Clear Skies

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...

By Scott Levine For all the good they do, all their old-timey-Tweeting of what’s going on in our heads, sticky notes have a dark side. Let me share this one with you that I found on my desk recently, in...

By Scott Levine Through July, most of the space news has been full of extraordinary stories and gorgeous photos of the alluringly named comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), which was visible with the naked eye even in Westchester’s skies. Comets are...