Continue to watch the skies and be awed by the universe about us. Farewell! Read More
Did you ever wonder how the Moon came to be? Read More
Neptune comes into view in the southeast at dusk, its blue-gray disk is best seen around midnight in Aquarius. Read More
Mercury makes it above the western horizon during the final week of July just to the upper left of Venus. Read More
Located 3.8 billion light years from Earth, Supernova ASASSN-15th at its peak was 50 times brighter than all the stars in our Milky Way galaxy combined. Read More
Maine Skies: Space exploration has left dozens of functioning and dead spacecraft and associated debris wandering about the solar system, and nowhere is it more evident than at Mars. Read More
A team of astronomers from Yale University and the University of California have used the Hubble Space Telescope to shatter the cosmic distance record by spotting a galaxy 13.4 billion light years away. Galaxy GN-z11 formed only 400 million years after the Big Bang, so researchers are seeing… Read More
Some skeptics are awaiting telescopic evidence. Read More
Maine Skies: Astronomers in Chile have discovered the faintest galaxy ever seen in the early universe. Read More
All the planetary action favors early risers this month as Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Saturn are all in the late night and predawn sky. Read More
Ducks and geese flying south in the fall are a familiar sight to Mainers. Many species of birds migrate vast distances each year. The record holder appears to be the Arctic tern, which spends one summer in the Arctic and then migrates halfway around the world to spend… Read More
Astronomers estimate there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. One has to be the brightest, and the current frontrunner is a galaxy 12.5 billion light years from Earth that is as bright as 300 trillion stars. It was discovered by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Read More
How far into the universe have astronomers been able to see? The distance record holder is a galaxy named EGS-zs8-1 that is 13.1 billion light years from Earth. Since the universe is thought to be 13.8 billion years old, this means the galaxy was formed shortly… Read More
What do astronomers mean when they say they are looking back into time? Let’s first look at an example here on Earth. Suppose you took a picture in a room filled with people on your cell phone. You then get in your car and drive 100 miles home… Read More
How can the sun be in two places at once? On April 19, the sun enters the sign of Aries astronomically and one day later enters the astrological sign of Taurus but still, in reality, is in Aries. How can this be? The answer lies with precession and… Read More
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft left on its mission to Pluto in January 2006, the latter was still listed as the ninth planet of the solar system. As the spacecraft begins its approach to Pluto nine years later, its target has been downgraded to a dwarf-planet or plutoid… Read More
Here’s a common question: How many stars can you see with the naked eye on a clear night? Every eye is a bit different but under ideal conditions the most frequent number given is 2,000 to 2,500, all of which belong to our Milky Way galaxy. Read More
Pioneer 6 is considered ‘extant,’ or still operable, making it the oldest operating probe in the history of space exploration. It was launched on Dec. 16, 1965 into a circular orbit about the sun at a distance of 0.8 A.U (A.U. = 93 million miles). Its mission was… Read More
Voyager 1 was launched on Sept. 5, 1977, and, in the more than 36 years that have passed, has achieved a number of remarkable landmarks. In 1979, it visited Jupiter and sent back pictures of both the planet and its major moons. In 1980, it passed by Saturn… Read More
On a clear dark night in Maine with no interference from the moon, the sky appears dotted with millions of stars. One reader was curious: Just how many stars can we see? There is no true answer to this question as each person’s eyes are different even if… Read More
