Mars, Saturn on way out
I have mixed emotions about this time of year. I hate the fact that summer is starting to wind down and vacation season is coming to an end.
Howe...
Last week in Starwatch I told you about a nice coupling of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon in the early eastern predawn sky, which is still going on minus the moon.
This w...
Hercules the Hero is not the brightest of constellations but it's a large one, in fact it's the fifth-largest constellation of the Butler night sky and it's home to some...
Take an afternoon nap and prepare to do some serious — but comfortable — stargazing this month.
It’s not truly dark enough in Butler until after 11 p.m., but a summer ni...
Welcome to part three of my trilogy on the birth, life and death of stars.
In last week’s Starwatch column — the life of stars — I explained how stars cook up energy in ...
Star lives and shines
Last week in Starwatch, in the first part of a trilogy of the birth, life and death of a star, I described how stars are born.
Balls of hydrogen gas...
Over the years I've touched on the life cycle of stars in our Butler heavens, but I haven't really gone into detail.
All of the stars we gaze at in our heavenly dome ar...
We're into the shortest nights of the year so good stargazing can't really begin here in Butler until after 10 p.m., and the show is pretty much over by 4:30 a.m. when m...
Most of the 66 or so of the constellations we see around our Butler night skies require you to suspend any sense of reality and turn on the imagination big time.
I alway...
Whenever I’m scanning the night skies with my telescope, I often have a hard enough time getting my mind wrapped around the distances to neighboring planets in our solar...
