Phoenix Mission - Mars WeatherStargazing
Banff, Alberta
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Current Weather
15°C
| Sunrise | 5:34 |
|---|---|
| Sunset | 21:58 |
| Ceiling | m |
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BookmarkUpdated:Friday July 4 2008,22:00 MDT - Banff
Clear Sky Forecast
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Wind W 10km/h
Cloudy periods
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Wind SW 15km/h
Moon Phases
July 10
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August 1
This Week in the Sky
The Little Donut in the Sky
For backyard astronomers the constellation Lyra-the harp offers up special deep sky riches. Besides having the fifth-brightest star in the entire sky and beautiful binary suns, there lies another treasure - the famous Ring Nebula.
Visible only through telescopes, this pale donut-shaped ring is actually a shell of gas thrown off by a dying star more than 2000 light years away. Photographs show the one light year diameter expanding bubble of gas in a beautiful rainbow of colours.
Larger telescopes also reveal a faint star in the centre of this ghostly ring. Known as a white dwarf, it is the naked white-hot core of a star that exploded 20,000 years ago. Astronomers believe that just such a fate awaits our own Sun when it dies. But no need to worry, our Sun has another 5 billion years to go.
