Tag: Milky Way

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Free Astronomy Magazine – September-October 2025 Issue Available For Reading And Download

Above: This image captures a small section of NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s view of the Virgo Cluster, offering a vivid glimpse of the variety in the cosmos. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies, three merging galaxies, galaxy groups both near and distant, stars within our own Milky Way, and much more. Image available at rubinobservatory.org. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (September-October 2025) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure in English, Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, and now Chinese(!) at www.astropublishing.com (and facebook).

We spent so much time in 2019-2020 or so (with little else to do) reading about the varying brightness of Betelgeuse and that, maybe, finally, maybe, just maybe, it was *this close* to going off in our lifetime, that we neglected to think about the collateral damage it might cause to anything in close proximity (and close is certainly relative, with anything there that might know the difference within light years certainly in for stormy weather). As it happens, a long-suspected lurking neighbor, here in the form of a pre-Main Sequence star, has recently been discovered according to recent studies with NOIRLab's ‘Alopeke instrument on Gemini North.

And it also looks like a featured-but-featureless picture right out of the National Geographic Picture Atlas Of Our Universe book (the one with the primo John Berkey cover art, mine having suffered slightly at the curious hands of my space cadet kids).

And, of course, the Vera Rubin Observatory coming online and now posting images is the second most important space science story of the past few months (the state of the NASA budget being the first by page hit) and the most important space science progress since James Webb coming online. Let us hope the gap between the capabilities of modern tools and the expectations of the next generation of similar tools only grows.

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Free Astronomy Magazine – March-April 2025 Issue Available For Reading And Download

Above: I'm an American. Of course it's in the middle (and apologies if I, er, cut you off). Light pollution map as of the data available on 8 March 2025. See the excellent/astronomically depressing details at lightpollutionmap.info.

The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (March-April 2025) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure in English, Italian, Spanish, French, and Arabic at www.astropublishing.com (and facebook).

The March-April 2025 cover. Click to go to the issue.

Two very young children, COVID, and life in general kept me indoors most evenings (and away from observing) for much of 2020-2021. What I do vividly remember around mid-March 2021 was taking out the garbage a little bit earlier in the morning than usual and seeing a massive celestial caravan moving from west-to-east through a crystal-clear sky. At that moment, I was astounded at the progress SpaceX had made with Starlink, as I'd never seen anything that massive and coordinated and that fast in the sky before (and that includes seeing a space shuttle undock from the ISS over the course of two full orbits, which itself I won't soon forget).

I personally do not know any amateur astronomer who considers that caravan "progress" (feel free to correct me). The good fight from darksky.org, the now-defunct SELENE-NY, whose web presence ended around 2019 (last snap – web.archive.org/web/20190101182128/http://selene-ny.org/; skipping what might be a hacked site, a link and mention is, for instance, skykeepers.org/activism.html), and other local, national, and international organizations seems most up-the-hill as we progress upwards. If it were easy for astrophotographers to plant their gear just past the edge of GEO, it would likely be a different situation. But that's a long time in waiting (because they spent all their money on gear and can't affords rockets and space platforms).

In the defense of progress, very little in the nighttime sky will get a crowd of 200 people looking at the exact same location faster than a pinpoint of light hauling in front of a field of stars. I have no doubt that the sight of a satellite can be a gateway for someone into the hobby (or into one of the many associated professions).

The problem remains far worse here on the ground, as even the darkest of dark skies are seeing light pollution either slowly or rapidly advance (see the cover article above). The tension continues.

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Free Astronomy Magazine – November-December 2024 Issue Available For Reading And Download

Above: Among other events to look forward to, 2025 should be excellent for more aurora with our Sun being in/just past solar max. Even lousy fish-eye lens aurora pics from the light polluted near-suburbs of Rochester with no forethought into optimizing the capture should still be completely reasonable this coming year.

The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (November-December 2024) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure in English, Italian, Spanish, French, and Arabic at www.astropublishing.com (and facebook).

Running past the finishing line for the year with a slew of exceptionally well-presented NASA, ESA, CSA, ESO, and NOIRLab articles that go from the Kitt Peak Visitor Center to Barnard’s Star to the very, very edge of it all.

Also looking into 2025 for notable space and space science missions, for which Suni and Butch's return to Earth is a major event for the household (as Suni's tour of the ISS was on our dinner playlist for months), ESA's BepiColumbo will finally settle into Mercury's orbit in early December, NASA's own Lucy will be flying by asteroid Donaldjohanson (get it?) in late April, and a bunch of other missions will be reaching milestones.