Here's this month's 'Night Sky' newsletter from Cosmic Pursuits!

 

1. Venus moves from the evening to morning sky, Mercury makes a brief appearance, and Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn brighten and grow bigger along the southern ecliptic. Here's what's going on in the Night Sky This Month.

 

2. Comet SWAN put on a so-so show in the southern sky last month, but it fizzled on its way north. And yet the tiny Comet C/2017 T2 (PanSTARRS), though not terribly bright, makes its way across the bowl of the Big Dipper this month and passes some bright stars and galaxies. Update (and a spectacular image) here.

 

3. If a comet isn't enough for you, then grab a big scope (or a good camera) and have a look at the new supernova in the lovely barred spiral galaxy Messier 61. If you think things are tough on Earth right now, it was a lot worse on any planets orbiting this (very) distant exploding star about 52 million years ago.

 

4. On a brighter note, here's an astonishing image of a new planet being born.

 

5. Some great viewing for a cloudy night: an amazingly detailed interactive atlas of the Moon. Take a little time to learn how to navigate this resource. You will be richly rewarded.

 

6. The redoubtable Dr. Ethan Siegel takes you on a dual-wavelength tour of five of Hubble's best images in visible and infrared light.

 

7. For nearly two decades, amateur astrophotographers have been using 'lucking imaging' techniques to capture stunning images of the planets. So imagine what the professionals can see with a really big telescope, in infrared, on the planet Jupiter.

 

8. As part of the 100th anniversary of the 'Great Debate', the always interesting Timothy Ferris muses on the prospects of life in the universe.

 

9. Wait, what's the 'Great Debate'? It was an historically important head-to-head debate between the astronomers Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley in April 1920 about the size and scale of the universe. The winner of the debate? Reason itself. Although later measurements proved Curtis right.

 

10. And finally a little astronomy music: a lovely little folk song by Dr. Brian May, ex of Queen, and a professional astronomer in his own right. I assure you, this will be the best song about Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity you will hear all day.

 

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Clear Skies!

 

Brian Ventrudo

Publisher