Open Observing

Last updated: November 21, 2025. If you find this helpful and buy through my links, I may receive a small commission. Over the past few months, I have been testing the DWARF mini smart telescope from the backyard and at a dark-sky site. This smart telescope is currently the world’s smallest, weighing just 840 grams. ... […]

Last updated: November 4, 2025. If you find this helpful and buy through my links, I may receive a small commission. My latest photo of the Andromeda Galaxy is my best effort yet. I have been taking deep-sky astrophotography images for almost 15 years now, and this might be my favorite photo of space I’ve... […]

Last updated: October 23, 2025. If you find this helpful and buy through my links, I may receive a small commission. Over the years, I’ve spent countless nights under the stars chasing crisp, deep-sky images from my backyard. But this fall, I added something new to my telescope that completely changed the way I capture... […]

NASA has selected Plug Power, Inc., of Slingerlands, New York, and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to supply up to approximately 36,952,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen for use at facilities across the agency. The NASA Agency-wide Supply of Liquid Hydrogen awards are firm-fixed-price requirements contracts that include multiple firm-fixed-price delivery orders critical […]

Nearly 1,250 middle and high school students from 71 schools around the world joined Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden for the Growing Beyond Earth (GBE) Student Launch Chat with the Scientists, marking an inspiring milestone in the program’s 10th anniversary year. The live session, held in collaboration with NASA, connected classrooms directly with Dr. Gioia Massa […]

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy that’s hard to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (the Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star […]

Uranus is its closest to Earth all year on the night of November 21st, and you can find it easily in the evening sky using Sky & Telescope’s exclusive star chart. The post Spot Uranus at Opposition appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Saturn's rings are now the closest to edge on that they'll get. The famous interstellar comet has become higher and easier for amateur telescopes before dawn. The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 21 – 30 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Now that Comet 3I/ATLAS has emerged from the Sun's glare, its behavior is being monitored by every available observatory. The post Updates on Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS: NASA Images, Many Tails, and Non-gravitational Forces 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 […]