Where:

Frosty Drew Observatory

When:

Friday August 16, 2013 at 6:00 p.m.

Cost:

Free! Donations Appreciated.

Sky conditions are looking fairly good for this evening, so the observatory will be open. However, before we do, please join us in the Drew Sky Theatre at 7:00 P.M. for a showing of the award-winning movie "The City Dark," a wonderful introduction to light pollution and its effects on the environment, animals, and humans. Made for all ages, this 80-minute show will end right when darkness will come to Frosty Drew, just in time for us to capture the planet Saturn. Plus, the Moon, which is just a tad beyond 1st quarter, will also be a beautiful site through the 16-inch telescope.

Out on the lawn, we will have two passes of the International Space Station, at 9:03 and 10:39 P.M. The first will be brighter and will last longer, but we will watch for them both. Also, early in the evening, at 8:35, Iridium Satellite #68 will show itself high in the east-southeast.

Also, we'd like to let you know that there are two very bright Iridium flares occurring tomorrow night, the first high in the east-southeast at 8:29 P.M., and the second a third of the way above the east-northeast at 10:04; then just one minute later, a second satellite will appear in almost the same region of the sky. It won't be as bright, but still should be easy to see. If the sky is clear Saturday for you, let us know if you do see these very bright satellites from your yard.

Hopefully, many of you did see a fair number of Perseid meteors last weekend. Although Friday was clouded out, we did have a fair number of you come and share our dark skies. If you did see a lot of them, and can't wait to witness another major shower, mark your calendars for the middle of December, when the Geminids will appear. Many observers feel these winter shooting stars are even more plentiful than the Perseids, so be ready to dress very warmly for the next major reason to spend a lot of time outside.

On this day in 1797, Comet C/1797 P1, also named Bouvard-Herschel, came within 8 million miles of the Earth. I'm mentioning this because we do have a comet that, although we're still not sure how it will appear in our skies, or how close it will come to the Earth, we are hoping that Comet ISON does pass around the Sun and be a fair spectacle in the next few months. We'll keep you informed as to its path and hopeful observing.

Frosty Drew Observatory is privileged to be within the town of Charlestown, having the darkest skies in Rhode Island. Please help us to keep our skies as dark as possible.

-Francine Jackson

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Tonight's weather looks to be mostly clear with a nice summer night's breeze. The 75% waxing gibbous moon will set at 1:51 a.m. offering us some great views of the lunar surface. We will open this afternoon at 6:00 with live views of the sun and the solar photosphere until sunset at which time we will open the observatory telescopes to the sky with Venus, Saturn, Neptune, and the Moon on our primary target list. We plan to close a little earlier than usual tonight, around 11:00 p.m., but will be back on our regular schedule of super late night observing next week. If deep sky objects are your thing, tonight's moon will surely keep them out of view.

Again the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover has brought us an out-of-world experience of huge proportions. On August 1st, Curiosity snapped a series of photos of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, eclipsing each other as scene from the surface of Mars. This is a view that we would never have on Earth as we only have one natural satellite, The Moon.

Not only is this super cool, but it also gives us a view of what Phobos and Deimos would look like when viewed from the surface of Mars. Where we are used to seeing a beautiful, well rounded, moon with a bunny (maybe?); on Mars the edges get a bit rougher. Here is a comparison photo of what Mars' moons would look like when viewed naked eye from Mars' surface vs what The Moon (Luna) looks like to us. So awesome!

Today starting at 10:39 a.m. EDT, Russian cosmonauts will begin a 6.5 hour long spacewalk on the International Space Station (ISS). This goal of this spacewalk is to prepare for the future addition of the Russian “Nauka” Multipurpose Laboratory Module as well as installing an experimental panel that will later support a small optical telescope. The spacewalk will be streamed live for all of us gravitationally bound citizens to watch and dream big!

Keep looking up, amazing things are happening!

-Scott MacNeill