Comet C/2007 W1 (Boattini)

Comet C/2007 W1 (Boattini) has brightened enough to see with binoculars and, if you're lucky, with naked eyes.

Comet C/2007 W1 (Boattini) continues to brighten faster than predicted, and has now reached about 6th magnitude. That's bright enough that you can see it without optical aid under excellent conditions, and it should be a relatively easy target through binoculars. The comet currently lies low in the southwestern sky after darkness falls, but it won't stay there long. It can be seen among the background stars of the southern constellation Pyxis the Compass. It lies at about the same altitude at the bright star Procyon in Canis Minor.

The Comet's best view is until the 1st week of June from Southern Hemisphere. Afterwards it will be lost in the glow of the Sun until it emerges in the 1st week of July. Then the Northern Hemisphere population will also have a good look at the comet (hopefully without optical aid). These couple of evenings the sky is not that clear here in Johannesburg, to go comet hunting, but I'm looking for an opportunity to see it soon.

Read more about this comet on:

Astronomy.com - Look quick to spy a bright comet & Comet Boattini: Barely Visible Now, Bright in July?

World Wide Telescope: New Astronomy Software from Microsoft

WorldWide Telescope (WWT)

Software giant Microsoft is now reaching for the stars with the release of its WorldWide Telescope (WorldWideTelescope.org)

* Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images?

* Or do you want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth?

WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes to enable seamless exploration of the universe.

Features:

- Exploring the Sky: Within WorldWide Telescope, you can explore deeply into the sky discovering stars, planets, constellations and rich panoramas. You navigate the same way for each — select a view, select the imagery and explore the images in the field of view.

- Zoom and Pan: WorldWide Telescope supports zooming and panning on objects in the sky. As you move through the sky, thumbnails of celestial objects in that constellation display in the navigation pane below the field of view.

- Orientation in the Sky: WorldWide Telescope provides two mechanisms to orient you in the sky. The first is the Sky Ball which represents the field of view with a flat yellow plane. The plane expands and contracts as you zoom into and out of the sky. The other mechanism is the Constellation Overview which represents the size of the field of view in relation to the constellation boundary. You also can orient yourself by selecting your city as the default sky view.

- Collections: WorldWide Telescope includes a rich set of collections of the deep sky objects including constellations, the solar system, images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space Telescope, Sky Surveys, the Messier Catalog, named stars and more.

- Guided tours: A number of expert-created guided tours of the sky, objects in space and collections of celestial objects are built into WorldWide Telescope. Users can create their own tours and share them with others. Slide-based tours are similar to a PowerPoint slide show. Creating tours can be as simple as showing images of deep sky objects or places on the Earth that you have visited. Or it can be as immersive as combining images with art and music to illustrate and enhance your tour. You also can add common license art and music to complement your tour.

- Research the Sky: Using the Finder Scope, it is easy to identify and research objects in the deep sky. The Finder Scope opens a wealth of data and image resources to use when researching the deep sky objects in Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data (SIMBAD), Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), Wikipedia, NASA and the Internet.

Read more on: Microsoft Launches Astronomy Software

The first step is to download and install WWT itself from WorldWideTelescope.org. It took me 30 min to download the software, but of course it depends on the speed of the Internet.

For those who enjoyed the night sky, WorldWide Telescope is one more option (remember Google Sky was launched 2 months ago?) to explore the Universe.

Celebrating Astronomy Day in Pictures

Celebrate the Astronomy Day, 10th of May by looking at these and more pictures @

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Picture 1: Galaxies Collide in NGC 3256; Picture 2: Shaping NGC 6188; Picture 3: The Tarantula Zone

Google Sky @ your Browser

It is Saturday morning and I have been reading "Sky and Telescope newsletter" on my e-mail, when I saw the announcement of the new Google development - Google Sky. I click on the link and the sky came directly in front of me. For those like me, who love watching the evening sky & what is out there, I'm providing some additional information on this new web tool.

Google has unveiled a browser version of its Google Sky application on Thursday, 13th March for people who don't want to download the Google Earth software. Prior, to access "Sky", users needed to download and install the "Google Earth" application - the Web-based mapping software. "Google Sky" was introduced as an additional feature to "Google Earth" (version 4.2) in August last year.
This browser version of Google Sky allows you to zoom in and out the celestial bodies, search for planets, constelations and galaxies and view the sky through infrared, x-ray, ultraviolet, and microwave views. There are also galleries of some of the best pictures from the Hubble telescope and others. You can also listen to podcasts and look at historical maps of the sky.

Enjoy the exciting sky world through Google.

http://www.google.com/sky/