Cosmic Pursuits

Basic astronomy and night sky information

Brian Ventrudo

Sky Tours (South) – November

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

The Great Square of Pegasus, which looms large over the northern horizon this month, will once again guide our tour of the southern spring constellations. We arrive at the end of the zodiac at the constellation Pisces, then keeping on going to Aries, the first constellation on this band of twelve constellations along the ecliptic. We also look at t...

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Sky Tours (North) – November

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

The Great Square of Pegasus, high overhead this month, will once again guide our tour of the northern autumn constellations. We arrive at the end of the zodiac at the constellation Pisces, then keeping on going to Aries, the first constellation on this band of twelve constellations along the ecliptic. We also look at the constellation Andromeda, an...

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The Lunar 100

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

(Note - There are no downloadable notes or audio for this lesson. There are links and information below to get you started finding the 'Lunar 100').
A map showing the position of each object in the Lunar 100 (image credit: Sky and Telescope)
This month, you look at the “Lunar 100”, a list of 100 interesting objects to see on the visible surface of ...

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Stargazing Tools – Finders, Barlows, Sky Charts, the Caldwell List

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

A red-dot finder mounted on a small refractor telescope.
This month, you find out about some extremely useful stargazing tools, namely finder scopes and Barlow lenses. These tools, finders especially, belong in the toolkit of every stargazer. You also learn about useful online weather tools that forecast the state of the skies for astronomy. And yo...

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Science of Stargazing – Star Clusters

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

Each star cluster is as distinct as a European city, each as beautiful in really dark sky as a spray of diamond dust on black velvet. Open star clusters-- sometimes called galactic star clusters-- are congregations of a few hundred young stars that have emerged from the cocoon of an emission nebula and still hang together through mutual gravitation...

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