Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Friday, August 3rd.  The sun rises at 6:31.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 32 minutes, setting at 9:04.   The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 9:34 this evening.

The Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers observatory will be open this evening starting at 9 p.m. For views of the heavens including the planet Saturn and the moon.  There’s some bright deep sky objects also visible.  Mars though up is a very tiny planet and is quite distant.  What can’t be seen in a telescope will be visible shortly.  Monday at 1:31 a.m. The Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory will land in Gale Crater.  If the landing is successful the new rover will be bringing a new arsenal of scientific instruments to probe the martian past.  From our vantage point on the earth Mars looks like a tiny yellowish orange disk.  We will be back to two operational rovers joining the three operational satellites now orbiting Mars.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Here’s a movie from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of Curiosity’s entry descent and landing called Seven Minutes of Terror: http://youtu.be/ISmWAyQxqqs