Less accurate than a compass or the North Star. Put your watch next to a thin stick so the shadow falls over its center and the hour hand points along the shadow towards the stick. A line dividing the angle made by the shadow and the watch's 12 (1 if Daylight Savings TIme) points South. At 6 a m the sun is East. Face the sun, South is to your right. At 6 p m the sun is West, South to your left. If your watch is digital draw a circle with lines for the hour hand and the 12 or 1.
Leonid meteors delight watchers
A true storm with 2,200 shooting stars an hour in prime viewing areas peaked within 20 minutes of the time predicted, giving scientists new confidence in their ability to forecast this elusive phenomenon. With the show's best seats in Europe and the Middle East, parts of North America saw a good garden variety meteor shower, initially discouraging because meteors didn't show until 1:30 a m. At 4 there were at least 2 or 3 a minute. Leonids occur yearly when Earth glides through dust and pebbles shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Emanating from constellation Leo they're usually sparse. Every 33 years Earth enters an especially dense debris stream, a thrilling, beautiful storm. Some meteors had long trails. A weather balloon from Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and 2 research planes from Tel Aviv watched from above the clouds, providing valuable insight on meteors' role in Earth's evolution of life. Comet debris forming meteors may share the early solar system's primitive composition.
6 planets found around distant stars
As big or bigger than Jupiter, orbiting stars 65 - 192 light years away, discovered by measuring a slight motion distortion or wobble of the target star, caused by gravitational pull from an orbiting planet. 5 given their distance from their stars could have liquid water, a fundamental requirement for life. They look like giant Jovian balls of hydrogen and helium. Most circle their stars in eccentric oval orbits. One newfound planet dips 36 million miles from its star, then swings out to over 214 million miles. Neatly stacked circular orbits such as in our own solar system are rare. Earth's orbit is almost circular at 93 million miles. Earth-sun distance, astronomical units (AU), express planetary distances. A light year is 5.9 trillion miles. 5 of the 6 new planets are in the habitable zone, the region around a star where temperatures let liquid water exist. Planets and moons inside the zone are too hot for liquid water, those outside are too cold. These planets are at just the right distance. Larger planets eject smaller planets in their orbits from around the star. This won't happen to Earth because Jupiter, 318 times bigger, orbits far outside Earth's orbit.
Star HD 10697: 106 light years. Planet 6.35 Jupiter masses. Temperature 15 degrees F, within habitable zone.
Star HD 37124: 108 light years. Planet 1.04 Jupiter masses. Temperature 130 degrees F, within habitable zone.
Star HD 134987: 83 light years. Planet 1.59 Jupiter masses. Temperature 108 degrees F, within habitable zone.
Star HD 177830: 192 light years. Planet 1.22 Jupiter masses. Temperature 192 degrees F, within habitable zone.
Star HD 222582: 137 light years. Planet size not reported. Temperature -38 degrees F, within habitable zone.
Star HD 192263: 65 light years. Planet .78 Jupiter masses. Temperature not reported, outside of habitable zone.
Distant planet's milestone
Scientists for the first time watched the 29th planet discovered outside our solar system cross in front of its home star revealing more about these distant planets than before possible, including their size and weight. This ranks with discovering the first solar system outside our own. The planet, with no formal name, orbits Star HD 209458 closely every 3 1/2 days, its temperature 3,600 degrees. Until now planets were detected only indirectly by observing how their gravity tugged their home stars rhythmically back and forth. Keck Telescope measured such a wobble in HD 209458, 153 light years (859,000 billion miles) away in the constellation Pegasus. This method yields only the planet's minimum weight, or mass, and how closely and fast it orbits, but not size, density or character. One out of 20 planets should orbit perfectly aligned from the perspective of Earth scientists, like a spinning phonograph record viewed edge-on so the planet passes directly in front of its home star on each orbit. Each time this happens the starlight dims slightly. After confirming the existence of a planet around HD 209458 a remotely operated robotic telescope found the star's light faded by 1.7% when predicted, confirming the planet's presence. Calculations from the planet's shadow showed its weight the same as Jupiter but 60% wider, bloated by the extreme heat of the star so close by. Critics suggested a failed star or other object.
10th Planet
Our solar system may have a new, strange and very distant member, maybe a big 10th planet hidden far beyond Pluto, a hitchhiker joining the solar system later than the other planets. Maybe it's a burned-out mini-star, a brown dwarf, our sun's long lost twin 3 trillion miles, give or take a few billion, away. It's still part of our solar system, maybe 3 times as big as Jupiter, big enough to warp far-traveling comets' orbits. The object, informally named the perturber, is so distant and dark telescopes can't see it. What shows is its gravitational push-pull on 3 dozen comets. It's not unusual to see a planet's effects before seeing the planet, as before Pluto was first observed. Paths of 13 comets whose huge orbits bring them into this part of the solar system once every few million years or so show a similar distorting pull, warping in 1/4 of 82 other comets generating from the Oort Cloud, a comet breeding ground far past Pluto.
BROWN DWARF - It formed not like a planet but like a star. When the solar system formed there were 2 stars: the Sun and a small twin which shrank and cooled, observable in infrared. Something orbiting the sun is a planet unless it glows. A planet moved into the solar system after the solar system formed. Astronomers long suspected something warps comets' paths, everything from the theoretical anti-sun Nemesis to passing stars. Many doubt a 10th planet or a brown dwarf without enough comets to see this as evidence. A NASA IR telescope should find the object's inner heat and confirm its existence.
Large planets formed near sun
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed within a relatively narrow band around the sun, scattered to great distances by interplanetary jostling. All 9 solar system planets maybe formed as icy bits of rock merged with gas, swirling around the newborn sun 4.5 billion years ago. How could Uranus and Neptune form at their current distance from the sun? In theory there wasn't enough dust and gas out there. 4 - 5 planet cores could have formed where Jupiter and Saturn are today. Big planet cores forming trigger other large ones to clump together as well.