Astronomy Articles

When deprived of artificial light and exposed to natural light/dark cycles, people sleep BETTER. We flood our nighttime environment with lighting - and I don't just mean outside. TV's, computers, light bulbs - sometimes on ALL night. And yet don't stop to consider that maybe we need to turn the lights off - like our ancestors did.

I was only 60% convinced I had seen an actual aurora, though my daughter, ever optimist, was 75% convinced (despite not having much of a passion for astronomy - okay, she doesn't have any at all, but she was excited about last night for some reason). When I got home, my conviction percentage dropped a bit as the area of brightening I saw was actually a brighter section of the Milky Way according to Stellarium. Fortunately, I got a couple responses to my post on CloudyNights.

I had made a video about how to find Pluto, and why this time was a good opportunity to try and spot the little pla... uhhh - dwarf planet. Two weeks ago some of my friends who are part of the informal Chicago Astronomer group indicated this last weekend might be a good time to try it. I put it on my calendar, and was not disappointed!

The 2012 Venus Transit turned out to be a perfect day for not only capturing the transit occurring visually via different means, but also sharing it with a LOT of interested local people.

Some more photos from the May 20, 2012 solar eclipse - including a long distance one all the way from Japan!