Twinkle, Twinkle…
by John Weckerle
On a clear night, especially one when there are not too many lights shining and the four guys in Moriarty with the annoying flashlights are on vacation, New Mexico’s real central valley and the East West Mountains have a wonderful, naked-eye view of the cosmos. We here at New Mexico Central love it, and it’s always a treat to pass on an opportunity for another way to enjoy it.
Today, we’re providing a link to Heavens Above’s excellent resource, which helps us try and identify the constellations above us. The search begins with their Select Town(s) page. Enter the name of the nearest town (just the town, don’t include the state), and pick the correct town from the list. Under Astronomy, select “Whole Sky Chart.” The resulting page shows the default star chart, and users can input date/time to get the right configuration for whatever time they wish. Options include “Black on white” or “Coloured” for the star chart; if you print it to take outside at night, “Black on white” is your logical choice. “Size,” in pixels, specifies the size of the square image output by the system. We ramped it up to 4000, with virtually no delay – although the image does look a bit choppy at that size.
We obtained the address for this resource from a handout received at Wildlife West Nature Park’s latest Star Party. These are fun and informative events that allow visitors to take advantage of other people’s (including, but not limited to, those in the Albuquerque Astronomical Society) rather expensive telescopes to get a closer look at places far, far away.
In other celestial news, it looks as if the next ten days will provide us some good opportunities to see the International Space Station as it passes overhead. Check the latest listings for Moriarty, the only municipality in our area with its own ISS sighting schedule! We can neither confirm nor deny rumors that the ISS will be trailing a banner with the words “NM-Central.com Rules!” big enough to be visible with binoculars.1
1Although, to be perfectly honest, this appears to be one of the most patently idiotic rumors we’ve run across yet.