Posted on by David Dickinson

Watch the Moon Occult Vesta and Aldebaran This Weekend

The Moon occults Aldebaran last lunation on March 14th as seen from India. Image credit and copyright: Rajneesh Parashar

So, did you miss yesterday’s occultation of Venus by the Moon? It was a tough one, to be sure, as the footpath for the event crossed Europe and Asia in the daytime. Watch that Moon, though, as it crosses back into the evening sky later this week, and occults (passes in front of) the bright star Aldebaran for eastern North America and, for Hawaii-based observers, actually covers the brightest of the asteroids, 4 Vesta. Continue reading “Watch the Moon Occult Vesta and Aldebaran This Weekend”

Posted on by David Dickinson

Watch Venus Brush Past Saturn This Weekend

Venus rising over the Catalinas near Tucson, Arizona on January 3rd. Image credit: Rob Sparks (@halfastro)

Welcome to 2016! The early morning sky is where the action is this first week of the year. We were out early this Monday morning as skies cleared over Central Florida on our yearly vigil for the Quadrantid meteors. Though only a handful of meteors graced the dawn skies, we were treated to a splendid line-up, including Jupiter, Mars, Spica, Antares, Saturn, Venus, the waning crescent Moon AND a fine binocular view of Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina. Continue reading “Watch Venus Brush Past Saturn This Weekend”

Posted on by David Dickinson

The Top 101 Astronomical Events for 2016

Camping out under dark skies. Image credit and copyright: Michelle Nixon/MNixon Photography

Here it is… our year end look at upcoming events in a sky near you. We’ve been doing this “blog post that takes four months to write” now on one platform or another every year since 2009, and every year, it gets bigger and more diverse, thanks to reader input. This is not a top 10 listicle, and not a full-fledged almanac, but hopefully, something special and unique in between. And as always, some of the events listed will be seen by a large swath of humanity, while others grace the hinterlands and may well go unrecorded by human eyes. We’ll explain our reasoning for drilling down each category, and give a handy list of resources at the end.

Click on any of the graphics included for the top events for each month to enlarge.

Continue reading “The Top 101 Astronomical Events for 2016”