There will be three public nights at Behlen Observatory and four at the Student Observatory during the Fall 2008 semester.

Date	Time	Location
Friday, September 5	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Behlen Observatory
Friday, September 12	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Student Observatory
Friday, October 3	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Student Observatory
Friday, October 10	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Behlen Observatory
Friday, November 7	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Behlen Observatory
Friday, November 14	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Student Observatory
Friday, December 5	7:30 pm to 10:00 pm	Student Observatory

Directions to Behlen Observatory
UNL Observatories Home

After showing the Planetary Orbit Simulator at the AAPT workshop in Edmonton we realized that the orbit scaling method could be made more intuitive. Here is the new version with improved scaling:

Updated Planetary Orbit Simulator

Notice that instead of staying at a fixed size on the screen the orbit temporarily expands or contracts as the semimajor axis length changes. Check out the old version for comparison.

Other changes to note: there's now a scale bar in the Visualization panel, grid lines are now optional, and there are more options in the Newtonian Features panel.