Winter Solstice

NASA is so sure the world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, they've already released a video about the day after. View "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY_Gc1bF8ds

Instead on December 21st, researchers will use NASA's Cassini spacecraft to observe a rare transit of Venus visible from the planet Saturn:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/20dec_transitofvenus/

Sir Patrick Moore

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde

British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89, his friends and colleagues have said.

He "passed away peacefully at 12:25 this afternoon" at his home in Selsey, West Sussex, they said in a statement.

Sir Patrick presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever.

He wrote dozens of books on astronomy and his research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes.

Described by one of his close friends as "fearlessly eccentric", Sir Patrick was notable for his habit of wearing a monocle on screen and his idiosyncratic style.

"Through his regular monthly programmes he was telling us what to look for and what was out there and that was a real inspiration”

Maggie Aderin-Pocock Space scientist

Sir Patrick presented the first edition of The Sky at Night on 24 April 1957. He last appeared in an episode broadcast on Monday

Black Marble

Scientists unveiled today an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.

It has been assembled from a series of cloud-free images acquired by one of the most capable satellites in the sky today - the Suomi spacecraft.

The platform was launched by the US last year, principally to deliver critical meteorological data.
The Black Marble dataset shows off one of Suomi's key innovations: the low-light sensitivity of its VIIRS instrument.

VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) can discern a range of phenomena of interest to weather forecasters - cloud, snow, fog, etc - even when the satellite is on the dark side of the Earth.
Most of the time, all VIIRS needs to do its work is some illumination from the Moon. But if that is not available, the instrument can still detect features down below just from the nocturnal glow of the atmosphere itself.
And, of course, just as this Black Marble rendition demonstrates, VIIRS is also very good at capturing the lights of our cities.