Backyard Stargazing – Spring 2020

Backyard Stargazing is a surprisingly simple and rewarding experience. In just one night you can learn to identify constellations and find objects like Globular Clusters, Nebulae, Supernova Remnants, Double Stars, and more!

Summer Astronomy – Observing List

The summer observing season is upon us which means summer vacations, camping, and otherwise just spending more time outdoors which leads to noticing the night sky above us. Many beginning astronomers may be wondering, “What interesting things can I see with simple equipment?”

How to Use The Night Sky – Quick Guide

With The Night Sky™ planisphere you will be up and running and locating constellations within minutes. The most popular and lowest distortion star chart on the market.

Planisphere or App?

Now that smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous many people ask us why we don’t publish a planisphere app instead of continuing to sell physical planispheres. The answer is that, in this case, there are several advantages to the physical format. more…

Why the Red Light?

Why do you need a red light to read your charts at night? It can take up to 45 minutes for the human eye to completely adapt to darkness as a protein called Rhodopsin builds up in the rod cells. Once your night vision is adapted you might be surprised …

Latitude Selector

You should choose a planisphere version based on the location from which you will be observing. Each latitude version of The Night Sky is optimized for the specific latitude zone to provide accurate horizons and minimum distortion.

Summer Meteor Showers

Summer is a great time to be outdoors at night with clear skies and the prospect of seeing a shooting star. As you know, a shooting star is the common name for the bright streak of light given off by a meteor as it streaks into Earth’s atmosphere and burns up from the heat caused […]

Rocky Mountain National Park Night Sky Festival

The first Rocky Mountain National Park Night Sky Festival is now history.  The park rangers put on a variety of astronomy related programs free for park visitors including opportunities to view the cosmos through a variety of telescopes and interesting presentations by professional astronomers and aerospace experts.  Over 300 visitors attended the presentations and public […]

Venus, Jupiter, and Regulus. Credit: Stellarium software.

The Venus and Jupiter Show

For those of you who rarely stop to notice the night sky, you might want to take a few moments tonight. The planets Venus and Jupiter will be very close together in the Western sky just after sunset. You will see Venus first as it is the brighter of the two now. Shortly thereafter you […]

Summer Object – Mizar and Alcor

This post describes the stars Mizar and Alcor as part of our series of interesting objects to observe with binoculars or a small telescopes.  For information about this series please see our feature, “Summer Observing List“. Mizar and Alcor Mizar and Alcor are an easy pair to find, but there is much more going on […]