Saturn

September 12, 2024

I haven't written much this year, owing in large part to my frantic quest to finish revising my next book,  Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean. Revising a book always makes you wonder why you decided to...

September 17, 2023

It was midnight on September 1st, and the atmosphere was about as good as it gets for stargazing here in Washington, DC. Transparency was high, seeing was great, Saturn was high in the sky and...

August 25, 2023

Recently, I've been on a mission to optimize my grab-and-go setup. Slowly but surely, parks that offered dark corners for a telescope have been saturated with bright lights: the kind that needlessly...

August 3, 2023

To put it mildly, it's been a dreadful summer for astronomy in Washington, DC. The primary culprit is wildfire smoke, which seems to waft into the city with every clear night. As a professor whose...

August 13, 2022

Binoculars have long frustrated me. While I've thrilled at catching glimpses of rocket launches or lunar craters with big Celestron binoculars here in Washington, DC, I could never hold them steady...

July 11, 2022

The planets are all lined up in the early morning sky, and the summer atmosphere here in DC can really settle down at night. The Sun begins to rise at around 5 AM, however, so getting up early enough...

October 20, 2021

We've had a few clear nights this week, with seeing and transparency both hovering near average. It's been a demanding month at work, but I had to step out last night, Takahashi in hand, to catch a...

October 2, 2021

Conditions were glorious last night - temperatures in teens, seeing and transparency both above average - and I was feeling surprisingly energetic, so I dragged my TEC 140, DM-6, and Berlebach Uni...

September 25, 2021

We've had some wonderfully clear, autumnal nights over the past week, with Jupiter and Saturn riding high in the evening sky and the Moon waxing and waning nearby. I'm teaching what may be my...

May 15, 2021

Everybody approaches amateur astronomy in different ways, but for me - and many others - the most difficult thing about the hobby is that you always wonder, no matter how sublime the view: what would...

August 10, 2020

After two weeks of rainy, stormy weather, the skies cleared over the last two nights, and seeing conditions were, remarkably, better than average. On the evening of the eighth, I marched out of our...

July 27, 2020

This weekend, we travelled to the Shenandoah Mountains with our "bubble family" for a much-needed getaway from Washington, DC. It took a little negotiation - even a short trip with kids requires a...

July 19, 2020

In many cultures, in many times and places, bright comets were thought to herald - or perhaps cause, or confirm - disaster. It therefore seems almost absurdly fitting that, in this terrible...

July 12, 2020

The good times keep coming! Another clear morning, with average seeing and above-average transparency. Astronomy and my toddler have been costing me sleep recently, and deep down I knew it wasn't a...

July 10, 2020

It's been quite a stretch of clear nights in these parts - as I wrote before, DC is a feast-or-famine city for amateur astronomers - and I've been determined to take full advantage. Last night, I...

July 5, 2019

It's hard to properly celebrate Independence Day this year, though that didn't stop the jet fighters and the bombers from roaring overhead yesterday evening. Fireworks followed - hours and hours...

July 3, 2020

Rocking a fussy baby is a dangerous thing. The mind latches on to anything that can distract from the crying, and for me that means telescopes. Could I really use my Mewlon 180, I wondered lately?...

June 9, 2020

Washington is a feast-or-famine city for amateur astronomy. Clouds and bad seeing can endure for weeks - even months - with little relief, and then, suddenly, the weather clears for a week. When that...

November 9, 2019

So I may have contracted a mild case of aperture fever. Not the first time, and likely not the last. ​I caught a glimpse of the Ring Nebula with my 100mm Takahashi recently, and part of me was...

September 23, 2019

At the moment, Lyra and Hercules are high in the high, and Uranus and Neptune are near the annual oppositions. This got me thinking. My refractors are everything I'd hoped they'd be, but would they...

September 10, 2019

So the Takahashi, it turns out, is a pretty good telescope. I've now used it a few times on my observing deck, after amassing all those little accessories, and systematically exchanging my...

July 21, 2019

It's been a while since I wrote. I've come to realize that, with young kids, I just about never have the time to do something as decadent as write for fun. And I certainly don't have time to write...

December 12, 2018

About a year ago, I picked up a Skywatcher 100ED: a "slow" (F/9) 100mm refractor. I haven't written much this year, but wow: suffice it to say, I rarely use any other telescope (and when I do, I come...

August 22, 2016

After a hot, clear day that lacked the crushing humidity I've come to associate with DC summers, I decided to take out my new 4-inch, Celestron Omni XLT refractor. Mars was just a few months from its...