Some real great star gazing is possible over the next week or so with a real good chance to see the International Space Station and Space Shuttle.  There is a small chance to see a shooting star.

One of the things I love to do when there is a meteor shower is to get the binoculars and sit out in the backyard with all the lights off and focus on the stars. The binoculars are a great substitute for a telescope and they never disappoint revealing so many stars that escape the naked eye.

Typically I'll do this in August when the Perseid meteor shower appears. It's warmer than getting out to look for meteors in November when the Leonid meteor shower darts the night sky. You can still brave the cold and catch a few meteors up until Nov. 20 but the peak was Nov.17.

But over the next couple of weeks at specific times there will be a vivid light that stands out of the night sky. And for me this trumps standing in the cold to view meteors.  It's the International Space Station with the Space Shuttle docked to it.  Typically it makes very brief appearances on the horizon but you can catch 3-4 minute windows where it can be seen moving across the sky.

Here are some viewing times for Boise, Idaho from the NASA website.

The shuttle will be moving from the NW horizon towards the NE horizon with the dates below.

Wednesday Nov. 17  6:20 PM MST - 6:23 PM MST

Thursday Nov 19 06:43 PM MST - 6:45 PM MST

Friday Nov 20 07:05 PM MST - 7:06 PM MST

Saturday Nov 21 05:52 PM MST - 5:56 PM MST

Sunday  Nov 22 06:14 PM MST - 6:18 PM MST

Monday Nov 23 06:36 PM MST - 6:39 PM MST

The shuttle will move from the WNW horizon overhead to the SSW horizon Tuesday.

Tuesday Nov 24 06:59 PM MST - 7:01 PM MST

The shuttle will move from the NW horizon to the ESE horizon Wednesday.

Wednesday Nov 25 05:45 PM MST - 5:49 PM MST

The shuttle will move from the WNW horizon to the SE horizon Thursday.

Thursday  Nov 26 06:07 PM MST - 6:12 PM MST

The shuttle will move from the SW horizon to the S horizon Friday.

Friday  Nov 27 06:32 PM MST - 6:34 PM MST

The shuttle will move from the SSW horizon to the S horizon Sunday.

Sunday  Nov 29 05:42 PM MST - 5:43 PM MST

Of course all of this will depend on the weather and the sky coverage.  Enjoy.

 

 

ASADENA, Calif. (AP) — The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday.

The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, the laboratory said.

JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn't reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it.

Although the ring dust is very cold — minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit — it shines with thermal radiation.

No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said.

The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles.

The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it, JPL said.

Before the discovery Saturn was known to have seven main rings named A through E and several faint unnamed rings.

A paper on the discovery was to be published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

"This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.

Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material.

The ring also may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side.

The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.

"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."

The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by JPL in Pasadena. Spitzer is 66 million miles from Earth in orbit around the sun.