APOD: The Moon Passing Over Jupiter

This picture looks really neat. Too bad I could not get up and see it, but I do think that I woke up that day at 5:45pm and saw the waning crescent moon in my window which faces east. But anyway you can see that the moon is not spherical and has a lot of bumpy craters (neato): just look at the shadow and light of the sun. North of the moon is the bright big Jupiter, which the moon passed over and covered with its shadow. The image was taken right after the moon occulted the planet, and you can see two of its Galilean satellites, Ganymede closer to Jupiter and Callisto farther away. I think it is really cool to see Jupiter as the huge "star" in the sky!
For more information, see: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041209.html

More Stargazing

For the last couple of nights I have been looking at the sky. Notibly the Summer Triangle drifts toward the east. Between the time I may first go out, around 8:00pm, and 10:00pm, the Summer Triangle gets so low in the horizon that I can only see Deneb. The Northern Cross is still visible, as is Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Perseus, Andromeda, Orion, Capella in Auriga, Gemini, Taurus and its Pleiades and Hyades and Aldebaran, Fomalhaut, and the square of Pegasus right overhead. There are a lot of new winter constellations popping up with cool bright blue stars but I don't know them yet. Also, I noticed that there is one star to the northwest of Fomalhaut that I can't identify. I think it might be Mira in Cepheus. More Stagazing to Come!

APOD: Dione

Dione, discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1684 (who may have first spoted the Red Spot of Jupiter--my project--too!), is an icy and rocky moon. It is the most dense moon after the big Titan, and has craters and plains. The bright streaks across the planet run across Dione's craters. The spacecraft Cassini, who photographed the picture in October, may help astronomers unravel the mystery of the bright streaks. So far, astronomers have figured out that the bright streaks formed after the crater. See: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041201.html