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White House Astronomy Night is tonight

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

This evening marks the White House's second-ever Astronomy Night. President Obama is hosting astronomers, engineers, scientists, and especially teachers and students for a night of stargazing and other hands-on astronomy activities. Guests can chat with astronomers, astronauts, and even Mythbusters, learn astronomy-inspired stories and navigational techniques from Native American and Hawaiian traditions, and explore some of the latest technology innovations in space travel and astrophysica...

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The Advanced Imaging Conference wrap up

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

The Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) concluded today. More than 350 imagers and manufacturers dedicated to imaging met in San Jose, California, for three intense days of learning, buying, and fun. Saturday was the big day, but today offered the talk “Eight Ways to Intensify Color” by R. Jay GaBany and an interview with noted imager Adam Block by Hubble Award recipient Ken Crawford. Everyone I talked to agreed: This was a great conference. The venue was new and easily held the reco...

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Day 2 of the Advanced Imaging Conference

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

The Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) continues today in San Jose, California. Yesterday was filled with lots of conversations with imagers (both longtime contributors to the magazine and those who never have sent anything in) and manufacturers. If you’ve followed my recent blogs and writings, you know I’m totally aimed toward the 2017 total solar eclipse. So, I made sure to ask attendees what they’re doing on that day. I had a different question for manufacturers: What eclipse...

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Day 1 of the Advanced Imaging Conference

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

The 2015 version of the Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) has gotten off to a strong start. I'm currently attending the 11th incarnation of this meeting in San Jose, California. This gathering always has been specifically geared toward astroimagers. And this year, the AIC board decided to expand their reach a bit. In the past, most of the imagers have concentrated on CCD cameras and deep-sky targets. But in 2015, there are talks about planetary imaging, wide-field imaging, and lots of attention ...

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Abundant Northern Lights continue to grace Astronomy's Norway cruise

Posted 9 years ago by Eric Betz

Mother Nature continues to deliver northern lights in abundance for our Astronomy magazine/TravelQuest International tour of Norway's Aurora, Culture, and Scenic Wonders.Aurorae struck for a third consecutive night on Thursday, adding to the general feeling of good luck onboard the Hurtigruten vessel MS Nordnorge. Even here north of the Arctic Circle, the weather is sunny and relatively warm during the day, with crisp, aurora filled evenings. Behind the glow, the northern skies brim with stars c...

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The evolution of eyepiece developments at Tele Vue

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

A guest blog by Al Nagler. Over the years, I’ve heard many interesting stories on the origin of the Nagler eyepiece, especially on Internet forums, so I thought I'd set down what I've discussed at many convention talks worldwide — while I still retain some memory faculty! Brief background I grew up in the Bronx. When I was 12, my father took me to the Hayden Planetarium, unleashing my enthusiasm for the magnificent universe we're so lucky to share. My 3.5-inch Skyscope reflector d...

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Solar storm smacks Earth, puts on celestial show

Posted 9 years ago by Eric Betz

Our ship was slowly trudging north up the Norwegian Coast toward the Arctic Circle last night when the captain announced the celestial show we'd all been expecting -- the aurora borealis. Before the night was out, green clouds would blanket the sky from horizon to horizon. These great, green cumuli would linger overhead for a while and then collapse into long concentric arcs that gradually began to dance. The twisting bands grew serated edges that chattered and shook like some heavenly mus...

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Presidential star party

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

The White House is throwing a star party, and President Obama is hosting. In 2009, which was also the International Year of Astronomy, the White House held its first Astronomy Night, with special guests including legendary astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, and John Grunsfeld. But Obama reserved his warmest welcome for two astronomers who discovered a supernova and a pulsar before they had even graduated high school. The president used these young scientists to highlight the impo...

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Eclipsed

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

“It’s like a finger pointing the way to the Moon … Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.” — Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon Indeed, our lunar eclipse soirée on the shore of Lake Michigan provided a bit of lunar glory plus a lifelong memory for all who were there. I had sent out an invitation a week ago to co-workers, family, and friends, inviting them to a “picnic under the shadow.” After the email went...

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A guide to Comet Catalina

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Recently, I received this brief story about an object in the current night sky from Neil Norman of Ipswich, England. Because this comet will reach perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in mid-November, it couldn’t appear in print because that deadline has passed. So, we thought it best to reproduce the story here. Thanks for sending this, Neil! There's always something exciting, or dare I say magical, about a bright comet well placed over the festive period near year’s end. In 20...

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Live tweeting against this week's apocalypse -- and next week's too

Posted 9 years ago by Eric Betz

Meet NASA’s woman in charge of fighting doomsday asteroids using less than 140 characters.Veronica McGregor is a patient person. Every day, she uses 140 characters or less to knock down doomsday rumors from worried souls convinced the world will end today, or next week, or sometime in 2022. This time, the hype surrounds an imaginary asteroid that will hit Earth any day now and may or may not be related to the September 27 lunar eclipse. The Chilean earthquake this week didn’t help c...

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A September Galaxy Ride

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

On September 18, a group of astronomers and educators will set off on bikes from their home base at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, scant feet from the shore of Lake Michigan, and travel south for 300 miles (500 kilometers) on the historic Route 66 bike trail. They’ll end their trip in St. Louis, Missouri — or the Andromeda Galaxy, depending on how you reckon it. Along the way, they’ll make six stops, including the Moon (Joliet, Illinois), Kuiper Belt (Normal), and Alpha Cen...

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Telescopes and talks from Stellafane 2015

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Recently, Contributing Editor Phil Harrington attended the 2015 Stellafane conference. Here is his account, arranged as a brief introduction and a series of captioned images. More than 1,000 people attended the 80th Stellafane convention in Springfield, Vermont, held August 13-16, 2015. “Stellafane,” a contraction from the Latin phrase Stellar Fane, meaning “Shrine to the Stars,” is the oldest amateur astronomy convention in the United States, if not the world. Stellafa...

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To the stars through Doctor Who

Posted 9 years ago by Karri Ferron

Guest blog by Lindsay Henderson, a senior medical student and M.D. candidate from All Saints University, Dominica, specializing in neurology. Having been inspired into the sciences by her geology professor grandfather Bob, she now spends her free time introducing and encouraging young children and students to explore the hard science fields. “Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire; through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and...

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Milwaukee meteor fest

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Yes, you can see meteors from Milwaukee. Well, at least from a site slightly north of Brew City. Last night (August 12 — the only night near the maximum of the Perseid meteor shower that promised clear skies), my wife, Holley, and I decided to pack some reclining chairs, blankets (it is the frozen north, after all), and snacks, and head to Harrington Beach State Park, near Belgium, Wisconsin, a location roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Milwaukee’s city center. A local astr...

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IAU day 5: Viewing the Sun with radar

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

Following my post from yesterday about radar, Monday at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) meeting revealed yet more radar tales. Miller Goss from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) shared the story of how the first original records of solar radio astronomy were lost for decades and then found only last year. Joseph L. Pawsey (1908-1962) was not the first to detect the Sun in radio emission, but earlier records have also been lost. To Goss' knowledge, the newly discovered d...

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IAU day 4: Radar from WWII to the outer solar system

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

I'm still nominally at the International Astronomical Union meeting here in Honolulu. But most of the astronomers have taken a break for the weekend, leaving me to amuse myself for some of the time. This morning, I hopped a bus over to Pearl Harbor to view the memorial of the USS Arizona, one of the battleships struck and sunk on December 7, 1941, in the attack on Pearl Harbor that toppled the United States into World War II. Walking over the sunken battleship and the men entombed there to this...

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IAU day 2: What makes a brown dwarf?

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

[Updated August 10] My second day at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly meeting featured one of my favorite parts about attending science conferences: watching scientists fight! OK, astronomers are a pretty friendly bunch, so by "fight," I mean "spirited but polite debate." Nonetheless, this kind of dialog is why conferences are important, so I'm always excited to see it in action. In this particular case, I was enjoying a talk about the boundary between planets ...

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Aloha from the IAU

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) holds its general assembly meeting only once every three years, for two full weeks. This is the meeting that infamously stripped Pluto of its planethood in 2006. This year, the resolutions up for vote cover technical points about mathematical conversion factors, but also crucial protection of the airwaves that radio astronomers use to study the cosmos. Voting by the IAU members won't occur until the conference's end. So until then, the attendees will fo...

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Only 750 days until the eclipse

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Saturday, August 1, marks another milestone in the countdown toward the biggest public science event in history — 750 days until the total solar eclipse August 21, 2017. Rather than write a long blog about the importance of it, I’ll direct you to the one I wrote at the 800-day-out mark. If you’re just learning about this event, or want a refresher course on the facts, head here. And if you’re wondering where to go for the eclipse, you can zero in on the best locations w...

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Humans cling to their primal fear of the dark

Posted 9 years ago by Eric Betz

Your chances of being attacked, robbed, or struck by a car are no worse on a dimly lit street. And yet, like cavemen huddled around a campfire, humans are still comforted by light. Most of the 7 billion people on planet Earth have never seen the Milky Way. And within a decade, studies suggest that the spread of artificial light will wipe out the night sky’s most distinct feature in all but a few remote places within the United States.Until relatively recently, human history was record...

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Mike Reynolds reports from ALCon 2015

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

The Astronomical League (AL) and Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) held their annual meeting (the Astronomical League Convention, or ALCon) jointly July 6-11 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The hosts were members of the Astronomical Society of Las Cruces (ASLC). The first two days were for field trips to local sites of interest; the last three were for papers, the Star-B-Que, and the closing Awards Banquet. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, and Walter Haas, founder of the ALPO, t...

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Science rocks Comic-Con

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

San Diego Comic-Con 2015 is now over. This major pop-culture event ran from July 9 through the 12th, not counting the preview night July 8. Quick summary: It rocked! NASA held two major events, panels concerned with education abounded, and it seemed like every sci-fi and fantasy author was obsessed with “getting the science right.” Let’s get the big news out of the way first. NASA was back at Comic-Con. The space agency first attended just last year, and the reaction was so ov...

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I'm off to see the wizards

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Yep, wizards — plural. And dragons. And time lords. And Jedi. And every other kind of creature ever imagined in an environment I can describe only as the world’s greatest pop-culture convention. The 46th incarnation of San Diego Comic-Con International starts Thursday, July 9, and runs through Sunday the 12th, with a preview night Wednesday, July 8, for professionals, exhibitors, and press. This will be my third visit to Comic-Con, and I’m really looking forward to it. Comic-...

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SpaceX supply mission fails minutes after launch

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

On Sunday morning, SpaceX attempted what was to be the company's seventh resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), only to have the unmanned vehicle break up just over two minutes after launch. The first six missions were successes for the private space firm, and Sunday was to be their third — so far unsuccessful — attempt to land their Falcon 9 rocket on a drone barge after launching the Dragon supply ship into orbit. While the rocket hit its target accurately on bo...

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Uwingu offers out-of-this-world Father's Day gift idea

Posted 9 years ago by Karri Ferron

Posted on behalf of the Uwingu team; Astronomy magazine is a proud partner of this effort to raise funding for space scienceNeed a last-minute present for dad? Space company Uwingu offers a great gift for Father’s Day with place names on its Mars map. Uwingu’s Mars Map will be carried to Mars aboard the first Mars One robotic lander.Through Father’s Day — Sunday, June 21 — Uwingu is offering special decorative Father’s Day certificates for anyone choosing to h...

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A closer look at PixInsight

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

Image contributor Ron Brecher, whose great shots have appeared on this website as well as in Astronomy magazine, has sent in a guest blog that’s a review of a product he’s quite fond of. We don’t publish software reviews in the magazine, so this virtual space is the perfect forum for such an article. Brecher’s review (with some of his images) follows: PixInsight (PI) is a powerful tool for deep-sky image processing, but it can be tough to learn. Documentation is incomple...

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Arsonist sets 9 spot fires near historic Lowell Observatory

Posted 9 years ago by Eric Betz

An unknown arsonist set nine spot fires within sight of Lowell Observatory on Wednesday and sent staff scrambling to put the blazes out with garden equipment, according to the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff.The paper reports that the observatory’s sole trustee, Lowell Putnam, great-grandnephew of Percival Lowell, was having family over at his home on Mars Hill when a staff member smelled smoke and sounded the alarm.More than a dozen family members and staff armed themselves with garden too...

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T minus 800 days until the eclipse

Posted 9 years ago by Michael Bakich

A few days ago I realized that today — June 12, 2015 — is a milestone of sorts: 800 days until the big event. Are you excited yet? Probably. What I mean by that is that you’re reading a blog dedicated to the August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, so it’s not a stretch to imagine where your interests lie. Here’s the thing, though. I’m not seeing that level of excitement in many other places. So far, most media stories about the 2017 event fall into the “...

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Making exoplanet news right here at Astronomy

Posted 9 years ago by Korey Haynes

Most days, I get to report about other scientists’ discoveries. But today, I’ll toot my own horn a bit. I’ve been here at Astronomy for six months now. But before that, I was a graduate student researching exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system. And not just any worlds, but the massive planets called hot Jupiters, orbiting extremely close to their stars and heated to thousands of degrees. Specifically, I looked at their atmospheres, hoping to see water in enough detail tha...

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