There is a lot of exciting stuff going on in the stars above us that make astronomy so much fun.  The truth is the universe is a constantly changing, moving, some would say “living” thing because you just never know what you are going to see on any given night of stargazing. But of the many celestial phenomenons, there is probably none as exciting as that time you see your...

As parents, we often worry about what our children are getting excited about.  We hope we can guide them to “bond” with healthy things like a love of learning, family, and of healthy social activities.  But we also worry they will bond with the wrong people like internet stalkers or the wrong crowd at school.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness that...

The ancient Chinese astrologers worked with little to no contact with those of the Greek world. This relative isolation means the constellations we know in the western world are unheard of in Chinese astrology. They have a system entirely their own. The astrologers of ancient China divided their sky into 31 sections or regions. The three sections, which make up the north celestial pole are...

For most of us, the idea of astronomy is something we directly connect to “stargazing”, telescopes, and seeing magnificent displays in the heavens.  And to be sure, that is the exciting area of astronomy that accounts for its huge popularity.  So to the uninitiated, the idea of “radio astronomy” seems strange.  There are two reasons for that.  First...

If you are a serious astronomy fanatic like a lot of us are, you can probably remember that one event in childhood that started you along with this exciting hobby.  It might have been that first time you looked through a telescope.  But for many of us, it was the first time we saw a rain of fire from the sky that we eventually came to know as a meteoroid shower. At the time when you...

No matter how far along you are in your sophistication as an amateur astronomer, there is always one fundamental moment that we all go back to.  That is that very first moment that we went out where you could really see the cosmos well and you took in the night sky.  For city dwellers, this is a revelation as profound as if we discovered aliens living among us.  Most of us have...