Category - Skyward

“If you build it,” said the voice, “he will come.” In eastern Iowa near the town of Dyersville, near a well-kept farmhouse, lies a regulation baseball diamond in the midst of a cornfield...

If I were just getting started in astronomy, who knows what field would have attracted me?  In the 1960s it was comets, and I have no regrets. Notwithstanding the truism that there are no...

The summer of 2018 featured our fifteenth Adirondack Astronomy Retreat in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. It is also the last one that Wendee and I will host. Usually the dark...

Back in 2006, Wendee and I founded an organization designed to spread our enthusiasm and passion for the night sky.   We called it the National Sharing the Sky Foundation.  Its basic...

On Friday evening, May 4, 2018, the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (also known as the TAAA) bestowed its highest honor, the Bart and Priscilla Bok award, to Dr. Tim Hunter, a retired...

The stars, it somehow appears, were aligned in good fortune when my mother, Edith Pailet Levy, was born in New Orleans on June 1, 1918.  Just one week later, a total eclipse of the Sun...

The Regal Princess is a beautiful, majestic cruise vessel designed to sail to exotic destinations.  In February 2018, Wendee and I boarded it for a single reason:  we wanted to visit the El...

In the last two hours of darkness before dawn on the morning of January 31st, 2018, the Moon waded into the shadow of the Earth.  The result was a total eclipse of the Moon. Despite a...

The Geminids are the most active, surprising, gorgeous, and wonderful meteor shower of the entire year.  I recall first observing this meteor shower on December 13th, 1961 from Montreal. ...

Last month I visited the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania to give a lecture.  The experience was fun and intellectually enlightening.  Just before the lecture I had a...