Basic astronomy and night sky information
You can spend thousands of dollars on a big, advanced telescope, hundreds more on the best eyepieces money can buy, and still not see much of anything at all. Unless, that is, you know you to extract maximum light and detail with your eye. There are two concepts every stargazer should know to get the best visual views: averted vision and dark adaptation. Here’s how it all works… [Read more…] about How to See – Averted Vision and Dark Adaptation
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In 1991, stargazer Steve Cariddi walked into a Boston bookstore and noticed most desk calendars were about cats, or puppies, or sailboats. There was not a single astronomy calendar in sight. So he decided to create his own, and in late 1993 he published his first “astronomy and space” desk calendar. He’s been publishing these calendars every year since. And now he’s released the large-format ‘Year in Space’ wall calendar for 2018 [Read more…] about The 2018 ‘Year in Space’ Calendars Now Available
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For better or worse, the year 2017 finally comes down to its last month. Our planet, to be sure, has had better years. But the heavens, as always, offer respite.
This month has many beautiful sights and events for attentive sky watchers. The Moon acts as your guide in December to the planets and bright stars along the ecliptic, especially the brightening planets Mars and Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky. Saturn finally disappears westward into the Sun for the year after a fine apparition in 2017, while Venus disappears eastward into the Sun’s glare by mid-month. There are two fine meteors showers in December. And the seasons change once again as winter begins in the northern hemisphere and summer begins in the south. Here’s what to see in the sky this month… [Read more…] about The Sky This Month – December 2017
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November has fallen fast upon us. That’s good news for southern-hemisphere stargazers who now enjoy warmer nights. But it’s also good for northern stargazers who enjoy earlier sunsets and longer stargazing sessions. For deep-sky observers, there are plenty of open star clusters in Cassiopeia and Perseus, and lots of galaxies in Pegasus, Sculptor, and elsewhere. There are congregations of bright planets in the morning sky, and a few planetary stragglers in the evening sky as well. Not to mention two overlapping meteor showers that offer a chance for you to see a few bright, slow-moving fireballs, and two occultations by the Moon of first-magnitude stars. Here’s what to see in the night sky this month…
[Read more…] about The Sky This Month – November 2017
Aquarius is a dim constellation in a barren patch of sky far off the plane of the Milky Way. Just east of Capricorn, it marks the 11th constellation of the zodiac. This dim constellation lies near the other “watery” constellations including Cetus, the Sea Monster (or whale), Pisces, the Fishes, and Eridanus, the River. This ancient constellation was associated with water or water bearers since Babylonian times. Some representations have the water bearer pouring water into a stream that leads to the bright star Fomalhaut, the mouth of the southern fishes Piscis Austrinus. Like Capricorn, Aquarius has far fewer deep-sky sights than Sagittarius. But there are a handful of objects here of enduring interest including the famous Helix Nebula, one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. Let’s take a short tour of some of the finer sights in this zodiacal constellation… [Read more…] about Roaming the October Skies – A Brief Tour of Aquarius
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