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Charles Hakes
Position: Fort Lewis College

Galilean moons of Jupiter offer regular eclipses

Greetings, stargazers. I hope you enjoyed the recent great pictures from comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko (or 67P for short) as much as I did. Launched in 2004 by the European Space ...

LED lights save energy but add light to night sky

Greetings, stargazers. A very common question you may have asked or you might hear from a child is: “Why is the sky blue?” An excellent question that goes right along with: “Why...

In October, take a peek at Uranus and two eclipses

Greetings, stargazers. Ancient astronomers knew of five “wanderers” in the sky. These five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – are all very bright, and, obvious...

With telescope, mine the riches of constellation Lyra

Greetings, stargazers. I hope you have been enjoying the dog days of summer. One reason these might be called the dog days is because Sirius, the dog star, is now roughly aligne...

Remove the noise to let night sky pictures shine

Greetings, stargazers. Last month, I talked about astrophotography on the cheap. You can take photos with wide fields of view and either very short or very long exposures to get...

Photographing the stars can be fun and easy

Greetings, stargazers. Astrophotography is great fun even if you don’t have the most expensive camera on the block. At star parties, I frequently see people pull out their phone...

Near Hesperus, FLC observatory explores night sky

Greetings, stargazers. This time of year has fewer hours of darkness, but since school is out, I get more opportunities to use the Fort Lewis College Observatory. This spring, t...

Time to turn your telescope to our nearby neighbors

Greetings, stargazers. I hope you enjoyed the lunar eclipse more than doing your taxes. If you missed this one, there are more to come in the next couple of years. The next one ...

The universe likes simplicity: Just ask hydrogen

Greetings, stargazers. We have barely passed the equinox, but it already feels like we are heading into summer. I think another few feet of snow would be great, but in the mean ...

New supernova lights up in the cigar galaxy

Greetings, stargazers. Timing is everything. One day after I submitted my What’s Up in Durango Skies column for January, the brightest supernova in a generation went off in M82....

Alpha stars not always the sky’s brightest

Greetings, stargazers. When learning about the night sky, much of what you are doing is learning names. Just like with plants or birds, the agreed-upon names help you communicat...

In 2014, you can help keep the night sky dark

Greetings, stargazers. You probably heard that comet ISON didn’t survive to light up our December skies. What you might not know, however, is that comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy is sti...