Astronomy Nightly

The Andromeda Galaxy is arguably one of the most spectacular objects in the night sky. In typical city lights, it's completely invisible even though i…

A few days ago, a Type Ia supernova was discovered in Messier 82 (NGC 3034, the Cigar Galaxy).  Because of clouds, it took a few days for me to i…

When doing astrophotography, I've always dodged the moon like the plague.  Since not imaging when the moon is up severely limits how much shootin…

In my last post, Explore Scientific ED127 Robofocus Installation – Part 1, I talked about how I modified (bent) the attachment bracket to align the Ro…

After lots of glowing recommendations, I decided to buy a Technical Innovations Robofocus for my Explore Scientific ED127 telescope and its stock Cray…

After getting a pretty good image of the Orion Nebula from my backyard, I wanted to try some tougher targets.  With about half the moon in view and it…

Nine years ago I bought my first "real" telescope.  My experience the year prior with a department store telescope was horrible.  Department store tel…

I haven't done any official research, but my guess is amateur astronomy buffs spend most of their astronomy time in their backyards.  Home-based …

Neil Armstrong passed away today.  In honor of him, his family's request was: For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple r…

Congrats to the team who got Curiosity this far. Here's the first image from Curiosity. Taken just minutes after touching down on Mars.…