Neptune is at opposition on August 15 and is easily located from August through October. Neptune, along with the other three gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, all have diameters over 48,000 kilometres. (The other five “small” planets, including Earth, have diameters under 13,000.) Of Neptune’s known moons, only two are visible from Earth.

Uranus, along with moons Titania and Oberon, are visible at a good mag. 6 from September to early December in Aquarius. Read more …

   When is a “planet” not a planet, but an object in some other category? It depends on with which group you are associated.

The IAU defined a “Planet” as having to : 1) Orbit a sun; 2) Have enough mass to draw itself into a round shape; and 3) Have enough mass to clear out its orbit through impact or scattering.
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    Some of us are fortunate in that we have access to conferences where we can go to hear programs on the latest research. Some of us are not as fortunate and have to rely on printed material for our information. Now we can go to a web site and download lectures by researchers presenting their findings. The downloads are free MPG files, and the topics are current. The lectures are more of a non-technical nature, so don’t think that they will be hard to understand.
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The Imaging Centre is offering a DMK 21AU04.AS Astrophotography Monochrome Camera as a prize for those who can answer a straightforward question about the camera - a quick look at its specification sheet should help! You can enter at the Imaging Centre Competition website.

  For those of you who like to observe the many features on the Moon, how many of you have seen the “X”? As you know the appearance of lunar features change as the Moon cycles through the phases. The “X” is one of those features, much like the Straight Wall, that is visible only during certain times.
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   “We have water,” were the words of William Boynton of the University of Arizona when he announced findings from laboratory tests conducted my NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander. The water was originally in the form of water-ice, which has been detected previously, but has never before been examined in the different phases from the same sample.
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   The Perseid Meteor Shower peaks on Tuesday morning (12 Aug), but it is already giving us a show. Last night (01/02 Aug) a couple of us were out looking at the sky when we saw several of the bright streaks in different areas of the sky. They were long tailed, but we did not see lingering vapor trails. The air was extremely humid, and only the brighter meteors could be seen.

If you are interested in viewing the shower, even if you do not see the peak, you should go out any night for the next two weeks and look up. Of course you will see many more if you observe when the Moon is not up, but those we saw last night would still have been seen with a Full Moon.

NASA has released an update on information for the solar eclipse that will occur later this week. For the link, go to the NASA site.

 Maybe you have not seen it yet, but some video of the Moon passing between Earth and the spacecraft Deep Impact gives us an extremely good view of what our planet and moon looks like from space.  I could re-write the information, but you can go to the site yourself and take a look.

Cool NASA Video.

   The Dog Days of Summer are upon those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. At least that’s what they call this time if year where I live in mid latitude of North America. Blistering heat (both sides of 100F), high humidity (60-100 relative), and random thunderstorms have been around all month, and weather predictions are for them to stick around for some time to come.

Why are these days called Dog Days of Summer?
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