Latest Amateur astronomy Stories

Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark "scar" had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered...

On June 29th, neighbors of Paul Mortfield in Ontario, Canada, heard "cheers of excitement" coming from the astronomer's house. What caused the commotion?"I had just observed NASA's LCROSS spacecraft," explains Mortfield. Using no more than a backyard telescope, he caught it zipping past spiral galaxy IC3808. View AnimationLCROSS is the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. It left Earth June 18th atop an Atlas V rocket on a mission to crash into the Moon. On Oct....

Gender equality is a priority concern for the whole scientific community, regardless of its field, cultural background or geographic location. This is also the case for astronomy, where only approximately one quarter of all professionals are women. In some countries there are no female astronomers, whilst in others more than half the professional astronomers are female. These numbers drop towards more senior levels, suggesting that scientific careers are heavily affected by social and...

British amateur astronomers say they have a new challenge -- spotting an astronaut's lost tool bag orbiting the Earth, to be visible until early next month. The backpack-sized object was lost by astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper during a space walk last week and should be visible from Britain with a reasonably strong telescope or pair of binoculars through the first days of December, astronomers told The Times of London. The best opportunities for British stargazers to spot the tool...

A Dutch schoolteacher taking part in an online research project has discovered a gaseous object that astronomers say is of unknown origin. Hanny van Arkel was one of more than 150,000 volunteer amateur astronomers who last year helped classify more than 1 million images on the Web site galaxyzoo.org. She reported she was unable to classify an irregular, green, glowing object. Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and colleagues at Oxford University say van Arkel might have found a new class...

By Jeff Green June 30 marks the 100th anniversary of an asteroid that exploded over Tunguska, Russia, with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that leveled Hiroshima at the end of World War II. David Healy, by day an auto analyst with New York-based Burnham Securities Inc., wasn't around to warn people about that one. He built his own $500,000 observatory in his backyard in Arizona so he can have a shot at preventing the next. Healy, 71, has some experience with...

By Anonymous STARS & PLANETS: The Most Complete Guide to the Stars, Planets, Galaxies, and the Solar System IAN RIDPATH & WIL TIRION This fourth edition has been revised and expanded. Though it is small enough to fit into a coat pocket on a cool, dark evening, the amount of the material within could fill volumes. The book seems designed to convert curious readers into stargazers. Many of the celestial sights described in the book can be seen with binoculars, and all are accessible with an...

By DAN SORENSON 'Amateur' astronomer, citizen scientist Famed Tucson astronomer and comet hunter David Levy's future was in the stars. Dimly. Barely visible. Levy says he was 8 years old and walking back to his cabin at summer camp. "I happened to be looking up at the dark sky and I saw a little shooting star. It wasn't much of anything, but it lit a spark in me," Levy says. "I asked my cabin mates if they saw it, and they didn't, and I thought, 'This is just for me.'...

NEW YORK, Aug. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- SLOOH.COM, the leader in online astronomy, announces a new remote control observatory location in Chile -- opening up the other half of the Universe for live exploration. Slooh builds private observatories at professional locations and connects them to the Internet with patented technology. The Chile site will open the celestial wonders of the Southern Hemisphere to its members in the US, Europe and most of Asia when it launches this fall. (Photo:...

The two biggest storms in the solar system are about to go bump in the night, in plain view of backyard telescopes. Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years. Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as "Red Jr.," a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its...