Hello ! Here's your monthly night-sky newsletter from CosmicPursuits.com.

 

1. The rich constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius are moving westward, but the lengthening nights keep these stars accessible for a little longer, at least for observers in the northern hemisphere. In the east, the relatively star-poor constellations of Pegasus, Capricornus, and Piscis Austrinus are moving into view along with hundreds of galaxies accessible with a small telescope. Also this month, Jupiter and Saturn liven up the southwestern sky, the planet Neptune reaches opposition, and Venus remains low but bright in the west after sunset. Here's what's going on in the Night Sky This Month.

 

2. Take a brief tour of the magnificent Elephant Trunk Nebula and its environs in the constellation Cepheus.

 

3. Did you see the Perseid meteor shower last month? I saw a few, but not as many as usual. Bad luck? Or are the Perseids becoming truly becoming weaker over time?

 

4. Many stargazers would love to have a good 5" refractor. Ed Ting reviews the (relatively) affordable ED127 refractor from Explore Scientific, a good bet for both visual observers and imagers.

 

5. "Uncle Rod" Mollise recounts how Julia Child inspired his mission to capture the entire “Herschel 2500” catalog, the deep-sky sights discovered by William Herschel and his sister Caroline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

 

6. Many amateur astronomers were shocked by the sudden (if not unexpected) closure of the specialty astro-publisher Willmann-Bell last year. But the American Astronomical Society has come to the rescue and will begin to offer Willmann-Bell books for sale late next month. And yes, that includes new volumes of the epic "Annals of the Deep Sky" series!

 

7.In 1994, graduate student Didier Queloz emailed his adviser Michel Mayor the following message: "I think I found a planet." He was right. Mayor and Didier made the first discovery of an exoplanet around the star 51 Pegasi. For their work, they shared a Nobel Prize in 2019. Since then, astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around nearby stars. Now, they're trying to figure out what these planets are all about.

 

8. Some say, with some justification, that the field of physics has run into a dead end when it comes to explaining how nature works at a fundamental level. But some promising new ideas are emerging that may bear fruit in the coming years...

 

9. For your listening pleasure: Sean Carroll talks to Alan Lightman about finding meaning in nature and science on the Mindscape Podcast.

 

10. Instead of music this month, a video. The incomparable Carl Sagan reflects on an image of the Earth, smaller than a single pixel, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it passed by Saturn in early 1990. Required listening for every thoughtful human seeking perspective on our place in the universe. (Now if only we had more thoughtful humans).

 

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Clear Skies!

 

Brian Ventrudo

Publisher