Here is the newsletter broken into the videos. For the full newsletter and to make copies head over to Eadsy Astronomy and please hit subscribe on YouTube and join our community at Eadsy Astronomy!
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For centuries, humanity lived in a remarkably small cosmos. The consensus among the world's leading scientists was simple: the universe was static, unchanging, and entirely contained within the boundaries of our own Milky Way galaxy. All the fuzzy, spiral patches of light seen through telescopes were assumed to be nearby clouds of gas and dust.
That modest, quiet view of reality was permanently shattered in the 1920s by an assertive, athletic, and fiercely determined American astronomer named Edwin Powell Hubble. Armed with the largest telescope of his era, Hubble transformed astronomy from the study of a single stellar neighborhood into the grand field of modern observational cosmology.
The full article is over at Eadsy Astronomy. Please head over and take a look and join our community there.
For centuries, astronomers have measured the heartbeat of our Sun by counting its scars. Sunspots, massive solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have long been the traditional yardsticks for tracking the Sun’s roughly 11-year cycle of magnetic activity. When sunspot counts are low, the Sun is asleep; when they spike, it's wide awake.
By those traditional surface metrics, our current Solar Cycle 25 has looked somewhat average—perhaps even a bit subdued compared to the grand maxima of the late 20th century.
But a groundbreaking new study led by Professor Bill Chaplin at the University of Birmingham reveals that we’ve only been looking at the skin of a much deeper phenomenon. By essentially "listening" to the inside of the Sun, an international team of scientists has discovered that the Sun's magnetic engine is undergoing a long-term, structural reorganization.
To read my article and get links to the research and to listen to the sounds of our Sun from NASA's Goddard head over to Eadsy Astronomy. Please hit hte subscribe on my YouTube channel and join our community over at Eadsy Astronomy.
I discussed in a video and article yesterday, a reoccuring nova in our largest neighbor, Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy, M31N 2008-12a. Today, I thought it would be good to share an update on another reoccuring nova, one in our own neighborhood that we are patiently waiting for it to go off, T Coronae Borealis or T CrB, also known as the Blaze Star.
Come learn more about the Blaze Star and head over to Eadsy Astronomy for the full article and links mentioned in the video. Please hit the subscribe button here and join our community over at Eadsy Astronomy!
For the full article including the links to the items mentioned in the video, head over to Eadsy Astronomy. Please join our community there!
For most people, the night sky feels completely permanent and unchanging. But for astronomers, the universe is an incredibly dynamic place filled with sudden stellar explosions, moving space rocks, and unpredictable flares.
When a massive star goes supernova or a black hole wakes up, scientists don't have months to wait for a peer-reviewed academic journal to be published—they need to tell the world right now. That is where The Astronomer’s Telegram comes in.
As always, there is an article over at Eadsy Astronomy LINK and a link to this resource there. Please join our community there and subscribe on our YouTube channel! Thanks!
Tucked away in the spiral arms of our nearest large galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), sits a stellar system that defies everything we thought we knew about stellar patience. It goes by the unassuming catalog name M31N 2008-12a (or simply "12a"), but to astronomers, it is the most extreme and fascinating recurrent nova ever discovered. It is an object I have written about a lot in the past (see these older blog posts from my blog: 2015 Article and 2017 Article and the 2018 Article). This is a precusor object to a Type Ia supernovae that will ond day, in the future go off. For me and I hope for you, it is fascinating. Come learn more.
To read my article and for links to my 2015, 2017 and 2018 articles here on this blog, please head over to Eadsy Astornomy. Please hit subscribe on the YouTube video and please join us at our community at Eadsy Astronomy.
Here is the video portion of the newsletter for this week. Please remember that the full article is available for free over at Eadsy Astronomy as a PDF or a Google Doc Link and you can read it in its entirity there. Please hit subscribe on our YouTube Videos and please join our community at Eadsy Astronomy.
Well, I did a post on double stars and the joy of observing them. So for this week's astronomer of the week I picked Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve who did extensive work on double stars during his lifetime. He left a huge legacy on true binary double stars and created a family legacy where over 5 generations were famous astronomers, cultimating in his great grandson Otto Struve, one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century! Come learn more about this incredible astronomer and man!
For the full article head over to Eadsy Astronomy and join our community there! LINK.
When we look up at the night sky with the naked eye, the stars appear as solitary, lonely beacons of light. For centuries, humanity assumed that our Sun’s solitary existence was the cosmic norm. But when telescopemakers began turning their new lenses toward the heavens in the 17th and 18th centuries, they discovered a dazzling secret: many of those single points of light are actually pairs, trios, or even complex families of stars bound together in a celestial dance.
For amateur astronomers and stargazers, double stars offer some of the most rewarding, colorful, and reliable targets in the night sky. They are terrific under a dark sky with the moon out of the way. They are FANTASTIC targets during the waxing phases of the moon! That is when I personally observe them. You can do a couple with your naked eye. Binoculars open up a lot more and a small to medium size telescope bring many, many more to your view. Here is everything you need to know about what they are and how you can observe them tonight.
I have a full article over at Eadsy Astronomy as well as some of my sketches I've made of the doubles I've observed. Please head on over for more info on these wonderful objects at this LINK.
5/21/2026
We’ve known about "superluminous" supernovae—cosmic explosions 10 times brighter than normal—for a couple of decades. But what actually gives them that terrifyingly awesome extra punch? For the first time, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has caught the "engine" under the hood in the act.
For my article and to watch NASA's video on this, head over to Eadsy Astronomy and please consider becoming a member of the community there. LINK.
So, I really do observe the Moon as it grows in its wanning phase and I do double stars. Last night, from my home here in northern Utah, I pulled out the Skywatcher Evostar 100mm ED and tripod into the backyard. I had my starbound chair, my table and lunar sketching materials and I was using my 23mm Pentax XW and my 13mm, 10mm, 7mm and 4mm UWA.
The UVW'as are new to me and are a poor man's TeleVue Nagler. I own Naglers and these held up in the 100mm ED extremely well. I was very pleased with their view and for $120.00 each, they are great eyepieces.
Here is the simple setup. It is why I love observing double stars and the Moon. I have the scope, the tripod, the Starbound Observing chair, a small table, my one eyepiece case, my sketching materials. That's it!
It was cold, it got into the upper 30's early and I had to go in and put on my bibs to stay warm!
Sketches and images and my written report are over at Eadsy Astronomy LINK.
For decades, science textbooks taught us a simple "fact" about the Moon: it's a dead, cold rock that ran out of geological steam roughly 2.8 billion years ago. We based this entire history on the lunar samples brought back by the Apollo and Soviet Luna missions in the 1960s and 70s.
But as it turns out, we were missing a massive piece of the puzzle. Enter Chang'e 5 . . .
For my article on this head over to Eadsy Astronomy LINK. Please consider subscribing to the channel on YouTube and joining the community over at Eadsy Astronomy.
For decades, archaeologists on Earth have dug through layers of soil, using buried artifacts and structural strata to reconstruct the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Now, astrophysicists are doing the exact same thing—but their site is 56 million light-years away, and their shovel is a data-cube of pure light.
In a pioneering study published in Nature Astronomy, a team led by Professor Lisa Kewley, Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, has achieved a historic first: they successfully mapped the 12-billion-year life story of a galaxy outside our own Milky Way by reading its chemical "fossil record."
The full article and info over at Eadsy Astronomy. Please consider joining our community over there and contributing if you find the info here useful! Thanks!
I discussed this in the weekly newsletter and went out and it has cleared up and saw this. I thought it was very stunning and the Earthshine is so prominent right now! Not the best of shots, sorry but still beautiful!
One of the simple pleasures for me when I go observing is what is commonly called star hopping. Over my 27 plus years none of my telescopes had goto and all were manually driven. That means I had to have a star atlas, much like this one (Insterstellarium Deep Sky) of the Virgo area, full page. So back in the day, I would find the object I wanted to observe by identify the constellation it was in, turn to that page in the atlas I was using, and then find it and figure out my star hop from a bright star.
A lot has changed over the last 26 years and with GoTo and Digital Telescopes I think star hopping, much like visual observing is becoming a lost skill. My post here is to share why I still love and enjoy it and how to do it.
The Why:
The How Part 1
The How Part 2
I have a complete article on star hopping over at Eadsy Astronomy at this LINK. Please consider joining our community there. It is really appreciated.
For those of us who spend our nights looking up, the steady march of light pollution is a constant battle. We map out our dark-sky excursions seeking pristine, unpolluted skies where the stars aren't drowned out by a permanent artificial glow. But a fascinating new analysis of NASA’s Black Marble data reveals that our planet’s nighttime footprint isn't just a story of uniform, gradual brightening. Instead, it’s a complex, shifting mosaic of lights turning on—and off—around the globe.
For the full article and link to NASA's Black Marble Project head over to Eadsy Astronomy. LINK.
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Johann Heinrich Von Madler was a 19th-century German astronomer whose painstaking visual observations laid the groundwork for modern planetary mapping. Before photography revolutionized the field, Mädler’s steady hand and sharp eye provided humanity with its first truly accurate glimpses into the topographies of Mars and the Moon.
In 1961, Frank Drake gave us a formula to estimate the number of active civilizations in our galaxy. Even with conservative numbers, the result is usually a lot! So, if they are out there, why the Great Silence?
Or in other words, we have the Fermi Paradox which remains and gives to us one of the most haunting question in modern science: if the universe is unfathomably old and vast, and life on Earth evolved relatively quickly, where is everyone else?
The mathematical discrepancy between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and the "Great Silence" we observe has led to several chilling, fascinating, and even hopeful theories. Here is a breakdown of why the cosmic phone hasn't rung.
Besides the video head over to Eadsy Astronomy for my article which is a little more in depth on this. Please hit the subscribe button and consider joining Eadsy Astronomy at Paetron as either a free member, or if you find value in what we do, joining as a contributing member at the $3.00 or $5.00 a month level. It is deeply appreciated!
5/11/2026
The universe just handed us a masterclass in cosmic history, and it came in the form of a visitor from the stars. A groundbreaking new study published in Nature Astronomy, Water D/H in 3I/ATLAS as a probe of formation conditions in another planetary system, has revealed that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our own solar neighborhood.
As someone who spends a lot of my nights at the eyepiece of a 17.5-inch Dobsonian, I’m used to the "faint fuzzies." But the data coming back from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) tells a story that is anything but faint. Please enjoy this video on what the paper shared with us about 3I/Atlas and head over to Eadsy Astronomy for my article on it.
Better late than never! Sorry, I've been doing a bunch of observing and will be this week so here is this week's enstallment. For the full newsletter head over to Eadsy Astronomy.
On Thursday, May 7th, 2026 I went out to N. Alkaline Rd in Puddle Valley north of Interstate I-80 here in Utah. I usually observe with a 17.5 inch f/4.4 dobsonian telescope. This night, I had my TeleVue NP101 telescope and I observed wide field galaxy clusters and Messier Objects. I'll be sharing those sketches after new moon.
I made two videos and you can see them below at sunset of my setup and get a feel for what it is like to observe here in northern Utah. That night the SQM was measuring skies in the 21.68 to after 1:00 a.m. at 21.75 mpas range (22.00 is the darkest) so these are a dark sky location. Come take a look at both videos!
Bottom line, one of the things I LOVE about getting to a dark site and not just observing in the backyard. It gets you away from the daily grind, you are in nature and you can focus both on the night sky and nature and feel connected in a real way.
Please hit the subscribe button if you enjoy the content here and head over to Eadsy Astronomy at Paetron. I've included photos of the location and set up there which will provide further insight to the sites I go to. Know also, if you ever wish to join me, I do offer visits and expeditions to Utah here where you can come into Salt Lake City, and we can go out for an night or over several nights to observe using my telescopes.
Please come join our community there. Our purpose is to discuss Astronomy News and advances in knowledge, and create interest in the hobby of amateur astronomy. If you value that please join us!
A team of professional and amateur astronomers, led by Ko Arimatsu at the Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory, has detected a thin atmosphere around the trans-Neptunian object (TNO) (612533) 2002 XV93, show us that the outer Solar System still holds plenty of surprises for us!
A TNO is a trans-Neptunian Object, and Pluto is considered one as are many other objects that lie outside the orbit of Neptune.
While Pluto is known for its thin atmosphere, 2002 XV93 is only 500 km in diameter—roughly one-fifth the size of Pluto. At that size, its gravity is theoretically too weak to hold onto an atmosphere in the deep freeze of the Kuiper Belt. Come learn how both amateurs and professional astronomers colloborated and made this discovery and the two theories of why this object, 2002 XV83 has an atmosphere when it shouldn't!
So recently, I read these papers on the LMC and then yesterday, saw and read an article from Phys.org that details a fascinating "galactic mystery;
"Is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) a long-term companion of the Milky Way, or is it just passing through for the first time?"
Since I have read the papers and the article, I decided to do a post on it. For years, astrophysicists assumed the LMC was on its second or third orbit. However, new research led by Scott Lucchini and his team suggests our massive neighbor is actually a first-time visitor. However, there are conflicting information on this as well resulting in a debate which is common in science!
I have an article with links to the papers over at Eadsy Astronomy.
Again, I've broken this up into areas, Lunar, Planetary, Comets, Double Stars and Deep Sky. On the Deep Sky I've included copies of previous sketches I've done. The movie reviews are here and the full article and newsletter is available over at Eadsy Astronomy and you can make a copy of a Google Doc or download the PDF if you wish.
Lunar:
Planetary
1st Video: Callisto Transit May 6th and Morning Info on Mars and Saturn
William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse was both an English engineer and astronomer. He is famous for building the Leviathan of Parsonstown, in his effort to determine if the nebulae in Charles Messier's and Sir John Herschel's catalogs were unresolved star clusters or galaxies of their own. He sketched Messier 51 giving to us it's spiral structure and resolved stars in that nebuale forever changing astronomers view of the cosmos above.
The full article on Sir William Parsons 3rd Earl of Rosse and his mighty Leviathan of Parsonstown telescope is available over at Eadsy Astronomy.
