[home] [Ephemerides index]

Constellations Andromeda Cancer (Crab) Cassiopeia Hercules Leo (lion) Lyra (Lyre) Orion Perseus Ursa Major (big dipper) Pegasus (Winged Horse)

April 2006 and beyond... This page is a work in progress. Please, Let me know if you feel it does not display properly on your browser. Legal The information on this site is believed to be correct, if you find any error, please send a message to the webmaster. We will do our best to fix any error in a timely manner. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no waranty of any kind, the information on this site is accurate, neither correct. To send us a message. Future events or events in progress. Events listed below, are mostly of general or scientific interest. They are events people can often be part of them. March 29th Total solar eclipse (Exploratorium). Eclipse site from ESA (European Space Agency). More info about the Sun (ESA). April 2nd DST Daylight Saving Time, start at 02:00 am. (Wikipedia). DST Daylight Saving Time (California Energy Commission). DST Daylight Saving Time (webexhibits.org) April 7th ASOD Meeting ASOD (Astronomy Society of the Desert, Coachella Valley, California) meeting date. April 8th RAS Meeting RAS (Riverside Astronomy Society, Riverside California) meeting date. April 12th World party for space! 45 years ago, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly into space. They are parties in a few cities around the world to celebrate the event. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle April 21st RAS Star Party RAS (Riverside Astronomy Society, Riverside California) Star Party. April 22nd Earth day at the Living Desert, 47-900 Portola Avenue, Palm Desert, CA 92260. Earth dayAudubon Center at Debs Park, 4700 North Griffin Ave., Los Angeles. April 22nd ASOD Star party ASOD (Astronomy Society of the Desert, Coachella Valley, California), society star party. April 23-30th National Dark-sky Week (NDSW) is an event, during which people are encouraged to turn out their unnecessary outdoor lights in order to temporarily reduce light pollution. Wikipedia La Semana Nacional del Cielo Oscuro (SNCO) es un acontecimiento, durante la cual se anima a los estadounidenses a apagar las luces fuera de la casa que no son necesarias para seguridad para reducir la polución lumínica. April 25-28th Space Weather Week 2006, Millennium Hotel, Boulder, CO. May 6th International Astronomy Day. Astronomy dayAstronomical League. Astronomy dayAstronomy magazine. Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. Chabot Space and Science CenterOakland, California. Dorrance Planetarium at the Arizona Science Center, Phoenix, Arizona. Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center, San Diego, California, with the San Diego Astronomy Group. May 20-21 Jet Propulsion Laboratory Open House. Saturday and Sunday, from 9am to 5pm both days. Directions and Maps. Wikipedia Jet Propulsion Laboratory. May 26-29 (Memorial Weekend) RTMC Astronomy Expo 2006. RTMC, stand for Riverside Telescope Maker Conference. This yealry event is held in Big Bear California. June 17-24 Grand Canyon Star Party 2006 Grand Canyon Star Party 2006. Solar system Object: 1st quarter: full moon: latest quarter: new moon: Earth Moon 5th 13th 20th 27th Date: what time: Events: Where: good chances of observation with: Comments: Naked eyes Bino culars Tele scopes 1 evening Moon in Pleiades West x x . . 1 night Saturn rings have the biggest opening angle for the whole year, about -20° Saturn will seems stationary in the beginning of the month. Then it will move East toward the Beehive cluster (constellation of Cancer). Saturn observation campaign (JPL). Viewing Saturn in 2006 West . x x It will last a few days 3 . Moon and Mars are less than 3° apart . x x . . 5 . Comet (C/2006 A1) Pojmanski is fading away. It is now a Magnitude 9.7 (about 6.5 in early March). It can be seen in the vicinity of Cassiopeia, at R.A. 22 50.09 Decl +52° 09.9 Comet (C/2006 A1) PojmanskiObservable Comets (Harvard University). . . . x . 6 evening Moon and Saturn are about 4° apart South-West x x . . 8 night Moon near Regulus in Leo . x x . . 8 night Nice view of Jupiter and a few of its satellites . . . x . 13 night Moon in Virgo, near Spica . x x . . 14 night Moon near Jupiter . x x . . 17 early morning Moon near Antares in scorpio South x x . . 18 early morning Uranus almost hide behind Venus East South-East . . x . 22 night Shooting stars near Lyra (Lyrides) . x . . . 24 early morning Nice view of the moon and Venus East South-East x . . . 25 . Comet (C/2006 A1) Pojmanski is now a Magnitude 11.3 . It can be seen in the vicinity of Cassiopeia (North of it), at R.A. 00 15.05 Decl +60° 59.3 . . . x . 25 night Saturn will form an "East quadrature" with the Sun. It will be at an angle of 90° east of the sun, viewed from Earth. . . x x . 29 evening Moon in Pleiades West North-West x x . . Today in history. Some interesting events. Historical events, as well as future historical events, such as spacecrafts journey. Date: History event(s): 2006 March 31 VOYAGER 1 Signal Received (slashdot.org) by AMSAT-DL (a group of radio amateurs). Voyager 1 is currently at roughly 98 astronomical unit (1AU/UA = more or less distance Earth-Sun). Or about 14.7 billion km (about 9.1 billon miles). It was launched on September 5 1977. Data take currently about 13.6 hours to reach us. Voyager 1 and 2 were designed to fully use "gravity assisted orbbit" to save on fuel. It was a new concept at that time, to use planet gravity as an accelerator. Image an details of the connection (in German). Voyager and the Deep Space Network. Voyager 1 Saturn Encounter. Voyager 1, 25 years of history (University of California Riverside). Voyager history on Wikipedia. 1960 April 1 Weather satellite Tiros 1 was launched (Television Infrared Observation Satellite). Tiros 1, was the first true weather satellite. It was operational for "only" 78 days. Which was a nice improvement compared to Vangard 2 (Wikipedia), which was operational for "only" 19 days (launched February 17, 1959). Tiros 1 on Wikipedia. Program Tiros on Wikipedia. First TV image of Earth from space (Wikipedia). JPL Mission and Spacecraft Library. Tiros program (Florida State University, meteorology department). Lot of information about Tiros 1. NASA Tiros Missions. Some Technical data about Tiros 01. 1976 April 1 Apple computers is 30 years old. 2006 April 11 Venus Express ESA’s spacecraft will arrive at its destination: planet Venus, by performing an Orbit Insertion manoeuvre, using its main engine for about 51 minutes. The spacecraft journey was about five-month and about 400-million-kilometre, which started by lift-off on November 9 2005. ESA’s Venus Express, index of events. The mission center is located in Darmstadt, Germany, which communicate with the craft using the Cebreros (Spain) deep space antenna (35m diameter). this is the first major mission using this new antenna. Cebreros webcam. 2006 April 11 Planetary Society Opens Optical SETI Telescope (www.seds.org). Projects SETI Optical Telescope (planetary.org). Telescope information. Mirror's curvature is f/2.5 (focal length 4.4m, Diameter 1.8m). Mirror has a spherical, rather than parabolic curvature, which makes the images near the edge of the field of view a bit fuzzy. The optical SETI telescope will not be used to take beautiful pictures but to detect brief flashes of light, this does not matter. Spherical mirrors are cheaper, simpler and most of the time, faster to make. The telescope will scan the Milky Way galaxy, visible in the northern hemisphere. 1961 April 12 Soviet cosmonaut Youri Gagarine, was the first known person, to orbit our planet with a spaceship. 1981 April 12 The first Nasa space shuttle took off, with two astronauts on board. It was the Columbia shuttle and did 28 missions before breaking apart at time of re-entry into Earth atmosphere. This last sad event was on 2003 february 1st. 1990 April 29 Hubble space telescope was launched. It has an orbit circular of about 593km (slightly less than 370 miles). Its inclination is 28.5° and has an orbital period between 96 and 97 minutes. Its weight is about 11110kg (about 24440 lbs). Hubble, (ESA, science and Technology). The latest and original of this document is available at the following address: http://www.linuxastronomy.org/lias/lias/hp/sky_data/hp/2006/200604_sky_events.html This page as well as the whole site is Copyright© , 2001 - 2006 Eugene Clement

Our Sponsors People at Alembic have helped us in many ways, at first as sponsors, then as volunteers as well. They are so dedicated, I would not be surprised if their guitars run linux. ;-) Martin Roesh founder of SourceFire and Creator of one of the most famous intrusion detection software "Snort" has proposed to host our web site. Since that day we do not experiment any more downtime on the webserver. Space Astronomy picture of the day. NASA Hubble space telescope, picture of the day (image and video). ESA European Space Agency. Picture from the OSEI (Operational Significant Event Imagery). These images usually represent environment change events. Earth motion for Coachella Valley. seismology for Coachella Valley (Southern California). Light pollution prevention start at home. The night sky in the World. Satellite monitoring of the artificial night sky brightness and the stellar visibility. IDAInternational Dark-Sky Association. Auroral Activity (Northern Hemisphere). NOAA Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) continually monitor the power flux carried by the protons and electrons that produce aurora in the atmosphere. Auroral Activity Southern Hemisphere. GOES Solar X-ray Imager, provide full-disk images of the Sun once a minute in the 0.6-6 nm range with 5 arcsec pixels. It allow real-time prediction of solar-terrestrial disturbances. more info. SOHO Pick of the Week. Courtesy of SOHO/EIT and SOHO/LASCO consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. latest SOHO images171. latest SOHO images284. CosmicopiaMore about Cosmic Rays (educational). UCAR Windows to the Universe is a learning system covering the Earth and Space sciences for use by the general public.