1. Happy New Year! Let's put 2020 behind us and look forward, with a little hope, to good times and good stargazing in 2021. To kick off the new year, here's what's going on in the Night Sky This Month.

 

2. Here are five of my favorite astro-images that I managed to capture this year.

 

3. If you want to learn how to take a good nightscape image with a camera and lens (no telescope required), Australian photographer Richard Tatti has a huge number of tutorials to get you going. This one of his videos shows you the basics.

 

4. In their annual article on the subject, Universe Today summarizes their selection of the best (predictable) celestial events of 2021.

 

5. Did you see the 'Great Conjunction' of Jupiter and Saturn last month? I managed a peak through a telescope the day before closest approach, and it was still a spectacular sight. EarthSky.org has a summary of the event and a selection of photos that show what it looked like.

 

6. Sky and Telescope predicts and summarizes the best meteor showers of 2021.

 

7. There's always something good on Dr. Brian Keating's 'Into the Impossible' podcast. In this recent episode, author Emily Levesque considers what it’s like to be a real astronomer, and whether today’s generation of astronomers will be the last true stargazers.

 

8. A (very) short video showing the moon's shadow crossing the Earth during the total solar eclipse of December 14, 2020. See a few photos of the event here.

 

9. Ethan Siegel explains why dark matter and dark energy are the worst possible explanation for what we observe in the universe... except for all the others.

 

10. A Song for Stargazers: Here's one of my favorite ‘sunrise songs’ after a long night of sky watching, one that seems appropriately hopeful after a ghastly year when the lions seemed to be always at the door: Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Wondering Where the Lions Are’. Here’s to a better year in 2021!

 

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Clear Skies!

 

Brian Ventrudo

Publisher