Posted on by David Dickinson

A Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Leads the Way to Easter Weekend

Chuck Manges
Can you see it? A penumbral eclipse from 2013. Image credit and copyright: Chuck Manges

Ready for Easter? The first of two lunar eclipses for 2016 occurs this week, though it’s an event so subtle, you might not notice it at first glance. We’re talking about Wednesday evening’s (morning for North America) penumbral lunar eclipse. If a total solar eclipse such as the one that crossed Indonesia and the Pacific Ocean earlier this month is the ultimate astronomical experience, then a penumbral lunar eclipse is at the other end of the spectrum, a ghostly shading on the Moon that is barely noticeable. Continue reading “A Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Leads the Way to Easter 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”