Astronomy Down Under

Up there and down here

22 Aug at 0:09 by Wilson

As I write this, space shuttle Endeavour is preparing to return to Earth, one day earlier than expected because of the approach of hurricane Dean. The worry is not so much about bad weather in Florida interfering with the actual landing, but with bad weather in Texas forcing the evacuation of the mission control buildings in Houston. I’m pretty sure everyone will be following the landing closely because of the aforementioned problems with the damaged heat shielding tiles, which NASA chose not to fix (as the process of fixing them could actually make the problem worse). NASA TV will have live coverage of the landing on the web in a few hours.

In unrelated news, the weather forecast for next Monday Tuesday in Melbourne calls for a mostly sunny day with a top temperature close to 20° (and even above 20, depending on your suburb). Great weather for the lunar eclipse of that night; remember that you can join the Astronomical Society of Victoria on the roof of the Victoria Gardens shopping centre, in Richmond, starting from 6:30pm: a gold coin pays for admission, and you get to use the viewing equipment that will be there to look at the moon and the rest of the night sky (I have no idea how to get on the roof, though; my guess is that one would use the garage lifts). But, of course, the only equipment you need to see the eclipse are your own eyes.

And, should you want to go out on the previous night, Mars and the red star Aldebaran will be very close together, presenting a nice show on the night sky to anyone who’s up and looking east around 3am; the bright stars Betelgeuse, Rigel and Sirius will not be far off, adding to the show. Mars will put on an even better show in December, at the time of its closest approach to Earth, but we can talk more about that then.