock-full of information from astronomy clubs across the United States. Just enter your location and you can find out what is happening in your area.

Here in San Francisco, the California Academy of Sciences has an astronomy lecture series called the Benjamin Dean Lecture Series. The next lecture in the series will be on Monday December 7th. The topic is Saturn, presented by Dr. Carolyn Porco, the director of the imaging team for the Cassini spacecraft that is orbiting Saturn. You can get tickets for the December 7th Dean Lecture online.

The San Francisco Amateur Astronomers (SFAA) have their monthly meeting at the Randall Museum on December 17th and their "City Star Party" on December 26th at Land's End in San Francisco. The City Star Party on the 26th (weather permitting) will be a great chance to bring out new holiday gifts such as telescopes and binoculars and learn to use them alongside amateur astronomers. The SFAA and the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers have free telescope workshops before each City Star Party but please RSVP to them at clinic@sfsidewalkastronomers.org if you plan to come on December 26th.

I hope to see you at an upcoming event!

Saturn has no rings!

If you could get a good telescopic view of Saturn today, you would find that it has no rings. At least that would appear to be the case for several days as another rare phenomenon takes place in the Solar System. Of all of the beautiful objects in the sky, Saturn is one of those wonderful heavenly targets that can be seen from cities and country, from spacecraft and flying telescopes, and always impresses the viewer. The second largest planet in the Solar System, Saturn has the largest and most distinctive ring system (Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have ring systems). The detailed photographs sent back to Earth from the Voyager and Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope have given us stunning perspectives into the depth and intricacies of the Saturnian ring system.

Saturn's ring system is very thin (less than 50 feet thick), and when viewed 'edge-on' from Earth it is virtually invisible. Saturn, like Earth, has a tilt in its rotation such that it has seasons as it moves around the Sun in its 30-year orbit. Consequently, every 15 years we see the ring system from the side and for a short while it disappears from view altogether. Although the ring system is very thin, it is extremely wide -- about 170,000 miles across, making the system even bigger than Jupiter!

Saturn is currently moving its way westward across the constellation Leo the Lion and is not visible due to its proximity to the Sun in the morning sky. It will gradually emerge from the glare of the dawn and be visible before sunrise. By the end of the year it will be rising in the east just before midnight and by next spring will be a gorgeous evening object with its ring system back in view. Until then, enjoy Jupiter and its fascinating moon system -- except when they aren't there!