When a planet passes between the Earth and the sun, it sometimes passes directly in front of the sun. We call this event a transit.
Well, it is officially fall. Summer ended and fall began at 12:50 a.m. on Sept. 23, the fall equinox.
An aspect of astronomy that has always fascinated me is that when we look at the sky, every object that we see above the Earth’s atm…
There are eight major planets orbiting our sun. We know them as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We…
The thousands of stars you see on a clear night are the same ones your parents, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents s…
During the first nights of April, we can see all of the naked-eye planets. Mars is in the west during the evening, then Jupiter and …
In ancient times it was believed the stars never changed. Today we know this is not true, and there are hints some ancient people al…
Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a large, cold region known as the Kuiper belt. Astronomers believe there are millions of small, icy…
You probably noticed this fall that the days were getting shorter and the nights were getting longer. You may have also noticed that…
The Parker Solar Probe may solve some decades-old mysteries about the sun. The sun not only provides the Earth with light and heat, …
Not only is Oct. 31 Halloween, more importantly — at least to astronomers — it is also Dark Matter Day. This observance is sponsored…
In my last article I explained a high-tech solution to finding objects in the night sky. The example I used was an app called Star W…
One of the real joys of astronomy is learning the night sky — but this can be challenging, because the sky is constantly changing. I…
Every year in mid-August, the Earth intersects the orbit of the Swift-Tuttle comet, and the Perseid meteor shower occurs.
I always have mixed feelings about observing the night sky in the summer. The good news is that it is often clear and there is good …
One hundred years ago, on a clear night, you could see the Milky Way from almost any location in the United Sates. Today, most peopl…
During the month of May, Venus is high in the western sky at sunset. It is about 20 degrees above the horizon and nearly due west. I…
Last month I told you how to find Venus and Mercury in the evening sky just after sunset. All we needed were a few clear nights to s…
The latest buzz in astronomy has been the discovery earlier this month of the merging of a pair of neutron stars millions of light y…
As the Earth moves along its annual orbit of the sun, new constellations appear in the eastern night sky while old ones disappear in…
In three weeks Walla Walla will be treated to a near total solar eclipse. The rare event occurs the morning of Aug. 21.
At any given location on Earth, a total solar eclipse is rare. If you stayed at the same location your entire life, you might see on…
You’ve probably heard a solar eclipse will occur in August and that the path of totality passes across the middle of Oregon. I plan …
Many of us in Walla Walla think the best times to live here are spring and fall. Cold, snowy winters like the one we’ve just had and…
On any clear night, if we go outside and look at the north sky for a few hours, we see that the stars are rotating around a point ca…
Most of the stars that we see at night are called fixed stars. Even though they are moving, their distance from Earth is so great th…
If you were to record the position of the sun in the sky at the same time every day for a year, you would discover that it does not …
On Nov. 14 the full moon will be just 221,524 miles from Earth, the closest it has been since 1948. It will not come this close agai…
Summer in the northern hemisphere is officially over and autumn began on Sept. 22, the fall equinox.
For years astronomers have been searching for exoplanets — planets orbiting not around our sun but other stars. They have found thou…
This month NASA released a time-lapse video (link) of the Earth, taken over the past year. The 3,000-plus images that make up this v…
Is there a connection between the moon and the ocean tides?
The best views always occur at opposition: when Mars appears to be opposite the sun as seen from Earth. To see surface features, you will need at least a 4-inch telescope.
Now is a good time to watch the moon. Not Earth’s moon, but the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter.
It is not easy to be a stargazer in Walla Walla in the middle of winter. But if there are some clear nights in the next month or two…
It has been more than four months since the New Horizons spacecraft had its close encounter with the (dwarf) planet Pluto, and I thi…
During December when you looked to the southwest at sunset, you saw a bright star about 20 to 30 degrees above the horizon. It wasn
’
t really a star, but the planet Venus.
