Community Observatory

  What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? We will be closed this weekend and next. Did you know that the Community Observatory is staffed by volunteers? Our hard-working docents have dedicated many thousands of hours in 2025 to showing the public the wonders of the cosmos. This break comes at a good time since it looks like the weather will not be cooperating either. Since I am writing this on Christmas Day, I’ll address the Christmas Star. This is the “star” that the magi followed from the East that led them to Bethlehem. There have been many theories about what this might have been. These range from a comet, a conjunction, or a supernova. Let’s look at these. Comets seem to move slowly, sometimes taking months to traverse the sky. They can be bright and their motion can seem to indicate a direction. Chinese and Korean astronomers recorded a bright comet that was in the sky for about seventy days in 5 BC. Another theory is that it was a conjunction of...

  What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? It will be cloudy and rainy and we won’t be open. We did have a great night last Saturday when the weather cooperated and the clear skies gave us some great views of the Geminid Meteor Shower. But no such weather is expected this week. We are also going to give our hard-working docents the next two weekends off. Our next public viewing will be on Friday January 9th if the weather cooperates. The hype this week will be about the “Interstellar Comet” also known as 3I/ ATLAS. As usual, social media is flooded with fake news about the comet. It is true that its closest point to earth falls on Friday, December 19th but it won’t be close, and it won't be spectacular. It is 168 million miles away and it has a magnitude of 16.6. Brighter objects have lower numbers. The dimmest objects most humans can see are 6.5 magnitude. That means that the dimmest objects that you can see are about 11,000 times as bright as that com...

  What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? We saw the stars last night for the first time in two weeks. While it was foggy below, our higher elevation had clear skies. We are hoping that excellent views will continue for the next two weekends. Be sure to check our website ( communityobservatory.com ) to make sure we will be open before you head up the hill. There are some exciting things to see in the sky right now. Jupiter with its four prominent moons is finally visible. Saturn continues to be awesome. The Taurus constellation with the Pleiades star cluster is easily visible and Orion with its best-in-class nebulas will be visible later during this weekend’s public viewing sessions. The big excitement this weekend is the meteor shower that peaks on Saturday night and Sunday Morning, The Geminid Meteor Shower is often the best one of the year. It can produce more than two meteors per minute under ideal conditions. Ideal conditions include a very dark...

What can you expect to see at the Community Observatory this weekend? We have been disappointed with the quality of the sky lately. We have been having fog and high humidity. This is in spite of the weather predicting “mostly clear” nights. The forecast for Friday and Saturday is, once again, for “mostly clear” skies. We are most likely to open but you should always check communityobservatory.com after 3 PM to make sure we won’t be closed. There is a special full moon on Thursday. The appropriately named “Cold Moon” will be a super moon. That means that the closest point in its orbit, its “perigee,” occurs during the full moon. Since it is closer, it will appear to be bigger and brighter than normal. It also occurs at “lunar standstill.” This is a bit more complex to explain. The Moon’s orbit is tilted 5 degrees compared to the ecliptic, the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Combine this with the Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt and the Moon can be substantially higher or lower in...