Astronomy Hub

The Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi is a fully GoTo equatorial mount, the successor of the well-known star tracker “The Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i”. Performance in tracking and guiding is the name of the game when it comes to equatorial mounts. I was determined to put this 11lb weight cap mount to the test.

Earth’s atmosphere is a wonderful thing. It lets us breathe and helps us stay warm, despite our living on a rock that’s moseying along in the frigidness of space. But sometimes, for astronomers especially, it can be a real pain.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes behind the Earth’s shadow, turning the Moon a deep, dark red color. This red color is why some call a lunar eclipse a “blood moon”. During the eclipse, all direct sunlight to the lunar surface is completely blocked out.

Uranus is in conjunction with the Sun on the 5th and therefore won’t be visible this month, leaving Mercury as the only planet to be seen in the evening sky.

Our universe is absolutely massive. For example, did you know that it takes light 2.8 million light-years to travel from the Andromeda Galaxy? That means we’re looking at the Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.8 million light-years ago! In this article, we’ll begin our journey to the edge of the universe starting with the center of our celestial neighborhood: the Sun.

If you’re a birder, the chances are you’ve seen and/or used both binoculars and spotting scopes before. Maybe you already own a few of each and are wondering which is best for looking at the stars. Alternatively, you may be an amateur astronomer considering buying a spotting scope for both astronomy and daytime use. There are pros and cons to both, but when it comes to astronomy, is one any better than the other?

Almost everyone has seen a shooting star at some point. Technically known as meteors, these streaks of light often appear suddenly and without warning before fading and disappearing just as quickly. What are they? Where do they come from? And which meteor showers are best?

It might seem like there’s a lot to learn about astronomy, and you might not know where to begin. To give you a head-start, we’ve created a library of online content that will help to build the foundations you need to get the most out of the hobby.

Several years ago High Point Scientific sent me an R2 kit and asked me to try it out for a few weeks so that I could become acquainted with it, in order to help our customers with any questions that they might have. As excited as I was in putting this accessory to the test, I must tell you that the first few nights I was quite baffled.

We’ve all heard of a blue moon. Whether it’s because someone has said “once in a blue moon” or because a “blue moon” was said to be happening that month, the term has become part of our everyday language. But what does it really mean? How did it originate? And can the moon actually turn blue?

There’s nothing quite as awe-inspiring as a total eclipse. Both solar and lunar eclipses have captivated millions of people across the world for thousands of years, with many civilizations attributing the phenomena to gods or netherworld spirits.

You’ve probably heard of a nebula before. Maybe it’s because you’ve seen them in sci-fi movies and TV shows, where they’ll hang in the background to make the blackness of space look more appealing. They’re often stunningly beautiful in photographs and can sometimes hit the headlines, usually thanks to discoveries by the Hubble Space Telescope.

We are always looking to improve our astrophotos, and there certainly are a variety of ways to do so! One option is adding Hydrogen-Alpha (Ha) to your RGB data. This is an especially helpful trick for any astrophotographer using a cooled color camera or a modded DSLR!

PixInsight is an incredibly powerful tool for an astrophotographer, however, it has a huge learning curve to it. You can do things such as remove light pollution, color calibrate your images, reduce noise, and so much more.

After the discovery of Neptune, it was postulated that other planets may exist beyond its orbit. This trans-Neptunian object was dubbed “Planet X”, and beginning in 1894 the astronomer Percival Lowell began an extensive search to find Planet X.