Our Milky Way galaxy John Lauder The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name “milky” is derived from its appearance as a dim, glowing band (easily seen on dark nights from SaddleBrooke) arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. From Earth, the…
—Nights would be much, much darker. The next brightest object in the night sky is Venus but it still wouldn’t be enough to light up the sky—a full moon is nearly two thousand times brighter than Venus is at its brightest. —Without the moon, a day on earth would only last six to twelve hours.…
How far are the stars? John Lauder When astronomers use their telescopes to look at stars, the distances are gigantic. For example, the closest star to Earth (besides our sun) is something like 24,000,000,000,000 miles away. That’s the closest star. There are stars that are billions of times farther away than that. When you start…
New planet discoveries An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. Nearly 2000 exoplanets have been discovered (1948 planets in 1232 planetary systems including 487 multiple planetary systems as of August 21, 2015). There are also rogue planets which do not orbit any star and which tend…
John Lauder Betelgeuse is the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. Betelgeuse is easy to spot with the naked eye owing to its distinctive orange-red color. In the Northern Hemisphere, beginning in January of each year, it can be seen rising in the east just after sunset. Distinctly…
John Lauder Where could we find water? Those of us who live in the desert certainly know water is important and future space travelers will need water. In our solar system, where could we find water? The Goldilocks Zone is the region around our star where the surface temperature of a planet might allow liquid…
John Lauder The International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) is a Tucson, Arizona, based nonprofit organization incorporated in 1988 by founders Dr. David Crawford, a professional astronomer, and Dr. Timothy Hunter, a physician/amateur astronomer. The mission of the IDA is “to preserve and protect the night time environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor…