Hello ...
Happy New Year! Here's your Cosmic Pursuits newsletter for January 2023...
1. The first month of 2023 brings
planets galore, a modest meteor shower, dazzling constellations, and for a lucky few, another lunar occultation of Mars. Grab your scope and star maps - here's what to see in the Night Sky This Month.
2. A few years ago, astronomers announced the discovery of an astonishing wavelike structure in the nearby Milky Way - the
Radcliffe Wave. So of course I had to call them up and ask if we could see any of this structure with a backyard telescope. Follow my tour of the Radcliffe Wave in my latest article at Sky & Telescope magazine at this link.
3. The best good-news story of 2022 was the successful launch and commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But as Dennis Overbye explains, this remarkable instrument is just getting started...
4. If you're looking for a hands-on project, Ethan Siegel explains how to prove Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity for less than $100.
5. Astronomer asked the new ChatGPT artificial intelligence model a
few questions about astronomy. It didn't go so well.
And the astronomy quotation of the month, one to help you through the 'January blahs':
"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the
stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness." - Andre Malraux
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Wishing you clear skies!
Brian
Ventrudo
Publisher
CosmicPursuits.com
