Special guest blog from Contributing Editor Martin Ratcliffe President Barack Obama and his family joined 150 school children, dozens of amateur astronomers, professional scientists, and education and public outreach professionals Wednesday night during the Star Party at the White House. And how cool was this? “Cool” doesn’t even come close. I was lucky to be a part of the exciting events running one of the planetarium domes set up on the South Lawn...

Astronomy magazine contributor and longtime imager John Chumack had some luck spotting the new Jupiter impact site from his home in Dayton, Ohio, July 24, and he was nice enough to share his account with us: Even though the seeing sucked, and the sky was full of thick haze, I was able to capture the impact mark on Jupiter. I shot these images with my ToUcam PRO II webcam attached to my 6-inch f/8 cave reflector from my front driveway last night. Unfortunately...

Perplexed by planets? Confused by cosmology? Baffled by black holes? Then send in your questions to Astronomy magazine at askastro@astronomy.com . If you have an astronomy question about observing, the planets, stars, cosmology, or astronomy history, send it in! Five are selected each month for publication in the Ask Astro section of Astronomy magazine. If your question is selected, we will forward it to an expert for his or her response. Then, the...

In this video , I discuss the objects you can see with your naked eyes and binoculars in this spring’s sky. The season offers several bright planets, notable constellations, and bright deep-sky objects. You can locate all the night-sky sights I talk about with Astronomy.com's interactive star chart StarDome . Watch the video, " Observe easy-to-find objects in the spring sky ." Venus As darkness falls during the first half of March, your...