Open Observing Night

The ZWO Seestar S30 is a compact, all-in-one smart telescope designed to make astrophotography simple and approachable. It’s a smaller version of the extremely popular Seestar S50, with some added features.  With its built-in camera, motorized mount, and mobile app control, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of capturing the night sky. No... […]

The ZWO ASI585MM Pro is ZWO’s most affordable cooled monochrome astronomy camera, and after two months of backyard imaging with it, I’ve come away pretty impressed. This little camera offers a lot of versatility—ideal for both planetary imaging and deep-sky astrophotography—thanks to its high frame rate and cooling capability. But like any gear, it has... […]

If you want to start taking incredible photos of the night sky, I highly recommend investing in a small star tracker. You can attach your existing camera and lens to a star tracker to take amazing photos of large nebulae and galaxies. Over the years, I have used many different star trackers, but the Sky-Watcher... […]

Listen to this audio excerpt from Joe Pavicic, Artemis operations project engineer Joe Pavicic will never forget when he told the Artemis launch director teams were NO-GO for launch. Before Artemis I lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in November 2022, the launch team made multiple launch attempts the months prior.   […]

Citizen science projects result in an overwhelmingly positive impact on the polar tourism experience. That’s according to a new paper analyzing participant experiences in the first two years of FjordPhyto, a NASA Citizen Science project..   The FjordPhyto citizen science project invites travelers onboard expedition cruise vessels to gather data and samples during the polar summer […]

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University For the past month and a half, Perseverance has been exploring the Krokodillen plateau in search of clay-bearing rocks. An earlier blog discussed that these rocks could hold clues to Mars’ watery past, and Perseverance has been exploring multiple potential locations to find a suitable […]

Astronomers have just spotted for the first time a huge cloud of cold hydrogen gas just 300 light-years from Earth. The post Giant Gas Cloud Discovered 300 Light-Years from Earth appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

A newfound comet from a remote star system may become bright enough to see in amateur telescopes this November. The post Rare Interstellar Comet Buzzes Solar System appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

On Sunday night the Moon occults Pi Scorpii for almost all of North America. Elsewhere in Scorpius, the Cat's Eyes point side-eye to the Little Cat's Eyes. The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, July 4 – 12 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

 Anybody still coming here?

My own Hubble View! These galaxies lie between 10 to 50 million light years away. How many galaxies do you see? A pretty tricky part of the sky to image, really. You're utilizing almost your entire field of view with an 80mm scope, so dealing with all that comes with wide-field. This is the best […]

A nice clear night last night until around 12:30 when clouds rolled in. Managed to get this image of the lovely M51 Whirlpool galaxy. It lies around 23 million light years away and it is interacting with a smaller galaxy (yellow~ish bulge to the left). Three supernova (star explosions) have been detected in this galaxy […]