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. …
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 …
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 …
There is no way to predict when I pebble of interstellar material will streak into the Earth’s atmosphere but the odds increase when we have a meteor shower. This is likely from the Perseids meteor shower which has a broad peak from around mid July to mid August every year. If you had been outside …
The all sky camera caught this really bright meteor this morning at 2:44. Wish I had been up!
Last week, Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon got up close in the evening sky. This week the moon left the pair and let Venus and Jupiter snuggle in private. These were all taken with a standard Canon DLSR on a tripod and telephoto lens. On the cropped image of Jupiter you can see all …
