Brian Ventrudo

Sky Tours (South) – December

Summer comes to the southern hemisphere in December, and many regions don’t get dark until well after 9 p.m. local time. The stars of southern winter, especially Scorpius and Sagittarius, have set in the west for the year. And the stars of southern summer, especially Orion and Eridanus, are starting to rise in the east. This month you conclude the ...

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Sky Tours (North) – December

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

This month we wind up the tours of the northern skies with a tour of the constellations Perseus, Cetus, and Camelopardalis.
Click here to download notes for 'Sky Tours (North) - December' (PDF, 1 MB)
Click here to download audio for 'Sky Tours (North) - December' (MP3, 5.9 MB)
Streaming Audio for this Lesson:
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Solar System Observing – Venus and Mercury

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

The waxing crescent Moon, Venus (middle), and Mercury in the twilight evening sky.
We continue our tour of the major planets of our solar system with a look at the so-called “inferior” planets Mercury and Venus, the planets closer to the Sun than Earth. When sufficiently separated from the Sun, these planets are visible without optical aid, and the...

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Stargazing Tools – Moon, Color, Comet, and Solar Filters

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

In a previous section, we examined so-called “light pollution” filters, extremely useful optical tools for removing unwanted light from certain types of street lamps that have long been the scourge of astronomers. This month, we look at simpler filters for observing planets and the Moon. We take a quick look at filters that can aid in observing com...

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Science of Stargazing – Galaxies

Filed Under: Fundamentals of Stargazing

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system made up of stars, remnants of stars, agglomerations of gas and dust, along with an unknown type of “dark matter” that has mass but does not emit light or interact with “ordinary” matter. The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek work galaxias which means "milky", a reference to the whitish path of th...

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