Stargazing

General articles and links about astronomy and the night sky.

Geminid Meteor Shower 2015

December 11, 2015 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System, Stargazing

Meteors from the Geminid meteor shower (credit: Asim Patel)

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

Share This:

2016 ‘Year in Space’ Calendar

November 26, 2015 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Stargazing

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

Share This:

Weekend Stargazing: Crescent Moon and Clusters

July 10, 2015 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Stargazing

The waning crescent Moon, the Hyades, and Pleiades star clusters before sunrise on July 12, 2015.

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.

Share This:

Aurorae at Summer Solstice

June 24, 2015 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Stargazing

(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

Share This:

Alpha Centauri Through a (Really) Big Telescope

May 14, 2015 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Stargazing

1. Alpha Centauri Through a (Really) Big Telescope

The razor-sharp images afforded by Earth-based telescopes with high-tech adaptive optic systems often rival images from space-based scopes like Hubble. But is it possible to look through the eyepiece of one of these big scopes? A select group of professional astronomers did just that. They peered through the 6.5 m Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory and saw the two brightest stars in the Alpha Centauri system split as wide as a church door. By contrast, this is what the two stars look like in a small amateur telescope.

2. Venus Brightens

Venus, already tremendously bright and high in the western sky after sunset, is now tangled in the feet of Gemini in the northern Milky Way. The planet reached its highest point above the horizon last week and now slowly sinks in the west on its way to a photogenic rendezvous with Jupiter on the last day of June.

3. A Paradise Lost?

Speaking of Venus… the planet is similar to Earth in size and mass, and lies within the zone in which a planet might be habitable. Yet Venus has a distinctly un-Earth-like environment. It’s a pressure-cooked hellhole of a world hot enough to melt lead, a place where rain falls in the form of battery acid. But Venus may not always have been so unpleasant. About 650 million years ago, the planet was wracked by volcanic activity that covered much of its surface in lava and turned the planet into a giant toxic greenhouse. A pair of planetary scientists recently found evidence that Venus may once have had tectonic activity, continents, and perhaps even oceans, and may have been a much more hospitable place.

4. Eta Carinae: The Next Supernova?

The Eta Carinae Nebula, the jewel of the southern-hemisphere constellation Carina, the Keel, is the most spectacular example of an active star factory in all the heavens. In this excerpt from an upcoming e-book about the most striking nebulae of the Milky Way, you get a close look at this star-forming region that harbors a star that’s too big to be stable… or to last for much longer.

5. A Video Game As Big As A Galaxy

I last played a video game when Ronald Reagan was early in his first term. Life’s too short, I say, to muck around in front of a game. The real world is interesting enough. But this may change. A new game called “No Man’s Sky” is due for release at the end of the year, and it’s a jaw-dropping extravaganza of imagination and computer science that enables the ‘player’ to navigate and explore more than 18 quintillion unique planets. The ‘universe’ in this game is designed using natural laws that determine the age and composition and physical characteristics of stars, planets, and life. Early video clips are awfully impressive. A feature on the creation of the game is out this week in the New Yorker.

Share This: