Clear Winter Nights in February is a Very Sirius Business! The brightest star in the night skies is Sirius. With a visual magnitude of -1.4, Sirius is often mistaken for Venus. Coming into February, it’s real easy to distinguish the two. Sirius is the brightest object in the SE skies in the evening, while Venus […]
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The large, bright nebula in the lower two-thirds of this image is M42, the Orion Nebula. It’s big, about 24 light years across, and bright! With a magnitude of +4, you can spot M42 with your naked eye! M42 is only 1,400 lights years away from us. It’s an area of intense star formation – […]
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November offered great views of nebulae! This is the Flame (lower left quadrant) and the Horse Head Nebulae (upper right quadrant) and a couple of small reflection nebulae! The main star in this shot is Alnitak. It’s the easternmost star in Orion’s belt. With a visual magnitude of +1.7, it’s easy to see with the […]
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What to look for in November 2018. If you are lucky, you might get to see Jupiter and Mercury closely following the setting sun shortly after sundown on November 1. Saturn and Mars will still be visible in the evening skies for all of November. Pluto is between Mars and Saturn, but obviously hidden from […]
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GERRY LEBING GERRY LEBING On the night of September 2, I was looking at my star maps and noticed a little galaxy I had never looked at before. NGC 7331 is a magnitude +9.3 spiral galaxy in the Pegasus constellation. I took a series of images, and when I processed them, I was pretty happy […]
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This is Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula. It’s a bright (magitude +6.0) emission nebula that’s divided by a lane of dark intersteller gas. It’s located about 4,000 lightyears away from us. M8 is believed to be an area of star formation. Under very dark and clear skies, M8 can be observed with the naked eye. […]
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GERRY LEBING GERRY LEBING The Perseids meteor shower will peak the night of August 12-13. There are a number of reasons the Perseids are considered the best meteor shower of the year: It’s a high volume meteor shower. The Perseids are known for counts of 100 shooting stars per hour. It’s a bright meteor […]
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Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. Its diameter is about 87 thousand miles–that’s about 11 times larger than Earth’s! Jupiter is also about five times further from the sun than the Earth. The composition of Jupiter is about 90% hydrogen, 9% helium and it has small amounts of other elements. Its size […]
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April yielded some great views of double galazies! The large spiral galaxy in the upper left is Messier 100; the smaller galaxy in the lower right is NGC 4312. Messier 100 was discovered in 1781, but it wasn’t until 1850 that its spiral structure could be seen with the use of a six foot reflector […]
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Start April by looking across the sound to the west, right around sundown. If the skies are clear, you will easily spot Venus, the third brightest object in our skies – (only the sun and the moon are brighter!) Venus is named after the Roman god of love and beauty. It’s often called the evening […]
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