Tag: Stargazing

Ghostly green ripples can be seen in the hazy green airglow above. (Image credit: Aaron Watson/Skies Alive Photography) Beneath the star-drenched skies of Colorado on May 26, as the Milky Way arched into view, photographer Aaron Watson pointed his lens upward — and captured something extraordinary unfolding in the night. “I have seen airglow a lot, but it is rare to see it directly overhead and moving like that,” Watson told Space.com in an email. Watson’s timelapse, captured around 3:30 a.m. local time and spanning about 30 minutes, reveals watery…

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Noctilucent cloud season is upon us! Here’s what you need to know about when to catch the spectral phenomenon as we move into the prime viewing season of the summer months. Astronomers and clouds are natural enemies, owing largely to the latter’s habit of obscuring the sky beyond with dense veils of condensed water vapor. One exception to this rule is the appearance of noctilucent clouds — delicate wisps of icy particles that appear to glow a spectral blue in the sun‘s reflected light in the post-sunset and predawn hours.…

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Jupiter will soon end its brilliant year-long showing on consecutive evenings with a rendezvous with an exceedingly thin and very young crescent moon. Indeed, for the first opportunity on Tuesday, May 27, the moon itself will appear so thin and low that it may be rather hard to detect in the sun’s afterglow; and seeing Jupiter itself will not be an easy task either, appearing to sit about 10 degrees to the upper left of the slender lunar sliver. The moon will be only about 1% illuminated and will be…

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The new moon of May occurs on May 26. Two days later the moon will make a close pass to Jupiter in the evening sky, and the summer constellations will be rising. New moons happen when the moon is directly between Earth and the sun. They share a celestial longitude (called right ascension by astronomers), a projection of the Earth’s longitude lines on the sky measured eastward from the point where the sun crosses the celestial equator. This position is also called a conjunction. If the sun and the moon…

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Should your local weather forecast suggest that Friday morning — the start of the Memorial Day Holiday Weekend — will be fair and clear, it will be well worth setting your alarm clock to awaken you about 90 minutes before the sun comes up. If you head outside at that early hour and if you have a clear and unobstructed view toward the east, you will be treated to a lovely pairing of the two brightest objects in the night sky. You’ll immediately notice the crescent moon; appearing slender and…

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The night sky offered lucky skywatchers an unexpected double feature on May 17 — a surprise geomagnetic storm and a mysterious white plume slicing through the auroras. The moderate (G2 class) geomagnetic storm came as quite a surprise, kicking off early Friday (May 16) after Earth caught the glancing blow of a coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME was launched during a colossal filament eruption on May 12 from the sun’s northern hemisphere. Initially expected to miss Earth, the “bird-wing” ejecta was wider than predicted, with some of the material…

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