People in the eastern United States will get a great opportunity, weather permitting, to see the Space Shuttle Discovery launched into orbit Wednesday evening, March 11.

The Shuttle flight (STS-119) will be the 28th to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and the glow of its engines will be visible along much of the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

To reach the ISS, Discovery must be launched when Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the ISS's orbit. For mission STS-119, on March 11 that will happen at 9:20:10 p.m. ET, resulting in NASA's first Shuttle flight of 2009 and its second consecutive nighttime (the previous shuttle flight, last November 14, was also a nighttime launch). This launch will bring the Shuttle's path nearly parallel to the U.S. East Coast.

What to expect

For most locations, Discovery will be visible by virtue of the light emanating from its three main engines. It should appear as a very bright, pulsating, fast-moving star, shining with a yellowish-orange glow.

Based on previous night missions, the brightness should be at least equal to magnitude -2; somewhat brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, which shines brilliantly in the south-southwest during the evening hours. Observers who train binoculars on the Shuttle should be able to see the rapidly moving shuttle resembling a tiny V-shaped contrail.

In the Southeast United States, depending on a viewer's distance from Cape Canaveral, Discovery will become visible anywhere from a few seconds to 2 minutes after it leaves Pad 39-A. The brilliant light emitted by the two solid rocket boosters will be visible for the first 2 minutes and 4 seconds of the launch out to a radius of some 520 statute miles from the Kennedy Space Center.

No matter where you're located, keep in mind that the Shuttle will not get very high above the horizon. In most cases, it will range from roughly 5 to 10 degrees. To get an idea of how high this is, make a fist and hold it out at arm's length. Place the bottom of your fist on the horizon; the top of your fist is 10 degrees

By location:

Southeast U.S. coastline:

Anywhere north of Cape Canaveral, I suggest viewers initially concentrate on the south-southwest horizon (if you are south of the Cape, look low toward the north-northeast).

Mid-Atlantic region:

Look toward the south about 3 to 6 minutes after launch.

Northeast (Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston):

Concentrate your gaze low toward the south or south-southeast about 6 to 8 minutes after launch. Of course, as the shuttle gets closer, its azimuth very quickly swings over to the southeast, where in most cases, the point of maximum altitude occurs. I suspect most people will be scanning the horizon from south-southeast in the final couple of minutes of powered ascent . . . if so, you shouldn't miss out on sighting Discovery.

Discovery will seem to flicker, then abruptly wink-out 8 minutes and 23 seconds after launch as the main engines shut-down and the huge, orange, external tank is jettisoned over the Atlantic at a point about 870 statute miles uprange (to the northeast) of Cape Canaveral and some 430 statute miles southeast of New York City. At that moment, Discovery will have risen to an altitude of 341,600 feet (64.7 statute miles), while moving at more than 17,000 mph and should be visible for a radius of about 770 statute miles from the point of Main Engine Cut Off, or MECO.

Should the launch of Discovery be scrubbed on Wednesday, March 11, the launch will be rescheduled on a daily basis, but the time of the launch will occur roughly 23 minutes earlier for each day the launch is delayed (launch window times through March 16).

Before hoping to see the Shuttle streak across your local sky, make sure it has left the launch pad! Watch a television news outlet to verify that Discovery has been launched, or you can watch the launch on your computer via streaming video from NASA-TV.

Good Luck!

To date it has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus.  February marks the pinnacle of its evening visibility as it stands like a sequined showgirl nearly halfway up in the western sky at sunset. Currently shining at its greatest brilliance for this apparition, this dazzling evening star appears as a distinct crescent shape in small telescopes, which is growing progressively larger in size as it approaches our Earth.

And be sure to get out your calendar and put a big circle around Friday, February 27, 2009, for that evening a lovely crescent Moon will appear to snuggle up close to Venus, particularly for skywatchers across the Western Hemisphere.  It will make for an eye-catching scene as the two brightest sky objects of the night dominate the early evening scene for about three hours after sundown; even those who do not normally look up will likely have their attention drawn to this dynamic duo during their normal commute home from work or school.  What will make this array especially attractive is the fact that it will look almost three-dimensional; the Moon will look almost like an eerily illuminated blue and yellow Christmas ball hovering next to the brilliant-white diamond that is Venus.

Sadly, this will be the last in the current series of evening get-togethers between the Moon and Venus, for during March Venus will slide rapidly down into the sunset glow and by month's end will disappear from our evening sky until the spring of 2010.

But again . . . Friday night, February 27 will be the night when the Americas will be greeted with one of the most beautiful Venus-crescent Moon conjunctions possible. The pairing will persist from before sunset on into the depths of darkness.  The time when Moon and planet will appear closest will be around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time (7:30 p.m. Central, 6:30 p.m. Mountain, and 5:30 p.m. Pacific).  Venus will appear to hover approximately 1.5-degrees above and to the right of the 10-percent illuminated Moon (the Moon itself appears one-half degree in diameter).  For cities situated in the Mountain time zone, the time of closest approach will come during evening twilight, while for those in the Pacific time zone it takes place around, or just prior to sunset.

From other places around the world, the pairing will appear a bit different primarily because the Moon appears to move much more rapidly against the background stars than Venus, and also because of the effect of parallax: different viewing angles from different points on our planet.

From Europe, for instance, Venus will appear to hover majestically about 4-degrees directly above the Moon at sunset.  South Americans will see the Moon with Venus to its right; the pair low in the west-northwest at dusk and appearing to set side-by-side.  From Australia, the Moon will be positioned far to the lower left of Venus on the evening of Feb. 27 and a somewhat similar distance to its upper right the following evening.

Finally, if you're watching with some friends, here's a trivia question you might want to pose to them: Of the two which do they believe is the brighter: Venus now at its peak brilliance or the three-day old Moon?  The almanacs say that the Moon is 8.5 times (2.3 magnitudes) brighter, but because its light is not concentrated into a point like Venus, they may have a difficult time believing this!

January 24, 2009 marks an auspicious anniversary in the history of New York astronomy.  It is the 84th anniversary of the last total solar eclipse that was visible from New York City.  On January 24, 1925, the southern portion of the Moon's umbral shadow passed across upper Manhattan, parts of Queens and all of the Bronx.  Only in these locations would totality be visible; places like lower Manhattan, Staten Island and Brooklyn would unfortunately be outside the zone of the total eclipse.

So on a bitter cold morning (the air temperature hovered near 0 degrees F), but under a brilliantly clear, blue sky, millions of New Yorkers who properly positioned themselves, were able to briefly witness one of nature's greatest spectacles.  What made me think about this today was not so much the anniversary date itself, but the fact that like today, in 1925, the great event occurred on a Saturday.

I can recall as a very young boy, my grandfather telling me stories of how he and throngs of others watched this eclipse from along the East River Drive in East Harlem.

In 1970, just before the solar eclipse that swept along the US East Coast on March 7th of that year, I remember attending a meeting of the O.G. (Observing Group); a division of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York.  The meeting was held in one of the basement classrooms of the old Hayden Planetarium and the topic that afternoon was: Can you remember the 1925 Eclipse?  Many participants who were there that day provided spirited anecdotes, such as AAA old-timers like Patrick Rizzo and Gilbert Schmidling.  Back then, the 1925 eclipse was still fresh in their minds . . . for it had occurred only 45-years ago.

Some years later, when I was the morning-drive meteorologist on WPAT Radio, I asked on the anniversary day if any listeners remembered that 1925 eclipse and was delighted to get about about a half-dozen responses from folks who indeed recalled that special day.  One woman wrote that she lived in Gravesend, Brooklyn back then: I don't remember much about the eclipse, so much as I recall that Papa woke me and my two brothers up very early that morning, bundled us up, piled us into our car and took us on what was then (for us) was a great adventure: We were going to the Bronx.  Another sent me an eclipse viewer—a piece of exposed film mounted on a piece of cardboard—dated January 24, 1925, with instructions on how to properly use it.  I've held on to this for many years, wrote the listener, adding . . . maybe you can put it to some use.

It is a sobering thought as type these words that I realize that virtually all of those people who saw the 1925 eclipse have passed on to the great beyond.  Indeed, to have any good memory of that event of so long ago, a person would have had to attain the age of five, meaning they would be 89 today; those few who are still with us are not likely to be around when the next total solar eclipse sweeps across the Continental US in 2017.

Certainly most of us are not likely to be around when the umbra touches NYC again . . . on the first of May in 2079.

I would suppose that in that in 2017, there might be some kind of a pre-eclipse gathering of those who will vividly recall the US East Coast Eclipse of 1970.  After all, that event will have occurred only 47-years earlier.  I can already see myself talking to a group of fresh-faced young people, most of whom probably will have never been exposed to the panoply of phenomena that accompany that magic word Totality! listening intently to me—an old-timer, describing a memorable event from a era which to them might seem almost like the stone age: the '70s.

Getting back to 1925, I'll finish this off on a somewhat ironic and eerie note.

On the morning of January 24, 1925, millions of New Yorkers were eagerly awaiting that magic moment when the Moon's umbra would descend upon their great city and briefly plunge them all into darkness.  Newspapers had been publicizing the time for weeks, so that when the big day finally arrived virtually every man, woman and child knew when that eagerly awaited moment would come.

It was 9:11.

Here is a YouTube link to a short film, showing preparations being made at Lakehurst, NJ to observe the 1925 eclipse from the Airship, Los Angeles . . . which was then the largest in the world.  There are also views of the partial stages and totality which was observed near Montauk Point, Long Island at an altitude of 3,000 feet.