Venus has been an Evening Star this spring, summer, and fall shining brilliantly in the west after sunset. We have a final chance to enjoy it this month before it disappears for a few weeks and then becomes the Morning Star for winter, spring, and summer of 2022. As...
Night owls can be awed by a lunar eclipse on Friday, November 19th. That’s the one where the Full Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth and turns a rusty color. The Full Frost (or Beaver) Moon rises on Thursday the 18th around 4:20pm as the Sun is setting and...
On the first day of September, I had a wonderful time hiking the trails of Kickapoo Valley Reserve well beyond midnight. I was on a mission with my Unihedron Sky Quality Meter to measure just how dark it was at nine sites. And I was guiding and assisting an...
September will be a wonderful month to spot the two largest planets of our solar system. Back at the Winter Solstice Great Conjunction, so many of us were wowed to see Jupiter and Saturn just a tenth of a degree apart (only a quarter of the width of the moon). Jupiter...
I love the summer ritual of heading outside and being awed by the return of the Perseid meteors in August. 2021 looks to be an especially good year. On the peak nights of Wednesday the 11th and Thursday the 12th, the crescent moon sets in the evening making the...
It was about 50 years ago that my older cousin convinced me that I just had to read Frank Herbert’s Dune. There was much to fascinate tweenager me: desert survival, spice producing sandworms, Spacing Guild navigators bending time and space with just their minds. But...
