Secrets of winter moonlight
Few objects are darker than the Moon.
Bob Berman, Ulster Publishing’s Night Sky columnist since 1974, is the world’s most widely read astronomer. Since the mid-1990s, his celebrated "Strange Universe" feature has appeared monthly in Astronomy magazine, the largest circulation periodical on the subject. Berman is also the long-time astronomy editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. He was Discover magazine’s monthly columnist from 1989-2006. He has authored more than a thousand published mass-market articles and been a guest on such TV shows as Today and Late Night with David Letterman. Berman is director of two Ulster County observatories and the Storm King Observatory at Cornwall. He was adjunct professor of astronomy and physics at Marymount college from 1995-2000.
In hush-hush astrophysics circles there are seldom discussed lists of impenetrable cosmic mysteries. These are the tantalizing enigmas that will...
In 2017, this page offered good portable telescopes to anyone who’d explain why they want one. Both found grateful new...
Half of the visual field consists of everything from eye level downward: the contents of the world.
It’s featured in the current Scientific American. So it’s finally mainstream, at least scientifically.
Clouds are a fascinating topic around here. Especially since they are poised for a major makeover.
Last week brought exciting news -- of the successful parachute retrieval of material scooped off the surface of an asteroid.
Two major solar eclipses will soon happen. Each will be seen from here to some degree. You certainly want to...
In general, Americans are bad at math. And scoundrels take advantage of this.
Here they come. Already the post-midnight sky is ablaze with more shooting stars than normal. Each night their numbers increase.
We live in one of the world’s safest places in terms of the personal dangers from climate change. Yet, as...
Mars is performing a wonderful, colorful conjunction, and it’s easy to spot. At 9:30 or 9:45, tonight or the next...
Many assume the universe’s underlying nature can be revealed by astronomy or its cousin cosmology. That’s a big change from...
All this year Earth's sister planet has heated up the evening sky like a UFO. You've surely seen that dazzling...
Last week’s news was exciting: A meteor plunged through the roof of a New Jersey home, was scientifically identified by...
When this long cloudy period finally ends, let’s point our eyes toward arguably the most amazing thing in the universe....
Either nature is perfect, or else dark, snakelike patterns slither menacingly through the universe’s appointment calendar, its pages redolent with...
In one of the most egregious science news goof-ups of the past half century, many mainstream media sources urged people...
Venus is the brightest “star” in the cosmos. No wonder civilizations through the ages worshiped it.
The wild concept of a crushed sun started in 1783 with the British natural philosopher John Mitchell. He proposed the...
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