6 June 2006

Hugh J Grant Circle, Bronx, NY

Observing Location
Observational Period	2200-2215 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	The forecast was for clouds and possible showers. When I got home there was a thin stripe of cloud above the Moon and denser clouds on the southern horizon. As I observed the low clouds moved closer until both Sirius and Jupiter were obscured. The air was a little cool and a little moist. There was no perceptible wind. On walking up from the subway I noted that most of the cars had water drops on them and the cracks in the pavement were wet so it had rained here sometime before my arrival.   Transparency Poor Seeing
Instruments	Naked-eye observing - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Moon, Spica & Jupiter alignment
Constellation	Vir
Category	Lunar, Planet
Time	20060606.2200 EDT
Comments	I thought tonight was the night when the Moon would be between Jupiter and Spic but I found that it was to the east of Spica. There was about a thumb-width of distance (~2°) between the Moon and Spica and about a fist-width of distance (~10°) between Spica and Jupiter. [3.15° and 16.67° center to center, respectively] The bulge of the terminator into the dark of the moon was more pronounced tonight. The same mare were noted as last night.

I was browsing through Blackberry books yesterday and saw a listing for a freeware program called MicroSky. Today I downloaded it and installed it on both my Blackberry and my Palm (it is a Java program so it works on both platforms, you just need to get the right installer).

The program needs an internet connection as you have to log into a server that generates sky charts on the fly. I can't use it on the blackberry since it is not connected to a service provider, but I did play a bit with it on the Palm tonight.

The graphics are a bit crude but usable. It would be really nice to have free Wi-Fi in the park and to have this capability. Kin plans to try it out on his Blackberry which is on a corporate data plan. The UI isn't as friendly on the Palm as that of Planetarium and I imagine it is even less so in the Blackberry where you don't have a touch screen.

There is a new version of the program due out sometime this month. It will likely have a facility for saving offline star charts.