Q-90.1's Backyard Astronomer

One of the best meteor showers of the year comes to a maximum on the evening of August 11th and morning of the 12th.

After a long hiatus, the planets Jupiter and Mars are making their way back into the pre-dawn sky.

After dusk, look about a third of the way up the eastern sky for Altair, the brightest star in Aquila the Eagle and part of the Summer Triangle.

Now is a good time to see the dark round plains called “maria,” and bright splashes of lighter material called “rays.” The southern maria offer some interesting sights in a small telescope.

Hercules, the strong man of ancient mythology, rides high overhead in early summer. While its stars are not particularly bright, its most distinctive shape are the four stars in its center known as the Keystone. Within its borders lies one of the most famous globular star clusters of the entire night sky.

As twilight ends around 10:30 pm, look low in the southeast for a bright reddish star – this is Antares, the heart of the Scorpion.

Now that summer has arrived, the famous “Summer Triangle” of stars has returned to guide us around the evening sky.

Even to the unaided eye, the moon reveals round dark regions called "maria." Before the age of telescopes, people imagined these dark stretches as oceans of water. In reality, they are vast lava plains left behind by asteroid impacts.

At the beginning of the week of June 10, the moon appears as a crescent in the west after sunset. But each night, the moon will appear to slip a little farther back or eastward among the stars.

If you follow the arc to Arcturus and keep the curve going even farther down into the south, you’ll come to a fainter bluish star, Spica.

Observe the night sky long enough and you’re bound to see something strange that’s hard to identify. It’s easy to think of a UFO, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s an alien spaceship.

In binoculars, look near the very center of the lunar disk for a large crater that seems to have a dark, smooth floor. This is Ptolemaeus, named for Claudius Ptolemy, an astronomer of ancient Greece. Two more large craters in a line below Ptolemaeus, Aphonsus and Arzachel, complete the chain.

The moon is "new" this week, which keeps the night sky dark enough to see more stars and deep sky wonders. One distinctive little springtime constellation to look for in the south is called Corvus, the Crow.

Each season has that one constellation that serves as a signpost to the sky. In spring, many stargazers use the zodiacal constellation of Leo the Lion.

Mid-April to mid-May is a good time to see a collection of bright stars in the west called "The Arch of Spring."

As the phase of the moon grows steadily from Crescent to First Quarter to Full, it’s a good opportunity to explore the contrasts of light and dark on its surface.

This is the time of year when the Big Dipper climbs to its highest point in the north, appearing almost directly overhead by month’s end.

There's a fuzzy glow in the constellation of Cancer the Crab that's barely visible to the naked eye, but binoculars will reveal a pretty little star cluster called the Beehive.

One of the most amazing spectacles in nature is coming on Monday, April 8 – a total eclipse of the sun! Here's how you can make the most of it.

Mercury is rarely visible because it never wanders far from the sun in the sky, but we're approaching the opportunity to see it now. As a bonus, Comet Pons-Brooks is visible in binoculars in the west at dusk!