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On Saturday, July 29, a long-planned astronomical observation took place in Frontenac State Park. Fortunately, the weather was nice and clear. People can especially enjoy walking the various trails in the park. For example, the Lower Bluffside Trail Loop takes you all the way down to the Mississippi River here called Lake Pepin. Members of the Rochester Astronomy Club arrived […]

Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki on May 18 2023 discovered supernova in the Galaxy M101 Pinwheel. Supernova was designated with name SN 2023ixf and it is about 21 million light years distant. Galaxy Messier 101  is well known to the amateur astronomers and it’s easy to find it close to the handle of Big Dipper. Now it’s passing every evening local […]

On the evening of March 23, NOAA predicted increased auroral activity in the auroral ring over Greenland and Canada. This activity was expected to affect Minnesota at a lower intensity. The aurora was clearly visible to the naked eye even from light-polluted Rochester. One could even suspect that the streaks and clouds had some color tint. The color stands out […]

Robert Fealey published on October 21st on forum post including beautiful picture above: https://rochesterskies.org/forum/topic/observing-tonight/page/167/#post-13989 The December Sky and Telescope mag motivated me to get out early this morning and see if I could observe and photograph “The First White Dwarf” star in 40 Eridani; the latter is a triple star with the B component a white dwarf. In the attached […]

On the 7th annual Star_BQ Sunday morning October 26, 2014 Dean Johnson had an idea to look at Sirius B. At first I didn’t understand what Dean was talking about, why should we look at bright Sirius. I realized later that he meant Sirius B, a weak companion of the brightest star in the sky, which only a few people […]

V Aquilae (V Aql) is a carbon star and semiregular variable star in the constellation Aquila. It has an apparent magnitude which varies between 6.6 and 8.4 and is located around 1,300 light years away. Star has significant red color, which is more highlighted in medium size and bigger telescopes, temperature 2800K. It can be find even by binocular under […]

I stayed up for the 93% lunar eclipse that was visible very early Friday morning. I didn’t setup my telescope because I thought the clouds and wind were going to ruin it but it actually turned out to be an incredibly beautiful night. Through binoculars it was the best lunar eclipse I’ve yet witnessed. I caught this series of photos […]

Visitors of the Frontenac State Park had on Saturday November 6 opportunity to see celestial object through telescopes. There were three stations with telescopes on parking loop in short distance from beautiful overlook. People could watch sliver only four days old Moon above southwest horizon not so far from brilliant Venus. On South were shining Jupiter and Saturn. And of […]

A bright nova ignited in the constellation Cassiopeia, which is also available in the binoculars. The current brightness is around 7.8 mag (March 19, 2021) and still is getting brighter. Nova was given the designation Nova Cas 2021. It can be found close to the M52. The flare of the nova discovered Japanese Yuji Nakamura March 18, 2021 as an […]