Recent Astronomy Articles at Cosmic Pursuits

A Visitor from Beyond: Comet 3I/ATLAS Rounds the Sun

November 1, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Science, Solar System

A deep image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory. The image shows the comet’s broad coma — a cloud of gas and dust that forms around the comet’s icy nucleus as it gets closer to the Sun — and a tail spanning about 1/120th of a degree in the sky (where one degree is about the width of a pinky finger on an outstretched arm) and pointing away from the Sun. 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar visitor to our solar system. Image credit: Gemini South/NSF.

It’s a comet! No, it’s an alien spaceship! No, it’s probably just a comet. But Comet 3/I ATLAS isn’t just any comet. This speedy little visitor, which was discovered by the ATLAS survey telescope near Río Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025, is only the third confirmed interstellar comet or asteroid ever observed in our cosmic neighborhood. It’s a free ‘sample delivery mission’ from another star system, and it may help reveal secrets and insights about the nature and composition of other stars and planets in the Milky Way [Read more…] about A Visitor from Beyond: Comet 3I/ATLAS Rounds the Sun

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The Pleasures of Ugly Astrophotography

September 21, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

An untracked snapshot of the North America nebula taken with a ZWO ASI385MC camera and Nikon 28mm manual camera lens at f/2.8.

A thread on the astronomy forum Cloudy Nights a couple of years ago explored the possibility of capturing quick ‘snapshot’ astrophotos with small but sensitive monochrome cameras and inexpensive, small-aperture lenses of less than 25mm (!) aperture. Even better, this approach used no astronomy mount or tracking at all, just a fixed camera tripod and a PC to capture and stack each image over the course of a minute or two. Lightweight, cheap, simple.

It seemed like a preposterous idea. So of course I had to try it!

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Einstein, Immortality, and the Stubborn Illusion of Time

August 31, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Science

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. As we look into the past, the past looks back at us. Image credit: NASA/ESA.

On March 15, 1955, Albert Einstein learned of the death of his close friend Michele Angelo Besso at the age of 81. An engineer by training, Besso attended university with Einstein and worked with him at the Swiss patent office, serving as a supporter and sounding board for some of the great scientist’s early and most profound ideas. Upon hearing of his friend’s passing, and although he himself was ill with only weeks to live, Einstein sent a letter of condolence to Besso’s family in which he wrote this beguiling passage:

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Some might dismiss this passage as comforting words to a grieving family. But this was Albert Einstein writing, and Einstein knew a thing or two about time and space. He must have meant something here, perhaps something profound, but what? [Read more…] about Einstein, Immortality, and the Stubborn Illusion of Time

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Guide to Observing Saturn in 2025

August 20, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

This composite image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 6 June 2018, shows the ringed planet Saturn with six of its 62 known moons.

Many casual observers get hooked on amateur astronomy after a first look at Saturn through a telescope. More than a few have looked through my small refractor on a night of good seeing and asked of Saturn, “Is it real?”

Oh, it’s real, all right. And incredibly beautiful… the color, the proportions, the apparent 3D perspective of this grand icy world. It is arguably the finest sight accessible with a small telescope. The planet reaches opposition on the September 21, 2025 and will remain bright and large in a telescope over the next few months. Here’s how to find it and see it in a small telescope.

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The Cygnus Star Cloud

July 30, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

As northern summer nights grow longer in August and September, the big constellation Cygnus lies nearly overhead before midnight and offers dozens of colorful nebulae and star clusters for visual observers and astrophotographers. The newly discovered Radcliffe Wave begins here. So does the dark and dusty Great Rift that splits the band of Milky Way in two. Cygnus also contains the brightest section of the northern Milky Way in the grand Cygnus Star Cloud, the most prominent star cloud north of the celestial equator. With a pair of low-power binoculars or with just your dark-adapted eyes, this billowing collection of millions of stars along an arm of our galaxy offers as beautiful a sight as any earthly work of art or nature [Read more…] about The Cygnus Star Cloud

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