Author Archives: The Backyard Astronomer

The planet Saturn has intrigued astronomers – both professional and amateur – since Galileo first sketched what he thought were two odd-shaped moons on either side of the planet.  His final telescope at magnification 30x was still not quite able to resolve the rings that we love so much to gaze at.  Dutch mathematician ChristiaanContinueContinue reading “August 2022 – The Ringed Planet”

In the early summer months, the constellation Boötes moves to the western sky.  Adjacent the Big Dipper, some Ancient Greek Mythology tells of how Boötes invented the plough and was rewarded with a place in the heavens for this history-altering advancement.  Keeping in line with feeding the masses, the Yup’ik language – second most widelyContinueContinue reading “The Many Wonders of Boötes”

The early solar system was a violent place.  We know this courtesy of modern telescopes and models generated by today’s supercomputers, allowing us to peer at clouds of gas around distant stars, and observe their planets forming, and hypothesize how our solar system would have formed under similar conditions.  Like the rings around Saturn, aContinueContinue reading “Planetary Collisions and the Seasons”

The Earth has been estimated at a total mass of approximately 5.9722×1024 kg, or more commonly notated as 1 Earth Mass (ME).  One Solar Mass – or the Mass of the Sun and notated as M☉ – is approximately 333,000 Earth masses.  The whole of the solar system is estimated at 1.0014 Solar masses, meaning all theContinueContinue reading “Space Junk”

In 1609 Galileo pointed his rudimentary telescope at the heavens, finding three, and then four moons orbiting Jupiter.  He combined two polished glass lenses, slightly convex at different angles, and was able to magnify the image he gazed at.  This wasn’t a new technology, but a basic monocular had been used for mostly terrestrial purposes,ContinueContinue reading “The History of the Telescope – Refractor vs. Reflector”

As early as 1923, space telescopes were proposed to peer deeper into the universe, without the obstruction of the Earth’s tenuous atmosphere.  By the 1970s congress had funded the first of these great space telescopes, with the 2.4 meter primary mirror completed in 1981 for a Ritchey-Chreitien Cassegrain type telescope which finally launched in 1990ContinueContinue reading “The James Webb Space Telescope”

The dormant volcano Mauna Kea is the highest point in the Central Pacific and of the Hawaiian Islands. At such a height, the benefits of dry air above the clouds with little to no light pollution make it the preeminent site in the world for astronomical observing. As such, many large telescopes operate at itsContinueContinue reading “The Subaru Cluster”

When Billy Bob Thorton’s character approaches Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi to save the world from impending doom in 1998’s blockbuster film “Armageddon” they only had 18 days to prevent an asteroid the size of Texas from annihilating life on Earth. In the years since, real NASA scientists have spent countless hours observingContinueContinue reading “NASA DART Mission – Armageddon Version 2.0”

We live on Earth, which orbits the sun every 365.256 days as part of our Solar System.  Our Solar system is one of hundreds of millions of stars and similar systems that orbits the center of our Milky Way galaxy about every 225 million years.  We are familiar with the cloudy or “milky” swath aboveContinueContinue reading “The Backyard Astronomer – Andromeda! ”

In July we talked about using the Summer Triangle asterism to locate Messier 57, the Ring Nebula.  If you were able to make it to our August Star Party at Pronghorn Park in Prescott Valley, you most likely were able to view it and the planets Saturn and Jupiter shining bright at opposition.  M57 howeverContinueContinue reading “The Backyard Astronomer – The Summer Triangle and The Dumbbell Nebula”