Space Station Threshold

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for another weekend? As the seasons slowly begin to change for both hemispheres and the Moon grows more full, look for an optical phenomena known as a "nimbus" - or halo around the Moon. While it's nothing more than a thin layer of ice crystals in [...]

Greetings, Fellow Stratos Dwellers! Have you had more than your fair share of clouds lately and are hankering for a few photons? Skies haven't been spectacular in this part of the world either and when it is clear, the heat is sure making it difficult to get a nice steady view. But, it's [...]

Space is far from empty. The Solar System can be viewed as a "bubble" of solar matter - filled with particles emitted by the Sun as the solar wind - extending well beyond the orbit of Pluto. The solar wind velocity is supersonic for most of this distance (exceeding a million miles per hour), but [...]

Just when we thought we were beginning to understand what supernovae and gamma ray bursts were all about. Astronomers have just uncovered the true nature of what they thought was a regular supernova observed in January. At the time, it looked like a supernova emitting a 5-minute long burst of X-rays. But these X-rays were [...]

Polaris is a well known Cepheid variable, but its periodic brightness variations have been steadily decreasing in amplitude for the last hundred years. Around the beginning of the 20th Century, Polaris' brightness fluctuated every four days by 10%. Only ten years ago this variation had dropped to 2%, leading astronomers to believe this steady ...

According to AAVSO Special Notice #114 prepared by Matthew Templeton, dwarf nova VY Aquari is now rebrightening and observers are asked to contribute their data. VY Aquari has been fairly quiet since its last superoutburst of 10.2 magnitude on July 30, 2008 and is on the rise again… (...)Read the rest of [...]

A huge piece of space debris, weighing 1400 lb (635 kg) and the size of two refrigerators, is gradually falling to Earth, giving observers on the ground a great opportunity to see it. The junk was jettisoned from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2007 and it is expected to re-enter the atmosphere later this [...]

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! If you're enjoying a holiday weekend where you live, then start the fireworks off as we begin by remembering Deep Impact and journey towards a nearby star approaching the supernova phase. As things heat up towards one of the most spectacular conjunctions of the year, we'll also take a look at [...]

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It's that time again and darker skies are in our favor for this weekend. Are you working towards Astronomical League studies? The tag along as we seek out one of the most difficult of all targets - Palomar 5. But don't despair - there's just slightly easier ones [...]

Although we haven't figured out everything in the universe by a long shot, we're getting a pretty good a handle on how things work in our world, and how the laws of nature operate here at home. One big question we have is, would laws of nature as we know them function the same [...]