Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton

From the Director

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Rex Parker, PhD director@princetonastronomy.org

Meeting Sept 8 (7:30pm) on Campus. Welcome back to our monthly astronomy club meetings in person (and Zoom) after the summer hiatus. Reacquaint with other members and catch up on ideas and activities for the club this fall. Our long-time venue Peyton Hall is still under reconstruction and Sherrerd Hall, our location in May, is not available on this date. So, on Sept 8 at 7:30pm we have arranged to meet in Louis Simpson Hall room A71, just a stone’s throw from Sherrerd Hall. Parking lots and streetside spots are very close on William Street. Stay tuned to your email the night before for any last-minute announcements. Here’s a map, Simpson Hall is #8 on this chart. Simpson Hall Map

There have been tremendous advances in astrophotography in the past several years, from smart telescopes to harmonic mounts to remote observing. The Sept 8 meeting will delve into the current state of astrophotography as practiced by amateur astronomers. We’ll feature two members who have great experience here, Dr Michael DiMario and Dr Bob Vanderbei. For more on the presentation please see Victor’s article below.

Also at the Sept 8 meeting after the main presentation, we’ll discuss “What you did on your Summer Vacation”. Here is an opportunity to tell others about your great astro escape or other astronomy/science adventures or trips you took this summer. Please send a note to me and Program Chair Victor if you’d like to hold a 5-10 minute slot to relate your escapades.

The Planets Return to our Stage. Solar system watchers have had some sparse evenings this summer, with Jupiter nowhere in sight till the wee hours. But the situation is becoming more enticing. While Venus has been steady in the western sky after sunset at an astonishing brightness (magnitude -4.4) only recently has its phase become a sight worth pulling your telescope out for. Recalling that only planets sun-ward from earth can display a phase in telescopes, the phases of Venus are interesting to study. The illuminated disk of Venus will be ~40%, making a beautiful telescopic crescent as it shines just south of first magnitude Spica in Virgo in early Sept..

And now the observing windows for the gas giant planets are opening up for evening observing. The opposition of Neptune (when it is closest to earth) occurs during late September. Neptune at opposition is still very far away, about 2.7 billion miles or 240 light minutes from earth. Because it is completely invisible to the naked eye (magnitude ~7.8), Neptune is much less viewed and of course much more difficult to see than the other gas giants. It can be estimated that well under 1 in 1000 people (0.1%) in the US have observed Neptune. Can you hunt down its tiny, bluish-green disk using finder charts near the Great Square of Pegasus? The club’s telescopes at our Washington Crossing Observatory have enough magnification and aperture to make it feasible and worthwhile for you to join that 0.1%.

The planetary positions in September from TheSkyX star chart. Neptune is ~4 light hours away (about 2.7 billion miles, 28 astronomical units).

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged director, parker, pluto, Simpson Hall, TheSkyX | Leave a comment

From The Program Chair

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Victor Davis, Program Chair

Fundamentals of EAA and Astrophotography
The September, 2026 monthly meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton will take place in room A71 of Louis Simpson Hall on the campus of Princeton University on Tuesday, September 8th at 7:30 PM. As usual, the meeting is open to AAAP members and the public. Participants can join the meeting in-person at Louis Simpson Hall or log in to the Zoom session as early as 7:00 pm to chat informally before the meeting begins. The evening’s guest speakers will be AAAP Assistant Director and Princeton University Emeritus Professor Robert Vanderbei and Michael DiMario, Chair of AAAP’s Astroimagers and EAA Group. Prof. Bob and Dr. Mike will describe the fundamentals of deep sky imaging and Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) and show examples of their astroimaging work.

Options for Attending the Meeting
You may choose to attend the meeting in person or participate via Zoom or YouTube as we’ve been doing for the past few years. (See How to Participate below for details). Due to security concerns, if you log in before the host has set up internet connectivity on-site, you may need to wait in the Waiting Room for a few minutes until the host is prepared to admit you into the meeting. You’ll need to unmute yourself to make comments or ask questions. It’s polite, though not required, for you to enable your camera so other participants can see you. The meeting will be recorded and edited for posting to our club’s YouTube channel.

Join us for our “meet the speaker” dinner
Our guest speakers will be joining us for our traditional “meet the speaker” dinner at Winberie’s before the meeting. Our reservation is for 5:45 pm Tuesday, September 8th. Please contact the Program Chair if you plan to attend.

Here’s the anticipated agenda for September 8, 2026’s monthly meeting of the AAAP:

Fundamentals of Astroimaging
Featured Speakers:

Michael DiMario, PhD
Chair, AAAP Astroimagers and
EAA Group
k2mjd@outlook.com

Robert Vanderbei, PhD
Professor Emeritus Princeton University Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering
rvdb@princeton.edu

What you see depends on how you look. For thousands of years, visual astronomy gradually informed our appreciation of our place in the universe. Our understanding of nature, of its cosmic cycles, of religion, of origins and destinies all came from looking at the heavens, eventually aided by mechanical and optical gizmos to extend and enhance our vision. Four hundred years ago, telescopes of various sizes and sophistication began helping us collect the photons that let us see distant stars and the faint fuzzy patches of nebulae. For the curious, the serene beauty of Saturn or the glow of the Orion nebula are revelations. Yet until recently, the eye was the ultimate – the only — sensor. Today, the digital sensor has revolutionized astrophotography. Images can be stacked, histograms stretched, and software used to manipulate images in countless ways to mitigate some aspects of poor seeing, light pollution, and atmospheric attenuation. Bob Vanderbei and Mike DiMario, both avid astro-imagers, will introduce the fundamental concepts and processes by which photons modulate electrons which are tortured into stunning images that reveal what the eye cannot by itself see. This presentation explains how to use affordable gear for making pretty pictures that also disclose reality and elicit a sense of wonder that we want to feel and share.

Michael DiMario
Michael DiMario has recently retired from Lockheed Martin serving various executive roles and has held executive engineering positions at General Electric Medical and Lucent Technologies/Bell Laboratories. Michael has six patents, a published book on systems engineering, several published book chapters, more than fifty peer reviewed papers. He has been interviewed and quoted in Wired Magazine, GPS World, Sifted, and the Financial Times. In regard to his astronomical pursuits, he chairs the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton Astroimaging Group, spends many a night astroimaging, and does considerable astronomical history research. He co-shares the earliest precovery of Pluto on Edward Barnard 1909 photographic glass plates located at Yerkes Observatory.

Left: Sombrero Galaxy M104, Right: Heart Nebula IC 1805

^{Sombrero Galaxy M104, Heart Nebula IC 1805. Credit: Michael DiMario}

Robert Vanderbei
Bob Vanderbei grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He first became interested in the stars at the age of six, when he and his family took a camping trip around Lake Superior. Late one night on that trip, Bob looked up at the sky and was astonished by the beauty of the stars. He was enthralled by the idea of space exploration, but a high school teacher convinced him that the Apollo era would be short-lived, and that a career with NASA was a suboptimal career path. Nevertheless, he joined a local astronomy club and immersed himself in math and science. Bob earned a BS in chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in applied math at Cornell. A few postdocs later, he took a job at AT&T Bell Labs, where he emerged as the lead developer behind Korbx, a groundbreaking optimization tool. He received an offer to come to Princeton in 1990. Bob is co-author, with Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott on “Sizing Up the Universe” published by National Geographic, and with Gott, Michael Strauss and Neal DeGrasse Tyson on “Welcome to the Universe in 3D, briefly the number one bestseller on Amazon.com. Bob is a prolific and expert astro-photographer. His work is on view at vanderbei.princeton.edu.

Top Left: Trifid Nebula M20 Takahashi/RC-Optical
Bottom Left: Jupiter Questar
Right: Rosette Nebula NGC 2238 SeeStar S30 Pro

Unjournal Club

Following the break, AAAP member Tom Angle will describe his recent trip to Spain with a Sky and Telescope tour to witness the Total Solar Eclipse of 2026 August 12.

Left: Totality in Spain, Credit: Tom Angle
Right: Madrid Royal Observatory, Credit: Tom Angle

How to Participate (Links)
Zoom & YouTube Live
Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
Topic: May AAAP Meeting, John Horgan, End of Science
Time: May 12, 2026 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 846 0203 3355
Passcode: 246796
Join instructions

....
Click the above icons for Zoom and YouTube

AAAP Video Library

AAAP’s library of monthly meetings is available on the club’s YouTube channel. May’s edited meeting featuring a presentation by John Horgan, science journalist, asking if his 2015 book “The End of Science” was too optimistic is at: https://youtu.be/EqdLY8SSDrw and runs about an hour and 13 minutes.

A look ahead at future guest speakers:

As always, members’ comments and suggestions are gratefully accepted and much appreciated. Thanks to Ira Polans and Dave Skitt for setting up the online links and connecting the meeting to the world outside Peyton Hall.

victor.davis@verizon.net
program@princetonastronomers.org
(908) 581-1780 cell

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged "program chair", davis, guest speakers, michael dimario, princeton, program, vanderbei | Leave a comment

Observatory News: Perseids Bring Visitors to Washington Crossing

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Dave Skitt, Observatory Chairperson

August brought some excellent nights for stargazing at the AAAP Observatory, with the Perseid meteor shower making its annual appearance. This year, the Perseids coincided with the New Moon, giving observers wonderfully dark skies. The peak was expected on August 12 and 13, with the best viewing between about 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.

AAAP members and their guests took advantage of the dark skies at the Observatory and, when needed, the parking areas near the Phillips Farm soccer fields. It was a great opportunity to spend a few late summer nights under the stars and hopefully catch a few bright meteors streaking across the sky.

Our regular Friday night public observing sessions have also been a success this year and will continue through the last Friday in October. These sessions are an important part of AAAP’s outreach to the community and give visitors a chance to look through the Observatory telescopes and share in the excitement of the night sky.

A reminder to everyone enjoying the Park: please respect Washington Crossing State Park rules and follow any directions from Park Police. AAAP is fortunate to have a wonderful relationship with the Park, and we look forward to many more clear nights of observing, learning, and sharing the sky with our members and visitors.

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged meteor, meteor shower, observatory, park police, perseid, skitt, Washington Crossing State Park | Leave a comment

Privatization of Space

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Prasad Ganti

Initially, space was the exclusive domain of the governments. Even now, it is for most of the countries in the world except three. SpaceX started the efforts in the US. And now it plays a major role in democratizing access to space. Low cost launches, very frequent launches, reusable first stage of the rocket etc. The next step for SpaceX is to make the second stage reusable as well.

The Chinese private sector then entered the race. LandSpace started with launches. Recently it was able to recover the first stage, which returned upright to a platform at sea. The reusable technology has entered the Chinese space program.

The third country is India. Skyroot Aviation, founded in 2018 by former ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) employees, recently launched a four stage rocket with payload into low earth orbit. Following an earlier successful suborbital flight. The private sector is more involved in the entire spectrum of space related activities. Efforts are also on to reuse the first stage.

The four stage rocket, named Vikram-1, is about seven storeys tall. It is made of all-carbon composites. It can carry payloads of up to 350 kgs into low earth orbit. The rocket engines propelling the rocket were developed in-house using 3D printing. The high-performance solid rocket motors were also developed in-house.

Space programs need the private sector participation. For optimizing the operations and design. To make space more affordable and reliable. There is a lot of demand for launching small satellites. Governments alone cannot meet this demand. Nor are the governments nimble enough to speed up adoption with lower costs. Besides, rocket launches are a commercial business now. There are profits to be made. The private sector has enough incentive to make the investments and reap the accruing benefits.

While the government can still continue with their basic research and exploration.Once their research yields fruits and becomes a repeatable process, the private sector can take over and bring optimization and efficiencies to the process. The private-public combination can achieve optimal gains. It is said that the government is like a thumb, very powerful but not as nimble, while the private sector is nimble but not as powerful as the thumb. As we know from our experience, we need both the thumb and the fingers to grip anything or to get any useful work done.

Vikram-I was not just an experimental flight. It did carry commercial payloads. The mission carried SCOPE, Skyroot’s Earth observation satellite; SOLARAS, a CubeSat developed by Grahaa Space to study solar activity; Embrace, an orbital robotic arm demonstration by Cosmoserve Space for space debris capture; and two technology demonstration payloads, uD3PP and mD3RN, built by Germany-based DCubed.

Another unique payload, called Micro-Art, featured an 18-karat gold micro-sculpture carrying microscopic portraits of Indian space pioneers Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Sir C.V. Raman.

Hopefully, other major players like ESA and Japan will get their private sectors to participate in their respective space programs and get good benefits and achieve faster progress.

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged ganti, landspace, privatization, spacex | Leave a comment

The Observatory at the End of the Road

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Dan Opdyke

The observatory had been built in 1967, when men were still learning how to leave the Earth.

It stood on a wooded ridge at the end of a road that no longer appeared on most maps. Once there had been farms here, and telephone wires, and houses whose foundations could still be found beneath the undergrowth. The forest had reclaimed almost everything.

It had not reclaimed the observatory.

Each evening when the weather permitted, Elias Morgan climbed the hill and opened the dome.

He was seventy-three years old and had been doing this for nearly half his life.

The telescope was not a remarkable instrument. Its mirror was only half a meter across. There were amateur astronomers now who owned better equipment in their gardens.

But Morgan had never considered this important.

A telescope was a machine for collecting photons.

And photons did not care who collected them.

On a cold October night, shortly after midnight, someone knocked on the observatory door.

Morgan opened it.

A man of perhaps fifty stood outside.

“Are you still open?”

Morgan glanced at the clock.

“Apparently.”

The stranger entered.

He gave his name as Daniel and offered no explanation for being there.

Morgan asked for none.

“Have you ever seen Jupiter?”

“Pictures.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Morgan entered the coordinates.

The telescope moved.

Its motors made the quiet, purposeful sounds of a machine performing a task that human beings had once believed impossible.

Morgan adjusted the focus.

“Look.”

Daniel bent over the eyepiece.

For a long time he said nothing.

Jupiter floated there.

Not a photograph.

Not pixels on a screen.

A world.

Two dark equatorial bands crossed its pale disk. Four points of light were arranged beside it.

“What are those?”

“The Galilean satellites.”

“Those dots are moons?”

“Yes.”

Daniel looked again.

“How far away?”

“Tonight? Approximately six hundred million kilometres.”

Daniel raised his head.

“And I’m seeing it now?”

Morgan smiled.

“No.”

Daniel waited.

“You’re seeing Jupiter as it was about thirty-five minutes ago. That’s how long the light required to reach us.”

Daniel returned to the eyepiece.

“So I’m looking into the past.”

“Of course.”

Morgan walked toward the open slit of the dome.

“The Moon you see is a little more than a second old. The Sun is eight minutes old. Sirius is nearly nine years old.”

He pointed toward a faint patch of sky.

“And the light from the Andromeda Galaxy began its journey before there were human beings.”

Daniel stared upward.

For several moments neither man spoke.

“It makes everything down here seem insignificant.”

Morgan had heard this observation many times.

He had never agreed with it.

“On the contrary.”

Daniel looked at him.

Morgan sat beside the telescope.

“The hydrogen in your body was made during the first few minutes after the beginning of the universe. The carbon, oxygen and calcium came later. Stars manufactured them.”

Daniel listened.

“Those stars died. Their material entered other stars, planets, oceans and eventually living things. After several billion years, some of that matter became capable of asking where it came from.”

Morgan touched the telescope.

“And then it built instruments to find out.”

Daniel smiled.

“That’s a dramatic way of putting it.”

“It is also essentially correct.”

They observed until dawn.

Morgan showed him Saturn, whose rings seemed so geometrically perfect that they might have been engineered.

They examined the Pleiades.

They looked into Orion, where stars were being assembled from collapsing clouds of gas while, elsewhere in the Galaxy, other stars were dying.

At 5:17 the first light appeared in the east.

Morgan closed the dome.

Daniel stood by the door.

“Can I come back?”

“Whenever the sky is clear.”

He did.

At first occasionally.

Then often.

Morgan taught him the constellations, celestial coordinates, optics and the peculiar patience required by astronomy.

Years passed.

Daniel learned the telescope.

Then he learned the sky.

Eventually he began opening the observatory himself.

There came, inevitably, an evening when Elias Morgan did not climb the hill.

The telescope continued without him.

So did Jupiter.

So did Saturn.

So did the Galaxy.

Twenty-one years after Daniel had first knocked upon the observatory door, another visitor arrived shortly after midnight.

She was young, though she looked tired.

“Are you still open?”

Daniel glanced at the clock.

He remembered an October night from another lifetime.

“Apparently.”

He opened the door.

“Have you ever seen Jupiter?”

“Pictures.”

Daniel smiled.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

The telescope turned toward the giant planet.

Far above them, photons that had departed Jupiter thirty-five minutes earlier completed their journey.

Others were arriving from Sirius.

Others from Andromeda.

And still others, so ancient that Earth itself had not existed when they began crossing the darkness, passed unnoticed through the observatory walls and continued into space.

For four billion years, life on Earth had looked outward without understanding what it saw.

Then, for the briefest instant in cosmic history, matter had learned to understand itself.

Perhaps that was all intelligence was.

Perhaps it was enough.

And beneath the turning dome, on one small world circling an ordinary star, someone leaned toward an eyepiece and looked outward once again.

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged dan opdyke, elias, elias morgan, morgan, opdyke | Leave a comment

Partial Solar Eclipse at the AAAP Observatory

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

AAAP member Daniel Mints was at the Observatory on August 12, 2026, ready to catch the partial solar eclipse—and thankfully, his camera was ready too! New Jersey experienced a partial eclipse that afternoon, with maximum eclipse occurring around 1:54 p.m. Dan captured the observing session with his Canon R6 and 50mm lens, while the close-up images of the Sun were taken with his Dwarf 2 smart telescope.

A solar eclipse is always a good excuse to stop what you’re doing, look up, and spend some time with the sky. These photographs give us a glimpse of what Dan and others at the Observatory were able to enjoy that afternoon. Thank you, Dan, for sharing your eclipse adventure with Sidereal Times—and for proving once again that you don’t need to travel to the ends of the Earth to enjoy a celestial event!

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged Daniel Mints, mints, observatory, partial eclipse, solar eclipse, Washington Crossing Observatory | Leave a comment

Solar Eclipse by the Ocean

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Rachel Reither

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged rachel reither, reither, solar, solar eclipse 2026, total solar eclipse | Leave a comment

Sun as the Teacher: The Sūrya Siddhānta

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

Short Stories Series from Eklavya Doegar

Over 1,500 years ago, much before telescopes and space agencies, Indian scholars were carefully studying the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets. Unknown scholars wrote a book that shaped astronomy for centuries.

It was called the Sūrya Siddhānta, which means The Teachings of the Sun. According to legend, the Sun god shared this knowledge with a wise sage.

This is unlikely, however, the science in the book was real and meaningful. It explained how to calculate the length of a year, the size of Earth, and the distance to the Moon and Sun. It even gave methods to predict eclipses and track planets. The Sūrya Siddhānta introduced important math ideas like trigonometry and sine tables, which were used to calculate angles and positions in the sky.

Aryabhata and Bhāskara II, took inspiration and ideas from this book and developed them further. The ideas from the book also spread to the Islamic world and beyond. Even today, Hindu calendars still use methods from the Sūrya Siddhānta. It is one of the oldest surviving scientific texts in the world, and a reminder of how people long ago explored the universe with just their eyes, minds, and math.

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged doegar, Eklavya Doegar, Sūrya Siddhānta | Leave a comment

Ira went Camping

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

Ira went camping, quite off the grid,
For the camp’s hundredth year, as a youngster he did.
With M13, Moon and Venus in view,
And a lovely shot of Chrissy too,
Though the Perseids hid—clouds spoiled what he had bid!

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged camp, polans | Leave a comment

A Night of Imaging at Cherry Springs

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Hrishikesh Karvir

I recently had the chance to image Helix Nebula and M101 on August 16 from the Cherry Springs overnight observation field. Conditions were pretty good overall, but tracking wasn’t great due to heavy dew throughout the night. Despite that, I was happy with how the images turned out, especially the Helix Nebula, which came out slightly better of the two.

What I found particularly interesting was that both images visibly resolved smaller galaxies within the fields. For example, the 2MFGC 16944 galaxy can be seen within the outer edge of the Helix Nebula, near the top-left corner in the red hydrogen-alpha emission. It’s always fun when an image reveals a little more than what you were initially looking for!

Both images were taken with the following equipment
Scope: Celestron EdgeHD 9.25 [Focal Length: 2350mm, Aperture: 235 mm, f/10]
Mount: Orion Atlas II
Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Duo Pro [No filters]
Guide Scope: SVBony SV160 [Focal Length = 120 mm, aperture 30 mm, f/4]
Guide Camera: SVBony 305
Imaging Computer: Raspberry pi 4B – Image capture with KStars and guiding with PHD2

Post processing done with PixInsight

Helix Nebula: Integration time = 95 mins

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged 2MFGC 16944, 2MFGC 16944 galaxy, cherry springs, helix, Hrishikesh Karvir, karvir, M101, nebula | Leave a comment

Our Milky Way Galaxy

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

by Robert Vanderbei, Assistant Director assist.director@princetonastronomy.org

My Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope has two different imaging options. There is the default which is used to take photographs of small things like nebulas, galaxies, and our planets. The other option uses a different lens that provides a much wider field of view so that we can take pictures of our Milky Way galaxy. In this mode, the angular field of view is 32 degrees by 57 degrees. A few days ago, I used the Milky Way mode to take pictures of… you guessed it… the Milky Way. The best picture I got is a stack of sixty 10-second exposures automatically taken and combined by the Seestar app.

Here’s the picture…

Oh, you don’t see the Milky Way? It is there. But, it’s completely dominated by the light pollution here in NJ. I took this picture at the Montgomery Veterans Park, which is only about a mile from where I live here in Montgomery NJ. I went there because I wanted a good view down close to the horizon. But, even at the park light pollution is a significant issue. Also, the Moon was up. It was in its first quarter phase so it wasn’t terribly bright and it was about 60 degrees away from where I was imaging the Milky Way. So, I don’t think the Moon was a big contributor to the light pollution. I was pointing my Seestar south so light from Princeton NJ and even Philladelphia PA was the major contributor. For those of you who are familiar with the Bortle light-pollution scale, this picture was taken in Bortle 6 sky.

Anyway, if you look at the picture you can see some stars. Down by the bottom of the picture you can see the bright stars of the Sagittarius constellation. These bright stars are often referred to as the Teapot Asterism because they look like a drawing of a teapot.

So, in my hope to get a picture of the Milky Way, this looks like a total failure. But, here’s the interesting thing. In addition to the 8-bit jpg file shown above, the Seestar app also saves a so-called “fits” file that has data at the 16-bit level. So, with a jpg file each pixels red, green, and blue levels vary from 0 (no light) to 255 (fully illuminated). With the fits file, the numbers range from 0 to 65535. That’s a lot more informative. So, with ChatGPT’s help, I wrote some python code to estimate how bright the light pollution was at each pixel and then subtract out the light pollution. I then used the PixInsight app’s Screen Transfer Function to adjust the brightness.

Here’s the result…

A much better Milky Way from Montgomery, NJ with the help of SeeStar App, Python Code, ChatGPT & PixInsight

Bortle Scale Maps of the World

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged assistant director, milky way, montgomery, Seestar S30, vanderbei | Leave a comment

Snippets

Posted on August 28, 2026 by ST Editors

compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Astronaut Microbes Might Survive at Moon’s Pole, NASA Warns One of the primary objectives of space exploration that often gets overlooked is the intense effort that goes into ensuring Earth microbes don’t contaminate planetary objects, also called forward contamination. This is done to prevent contaminating any potential life that might be present could get killed off my Earth microbes and scientists don’t want to make false discoveries….more

Alien Signals May Hide in Unexplored High Radio Frequencies Confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence via radio signals, also called technosignatures, is the cornerstone of radio astronomy. While humanity has been asking since time immemorial whether or not we’re alone in the universe, radio astronomers are at the frontlines trying to tirelessly answer this longstanding question….more

Mars Curiosity Rover Discovers Massive Field of Polygons The surface of Mars is home to some of the most breathtaking and awe-inspiring landscapes in the solar system. This is primarily due to the Red Planet lacking several re-surfacing processes that Earth possesses, including plate tectonics, volcanism, and flowing water. While Mars does have dust storms, this has done little to reshape the planet’s surface, which has remained largely undisturbed for billions of years…more

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 1: The Atmospheric Fingerprint In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, then six billion kilometers from Earth and destined to become humanity’s most far-flung emissary, turned around and took a picture of home. The resulting image is now legendary: a haunting portrait of our tiny, fragile world, a single pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam…..more

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 2: A Machine to Find Another Earth It’s not hopeless, because the James Webb isn’t the last telescope we’ll ever build. Next up on the docket of space launches is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will mostly run deep-universe cosmology surveys but will also, almost incidentally, pick out millions of exoplanets using a trick called microlensing….more

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 3: Reading the Face of a Planet Oh, it’s enough. It’s never enough, of course, but it’s enough to justify building this monstrous planet-hunting telescope, because a single pixel gives you far more than you’d think. That dot has a color, maybe even a pale blue one. It has a spectrum. And it changes brightness as the planet spins on its axis and swings through its orbit…more

What Can We Actually Find on an Exoplanet? Part 4: Looking For Us All of that from a single dot. One HWO observation of an exoplanet can reveal what’s in its atmosphere, sketch a rough map of its surface, show where its oceans and continents lie, and even pick up signs of photosynthesis and how life responds to the changing seasons. And we can go bigger. That same dot can tell you whether there’s not just life, but intelligent life….more

Comet 220P McNaught Puts On An Encore Performance It has been a busy month for astronomy. In the midst of an eclipse season bookended by the total solar eclipse on August 12th and the deep partial lunar eclipse coming right up this week on August 28th, an outbound comet hanging high in the dawn sky just refuses to die: 220P/McNaught…more

Chance gaze at old Hubble Telescope image leads to discovery that could reveal dark matter’s secrets In late June 2023, on a morning train commuting to work in New York City, David Hendel was scrolling through a recent astronomy paper on his phone when a half-page image caught his eye. The image, captured a year earlier by the Hubble Space Telescope, showed UGC 9050-Dw1, a dwarf galaxy some 115 million light-years from Earth…more

NASA telescope honors Nancy Grace Roman, architect of space-based astronomy The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch this weekend aboard a SpaceX rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When it becomes operational early next year, it will transform our view of the universe….more

Want to see a star in close-up? Astronomers have produced one of the most detailed images of Betelgeuse we’ve ever seen. Observations of Betelgeuse by the ALMA observatory in 2023 reveal a strange, bumpy atmosphere and a persistent hotspot on the star’s surface…more

James Webb Space Telescope observes 72 stars and finds planet formation is a race against time “Gas giants like Jupiter must assemble their massive atmospheres while the disk is still substantial enough to supply them, before winds and jets carry that raw material away into space.” Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have studied 72 young, sun-like stars….more

Posted in September 2026, Sidereal Times | Tagged kaplan, snippets | Leave a comment

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Date	Featured Speaker	Topic
October 13, 2026	Charles Bracken Astro-photographer and author deepskyprimer@gmail.com	Mr. Bracken is an amateur astrophotographer and author of “The Deep Sky Imaging Primer” now in its third edition. He will present his perspectives on astroimaging. We expect to have copies of his book(s) for sale for the author to sign at the conclusion of his presentation. Thanks to Tom Angle for suggesting this speaker.
November 10, 2026	Becka Phillipson Assistant Professor in Physics Villanova University rebecca.phillipson@villanova.edu	Prof. Phillipson, originally scheduled to be October 2025’s guest speaker, is an unconfirmed prospect to try again in 2026.
December 8 2026	Joel Hurowitz Associate Professor Graduate Program Director Acting Principal Investigator, Mars 2020 PIXL Team Department of Geosciences Stony Brook University joel.hurowitz.stonybrook.edu	Prof. Hurowitz will speak virtually to our club about his research using the Perseverance rover and about astrobiology on Mars. Thanks to Rex Parker for suggesting this speaker.

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