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Unveiling Treats of the Summer Sky
Around ten thousand years ago, when the Ice Age was in the early stages of surrendering its frozen grip on Earth, a star about 20 times more massive than our sun exploded in what became the constellation Cygnus the Swan. The star was close to Earth, only 1,600 light years away, almost next door in…
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A Misbehaving Comet
Hearing reports of an unexpectedly bright comet in the morning sky, I woke close to 4 a.m. and stepped out of our south-facing front entrance to gauge the sky conditions. I knew the air quality was bad as soon as I stepped out—the Air Quality Index was 97, ashes on the tongue territory—but I saw…
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Three Bear Beauties
I went bear hunting on a couple of fairly clear nights in early August. Ursa Major, aka The Great Bear, aka The Big Dipper, aka The Plough and several other aka’s, is the third largest constellation in size and is home to several galaxies that made Chuck Messier’s famous list of non-comets. M101 is a…
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Out-of-Season Andromeda
July 13. It’s 2:15 a.m. and I’m wide awake. A quick peek out the window shows stars. Go to my goto App for astronomical sky conditions. Fantastic sky, despite the heat dome under which Rochester Minnesota bakes. Ten minutes later I’m on the deck aligning my SeeStar. It’s 71 degrees, the sky is black as…
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Saturday Night in Rochester Minnesota
After a long pack and trek by camel–our small herd was quite hesitant about swimming across the Mississippi– we arrived at our new home high in the Morris Hills area Northeast of Rochester, Minnesota. We are a tad north of our previous homestead in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but the difference is minuscule: 44.065 degrees North here…
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Leo’s Trio
It’s been a while. My wife, Michelina, and I purchased a home high on a cliff in Rochester, Minnesota a month ago. We have been bouncing back and forth getting our current home—My daughter, Courtney, calls it Home No. 1—ready to sell. Once it is sold, we’ll be able to move into Home No. 2,…
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K-1 is Going Kaput
A rare cosmic event, a comet breaking apart, is now visible to people living in the Northern Hemisphere.
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Our Sweet Lemmon
When I was a young lad, devoid of optical instrumentation and a lot of other things cerebral, I thumbed through astronomy books and gazed at magnificent drawings of ancient comets that lit up the night time sky, and could even be seen in daylight! Imagine that! And I did. Of course, photography had advanced by…
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Winter is Coming
Indeed, winter is coming. There’s no news in this headline, but for those of use who enjoy the expanding, wide windows of night sky, winter is the best time of the year. I’m clearing leftover photos off the screen of my desktop computer and I’d thought I’d share them. On the morning of October 10,…
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M31: The Finest Fruit of the Autumn Sky
It’s October 1, 2025, and I have finished my latest book, “John Mayasich—Immigration Roots to Olympic Gold.” It should be available on Amazon.com in a few weeks. It’s a compelling story about a truly remarkable family and their Croatian immigrant parents who raised 11 children in northern Minnesota. One child, John Mayasich, absorbed everything important…
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Leo’s Trio Chase the Seven Sisters
Hi everyone. Glad you’re still here. Leo’s Trio is an arresting mix of galaxies which fit comfortably in the field of view of most small telescopes. On the evening of March 16, I had to slightly expand the roughly .75 by 1.25 degree field of view in the SeeStar S50 to comfortably fit the threesome…
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Crabbing Around the Winter Nights
This week, on a fairly transparent night, I drove our vehicle about a half-mile out from the western shoreline of Lake Winnebago to go fishing. No, not for the prehistoric sturgeon that humans in nearby area zip codes like to hunker over and spear, savagely, through a rectangular hole in the ice, but to fish…
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The Rosette Returns
On a recent night that would chill emperor penguins of the Antarctic, the little wonder-scope that is the SeeStar S50 stood outside our frosty family room window and went to work. Grinding away in minus 8 Fahrenheit temperatures, the S50 with its modest two-inch triple lens spent about two hours photographing the sky in a…
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Tourist Stops in the Winter Night Sky
Your intrepid astronomer visits more than a few astronomy sites during his infrequent online trekking. This time of year, nearly everyone who photographs the night sky has proof that they have visited popular winter sky tourists stops. Many of the modern amateur portraits are stunning. Equivalent to the American Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park or…
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Seeing All Seven of the Sisters
The weeks zip by, quick as meteors in the night. It’s been a while since your intrepid astronomer planted his sack of potatoes beneath the starry night. Clouds, travel, moon-washed evenings, and life all sometimes conspire to keep us from what we love doing. When the doing arrives again, cosmic serenity seeps in to remind…
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Cosmic 