Basic astronomy and night sky information
General articles and links about astronomy and the night sky.
It’s been too long since I’ve been in a good planetarium, but this past weekend I saw the splendid “Dark Universe” show at the Hayden Planetarium (pictured) in New York. With dazzling graphics, a lapidary script by Timothy Ferris and narration by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the movie summed up in style the most important discoveries in cosmology over the past 100 years. If you’re visiting NYC, skip an afternoon of shopping and go to the Hayden. It’s worth the trip.
As the days tick down to the December solstice, stargazers can engage in a little meteor watching as the Geminids meteor shower peaks during the nights of December 13-14, 2015. One of the best meteor showers of the year, the Geminids shows up to 100-150 meteors per hour in dark sky. This will be an excellent year because the waxing crescent Moon will set before the shower peaks [Read more…] about Geminid Meteor Shower 2015
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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 2016 [Read more…] about 2016 ‘Year in Space’ Calendar
The Moon is on the wane this week, a boon for stargazers who crave the darkest sky. But the Moon remains a pretty sight in the early-morning sky before sunrise, thinning down to a slender crescent by the July 12th as it passes through the sprawling Hyades star cluster in the eastern sky and close to the orange giant star Aldebaran. The Hyades is a V-shaped group of stars about three finger-widths wide. Look for the resplendent Pleiades star cluster above the Moon and Hyades. If you can see down to the horizon, you might even see Mercury before it disappears into the glare of the Sun for the month.
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(The Great Solstice Aurora from Alan Dyer on Vimeo).
The Sun flared late last week and sent a series of coronal mass ejections in our direction. The high-speed charged particles smacked into the Earth’s upper atmosphere on June 22, 2015, and ignited aurorae borealis as far south as Georgia and Virginia, for example. The deep-southern hemisphere had fine shows of aurorae australis as well. If you missed these splendid vistas, the striking timelapse by astrophotographer Alan Dyer will give you a taste of the intensity and color of the display. Dyer is a master of nightscape and timelapse photography, and when he learned of the possibility of a striking auroral display, he packed his equipment and set to work. He wrote of his impromptu timelapse project on the night of summer solstice: [Read more…] about Aurorae at Summer Solstice
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