The Astronomy staff gets things rolling the morning of October 16, 2009. David J. Eicher photo Be prepared for plenty of surprises to come in the next few months. Last Friday Astronomy ’s editorial staff joined forces with the art staff and our publisher and went off site, as we do each year, for a daylong discussion. The topics cover the entire spectrum of magazine and web site creation, and the goal is to give you the best possible product we can...

Last night our homeland at Astronomy magazine had the good fortune to receive a visit from a friend of the magazine, Dava Sobel. Dava is an award-winning science writer whose books, Longitude , Galileo’s Daughter , and The Planets , have graced the New York Times bestseller lists. She has contributed to the magazine in the past and has traveled with several editors on trips around the globe in the past to see solar eclipses. Last night, September...

Following the dedication of Astronomy magazine’s observatory , and of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh’s telescope at Rancho Hidalgo, New Mexico, desert adventure awaited us. Astronomy ’s publisher Kevin Keefe had joined me to trek out to visit developer Gene Turner and Loy Guzman, our hosts at Rancho Hidalgo. With the many guests from the night before now departed, we set about exploring nearby attractions surrounding the Hidalgo site — Portal, Arizona...

On Thursday night, September 17, at Rancho Hidalgo near Animas, New Mexico, Astronomy magazine editors joined a group of some 50 people to dedicate the magazine’s new observatory facility and to dedicate Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh’s personal telescope in its new location. Now called Pluto Park, the area of the ranch has been set aside for astronomy education goals by Rancho Hidalgo developer Gene Turner, in conjunction with his large and enthusiastic...

What CDs do you like to spin when you’re out under a dark sky enjoying a long evening of observing? As for me, I’ll pull one out from the old days — Pink Floyd’s epic Dark Side of the Moon . The classic album that sold 45 million copies was a stalwart on the bestselling lists for years after its debut in 1973 and did much of the heavy lifting at planetarium laser shows throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Engineered at Abbey Road Studios by Alan Parsons...

Are you one of those amateur astronomers who sees references to space or astronomy in the movies and either wants to capture the moment because you loved it or or can’t stand it because of inaccuracies? The editors of Astronomy want to know your favorite (or least favorite) moments in astronomy in the movies. As an example, I’ll provide a dramatic moment from a 1930s classic. Everyone knows the legendary Gone with the Wind , starring Clark Gable and...

Along with the other 186 people on our ship, the Victoria Prince, I found myself reporting from China during our last week with very limited Internet capability. Thus, I could not send images with the final blog posts during the week of July 20. To make up for this, I am now posting a selection of images from the last week of the trip that includes shots of eclipse day . Enjoy! Previous post: We visit a Revolutionary Photo credit: David J. Eicher

Here's my final blog from the China 2009 eclipse tour the Astronomy magazine editors have conducted, along with Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates. Sunday we travel to Shanghai, board a plane in the afternoon, and fly back to Chicago and then to Milwaukee. See all the images from Dave's tour in our solar eclipse 2009 trip gallery . This morning our group of 187, including Senior Editor Rich Talcott and his wife Evelyn, boarded buses in Nanjing...

Today our group of travelers left our ship, climbed aboard buses, and made a 2.5-hour journey from our dock to Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain , a national treasure of China. Although the weather was hardly favorable, with rain coming down strongly or sometimes partial clearing and fog and haze rolling by, we journeyed toward our destination through charming little towns, villages, and cities. The pastoral countryside was amazing in that every farmhouse...

Carefully following weather reports and satellite imagery through the hours leading up to the great Asian solar eclipse , we knew we might well be in trouble. Rather than pushing on eastward to Wuhan, we stopped our ship, the Victoria Princess , at the city of Yichang, well to the east, and had wonderful success. A wisp of cloud hung over the Sun just as first contact occurred, but then it slid to the east, and we had the Sun hanging in a cloudless...