I'm going to be headed up to the Black Rock Desert on Thursday, June 22. I'll be up there for one night, and coming back Friday morning. The purpose of the trip is to enjoy the utterly black night sky, with an almost perfectly flat horizon. I'll be taking my dad's telescope, and my roommate's bringing his camera, and that's about it.
Mars and Saturn might be visible just after sunset, Jupiter will be up for much of the night, there will be almost no moon, and the Milky Way should be amazing. By 2 or 3 in the morning, the Andromeda galaxy should be visible in the scope. I'm also going to hunt (probably in vain) for a couple other galaxies and such.
I currently have one spare seat (the other in the back needs to be folded down for the telescope). I'd welcome anyone else that wants to join us - there will be no fires, and no (or very little) light, because the point is to enjoy the night sky. But I hear it's a good idea to go up with multiple vehicles, just in case. Should the weather not cooperate, the trip won't happen (clouds and wind being very poor companions to stargazing).
Let me know if you're interested. There are no facilities - no water, no toilets, no cell phone coverage. This is a no-impact area, so everything you bring in, you take out.
4 comments:
Funny you mention this. The last few nights I've been looking into the sky wondering if the bright stars I see are planets. Venus I'm pretty sure of. But I see this twinkling red thing and I swear it's Mars. I was going to ask you about it.
Depending on the time of the evening, there are two distinct possibilities. Mars is near Saturn (maybe 1 or 2 times the diameter of the full moon), both not far behind the sun and setting by 10 or 11.
The other is a bright star, Antares (easy to remember as anti-Ares, so named for its similarity to Mars). It rises later than Mars and Saturn at the moment, and stays further south in the sky, being on that side of the ecliptic. It is due south at about midnight right now.
Jupiter is also due south, at about 10:00. It is more yellowish than Mars, but doesn;t look like a star.
Do I have a vast, encyclopedic knowlede of the sky? No. I just know where to look.
It must have been Antares.
There was something else I saw that I thought might have been Jupiter, but it was almost directly overhead and certainly looked like a bright star.
I thought I knew the answer, but looked online to be sure. Straight up is probably Arcturas. The best way to tell is to find the Big Dipper, and pretend that the handle is a fishing pole. If it roughly leads you to that star, that's it. Yellowish, bright, and seemingly at the tip of an ice cream cone. Boötes, the Herder.
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