Namibia's clear and open southern sky is also great for star gazing and NWR's facilities being situated in the National Parks with minimal reflections at night are ideal destinations for keen astrologers and enthusiasts.
Milky Way
Orion Constellation
The three stars that are often referred to on star maps as Orion’s Belt, we call “the three zebras.” A story is sometimes told amongst our people describing a hunter with only one arrow who was sent out to hunt in the skies by his wife. He spotted three zebras, a male in the center flanked by two females. The hunter decided to try shooting them. He quietly crept upon the animals and shot his arrow. But he was not close enough to hit them, so his arrow fell short. All three zebras escaped onto the Earth, as can be seen when they set in the west. The stars of the Hunter’s Arrow are the same as the stars of the sword of Orion that hangs from Orion’s belt.
Jupiter
If u look up tonight at around 8pm and you face the east you might come across a very bright Orange-Reddish star, but alas that is not a star but instead our fifth sister planet in our solar system.. It is Jupiter,the largest of all planets in our solar system, one is be able to follow it across the sky as it travels west-ward.. Below are a few interesting facts about this very gaseous planet..
Why is Jupiter called Jupiter?
Jupiter got its name about two thousand years ago. It is named for the Roman god Jupiter, who was the chief god of the many gods that the Romans believed in. All the planets have names that come from the Romans.
How far is Jupiter from Earth? How long would it take to go to Jupiter and back?
Jupiter is about five times farther from Earth as Earth is from the sun. Let's see — the distance between Earth and the sun is about 93 million miles, so the distance to Jupiter is about 500 million miles!
How long it takes you to get there depends on how you go. If you could drive a car going 60 miles an hour to Jupiter, it would take you about 950 YEARS to get there! Fortunately our spacecraft like Voyager and Galileo go much faster. The Galileo spacecraft took six years to get to Jupiter, and it was going thousands of miles per hour. The solar system is a BIG place!
How long does it take for Jupiter to go around the sun?
Almost 12 years (Earth years that is).
Some of the gases on Jupiter?
The gases include nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia. There is even a little water. Not all of these gases are poisonous. Most of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, and there is a little helium too. There is no oxygen on Jupiter like there is on Earth. The plants on Earth have made the oxygen that we breathe.
The gases are pretty thick but not enough to stand on. I think it would be almost like being in the ocean, so I guess you would want to have a special submarine to explore Jupiter!
Jupiter is made up of gas, mostly hydrogen, but it isn't on fire. To burn the hydrogen gas, you would also need oxygen, but there is very little oxygen on Jupiter. Jupiter has lightning storms much like Earth. But they don't start any fires because there is no oxygen.
Gravity of Jupiter compare with Earth
Jupiter is much larger than Earth, so its gravity is stronger. If you could stand on the surface of Jupiter, you would weigh 2.6 times as much as on Earth. So if on Earth you weigh 100 pounds, on Jupiter you would weigh 260 pounds.
Jupiter’s rings?
Yes, Jupiter has rings. They are not as big and bright as Saturn's, so they weren't discovered until Voyager passed by in 1979. This was a big surprise. Everyone thought that rings would be a very unusual occurrence. Later some parts of rings, called ring arcs, were found around Uranus. So now we understand that rings around planets are not so unusual after all.
The moons of jupiter
Well, so far scientists have found 16 moons around Jupiter. We always find the biggest ones first, but the little ones with odd orbits are harder to find. It wouldn't surprise me if a few more little moons were found in the future! As you may know the Galileo spacecraft is currently orbiting Jupiter and studying the four biggest moons, including Io. We now have images of volcanoes going off on Io, spewing out mostly sulfur dioxide. Recently a large dark area the size of Arizona was seen, perhaps the result of a lava flow!
Red spots
The red spot on Jupiter appears to be a huge storm, like a gigantic hurricane. The clouds of the red spot actually rise a little higher above the atmosphere than the surrounding clouds, like hurricane clouds. For some reason it has persisted for over 300 years! Some people think that deep down inside Jupiter there may be a mountain or something that helps stir up the red spot storms. The red color comes from the slightly different composition of atmospheric gases that are in the spot. You may be surprised to learn that the spot varies in size. Sometimes it is only 12,000 miles long, and sometimes it is 24,000 miles long. It is an oval shape, and the short distance across the oval is about half the length (6,000 to 12,000 miles across). Earth is about 8,000 miles across, so that makes it smaller than the red spot.