Favorite Star Patterns

Winter Circle

Mar 29, 2012 Tonight

Winter Circle: Brightest winter stars

The Winter Circle paints a great big circle of brilliant stars on the dark dome of a winter night.

Vega, the Summer Triangle's brightest star, found high in the east at nightfall in June and July

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 4 Comments

Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb, Altair

During the summer months, the Summer Triangle star formation lights the sky from dusk until dawn. It consists of three bright stars: Vega in the constellation Lyra, Deneb in the constellation Cygnus, and Altair in the constellation Aquila.

BigLittleDipper [Converted]

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 36 Comments

Big and Little Dippers: Noticeable in northern sky

The Big and Little Dippers appear in the northern sky, near Polaris, the North Star.

best_coathanger2raw

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 2 Comments

Coathanger: Looks like its name

The Coathanger star cluster – also known as Brocchi’s cluster – is a tiny pattern of stars on our sky’s dome. It really looks like a coat hanger and is surprisingly easy to make out through binoculars. The trick to viewing the Coathanger is to start from the star Albireo and to star-hop to its spot in the sky.

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 2 Comments

Northern Cross: Backbone of the Milky Way

The Northern Cross isn’t one of the 88 official constellations. Instead, it’s an “asterism” or recognizable pattern of stars. It’s part of the constellation Cygnus the Swan.

Working FileCS2

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 3 Comments

Hyades: Face of Taurus the Bull

The constellation Taurus the Bull is home to the two brightest star clusters, the Hyades and Pleiades. The Hyades represents the Bull’s face and is easy to see in the night sky because it has a distinctive V-shape. The brightest star in the V is Aldebaran, which represents the fiery red eye of Taurus. Aldebaran is not a true cluster member, however. Its distance from Earth is less than the distance to the other Hyades stars.

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight Leave a comment

Southern Cross: Signpost of southern skies

The constellation Crux – otherwise called the Southern Cross – can be seen from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere and from tropical and subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

ecliptic_galactic_equator_winter_solstice_point

Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 2 Comments

Teapot of Sagittarius: In the direction of galaxy’s center

Two things set Sagittarius apart from all other constellations: the winter solstice sun shines in front of it, and it marks the direction to the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

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Jun 29, 2009 Tonight 5 Comments

Great Square of Pegasus: Easy to see

The Great Square of Pegasus consists of four stars of nearly equal brightness that make a large square pattern. It is best seen from September to March.

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Stéphane Udry

Stéphane Udry is an astronomer at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and is involved in the search for exoplanets.. He and his team, in 2007, discovered a possibly terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, approximately 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. He also led the…read more »

Stéphane Udry: Evidence of billions of rocky, habitable planets in our galaxy

Chris Field

Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for two decades, led major…read more »

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David Stuart

In 2004 David Stuart was appointed as the Linda and David Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing. His interests in the traditional cultures of Mesoamerica are wide-ranging, but his primary research focuses is the archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Maya civilization. His early work on the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs led to a MacArthur…read more »

David Stuart on the Mayan calendar and 2012 doomsday predictions

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Kristin O’Brien

Kristin O’Brien is an Associate Professor of Biology University of Alaska Institute of Arctic Biology. She is interested in the unique biochemical and physiological characteristics that have evolved in fishes living in the chronically cold environment of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. One of the most striking characteristics among the Antarctic fishes of the family Channichthyidae, known…read more »

Kristin O’Brien: Antarctic icefishes have translucent bodies and blood

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Sukanya Chakrabarti

Sukanya Chakarbarti is faculty member in the physics department at Florida Atlantic University. She researches the dynamical evolution of galaxies, with the goal of developing astrophysical probes of fundamental physics. Chakrabarti works on understanding galaxy evolution by performing hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxies combined with radiative transfer calculations. Dr. Chakrabarti has co-authored over 30…read more »

Sukanya Chakrabarti maps dark matter from ripples of passing satellites

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