Jul 29, 2024 | Rick's Picks
Transient Events That Can Give Us a Good Enough Reason to Get Outside and Do a Little Observing All month: the planets continue their slow and hesitant return to the evening sky this month. As August opens, Mercury is a mag +0.9 waning crescent 9 arcseconds from tip...
Jul 29, 2024 | Focal Plane
Dwarf stars are the most plentiful in our sky. But as their name suggests, they are smaller in mass and thus less intrinsically bright. Our August fundamentals will focus on some white and red dwarf stars. Although each of these stars are dwarf stars, they are more...
Jul 21, 2024 | Rick's Picks
Transient Events That Can Give Us a Good Enough Reason to Get Outside and Do a Little Observing All month: planet-watchers won’t have much to do on April evenings this year, since Mercury will vacate the sunset sky before the end of April’s first week, heading for...
Jul 21, 2024 | Rick's Picks
The sky at totality: April 8, 2024 This is how the sky will look during totality from the NAA viewing site near McLeansboro IL.For locations farther east, move everything in the illustration slightly to the west; for more westerly locations, move everything a little...
Jul 21, 2024 | Rick's Picks
Transient Events That Can Give Us a Good Enough Reason to Get Outside and Do a Little Observing All month: planet watchers are in for a boring month, as their quarry largely disappear from both the morning and evening sky. The evening’s last holdouts, Jupiter and...
