This image of Messier 13 in Hercules, the father of all globular star clusters visible from the Northern Hemisphere, was captured by Martin Pugh. Hundreds of thousands of stars, 25,000 light-years away from the sun, are arranged in a sphere by their mutual gravitational attraction. M13 is visible as a faint fuzzy patch to the…
Read more
On Saturday, June 3, the full Strawberry Moon will rise at sunset. This simulation shows the moon at 10 pm local time. The bright reddish star to its upper right of the moon will be Antares, the “Rival of Mars” and the brightest star in Scorpius, the Scorpion. They’ll be cosy enough to share the…
Read more
This image by Michael Watson of Toronto nicely captured earthshine on the waxing crescent moon after sunset on March 8, 2019. Michael’s terrific galleries of moon images are hosted on his Flickr page. Hello, May Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of May 21st, 2023 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass…
Read more
This gorgeous spiral galaxy named NGC 5248 and Caldwell 45 in Boötes is visible in medium-sized and larger telescopes on moonless evenings. Image by Adam Block of Mount Lemmon Observatory (Wikipedia) Hello, Moonless May Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of May 14th, 2023 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this…
Read more
This terrific Wikipedia image by Hunter Wilson from March 28, 2008 shows the Leo Triplet of Galaxies, which is located south-southeast of the bright star Chertan in Leo. The photograph, with celestial north up and East toward left, covers a pinky-finger-width (or 0.6 degrees) of the sky left-to-right. The Hamburger Galaxy is at the top…
Read more
This colour image of the moon during the penumbral lunar eclipse of September 16, 2016 was taken by Robin Lee in Hong Kong. It was the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for Oct 12, 2016. Welcome to mid-Spring, Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April 30th, 2023 by Chris Vaughan.…
Read more
This beautiful natural image of the Hyades and the Pleiades clusters in Taurus, was captured and processed by Alan Dyer while he was travelling to Arizona in December, 2017. He used a Canon 5D MkII camera on a tracking mount and a total of eight minutes of exposure. The bright star Aldebaran at left is…
Read more
A sampling of galaxy forms. Clockwise from upper left: Messier 87 “Virgo A” (elliptical), Messier 102 “Spindle” (lenticular), NGC 1365 (barred spiral), NGC 4656 “the Crowbar” (irregular), and Messier 81 “Bode’s Nebula” (spiral). All except NGC 1365 are visible on spring evenings from mid-northern latitudes. Hello, Meteor and Galaxy lovers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights…
Read more
This spectacular photograph by Alan Dyer of Alberta, Canada captured Venus’ swing past the Pleiades Star Cluster, or the Seven Sisters, on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. The image, spanning about two fingers widths of the sky, nicely shows the mini-dipper shape of the stars that you would see through binoculars. Alan’s original blog post is…
Read more
This image taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the fascinating Aristarchus Plateau. The crater Aristarchus at lower right is very prominent, and can be seen even with unaided eyes as a very bright patch. To its left is the similar-sized, but darker crater Herodotus. Vallis Schröteri, the largest sinuous rille on the moon, starts…
Read more