Clear Skies

By Scott Levine We usually spend most of our time around here talking about the comings and goings of things in our nighttime skies. This month, I thought, it’d be fun to skip past the evenings’ prime time and look

By Scott Levine If you need any more proof that summer is fleeting, as July becomes August we’re already in the last full month of summer. Maybe you’ve noticed that we’ve been slowly and steadily losing daylight since June’s solstice.

By Scott Levine Some of my favorite conversations about astronomy start with people asking about a group of stars, usually their zodiac sign, and then having a hard time seeing that figure mapped out in the sky. The word zodiac

By Scott Levine Every season, and even every month, have their own feel. Spring is different than summer, and there’s a certain indescribable difference between July’s and August’s muggy heat. The same is true in the skies. There are bright

By Scott Levine Here’s a question: How far is Earth from the sun? Back in the dark corners of your memory, behind the list of all the state capitals and the seven times table, you probably remember what you learned

By Scott Levine The other night I was looking up and thinking about the star patterns we see. One of the most interesting things to me is not just the stars, though they’re certainly fascinating, but the asterisms they’re in.

By Scott Levine It’s a funny thing about the moon’s phases. They don’t care about our calendar. Even though the word “month” comes from an old Germanic word for the time it takes for the moon to orbit earth, our