First of all, let me apologize for taking a couple days off from blogging. I have had a flurry of projects this week, including one that is huge and last minute for the January issue of the magazine. Now that I’ve caught my breath on those special...

Enormous storms on the Sun are creating great opportunities for solar viewing and imaging by amateur astronomers as they watch a monster sunspot group (1302), which is now visible to the naked eye . A significant explosion from the Sun’s corona...

Happy beginning of the week to you; some surprises coming up starting tomorrow — stay tuned. Today I am sharing a lovely image of the galaxy M101 in Ursa Major shot by astronomy students of the University of Delaware at Mount Cuba Observatory, near...

Welcome to Friday! Let’s hope that none of us is hit by pieces of an infalling satellite today. I want to let you know about a major star party event coming in 2 weeks that is being put on by Astronomy magazine Contributing Editor Mike Reynolds...

Dayton, Ohio, astroimager John Chumack has a way of capturing one cool astroimage after another, and he’s done it again by sending this neat shot of the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster. As John puts it, “It can be a real challenge to shoot...

I’ve mentioned the Astronomy Foundation a few times in my blogs — it’s the 2-year-old organization of telescope industry folks who want to encourage a new generation of people to discover amateur astronomy. I happen to be president of...

Florida astroimager Pete Lardizabal shot this beautiful image of the orange Moon he observed about 9° above the eastern horizon near Jacksonville, Florida, at 8:52 p.m. EDT on September 13, 2011. The extreme orange color seen in the area was due to...

Welcome to my 100th blog! This is a day for anniversaries: 100 blogs and 29 years to the day since I joined the staff of Astronomy magazine! And to celebrate, I am taking the day off. Instead of writing something original, I am presenting you with a guest...

You’ve heard before from 16-year-old Benjamin Palmer of Queensbury, New York, an enthusiastic astronomy buff who won Astronomy magazine’s Youth Essay Contest this year and also serves as chair of the Youth Committee for the Astronomy Foundation...

You’ve heard before from 16-year-old Benjamin Palmer of Queensbury, New York, an enthusiastic astronomy buff who won Astronomy magazine’s Youth Essay Contest this year and also serves as chair of the Youth Committee for the Astronomy Foundation...

Check out this huge sunspot captured by astroimager John Chumack in Dayton, Ohio, September 12. It is a striking image of our Sun, the source of all our energy in the solar system, the entity that makes life possible on our planet, and the nuclear engine...

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of being asked to come to Astronomy at the Beach near Detroit, Michigan, the 15th annual public star party put on by seven different astronomy clubs in the metro area. Despite the fact that I was in Green Bay for...

For the 15th year in a row this weekend, the seven astronomy clubs in the Detroit, Michigan, metro area are sponsoring Astronomy at the Beach, an observing event held at Maple Beach at the Kensington Metropark near Brighton, Michigan, northwest of the...

As first I described on Friday, August 26 , a type Ia supernova discovered on Wednesday, August 24, in the nearby galaxy M101 in Ursa Major is the nearest type Ia supernova astronomers have found since 1972. The brightness of this exploding star is on...

Few astroimagers have the kind of history and spectacular results as Tony Hallas , contributing editor to Astronomy magazine and experienced skyshooter. For years, Tony has pioneered shooting deep-sky objects in color, and his recent image of the dark...

Several of you who were at star parties over the past few days commented to me about how cool it was to see Comet Garradd slide past the rich globular cluster M71 in Sagitta, a close encounter that occurred on the evening of Saturday, August 27. C/2009...