Night Sky

  There are several species of dolphin inhabiting the waters of the Mediterranean and for the seafaring people of Ancient Greece there were bound to have been numerous encounters with these playful, inquisitive, and intelligent sea mammals. It’s apparent that the Greeks took special delight in dolphins. In some areas, they were known as “philomousoi” … September Feature – A Celestial Dolphin, The Constellation Delphinus

    • Sept 3rd – The Viking 2 landed on Mars this day back in 1976.   • Sept 5 – Neptune, the 8th planet in our solar system, reaches opposition at 12:00 A.M. CDT, opposition is the point in an outer planet’s orbit where it lies opposite the Sun as seen from here on … Highlights of the September Sky

      August is a perfect time to observe the summer Milky Way, that band of pale, ghostly light arching across the sky from the stinging tail of Scorpius in the southwest, right through the celestial swan flying high overhead, and then back to the northeastern horizon where Cassiopeia sits, tilted at a crazy … August Feature – The Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) & Trifid Nebula (Messier 20)

      • Aug 2 – The moon is at apogee, its most distant point in its orbit for the month, at 251,671 miles away from Earth at 12:55 P.M. CDT. Waxing gibbous moon is just a few degrees to the NW of Saturn in our evening sky. • Aug  3 – Waxing gibbous … Highlights of the August Sky

“My god, it’s full of stars.” – 2001:  A Space Odyssey (novel), by Arthur C. Clarke In the beginning, some 13.87 billion years ago, there were no stars in our universe. Even atoms did not exist in the beginning. The infant universe started out as a hot, dense point of matter, energy, and fundamental cosmic … July Feature – The Hercules Cluster (Messier 13)

SATURN: CROWN JEWEL OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM “No [expletive] way!”, the young lady cried. Realizing her faux pas in the middle of a crowd of over 100 people, at a family oriented star party in the middle of one of our most popular state parks, she quickly clamps her hand over her mouth. I can’t … June Feature – Saturn: Crown Jewel of the Solar System

      • June 3 – Morning Sky: Venus is at its greatest elongation, 46 degrees west of the Sun, low in the eastern dawn sky. In astronomy, a planet’s “elongation” refers to the angular separation upon the sky between the Sun and the planet. Venus is never more than 47 degrees away from … Highlights of the June Sky

SEEING RED IN A SUPERB STAR Whenever I give programs on the basics of stargazing I always inform my audience that, through a telescope, they will never see the gorgeous colors that can be found in the pages of glossy astronomy magazines. This news is often met with a few dejected and deflated expressions.   I … May Feature – Seeing Red

  • May 2 – The Moon is at First Quarter at 9:47 PM CDT. • May 7 – On this night the planet Jupiter appears just to the right of the Waxing Gibbous Moon. Look for the blue-white stars Spica in the constellation of Virgo about 10 degrees to the lower left of the … Highlights of the May Sky

HAIL TO THE KING!  JUPITER IS AT ITS BEST THIS MONTH Named for the king of the Roman gods, the planet Jupiter returns to our evening sky this month and reaches opposition on April 7th. When astronomers say that a planet is at “opposition” what they mean it that it has reached a point in … April Feature – Jupiter!