Earth and Sky shows Tonight’s Sky at http://www.earthsky.org/skywatching/

You can see Mars in the night sky, as it passes by the constellation Orion and the Pleiades star cluster, which is also called the Seven Sisters because only seven major magnitude stars can be seen with the naked eye. There’s actually hundreds of stars in the cluster, that can be seen with a telescope and time exposure images.

Also of interest, I’ve updated my blogroll to include this great site, along with a few others that share this blog’s focus on astronomy and space exploration.
Astronomy Magazine: www.astronomy.com
Earth & Sky: www.earthsky.org
NASA: www.nasa.gov
Sky & Telescope: www.skyandtelescope.com
Space.com

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There’s a new DVD coming out on March 15th, that documents NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon. It sounds interesting because it combines archived film footage with recent interviews of the astronauts, giving the project a historical view with the human element and emotional impact.

The DVD, titled In the Shadow of the Moon, is a film directed by Ron Howard that was just released last year.   DVD link to amazon.com

Here’s the official product description from amazon.com:
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON is an intimate epic, which vividly communicates the daring and the danger, the pride and the passion, of this extraordinary era in American history. Between 1968 and 1972, the world watched in awe each time an American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon. Only 12 American men walked upon it’s surface and they remain the only human beings to have stood on another world.

Now for the first, and very possibly the last time, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON combines archival material from the original NASA film footage, much of it never before seen, with interviews with the surviving astronauts, including Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and 13), Dave Scott (Apollo 9 and 15), John Young (Apollo 10 and 16), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and 17), Mike Collins (Apollo 11), Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), Alan Bean (Apollo 12), Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17). The astronauts emerge as eloquent, witty, emotional and very human.

Look for an upcoming total lunar eclipse on Wednesday evening, February 20th, with maximum eclipse times at 10:26 pm EST, 9:26 pm CST, 8:26 pm MST, and 7:26 pm PST. The partial phase starts a couple of hours earlier, so plan ahead to find a good spot to watch from.

The moon will turn red at totality and will easily be visible from across the United States, Europe and Western Africa. Start and finish times can be found at science.nasa.gov/

There’s some noteworthy anniversaries happening this week, and they touch on two of my favorite subjects, music and space exploration.

February 4th: NASA beams The Beatles “Across the Universe” towards Polaris, the North Star. It’s the first time a song has been transmitted into deep space by NASA’s Deep Space Network. This marks the 50th anniversary of NASA, as well as The Beatles, who both started in 1958.

See the video on anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net.
45 Years Ago: The Deep Space Network is founded.
50 Years Ago: Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite is launched into orbit.
Read the full story on nasa.gov

Space shuttle Atlantis launched into orbit today carrying the Columbus science laboratory, which is Europe’s primary contribution to the International Space Station.

Full story at nasa.gov

Launch Video at anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net

This article on news.yahoo.com recently caught my attention and I thought it good enough to share with you.

NASA’s eyes grow dark with outer solar system missions
by Will Dunham from Reuters Washington Wed Feb 6:
NASA officials at the U.S. space agency are planning an ambitious unmanned journey to the outer solar system, to better understand some mysterious forms of energy in the cosmos.

It would be great to see another unmanned space mission like Voyager, that traveled beyond our solar system to explore deep space. Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to explore this bubble called the heliosphere, when it crossed into it’s outer layer (the heliosheath) in December 2004, and encountered the shock wave that surrounds our solar system, the solar wind termination.  Then Voyager 2 followed behind on August 30, 2007, at only 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles closer to the sun.

Read more at http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov