Tag: Stargazing

During the next two weeks, there will be two eclipses on the astronomical docket. The main event, of course, will be the Great North American Eclipse on April 8 that will stretch from the Pacific coast of Mexico, on to Texas and across southern and eastern portions of the United States and Atlantic Canada, before coming to an end over the north Atlantic Ocean.  But two weeks before the total solar eclipse, during the overnight hours of March 24-25, it will be the moon’s turn to undergo an eclipse; a…

A nova outburst visible to the naked eye is expected to decorate the night sky this year, offering a rare skywatching opportunity.  The star system offering us this opportunity is known as T Coronae Borealis (T CrB). It’s located some 3,000 light-years away from Earth and consists of a red giant star and a white dwarf that orbit each other. When the white dwarf steals enough stellar material from its red giant companion, it ignites a brief flash of nuclear fusion on its surface, triggering what is known as a…

Armed with my Sony A7R V camera and the FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens, I set off in search of the northern lights in Abisko National Park. Located in the heart of Swedish Lapland, 121 miles (195 kilometers) within the Arctic Circle, Abisko National Park is the perfect place to photograph the northern lights. All you need are the right conditions, a lot of patience and of course a little bit of luck.  Before I left I had never photographed the northern lights on anything other than a smartphone and…

The first full moon of 2024 rose over Earth on Thursday (Jan. 25), in the form of January’s Wolf Moon.  The January full moon takes its name from packs of hungry wolves that would howl outside native American villages amid the cold and deep snows of winter, according to NASA.  Wolves weren’t the only ones who braved the frigid weather on Thursday to observe the moon, as skywatchers across the globe bundled up and went hunting for incredible images of Earth’s lunar companion.Related: Full moon calendar 2024: When to see…

Two skywatching favorites will meet up in the clear winter night sky tonight. The moon and Jupiter will appear close together in the Aries constellation, offering the chance to see five moons at once through the right binoculars. Jupiter’s four largest satellites, called the Galilean moons, will appear in pairs on either side of the largest planet in our solar system.  The moon, meanwhile, will be just seven days past new moon in a bright waxing gibbous phase, appearing 59% illuminated as it heads toward the first full moon of…

On January 7 2024 Unistellar proudly unveiled the new Odyssey range of smart telescopes at the world’s biggest tech show, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024, held in Las Vegas. Smart telescopes are here, and they are here to stay — with numerous optics brands battling it out to come up with the very best smart telescope or intelligent home observation station. Unistellar boasts that the Odyssey stands out as the first smart telescope that can observe both nearby planets and objects situated tens of millions of lightyears away at…