Fireworks and/or Dark nebulae!

For those of you escaping the urban jungle this holiday weekend, pack a pair of binoculars and enjoy the glorious Milky Way after the sight of fireworks is over. A pretty march of the planets is underway too. Mars and Saturn are inching closer to one another (from out vantage point on Earth, that is) with Venus not too far away - all grouped in the western sky at sunset. The sky looked exactly like the images in this month's What's Up podcast at our recent desert outing. In fact, nearly all the astrophotos in July's podcast were taken on that June 12-13 night by Mojo from our dark sky astronomy location. Out next outing should be July 10. If you are interested in seeing an amazing summer sky through big and small telescopes, let me know. We haven't quite decided if and where we'll go, as the desert heats up in the summer, even at night! I have a new webpage for my What's Up podcast and occasional blog entries on our NASA Solar System Exploration website. Here's the new News and Events webpage, and from here you can get to this month's podcast and more. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm And join me and take a stroll through the new Solar System web content. My group at work has been developing, writing and coding it for a year now! There is great kids content! I double dog dare you to try these puzzles! http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/kids/puzzles.cfm YouTube version of the podcast is easier for some people so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JPLnews#g/u We'll keep you in the loop with regard to celestial happenings, and we both have some work travel this month. I get to go to Washington DC and be Galileo with my Galilean telescope replica. :-) -- Jane Houston Jones Monrovia, CA What's Up July 2010? Dark Nebulae! http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm What's Up Podcast on YouTube: http://is.gd/c3r1i Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhjones http://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn http://twitter.com/otastro Blog: http://jane.whiteoaks.com/