The Milky Way - New Zealand

Postcard NZ-146406 from New Zealand shows a view of the Milky Way from Down Under. According to an article from the Photography Roundtable, for people living in the Southern Hemisphere, the best time period to see and photograph the Milky Way is from February to October, as the galactic center of the Milky Way will not be visible from November to January.

For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the best time to see and photograph the Milky Way is between March and October with the galactic center in full view.

On a separate note, USPS released the Pluto—Explored! and Views of Our Planets Forever stamps during the first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony at World Stamp Show-NY 2016 on May 31, 2016. I was excited to purchase two sheets of the Views of Our Planets Forever stamps yesterday. However, to my disappointment, our local post offices had not ordered the Pluto—Explored! souvenir sheets. I will have to order them on-line.

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon Forming a Triangle

Postcard UA-1182470 from Ukraine shows a space image with stars and planets in a nebula.

If you have looked towards the western sky at dusk today, you would see the pair-up of Jupiter (top left) and Venus (middle right), with the waxing crescent Moon below, forming a distinct triangle.
Venus and Jupiter will be at their closest approach on June 30.

News on Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. In 1980 and 1981, the Voyager space probes flew by Saturn and measured a day on Saturn as 10 hours and 39 minutes. They also returned the first high resolution images, which revealed a persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere among other discoveries. The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft arrived in 2004, found the days a little bit longer at 10 hours and 47 minutes. However, a team of planetary scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel recently reported in Nature that the spin period is 10 hours and 32 minutes and 45 seconds plus or minus 46 seconds for Saturn when the spin was deduced from its gravity field. Their model removed the distortion of the previously measured gravity field that caused the equator of Saturn bulging outward due to Saturn's fast rotations.

Unrelated, NASA is planning a mission to Saturn to explore one of its 61 moons known as Titan. Titan, twice the size of the Earth's moon, is the only moon of Saturn that has an atmosphere. Because the majority of the moon is dominated by methane and ethane lakes in liquid form,  NASA has designed a new submarine that can be operated at -290°F or -179°C  to study the Kraken Mare, the biggest sea on what is Saturn’s biggest moon, at a maximum speed of  2 miles or 3.2 km per hour for a duration of three months.

Postcard US-1575782 from the U.S. was a multi-view card showing the satellites of Saturn.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an annual event to promote reduced energy consumption for the planet Earth by turning off non-essential lights for one hour from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on the last Saturday in March. It was first organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then, 7,000 cities, 1,200 landmarks and 172 countries and territories have joined the action to raise the awareness of climate change.

Postcard US-1630412 to the Netherlands shows New York-New York Hotel & Casino before and during Earth Hour in Las Vegas on March 26, 2011. It features a quote from a Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum: "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." Sent before and received on Earth Day, April 22, 2012, it also highlighted the theme for Earth Day 2012: Mobilize the Earth.

For Earth Hour 2015 on Saturday, March 28, Las Vegas City Hall and the properties from MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Boyd Gaming all dimmed their exterior lighting, signage and marquees from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. In addition to dimming the lights, Venetian and Palazzo had put on a candlelight display at Doge's Palace Plaza in front of Venetian.

Candlelight display for Earth Hour 2015 at Venetian with Mirage dimming its lights in the background.

Earth Hour 2016 will be on Saturday, March 26, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time.