One summer at science camp, a tween asked me why the sky was blue. They said they asked their parent who told them it was because God liked it that way. I sympathize with that parent. And also with the middle schooler. As we get older, we sometimes get discouraged and...
I love how stargazing lets us look back into the recent and distant past just by being open to the starlight. And I love how astronomy lets us predict future events years into the future. This month, I would like to share some of the coming sky events I am most...
So many stargazers have their list of rare astronomical events they hope to see at least once while life is in them. I am grateful to have seen an all-sky aurora, several naked-eye comets, two transits of Venus, and a total solar eclipse. Still hoping for a visible...
All five visible planets will be there to greet us before sunrise as we journey from spring to summer this month. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (in that order!) will be in a sparkly string across a quarter of the sky from east to south. We haven’t seen...
We are in a good place to be wowed by the lunar eclipse coming up on Sunday May 15. This is the third in a tetrad of lunar eclipses in the spring and fall of 2021 and 2022. The lunar eclipses in May and November 2021 were wonderful to see, but you had to set an alarm...
Humans have long been skywatchers. We watched the movements of the sun, moon, and stars and learned the cycles of days, months, seasons, and years. For thousands of generations all over the world, we humans have put our stories in the sky. We looked at the stars,...
