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Posts by
Deborah Byrd
Hubble Telescope joins a Messier Marathon
There are 110 Messier objects. They are some of the sky's most beautiful nebulae, star clusters, galaxies, from a list originally published by Charles Messier in 1774. During a Messier Marathon, stargazers with telescopes try to find as many in one night as they can.
April 10, 2019
Latest predictions for the coming solar cycle
Solar physicists predict another weak 11-year solar cycle ahead. At the same time, they expect the coming cycle to break the trend of weakening solar activity seen over the past 4 cycles, and they add there's "no indication we are currently approaching a Maunder-type minimum in solar activity."
April 9, 2019
Photos of last night’s young moon
The young moon has returned to the west after sunset. Check out these photos from the EarthSky Community.
April 7, 2019
Fireball over New Mexico
You can expect meteor activity to increase in the coming months, as we re-enter a time of year for major meteor showers. Here's what appears to be a random meteor, but a very bright one!
April 5, 2019
Astronomers find a planet fragment orbiting a dead star
The star is a white dwarf, a cool, dead, dense star like our sun some 6 billion years from now. The planet fragment - made of heavy metals - survived a system-wide cataclysm that followed the star's death.
April 4, 2019
Farewell old moon, hello Mercury
Many in the EarthSky community caught the brightest planet Venus and the very old moon - a waning crescent in the east before the sun - this week. Some also caught elusive Mercury near the moon.
April 4, 2019
See it! Mars meets the Sisters
Red Mars has been exceedingly close - and is still close - to the Pleiades star cluster, aka the Seven Sisters. These EarthSky Community photos show them in the west after sunset, where you can see them for some nights to come.
April 2, 2019
Astronomers find 2nd galaxy lacking dark matter
Dark matter theory - the idea that a huge fraction of our universe exists in a form we can't see - is a cornerstone of modern cosmology. Ironically, galaxies lacking dark matter might help confirm the theory.
April 2, 2019
Moon and Saturn Friday morning
The March 29 occultation of Saturn by the moon was visible from eastern Brazil, southern Africa, Madagascar, the southern tip of India, and Sri Lanka.
March 31, 2019
Hubble captures a rare active asteroid
The Space Telescope's sharp imaging provided detail on activity from active asteroid Gault, which is now known to be spinning on its axis so fast that material on its surface at times flies off into space.
March 30, 2019
