Tag - skyward

Meteors 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 night sky.   No cosmic connection, no postulating about the origins of the Universe, no understanding of what dark matter might entail.  When we look for meteors, we are in our own celestial backyard.  We usually do not...

Skyward

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 section in which each constellation was introduced, along with interesting things to see in each one.  I particularly recall Cassiopeia, in which, between the...

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 published evidence, the best document he could come up with was this beautiful line from Ecclesiastes: “All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full...

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 people to enjoy the night sky.  Whether you are physically young, or even just young at heart, this new book is meant to inspire you to reach for the stars. This...

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 over a decade, but this past summer she was truly and clearly suffering. We had an oncologist who was good clinically but who had no bedside manner, and a nurse...

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 English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “I am like a slip of comet, Scarce worth discovery.” He wrote his poem in 1864 but it might have been composed with...

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 telescope to the night sky hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That Galileo ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard...

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 that has changed. “Such wonders,” Bok wrote,” fill this book.” I have never forgotten those beauties, in particular Bart’s favorite: The Eta Carinae nebula...