Night Sky is a discontinued American bimonthly magazine for entry-level stargazers. It was published between May/June 2004 and March/April 2007 by Sky Publishing, which also produces Sky & Telescope (S&T). [1] [2]
Night Sky was intended to be a less technical than S&T. The target audience was recreational naked-eye and low-power instrument observers. The magazine was discontinued because of low sales, and subscriptions were converted to an equal number of issues of S&T. [3]
Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers make contributions in doing citizen science, such as by monitoring variable stars, double stars sunspots, or occultations of stars by the Moon or asteroids, or by discovering transient astronomical events, such as comets, galactic novae or supernovae in other galaxies.
In astronomy, a transit is a phenomenon when a celestial body passes directly between a larger body and the observer. As viewed from a particular vantage point, the transiting body appears to move across the face of the larger body, covering a small portion of it.
Sky & Telescope (S&T) is a monthly American magazine covering all aspects of amateur astronomy, including the following:
Skyglow is the diffuse illumination of the night sky, apart from discrete light sources such as the Moon and visible individual stars. It is a commonly noticed aspect of light pollution. While usually referring to sky luminance arising from artificial lighting, skyglow may also involve any scattered light seen at night, including natural ones like starlight, zodiacal light, and airglow.
Catalina Sky Survey is an astronomical survey to discover comets and asteroids. It is conducted at the Steward Observatory's Catalina Station, located near Tucson, Arizona, in the United States.
The Hale Telescope is a 200-inch (5.1 m), f/3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, design, and construction of the observatory, but with the project ending up taking 20 years he did not live to see its commissioning. The Hale was groundbreaking for its time, with double the diameter of the second-largest telescope, and pioneered many new technologies in telescope mount design and in the design and fabrication of its large aluminum coated "honeycomb" low thermal expansion Pyrex mirror. It was completed in 1949 and is still in active use.
Philip Cary Plait, also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, writer and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objects, as well as engaging in public outreach advocacy for NASA missions. He has written two books, Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies. He has also appeared in several science documentaries, including How the Universe Works on the Discovery Channel. From August 2008 through 2009, he served as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Additionally, he wrote and hosted episodes of Crash Course Astronomy, which aired its last episode in 2016.
La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Several other telescopes are located at the site and are partly maintained by ESO. The observatory is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and was the first in Chile to be used by ESO.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), formerly known as the One Hectare Telescope (1hT), is a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The array is situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Shasta County, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California.
WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky, simultaneously monitoring many thousands of stars at an apparent visual magnitude from about 7 to 13.
International Dark Sky Week, held during the week of the new moon in April, is a week during which people worldwide turn out their lights in order to observe the beauty of the night sky without light pollution. This event was founded in 2003 by high school student Jennifer Barlow of Midlothian, Virginia and its popularity and participation increases every year. It has been endorsed by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the Astronomical League, and Sky & Telescope (S&T).
Astronomy is a monthly American magazine about astronomy. Targeting amateur astronomers, it contains columns on sky viewing, reader-submitted astrophotographs, and articles on astronomy and astrophysics for general readers.
The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, US, consists of astronomical cameras, telescopes and a computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving or variable objects on a continual basis, and also producing accurate astrometry and photometry of already-detected objects. In January 2019 the second Pan-STARRS data release was announced. At 1.6 petabytes, it is the largest volume of astronomical data ever released.
The Siding Spring Survey (SSS) was a near-Earth object search program that used the 0.5-metre Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, New South Wales, Australia. It was the southern hemisphere counterpart of the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) located in the Santa Catalina Mountains on Mount Bigelow, near Tucson, Arizona, USA. The survey was the only professional search for dangerous asteroids being made in the Southern Hemisphere.
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is a NASA infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 2011. It was re-activated in 2013. WISE discovered thousands of minor planets and numerous star clusters. Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y Dwarf and Earth trojan asteroid.
The Bortle scale is a nine-level numeric scale that measures the night sky's brightness of a particular location. It quantifies the astronomical observability of celestial objects and the interference caused by light pollution. John E. Bortle created the scale and published it in the February 2001 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine to help amateur astronomers evaluate the darkness of an observing site, and secondarily, to compare the darkness of observing sites. The scale ranges from Class 1, the darkest skies available on Earth, through Class 9, inner-city skies. It gives several criteria for each level beyond naked-eye limiting magnitude (NELM). The accuracy and utility of the scale have been questioned in recent research. The table below summarizes Bortle's descriptions of the classes. Some classes can have very drastic differences from the one next to it, e.g, Bortle 4 - 5.
David John Eicher is an American editor, writer, and popularizer of astronomy and space. He has been editor-in-chief of Astronomy magazine since 2002. He is author, coauthor, or editor of 23 books on science and American history and is known for having founded a magazine on astronomical observing, Deep Sky Monthly, when he was a 15-year-old high school student.
The Lulin Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the Institute of Astronomy, National Central University in Taiwan.
Comet Lulin is a non-periodic comet. It was discovered by Ye Quanzhi and Lin Chi-Sheng from Lulin Observatory. It peaked in brightness and arrived at perigee for observers on Earth on February 24, 2009, at magnitude +5, and at 0.411 AU from Earth. The comet was near conjunction with Saturn on February 23, and outward first headed towards its aphelion, against the present position of background stars, in the direction of Regulus in the constellation of Leo, as noted on February 26 and 27, 2009. It was expected to pass near Comet Cardinal on May 12, 2009. The comet became visible to the naked eye from dark-sky sites around February 7. It figured near the double star Zubenelgenubi on February 6, near Spica on February 15 and 16, near Gamma Virginis on February 19 and near the star cluster M44 on March 5 and 6. It also figured near the planetary nebula NGC 2392 on March 14, and near the double star Wasat around March 17. According to NASA, Comet Lulin's green color comes from a combination of gases that make up its local atmosphere, primarily diatomic carbon, which appears as a green glow when illuminated by sunlight in the vacuum of space. When SWIFT observed comet Lulin on 28 January 2009, the comet was shedding nearly 800 US gallons (3,000 l) of water each second. Comet Lulin was methanol-rich.
SkyWeek was a weekly astronomy television program created by Sky & Telescope magazine. The show was hosted by Tony Flanders, associate editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. Each episode of the program was released in one, three, and five-minute formats; and, the show's content and format were similar to that of another weekly astronomy program called Star Gazers. SkyWeek was carried by many PBS affiliates.
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