astronomy

Step outside on a clear night this week and gaze upward. You’ll see a bright gibbous Moon – or a full Moon on January 28.

The Moon is iconic, seen and enjoyed from anywhere on Earth. It is so coveted that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a space race to see who could reach the Moon first. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to land on its surface. This race inspired the first international space treaty. Dubbed “the Outer Space Treaty,” the 1960s document governed the first international laws about space and forbade any single country from owning celestial bodies, including the Moon. Instead, they were to be enjoyed and studied by all.

2021 promises to be a great year for watchers of our Western Slope Skies. The New Year will feature two lunar eclipses, Perseid meteors under a dark August sky, several planetary conjunctions, and increasing solar activity.

Have you ever tried to count the stars on a crisp, clear night, far from city lights? It is not for the numerically faint of heart.

Over the next week, the Full Moon will light up the otherwise dark skies of the Western Slope. While a spectacular sight in its own right, the glow of the Full Moon overwhelms many fainter stars and the fuzzy glow of the Milky Way from our sky. Even once it departs, something else often prevents us from getting the best view of the night sky, and it all starts with your own two eyes.

Astronomers announced the surprising possibility of life on Venus last month, based on the discovery of phosphine in the atmosphere. What is phosphine? And are we really ready to reclassify Venus from scary greenhouse-effect nightmare to potentially livable place?

As evening twilight deepens, look to the east. You’ll see a brilliant red star rising. That star is actually not a star, but the planet Mars. Over the next several weeks, we on Earth will be swinging by Mars on our faster orbit about the Sun, allowing for great views of our planetary neighbor.

The small mountain town of Lake City now hosts an International Dark Sky Park. One man’s love for astronomy and his desire to protect his community’s dark skies made the dream a reality. For KVNF News, Laura Palmisano reports.

“We are here.” That is the first thing I tell people at a national park visitor center, as I point to our location on a park map. Even if they didn’t ask, hearing it always seems to be a relief.

You don’t have to travel to a national park to enjoy the night sky, especially here on the Western Slope. Even in the midst of Montrose, we can see a faint Milky Way streaming over our sleeping town. Connecting to our universe from the comfort of home is not only possible, but enjoyable, and a good way to let go of pandemic stress.

The best time to see the Milky Way is NOW! Did you know that dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate?  Yeah - but I'm not a dung beetle you may say. Ok, did you know that humans use the stars for navigating as well?

We consider our universe to be limitless. Over the decades, people have explored that infinity to discover what is out there, even who is out there. But what about the space closest to us? The low Earth orbit is overcrowded by satellites, space junk, and the leftover remnants of space exploration. These leftover pieces affect how scientists and people experience space.

On Earth, we know rain as a water phenomenon-- falling gently or torrentially from clouds, feeding river and lakes, carving landscapes. You may have danced in it; likelier, you have complained about it. But what if it rained something else…like diamonds?

As early as 1923, German astronomers dreamt of a telescope that could observe the universe from space, where Earth’s weather and atmosphere would not interfere with its observations. Nearly 70 years later, their dreams became reality – not just for a select group of scientists, but for the masses.

When most people think of astronomy, they think of planets and galaxies that are far, far away. But one can experience astronomy right here on Earth. Studying the extraterrestrial helps us understand the terrestrial, our own planet.

Go out tonight and look for a constellation that is easy to see at this time of year. Scorpius lies close to the southern horizon. Scorpius is Latin for scorpion and this is a constellation that really looks like its namesake. Yet, as obvious as it appears like an arachnid, the constellation holds mysteries we can’t see.

Millions  of people globally have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything from schools to states and countries have shut down to limit the spread of the virus. National parks have been temporarily shuttered in many places to protect visitors, staff, and surrounding communities. With all this going on, it’s hard to remember what day it is much less remember what is happening in the night sky! Why should we care about astronomy during a worldwide emergency? Shouldn’t we be focusing our energy elsewhere?

Gazing into the depths of the night sky, where distances are measured not in miles but in light years, it’s easy to feel that everything is impossibly far away and ultimately apart from us. Take Corvus, a constellation best seen in spring by looking south. Of its 4 brightest stars, the most distant from earth is Minkar, at 303 light years. Somewhat closer, Algoreb is still an impressive 87 light years away. At these distances, you could live a lifetime and not know that one of its stars has died, still seeing its traveling light long after the star itself has ceased to exist.

The question as to whether or not we are alone in the universe has been one of the greatest and most difficult to answer in the history of mankind.

In 2004, NASA scientists pointed the Hubble Telescope towards a blank patch of sky in the constellation Fornax the Furnace to see what lies out there in the deepest parts of space. What they recorded has become one of the most profound images in modern history - the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Whether motivated by romance or astronomy, you have probably watched a moonrise. If so, you likely noticed how it looms large against the horizon; yet later, it appears much smaller.

Have you noticed that brilliant star in the western evening sky over the past few months? That “evening star” is Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor.

In July of this year NASA will be launching our next rover to Mars, currently known as Mars Rover 2020.

In the last Western Slope Skies episode, we discussed several aspects of astronomy in indigenous North American cultures. Today we focus on the Lakota constellation The Sacred Hoop.

The night sky is mystical to many cultures. Untouchable, seen only part of the day, changing from month to month, yet it clearly has an impact on life on the earth in terms of agriculture, weather changes, and navigation.

If you venture out under clear and dark Western Slope winter skies, you’ll notice a diffuse glow, extending from the northwestern horizon across the zenith to the southeast. This is the winter view of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. While not as bright as the Milky Way we see during summer evenings, the winter Milky Way has a subtle beauty all its own.

  Ready or not, year 2020 is here with a host of new astronomy highlights.

Over the past year, how many questions did you ask that went unanswered?

Have you ever have taken a long, time-exposure photo? Say, 30 seconds long? You can image stars, and even the Milky Way. What if you took a very long time-exposure photo of a seemingly empty part of the sky with a large telescope? Say, 22 hours long!

A black hole is an object with such strong gravitational attraction that even light can not escape.