star gazer

May 17th, 2012

Cosmic baseball region

By PAUL DERRICK

With the baseball season now underway, it’s fitting that the Cosmic Baseball region is prominent in the early evening sky.  It doesn’t take much imagination to hear the fans cheering as the players round the bases – but perhaps your imagination needs a little help finding the bases.

Baseball …

Star Gazer

May 10th, 2012

Solar eclipse May 20, transit of Venus June 5

By PAUL DERRICK

Come May 20 we will be treated to a relatively rare solar eclipse – a partial eclipse over much of the western half of the U.S. and an even more spectacular annular eclipse for the lucky ones in a 200-mile wide band stretching from …

Star Gazer

April 12th, 2012

Solar eclipse coming our way

By PAUL DERRICK

The May 20 new Moon will produce a solar eclipse visible over the western half of the U.S. Those in a narrow band from the Texas panhandle to northern California will see a rather rare annular eclipse while the rest of us will see an impressive sunset partial …

Star Gazer

March 30th, 2012

The southern circumpolar region

By PAUL DERRICK

In the northern hemisphere we have a section of the night sky we call the Circumpolar Region consisting of those stars and constellations that never dip below the northern horizon as they circle the north celestial pole (and Polaris) each day. We should call it the North Circumpolar Region …

Star Gazer

March 8th, 2012

More star gazing below the equator

By PAUL DERRICK

This column, like the previous two, comes to you from the small but fascinating country of New Zealand situated deep in the Southern Hemisphere nearly a thousand miles southeast of Australia. The natural beauty, rich diversity of scenery, and many other factors, like friendly people and no snakes …

Star Gazer – Transit of Venus and other celestial spice this year

February 2nd, 2012

By PAUL DERRICK

The coming year offers many stargazing delights, and a couple of them don’t even occur at night.    There will be the usual annual meteor showers, brilliant naked-eye planets, and pairings of night sky objects, but 2012 also will treat us to a partial solar eclipse and a rare transit of Venus.

Star Gazer – The winter circumpolar region

January 12th, 2012

By PAUL DERRICK

Polaris, popularly known as the North Star, is the star, which, by chance, happens to be almost exactly straight up from Earth’s North Pole. As such, it is the only star, which seems never to move, always being in the same place any time of night and every night of the year.

Star Gazer

December 8th, 2011

Tycho Brahe, an unlikely revolutionary

By PAUL DERRICK

December 14 is the 465th birthday of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), one of five key players in the 150-year long Copernican revolution – a revolution he didn’t even fully support.

Up to their time, it was believed the Earth was the center of all creation, a view called the …

Star Gazer

December 1st, 2011

Night sky regions

By PAUL DERRICK

On any clear, moonless night away from city lights, the night sky appears to be filled with millions of stars, so no wonder learning the night sky can seem so daunting. But while there really are millions of stars in our section of our Milky Way galaxy, we can’t see near …

Star Gazer – Scoping out a telescope

November 17th, 2011

By PAUL DERRICK

It’s the time of year when many are considering buying a telescope as a holiday gift – a decision many face with many questions – and given the options available, it’s no wonder.  While we don’t have space for Telescope Buying 101, we can offer some help in making the decision easier.

Cost. Prices …