This morning, after a night's observing, I cooled down with a cup of tea and watched Scorpius scuttle up from the eastern horizon. What a spectacular southern hemisphere constellation Scorpius is.
Owing to the encroachment of light pollution, sighting the gegenschein has almost become mythical and certainly makes me appreciate what an immense privilege it is to be observing under skies so dark and transparent that one can see faint, diffuse, oval glow around midnight.
Shining at magnitude 1.78 with a hot blue-white light, Gamma Velorum is nothing less than spectacular. Located about 840 light years away, it is a complex multi-star complex that contains the nearest Wolf-Rayet star to Earth.
After watching hundreds of Kalahari sunsets I saw the green flash yesterday evening and it was every bit as beautiful and exciting to see as I had imagined.
The “Baracchi 59” are the 59 unpublished visual discoveries that Pietro Baracchi made using the 48″ Great Melbourne Telescope during the years 1884-1888.
Dung beetles have a tiny brain – it is several times smaller than a match head and contains fewer than a million neurons. Yet within this tiny brain lies a complex sky compass that employs sophisticated celestial navigation skills.
This morning, after a night's observing, I cooled down with a cup of tea and watched Scorpius scuttle up from the eastern horizon. What a spectacular southern hemisphere constellation Scorpius is.
Owing to the encroachment of light pollution, sighting the gegenschein has almost become mythical and certainly makes me appreciate what an immense privilege it is to be observing under skies so dark and transparent that one can see faint, diffuse, oval glow around midnight.
Shining at magnitude 1.78 with a hot blue-white light, Gamma Velorum is nothing less than spectacular. Located about 840 light years away, it is a complex multi-star complex that contains the nearest Wolf-Rayet star to Earth.
After watching hundreds of Kalahari sunsets I saw the green flash yesterday evening and it was every bit as beautiful and exciting to see as I had imagined.
The “Baracchi 59” are the 59 unpublished visual discoveries that Pietro Baracchi made using the 48″ Great Melbourne Telescope during the years 1884-1888.
Dung beetles have a tiny brain – it is several times smaller than a match head and contains fewer than a million neurons. Yet within this tiny brain lies a complex sky compass that employs sophisticated celestial navigation skills.