In April 2008 we asked our readers the question “Do Yuo Believe in..”

- God

- Evolutionary Theory

- Both

- Neither

It is time to see the results. Oh yes, I should have done it already two weeks ago, but life is life. It has been so busy lately that my blogging has suffered very much. I hope I will get my work done and by that release more time for blogging. Just stay tuned, I will write more how-to articles on amateur astronomy.

So, the results of our April poll? The results are pretty much what I expected. 38% of the people who answered this question believe in God, while 17% believe in evolutionary theory. 37% of those who answered believe in both, God and evolutionary theory. Only 8% believe neither of these.

Thank you for giving your opinion in this poll! Check out also our March poll results. In March 2008 we asked if people are afraid of comet strikes.

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As you most probably know, yesterday was the international mother’s day. As I am an amateur photographer, I shot lots of pictures of my wife and our kids during the day. It was a very nice and warm day here in Finland, so we spent a lot of time outside. Although the light was almost too bright, it is great to shoot pictures on a sunny day.

Later in the evening I was looking for information on New York sightseeing. We have been thinking of a holiday trip to NYC, so I wanted to know what to do in the Big Apple. While reading various websites I discovered PhotoAcute Studio review which is a promotional website for leading edge tool for improving digital photographing. As I am interested in astrography as well, I decided to post few lines about this website. You might find it useful as well.

So, PhotoAcute Studio processes sets of photographs taken in continuous mode to produce high-resolution, low-noise pictures. It increases image resolution, removes noise without losing image details, corrects image geometry and chromatic aberrations and expands the dynamic range. Shortly said, it makes your average pictures superb.

PhotoAcute Studio review website claims that they can provide an amazing image quality without changing my gear. Sounds good, because I use an old Canon EOS 5 and I’ve been thinking of purchasing a new camera. What’s best, it works even with mobile phone cameras!

Check out the examples on PhotoAcute website. At least in those pictures is seems to work well. PhotoAcute is available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms. What really makes me happy is the low price of this useful piece of software. For example for mobile phones it costs only $19. PhotoAcute Studio is available for free in trial mode. I just downloaded and will give it a try.

Photo source.

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NASA’s Terra satellite has captured images of the disaster in Burma. Cyclone Nargis terrorized the cities and villages of Burma just few days ago. The images taken by the satellite show how the cyclone caused serious floods in southern Burma.

The first picture was taken one day before the disaster. In the picture one can see flora with green color, land with brown color and clouds with white and light-blue color. In the second picture one can see the increased amounts of water with blue and black colors. For example Rangoon city (four million inhabitants) is almost totally surrounded by water.

NASA’s satellite images show how several cities of 100.000-500.000 inhabitants are covered by water. According to United Nations, the worst area is Irrawaddy’s peninsula where 5000 square meters of land is covered by water.

You can read more about NASA’s satellite images in NASA’s website.

Text and image sources [Avaruus.Fi via NASA]

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Alpha Centauri is the nearest star from our Sun and it is located in constellation Centaurus. In fact Alpha Centauri is not one big star, but a formation of three stars located close to each other. The brightest one of those three stars is Rigil Centaurus, many times called just Rigil Cent. Alpha Centauri can only be seen in southern hemisphere and it is the third brightest star in the sky.

If you happen to live in southern hemisphere and would like to observe Alpha Centauri, use the following tips and the pictures above for finding Alpha Centauri. The pictures above are from a simulation in which observer is located in Sydney, Australia.

- wait until it is midnight because at that time it is dark enough and Alpha Centauri is positioned high in the sky

- look at the first picture and stand your face towards South. With the help of the picture, locate the two well-known constellations, namely Triangulum Australe and Crux.

- next locate constellation Centaurus which is located in between and above those two mentioned constellations.

- look at the second picture and imagine a line crossing Triangulum Australe and a diagonal from the cross of Crux. By using those two lines you should easily be able to locate the very bright star Alpha Centauri

You found it? Great! Isn’t it bright? Alpha Centauri is a nice star to observe. Unfortunately I cannot see it here in northern hemisphere, but if I ever fly to Sydney or other cities in southern hemisphere, I’ll shoot some pictures of Alpha Centauri.

Please tell us if this tip was helpful or not by leaving a comment. Do you have a better method to locate Alpha Centauri? You are free to write it to comments. I would be glad to hear other methods to find Alpha Centauri.

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So, we are already in May and having a very nice and warm spring. What’s up with the nightsky this month? There will be only few more dark nights before the summer in northern hemisphere, especially in the northern side. Here in Helsinki the Sun will go below -12 degrees 9th of May. After that there will be no more dark nights before autumn. Above 70 degrees northern latitude the Sun will not set anymore after May 16th.

Although summer nights are bright here in Nordic countries, the brightest stars can still be observed. Examples of those observable bright stars are Regulus, Arcturus and Spica. Also Vega, Deneb and Altair can be seen well. Although it might be a bit more difficult to find Antares, it can be observed in early morning.

Which planets can be observed in May 2008? There are four observable planets in the nightsky in May 2008. Mercury, Mars and Saturn can be observed in early night, while Jupiter is best observed in early morning. Mercury can be seen in late evening in South-West. Mars is located in constellation Gemini in early May, but will move to Cancer in May 5th. It is not easy to locate Mars in May because the planet is not very bright at this time. Saturn is located in constellation Leo and close to Regulus. Saturn can be seen between West and South-West directions. Jupiter is located in constellation Sagittarius and can be seen in South-East direction in early morning. Jupiter is pretty easy to find in May because it is very bright.

How about the Moon? Is there going to be anything interesting happening with the compagnion of the Earth? Below is a list of the most interesting upcoming events with the Moon in May 2008.

May 6th: Located close to Aldebaran, Mercury and Pleiades
May 10th-11th: Located close to Castor, Pollux and Mars
May 12th-13th: Located close to Regulus and Saturn
May 16th-17th: Located close to Spica
May 20th: Full moon at 5:11 am (Helsinki, Finland)
May 20th-21st: Located close to Antares
May 24th-25th: Located close to Jupiter

This is the nightsky situation in May 2008. Although nights here in northern side of the northern hemisphere are not anymore as dark as in mid winter, many interesting stars and planets can still be observed in May. Enjoy the warm spring and have great stargazing nights!

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Did you know that Hubble space telescope has been operating already 18 years? To celebrate this anniversary NASA has published 59 new pictures of colliding galaxies. This is the biggest single set of Hubble pictures ever published.

Collisions of galaxies is just normal evolution, but it all happens in such a long time period and within such a big scale that seeing it happen in a picture is absolutely stunning. A typical collision of galaxies lasts hundreds of millions of years, so it is far from Hollywood movies

A beginning collision can be detected from a material bridge between galaxies which is caused by gravitational forces of the galaxies. The shock waves of collisions form great amounts of new stars that increase the brightness of the galaxies.

Billions of years ago, as the universe was young, collisions of galaxies was more common. Galaxies collided more often due to lack of space in the young and small universe.

Read more about the pictures of colliding galaxies in NASA’s website.

Here is a bigger picture of the gallery.

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Hey there, this is a reminder. Our April free giveaway campaign is soon going to be over. In April we are giving away a book called “A Briefer History of Time” by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Would you like to win that book for yourself? Would you like to win something else next month? HomeboyAstronomy.Com gives away valuable stuff every month. Subscribe to our weekly email newsletter and you might win something every month!

How to subscribe to our newsletter? Just read instructions on our giveaway page. It’s very easy.

See how we gave away a great DVD value pack in February.

Do you believe in God or don’t you believe? Do you believe in evolutionary theory or do you believe in both, God and the theory? See our current poll on right sidebar. Please leave your opinion to that poll. We will publish the results in the end of this month.

Although nights here in Finland are going to be bright on summer time, HomeboyAstronomy.Com is not going to be quiet. We will write astronomy articles on summer time as well, but not necessarily every day. Stay with HomeboyAstronomy.Com and get valuable tips for your skywatching and stargazing!

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Virgin Galactic, the first commercial space flight company, is soon ready to take the first people to space. Virgin Galactic will use their special-purpose aircrafts to provide this unforgettable trip outside our atmosphere. The company has spent years and millions of dollars to develop this spacecraft. Soon ordinary people can experience the feeling of flying to space.

So what is Virgin Galactic anyways? Wikipedia says:

Virgin Galactic is a company within Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, which plans to offer sub-orbital spaceflights and, in the future, orbital spaceflights to the paying public. Virgin Galactic’s mission is to fly passengers who are not professional astronauts to an altitude slightly over 100 kilometers (62 mi) and allow them to experience weightlessness for up to 6 minutes. Each seat will be sold for US$200,000. According to Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn, the company had sold nearly 200 seats as of November 2007. The first flight is planned for 2009.

Virgin Galactic is aiming to be the first space tourism company specializing in the provision of sub-orbital flights to the public. While orbital flights can be made by budding space tourists through the Russian Space Agency, there are presently no operational craft capable of sub-orbital flight aside from SpaceShipOne. However, EADS is currently working on a competing sub-orbital craft. Given that SpaceShipOne was designed for a very specific task, Virgin Galactic has commissioned Burt Rutan to design a newer, bigger and better version of his suborbital craft, called SpaceShipTwo. It is this eight seater craft, seating 2 pilots and 6 passengers, which will be used by Virgin Galactic passengers.

Check out the video below. It gives you more information on Virgin Galactic, commercial spaceflights, SpaceShipTwo aircraft as well as Sir Richard Branson, the “father” of Virgin Group.
Virgin Galactic, the first commercial space flight company, is soon ready to take the first people to space. Virgin Galactic will use their special-purpose aircrafts to provide this unforgettable trip outside our atmosphere. The company has spent years and millions of dollars to develop this spacecraft. Soon ordinary people can experience the feeling of flying to space.

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It was a close call. The returning cosmonaut and two astronauts almost died during their landing because Sojuz capsule almost burned in the atmosphere. The crew was very lucky because the situation was actually very dangerous. The results could have been much worse.

Last weekend the Sojuz capsule was bringing back cosmonauts Juri Malatshenko, American Peggy Whitson and South-Korean Yi So Yeon. They had spent over half a year in the International Space Station (ISS).

For some reason the capsule entered the atmosphere in wrong angle. The heath protecting shield was in the backside of the capsule, and in fact the vehicle was coming down without heath protection. The capsule set on fire and finally landed far away from the planned landing site.

The most scared was South-Korean Yi So Yeon who saw the flames around the capsule. “I thought we will die burning, but because other stayed calm, I tried to look like everything is just fine“, says Yi So Yeon.

Virgin Galactic is soon going to start their space flight. According to Daily Mail, the first test flights will be done on next summer. They will take one just married couple to spend two hours in the altitude of 112 kilometers. The chosen couple will first get three-days training. According to Virgin Galactic, two couples have booked to a flight so far. One couple will get married in the space while the other couple will focus on their “celestial honeymoon”.

Well, I hope Virgin Galactic will not have as serious problems as the recently landed Sojuz capsule. I am very interested to see how the space flights will go. I am a bit afraid that Virgin Galactic will face serious problems just because they are the pioneers and pioneers usually have to solve the most difficult problems. Anyhow, it is great to see people flying to space. May be I will fly one day as well. I guess it would be a staggering experience.

Would you like to fly to space with Virgin Galactic?

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Last week we wrote that a German school boy had found an error in NASA’s Apophis calculations and come up with much higher impact probability. German Nico Marquardt calculated Apophis impact probability to 1/450 while NASA estimated it to be 1/45.000. Current understanding is that Nico Marquardt’s calculation is not valid and this whole story has no scientific evidence.

News agency AFP had found this staggering news from German local newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten. According to the news, German school boy Nico Marquardt came up with more exact calculations of Apophis asteroid impact in 2029 and 2036. In his calculations Nico says that if Apophis hits one of our satellites, the probability of direct impact to Earth in 2036 would jump up to 1/450.

Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten claims that NASA has agreed with the new results, but this does not make sense because it is not NASA only calculating the probability but a world-wide team of mathematicians.

The reason why the calculations of the German student make no sense is that Apophis will pass far away from our satellite belt. Therefore it is not probable that the direction of Apophis will change due to satellite collision. For sure the amount of space debris will increase by 2029, but not so much that a collision with Apophis would be probable.

Few days ago NASA released an official denial of this news. You can read it in NASA’s website.

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