Clark Planetarium See Whats Out There

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How Far Can You See?

September 2nd, 2010

The most distant object observable with the unaided eye is visible in our current night time sky. It is the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, M31. There are many ways to find this object. I prefer to use the constellation Cassiopeia.

Cassiopeia was the Queen of Ethiopia. She is commonly depicted as a lady on a throne, upside down for part of the year. From our latitude (northern Utah), the constellation is circumpolar, meaning that it never sets. It is close enough to the north celestial pole that, if we could hide the Sun, we would see Cassiopeia simply circling the north star over a 24-hour period.

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Venus: It’s Just a Phase it’s Going Through

August 24th, 2010

Grab your party hats and telescopes, it’s time to celebrate 400 years of observational heliocentrism.

You have a good opportunity this week to observe Venus and see the dynamic geometry of the solar system in action.

While you are looking at Venus, appearing like a diminutive first-quarter moon in your telescope’s eyepiece, consider this:

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Tweet up offers VIP views of ATK ground test

August 23rd, 2010

Last year several Clark Planetarium staff members had the opportunity to watch the DM-1 test firing of the Ares solid rocket motor in Promontory, Utah. I was there, watching the visual representation of what 3.6 million pounds of thrust (22 million horsepower) looks like and it was pretty incredible.

Next Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010,  at 9:05 a.m. (MDT), ATK and NASA will host a horizontal ground test firing of the Ares DM-2 (Ares Development Motor – 2) five-segment solid rocket motor…and you’re invited!

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