Australian Sky & Telescope

I CAN STILL REMEMBER when I first identified Mars in the night sky. It was the first planet I had managed to spot. I was a teenager, armed only with a very rudimentary knowledge of stargazing and an old National Geographic star chart that really wasn

EDITOR Jonathan Nally ART DIRECTOR Lee McLachlan CONTRIBUTING EDITORS John Drummond, David Ellyard, Alan Plummer, David Seargent, EMAIL info@skyandtelescope.com.au ADVERTISING MANAGER Jonathan Nally EMAIL jonathan@skyandtelescope.com.au Ian Brooks E

THE EUROPEAN Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured an image of a young, Sun-like star and its two companions. Direct images of exoplanets are nothing new, but this is the first time researchers have directly seen multiple pla

Finger Lakes Instrumentation (a division of IDEX Health & Science) adds a new large-format CMOS to its line of professional-grade astronomical cameras. The Kepler KL6060 Cooled sCMOS camera (starting at US$45,000) is designed around a huge, 37.7-mega

Early September 10 pm Late September 9 pm Early October 8 pm Late October Dusk These are standard times. Add 1 hour for daylight savings. HOW Go outside within an hour or so of a time listed above. Hold the map out in front of you and turn it arou

Mars is the planet in the spotlight this spring, reaching opposition on October 14. You can read all about viewing the Red Planet in our opposition coverage beginning on page 58. But there’s plenty of other planetary viewing to be had at the moment,

2 Venus 8° south of Pollux 6 Mars 0.03° south of the Moon 10 Moon 4° north of Aldebaran 12 Neptune at opposition 13 Moon 4° south of Pollux 14 Venus 4° south of the Moon 16 Moon 4° north of Regulus 19 Mercury 6° south of the Moon 19 Moon 7° n

Full Moon …… 2nd, 05:22 UTLast Quarter …… 10th, 09:26 UTNew Moon …… 17th, 11:00 UTFirst Quarter …… 24th, 01:55 UTApogee …… 6th, 07h UT, 405,607 kmPerigee …… 18th, 14h UT, 359,082 km Full Moon …… 1st, 21:05 UTLast Quarter …… 10th, 00:40 UTNew Moon ……

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) has been putting on a magnificent show for our Northern Hemisphere friends, sporting a fine tail and entrancing all those who have seen it. Those northern observers were first able to see the comet very low in morning twilig

Stargazers will be treated to two fine meteor showers over the next couple of months, the first of which will be the Southern Taurids. This show is active from around September 19 to November 20, with the peak on October 10. It generally produces slo

You don’t have read much about astronomy before coming across mentions of the variable star P Cygni, or the term ‘P-Cygni profile,’ which refers to the spectroscopic signature of gaseous stellar outflows, named after those of the star. P Cyg first a

At the start of September, Jupiter rises before sunset and transits the meridian just after 8:00 pm, when it’s well placed for telescopic viewing. Any telescope will show the four big Galilean moons, and binoculars usually show at least two or three.

To find out which side of Mars is visible at any time use our Mars Profiler: https://is.gd/marsprofiler. For the locations of the two Martian Moons, visit: https://is.gd/MarsMoons. Instructions for making an occulting bar are here: https://is.gd/Occu

THE RED PLANET WILL REACH one of its best recent oppositions on October 14, when it will be just 62.7 million kilometres from your front door — close enough to outshine planetary kingpin Jupiter, and large enough for satisfying telescopic views of th

COMETS ARE PERHAPS the oddest denizens of the Solar System. Most appear with little warning, put on a modest show, then race back to the Oort Cloud, not to be seen again for many, many years. Part of their allure is that each is unique and doesn’t al

CELESTRON HAS LONG PIONEERED ways to quickly and accurately help us find our way around the sky. The company was the first to introduce Go To pointing on commercial telescopes, and over the years it improved the necessary alignment routines required

THOSE OF US WHO USE optical finders on our telescopes know the frustration of trying to figure out exactly which part of the sky the finder is pointed at. They’re great for zeroing in on an object once you’re in the right general area — you can often