Recent Astronomy Articles at Cosmic Pursuits

Galaxy Hunting with a 60 mm Telescope

May 31, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video, Stargazing

The face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 lies near the handle of the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major. It lies at a distance of 21 million light years. Click to open in a new window.

While awaiting the appearance of the Milky Way, not to mention astronomical darkness which won’t come again until July at my northerly latitude, I’ve been having fun snapping photos of galaxies with a 50 mm smart scope and other instruments of modest aperture. I recently tested another diminutive telescope, the Takahashi FOA-60 to see what it could do. While primarily intended to be a visual instrument, this telescope features superb optical quality, but it has a relatively slow focal ratio of f/8.8 which is not ideal for astrophotography. Nevertheless, I hooked up a small camera, the monochrome and highly sensitive ZWO ASI533MM-Pro and a Tele Vue 0.8x focal reducer to coax the optics of this little telescope down to a more reasonable f/7. Then I aimed it up out of the plane of the Milky Way into intergalactic space and snapped some photos of galaxies in and around Ursa Major to see what I could capture [Read more…] about Galaxy Hunting with a 60 mm Telescope

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Our Sun’s Lost Sibling

April 28, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Science

Our home star at summer solstice on June 22, 2022.

Like most stars in the Milky Way, our Sun was born in a cluster of hundreds of new stars in a cloud of glowing gas and dust like the Orion Nebula, then settled down with its siblings in an open star cluster like the Pleiades. Over the next few hundred million years, as it made its way around the Milky Way, this new cluster of stars was slowly pulled apart by tidal forces and the gravitation pull of passing dust clouds. Some of the family members may have traveled together for another billion years as a stellar association or a moving group. But like human siblings, they were eventually separated once and for all by the vicissitudes of the outside world. [Read more…] about Our Sun’s Lost Sibling

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Galaxy Hopping with a 2-Inch Telescope

March 27, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video, Deep Sky

Messier 81 (left) and Messier 82 (right), the largest two galaxy in the M81 Group. Imaged with a Seestar 50 smart telescope, 174x20s, with the telescope in EQ mode, stacked and processed in PixInsight. Slightly cropped to frame the galaxies better.

While star clusters and many nebulae are relatively large and bright objects for visual observing, galaxies are a different matter. A side from the Magellanic Clouds, only two shine bright enough to see without optics, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy, and most are far fainter. But with a little optical aid, dozens of galaxies pop into view. Charles Messier, who mostly observed with a 4″ refractor in 18th century France, catalogued 40 galaxies in his original list of 103 deep-sky objects, although he had no idea as to their great distance and nature as distinct ‘island universes’. [Read more…] about Galaxy Hopping with a 2-Inch Telescope

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The Winter Milky Way

February 28, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Stargazing

“It is nightfall; the clouds have vanished,
The sky is clear, pure, and cold…
Silently I watch the River of Stars…
Tonight I must enjoy life to the full,
For if I do not, next month, next year,
Who can know where I shall be?”
– Su T’ung-Po

A layer of fresh snow blankets the northern prairie, thin enough for the tops of golden wheat stubble to poke through, while a blast of arctic air from the northwest sweeps the darkening sky clean. Driving south on a secondary highway, an hour east of the city, I turn onto a back road and pull over by the side in complete darkness save for the lights of a farmhouse half a mile away. Emerging into the cold, I exhale a frosty breath and gaze upward into a bowl of black sky full of crackling stars. To the west I see Pegasus plunging towards the horizon with Andromeda in tow. The Big Dipper lies low in the north, its handle grazing the flat landscape and bowl pointed to the upper right. But the best view tonight lies overhead along the pale arc of the northern Milky Way through the bright constellations Perseus and Auriga, and down to the east skirting Orion’s eastern shoulder, passing the feet of the twins of Gemini, and into Canis Major, the Big Dog, with Sirius hovering over a snow-covered spruce tree like a Christmas star. As my eyes grow adapted to the dark, the outlines of our home galaxy begin to emerge. I grab my little telescope from the back of the car, set it securely on its mount, and get to work [Read more…] about The Winter Milky Way

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Winter Reflection Nebulae

January 31, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Uncategorized

Reflection nebulae have an undeniable allure to visual observers and astrophotographers. These little blisters of blue-white light, though typically small and rather challenging to detect, offer a chance to glimpse the galaxy at work turning cold dust and gas into new star systems. So grab your telescope and let’s take a tour of some reflection nebula prominent in northern winter with my recent article published in the 1,000th issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. Click on the image to the left to download the article on PDF format (it’s about 6MB). Then enjoy the tour!

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