By David H. Levy Said the night wind to the little lamb:“Do you see what I see?Way up in the sky, little lambDo you see what I see?A star, a star, dancing in the nightWith a tail as big as a kiteWith a tail as big as a kite” Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne, 1962 In the words of this beautiful Christmas carol,written during the Cuban...
By David H. Levy When Earth crossed the summer solstice on June 21, 2020, we were all mired in the midst of the most serious pandemic in more than a century. Summer is the most important season for me for one reason: it was many years ago, during the Summer of 1960, that I fell in love with the night sky. This summer just concluded had a start...
By David H. Levy Not long ago OSIRIS-REx, a spacecraft sponsored by the University of Arizona and flown by NASA, gently touched the surface of asteroid No. 101955, an asteroid named Bennu, tried to grab some material, and then quickly took off again. It was the first try, but it was a huge success! The craft gathered more than twice what was...
By David Levy Just a week before Christmas 1844, a sea captain named Wilmot discovered a bright comet without using a telescope. The comet...
By David Levy When you go outside on the summer nights, and the sky is clear, how many stars do you think you see? If you are in the middle of a large city like Tucson, you might see fewer than a hundred stars. However, from the darker sky over Vail, it is possible to see several thousand stars; typically, on a good night, you can see over 3000...
