This artist’s concept shows us the first time Deep Impact encountered a comet – Tempel 1 in July 2005.

Deep Impact, now in an extended mission called EPOXI, have flown to Comet Hartley 2, today at 02:00 / 2pm.

See Mission News :- EXPOXI Mission.

Click here for NASA to host live news.

How does a rocket work?
If a balloon is filled with air and then released, it speeds along – a rocket works in the same way but it’s a mixture of hydrogen gas and oxygen fuel explodes all the time to push hot gas out of the back of the rocket and propelling it along up into a space.

How do spacecraft land back on Earth safely?
Spacecraft such as Apollo and Soyuz both land in the sea  when they come back to Earth – however, the Space Shuttle is specially designed to land like a normal gliding plane on a runway.

Can spacecraft be re-used?
Until 1981, all spacecraft  were only used once but new types of spacecraft like the American Space Shuttle and the Russian Buran Shuttle can be used over and over again.

Did you know?
A spacecraft has to travel at 25,000 mph to escape Earth’s atmosphere.

Plossls
Your telescope may have come with one or two of these. Perfectly acceptable for planets and the moon, with great contrast. Not a bad all-around eyepiece. But the eye relief is not very good at short focal lengths, so beware if you must wear glasses at the telescope. Plossls are made by dozens of manufacturers. Orion, Meade, Celestron, and Televue are all recommended. You’ll find good short-focal length Plossls for less than £70.00.

Orthoscopics
An older design, but still works well. Orthos have better eye relief than Plossls, but a narrower field of view. So these are best for the moon and planets only. Around £60.00 each.

Radians
A premium eyepiece from Televue, Radians give long eye relief, great contrast, and a fairly wide field. Expensive… around £180.00 0r more.

Last night it was an ever-better condition skies that I was observed some showpieces – Deep Sky Objects in the constellation of Perseus (The Hero).

Perseus lies in the Milky Way, therefore is rich typical Milky Way objects as Open Clusters and Diffuse Nebulae.

Justifiably famous Perseus Double Cluster (NGC869 & NGC884) – one of the nearest to us, Solar System to binocular.

Ian Brock with his wife, from Par, Cornwall that I showed them to target at the Double Cluster that you will notice a “Spider” as pattern asterism with an Ethos 13mm eyepiece looking at the showpiece – NGC 884. They said,” it is a splendid sight – amazing! ”

You should try look for any pattern asterisms when the skies are not good conditions instead.

Also the Jupiter’s moon – Io, it was disappeared into the shadow of Jupiter before it went behind the giant gas planet and reappeared after two & half hours, the Great Red Spot was there but it was not clear to be seen.

Some of our deaf members (British Deaf Astronomical Association) will arrive here later today – I am sure we will catch up with lots of talk about what we have observed during the summertime.

Anyway last night till this morning 3am stayed up to observe some Open & Globular Clusters. Also looked at North American Nebula in Cygnus (NGC7000 – The Swan). It really does not look like North America! But my imagination was enough that you can extend the resemblance as far as Costa Rica, Panama & Florida. It was easily located with the dark adapted – about East-SouthEast from unmistakeable the brilliant white Star – Deneb.

So I see them – faint, extremely large, best seen in a rich-field scope with a low-power wide-field eyepiece & of course the Nebula Filter – OIII, but you can used other filter – UHC.

The Gaia Satellite from the UK to be launched in 2012 that the new mission to create the largest and most precise three dimensional (3D) chart of our Galaxy by providing unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars in our Galaxy and throughout the Local Group.

Click here for movie showing by ESA (European Space Agency) the deployment of Gaia’s solar array and sunshield.

The main structure of the spacecraft was moved this week from the UK factory at EADS Astrium, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where it has been for a year to undergo tests on its propulsion system then transported by the road to Ampac-ISP at Aylesbury for checks on its cold gas micro-thrusters then after that work is complete – it will move to Astrium at Toulouse in France for final preparations, it will be due for launch in 2012 by a rocket – Soyuz Rocket from the new Sinamary Spaceport in French Guiana, northeast of South America.

Computers have made a major impact on every walk of life, and astronomy is no exception. Professional scientists use them extensively to process and analyze data, and to control telescopes that may be far away that all researcher’s work greatly when they are studying such things as how stars or planets form.

Digital photographs, as described in the previous section, can be transformed into high-quality images thanks to computer techniques.

This is cutting-edge astronomy for dedicated amateurs but computers are helping stargazing beginners, too with a variety of programs that allow you to produce a planetarium on your computer desktop or mobile phone like iphone. These can accurately recreate the night sky for any date and time and from any location on Earth.

That’s how I learn more and more about astronomy that all down to my computer that I was purchased a software called Starry Night that I still use it today, but you can get a free software which creates a realistic view of the sky on your own home computer, I feel you should download the Stellarium for a beginner’s guide to the sky.

Stellarium, it is an amazing piece of software that is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

Free download :-  Stellarium (Night Sky Map)

If you are being to consider planing to buy a telescope for your first time observation, I do recommend that you should start with binocular because the mostly binoculars are not expensive but also it is portable, so you need to use with the night sky by a binocular before purchasing a telescope for more details or more faint objects to be seen.

Binocular – because for the starter, there are hundreds of beautiful sights in the night sky, binoculars have designations such from as 8 x 40, where 8 is the magnification and 40 is the diameter of each object lens in millimetres that “two small telescope” joined by a hinge to give a low-magnification view.

My first binocular was 10 x 50 to give me learn more for star hopping to target for the objects then second binocular 11×80 was purchased that give me more wide-view plus only one extra magnification, because it give me easy to find the objects by star hopping through that wide-view.  Both binoculars that I still to use them today since my first observation night sky was in August 2000. Now I have got a telescope – Meade Lightbridge 16 inch for giving me to view more details and some faint objects too. (Mostly faint objects won’t be seen through by binoculars.)