Astronomy Night

Tonight was the last CfA Monthly Observatory Night of the season. Marcia Bartusiak gave a talk based on her new book, The Day We Found the Universe about the various other people involved that led up to Hubble's discovery of galaxies and an expanding universe. It was a little too much history and not enough science for me, but she's a good speaker and it was interesting.

The host, while introducing her, mentioned her previous book, Archives of the Universe: 100 Discoveries That Transformed Our Understanding of the Cosmos. which I coincidently had bought as part of a sale at Border's but haven't read yet. Now I'm looking forward to doing so.

Afterwards there was some very nice observing on the roof. I saw four different viewings of Saturn and Titan, which never gets old. We also saw, M13, the Ring Nebula, the double double, and another double star that I'm not sure which it was but one star was clearly blue and another clearly white, it might have been Sheliak.

We also saw some satellite go by and later got a really good view of the International Space Station going by. Heavens Above is a good site for tracking satellites, but I'm thinking of getting GoSatWatch for the iPhone.