Lunar Eclipse and Super Saturn

Earlier this year in February, there was a lunar eclipse so I thought I would bust out the family telescope while there was good seeing. (That's astronomy terms for "a good night to view the sky when there is no wind, cosmic dust or such in the way.") A total lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes through Earth's shadow. It will appear as though the Earth's shadow is "eating" the moon. The redness is caused by sunlight being refracted off Earth's atmosphere and onto the moon. The next total lunar eclipse will not happen until 2010 and the next total solar eclipse will not happen until 2017! Since I had the telescope out I thought I would check out Saturn. The little dot to the left of the moon is Saturn. Saturn is mostly made up of gases, 98% helium and hydrogen. At the core, the pressure is so intense that it turns the gaseous hydrogen into liquid metallic hydrogen! Woah! Saturn is like Jupiter in that it has many storms and high winds created from the rising heat off the planet. Through the telescope you can see the rings, some strips on the planet and a couple of it's six medium sized moons. Saturn's rings were discovered in 1610 by Galileo. They stretch a whopping 100,000 miles across, but are only a 100ft thick! The rings are mostly made of frozen chunks of ice, talk about a slushy! There are several moons that are considered "shepherd moons" because their gravity influences the shape of the rings. Of course my little camera won't pick that stuff out. In fact it didn't even want to focus on the planet as you can tell. I still enjoyed looking at it though!

Aye-Ayes gone awry

So in honor of my sister Kathryn, who did not think awry was a word, I am doing a special blog on a certain animal. The aye-aye.
This animal is well, a little strange looking. It's real name is Daubentonia madagascariensis. As you might guess from it's species, its a native of Madagascar. It is the largest nocturnal primate. Being a primate it has posable thumbs, but another interesting trademark of the aye-aye is it's exceptionally long middle finger. It's middle finger can be up to three times longer than the rest of its fingers! Wow! Talk about flipping someone off!
The aye-aye is considered to be an omnivore. It chews holes in wood and uses it's elongated fingers to dig out any grubs. Eww!
Native villagers believe seeing an aye-aye is a symbol of death mostly because of how scary it looks. To counteract this bad omen one must kill the aye aye. This, along with habitat destruction, has led to the animal being added to the endagered species list.

Homemade Compass

Someone at work today told about how to make your own compass. I found this to be very interesting since I have recently been learning about Earth's magnetic field. So I thought I would give it a try.

Supplies:
needle
water
magnet

Simply magnetize the needle by rubbing it against the magnet. Carefully place the needle on top of the water. (You can use a cup of water, or as Mac told me at work, find a calm spot in a brook.) The needle will automatically point north.
It took me a few tries to get the needle to stay on top of the water with out sinking. I eventually used a pair of tweezers. I know you can't tell just from the picture that the needle is in fact pointing north, but I know from looking outside that it is pointing north. I could not readily find my compass, so for future attempts I will make sure and have a compass to verify the needle.