Are you often inside all day, not able to get out until after sunset? If so, don't lament missing all the daylight. The early evening sky is giving you a show!

Maybe you've spotted the stars of the show already: two very bright objects in the same direction where the Sun just set. They're really planets, not stars.

The lower one—the absurdly bright one—is Venus. The higher one is Jupiter. Jupiter will be less bright than Venus, but still brighter than any star.

(By the way, if in the last week you noticed a very bright object that was noticeably moving across the sky, you probably saw the International Space Station. Unless it was blinking red, in which case you saw an airplane.)

Bundle up, head outside, and...

Hi, this is Amy. I’m making a blog post while Jesse prepares for talking about the annual Perseid meteor shower on WRAL this Saturday.

The Perseid meteors will peak the morning of August 12th. Every year before this and other major meteor showers, phone calls roll in to Morehead Planetarium with questions about viewing meteors (also known as shooting stars).

According to planetarium legend, years ago a caller demanded to know why we had scheduled a meteor shower for the pre-dawn hours. So inconvenient! And on top of that, didn't we know that it was a school night?!

This year, that caller would surely be upset with us again. The best time to see the 2008 Perseids will be from 2 to 5 a.m. on Tuesday, August 12th. You can also try the pre-dawn hours on the days before and after.

Before 2 a.m., light from the waxing gibbous Moon will wash out the dimmer meteors. And after 5 a.m., the sky brightens as we rotate toward daytime.

If...

“North Carolina summers are bad for stargazing!” I’ve heard it said many times. But, the summer is actually my favorite time to do stargazing.

“But the nights are short!” OK, that’s true. Thanks to that pesky 23.5 degree tilt of Earth's axis, we experience seasons, and during the summer, our nights may only have 7-8 hours of total darkness. You have to be a bit of a night owl, and either stay up late or wake up early for any significant stargazing.

“But it’s humid and hazy!” Yes, we often have humid summer nights here in the Triangle. Crisp, clear nights are few and far between. Light pollution is more obvious when it’s humid (more water vapor in the air for light to scatter light), but if you get far enough away from city lights, a typical summer night can produce a very nice sky.

Despite its drawbacks, the summer does have one major advantage for stargazing: it’s warm at night! With overnight...

Want to learn more about astronomy from the comfort of your own desk chair? Here are my top 10 favorite websites (in no particular order):

www.stellarium.org - Stellarium is a free program that simulates the night sky on your computer. You can choose any location on Earth, a date and time, and you'll be presented with a simulated sky. Stellarium also allows you to zoom in on the night sky. I recommend zooming in on Jupiter or Saturn. I use this frequently, especially to cram right before a planetarium presentation.

www.shatters.net/celestia/ - Similar to Stellarium, it simulates the night sky. It's not as user friendly as Stellarium, but Celestia lets you virtually fly through the Universe. So, that's pretty cool.

www.heavens-above.com - Heavens Above is a website that allows you to get information...

You can see the international space station from your backyard! You just have to know when to look. Passes last only a few minutes, and the ISS will look like a bright star moving across the sky.

Visit NASA's page for ISS Passes for North Carolina cities and click on the city closest to you to find out what times within the next 10 days or so that the ISS will be visible.

It will compute a few columns of data for you. "Duration" is how long (in minutes) that the pass will last. "Max Elev" is the maximum height (in degrees) that the ISS will reach over the horizon (measured from 0 to 90 degrees). "Approach" tells you where it will be at the beginning of the pass, and "Departure" tells you where it will be at the end of the pass. With that information, you can get a pretty good idea of when and where...