Basic astronomy and night sky information
Articles about how to understand, find, and see celestial objects including stars, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters with binoculars, telescopes, and the naked eye.
Striking in photographs and picturesque in a telescope, the Sombrero galaxy offers a fine, if unusual, example of an edge-on spiral galaxy. This is a lovely object, with a huge and brilliant central galactic bulge likely caused by the machinations of a massive black hole, and an inky-dark dust lane that resembles the brim of the traditional Mexican hat that lends its name to this distant island universe [Read more…] about The Sombrero Galaxy
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Turn your gaze to the sky under the handle of the Big Dipper and you’ll see only two reasonably bright stars. These are the 3rd-magnitude stars Cor Caroli and 4th-magnitude Chara. Cor Caroli (the “Heart of Charles”) was named by Edmund Halley after the martyred English King Charles I. It is a pretty double star, easily split in a small telescope even at 30-40x. The blue-white primary shines at magnitude 2.9; the fainter yellow companion is magnitude 5.6 some 19 arc-seconds away from the primary. The pair is about 110 light years away [Read more…] about Star Tour – Cor Caroli and “La Superba”
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The constellation Cancer is the faintest of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and many casual stargazers pass it by when looking from bright Gemini to the striking group Leo to the east. In city skies, the constellation is hard to see at all. But there are some excellent sights in Cancer within reach of a telescope, including the superb star cluster M44, the Beehive Cluster, which is one of the finest objects for a wide-field telescope or a pair of binoculars [Read more…] about The Beehive Cluster
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Along with Taurus, Gemini is one of the two most northerly constellations of the zodiac. It lies just east of Auriga and the bright star Capella, and it’s marked by the two bright stars Castor and Pollux which lie less than 5º apart (a little less than the width of your three middle fingers held at arm’s length). To find the constellation draw an imaginary line diagonally from Rigel past Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion about a distance equal to the separation of these two bright stars. This will land you smack in the middle of Gemini. In March and April, the constellation lies still well above the western horizon in the early evening hours [Read more…] about Castor and Pollux
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Scattered in a thick band south of Canis Major lie the stars and star clusters of the constellation Puppis. There are no stars here to visually rival the brilliant stars of the Big Dog or Orion further to the north and west. But visual appearances are deceiving because among the stars of Puppis is one of the most luminous and hottest stars in our part of the galaxy, the star Naos or zeta Puppis [Read more…] about The Bluest Star
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