The Astronomical League and NASA have announced a new observing program to celebrate 35 Years of the Hubble Space Telescope
Explore the Night Sky Like Hubble!You can help celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope by taking on the Hubble’s Night Sky Observing Challenge!… Continue reading.
Major Telescope Companies Face $32 Million Settlement Over Price Fixing
Amateur astronomers who bought telescopes between 2005 and 2023 might qualify for payments from a $32 million settlement. This comes after a class action lawsuit accused major telescope makers of price fixing and monopolizing the U.S.… Continue reading.
Here’s a brief look at what’s going on in the skies above the Mile High City this week.
January 20:
The moon reaches apogee (its farthest distance from earth) at 10:00 AM MST, when it’s 251,219 miles away. Look for Venus and Saturn to be less than 3° apart (about two fingers’ width) in the constellation of Aquarius towards the southwest in the early evening sky.… Continue reading.
Dear readers,
What follows is the most difficult article I have ever written. On Friday, September 23, 2022, my wife Wendee died. She had been suffering from metastatic breast cancer for over a decade, but this past summer she was truly and clearly suffering.… Continue reading.
SLS Launch Further Delayed – Following previous technical delays, the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket returned to the safety of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building before the landfall of Hurricane Ian. After confirming that it suffered no damage, NASA announced they’re likely to make another launch attempt in November.… Continue reading.
Dear Don,
You left us far too soon, my friend. From your home in California and later in Arizona, you lived quietly and well, with a passion for stargazing that dominated your life.
As the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “I am like a slip of comet,/ Scarce worth discovery.”… Continue reading.
New JWST Images – James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) astronomers have continued to release new images. Among them is a mosaic covering an area about eight times the size of Webb’s First Deep Field released in July. The mosaic was made for the CEERS program, which is surveying a fraction of one square degree of sky with JWST in various infrared wavelengths.… Continue reading.
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly stars and clusters seen;
Round celestial islands have I been
With telescope after telescope to the night sky hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That Galileo ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Baade speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new star cluster swims into his ken;
Through his majestic window looks upon the Milky Way
He star’d at the centre of our galaxy.… Continue reading.
Webb Observations Released – NASA released the first full-color images and spectra taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, that weren’t alignment or test images. The telescope operates in infrared, so for humans to be able to see Webb images, the wavelengths detected are shifted to visible light wavelengths such that they appear to be color images.… Continue reading.
Ever since I read Bart J. Bok’s foreword to Rose Wilder’s and Gerald Ames’ The Golden Book of Astronomy, I have marveled at what the night sky had to offer and how much of that has changed. “Such wonders,” Bok wrote,” fill this book.”… Continue reading.