NGC 663 One of the first astronomy books I ever read was John Benson Sidgwick’s Introducing Astronomy. Thew book was published in 1959, a year after his death. In it was a large...
Category - Skyward
Skyward – February 2024
Skyward This month I have a story to tell. A few nights ago two close friends from Plattsburgh, Ed Guenther and Wendy Gordon...
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Skyward for January 2024
Skyward: Star Gazing This month let us explore one of the seminal galaxies in the night sky, NGC 253, Caroline Herschel’s galaxy...
Read MorePons-Brooks: A comet for the centuries
When David Rossetter and I began our observing session at the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association’s Chiricahua Astronomy Complex...
Read MoreMeteors Scratch the Sky
Despite what you read online, it is possible to think of meteor watching as one of the most boring things you can do with the...
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A little religion, but not too much.
As an undergraduate student at Acadia University, in the Canadian maritime province of Nova Scotia, my geology professor was trying to teach us about the water cycle. Despite reams of...
March 23, 1993: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Thirty Years On
A lot can happen in thirty years, especially when it involves comets and asteroids that creep across the sky, and even more particularly with comets that go bump in the night. Such is the...
A Magic Beagle and the Stars
It is my honor to introduce you, dear readers, this month to my latest book, “Clipper, Cosmos, and Children: Finding the Eureka moment.” It is a book specially designed to inspire young...
Goodbye, Wendee.
Dear readers, What follows is the most difficult article I have ever written. On Friday, September 23, 2022, my wife Wendee died. She had been suffering from metastatic breast cancer for...
An obituary for Donald Edward Machholz
Dear Don, You left us far too soon, my friend. From your home in California and later in Arizona, you lived quietly and well, with a passion for stargazing that dominated your life. As the...
Skyward for September 2022
On first looking through Baade’s window Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly stars and clusters seen; Round celestial islands have I been With telescope after...
The Sky Reborn
by David H. Levy Ever since I read Bart J. Bok’s foreword to Rose Wilder’s and Gerald Ames’ The Golden Book of Astronomy, I have marveled at what the night sky had to offer and how much of...
The Meteor Shower that wasn’t, but not so much
By David H. Levy On May 30 observers all across the western hemisphere were outside, hoping to see a wonderful “new” meteor shower. The shower is actually not new. It is called the Tau...
Skyward for June 2022
By David Levy Nothing in the night sky quite beats a total eclipse of the Moon. Other than a shooting star, eclipses prove to all who watch them that the sky is a changing place. During the...