kai

I haven't seen much on wildtexas about astronomy, aside from how bright 'that planet' (mercury, i think it was) was last year. But because camping goes hand in hand with the stars, I'll pass on this neat website I found via an express-news online article.

this is the express-news article: Skywatch: San Antonio gets a rare treat this week here's what all the excitement is about: " Canopus never is visible from most of the northern United States. Lucky San Antonio viewers can find the night sky's second-brightest star in the constellation Carina." The article isn't really an article- its more of a conglomeration of facts tossed in together with abandon, but its all interesting to look at.

the webpage I went to as a result of that article was www.heavens-above.com its pretty cool- you can plug in your coordinates, or look up the coordinates for your city, and heavens-above gives you more information about astronomy for where you are at than I can fathom (and this is after taking 2 astronomy courses in college- of course, they were after lunch, and the lights were off...). The website supplies you with sky charts, sun & moon data, other planet data, satellite information, etc... more information than I'll ever need, I am sure. The customized whole sky chart is what I find really appealing- it has all sorts of possibilities for travel information (the next time I go to hawaii, or washington state, or boston I'll be able to print out a sky chart before I go ).

Is anyone out there in wildtexas land also interested in astronomy? Once again, this is one of those things I was mildly interested in at one time, but let slip by years ago (and have since forgotten so much about...). Perhaps its time to dig out that old textbook.