Category Archives: "Article"

Have you ever gone outside on a beautiful night, looked up at the sky and wondered just how many stars that there were? Did you know that about eighty percent of the points of light you are seeing are actually Binary Star Systems… aka double stars? Unfortunately, to fully appreciate double stars, a telescope is required, but don’t despair! It doesn’t take the Hubble to see them; even a common set of binoculars can do the trick for many of these gems! So what is a double star… a Binary System? Well, commonly it is two or more stars in very close proximity to each other… Some double stars just happen to line up in the sky, and appear close together… even touching, but they are so far apart that their travels in the sky have no impact on each other. We call these Visual Doubles. Then we have the binary systems where there are actually two or more stars that are physically close to each other… enough so that they do have an impact on each other. We call these Gravitational Doubles. They circle one another, many times growing closer and closer to each other where over millennia that they may collide and result in super nova… […]

So it’s nearing sunrise… sunset… the middle of the night… or most anytime, and you notice something up in the sky that for some reason has caught your eye, but what is it? So before calling Mulder and Scully, I thought I would give you a brief overview of the common objects noticed… those of an identified nature of course! Is the object stationary? If so, you more than likely are seeing a star or planet. Common to notice are the planets Venus and Jupiter… and sometimes Mars and Saturn. Venus is very commonly seen at sun rise and sunset and is commonly referred to as the ‘Morning Star’ or ‘Evening Star’. Jupiter is generally seen when skies are slightly darker and appears a bit larger. Mars is a bit harder to pick out and has a red hue to it. Both Mars and Saturn are generally seen with the aid of darker skies. It is beneficial to view the planets under dark skies, but the ones mentioned here can easily be seen under moonlight skies and even from inside our city limits. During the middle of September, you’ll be able to see Jupiter and Venus follow the Sun as they […]

Ok, so ‘dancing’ may be a misnomer here, but it got your attention. So, you’ve been to a number of public events (hopefully) where you could look through club telescopes and see cool views of the moon, Saturn, Jupiter, a few double stars, a star cluster or two… maybe a fuzzy galaxy or two, and that orangish redish star that is actually Mars… but you’re still not quite ready to buy a telescope… that is GREAT news! Why??? There are a lot of great opportunities for you to see even more, and more importantly learn a bit about what it takes to do the type of astronomy that you want to do… not just guess at what facets there are and what gear to invest in. Public events are fun and easy to get to… but you’ll notice that most of the amateur astronomers there are directing traffic, and not doing the majority of viewing…. Mmmm… what do they know that Joe Public doesn’t? Well, mainly, that the darker the skies, the better you can see the aforementioned objects… not just a little better, but generally a lot better… except for the moon, which astronomers, unless that is the object of […]