Free press all around,
In the interest of aggregation, quick post linking the first two in a new series of astronomy articles on newyorkupstate.com and syracuse.com. There's an old adage in academia – "You don't really know something until you can teach it." To that end, these articles and their associated research prep are great fun and yet another excellent excuse to go out at night and compare the planetarium apps to the real thing (for which both Starry Night Pro and Stellarium are excellent organizational proxies. I'm currently leaning on Stellarium for the imagery because others who might get bit by the astronomy bug can download it for free and follow along. That said, Starry Night Pro is still my workhorse for fine detail as Stellarium continues to develop).
When the article series was first proposed, the goal for the Syracuse Media Group folks was to provide people in upstate some basic information for what was up and about in the night sky – when you step outside, what's there to find? My hope is to provide the non-observer and novice observer just enough information to whet the appetite, hopefully coaxing readers to take some quality looks and, if all goes well, to seek out their local astronomy club for some serious observing – and learning.
Night sky-gazing in Upstate NY: What to look for in July
– newyorkupstate.com article @ newyorkupstate.com…_look_for_in_july.html
– syracuse.com article @ syracuse.com…_look_for_in_july.html
Introducing the article organization, with first looks, spotting the International Space Station (ISS), moon phases, visible planets, and a constellation-a-month identifier to close it all.
Stargazing in Upstate NY in August: See the Milky Way, Perseid meteor shower
– newyorkupstate.com article @ newyorkupstate.com…_meteor_shower.html
– syracuse.com article @ syracuse.com…_meteor_shower.html
The series started just in time to highlight the Perseid Meteor Shower (and get its first linking to thanks to Glenn Coin's article as we approached the Perseid peak), then August was chock full of interesting planetary events. The August article was also a first exposure to the issues of episodic astronomy – how to be as minimally referential as possible in any single article to previous articles (which is not easy given how much the search for constellations historically has involved the finding of a bright one to orient observers to a dimmer one).
July hit 78 shares on newyorkupstate.com, August hit 4400 – at that rate, the whole world will see the October article.