Gary Seronik - A place for night sky enthusiasts

The Moon is out of the picture during evening hours this weekend, which presents a fine opportunity to get your first look at Comet 46P/Wirtanen. Although it won’t be at its brightest until mid-December, under a dark sky the comet may already be visible...

The weekend sky is brightly lit by a full Moon, which makes deep-sky observing difficult. So, this is an opportune time to turn your telescope to something really bright: the planet Venus. Indeed, it’s Venus’s overwhelming luminosity that presents the...

Evenings this weekend feature a fair amount of moonlight, but that won’t interfere if you’re hoping to have one last telescopic look at Mars during its current apparition. This will be the final weekend in which the Martian disc is greater than 10 arc...

Evenings over the weekend are largely moonfree and present a good opportunity to acquaint yourself with the constellations of autumn. The words “big” and “dim” best describe many of the season’s offerings—especially when you stack them up against the...