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Last week, I blogged about my one-year anniversary. In that article, I began listing my favorite celestial objects in several categories. Following are the categories I didn't get to. Planetary nebula — The Ghost of Jupiter (NGC 3242) in Hydra. This bright planetary shows lots of detail through 8...
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This blog marks my one-year anniversary yakking about any astronomical subject that caught my fancy. Blogs were new at Astronomy in 2006, but blogging seemed like a great vehicle for covering lots of topics in a somewhat random manner. Now, many of our editors blog on a weekly basis. I will use this...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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I was checking out the exhibitors at this week’s American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, and trying hard to avoid information overload. The booth for the Pan-STARRS project stopped me in mid-stride. In fact, I may have actually done a double-take. There, a giant poster of the Andromeda...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Have you heard the news? Astronomers have observed the early phase of an exploding star. It’s 2008d, the “ supernova caught in the act .” If you are in the science media, you can’t help having heard about it. For days, we’ve been in the midst of a blitz that would make the Luftwaffe envious. Fortunately...
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