Austin Planetarium

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Ask An Astronomy Question

Astronomy News - January 2012

Hello, and welcome to the monthly astronomy news page!

Of course the main goal of the Austin Planetarium is fund raising to make possible building a planetarium in Austin. But we thought it would be nice to also start offering some astronomy information. After all, a planetarium is all about the fun of astronomy and astronomy education.

This page offers some limited information about astronomical events for the Austin area this month. Sections that will always be included on this page are:

An almanac showing when the sun sets or rises today, when the Moon sets and rises and the current Moon phase.
A calendar depicting moon phases and (if applicable) other events such as meteor showers, star parties, etc.
The visibility of the ISS (International Space Station) from Austin
Each planet visible to the naked eye with some information, whether it is for observing purposes or current missions to these planets.
A special events section, where a more detailed description is given of astronomical events for this month.
A Did You Know? section where we discuss each month a different astronomy or related topic.

If you have any astronomy related questions, this is your chance to Ask the Board! The board of the Austin Planetarium consists of amateur astronomers and an astronomer/lecturer from a major Planetarium in Europe. We will be more than happy to answer your astronomy questions.

Almanac

Sun and Moon
Sunrise	Sunset
7:20 am	6:10 pm
Moonrise	Moonset
3:16 pm	4:39 am
Current Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous
Lunar Illumination: 91.34%

Next Full Moon on February 7, 2012, 3:55 pm

An almanac, like the famous Farmers' Almanac, is an annual publication with all kinds of data on weather or on the calendar. Astronomical almanacs show data like the rise and set times of the Sun and Moon for a given date. With the advent of computers and the internet, we can now generate data on the fly and display them in a variety of useful formats. So, instead of data for an entire year, often an astronomical almanac shows data for one day. This is exactly what we're showing in the table to the right: The Austin Planetarium Alamanac!

The data displayed is for right now and updates automatically. Of course the Sun and Moon rise and set times do not change during the course of a day, but the illumination changes continuously. That may surprise you, but in 28 days, the Moon goes from New (zero percent illumination), to Full (100%) and back to new again. So in 14 days, we cover 100%, or about 7% per day. Divided by 24 hours in the day, the illumination changes 0.30% each hour! Additionally we are also showing a picture of what the illumination actually looks like, and we're also displaying when the next Lunar event takes place.

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This page is maintained and developed by Torvald Hessel and Steve Rung.