Clear Dark Sky Forecast
AstroBackyard
- ZWO Seestar S30 Review July 6, 2025The ZWO Seestar S30 is a compact, all-in-one smart telescope designed to make astrophotography simple and approachable. 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 cables, no polar alignment, no complicated setup required. For this reason, the S30 is... […]Ashley Northcotte
- ZWO ASI585MM Pro Review: An Affordable Mono Powerhouse June 19, 2025The 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... […]Trevor Jones
- How a Star Tracker Can Transform Your Astrophotography May 31, 2025If 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... […]Trevor Jones
NASA Solar System & Beyond
- NASA Remembers Former Johnson Director Jefferson Howell July 3, 2025July 3, 2025 Jefferson Davis Howell, Jr., former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, died July 2, in Bee Cave, Texas. He was 85 years old. Howell was a champion of the construction of the International Space Station, working on a deadline to complete the orbiting lab by 2004. He oversaw four space […]Wendy K. Avedisian
- NASA Mission Monitoring Air Quality from Space Extended July 3, 2025Since launching in 2023, NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution mission, or TEMPO, has been measuring the quality of the air we breathe from 22,000 miles above the ground. June 19 marked the successful completion of TEMPO’s 20-month-long initial prime mission, and based on the quality of measurements to date, the mission has been extended […]Charles G. Hatfield
- Hubble Observations Give “Missing” Globular Cluster Time to Shine July 3, 2025A previously unexplored globular cluster glitters with multicolored stars in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Globular clusters like this one, called ESO 591-12 or Palomar 8, are spherical collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters generally form early in the galaxies’ histories in regions rich […]
Sky & Telescope
- This Week's Sky at a Glance, July 4 – 12 July 4, 2025On 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.Alan MacRobert
- See Multiple International Space Station Passes This Fourth of July Weekend July 3, 2025Early July is a great time to catch multiple passes of the International Space Station passes in a single night. Here's why. The post See Multiple International Space Station Passes This Fourth of July Weekend appeared first on Sky & Telescope.David Dickinson
- See Dual Naked-Eye Novae, a Rare Cosmic Coincidence July 1, 2025What's rarer than a naked-eye nova? Having two of them at the same time! The post See Dual Naked-Eye Novae, a Rare Cosmic Coincidence appeared first on Sky & Telescope.Bob King
Phil’s Astronomy Blog
- Hello out there? October 12, 2021Anybody still coming here?Phil
- Markarian's Chain in Virgo April 13, 2018My 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 […]Phil
- M51 Whirlpool Galaxy April 9, 2018A 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 […]Phil