Wanderers gather

screen capture by jacob

Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune accompany the Sun as it sets, captured this evening soon after sunset using Google Sky Map.

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ADDENDUM

Below is the (more or less) same view as above using Stellarium on a desktop PC.

screen capture by jacob

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Oh my god... it’s full of stars!

A free app for Android phones has the edge on anything Apple’s iPhone™ may have to offer.

This morning I see that the Sun rises accompanied by Mercury, Neptune and Uranus.

It must be so, because it’s on my phone!

I don’t even need to look out the window... in fact, what’s actually out there is irrelevant.

• Sky Map at Android Market Google Play
• Sky Map project page at Google+

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UPDATE

Sunset in Melbourne, 16 March 2012
(Screen capture by Jacob)

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Interstellar war imminent

It’s astonishing, but there’s not been a murmur of protest over this:

The Beatles song Across The Universe will be the first song to be beamed directly into space, NASA has announced.

And yet, surely Led Zeppelin fans would far rather that Stairway to Heaven was beamed into the interstellar reaches to represent our species. And don’t James Blunt fans have anything to say?

But not surprisingly...

The Beatle Sir Paul McCartney said it was an “amazing” achievement and John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, has called it the “beginning of a new age”.

Well, yes... It could ignite an interstellar war if the lyrics of the song are mistranslated. We could look up one day to find a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at a single word of command from the leader of the Vl’Hurgs, as he challenges we Earthlings to take back what we said about his mother.

NASA will this week beam the song via its Deep Space Network (that’s the one the Republicans keep threatening to make pay its own way with commercial advertisements). What’s more...

At exactly the same time, fans across the world are being asked to play Across The Universe in a bid to “create a harmonic convergence” around planet earth and throughout the universe.

They stop short of claiming such a “harmonic convergence” will solve greenhouse and ring in universal peace and understanding.

But, hey, this could just work! Please start churning out the Beatles’ Across the Universe on your CD players and iPods immediately, because it’s a happening thing.

Get with the vibe and do it now!!!

Elsewhere, Caz over at avatar briefs gives us an idea of the odds of Across the Universe reaching the ears (or whatever auditory sense organs may obtain) of advanced aliens.

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astronomically useful

Geoscience Australia has a range of online tools that just about anyone, sometime, somewhere, should find very useful.

From their Astronomical Information webpage, you can:

• Compute your own Sunrise/Sunset times
• Compute your own Moonrise/Moonset times
• Compute your own Sun and Moon Azimuth & Elevation
• Browse Moon phase data
• Browse Planet data for the major Australian cities

UPDATE: A colleague referred me to another useful reference page, this one offering metric conversion tables and ready reckoners.

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