Author – The Durango Herald

Deep-sky astrophotography requires accurate focus, tracking

Greetings, Stargazers. Last month, I began describing a typical night of remote astrophotography, covering opening the dome, cooling the camera and pointing the telescope in the ...

DATE: Feb 8, 2020 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

How deep-sky astrophotography works at the Old Fort Lewis Observatory

Greetings, Stargazers. I must admit that I spend more time looking at the stars and other celestial objects with the aid of a camera than I do with my naked eye. I ha...

DATE: Jan 11, 2020 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Comet Borisov visits from outside solar system

Greetings, Stargazers. It was only two years ago that the first confirmed interstellar object was identified passing through the solar system. The fact that the asteroid-like obj...

DATE: Dec 14, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Great Square defines Pegasus in the autumn sky

Greetings, Stargazers. The fall evening sky is often thought of as the empty gap between the rich summer Milky Way sky and the bright winter constellations surrounding Orion. In ...

DATE: Nov 9, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Find some of the oldest stars in globular clusters

Greetings, Stargazers. I need to make myself a set of cheat cards for my favorite objects in the sky so I can answer questions in more detail at the next star party. I have to ad...

DATE: Oct 12, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Discover gems inside night sky’s flying swan

Greetings, Stargazers. Cygnus the swan is flying south along the Milky Way. Although Cygnus is one of the larger and brighter constellations, I haven’t yet written a separate col...

DATE: Sep 14, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Hubble palette reveals glowing clouds of gas

Greetings, Stargazers. Happy monsoon season. I have been enjoying the nice clear mornings, followed by afternoon, dog-freaking thunderstorms, even if it puts a damper on evening ...

DATE: Aug 10, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Try this exercise to see how far the moon is from Earth

Greetings, Stargazers. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Some of us were lucky enough to be around when that happened. I was a space...

DATE: Jul 13, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Find Jupiter to track down the night sky’s scorpion

Greetings, Stargazers. June includes the summer solstice, which makes it the month with the most daylight and the least amount of darkness. Fortunately, the summer night sky inclu...

DATE: Jun 8, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Gauge the temperature of a star by its color

Greetings, Stargazers. Last month, I began a discussion of how stars are classified by their brightness and color, or more technically, by their luminosity and spectroscopic clas...

DATE: May 11, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Absolute magnitude allows us to compare luminosity of different stars

Greetings, Stargazers. Stars come in all colors and sizes. But our eyes limit us to seeing very few of those colors. And the range of apparent magnitudes of stars we can see with ...

DATE: Apr 12, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies

Variable stars help us measure distance in space

Greetings, Stargazers. Spring is galaxy season. If you have a small telescope, this is a good time of year to get it out to find galaxies in the sky. Because most will appear as ...

DATE: Mar 9, 2019 | CATEGORY: What's up in Durango Skies