December Astronomy Events in the NY Area
There are a bunch of interesting astronomy events going on in the month of December if you live in and around the New York City region.  To those of you who don’t live near New York, I suggest Googling “astronomy events” in your area and checking out the results! Happy Star-Gazing! 12/1/2009 : Using Light to Reveal the Darkness 6:30 pm A lecture at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium about dark matter and dark energy. 12/4/2009 : Columbia University Public Outreach Program 7

Celestron NexStar 5SE Review
I researched what kind of telescope I should purchase for close to 6 months before I actually laid out the money for one.  I had astronomy-grade binoculars, and for a while I tried to convince myself that I could see everything I was interested in with those.  But the lure of viewing Saturn’s rings for myself was too appealing for me, so eventually I sucked it up and got serious about buying a telescope. The one I settled on was Celestron’s NexStar 5SE.  I bought it from Amazon, because Amazon had the best price (You can buy telescopes from Amazon, too, by following this affiliate link:

No Meteor Showers for You
That’s pretty much what I feel the powers-that-be in the heavens must be saying to me.  EVERY METEOR SHOWER this year has been accompanied by me missing it because of cloudy skies.  I will now play my tiny violin…. OK, I’m done. Here is the science behind meteor showers (the abbreviated version): There are tons of comets in our solar system.  They all orbit the Sun, and some of them have tails that cross Earth’s path.  When Earth travels through the remains of a comet’s tail, we get meteor showers.  To be clear – you can see a meteor, or “shooting star” at any time.  Shooting stars could

It’s Not a Star, It’s a Planet
Did anyone notice the bright star to the bottom left of the half Moon last night? It wasn’t a star, it was the planet Jupiter!  I only got to take a look briefly, while I tried unsuccessfully to photograph both objects from the ground (I wasn’t at the location I keep my telescope at last night). It was too hazy for my pictures to be post-worthy, even with my DSLR.  Oh well! Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close again, but this time Jupiter will be to the bottom right of the Moon, and they will be a bit further apart. Good binoculars will definitely show you the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede), so if the skies are cl

It’s Not a Star, It’s a Planet
Did anyone notice the bright star to the bottom left of the half Moon last night? It wasn’t a star, it was the planet Jupiter!  I only got to take a look briefly, while I tried unsuccessfully to photograph both objects from the ground (I wasn’t at the location I keep my telescope at last night). It was too hazy for my pictures to be post-worthy, even with my DSLR.  Oh well! Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close again, but this time Jupiter will be to the bottom right of the Moon, and they will be a bit further apart. Good binoculars will definitely show you the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede), so if the skies are cl