Also known as Messier 33 (M33), its one of our local group neighbor galaxies at only 2.7 million light years away. The local group’s more famous and visible member, Andromeda (M31) is larger and only 2.5 million light years away. M33 “only” has about 40 billion stars compared over 100 billion for the Milky Way. …
Hope you had a chance to see the partial eclipse on Saturday. We were fortunate to be in the path of totality at the Hyatt Tamaya resort in Albuquerque. Unbeknownst to us, the Sky & Telescope Magazine eclipse tour was also there and we had about 100 folks viewing and photographing the eclipse in the …
You can see the moon take a small bite out of the Sun next Saturday morning. Its an “annular” solar eclipse where due to the Moon’s elliptical orbit, it leaves a ring of fire during totality. The solar eclipse on 2017 and the one next April are total eclipses where the moon completely blocks the …
We alway accuse Lexi of barking at nothing but a download from the backyard trail cam shows we do have some visitors!
This one came up quickly after its discovery by a Japanese amateur astronomer. You may be able to catch it just before sunrise low on the eastern horizon. See this link for details. Let me know if you spot it.
Another launch by Elon and another group of Starlink satellites headed for the ~500km orbital plane above the earth. This time with a Canon DSLR on a tripod. Complete with cicada soundtrack! You can see them dim one by one as the train moves into earth’s shadow.
When SpaceX launches a bunch of Starlink satellites they are visible for a few days as a train of bright dots crossing the sky. They eventually spread out and boost themselves into higher orbits where they are not visible to the naked eye but will bug amateur and professional astronomers for decades as the photo …
The all sky camera is proving its worth lately with clearer skies and meteor showers like the Perseids. Note the time stamp on all the recent fireball posts – all are after midnight. Meteors are most likely when the “radiant” is above the horizon. In this case the constellation Perseus sits just below the horizon …
I hope everyone got a chance to see the Perseids meteor shower this morning. I did not bother planning any photography given the bad weather forecast but just dragged an air mattress out to the driveway at 1:30 to enjoy the show and found nearly clear skies. We saw one about every 3-5 minutes with …
A four foot black rat snake gave me quite a surprise the other day when I reached for a saw above my workbench. Snakes in our garage are not that unusual as they come after mice who see shelter and look for food in dark spaces. I only noticed this one when he struck my …
