Night Sky

  • March 1 –  Around 5:00 A.M., CST, go outside and face west to find the almost full moon. Now, face south and look for the brightest thing in this part of the sky, this would be the planet Jupiter in the constellation of Libra. Looking back towards the southeast you should see the … Highlights of the March Sky 2018

    They say that the month of March comes in like a lion and there is actually some truth to that as the spring equinox heralds the arrival of a famous celestial lion, the constellation of Leo. Of the twelve zodiacal constellations (13 if you count Ophiucus, the snake bearer) Leo is one of … March 2018 Feature – Leo The Lion

    Looking up at a star-filled sky, it becomes a tempting thought to try and start connecting all of those dots in order to make your own set of constellations. We humans have been doing just that for thousands, if not millions, of years. Our brains are hardwired to impose order upon chaos and … February 2018 Feature – The Winter Hexagon

  • Feb 2 – For the next two weeks, look for the Zodiacal Light in the western evening sky. In late winter and early spring, it is seen for a couple of weeks in the western sky just after sunset, but in late summer, early fall, it is seen in the dawn sky and is … Highlights of the February Sky 2018

    Eighteenth Century French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier decided that he had had enough of those annoying fuzzy-looking clouds in the night sky, especially those that made he and his fellow comet hounds waste valuable observing time on in order to rule them out as being “not comets”.   Taking matters into his … January 2018 Feature – Messier 41 – An Open Star Cluster

  • Jan 1 – The moon is at perigee, its closest point in its orbit around the Earth at a distance of 221,559 miles, at 3:49 P.M. CST Full moon occurs at 8:24 P.M. CST. Whenever perigee coincides with a full moon, we get what the media often call a “supermoon”.   • Jan 2 … Highlights of the January Sky 2018

  • Nov 2nd – On this day in 1917, the Mount Wilson 100-inch telescope saw “first light”. First light is when a new telescope gets its first use gathering light from a distant celestial object for astronomical observation. From 1917 to 1949, this telescope, with its 100-inch mirror, was considered the largest in the … Highlights of the November Sky

  Open star clusters are groups of a few hundred to a few thousand stars, all having formed at about the same time from the same vast, cold cloud of molecular hydrogen.   For the backyard astronomer, open clusters are favorite binocular and small telescope targets as they can provide stunning vistas of distant, glittering suns … November Feature – The Double Cluster in Perseus

    • Oct 3rd – On this day in 1942, the first V-2 rocket was launched. The V-2 was the first long-range guided ballistic missile and was developed in Germany during WWII to attack Allied cities in Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and even Germany itself (1945, Battle of Remagen ). After … Highlights of the October Sky

    For the backyard astronomer, no other celestial object can offer as much beauty, complexity, and sheer wonder than does our closest neighbor in space, the moon. One could easily spend years, if not a lifetime, studying its battered and scarred landscape with just a small telescope. Observing time devoted to exploring the lunar … October Feature – Tycho Crater