I should have stayed up past midnight! A very large solar flare on Saturday triggered a geomagnetic storm in the Earth’s upper atmosphere giving rise to aurora much further south than normal. There is a geeky NASA website that tracks the intensity of solar storms and when the “K index” gets into the red zone, …
Get your coffee pot ready if you want to catch the annual Leonids meteor shower. Like most showers, it has a broad peak days before and after but the predicted maximum will be after midnight on Friday morning (November 18th). The waning crescent moon will be a minor factor when it rises around 1:30 but …
If you are an early riser you may be able to see the eclipse from Balsam in the morning. The moon will be low in the west at totality but if you have a clear view of the setting sun you might get a good luck. It will be setting shortly after totality. Check out …
This is a classic fireball from the Orionids shower. It was captured 1:34 AM on the morning of October 20th. Meteor showers are named for the constellation (in this case Orion) from which meteors seem to come from. They are actually coming from the direction of Earth’s orbit around the sun so they get named …
Assuming we get a break from the long pattern of clouds and rain, tonight will be a good time to see some meteors. There are three different showers with normally modest rates along with a new moon. More info here .
If you can find a place with a good view of the eastern horizon check out the amazing view of all the naked eye visible planets in a chance alignment in order from Mercury to Saturn.
We had a couple of clear nights with a late rising moon this week so I was able to get a couple of hours of exposure on these famous deep sky objects. They are visible through binoculars or a small telescope but the eye can’t see colors in very dim images. These are easy objects …
I took a quick black & white image of Orion during a very brief interval of clear skies Thursday night. I posted it on Astrobin – a popular site for astrophotographers to share images. You can click here to see it along with annotations that Astrobin provides of all the objects in the image. Orion …
Ken and I have been trying to grab photos of Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) over the past week and finally had success last night. In case you have not heard, comet Leonard is a very long period comet and only circles the Sun about every 80,000 years. It was discovered by astronomer Gregory Leonard earlier …
