Astronomical Information
for the Fargo-Moorhead Area

Day Length Information

The following sunrise/sunset times are for Paul P. Feder Observatory at Buffalo River State Park, about 14 miles from the MSUM Campus. They are only accurate to about 3 minutes since no attempt has been made to deal with the effects of changing temperature/humidity on atmospheric refraction. However, they should be reasonably accurate anywhere in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

We have placed a Google calendar with all the sunset/sunrise times for this semester online. You can add it by clicking the button to the left. Othewise, you can click on the "ICAL" button to the right to download an iCal file with the Sunrise and Sunset times for the next year (iCal files should be compatible with Mac OS X iCal or MIcrosoft Outlook.

Current Positions of the Planets

The following planetary ephemeris will be useful if you want to go outside to look at the planets or possibly for a class observing project.

NOTE ABOUT RISE/SET TIMES: If text is greyed out that means the rise/set time is on the previous/next day. "c.p." means the object is circumpolar and is continuously above the local horizon.

Currently Visible Comets

The following ephemeris lists the comets brighter than 12^th magnitude as tablulated by Seiichi Yoshida's Weekly Information about Bright Comets website.

NOTE ABOUT RISE/SET TIMES: If text is greyed out that means the rise/set time is on the previous/next day. "c.p." means the object is circumpolar and is continuously above the local horizon.

Deep Sky Objects

Here are the current positions and rise/set times for a selected sample of deep sky objects that look reasonably nice in a small telescope from the Fargo-Moorhead area.

NOTE ABOUT RISE/SET TIMES: If text is greyed out that means the rise/set time is on the previous/next day. "c.p." means the object is circumpolar and is continuously above the local horizon.

Useful Astronomical Links

• United States Naval Observatory Data Services provides information on the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, the phases of the moon for any location on the Earth. They also provide other detailed astronomical information.
• NASA Eclipse Information: Want to know when and where the next eclipse is going to occur, check out this site from NASA.
• Aurora Forecast Map: From the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, this map shows the predicted extent of Aurora in the next 24 hours.
• SpaceWeather.com: This page is mostly for tracking solar activity, the cause of the "Northern Lights" or Aurora. It provides a nice "front end" to all the NASA data on solar activity, as near Earth asteroid flybys, planetary activity, and other solar system news.
• NOAA Space Weather page: A bit more technical than SpaceWeather.com. Also offers detailed images of current auroral activity in the northern hemisphere.
• Planetarium Software: If you want to "roll your own" sky charts, this site lists most currently available "desktop planetarium" software available. Includes Freeware/ShareWare/Commerial software for MacOS, Windows, DOS, OS/2 Warp, Xwindows, and PalmPilot!
• Skymaps.com provides professional quality skymaps every month that you can download. You can print the sky charts and use them outside. You need Adobe Acrobat to view them.
• Your Sky provides sky charts customized to your location on earth, although it doesn't offer terribly printable one.