New year of 2007 is almost here and you can be sure that there will be plenty of astronomical phenomenon to wonder at in the coming year. Whether you use a telescope, binoculars or even the naked eye, many celestial objects are worth to gaze at. To help you explore the night sky there is an excellent book, that is prepared just for the year 2007. It title is What’s Up 2007 - 365 Days of Skywatching and was written by Tammy Plotner. The best part about this book is that it is available for free download. A perfect gift for any amateur astronomer, beginner or experienced one. If you like the book, you can also buy it in printed form and by doing so also support the author. He deserves it. Thanks to Wil Wheaton for the post with a pointer to this book.

Tags: astronomy, space, science, books, education

Up until today our Solar system had 9 planets. From this day forward it only has 8. No, one of them didn’t get destroyed by some Death star or something. What happened was that stronomers at International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly 2006 redefined the term planet. So the new definition is this:

A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

The consequence of this is that Pluto doesn’t qualify as a planet any more and now belongs to a new group called dwarf planets, which are defined as (pay attention to points (c) and (d)):

A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

And then we have a third group:

All other objects except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar-System Bodies.

So there you have it. Some books will have to be rewritten, people will have to learn some new facts, and celestial bodies still don’t care about any of this

Tags: astronomy, space, planet, planets, solar system, iau, science

To get the notification about the latest news from European Space Agency I’ve been subscribed to several of their mailing lists. I was extremely happy a couple of days ago when I found out that ESA has added RSS feeds to their web portal. So now I can finally use my favourite feed reader, Akregator, to follow news more conveniently. If you are using Firefox web browser, you can also subscribe to news, simply by adding the feed link as a new live bookmark. Besides feeds for top news, there are also feeds available for specific programmes/projects and for national news. For more information see the list of RSS feeds from ESA.

Tags: esa, european space agency, rss, feed, feeds, news, space, astronautics

In just a short few minutes European astronaut Thomas Reiter from ESA will start his EVA outside of International Space Station. EVA stands for Extra-vehicular activity, or if you like it, a spacewalk. Together with a fellow astronaut Jeff Williams from NASA, Thomas will be out in cold space for six and a half hours. Among other things they will install some equipment to prepare ISS for future assembly work. Editors from the Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, will be posting about this adventure in the EVA blog.

Update: Some photos from the spacewalk are now available in the NASA’s International Space Station gallery.

Tags: iss, international space station, esa, nasa, astronautics, space

After almost a year of no flights and two delays of launch because of bad weather Space Shuttle is finally flying again. As part of mission STS-121 the Space Shuttle Discovery was successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. The main mission objectives are to test new safety and repair techniques introduced after the Columbia disaster. There are also more then 2 tons of supplies that will be delivered to International Space Station (ISS). On board is ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany who will join Expedition 13 on the ISS and is expected to stay there for six months. Good luck to all the crew and the mission in general. I hope that from now on all goes well and that other missions will continue as planned. Modules for ISS assembly are already waiting to do their job.

Tags: space, astronautics, space shuttle, iss, nasa, esa

Nekaj trenutkov nazaj sem končal tudi s posodobitvijo prevoda programa KStars. To je odličen astronomski program, namizni planetarij, ki je namenjen predvsem ljubiteljskim začetnikom v astronomiji. Zelo prav pa lahko pride tudi pri učenju astronomije v šolah. Zaslonski posnetek poslovenjenega KStars si lahko ogledate tukajle.

English summary:
A few moments ago I finished updating the Slovenian translation of KStars, a great astronomy application. Screenshot of KStars with Slovenian user interface is available here.