Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, September 17th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 7:49, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:25. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 10:49 this evening.

A new Space Telescope has been launched last August 30th, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is has the same diameter mirror as the Hubble Space Telescope, a leftover from the reconnaissance satellites which looked at the Earth and like the Hubble would be looking into space. It is shorter, and can take images 100 times the area that are covered by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope cameras. It works in the infrared though not as much of the infrared as James Webb. It is classed as a survey instrument taking in a large area whereas Hubble and James Webb concentrate on a very small area of the sky for each image. The Roman telescope, its short name, will join the telescopes at the Earth Sun L2 Lagrangian point.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum