Month: April 2020

Country Sky versus City Sky

Dark skies are disappearing from the world. With modernization comes artificial lighting that brightens the night. While these lights allow modern humans to see, much light is wasted up into the sky. This light pollution not only wastes energy, but,...

/ April 8, 2020

A Path North

What happens if you keep going north? The direction north on the Earth, the place on your horizon below the northern spin pole of the Earth — around which other stars appear to slowly swirl, will remain the same. This...

/ April 7, 2020

NGC 1672: Barred Spiral Galaxy from Hubble

Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, featured here, was captured in spectacular detail in an image taken by...

/ April 6, 2020

Color the Universe

Wouldn’t it be fun to color in the universe? If you think so, please accept this famous astronomical illustration as a preliminary substitute. You, your friends, your parents or children, can print it out or even color it digitally. While...

/ April 5, 2020

Venus and the Sisters

After wandering about as far from the Sun on the sky as Venus can get, the brilliant evening star is crossing paths with the sister stars of the Pleiades cluster. Look west after sunset and you can share the ongoing...

/ April 4, 2020

The Traffic in Taurus

There’s a traffic jam in Taurus lately. On April 1, this celestial frame from slightly hazy skies over Tapiobicske, Hungary recorded an impressive pile up toward the zodiacal constellation of the Bull and the Solar System’s ecliptic plane. Streaking right...

/ April 3, 2020

Venus and the Pleiades in April

Venus is currently the brilliant evening star. Shared around world, in tonight’s sky Venus will begin to wander across the face of the lovely Pleiades star cluster. This digital sky map illustrates the path of the inner planet as the...

/ April 2, 2020

Asteroid or Potato

Is this asteroid Arrokoth or a potato? Perhaps, after all the data was beamed back to Earth from NASA’s robotic New Horizons spacecraft, the featured high resolution image of asteroid Arrokoth was constructed. Perhaps, alternatively, the featured image is of...

/ April 1, 2020