Posted on by David Dickinson

Our Guide to this Friday’s Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

Penumbral Eclipse
A subtle penumbral lunar eclipse from 2016. Image credit and copyright: Dave Walker.

Ready for the very first lunar eclipse of the year? The first eclipse season of 2020 comes to an end Friday, with a penumbral lunar eclipse. This season overlaps with 2019, when it kicked off with the Boxing Day annular solar eclipse of December 26th, 2019.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Top Astronomical Events for 2020

Mars Opposition
Bright yellow Mars approaching a close opposition in July 2018 shines over the waters of Middle Waterton Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park in southwest Alberta on the Alberta-Montana border. Mars is so bright it produces a glitter path on the water. The Milky Way is at right. This was from Driftwood Beach, windy as always this night. The sky is tinted green with bands of airglow, though there was a dim aurora to the north this night as well, quite unexpected. Waterton Lakes is a World Heritage Site and a Dark Sky Preserve. This is a stack of ten exposures for the ground to smooth noise (and blur the wind-rippled water) at f/3.2, and a single exposure for the sky at f/2.2, all 30 seconds with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400. Taken July 11/12, 2018 at the end of a 6-hour session training the Dark Sky Guides staff. It was a superb night, with everything to see in the sky.

Ready for another amazing year of sky watching and astronomy in 2020? Hard to believe, were already a fifth of the way into the 21st century. 2020 rounds out the final year of the second decade, promising an amazing year of skywatching to come.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Waiting for Betelgeuse: What’s Up with the Tempestuous Star?

Betelgeuse
Orion rising on December 21, 2019 with yellow-red Betelgeuse at upper centre reportedly dimmer than usual as it drops to one of its occasional dim episodes as a long-period variable star. It is a red supergiant that varies between 0.0 and +1.3 magnitude. rrThis is a stack of 6 x 1-minute tracked exposures plus a single exposure through the Kenko Softon A filter to add the star glows. All on the iOptron Sky Guider Pro and with the stock Canon 6D MkII and 35mm lens at f/2.8. Taken from home in Alberta on a partly cloudy and foggy night.

Have you noticed that Orion the Hunter—one of the most iconic and familiar of the wintertime constellations—is looking a little… different as of late? The culprit is its upper shoulder star Alpha Orionis, aka Betelgeuse, which is looking markedly faint, the faintest it has been for the 21st century.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Our Guide to the December 26th Annular ‘Ring of Fire’ Eclipse

Mid-eclipse, perfectly centered ring of fire. Image credit and copyright: Kevin Baird.

Ready for the final ‘Ring of Fire’ solar eclipse of 2019? The final eclipse of the year kicks off this week on Wednesday, early on December 26th the day after Christmas, with an annular solar eclipse spanning the Indian Ocean region from the Middle East to the western Pacific.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Will Blanpain Perform? Comet Prospects for 2020

Comet T2 PanSTARRS
Getting brighter... Comet T2 PanSTARRS from December 6th. Image credit and copyright: Efrain Morales Rivera.

Looking forward to the next bright comet in 2020 or beyond? You’re not alone. Though we’ve had a steady string of decent binocular comets over the past few years, we haven’t had a good naked eye comet since W3 Lovejoy beat solar death during its blistering perihelion passage in 2011. But this survivor turned out to be bashful, and headed for southern hemisphere skies… Comet P1 McNaught followed suit in 2007, hiding from northern hemisphere observers at its best. And we all remember what happened to Comet S1 ISON—touted as the next great ‘Comet of the Century’ on U.S. Thanksgiving Day 2013. Here it is almost 2020, and you have to go allll the way back nearly a quarter of a century to Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake to remember just how brilliant a good naked eye comet can be.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

December Meteor Squalls: Prospects for the 2019 Geminids and Ursids

2019 Geminids
A composite of several exposures to stack images of five Geminid meteors into a wide view of the winter sky with Comet Wirtanen at upper right in Taurus, taken on December 12, 2018. The meteors are shooting away from the radiant point in Gemini near the bluish-white star Castor at left. The Milky Way runs vertically through the frame from Auriga at top to past Orion at bottom. All the images for the base sky layer and the meteors were shot as part of the same sequence and framing, with a 24mm lens and Nikon D750 on a Star Adventurer tracker. The camera is unmodified so the red nebulosity in this part of the sky appears rather pale. Capella and the Pleiades are at top, Orion is at bottom, Taurus is at centre, while Gemini and the radiant point of the shower is at lower left. The Taurus Dark Clouds complex is at upper centre. All exposures were 30 seconds at f/2 and ISO 1600. I started the sequence with the camera framing this area of the sky when it was just rising in the east in the moonlight then followed it for 4 hours until clouds moved in. So all the images align, but out of 477 frames shot only these 5 had Geminid meteors. Images layered and stacked in Photoshop. Image Credit and Copyright: Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com

December means chillier climes for northern hemisphere residents, a time to huddle inside near the campfire, both real and cyber. I’ve always thought this was a shame, as the cold crisp nights of winter also offer up sharp, clear skies. Over the past decade or so, December gives observers another reason to brave the cold: the Geminids.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Conjunction Alert: Jupiter Meets Venus at Dusk

Jupiter and Venus
Invasion of the naked eye planets... shining a laser at Jupiter and Venus. Credit: Dave Dickinson

Get ready: The conjunction queries are inbound. “Did you see those two bright things in the sky last night?” Says a well-meaning family member/friend/coworker/random person on Twitter who knows you’re into astronomy. “They were HUGE!”

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Posted on by David Dickinson

November Meteors: Taurids, Leonids and a Surprise Monocerotids Outburst

Taurid meteors
Two Taurid meteors from the November 2015 shower, on November 10, taken from home as part of testing the Nikon D810a and 14-24mm Nikon lens. Green airglow lights the sky, as well as horizon glows from distant lights on this very frosty and humid night for a late fall evening. This is a stack of two exposures, one for each meteor, each 60 seconds at f/2.8 and at 14mm and at ISO 800, both tracked on the AP Mach One mount. Image credit and copyright: Alan Dyer

For the northern hemisphere observers, November is fireball season. This month, keep an eye out for two sure-fire annual meteor showers, and—just maybe—a wild card outburst from the obscure Alpha Monocerotids worth watching out for.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

Our Guide to the November 11th, 2019 Transit of Mercury Across the Sun

Mercury transits the Sun in 2016. Image credit and copyright: David Blanchflower.

One of the finest spectacles in astronomy is to witness the passage of one object in front of another. This can transpire as an eclipse, an occultation, or a rare event known as a planetary transit. We get a shot at seeing just such a singular event next Monday on November 11th, as a transit of Mercury across the face of Sol occurs for the last time this decade.

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