Here is the transcript for my podcast about how to see the Summer Triangle, the North America Nebula, and the Bow-Tie Nebula during the next few days. Check out the Astronomy.com's interactive star chart to see an accurate map of your sky. It'll help you locate some of this week's key targets. Astronomy magazine subscribers have access to a slew of cool functions. Targets for August 29-September 4 Naked-eye: Summer Triangle Small telescope...

Here is the transcript for my podcast about how to see Jupiter, M57, and NGC 1 during the next few days. Targets for August 22–28 Naked eye: Jupiter Small telescope : M57, the Ring Nebula 8-inch or larger telescope: NGC 1 --Begin transcript-- Just starting out? Let’s get started with this week’s naked-eye object. And it’s an easy one — Jupiter . All you have to do is look toward the south after sunset. If your sky is clear, you’ll spot Jupiter blazing...

Astronomers now recognize 88 constellations. A memory aid I’ve used through the years is that there are the same number of constellations as keys on a full piano keyboard. Today’s star groups cover the sky with no overlaps and no gaps between them. This, however, is a fairly recent development. Before 1928, celestial mapmakers were free to populate the skies as they pleased, with only the mildest restraint placed upon them by astronomers and other...

On Tuesday evening, April 8, you can experience one of the most beautiful events the sky can deliver. Head outside no later than an hour or so after sunset (around 8:30 P.M. local daylight time) and look to the west. Your eyes should land immediately on the slender crescent Moon, oriented with its cusps standing nearly straight up from the horizon. Point your binoculars at the Moon to reveal a stunning sight: the bright Pleiades star cluster (M45...

There’s no better place to find astronomy related software than the web archive created by Astro Events Group of Ostend, Belgium. “Our compilation will actually never be complete,” says Patrick Jaecques, a member of the group. “We have updates about every week. It’s also the only part of our Dutch web site that is translated into French, German and English.” There you’ll find hundreds of programs for a wide variety of computing environments, including...

In my last blog post , I presented a 25-question constellation trivia quiz. Here are the answers. 1) Serpens occupies two regions of sky. Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer separates Serpens. 2) Unlike the Southern Cross, whose long axis points to the South Celestial Pole, the “False Cross” gives only bad directions. Two of its stars come from Carina (Iota and Epsilon) and Vela (Delta and Kappa). 3) Before astronomers formalized the constellation boundaries...

Recently, I stood in a foot of snow when the Fahrenheit temperature was barely in the teens. I dressed warmly (or so I thought), but I wasn’t doing anything physical, so the cold was biting at my extremities. Yes, I was observing. As much as I despise cold weather (see, for instance, my blog “ The weather gods hate me ”), there’s a lot to be said for observing during the winter. When the temperature dips well below freezing, the crunchy snow pack...

Springer The definitive work on a famous list of deep-sky objects is now in print: The Herschel Objects, and how to observe them by James Mullaney (Springer, 2007). Why definitive? Because, in 1976, Mullaney was the first to propose an observing list based on Herschel's catalog. Mullaney packs an incredible amount of information into this 166-page book. He gives us a brief history of English astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738–1822), a list...

Here's something I'll strive to do with this blog every once in a while: provide you with suggestions for deep-sky observing. I'd like to suggest viewing some of my favorite objects, some of which are a little off-the-beaten-path. If you observe these objects, image them, or sketch them at the eyepiece, be sure to send us your material and we'll publish as much of it as we can in Astronomy or on our web page. Feel free to contact me...