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A week to remember: The 2013 Texas Star Party

Posted 11 years ago by Michael Bakich

Guest blog by Astronomy columnist Erika Rix In West Texas near Fort Davis, the Texas Star Party (TSP) has been going strong since 1979. What began as a gathering of fewer than 100 astronomy enthusiasts has blossomed to between 400 and 800 attending during subsequent years. Having moved to the Lone Star State only a year ago, I was excited to make the scenic seven-hour journey to Prude Ranch to experience this star party firsthand. Sunday, May 5, kicked off the first night. After setting up our...

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Discover the Universe in Ottawa

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

In April, Canada's Ottawa Valley Astronomy and Observer’s Group (OAOG) participated in the Astronomical League-sponsored Astronomy Day. On a specified day (April 20 this year), astronomical societies, planetariums, museums, and observatories host events all over the world so that people across all latitudes and longitudes can experience the coolness what’s above our heads. This year, the OAOG also made its event part of Astronomy magazine’s Discover the Universe&...

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An interview with the "Toy Hunter" at C2E2

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

A few weeks ago, I attended the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2). The 2013 version of C2E2 ran April 26–28, and the venue was the North Building of Chicago’s McCormick Place. Like most “comic” conventions these days, C2E2 also covers all aspects of pop culture. I managed to get press credentials again this year and started searching for potential interviews. When the Travel Channel contacted me about a possible interview with Jordan Hembrough of its Toy Hunt...

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Attend the American Astronomical Society conference and star party in Indianapolis

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

If you enjoy astronomy, convention centers, and knocking elbows with top-notch scientists, you’ll be thrilled to hear that the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is inviting you — yes, you — to attend its 222nd meeting. The conference, which takes place June 2–6 in Indianapolis, will host more than 500 science-professional attendees, and the number of public guests is up to you and your friends and cousins and co-workers. For a discounted rate of $50 per day, you ...

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Help discover gravitational lenses

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

Zooniverse, which is home to 14 online citizen science projects and more than 830,000 users, just launched another program aimed at armchair astronomers: Space Warps. In this project, you’ll hunt for gravitational lenses. These are the optical illusions created as the light from distant galaxies is bent as it travels near a foreground galaxy or galaxy cluster. (The gravity of that foreground object warps space-time around it.) So you can end up seeing bright arcs, or even full circles, of ...

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Astronomy Festival on the National Mall

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

Have you ever looked through a telescope while the Washington Monument towered over you? If not (or if you have and would like to do so again), you’ll have your chance in just over a month. On June 14 (or June 15 if the sky is not cooperating), the astronomy outreach arm of Hofstra University will host the Astronomy Festival on the National Mall. The event, whose title describes it quite accurately, will run from 5–11 p.m. That evening, museums, universities, observatories, a...

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Send your poems to Mars on MAVEN

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

NASA’s newest venture around Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN), will launch in November. It will carry the usual spectrometers and magnetometers, but it also will have cargo of a more literary sort: poetry, stored on a DVD and authored by you (if you’re lucky). The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, which coordinates the “Going to Mars” campaign for MAVEN, and NASA are inviting the pub...

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Astronomy dreams at C2E2

Posted 11 years ago by Michael Bakich

The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) starts Friday, April 26, and for the second straight year I’ll be there. I guess the convention organizers liked what I did last year because they’ve issued me press credentials again. The 2013 C2E2 runs April 26–28. The convention, which, in addition to comics, also spans the latest and greatest in the worlds of movies, television, toys, and video games, is being held in the North Building of Chicago’s McCormick Place. ...

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Discover the Universe in Maryland and Delaware

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

During the month of March, the Sussex County Astronomy Society and the Delmarva Space Sciences Foundation held three events — one at the seashore, one at a rocket launch complex, and one on a boardwalk — as part of Astronomy magazine’s Discover the Universe program to bring sidewalk astronomy to everyone. Gerry Lyons, the Sussex Society’s outreach coordinator, reports on their success: Assateague Island National SeashoreOn March 9, we held our fi...

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An "unofficial" name for Alpha Centauri Bb

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

Last week, I wrote about the Uwingu "People's Choice" contest that invites people to vote on a popular name for the nearest known exoplanet. Today, I have two updates: 1) Uwingu has extended the contest by one week, and the winning name now won't be decided until Monday, April 22, at midnight EDT. You can continue to vote at www.uwingu.com. 2) In response to Uwingu's efforts, which ultimately raise money for space education and research, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) issued a pres...

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The Sun lets loose the biggest coronal mass ejection of the year

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

Yesterday at 3:36 A.M., the Sun launched billions of tons of plasma into space at 600 miles per second (966 kilometers/second) — 37 times as fast as our fastest spacecraft. This event, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), sent charged particles and radiation hurtling toward Earth. The radiation, traveling at the speed of light, reached Earth in the usual 8.5 minutes, but the particles, slowed down by their pesky mass, will take 1−3 days to get here. The radiation caused a brief rad...

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Uwingu wants you to name Alpha Centauri Bb!

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

Astronomers aren’t normally known for being the most creative bunch when naming celestial objects. They stick to catalog/mission designations that involve an oftentimes convoluted or boring mixture of letters and numerals. That’s why many common names for our favorite deep-sky targets get their monikers from the non-Ph.D.s who enjoy them. Recognizing the public’s creativity, scientists with Uwingu, a company dedicated to raising funds for scientific projects through crowdfundi...

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NASA publishes its proposed 2014 budget

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

On April 10, NASA unveiled the budget it is requesting from the federal government in fiscal year 2014. The final number — $17.7 billion — is much higher than the average household income but is less than half a percent of the federal money-spending total in 2013. NASA has big plans for these billions and billions. The big news is that the agency, under direction from President Obama, plans to acquire an asteroid, bring it closer to Earth, send astronauts to it by 2025, and have the...

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High-energy astrophysics meeting: Future articles and the “Fermi bubbles”

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

Sitting in all these science talks and speaking with the researchers at the meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society is giving me some great ideas for future articles. High-energy astrophysics is a field that doesn’t always get a lot of media (and public) attention. I can certainly understand the reason: It’s difficult stuff and doesn’t always seem as accessible to people as extrasolar planets and solar system science — mostly ...

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High-energy astrophysics meeting: X-rays and more X-rays

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

I’m at the 13th meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for a few days. Some 400 astronomers have been updating one another on the state of their studies, and I’m here to listen in and learn about the current projects (plus I’ll receive the award for the David N. Schramm science journalism award at tomorrow’s banquet). Yesterday and today I heard a lot about X-rays — specifically the highest-energy X-rays that the Nucle...

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Explore the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

What has 65 siblings, lives 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) above sea level, and sees the invisible? As far as I know, the only thing that fits that description is an antenna in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a 66-element telescope in Chile that was just inaugurated March 13. Currently, 55 antennas are operational and on site, but the missing 11 are due to arrive shortly. The antennas’ combined data give the telescope a resolution of 10 milliarcseconds — 10 times...

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The 2013 International Earth and Sky Photo Contest is underway

Posted 11 years ago by Michael Bakich

April is Global Astronomy Month, and that means the fourth International Earth and Sky Photo Contest is underway. Organized by The World at Night (TWAN), the Global Astronomy Month project (an effort by Astronomers Without Borders), and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the contest is open to anyone of any age from now through Earth Day, April 22. The contest was founded by TWAN and the Dark Skies Awareness project in 2008 as a regional program. It expanded to worldwide scope in 2009 ...

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The Messier marathon meets March Madness

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

I’ll admit it: March is one of my favorite months. I love March Madness, even if I never win any pool because I always pick the wrong upsets. I enjoy the competition, the great story lines, and an excuse to watch college basketball all day. And after the first round, I tend to root for the Cinderella just to see an underdog win it all. But March isn’t just about college basketball. It’s also a big month for amateur astronomy — the month for Messier marathons. Messier&rsq...

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Iceland 2013: Waterfalls, culture, and aurorae

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

I wrote in yesterday’s blog that I’d describe a bit more about the daytime activities of the past few days. On Saturday, we made our way back to Reykjavik from the southern coast. Along the way, the tour stopped at a couple of waterfalls — one of which (the 200-feet-tall [60 meters] Skogáfoss) we could hike up 350 steps to see from above, and that we did. We also visited a folk museum in Skógar; it included an open-air portion (with old houses, a church, and othe...

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Iceland 2013: More aurorae!

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

Both last night and tonight we were fortunate enough to see more northern lights. Saturday gave an incredible show and Sunday’s was a nice going-away gift — tomorrow is the day we leave beautiful Iceland. On Saturday, we had made our way along the southwest of the island and back to Reykjavik (after spending the previous three days near Iceland's southern coast). Following a dinner about 45 minutes outside Reykjavik, the bus drove to a nearby park for us to watch the hole ...

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Iceland 2013: Lava fields and glaciers

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

Yesterday morning I gave my astronomical lecture about “The active Sun.” That went quite well — even though many in our travel group had been awake for a late night of aurora sightings. With that out of the way, the group drove to a nearby lava field. This solidified rock came from the volcanic eruption of the Lakagígar fissure in the southern part of Iceland, which lasted from 1783 to 1784. It spewed some 3.4 cubic miles (14 cubic kilometers) of roiling lava, and ...

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Guest blog: Leo by night, lions by day

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

Nick Howes, a freelance science writer for the European Space Agency and the pro-am program manager for the Faulkes Telescope, provides a guest blog about a recent “Astro Safari” to the pristine skies of Tanzania. The journey started at the UK 50 Space Conference, an event I only decided to attend at the last minute, due to the fantastic speaker lineup. Television producer and writer Tira Shubart, a friend with extensive experience in Africa as a journalist, approached me with the i...

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Iceland 2013: Water wonders and aurorae

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

Today we got to see a sampling of Iceland’s amazing natural wonders (including the northern lights!). In the morning, we left Reykjavik and drove southeast to the Haukadalur geothermal area to visit hot springs and natural geysers. The water is about 212° Fahrenheit (100° Celsius) — and contains alkalides — so we made sure not to touch the water. The steam roiling off the many water holes made it obvious how hot the spring-fed features are, but it made for dramatic pho...

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Comet PANSTARRS and a jet contrail

Posted 11 years ago by Karri Ferron

Astronomy magazine has received tons of fantastic images of Comet PANSTARRS over the past few weeks (see some of them in our special Comet PANSTARRS photo gallery and our Comets Reader Photo Gallery), and we unfortunately can’t highlight them all. But yesterday, frequent contributor John Chumack sent in some recent images I couldn’t help but share. John was in the Philadelphia area March 14 on business. He had a clear evening, so he headed to Valley Forge National Park because it ha...

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Iceland 2013: Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

During this week, I’m aurora hunting from the beautiful island country of Iceland. I’m joining a tour with Astronomy magazine’s travel partner, MWT Associates, Inc., as the lecturer. While here, I get to learn about Iceland’s impressive geology and rich culture while hoping the northern lights make nightly appearances. After snow in Wisconsin and New York City, we finally made it to the west coast of the island Tuesday morning — a couple hours delayed. Our first st...

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Deep Sky Forum and Faint Fuzzies create 46-object observing guide

Posted 11 years ago by Sarah Scoles

One year ago, NASA’s Ebb and Flow craft sent back images of the farside of the Moon, Lady Gaga started her own social networking site, and the Deep Sky Forum was in its infancy. Now, 12 months later, DeepSkyForum.com is a dynamo of observing information. With almost 300 members who have collectively made more than 1,500 posts, the site brings together some of the best and most experienced people in amateur astronomy. Users post and respond to others’ posts about everythin...

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A fantastic sketch of Comet PANSTARRS

Posted 11 years ago by Michael Bakich

Master sketcher Jeremy Perez from Flagstaff, Arizona, made this great drawing of Comet PANSTARRS on March 13. I was so impressed that I wanted to share the sketch and the story behind it. Here's what Jeremy said:"In the two nights since I last viewed the comet, its elevation has risen enough to pull it further out of the twilight glare. And it looks GREAT! The view got better and better as twilight deepened. The tail seemed to nearly double in length since I last viewed it — approaching wh...

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Comet PANSTARRS doesn’t disappoint

Posted 11 years ago by Michael Bakich

You know, I’ve heard a little buzz about town (OK, from a certain other astronomy publication) that Comet PANSTARRS (C/2011 L4) is a bit disappointing. That contradicts the reports I’m getting from observers and imagers all over the world who think the first dirty snowball in 2013 is terrific. I mean, c’mon. Anytime a comet hits naked-eye visibility, that’s news. But how could I know for sure? Here’s my problem: I live in Milwaukee. I can forget the mass of people,...

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"Cosmic Adventures" video series returns

Posted 11 years ago by Liz Kruesi

After a few-month hiatus, Cosmic Adventures is back to explore the awesome world of astronomy. You’ll notice a key difference with the second season: Associate Editor Sarah Scoles joins me on screen after Bill Andrews left Astronomy for its sister publication, Discover. In episode 20, we talk about 10 big changes in the field of astronomy — from the discovery of dark energy to the study of the martian surface. So whether you’re a Cosmic Adventures fan from the beginning, or yo...

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It's time to observe Comet PANSTARRS

Posted 11 years ago by Rich Talcott

It appears that our hopes for Comet PANSTARRS (C/2011 L4) may pan out after all. The most recent magnitude estimates put the comet at around 1st magnitude, considerably brighter than it was a week ago and approaching the optimistic forecasts from a few months back. Significantly, the comet already appears brighter than the 2nd or 3rd magnitude that many pessimists were predicting for the comet’s peak this weekend. Comet PANSTARRS currently has a high surface brightness and an impressively ...

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