By David Levy Over the last few months you must have read dozens of articles, online or in print, about the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Fortunately, this is not one of them. This article is about Omicron² Eridani. It is a faint star in the constellation of Eridanus, the River. Actually, there are two Omicron stars in that constellation. The first...
By David H. Levy Star GazersWhat crowd is this? What have we here? We must not pass it by;A telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky…William Wordsworth, 1806 While I was working on my master’s degree at Queen’s University in Canada some 42 years ago, I came across this poem, loved it, and decided to include it in my thesis. Norman...
“A Dragon Lives forever, but not so girls and boys.” By David Levy Three quarters of a century ago, during the Second World War, the famous Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, along with Charles Federer, founding editor of Sky and Telescope Magazine, launched an association of astronomy clubs across the United States. It is called the Astronomical...
By David H. Levy Agreed, this seems like an awfully daffy title for an astronomy article. But there is method to the madness, and there is a story. During the late summer of 2019 there was a star party in southeast Arizona that featured a dark sky and five perfect back-to-back nights As I spent hour after hour hunting for comets, I came across the...
By David H. Levy During the last almost two years I have been busier than ever, meeting many new people, giving lectures, quoting poetry, and advocating observing the night sky. And Wendee and I have barely left home. Obviously, I have not been able to give lectures in person since the Covid 19 pandemic began. On the home front for me, our local...
By David H. Levy “How would you like to go to prison?” was one of the first things that Frank Lopez asked me. My stunned expression prompted Frank to clarify: “The Federal prison off Wilmot Road has an astronomy club.” That was enough: we enjoyed two wonderful evenings down there, and even showed Orion to the group using one of my favorite...
By David H. Levy with Roy L. Bishop Gravity is one of the most fundamental things in physics. Everything and everyone has gravity. The more massive something is, the more gravity it has. When you jump into the air, Earth’s gravity brings you back down. What you cannot see while you are in the air is that your gravity brings Earth towards you just...
By David H. Levy The night before last, a comet named Palomar (actually known as C (for comet)/ 2020 T2 Palomar) was gliding near one of the most beautiful clusters of stars in the entire sky. It was parading about at about magnitude 11, which means that for my oldish eyes, it would be too faint to see. In fact, just a few weeks ago I spotted a...
By David H. Levy January 6, 2021 – Just one day after the Earth passed its closest point to the Sun in its orbit, its perihelion, the American Astronomical Society was having its annual meeting online, the United States Congress was validating the results of the 2020 national election, and Wendee and I were settling in for a civics lesson...
By David H. Levy In last month’s Skyward, I included that four-word phrase, but the first time I used it was actually in an article about the life of the star Betelgeuse, for Astronomy Magazine. When I met Richard Berry, the editor at the time, he began by reciting those words: “Stars are people too.” He added that he accepted the article for...
