May 22nd and 23rd will be providing some excellent opportunities for seeing the International Space Station from Europe and North America. The details of each sighting vary from place to place, but it is safe to say that the two days and nights will be offering some of the best sightings for a long time!

Tonight: A fat gibbous Moon will be near the star Spica in Virgo the Maiden. Spica can always be found by following the handle of the Big Dipper in an arc to the star Arcturus in Bootes the Herdsman. From Arcturus, continue the arc and you will spike to the…

I keep forgetting to plug the Carnival of Space. Well number 54 is out and is full of loads of stuff. I haven’t read it all myself yet, but figured I’d post now lest I forget.

Tonight: Mercury is visible low in the WNW evening sky. It”s 46° to the lower right of Mars and will stay that distance from Mars until May 22nd. However, Mercury will fade noticeably over the next week. Today, Mercury is +0.5 magnitude. On the 22nd, Mercury will have dimmed to…

From Gizmodo: If all goes well (or very wrong) Earth may receive a message from aliens from the Altair solar system as early as 2015. The message could be a reply to a message sent by two drunk astronomers in 1983. This is a funny article and it makes me…

Tonight: Saturn, Mars and Mercury span 75° across the evening sky. Look for Saturn high in the southwest near the star Regulus. Mars is in the west to the left of the stars Castor and Pollux, and Mercury is low in the WNW.

Link to Skynotes

Microsoft has released its highly anticipated Worldwide Telescope software, which can be used by astronomers and non-astronomers alike to explore the heavens with a desktop client akin to Google Earth. read more | digg story

Tonight: Mercury is at its greatest elongation from the Sun, The swift moving planet is now 22° east of the Sun. Look for Mercury in the WNW an hour after sunset. Mercury is now at +0.3 magnitude. Over the next week or so, Mercury will dim quickly as it moves…

Using the microwave oven in your kitchen, you can measure a fundamental property of the universe: the speed of light. All you need are some tasty marshmallows and a ruler.

A lovely little lowdown from the Gravity Probe B project on the nature of spacetime, the interestingness of the number 3 and some fairly advanced stuff about frame-dragging. Enjoy it, if you dare!read more | digg story

Tonight: Mars and Saturn are 30° from each other. Watch over the next several weeks as Mars slowly moves closer to Saturn. In July the two will be just ½° apart. Look for Mars high in the west at the end of evening twilight. Saturn and Regulus will be to…

From New Scientist: The ancient catastrophe that gave birth to the Moon may have produced additional satellites that lingered in Earth’s skies for tens of millions of years.read more | digg story

A great post from the Bad Astronomer.

read more | digg story

Tonight: Mother”s DayTonight: The First Quarter Moon is to the west of Regulus and Saturn. Regulus and Saturn are still about 2° apart. Saturn is slowly moving away from the star Regulus. Look for Saturn high in the southwest at dusk.

Link to Skynotes

Tonight: Astronomy DayTonight: The crescent Moon is east of the planet Mars and near the Beehive star cluster in Cancer the Crab. Look at the Moon with a telescope to see the three overlapping craters, Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina. These three craters are all around 60 miles in diameter. Also…

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 10th of May 2008:

• 1 Canada Hunts for Killer Asteroids
• 2 NASA”s Manned Mission to Asteroid 2000 SG344
• 3 APOD: Moon Meets Mercury
• 4 Interactive Timeline of Every Single Space Launch……Ever!
• 5 How Scuba Tanks and Bungee Cords Could Save NASA…

The world’s first exhibition of ‘extinct and impossible’ smells is under way, from the metallic fallout of the first atomic bomb to the aroma of cloves and oranges from first aid kit of a medieval plague doctor.read more | digg story

Working with colleagues from NASA, a Florida State University researcher has published a paper that calls into question three decades of conventional wisdom regarding some of the physical processes that helped shape the Earth as we know it today.read more | digg story

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 03rd of May 2008:

• 1 Watching the World Go By
• 2 Lava Fountain on Jupiter”s Io [PIC]
• 3 Astronomy Picture of the Day:Shaping NGC 6188
• 4 The Giants of Omega Centauri
• 5 Why Life On Mars May Foretell Our Doom

To…

Why not join in and Digg me too?read more | digg story