I recently found this great website for seeing different events that happen in the night sky. It's called spaceweather.com . You can sign up for their spaceweather alerts and get e-mails when different events are going to happen. Yesterday there was an alert that the plane Venus was going to be 1 degree from the moon so if you went outside before bedtime last night to look at the moon, Venus would be very close to it.
I think it will be a great way to start seeing things in the sky and noticing things more. There is a map that shows where the auroras most likely are happening for those of us living in the northern regions. There is a lot more general information about solar flares, meteor showers and all those kinds of things.
One other interesting feature, especially if you were doing a unit study on the night sky, is they have a spaceweather Phone feature you can pay to have. Basically for $5 or $7 a month (depending on whether you want the aurora/solar flare type events or general night sky events), they will call you on your phone when events are happening or about to happen. If they know in advance, they will call you in advance and play a message about what type of event will be happening. If something starts to happen in the middle of the night, you can set it up to either get calls then or not with these unpredictable events. The general night sky events include alerting you when the space station is passing across the sky in your area, meteor showers, planetary alignments etc...
I'm excited to become more aware of the things going on in the sky and share these with my kids!
Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. |
