Mar 10
What’s Up in the Sky – March, 2014 Remembering Dobson “You should build a telescope”, said the gentleman from the Vivekananda Monastery in Ganges, MI. The year was 1990, the place was Fennville HS, and the person leading the telescope building workshop was John Dobson. So that summer, with my school’s support, I spent …
Feb 05
What’s Up in the Sky – February, 2014 Everyone Loves Jupiter When choosing the topics for this column I always try to consider the demographics of my readership. Should I really devote an entire story to observing faint galaxies that rise after midnight or a close Moon/planet pairing that occurs an hour before sunrise? In …
Jan 05
What’s Up in the Sky – January, 2014 An Interesting Time of the Year A Private Universe is a classic video documentary produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that examines the mystery of why the most basic scientific concepts are so widely misunderstood. I was reminded of the famous opening scene at Harvard graduation …
Nov 07
What’s Up in the Sky – November, 2013 Royal Sky Has Visitor (We Hope) Robert Wade is the most accomplished and dedicated amateur astronomer I have ever known. A group of us were out observing in November of 2001, dutifully recording what we saw in our log books when Robert suddenly realized that, in twenty …
Oct 01
What’s Up in the Sky – October, 2013 Eagles and Dolphins and Swans, Oh My! If you are reading this, you probably know about the Summer Triangle. Vega, Deneb, and Altair make up this asterism which is almost directly overhead and visible all month. Let’s take a look at some of the mythology surrounding these …
