The half-moon glows orange near setting in this photo taken a few years back. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 3:33 pm, Jan. 9, 2022

Astro Bob: Happiness is a half-moon

The moon gleams at first quarter phase Sunday night, Jan. 9. We explore the most prominent lunar craters and seas visible with the naked eye, binoculars and small telescopes.

The low sun squeaks between snow-laden black spruce boughs at Biskey Ponds Ski Trails near Duluth, Minnesota on New Year's Day. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 3:58 pm, Jan. 5, 2022

Astro Bob: Earth huddles closer to the fire this week

On Jan. 4, 2022, engineers successfully completed the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield, seen here during its final deployment test on Earth in December 2020. The five-layer, tennis court-sized sunshield is essential for protecting the telescope from heat, allowing Webb’s instruments to cool down to the extremely low temperatures necessary to carry out its science goals. Each layer bleeds off heat into the vacuum of space.
Contributed / NASA, Chris Gunn

Astro Bob 4:31 pm, Jan. 4, 2022

Astro Bob: Gasp — it worked! Webb unfolds its sun umbrella

If you have clear view down near the southwestern horizon Monday evening, Jan. 3, you'll see a gathering of the two inner planets and the returning crescent moon. Start looking about no later than 30 minutes after sunset. Contributed / Stellarium

Astro Bob 2:02 pm, Jan. 3, 2022

Astro Bob: Enjoy a 3-course heavenly meal tonight

A fragment of a near-extinct comet produces a bright Quadrantid fireball during the 2011 shower.
Contributed / Mike Hankey

Astro Bob 1:02 pm, Dec. 31, 2021

Astro Bob: Start 2022 with the Quadrantids

And then there were four! Watch for Mercury to join Venus and the evening planet lineup at dusk on Wednesday, December 29. The smallest and innermost planet will remain a part of the twilight scene into mid-January 2022. Contributed / Stellarium

Astro Bob 12:44 pm, Dec. 29, 2021

Astro Bob: Mercury and Mars make merry on New Year's Eve

This illustration shows the James Webb Space Telescope parked in orbit a million miles from the Earth. Its multi-layer sunshade, made of layers of a plastic-like material called kapton, will block the heat of the sun, Earth and moon (lower left) and allow the telescope to chill down to 370° below zero. The mirror is covered in gold, an excellent reflector of infrared light. Contributed / NASA

Astro Bob 4:09 pm, Dec. 26, 2021

Astro Bob: What will the James Webb Telescope show us?

During a minor G1 storm, pictured here, the aurora shimmers in the lower third of the sky. Sometimes you'll see just a single arc, but often the arc will break up into a series of faint, parallel rays. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 1:43 pm, Dec. 23, 2021

Astro Bob: Aurora on Christmas night?

Orion glides over snow-clad spruce trees on a winter night. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 3:35 pm, Dec. 21, 2021

Astro Bob: Celestial sights at the solstice

The full Cold Moon rises in the northeastern sky Saturday night, December 18 along the purple-gray edge of Earth's shadow. Tonight (Dec. 19) it will be nearly as full and rise shortly after sunset. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 1:00 pm, Dec. 19, 2021

Astro Bob: I see a Cold Moon rising

Passenger Bradley Popovich looks up at the southern Milky Way stretching across the southeastern sky from the deck of the MS Roald Amundsen somewhere in the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina on December 8, 2021. The prominent dark patch near the right edge is a dark nebula in the Southern Cross named the Coalsack. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 8:29 pm, Dec. 17, 2021

Astro Bob: Journey to Antarctic skies

This photo is a composite of many single images taken during the 2007 Geminid meteor shower. When overlaid, the separate trails clearly show the shower's radiant in the constellation Gemini. Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which they stream. Contributed / Berko Erno, CC BY-SA 3.0

Astro Bob 1:37 pm, Dec. 13, 2021

Astro Bob: Watch the Geminid meteor shower peak tonight Dec. 13-14

Look to the west-southwest Monday night, Dec. 6, 2021, to see the thin crescent moon in conjunction with the planet Venus. They'll be just 3 degrees or so apart and make a pretty picture together with your mobile phone.
Contributed / Stellarium

Astro Bob 12:17 pm, Dec. 6, 2021

Astro Bob: Venus, Moon tangle Monday night

Comet Leonard, discovered last January, is now bright enough to see in a pair of binoculars from a dark sky before dawn. Contributed / Martin Mobberley

Astro Bob 4:22 pm, Dec. 2, 2021

Astro Bob: How to see Comet Leonard at its best

This is a contrail seen from the air moments before my plane flew directly underneath it.
Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 3:46 pm, Nov. 24, 2021

Astro Bob: Encounter with a rogue contrail

Using sonification, astronomers have converted the data in a picture, like this one of the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula, into a soundscape.
Contributed / NASA/STScI; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Astro Bob 1:03 pm, Nov. 18, 2021

Astro Bob: Hear the drone of a nebula, the tinkle of a star

The Leonids will be active the next couple weeks but are best before dawn on Nov. 17. The moon is up nearly the whole night, but there's a small window of darkness about half-hour to 45 minutes after moonset and before the start of dawn, when the sky will briefly turn dark. The meteors stream from a spot in Leo called the radiant. Contributed / Stellarium

Astro Bob 5:57 pm, Nov. 16, 2021

Astro Bob: Leonid meteor shower peaks, a shattered Russian satellite dumbfounds

Graham Wolf of Dunedin, New Zealand photographed the totally eclipsed moon on May 26, 2021. The upcoming November 19th eclipse will be just shy of total with 97 percent of the moon in shadow at mid-eclipse. Notice that during totality, stars are visible right up to the moon's edge. Contributed / Graham Wolf

Astro Bob 11:48 am, Nov. 14, 2021

Astro Bob: Watch a wonderful, near-total lunar eclipse

The moon will be in first quarter phase Thursday, Nov. 11, 2021, when it completes a quarter of its orbit around the Earth. At this time, we see half the lunar nearside in sunlight and half in darkness or night.
Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 2:49 pm, Nov. 11, 2021

Astro Bob: Hitch a ride with the moon, see the sights

This artist's illustration depicts a single extrasolar planet like HD 3167b orbiting in the equatorial plane of its host star. Contributed / NASA

Astro Bob 5:00 pm, Nov. 9, 2021

Astro Bob: Astronomers find solar system with right-angled planets

Orion's three belt-stars are so distinctive nearly everyone recognizes the constellation. A rectangular box of bright stars that forms the hunter's outline frames the trio. Losing Daylight Saving Time means Orion rises an hour earlier. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 3:26 pm, Nov. 7, 2021

Astro Bob: Set your clocks to Orion Saving Time

After the aurora, many of us awoke Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, to frost-covered lawns. I deliberately threw this image out of focus to better see the intense colors in the grass from sunlight refracted by billions of minute ice crystals.
Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 1:26 pm, Nov. 4, 2021

Astro Bob: From auroras to prismatic grass, light touches us all

Watch for the waning crescent moon to shine just a few degrees above the planet Mercury on Wednesday, Nov. 3 at dawn. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 1:56 pm, Nov. 2, 2021

Astro Bob: Keep your eye on the crescent moon

A massive aurora blooms across northwestern sky during a strong storm in May 2016. Contributed / Bob King

Astro Bob 2:16 pm, Oct. 31, 2021

Astro Bob: Trick-or-treat! Why the northern lights sometimes fizzle

Ceres crosses the Hyades cluster now through late November. This map marks the dwarf planet's position every 5 days from Oct. 28 - Nov. 26. For other times, just interpolate between the dates shown. Stars are plotted to magnitude 8, with the time set to 10:30 p.m. CDT. No worries if you're looking a few hours one way or the other because Ceres moves relatively slowly across the sky. Contributed / Stellarium with additions by Bob King

Astro Bob 2:13 pm, Oct. 28, 2021

Astro Bob: Biggest asteroid Ceres buzzes the Hyades

...